Page 2 of
3 SPEAKING
FREELY The plan to
topple Pakistan's military By
Ahmed Quraishi
Washington's
regional plans, Pakistan was gradually turning
into a "besieged-nation", heavily targeted by the
US media while being subjected to strategic
sabotage and espionage from Afghanistan.
Afghanistan, under America's watch, has
turned into a vast staging ground for
sophisticated psychological and military
operations to destabilize neighboring Pakistan.
During the past three years, the heat has
gradually been turned
up
against Pakistan and its military along Pakistan's
western regions:
A shadowy group called the BLA, a Cold War
relic, rose from the dead to restart a separatist
war in southwestern Pakistan.
Bugti's death was a blow to neo-BLA, but the
shadowy group's backers didn't repent. His
grandson, Brahmdagh Bugti, is currently enjoying a
safe shelter in the Afghan capital, Kabul, where
he continues to operate and remote-control his
assets in Pakistan.
Saboteurs trained in Afghanistan have been
inserted into Pakistan to aggravate extremist
passions here, especially after the Red Mosque
operation.
Chinese citizens continue to be targeted by
individuals pretending to be Islamists, when no
known Islamic group has claimed responsibility.
A succession of "religious rebels" with
suspicious foreign links have suddenly emerged in
Pakistan over the past months claiming to be
"Pakistani Taliban". Some of the names include
Abdul Rashid Ghazi, Baitullah Mehsud, and now the
Maulana of Swat. Some of them have used, and are
using, encrypted communication equipment far
superior to what the Pakistani military owns.
Money and weapons have been fed into the
religious movements and al-Qaeda remnants in the
tribal areas.
Exploiting the situation,
assets within the Pakistani media started
promoting the idea that the Pakistani military was
killing its own people. The rest of the
unsuspecting media quickly picked up this message.
Some botched US and Pakistani military operations
against al-Qaeda that caused civilian deaths
accidentally fed this media campaign.
This
was the perfect timing for the launch of
Military, Inc: Inside Pakistan's Military
Economy, a book authored by Ayesha Siddiqa
Agha, a columnist for a Pakistani English-language
paper and a correspondent for "Jane's Defence
Weekly", a private intelligence service founded by
experts close to British intelligence.
Target: Pakistan military The book was
launched in Pakistan in early 2007 by Oxford
Press. And, contrary to most reports, it is openly
available in Islamabad's biggest bookshops. The
book portrays the Pakistani military as an
institution that is eating up whatever little
resources Pakistan has.
The Pakistani
military's successful financial management,
creating alternate financial sources to spend on a
vast military machine and build a conventional and
nuclear near-match with a neighboring adversary
five times larger - an impressive record for any
nation by any standard - was distorted in the book
and reduced to a mere attempt by the military to
control the nation's economy in the same way it
was controlling its politics.
The timing
was interesting. After all, it was hard to defend
a military in the eyes of its own proud people
when the chief of the military is ruling the
country, the army is fighting insurgents and
extremists who claim to be defending Islam, grumpy
politicians are out of business, and the
military's side businesses, meant to feed the
nation's military machine, are doing well compared
to the shabby state of the nation's civilian
departments.
A closer look at Siddiqa, the
author, revealed disturbing information to
Pakistani officials. In the months before
launching her book, she was a frequent visitor to
India where, as a defense expert, she cultivated
important contacts. On her return, she developed
friendship with an female Indian diplomat posted
in Islamabad. Both of these activities - travel to
India and ties to Indian diplomats - are not a
crime in Pakistan and don't raise interest
anymore. Pakistanis are hospitable and friendly
people and these qualities have been amply
displayed to the Indians during the four-year-old
peace process.
What is interesting is that
Siddiqa left her car in the house of the said
Indian diplomat during one of her recent trips to
London. And, according to a report, she stayed in
London at a place owned by an individual linked to
the Indian diplomat in Islamabad.
The
point is this: Who assigned her to investigate the
Pakistani Armed Forces and present a distorted
image of a proud and efficient Pakistani
institution?
From 1988 to 2001, Siddiqa
worked in the Pakistan civil service and the
Pakistani civil bureaucracy. Her responsibilities
included dealing with Military Accounts, which
come under the Pakistan Ministry of Defense. She
had 13 years of experience in dealing with the
budgetary matters of the Pakistani military and
people working in this area.
Siddiqa
received a year-long fellowship to research and
write a book in the US. There are strong
indications that some of her Indian contacts
played a role in arranging financing for her book
project through a paid fellowship. The final
manuscript of her book was vetted at a publishing
office in New Delhi.
All of these details
are insignificant if detached from the real issue
at hand. And the issue is the demonization of the
Pakistani military as an integral part of the
media siege around Pakistan, with the US media
leading the way in this campaign.
Some of
the juicy details of this campaign include:
The attempt by Siddiqa to pit junior officers
against senior officers in Pakistan Armed Forces
by alleging discrimination in the distribution of
benefits. Apart from being malicious and
unfounded, her argument was carefully designed to
generate frustration and demoralize Pakistani
soldiers.
The US media insisting on handing over Khan to
the US so that a final conviction against the
Pakistani military can be secured.
Benazir Bhutto demanding after returning to
Pakistan that the ISI be restructured; and in a
press conference during her house arrest in Lahore
in November she went as far as asking Pakistan
army officers to revolt against the army chief, a
damning attempt at destroying a professional army
from within.
Some of this appears to be
eerily similar to the campaign waged against the
Pakistani military in 1999, when, in July that
year, an unsigned full-page advertisement appeared
in major American newspapers with the following
headline: "A Modern Rogue Army With Its Finger On
The Nuclear Button."
Until this day, it is
not clear who exactly paid for such an expensive
advertisement. But one thing is clear: the agenda
behind that advertisement is back in action.
Strangely, just a few days before Bhutto's
statements about restructuring the ISI and her
open call to army officers to stage a mutiny
against their leadership, the conservative US
magazine The Weekly Standard interviewed an
American security expert who offered similar
ideas:
"A large number of ISI agents who
are responsible for helping the Taliban and
al-Qaeda should be thrown in jail or killed. What
I think we should do in Pakistan is a parallel
version of what Iran has run against us in Iraq:
giving money [and] empowering actors. Some of this
will involve working with some shady characters,
but the alternative - sending US forces into
Pakistan for a sustained bombing campaign - is
worse," Steve Schippert was quoted as saying a
November 2007 issue of Weekly Standard.
In
addition to these media attacks, which security
experts call "psychological operations", the US
media and politicians have intensified over the
past year their campaign to prepare the
international public opinion to accept a western
intervention in Pakistan along the lines of Iraq
and Afghanistan:
Newsweek came up with an entire cover story
with a single storyline: Pakistan is a more
dangerous place than Iraq.
Senior American politicians, Republican and
Democrat, have argued that Pakistan is more
dangerous than Iran and merits similar treatment.
On October 20 , Senator Joe Biden told ABC News
that Washington needs to put soldiers on the
ground in Pakistan and invite the international
community to join in. "We should be in there," he
said. "We should be supplying tens of
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