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Audit: US Defense Department can't account for billions for Iraq

2012-01-30T22:11:00.001-08:00

Breaking News and Commentary from Citizens For Legitimate Government

29 Jan 2012

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Mission accomplished! Audit: US Defense Department can't account for billions for Iraq --'The bulk of the records are missing.' 29 Jan 2012 The U.S. Defense Department cannot account for about $2 billion it was given to cover Iraq-related expenses and is not providing Iraq with a complete list of U.S.-funded reconstruction [sic] projects, according to two new government audits. The reports come from the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. The Iraqi government in 2004 gave the Department of Defense access to about $3 billion to pay bills for certain contracts, and the department can only show what happened to about a third of that, the inspector general says in an audit published Friday.

Navy sending commando 'mothership' to Middle East 27 Jan 2012 The Pentagon is rushing to send a large floating base for commando teams to the Middle East as tensions rise with Iran, 'al-Qaeda' in Yemen and Somali pirates, among other threats. In response to requests from U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, the Navy is converting an aging warship it had planned to decommission into a makeshift staging base for the commandos. Unofficially dubbed a "mothership," the floating base could accommodate smaller high-speed boats and helicopters commonly used by Navy SEALs, procurement documents show.

Pentagon Seeks Mightier Bomb vs. Iran 28 Jan 2012 Pentagon war planners have concluded that their largest conventional bomb isn't yet capable of destroying Iran's most heavily fortified underground facilities, and are stepping up efforts to make it more powerful, according to U.S. officials briefed on the plan. The 30,000-pound "bunker-buster" bomb, known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, was specifically designed to take out the hardened fortifications built by Iran and North Korea to cloak their [alleged] nuclear programs. Doubts about the MOP's effectiveness prompted the Pentagon this month to secretly submit a request to Congress for funding to enhance the bomb's ability to penetrate deeper into rock, concrete and steel before exploding, the officials said.

Fmr. Homeland Security Sec Ridge calls for Regime Change in Iran 28 Jan 2012 "Regime change, regime change, regime change." That is what Former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge (R-Bush/Home Depot wh*re) said Saturday in an interview with Fox News, referring to the Obama Administration's need to take action against Iran. A United Nations nuclear agency team is traveling to Tehran to investigate the progress of the country's uranium enrichment. Ridge, the former governor of Pennsylvania warned that inaction from the administration could be detrimental to our U.S. long term security, in recent Fox News op-ed.

Obama administration using loophole to quietly sell arms package to Bahrain 27 Jan 2012 President Barack Obama's administration has been delaying its planned $53 million arms sale to Bahrain due to human rights concerns and congressional opposition, but this week administration officials told several congressional offices that they will move forward with a new and different package of arms sales -- without any formal notification to the public. The congressional offices that led the charge to oppose the original Bahrain arms sales package are upset that the State Department has decided to move forward with the new package.

US, South Korea to hold joint military exercises 27 Jan 2012 The United States and South Korea are to hold annual military exercises on the Korean peninsula soon, the first since the recent change of leadership in North Korea. On Friday, the U.S. and South Korea militaries announced the annual exercises would go ahead. This year two military exercises are planned. A command post exercise, named "Key Resolve" involving 2,100 U.S. personnel, including 800 coming from Japan and elsewhere, as well as 200,000 South Korean troops, is to start on February 27.

Talks Signal Possible US Return to Philippines 26 Jan 2012 The United States and the Philippines are discussing ways to re-establish a U.S. military presence in the Philippines, officials said. Such a step would be in line with the Obama regime's new policy pivot toward the Asia-Pacific region in face of China's growing military might, The Washington Post said Wednesday. The newspaper reported officials involved in preliminary negotiations said the two governments are favorably inclined toward such an arrangement -- which would come about two decades after the United States had to close its bases in the Philippines. [The Nosey Parker of the universe aka the US is trolling for more countries to annoy/invade/occupy. Hopefully, the resistance in the Philippines (and everywhere else) will become busy little bees!]

Doctor who led us to bin Laden was CIA agent, says US --Imprisoned CIA asset ran fake health scheme to get DNA evidence that al-Qa'ida leader was in house 29 Jan 2012 The United States has confirmed publicly for the first time that a Pakistani doctor long suspected of 'collecting vital evidence' before the assassination of Osama bin Laden was indeed working for them. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta told 60 Minutes on CBS that Shakil Afridi helped provide proof that the compound in Abbottabad to which they had tracked a Bin Laden courier, was indeed sheltering the al-Qa'ida leader. Bin Laden was killed, and a much-embarrassed Pakistan arrested Dr Afridi for acting for a foreign intelligence service. He has been in jail since, on suspicion of treason.

British soldier shot dead by insurgents in Afghanistan 27 Jan 2012 Britain's military says a UK soldier has been shot dead by insurgents in southern Afghanistan. The Ministry of Defence says the soldier from 1st Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment was shot on Friday during a foot patrol in the Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand province.

Yemen president arrives in US 29 Jan 2012 The Yemeni President Dictator, Ali Abdullah Saleh, is in the United States for medical treatment. He arrived on Saturday and is expected to stay for an unspecified time although the Yemeni Embassy in Washington told CNN he would return to Yemen in February. Saleh's plane arrived in the US after a brief touchdown in the United Kingdom for refueling.

CIA to pull officer from NYPD after internal probe 26 Jan 2012 A CIA operative's unusual [and illegal] assignment inside the New York Police Department is being cut short after an internal investigation that criticized how the agency established its unprecedented collaboration with city police, The Associated Press has learned. In its investigation, the CIA's inspector general faulted the agency for sending an officer to New York with little oversight after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and then leaving him there too long, according to officials who have read or been briefed on the inquiry. The inspector general opened its investigation after a series of AP articles that revealed how the NYPD, working in close collaboration with the CIA, set up spying operations that put Muslim communities under scrutiny.

Jingoistic sociopaths in bed with Ray Kelly and the NYPD: Anti-Islam documentary producer was arrested for impersonating Secret Service agent 26 Jan 2012 The producer of the controversial anti-Islam documentary featuring Ray Kelly and shown to NYPD recruits was once arrested for impersonating a federal officer, court records show. Erik Werth, a co-producer of "The Third Jihad: Radical Islam's Vision for America" -- which has Muslim groups calling for Kelly's resignation -- was nabbed in May 1995 after an incident at the Columbia, SC, airport. He claimed to be a Secret Service agent and threatened to have an airline employee arrested, prosecutors said. Kelly became embroiled in a scandal this week after it was revealed that "The Third Jihad" -- which features a narrator saying Muslims want to "infiltrate and dominate America" -- was shown to about 1,500 NYPD recruits. The flick was shown on a continuous loop during training, until an officer complained about it.

LAPD and Special Forces Conduct Military Maneuvers In the Skies Above Downtown LA --The LAPD said the purpose of the training was in part to ensure the military's ability to operate in urban environments. 25 Jan 2012 The Los Angeles Police Department teamed with military special operation forces Wednesday evening to conduct multi-agency tactical exercises in the skies above downtown LA. Many questioned what was going on Wednesday night as a Black Hawk helicopter and four OH-6 choppers – or "Little Birds" – flew over the city, at one point hovering just above the US Bank building downtown and later flying low over the Staples Center as the Lakers played inside. [Bye-bye, Posse Comitatus!]

Secret Service probes image of bullet-ridden Obama on Facebook 27 Jan 2012 A post on the Facebook page of a veteran Peoria police sergeant depicting the photo of seven Centennial High School students in Peoria, four with guns and one holding up a T-shirt with a bullet-riddled image of President Barack Obama, was brought to the U.S. Secret Service's attention by a citizen and an "appropriate follow-up" is being conducted, a Washington D.C-based spokesman for the federal agency told The Republic Friday. Max Milien, spokesman for the Secret Service, described the Facebook post in the category of "unusual direction of interest," which would merit an agency follow-up.

FBI staged 'hit' in NC beheading plot 27 Jan 2012 An FBI agent testified Friday that investigators faked photographs to make it look like a witness in a North Carolina terror case had been murdered. The revelation came in a preliminary hearing in Wilmington for Shkumbin Sherifi - who is accused of plotting to murder witnesses who testified against his older brother Hysen Sherifi. Hysen Sherifi was sentenced to 45 years earlier this month in what prosecutors described as a conspiracy to attack the Marine base at Quantico, Va., and targets abroad.

Prosecutors Ordered to Identify NYC Terror Witness --Judge allows government to provide name under protective order barring defense from disclosing it to public 25 Jan 2012 A judge gave federal prosecutors until a week from Wednesday to give up the name of a witness they say was recruited for a chilling, al-Qaida[al-CIAduh]-sanctioned plot for suicide bombers to attack the New York City subways with explosives made from beauty supplies. Lawyers for alleged plotter Adis Madunjanin had demanded to know the identity of the man, referred to only as John Doe in court papers, before Madunjanin goes to trial later this year. District Judge Raymond Dearie said Madunjanin's lawyers had a right to know the name.

Oakland Mayor: Convicted Occupy Protesters Should Pick Up Garbage --Arrests may top 400 --Several journalists were detained along with protesters. 29 Jan 2012 Officials said Sunday that arrests from the Occupy Oakland protests the day before could reach 400 and vowed to seek restitution from those [police agents] who vandalized City Hall. Mayor Jean Quan said the city would seek monetary damages from protesters. In addition, the mayor said she would pursue "restorative justice" by asking that those deemed guilty be put to work picking up garbage and removing graffiti in East Oakland. [A garbage-picking assignment? Is Quan working with Newt Gingrich? Anonymous, get busy!]

Mass arrests at Occupy Oakland protest 28 Jan 2012 Police arrested hundreds of Occupy protesters for failing to disperse Saturday night. Police Sgt. Christopher Bolton said the arrests came after protesters marched through downtown Oakland a little before 8 p.m. Saturday, with some of them entering a YMCA building. Meanwhile, about 100 police officers surrounded City Hall while others were swept the inside of the building to see if any protesters broke in. More help from other police agencies was also on the way, with busloads of Alameda County sheriff's deputies arriving in the downtown area late Saturday.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard escorted by riot police amid angry Australia day protests in Canberra 26 Jan 2012 Police were forced to escort Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard from a restaurant near Parliament House in Canberra on Australia Day, when protesters surrounded the eatery. Supporters of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra picketed the Lobby restaurant over comments by the opposition leader Tony Abbott who was dining with the Prime Minister at an Australia Day celebration. At least 50 police, including the riot squad, were called to the scene shortly after 2.30pm local time. The two leaders, protected security officers, escaped out a side door after about 20 minutes. Protesters chased their car down the road, banging on its roof and bonnet.

FBI will Monitor Social Media using Crawl Application 29 Jan 2012 The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking for a better way to spy on Facebook and Twitter users. The Bureau is asking companies to build software that can effectively scan social media online for significant words, phrases and behavior so that agents can respond. A paper posted on the FBI website asks for companies to build programs that will map sentiment and wrongdoing. "The application must be infinitely flexible and have the ability to adapt quickly to changing threats to maintain the strategic and tactical advantage," the Request for Information said. The tool would be used in "reconnaissance and surveillance missions, National Special Security Events (NSS) planning, NSSE operations, SOIC operations, counter intelligence, terrorism, and more."

Anonymous TKOs UFC's White --Anonymous logos appeared briefly on the UFC's website and traffic was redirected to a site associated with Anonymous. 27 Jan 2012 UFC president Dana White went toe-to-toe with the hacker collective Anonymous on Thursday night on Twitter and ended up on the receiving end of a brutal punch. White's personal information, including his Social Security number, cellphone number, address, geographical coordinates of his residence, net worth, was published online moments after his dust up with Anonymous. The UFC's website was also hacked for the second time in a week.

'No radiation fears' in Fukushima for Louvre works --'Radiation levels inside the exhibition room averaged 0.05 microsieverts per hour.' 26 Jan 2012 A Fukushima museum official on Thursday played down concerns in France about the possible contamination of artworks soon to be loaned to the nuclear hit region by the Louvre. The Paris museum plans to send 24 pieces to Japan, including to Fukushima prefecture, home to the stricken nuclear plant, in a show of solidarity with the disaster-hit country. Museum officials are now removing a contaminated lawn as part of their efforts to reduce levels of radioactivity ahead of the exhibition, said Tetsuo Sakai, head of the Fukushima museum.

Regulators say flood barriers may not protect TVA's nuclear plants --Sand baskets considered 'temporary fix' 26 Jan 2012 Sand baskets that the Tennessee Valley Authority installed at dams to protect its nuclear plants from a worst-case flood could fail, according to a federal nuclear oversight group. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said the baskets are not capable of standing up to the impact of debris barreling down the Tennessee River in a massive flood. "There is potential for this debris to damage the baskets or push the individual baskets apart, causing a breach," an NRC letter dated Wednesday to TVA says. "There would be no time to repair the baskets because the flood would already be in progress." [Insert eye-roll *here.*]

Ex-BP worker files whistleblower suit over cleanup 25 Jan 2012 A former BP employee has filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the company, claiming he was fired for airing concerns about the cleanup of Mississippi's shoreline after the Gulf oil spill. In a federal suit filed last Friday in New Orleans, August Walter claims one of his BP bosses manipulated data on shoreline cleanup and didn't give the Coast Guard "the true status" of what substances needed to be cleaned. Walter, a Covington, La., resident who helped develop BP's cleanup plans in Mississippi after the 2010 spill began, claims in the suit that he was fired last month in retaliation for complaining that BP wasn't following environmental regulations and was "picking and choosing what oil to pick up."

Bird flu mutation studies dangerous 25 Jan 2012 A scientist researching a potentially highly lethal airborne version of the H5N1 bird flu virus said on Wednesday he must be allowed to pursue his studies if deadly pandemics are to be prevented. Despite declaring last week a 60-day moratorium on the studies to allay security fears, Yoshihiro Kawaoka argued in a commentary in the journal Nature it was urgent and vital that his work continue. Kawaoka, of Tokyo University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States, is a lead researcher on one of two recent studies showing how H5N1 can be transmitted through airborne droplets, and his work is at the centre of an international row over whether its findings should be censored. [See: Kobe University lab creates 'novel' H5N1 in 'secret' lab --Emails from Kobe virologist and H5N1-H1N1 virus creator, Teridah Ernala Ginting --Story in e-mails: Kobe University PhD student Teridah Ernala confesses to creating H1N1-H5N1 "novel" viruses; Yoshihiro Kawaoka's virus thief Akiko Makino lies to Indonesian authorities to avoid arrest for attempted smuggling of H5N1 out of Indonesia, gives authorities another university as research facility she works for By Robert S. Finnegan 05 Jan 2012 .]

Mega barf alert *and* gag me with a chainsaw: Obama hosts George H.W. and Jeb Bush at White House 27 Jan 2012 Unbeknownst to the press<, President Obama met Friday evening with former president George H.W. Bush and his son, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, in the Oval Office. White House officials did not list the meeting on the president's schedule but released a photo on Flickr. According to the photo's time stamp, the meeting occurred shortly after 5 p.m., about the time the president returned to the White House from a fundraiser. The Bushes are in town to attend the exclusive Alfalfa Club dinner Saturday, an annual get-together for Washington power brokers that Obama also is scheduled to attend, according to the Associated Press.

Subpoenas issued to financial firms in expanded probe 27 Jan 2012 The Justice Department issued civil subpoenas to 11 financial institutions as part of a new effort to investigate misconduct in the packaging and sale of home loans to investors, Attorney General Eric Holder said on Friday. Holder declined to provide specifics, including the names of the firms. The Obama administration has received heat from left-leaning activist groups that believe a separate effort to investigate misconduct in processing foreclosures and servicing home loans may not be rigorous enough to extract a meaningful settlement.

Fitch downgrades credit ratings of five EU nations 27 Jan 2012 Fitch Ratings Friday downgraded the sovereign credit ratings of five euro currency countries - Italy, Spain, Slovenia, Belgium and Cyprus, contending they lack financing flexibility in the face of the regional debt crisis. Italy, the euro area's third-largest economy, was cut two levels to A- from A. The rating on Spain was also lowered two notches, to A from AA-. Ratings on Belgium, Slovenian and Cyprus were also lowered, while Ireland's rating was maintained.

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Pakistani Commission on Saleem Shahzads Murder a total Hogwash

2012-01-30T18:32:00.001-08:00

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012\01\31\story_31-1-2012_pg1_5

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

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Shahzad commission results marred by free ride to ISI

* HRW says ISI beyond reach of criminal justice system

* Calls for redoubling efforts to find Saleem Shahzad's killers

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistani government should redouble its efforts to find the killers of journalist Saleem Shahzad, following the failure of the judicial inquiry commission to identify those responsible, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Monday.

The commission concluded in its January 10 report to the government that the police failed to question Pakistan's military intelligence officials in its criminal investigation.

Shahzad, a reporter for the Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online and for Adnkronos International, the Italian news agency, disappeared from Islamabad on the evening of May 29, 2011. His body, bearing visible signs of torture, was discovered on May 31, near Mandi Bahauddin, 130 kilometres southeast of the capital. The circumstances of the abduction raised concerns that Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) was allegedly responsible. In June 2011, the Supreme Court, at the request of the government, instituted a commission of inquiry into the killing.

"The commission's failure to get to the bottom of the Shahzad killing illustrates the ability of the ISI to remain beyond the reach of the country's criminal justice system," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "The government still has the responsibility to identify those responsible for Shahzad's death and hold them accountable, no matter where the evidence leads."

The five-member commission, which included two judges, two senior police officers, and one journalist, convened on June 21, 2011. Over six months it interviewed 41 witnesses, including Shahzad's family members, journalists, senior ISI officials, and others. It also conducted an extensive examination of documents, including relevant emails, telephone records, and investigation reports, as well as reports by previous similar commissions.

ISI officials told the commission that Shahzad had cordial relations with them until shortly before his killing. Despite strong indications of ISI involvement, the commission concluded that the Pakistani state, militant groups including Taliban and al Qaeda, and unnamed 'foreign actors' could all have had a motive to kill Shahzad on the basis of his writings.

"The commission appeared fearful of confronting the ISI over Shahzad's death," said Adams. "Shahzad had made it clear to Human Rights Watch that should he be killed, the ISI should be considered the principal suspect."

The Human Rights Watch said that the investigation's weakness was exemplified by the failure to interview another journalist, Umar Cheema, who was abducted, tortured, and then dumped 120 kilometres from his residence in Islamabad in September 2010. Cheema alleged that his abductors were from Pakistan's intelligence agencies. It is inexplicable that the commission failed to seek Cheema's testimony despite his very public allegations against the ISI and repeated offers to testify before the commission, Human Rights Watch said.

"At great personal risk, scores of journalists, human rights activists, and others presented themselves before the commission to offer accounts of ISI and military involvement in human rights abuses," Adams said. "The commission repaid this courage by muddying the waters and suggesting that just about anyone could have killed Shahzad."

The group referred to the commission's recommendation that all intelligence agencies should be made accountable through "parliamentary oversight" and judicial redress should be promptly implemented by the government through appropriate legislation. The commission also recommended that "the balance between secrecy and accountability in the conduct of intelligence gathering be appropriately re-adjusted" and a "statutory framework carefully outlining their respective mandates and role" be developed. It also urged that the intelligence agencies' "interaction with the media be carefully institutionally streamlined and regularly documented."

"ISI abuses will only stop if it is subject to the rule of law, civilian oversight, and public accountability," Adams said. "It is the government's duty to insist on such accountability and the military's duty to submit to it. The ISI needs to stop acting as a state within a state." pr

The Lazy African Intellectual...

2012-01-30T05:46:00.001-08:00

FROM ANDRE

FYI - sent to me by Maliki, an African intellectual from Cameroon. I have always said - if you think Africans are lazy, let me put you and a hoe in a field with a local farmer and you won't last an hour!!

The IMF/World Bank are mentioned as part of the problem, attitudes of the educated intellectuals, & selling out to global welfare (foreign aid) by the ruling elite. Not mentioned is subsidized food dumping by the West, the West using proxy armies to fight over control of natural resources resulting in catastrophic disruption to societies and cultures (e.g., eastern DRC, Congo Brazzaville, etc.) with millions of civilians dying, the West propping up and putting into power despots and dictators during the Cold War and now/then to control access over natural resources, the brain drain where intellectuals - such as this Zambian author below - go off to Europe, America and now South Africa for their studies never to return to their country so as to make a difference. In some respects I can sympathize with an educated person not wanting to return to his/her country due to the lack of opportunities and the much higher salaries paid in the above-mentioned countries, but on the other hand if they do not return and try to make a difference, then things will only worsen and as we are seeing in the USA, Europe and South Africa there will also be a flood of poverty from these regions and we all lose - you reap what you sow and everyone loses in the long-run! It also means the relationship between the West and Africa/Developing World must change from a Win/Lose to a Win/Win relationship!

An interesting article - certainly controversial - will stimulate thought and discussion.

Regards Andre

----

Sent: Monday, January 30, 2012 7:25 AM

Subject: Fw: The Lazy African Intellectual...

Guys

This is food for thought!! You might find interesting.

Regards

Maliki

You Lazy (Intellectual) African Scum!
Posted on January 18, 2012<http://mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/you-lazy-intellectual-african-scum/> | 561 Comments<http://mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/you-lazy-intellectual-african-scum/#comments>
So I got this in my email this morning...

They call the Third World the lazy man's purview; the sluggishly slothful and languorous prefecture. In this realm people are sleepy, dreamy, torpid, lethargic, and therefore indigent-totally penniless, needy, destitute, poverty-stricken, disfavored, and impoverished. In this demesne, as they call it, there are hardly any discoveries, inventions, and innovations. Africa is the trailblazer. Some still call it "the dark continent" for the light that flickers under the tunnel is not that of hope, but an approaching train. And because countless keep waiting in the way of the train, millions die and many more remain decapitated by the day.

"It's amazing how you all sit there and watch yourselves die," the man next to me said. "Get up and do something about it." Brawny, fully bald-headed, with intense, steely eyes, he was as cold as they come. When I first discovered I was going to spend my New Year's Eve next to him on a non-stop JetBlue flight from Los Angeles to Boston I was angst-ridden. I associate marble-shaven Caucasians with iconoclastic skin-heads, most of who are racist.

"My name is Walter," he extended his hand as soon as I settled in my seat.
I told him mine with a precautious smile. "Where are you from?" he asked.
"Zambia."
"Zambia!" he exclaimed, "Kaunda's country."
"Yes," I said, "Now Sata's."
"But of course," he responded. "You just elected King Cobra as your president."

My face lit up at the mention of Sata's moniker. Walter smiled, and in those cold eyes I saw an amenable fellow, one of those American highbrows who shuttle between Africa and the U.S. "I spent three years in Zambia in the 1980s," he continued. "I wined and dined with Luke Mwananshiku, Willa Mungomba, Dr. Siteke Mwale, and many other highly intelligent Zambians." He lowered his voice. "I was part of the IMF group that came to rip you guys off." He smirked. "Your government put me in a million dollar mansion overlooking a shanty called Kalingalinga. From my patio I saw it all-the rich and the poor, the ailing, the dead, and the healthy."

"Are you still with the IMF?" I asked.
"I have since moved to yet another group with similar intentions. In the next few months my colleagues and I will be in Lusaka to hypnotize the cobra. I work for the broker that has acquired a chunk of your debt. Your government owes not the World Bank, but us millions of dollars. We'll be in Lusaka to offer your president a couple of millions and fly back with a check twenty times greater." "No, you won't," I said. "King Cobra is incorruptible. He is ..."

He was laughing. "Says who? Give me an African president, just one, who has not fallen for the carrot and stick." Quett Masire's name popped up. "Oh, him, well, we never got to him because he turned down the IMF and the World Bank. It was perhaps the smartest thing for him to do." At midnight we were airborne. The captain wished us a happy 2012 and urged us to watch the fireworks across Los Angeles.

"Isn't that beautiful," Walter said looking down. From my middle seat, I took a glance and nodded admirably.
"That's white man's country," he said. "We came here on Mayflower and turned Indian land into a paradise and now the most powerful nation on earth. We discovered the bulb, and built this aircraft to fly us to pleasure resorts like Lake Zambia." I grinned. "There is no Lake Zambia." He curled his lips into a smug smile. "That's what we call your country. You guys are as stagnant as the water in the lake. We come in with our large boats and fish your minerals and your wildlife and leave morsels-crumbs. That's your staple food, crumbs. That corn-meal you eat, that's crumbs, the small Tilapia fish you call Kapenta is crumbs. We the Bwanas (whites) take the cat fish. I am the Bwana and you are the Muntu. I get what I want and you get what you deserve, crumbs. That's what lazy people get-Zambians, Africans, the entire Third World."

The smile vanished from my face. "I see you are getting pissed off," Walter said and lowered his voice. "You are thinking this Bwana is a racist. That's how most Zambians respond when I tell them the truth. They go ballistic. Okay. Let's for a moment put our skin pigmentations, this black and white crap, aside. Tell me, my friend, what is the difference between you and me?" "There's no difference." "Absolutely none," he exclaimed. "Scientists in the Human Genome Project have proved that. It took them thirteen years to determine the complete sequence of the three billion DNA subunits. After they were all done it was clear that 99.9% nucleotide bases were exactly the same in you and me. We are the same people. All white, Asian, Latino, and black people on this aircraft are the same." I gladly nodded.

"And yet I feel superior," he smiled fatalistically. "Every white person on this plane feels superior to a black person. The white guy who picks up garbage, the homeless white trash on drugs, feels superior to you no matter his status or education. I can pick up a nincompoop from the New York streets, clean him up, and take him to Lusaka and you all be crowding around him chanting muzungu, muzungu and yet he's a riffraff. Tell me why my angry friend."

For a moment I was wordless.

"Please don't blame it on slavery like the African Americans do, or colonialism, or some psychological impact or some kind of stigmatization. And don't give me the brainwash poppycock. Give me a better answer."
I was thinking. He continued. "Excuse what I am about to say. Please do not take offense." I felt a slap of blood rush to my head and prepared for the worst. "You my friend flying with me and all your kind are lazy," he said. "When you rest your head on the pillow you don't dream big. You and other so-called African intellectuals are damn lazy, each one of you. It is you, and not those poor starving people, who is the reason Africa is in such a deplorable state." "That's not a nice thing to say," I protested.

He was implacable. "Oh yes it is and I will say it again, you are lazy. Poor and uneducated Africans are the most hardworking people on earth. I saw them in the Lusaka markets and on the street selling merchandise. I saw them in villages toiling away. I saw women on Kafue Road crushing stones for sell and I wept. I said to myself where are the Zambian intellectuals? Are the Zambian engineers so imperceptive they cannot invent a simple stone crusher, or a simple water filter to purify well water for those poor villagers? Are you telling me that after thirty-seven years of independence your university school of engineering has not produced a scientist or an engineer who can make simple small machines for mass use? What is the school there for?"

I held my breath.

"Do you know where I found your intellectuals? They were in bars quaffing. They were at the Lusaka Golf Club, Lusaka Central Club, Lusaka Playhouse, and Lusaka Flying Club. I saw with my own eyes a bunch of alcoholic graduates. Zambian intellectuals work from eight to five and spend the evening drinking. We don't. We reserve the evening for brainstorming." He looked me in the eye. "And you flying to Boston and all of you Zambians in the Diaspora are just as lazy and apathetic to your country. You don't care about your country and yet your very own parents, brothers and sisters are in Mtendere, Chawama, and in villages, all of them living in squalor. Many have died or are dying of neglect by you. They are dying of AIDS because you cannot come up with your own cure. You are here calling yourselves graduates, researchers and scientists and are fast at articulating your credentials once asked-oh, I have a PhD in this and that-PhD my foot!"

I was deflated.

"Wake up you all!" he exclaimed, attracting the attention of nearby passengers. "You should be busy lifting ideas, formulae, recipes, and diagrams from American manufacturing factories and sending them to your own factories. All those research findings and dissertation papers you compile should be your country's treasure. Why do you think the Asians are a force to reckon with? They stole our ideas and turned them into their own. Look at Japan, China, India, just look at them."
He paused. "The Bwana has spoken," he said and grinned. "As long as you are dependent on my plane, I shall feel superior and you my friend shall remain inferior, how about that? The Chinese, Japanese, Indians, even Latinos are a notch better. You Africans are at the bottom of the totem pole." He tempered his voice. "Get over this white skin syndrome and begin to feel confident. Become innovative and make your own stuff for god's sake."

At 8 a.m. the plane touched down at Boston's Logan International Airport. Walter reached for my hand.
"I know I was too strong, but I don't give it a damn. I have been to Zambia and have seen too much poverty." He pulled out a piece of paper and scribbled something. "Here, read this. It was written by a friend."
He had written only the title: "Lords of Poverty."

Thunderstruck, I had a sinking feeling. I watched Walter walk through the airport doors to a waiting car. He had left a huge dust devil twirling in my mind, stirring up sad memories of home. I could see Zambia's literati-the cognoscente, intelligentsia, academics, highbrows, and scholars in the places he had mentioned guzzling and talking irrelevancies. I remembered some who have since passed-how they got the highest grades in mathematics and the sciences and attained the highest education on the planet. They had been to Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), only to leave us with not a single invention or discovery. I knew some by name and drunk with them at the Lusaka Playhouse and Central Sports. Walter is right. It is true that since independence we have failed to nurture creativity and collective orientations. We as a nation lack a workhorse mentality and behave like 13 million civil servants dependent on a government pay cheque. We believe that development is generated 8-to-5 behind a desk wearing a tie with our degrees hanging on the wall. Such a working environment does not offer the opportunity for fellowship, the excitement of competition, and the spectacle of innovative rituals.

But the intelligentsia is not solely, or even mainly, to blame. The larger failure is due to political circumstances over which they have had little control. The past governments failed to create an environment of possibility that fosters camaraderie, rewards innovative ideas and encourages resilience. KK, Chiluba, Mwanawasa, and Banda embraced orthodox ideas and therefore failed to offer many opportunities for drawing outside the line.
I believe King Cobra's reset has been cast in the same faculties as those of his predecessors. If today I told him that we can build our own car, he would throw me out.

"Naupena? Fuma apa." (Are you mad? Get out of here)

Knowing well that King Cobra will not embody innovation at Walter's level let's begin to look for a technologically active-positive leader who can succeed him after a term or two. That way we can make our own stone crushers, water filters, water pumps, razor blades, and harvesters. Let's dream big and make tractors, cars, and planes, or, like Walter said, forever remain inferior.

A fundamental transformation of our country from what is essentially non-innovative to a strategic superior African country requires a bold risk-taking educated leader with a triumphalist attitude and we have one in YOU. Don't be highly strung and feel insulted by Walter. Take a moment and think about our country. Our journey from 1964 has been marked by tears. It has been an emotionally overwhelming experience. Each one of us has lost a loved one to poverty, hunger, and disease. The number of graves is catching up with the population. It's time to change our political culture. It's time for Zambian intellectuals to cultivate an active-positive progressive movement that will change our lives forever. Don't be afraid or dispirited, rise to the challenge and salvage the remaining few of your beloved ones.

Field Ruwe is a US-based Zambian media practitioner and author. He is a PhD candidate with a B.A. in Mass Communication and Journalism, and an M.A. in History.

See http://mindofmalaka.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/you-lazy-intellectual-african-scum/ for original article and commentaries

http://www.scribd.com/doc/61839666/Indo-Pak-Wars-A-Pictorial-History

http://www.scribd.com/doc/21686885/TALIBAN-WAR-IN-PAKISTAN-AFGHANISTAN-A-WRITERS-PERCEPTIONS-FROM-2001-TO-2011

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22457862/Military-Decision-making-and-leadership

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22151765/History-of-Pakistan-Army-from-1757-to-1971-PRINTING-ENABLED-Do-acknowledge-to-the-author

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22455178/Letters-to-Command-and-Staff-College-Quetta-Citadel-Journal

http://www.scribd.com/doc/23150027/Pakistan-Army-through-eyes-of-Pakistani-Generals

http://www.scribd.com/doc/23701412/War-of-Independence-of-1857

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22107238/HISTORY

http://www.scribd.com/doc/21693873/Indo-Pak-Wars-1947-71-A-STRATEGIC-AND-OPERATIONAL-ANALYSIS-BY-A-H-AMIN-THIS-BOOK-CAN-BE-PRINTED-FROM-THIS-SITE

Palestinian TV airs show praising Fogel family murderer

2012-01-30T00:26:00.001-08:00

Palestinian TV airs show praising Fogel family murderer

Palestinian TV airs show praising Fogel family murderer

In weekly show dedicated to Palestinian prisoners in Israel, Hakim Awad's mother and aunt describe convicted perpetrator of Itamar attack as a 'hero and legend.'

By Avi Issacharoff

Palestinian television aired an interview with the relatives of the Fogel family murderers earlier this month, praising the two cousins convicted with the brutal attack as "heroes."

The broadcast was aired as part of a weekly show on the Palestinian state-run station called "For You," which focuses on Palestinian prisoners incarcerated in Israel.

The show featured the aunt and mother of Hakim Awad, who along with his cousin Amjad was convicted of brutally stabbing to death five Fogel family members in an attack on their home in the West Bank settlement of Itamar on the night of March 11, 2011.

Hakim Awad's mother sent her regards to her son, proudly describing him as the perpetrator of the Itamar attack and that he was sentenced to 5 consecutive life sentences.

Awad's aunt then proceeded to describe her nephew as a "hero and a legend."

The unusual broadcast was reported by the Israel-based media watchdog organization Palestinian Media Watch

Late last year Amjad Awad was convicted of the murdering Ehud and Ruth Fogel, along with three of their young child-ren, Yoav, 11, Elad, 4, and Hadas, 3 months old, before fleeing the scene. His cousin Hakim was convicted a month earlier. Both men were sentenced to five consecutive life sentences by an IDF court.

Haaretz.Com

Pakistani Hypocrisy and Pakistani False Values-Bastion of Intellectual Dishonesty

2012-01-29T21:14:00.001-08:00

SEX AND THE CITY AND OTHER STORIES

Waseem Altaf

Sharmeen Khan is a popular TV anchor and hosts a morning show. Her monthly pay package exceeds rupees five hundred thousand. She has a Chauffeur-driven Porsche and lives in a palatial house in Defense Phase VII. She is married to Qurban Shah, a rich agriculturist cum businessman from interior Sindh who already has a wife and three kids in his native village, near Tando Adam. Sharmeen is thirty-three years old, twenty-seven years younger than her husband, (not that great a difference when you weigh the pros and cons!) She first met him when her close friend Shabana, Shah Saab's private secretary, took her to a party two years back.

Two years ago, she was Kausar Perveen, hailing from Qasba Colony. Her father divorced her mother, when she and her two younger sisters were still going to school. Her mother, a nurse at a local government hospital, lived with limited resources and worked really hard to raise her daughters. Kausar Parveen got a job as a dispatch clerk, at Shah Saab's main office and later got married to him when Shabana apprised that he was interested in her. She was also lured by the description of huge benefits that would accrue after this marriage.
Shah Saab is a chronic diabetic and is on heavy medication. He likes to be in the company of his young and stylish wife. Sharmeen, has two boyfriends whom she secretly meets in private rooms either at, Sheraton or Pearl Continental. There can be no intrusion and only complete privacy with no-one ever having the courage to disturb them during the time of the clandestine meetings. At the same time she is a deeply religious person and a true specimen of middle class morality.
She hosts a morning show called, 'ghairatmand brigade ka chhapa' where she along with others and the cameramen raid people engaged in 'immoral activities'. Lately young boys and girls sitting in an open park were caught on camera and subjected to harsh interrogation.

Farzana Jabeen, belonged to a poor family and had an affair with Mohammad Farooq, a clerk at the AG's office. They both wanted to marry each other but Farooq's parents were resisting due to the families' diverse ethnic background. It was Tuesday, when they both decided to meet each other. Farooq borrowed two hundred Rupees from a friend, took out his motorbike and picked up Farzana from near the Lines Area. They went to Clifton Park and while they were sitting on a bench, woom! There appeared the 'ghairatmand brigade' led by none other than Sharmeen. 'Is she your wife?' 'What is your relationship with this boy?' 'Do your parents know what you are doing?' 'Is it moral to have relations with the opposite sex?' Sharmeen shouted!
As the footage was telecast on TV across the country, by evening everybody in the neighborhood knew of the 'illicit relations' and the 'immoral conduct' of the couple. Farzana was severely beaten by her brothers. With a swollen eye and a broken rib she was locked in a room while Farooq's parents, admonished him for being 'corrupt'.

Royal Palm Country Golf Club is not for everybody. The membership fee exceeds rupees eight hundred thousand. Sometime back a grand musical evening was arranged by a renowned socialite and an MPA from Lahore where some of the top male and female artists were invited to entertain the audience. Several members of the Punjab Assembly, along with their families were also there. While Fareeha Pervez was singing, many of them started dancing. This 'high' was followed by a sumptuous dinner.

Ahmad Rasheed and his class fellow Shazia Rahmat, were members of the college's cultural committee. They had requested Fareeha Pervez to sing a few songs on a farewell party due to be held in the college premises. On receiving the news that Fareeha would be coming (of course at discounted rates) all the students who had contributed Rs 500 each, mostly from middle class families were very excited as it was not possible for them to go to concerts held at 5-star hotels for which a heavy amount is charged as entry fee.
That same day when they got confirmation that Fareeha would come, the college administration issued a circular that no concert could be held in the college premises as the Punjab Assembly had passed a resolution disallowing the holding of such events. It further added that no such activity could be allowed till further decision by the Government of Punjab.

Khalid Khan, (SP) City, lives in Lahore Cantonment while his family is in the UK. As some of his old friends were visiting him, he arranged a private dance party for them. Nazi and Rakhshi, two female stage artists, were specially brought to entertain the guests. The girls initially performed traditional dances which soon transmuted into erotic shuffling and strip tease while Bacaradi and Cabarnet Sauvignon- an imported red wine from Italy were being served.
Khalid Khan is deeply concerned with the spread of blue films and other such material in the city and has directed all thanas under his command to conduct raids on places where 'immoral activities' take place.
Bhola and some of his friends contributed Rs 40 each to get a VCD player on rent and a couple of X-rated CD's. And while the group of seven were watching those in a small 'baithak', a police raid was carried out and all the seven 'culprits' were caught red handed. The matter was immediately brought to the notice of Khalid Khan, SP (City), who greatly appreciated the action by the police.

Maulana Sadruddin Islahi is not only a political figure but also a noted religious scholar. His only son is enrolled in Aitcheson College, while his two daughters study at Kinnaird. Last month, he attended the sports day held at Aitcheson and was greatly amused by his son's performance in three events. He later met the Principal and applauded his efforts for the promotion of sports in the college. He also expressed his opinion on the significance of sports in keeping oneself fit and healthy.

Butt, as he was known and his friends belonged to the slum area of Mughalpura. In the morning, they would go to school and at around four in the evening they would play football in a small ground near the Railways workshop. That was the only healthful activity available to the poor guys. One fine morning, Maulana Sadaruddin Islahi appeared with a bunch of his associates and declared that a mosque would be built on the small ground. Master Anwar, who was present there, told him that they already had four mosques in the vicinity and there was no need to have another one as children used that space as a playground. However, he was snubbed. 'The purification of the spirit is more important than the purification of the body and moreover there is no mosque nearby for the Ahle-Hadis' cried Maulana Islahi. He also showed them the NOC from the municipality for the construction of a mosque.
In few weeks time, a mosque was built with an adjacent madrassa and a few shops which were then rented out. The rent and 'chanda' went to the Masjid committee headed by Maulana Islahi.

On August 12,2011 Farooq Ahmad alias Bhola Butt, 24, belonging to a lower middle class family of Qila Lachman Singh, Lahore was lying on an iron bed on the rooftop of his house. He was alone at home when Shakila 8, his neighbor's daughter came upstairs………………….
On August 14,2011Shakila's dead body was found near the side of a shallow pool. The post-mortem report later revealed that she was raped before being strangulated.

Note: All characters appearing in this story are fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

WASEEM ALTAF

USA wants Saudi-Iran War & Shia-Sunni Killings. (Rare Documentary on Saudi Royal Family)‏

2012-01-29T20:18:00.001-08:00

FROM MR AAMIR MUGHAL A RETIRED INTELLIGENCE OFFICER

USA wants Saudi-Iran War & Shia-Sunni Killings.

http://chagataikhan.blogspot.com/2011/10/usa-want-saudi-iran-war-shia-sunni.html

--
http://chagataikhan.blogspot.com/

PHENOMENAL LACK OF ORIGINALITY IN PAKISTAN ARMY

2012-01-29T12:28:00.001-08:00

PHENOMENAL LACK OF ORIGINALITY

Post Bretton Woods; Emerging Outlines of New International Monetary Order

2012-01-29T11:18:00.001-08:00

FROM AMBASSADOR GAJENDRA SINGH

For publication pl. Cheers Gajendra

http://tarafits.blogspot.com/2012/01/post-bretton-woods-emerging-outlines-of.html

Post Bretton Woods; Emerging Outlines of New International Monetary Order

Petrol Bourses are Modern Silk Routes

"History is ruled by an inexorable determinism in which the free choice of major historical figures plays a minimal role", Leo Tolstoy

"Keynes's collective work amounted to a powerful argument that capitalism was by its very nature unstable and prone to collapse. Far from trending toward some magical state of equilibrium, capitalism would inevitably do the opposite. It would lurch over a cliff," --- Hyman Minsky.

In 1960s, while returning from Algiers by boat via Marseilles, I found that the French shop keepers were very reluctant to accept US dollars, preferring Algerian Dinars .It was said that the French were converting their reserves of US dollars into gold .Why were the French and president Gen De Gaulle doing so! ( It became clear by 1971)

Because at the end of WWII in 1944, agreements were drawn up at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, USA to establish a new monetary management system to avoid worldwide economic disasters like the great depression experienced in the 1930's. Under this agreement the International Monetary Fund was set up along with the World Bank. Both the institutions have been used to maintain and expand US financial hegemony around the world.

Bretton Woods established the US dollar as the reserve currency of the world, replacing the British pound sterling and required world currencies to be pegged to the dollar rather than gold.

The demise of Bretton Woods began in 1971 when Richard Nixon took the US off of the Gold Standard to stem the outflow of gold. But the dollar has remained a 'fiat currency," backed by nothing but the promise of the US federal government." But the 1971 US action, referred to as the Nixon shock, created a situation in which the United States dollar remains the sole backing of currencies and a reserve currency for the member states.

Thus USA which had promised an ounce of Gold for US$ 35 went back on its international commitment , causing loss to those who held US dollars and not gold as reserves .So do not be surprised if Washington devalues $ or even refuses to reimburse trillions of dollars of debt , many countries hold in US dollar denominated securities .

In any case by 1976 the principles of Bretton Woods were abandoned all together and the world currencies again became free floating. But Bretton Woods remains an important template for forex traders.

At the Bretton Woods II conference in New Hampshire in April last year funded by US speculator billionaire George Soros , who finances regime changes in US favour , he admitted that "The big question is whether the U.S. dollar should be the reserve currency; and, added that in fact, it no longer is." The Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, Columbia University professor, and former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank admitted that the US dollar as the reserve currency is hurting the entire world. The US Federal Reserve has failed, and inequality in the US was reaching a tipping point that hurts the economy and society, with policymakers sending the US further in the wrong direction.

Stieglitz who also chairs the U.N. General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System, has argued for "a global reserve currency and called for a new "global system," saying the current one is "fundamentally unfair because it means that poor countries are lending to the U.S. at close to zero interest rates.""

During the last few years many countries including the five BRICS nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa have held many meetings including at the summit level and called "for a restructuring of the World War II-era global financial system and an eventual end to the long reign of the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency."

Petrodollars; US-Ibn Saud dynasty nexus;

Since the 1930s after the discovery of oil in the Arab peninsula, a critical development in the history of oil industry, there is the nexus between US and Saudi Arabia and a compact between the Saudi ruling elite and the puritan Wahabis, to handover the peninsula's oil wealth and revenues for western exploitation and benefit in return for protection to the Saud dynasty. This nexus has stood the test of time between successive Saudi and US governments. Washington has done everything to maintain the feudal regime in power, a regime which controls "the largest family business" in the world and lacks any popular mandate. ( It has not stopped Riyadh from interfering in other nations affairs across the Muslim world for greater freedoms and 'democracy 'i.e. in Syria , earlier in Libya etc)

This nexus began with first Franklin Roosevelt, then Dwight Eisenhower to Jimmy Carter to George H.W. Bush. Declared Roosevelt after meeting Saudi Arabia's king aboard a warship in 1945, "I hereby find that the defense of Saudi Arabia is vital to the defense of the United States." Carter, in 1980, put it even more forcefully: "Let our position be absolutely clear. Any attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States." It was clear even before WWII that oil had become the vital strategic commodity for expanding military and economic clout .During WWII, the Nazis occupied Romania for its oil and went for the oil fields in Azerbaijan, both countries then big oil producers.

Even a major reason for the partition of Hindustan was to protect western oil wells in the Middle East. Late Indian diplomat Narendra Singh Sarila in his well researched book 'The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of India's Partition', documents how the British leadership across the political spectrum , Conservatives and Labour , intrigued ,told lies , divided the Indian subcontinent and created a weak state of Pakistan which would be reliant on the West. Because Mahatma Gandhi with this opposition to violence and war, and emphasis on peaceful means to resolve all disputes and Jawaharlal Nehru with his non-real politic idealism and vision of creating friendship and understanding among colonized and exploited people of Asia, Africa, Middle east and elsewhere, would not join Western military pacts to protect from the Soviet Union, the oil wells in the Middle East dominated by Western oil companies.

Washington backed its commitment to protect Saudi Arabia with military treaties reaching into the Middle East. Apart from NATO and CENTO, U.S. military bases are stretched into east Africa, the Indian Ocean, and the Gulf to protect ME oil. Then came the Rapid Deployment Force and the U.S. Central Command and the U.S. 5th Fleet, now based in Bahrain. The 1991 Gulf War led to a massive expansion of the U.S. military presence in the region, including putting US troops on sacred Saudi soil, a major cause of anguish and deep resentment among conservative Muslims, specially the likes of the recently assassinated Osama bin Laden and Al Qaida and other such outfits.

Then came the 2003 illegal US led invasion of Iraq for its oil , publicly proclaimed by powerful deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz and others like Alan Greenspan .The invasion and brutal occupation has resulted in the death of over a million Iraqis , devastated the people ,divided and destroyed the state .But the outcome has been discomforting and to the contrary .The fierce Iraqi resistance has 'broken the US army' on the ground , making Washington to think many times to land large body of troops elsewhere. A Shia led pro-Tehran elite now controls Baghdad .Thus Iran's position has been strengthened against which Washington has developed a visceral hatred since West's gendarme in the region ,Shah of Iran was ousted in 1979 and US diplomats in Tehran Embassy held hostage .

All efforts are now being made to weaken Iran, directly or by weakening its allies; the Hezbollah in Lebanon and Assad regime in Damascus. But Russia and China are offering strong resistance, especially Moscow, against regime change of its ally Bashar Assad in Syria, since it will adversely affect its strategic position in the Mediterranean after the loss of Libyan ports. Washington with Saudi (and Qatari) finances has been exploiting the revolt of Arabs in north Africa against US puppet rulers of Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and elsewhere by promoting Muslim Brotherhood and other religious groups, as it has always done ie against nationalist and socialist regimes of Nasser in 1950s and 1960s and recently Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammer Gaddafi in Libya.

US remains determined that the business and trade in petroleum and gas is carried out and nominated in dollars, not only by Saudi Arabia but other five members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) as ordained but by others too. It is this template which acts as the spine for dollar as the reserve currency. But major changes are emerging.

Shifting of Economic Power from West to Asia

John Embry, Chief Investment Strategist of $9 billion strong Sprott Asset Management, said last year "When you look at the financial condition of the United States at the federal level, at the state level and at the municipal level, I don't see any way out of this. There's too much debt, interest rates are far too low. If interest rates really reflected what's going on, this risk in the debt and the risk of inflation, they would be hundreds of basis points higher and under that event the debt couldn't be serviced. So there will be some form of default."

Financial Times (London) warned last year that the US dollar will lose its status as the reserve currency in 25 years and would be replaced by a portfolio of currencies according to a survey of central bank reserve managers who collectively control more than $8,000 billion, unlike in the past when they said the dollar would retain its status as the sole reserve currency. -- The dollar would be replaced by a portfolio of currencies within the next 25 years. Central banks have bought about 151 tons of gold so far this year, led by Russia and Mexico, according to the World Gold Council, and are on track to make their largest annual purchases of bullion since the collapse in 1971 of the Bretton Woods system, which pegged the value of the dollar to gold. The Yellow metal

Would be the best performing asset class over the next year, citing sovereign defaults as the chief risk to the global economy.

US debt now amounts to over $ 14 trillion , equal to its GDP .Even in this GDP , the financial industry contributes 40%.The US economy is now 20-25 % of world GDP unlike 50% after WWII and is being artificially sustained by a stimulus of $ 2.8 trillion .There are no green shoots of revival , unemployment continues to rise . US economy remains in recession .The 1930s recession was overcome by WWII which allowed its protected ( from war) industry to run full steam and indebt European and other countries .With many industries disappearing or in decline , even the automobile one ,the US economic downhill can only worsen.

For the first time ever, the United States lost its perfect credit rating as Standard & Poor's reduced its long-term debt assessment in August last year from AAA to AA+ with a negative outlook.

In announcing the move, the ratings agency said a deal that week to reduce the nation's debt did not go far enough and exposed paralyzing political dysfunction. The downgrade could cost the government and ordinary consumers billions of dollars by jacking up interest rates the U.S. must pay on its $14.4 trillion debt and a host of rates consumers pay for items such as mortgages, car loans and credit cards.

Has the Critical moment of Paradigm Shift Arrived

In an article of 26 October, 2011, titled 'The End of the American Era', Prof Stephen M. Walt stated that 'THE AMERICAN ERA' began immediately after World War II. Europe may have been the center of international politics for over three centuries, but two destructive world wars decimated these great powers. So is USA in many wars .Paul Kennedy's best-selling Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, had argued in 1985 that America was in danger of "imperial overstretch." He believed that Great Britain returned to the unseemly ranks of mediocrity because it spent too much money defending far-flung interests and fighting costly wars, and he warned that the United States was headed down a similar path.

A new Reserve currency to challenge the dollar – What's really going on in the Straits of Hormuz.

http://mycatbirdseat.com/2012/01/a-new-reserve-currency-to-challenge-the-dollar-whats-really-going-on-in-the-straits-of-hormuz/

Speculation and talk about a Settlement or Reserve Currency has been going for quite some time, especially in the last few years. David Malone, author of the "The Debt Generation" has focused considerable attention on the financial systems. The Settlement Currency just means the currency both parties agree is stable, internationally trusted and accepted, and in plentiful supply which may not be the case for their own currencies. China and some other countries want to challenge the US and dollar hegemony with the eventual goal of creating an alternative reserve currency backed by gold rather than the dollar or by debt. These countries have been buying lots of gold and include Russia, China and India among others .They are talking about the need for a new reserve currency to replace the dollar.

Malone noted media reports that India was talking to Iran about moving out of dollar settlements so as to be able to buy Iranian oil despite a US embargo. India said it was discussing settling payments in Gold since Iran does not buy much from India unlike from China. India has also signed a settlement agreement with China to use the Yuan. China and Russia have been trading directly in their own currencies and using them both interchangeably for settlement for over a year. As the "The China Daily "article reported that Beijing is allowing greater use of its currency for cross-border transactions to reduce reliance on the US dollar, after Premier Wen Jiabao said in March last year that he was "worried" about holdings of assets denominated in the greenbacks.

Then on 26th December 2011 Bloomberg reported, Japan and China will promote direct trading of the yen and Yuan without using dollars and will encourage the development of a market for companies involved in the exchanges. China is Japan's largest trading partner. Japan will also start in 2012 buying Chinese debts. How much Dollar debt will either of them buy? They have both already been buying less.

On Dec.28 last year the Iranian news service reported that Iran and China signed two agreements on expansion of trade ties and joint investments. These trades too will not be settled in Dollars or in Euros.

"The China Post" reported that on the last day of 2011, US President Obama had signed a new law imposing sanctions on banks dealing with Iran….Sanctioned institutions would be frozen out of U.S. financial markets. But as the article went on to report, with only barely concealed delight, the threat may be as hollow as the dollar itself. The law comes with exemptions which may eventually highlight America's plight rather than its might.

"The Iranian oil embargo blowback "

While events and changes have been taking place as do all major historical movements and changes, perhaps the US and EU decision to put more sanctions against Iran and for EU not to buy Iran oil from July may be one of the straws that breaks the US Camel of Dollar Reserve Currency .Iran is an important oil supplier to emerging Asian countries like China, Japan, South Korea and India.

India whose prime minister committed Indians of deep love for George Bush, a few years ago, as a result of one harmful policy after another against India by Washington, finding its back stretched has decided that New Delhi, faced with difficulties to make payment by banks for Iranian oil will even settle the accounts in gold bullion, according to media reports including one close to Israel.

Veteran journalist Pepe Escobar puts it colourfully in his Asia Times column "The Iranian oil embargo blowback ";

"Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, "Unilateral sanctions don't help matters". The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing, exercising immense tact, nevertheless was unmistakable; "To blindly pressure and impose sanctions on Iran are not constructive approaches."

Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said, "We have very good relations with Iran, and we are putting much effort into renewing Iran's talks with the 5+1 [Iran Six - the United Nations Security Council permanent members plus Germany] mediators' group. Turkey will continue looking for a peaceful solution to the issue."

BRICS member India - alongside Russia and China - also dismissed sanctions. South Korea and Japan will inevitably extract exemptions from the Barack Obama administration.

All across Eurasia trade is fast moving away from the US dollar. The Asian Dollar Exclusion Zone, crucially, also means that Asia is slowly disengaging itself from Western banks.

The movement may be led by China - but it's irreversibly transnational. Once again, follow the money. BRICS members China and Brazil started bypassing the US dollar on trade in 2007. BRICS members Russia and China did the same in 2010. Japan and China - the top two Asian giants - did the same only last month.

Only last week, Saudi Arabia and China rolled out a project for a giant oil refinery in the Red Sea. And India more or less secretly is deciding to pay for Iranian oil in gold - even bypassing the current middleman, a Turkish bank.

Asia wants a new international system - and it's working for it. Inevitable long-term consequences; the US dollar - and, crucially, the petrodollar - slowly drifting into irrelevance. "Too Big to Fail" may turn out to be not a categorical imperative, but an epitaph." concluded Escobar.

Under US pressure ,EU declared economic war in the form of an Iranian oil embargo , beginning July , never mind many of their refineries are suited to light Iranian oil , although Libya can make up for some of the loss, the only thing the invaders have set right since Gaddafi lynching . Libya remains chaotic, with torture and strong trends towards a possible civil war, showing that West was only interested in stealing Libyan oil, having earlier gulped its assets in Western banks.

Against ill thought bluff moves, chess players in Iran have acted fast. The Majlis (Iranian parliament) is discussing the matter of sanctions and EU embargo on 29 January and may decide to cancel right away all oil exports to any European country that approved the embargo .A member of Parliament Nasser Soudani: declared "Europe will burn in the fire of Iran's oil wells."

Wrote Ambassador M.K.Bhadrakumar in his recent blog;

"The week ahead promises to be of momentous importance for the Middle East - and for international security. Two templates are overlapping in Tehran. One, Iran's Majlis is voting today on a legislation to put embargo on oil exports to Europe w.e.f coming week. The indications are that the law will sail through and may forthwith secure the approval of the Guardian Council.

Iran's retaliation has huge implications for international security. Put simply, we are all wading into unchartered waters. There is high probability of a chain reaction with oil price skyrocketing. The analysts have only been dabbling in the subject, as the latest disclosure by Reuters from Tehran suggests.

"The Reuters report says that all European companies with pending oil contracts with Iran are going to be hit. For Italy's Eni, for instance, the buyback contracts are worth $1.5 billion. Again, around 70 refineries in Europe will need to be shut down if the light, 'sweet' crude from Iran is unavailable. So, it all goes far beyond a matter of shortages in crude supply that Saudi Arabia can somehow make up.

Significantly, Saudi FM Prince Saud Al-Faisal has been quoted as saying that there is no 'binding decision' by the GCC countries in response to the EU's sanctions against Iran and adding, most interestingly, that they will only defer to decisions made by the UN. The FM underscored the importance of a "balanced market" for oil.

Riyadh is obviously having a multitude of considerations, which certainly includes Saudi Arabia's long-term relationship with Iran and the logic of geography that places the two countries as neighbours. Prince Faisal was speaking on the sidelines of a GCC-Turkey conference in Istanbul on Saturday where Turkish FM Ahmed Davutoglu categorically distanced his country from sanctions against Iran.

Meanwhile, the IAEA inspectors have arrived in Tehran. Iran's dialogue with the IAEA is resuming after a gap of 3 years. Most western assessments are already pessimistic about the prospects of the talks, while Iranian FM Ali Akbar Salehi has sounded hopeful.

The IAEA director-general Yukiya Amano, ominously, has dimension "to Iran's nuclear programme. Unlike Mohammed ElBaradei, who had a mind of his own, Amano holds the American brief and seems to be working toward the objective of referring Iran to the UN Security Council.

Ironically, he acknowledges that he has no proof in hand that there is any military content to Iran's nuclear programme. Equally, the renowned former IAEA director Hans Blix has suggested that there is still room for diplomacy.

But if the intention is to browbeat Iran, the inspectors aren't going to get anywhere. The supreme leader's advisor and elder statesman Ali Akbar Velayati has forewarned that Iran won't blink. Tehran is on guard that the IAEA inspectors are possibly holding a western brief. Velayati said:"We [Iran] have always been open with regard to our nuclear issues and the IAEA team coming to Iran can make the necessary inspections. We will, however, not withdraw from our nuclear rights as we have consistently acted within international regulations and in line with the laws of the non-proliferation treaty. Furthermore, wherever Iran has any nuclear activities, the IAEA cameras have constant monitoring ,adds Amb Bhadrakumar.

If EU hopes that Saudi Arabia will bail out , whatever the spin in Western corporate media – Riyadh does not have the spare capacity. Saudis will be happy with higher prices is high oil prices, as they have indicated ,to bribe - apart from repressing - its own population into forgetting about Arab revolts against US puppets in Arab states in north Africa and Yemen. It is likely that the Europeans will be compelled to buy oil at higher prices indirectly through intermediaries. This will hit Club Med countries such as Spain, Italy and Greece, having little time to find a possible alternative to Iran's light, high-quality crude. Greece - already facing the abyss - has been buying heavily discounted oil from Iran. The oil embargo may even precipitating a Greek government bond default - and have even cascading effect in the Euro-zone (Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Spain – and even beyond)

Reaction to sanctions and embargo

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, "Unilateral sanctions don't help matters". Foreign Ministry in Beijing, said "To blindly pressure and impose sanctions on Iran are not constructive approaches."

Even Turkey which has been cajoled and enticed into supporting Saudi policies by Yesil Surmaye aka Green Money from Riyadh since 2001 , finds that its Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu policy of 'Zero friction with neighbours ' has ended in tensions with all its neighbours and the passage of Armenian genocide bill in French Parliament . Davutoglu, who recently visited Tehran to sort out differences said "We have very good relations with Iran, and we are putting much effort into renewing Iran's talks with the 5+1 [Iran Six - the United Nations Security Council permanent members plus Germany] mediators' group. Turkey will continue looking for a peaceful solution to the issue."

BRICS member India - alongside Russia and China – is opposed to sanctions according the media including a website close to Israel. India will keep buying Iranian oil and paying in rupees or even in gold. After being led by the noose and hood winked by Washington on Indo-US Nuclear Treaty which has given no freedom from NSG regime or access to advanced technology, not allowed to work out an energy security policy with Iran and others, New Delhi is moving away from total obedience to Washington, since the replacement of a policeman National Security Adviser by a strategic expert.

Oil Bourses

West controls the oil trade via three current oil markers , all US dollar denominated: North America's West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI), North Sea Brent Crude, and the UAE Dubai Crude. The two major oil bourses are the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) in New York City and the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) in London & Atlanta.

US led west and its oil companies manipulate oil prices .Now the stimulus of over three trillion dollars is used to play around the stocks in the world and use this vast almost interest free sum for speculating in commodities and oil .Energy expert and economist William Engdahl has proved clearly, how a large portion of high oil prices paid by the world goes into the pockets of western speculators who have free access to massive funds from US and allied banks.

A defiant president Saddam Hussein of Iraq had converted in 2000, all its oil transactions under the Oil for Food program to Euros. When U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, it returned oil sales from the euro to the USD .It is now clear that the invasion of Iraq had little threat from Saddam's so called WMD program but with gaining strategic control over Iraq's hydrocarbon reserves and in doing so maintain the U.S. dollar as the monopoly currency for the critical international oil market.

Iran has been planning its own independent oil bourse since 2005 .In middle ages when trade was mostly done by caravans along Silk Routes , the empires vied with each other to control them and fought wars (See War Over Silk Routes and Petro-Bourses: Would History Repeat Itself ?) http://tarafits.blogspot.com/2010/08/war-over-silk-routes-and-petro-bourses.html

The Iranian Oil Bourse in Kish took some time to develop as a Petro bourse ,a fourth oil market, denominated by the Iranian rial, the euro and other major currencies. It opened for business on February 17, 2008, a joint venture between Iranian ministries, the Iran Mercantile Exchange and other state and private institutions. It is located at the Persian Gulf island of Kish and is designated by Iran as a free trade zone.

During 2007, Iran asked its petroleum customers to pay in non US dollar currencies. By December 8, 2007, Iran was reported to have converted all of its oil export payments to non-dollar currencies. The Kish Bourse was opened in a videoconference ceremony on February 17, 2008, despite last minute disruptions to the internet services to the Persian Gulf regions.

According to Iran's Press TV, Iran's international oil bourse was officially inaugurated in July 2011. The opening ceremony was attended by Iran's First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi, Economy Minister Shamseddin Husseini, and Caretaker of the Oil Ministry Mohammad Aliabadi.

National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) was expected to offer 600,000 barrels of heavy crude oil for sale on the first day launch of the bourse. Ali Akbar Hashemian, the managing director of Iran Mercantile Exchange, said the NIOC planned to offer 50,000 barrels of Iran's crude on the bourse on a regular daily basis, once all the necessary requirements are satisfied. Iran, OPEC's second-largest oil producer, has the world's second largest natural gas reserves after Russia.

Conclusion

US led West and the world itself is entering an unknown territory. The only definite outcome is the reduction and perhaps elimination of US led Western hegemony since WWII and almost a rogue elephant like run in the world since the Fall of the Berlin Wall .But how long will it take US to be reduced in influence and economic and military reach !The first shoe fell in September 2008 .

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19656.htm

When will the second shoe fall?

Let me conclude with a historic parallel .After centuries of warfare, both the Byzantine and Persian empires collapsed .The Soviet empire collapsed in 1990s. Is it now the turn of the US led Western hegemony!

In end 1993 , along with six ambassadors resident in Ankara I flew to Baku , capital of Azerbaijan , to present our first letters of credence to president Haidar Aliev , a former senior member of the Soviet Politburo , from Azerbaijan After the letters ceremony and calls on ministers , I called on resident ambassadors in Baku .The new US embassy was quite large and imposing , the British, smaller undergoing renovation; the Israeli , extensive extensions and renovation .

But I was in for a shock when I called on the Russian ambassador, who's Residence, consisted of a couple of rooms in an Intourist hotel. Russians were the masters of Azerbaijan till it broke away a few years earlier.

The point I want to make is that the Russians who lorded over Azerbaijan till recently were reduced to such straits that its Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary was confined to a suite in a two star hotel you find near old Delhi Railway station .But this kind of thing is not new in history . After all USSR had lost the Cold War , which was a tabletop nuclear war exercise between the two mighty adversaries .Moscow just could not match huge sums Washington poured into military expenditure . Washington now spends over US$ 700 billion for its defense and over $ One Trillion in all on National Security according to Chris Hellmen in Tomgram.

Ambassador (retd) K.Gajendra Singh 30 January, 2012.Mayur Vihar, Delhi

http://tarafits.blogspot.com/2011/08/amb-rtd-k-gajendra-singh-cv-post.html

http://www.scribd.com/doc/61839666/Indo-Pak-Wars-A-Pictorial-History

http://www.scribd.com/doc/21686885/TALIBAN-WAR-IN-PAKISTAN-AFGHANISTAN-A-WRITERS-PERCEPTIONS-FROM-2001-TO-2011

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22457862/Military-Decision-making-and-leadership

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22151765/History-of-Pakistan-Army-from-1757-to-1971-PRINTING-ENABLED-Do-acknowledge-to-the-author

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22455178/Letters-to-Command-and-Staff-College-Quetta-Citadel-Journal

http://www.scribd.com/doc/23150027/Pakistan-Army-through-eyes-of-Pakistani-Generals

http://www.scribd.com/doc/23701412/War-of-Independence-of-1857

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22107238/HISTORY

http://www.scribd.com/doc/21693873/Indo-Pak-Wars-1947-71-A-STRATEGIC-AND-OPERATIONAL-ANALYSIS-BY-A-H-AMIN-THIS-BOOK-CAN-BE-PRINTED-FROM-THIS-SITE

THE LONG ROAD TO SIACHEN-THE QUESTION WHY

2012-01-29T09:21:00.001-08:00

Story of Imperialism

2012-01-29T08:50:00.001-08:00

A Short animated Video on imperialism

http://otheraspect.wordpress.com/2012/01/28/the-story-of-imperialism-video/

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King Leopold's Soliloquy: A Defense of His Congo Rule

2012-01-29T08:44:00.001-08:00

King Leopold's Soliloquy: A Defense of His Congo Rule

http://otheraspect.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/king-leopolds-soliloquy-a-defense-of-his-congo-rule/

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Corrupt Medical Practices in Pakistan and Fake Drugs

2012-01-29T00:26:00.001-08:00

Corrupt Medical Practices in Pakistan and Fake Drugs

Bismillah hir Rahman nir Raheem

Substandard Drugs and our lazy and corrupt policies

Prof. (Dr.) Anwar Ul Haque

Head department of Pathology

Azad Jammu Kashmir Medical College

Muzafffarabad, Azad Kashmir, Pakistan

In Pakistan corruption reigns in every sphere of life! We cry only when some visible catastrophe happens or where political millage are needed. I personally carried out several inquiries related to pharmacy stores, witnessed sub-standard drugs at Pakistan Institute of edical Sciences (PIMS) and wrote editorials and articles but all fell on deaf ears. Our one great honest female pharmacist raised the issue on all levels including Supreme Court of Pakistan and Ministry of Health, however the well connected and influential corrupt mafia managed to include criminals and corrupt elements in the inquiry committees with expected results!

The Government Hospitals are dumping place for grossly sub-standard drugs (Please see my attached article which also contains the pictures of some of these drugs). Not only sub-standard drugs are sold at the Government Hospitals but drugs are stolen on a large scale from Government Hospitals stores and then sold at private Drug stores thus depriving poor people from meager and scarce source of free drugs. The standard of drugs is so poor that many hospital administrators do not use these drugs for themselves and get these from private drug stores! At times "Noora" thefts are created to "justify" the missing drugs which might have not arrived in the first place.

Heavy bribes in drug registration is extremely common. When I raised objection on ultra fast registration of drugs without appropriate procedures and tests at PIMS Clinicopathological Conference (CPC) in the time of Javde Hashmi (Then health minister) and Dr. Ghayyur Ayyub (Then D.G. Health) an inquiry committee was constituted against me by PIMS administration. WHO officials also stole expensive drugs from PIMS at the time of Earthquake in Pakistan.

Governor of Punjab Mr. Altaf Hussain received fake drugs as revealed by tests carried out in USA. He succumbed to these drugs!

Currently we are going through deep moral crisis and evil forces are bent upon to defame and demolish all genuine sources of elimination of corruption at all levels. Pseudo religious elements are also collaborating and dancing on the tunes of corrupt and incompetent mafia. Media is scared that corrupt and incompetent Government Hospital administration may not help them in case of need! it is also influenced by rich and powerful authorities.

We must join hands to strengthen the moral and ethical values at all levels.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/61839666/Indo-Pak-Wars-A-Pictorial-History

http://www.scribd.com/doc/21686885/TALIBAN-WAR-IN-PAKISTAN-AFGHANISTAN-A-WRITERS-PERCEPTIONS-FROM-2001-TO-2011

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22457862/Military-Decision-making-and-leadership

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22151765/History-of-Pakistan-Army-from-1757-to-1971-PRINTING-ENABLED-Do-acknowledge-to-the-author

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22455178/Letters-to-Command-and-Staff-College-Quetta-Citadel-Journal

http://www.scribd.com/doc/23150027/Pakistan-Army-through-eyes-of-Pakistani-Generals

http://www.scribd.com/doc/23701412/War-of-Independence-of-1857

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22107238/HISTORY

http://www.scribd.com/doc/21693873/Indo-Pak-Wars-1947-71-A-STRATEGIC-AND-OPERATIONAL-ANALYSIS-BY-A-H-AMIN-THIS-BOOK-CAN-BE-PRINTED-FROM-THIS-SITE

Atrocities in Pakistani Balochistan Continue while Old Women like Zulfiqar Magsi sheds crocodiles tears

2012-01-28T22:43:00.001-08:00

"I know that I am prejudiced on this matter, but I would be ashamed of myself if I were not."

Mark Twain

"A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself." - Joseph Pulitzer

ANALYSIS: Negligent dereliction of duty —Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur

These loyalists have not dissented since Ataullah Mengal's government, perceived as hostile, was summarily dismissed in Balochistan in 1973

The Balochistan government is plumbing new depths in misgovernance and it has prompted the unobtrusive and ineffective Balochistan Governor Zulfiqar Ali Magsi to express his dislike and discontent with the state of affairs there. Speaking to the media after the 10th Convocation of the Balochistan University, he expressed concern over the worsening law and order situation in the province, and said that it was the responsibility of the provincial government to improve security to the satisfaction of the people. He added, "As a governor I believe that the elected members of the provincial assembly are responsible for this worsening law and order situation since they are not playing a positive role in retaining durable peace. Merely expressing helplessness or inability is not a solution."
More importantly, when asked about the missing persons and the daily dumping of dead bodies of the Baloch, he said the issue had been taken up with the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) and categorically stated that it would not bode well for the country and its people. As the governor, he certainly must know who is behind all these crimes against the Baloch people. The army and the Frontier Corps (FC) deny any involvement in these killings but then when has anyone involved in atrocities ever accepted their responsibility? The apartheid regime denied the custodial killing of Steve Biko.
Zulfiqar Magsi blamed the stooge assembly and government, in which he as the Centre's representative is an integral part, of being indifferent and carefree. He cited the presence of only one member of the 65-member Balochistan Assembly at the Convocation as an example of their indifference. Nearly all Balochistan Assembly members are ministers and devotedly building empires for themselves. He accused influential people of involvement in kidnapping for ransom; certainly influential these days translates as those close to the Pakistani state.
The Pakistani state always tries to negate the Baloch national struggle with the claim that they have a representative assembly and cabinet to serve them. Zulfiqar Magsi's condemnation has exposed the level of commitment these representatives have for the welfare of the Baloch. These collaborators are assured of state support simply because they have given up on Baloch rights to look after their own material interests. They have sold their souls for a pittance to the tormentors of the Baloch people.
They can afford to be indifferent because there is no accountability; they mostly win elections with bogus votes. The police, the bureaucracy, the army and the judiciary actively abet in their corruption and loot as long as they make the right noises and keep aloof from Baloch rights.
The state mollycoddles them because they give them the desired face of Baloch representation. It is only when they move away from the agreed script of conniving to deprive the Baloch people of their resources, their land and their coast does the Centre and other institutions perceive them as a threat. These loyalists have not dissented since Ataullah Mengal's government, perceived as hostile, was summarily dismissed in Balochistan in 1973.
The practice of providing free rein to the state and the army to commit atrocities is common the world over. There were terrible excesses against the people in Latin America in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s of the last century with the connivance and consent of the US and except for a few prosecutions, nothing significant happened to the perpetrators. After three decades of delay the then Guatemala's military ruler Efrain Rios Montt is to be tried for genocide and crimes against humanity; in the civil war nearly 200,000 people died. The dice is heavily loaded in favour of the perpetrators.
A very recent example of a travesty of justice was seen in a judgement against the accused of the Haditha Massacre. In it, 24 unarmed Iraqis — among them seven children and a 76-year-old man in a wheelchair — were victims. Sergeant Frank Wuterich, the person who ordered this carnage with the instructions "shoot first, ask questions later", was the only person in the dock now as the other seven had charges dropped or dismissed. He pleaded guilty to the charge of 'negligent dereliction of duty' and will now go free.
The military judge Lieutenant-Colonel David Jones at Camp Pendleton, California, decided against his pay cut because he has three children to look after. Lieutenant-General Thomas Waldhauser, commander of the Marine Corps Forces Central Command, cannot increase the sentence but can reduce it. The American military first attempted to cover up the killings and a full inquiry was only launched after Tim McGirk, TIME magazine reporter, exposed them.
The judge has compassion for three American children but none for the Haditha Massacre's 24 dead Iraqis and their relatives. Some justice! But then the US is exceptionally skilful at such things: they invaded Iraq and hanged Saddam and killed around a million Iraqis for imaginary WMDs but they give 23 standing ovations to the murderers of the Palestinian people. For justice to be done and to be seen to be done, the Haditha people should have had had the right to try these murderers.
All the misdeeds and misdemeanours of the army here have gone unchallenged and mostly misreported or under-reported. One cannot expect bumbling civilian prime ministers who regularly eat crow after blurting out against the army to hold them to account. The judiciary dilly-dallies on missing persons and kill and dump issues because it has never been people-friendly. Atrocities and injustices are possible because people have become too docile and too obedient and have abdicated their right to protest.
Howard Zinn rightly said, "Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves...(and) the grand thieves are running the country. That is our problem."
As long as the people continue to accept injustices and atrocities being perpetrated against them or others, the 'grand thieves' will remain in power everywhere and atrocities will not cease. The plea of 'negligent dereliction of duty' will always come in handy to the perpetrators if those judging them are of their ilk. Only when people will give up their docility and obsequiousness will justice be done and be seen to be done. And therein lies the solution to the injustices and atrocities anywhere in the world.

The writer has an association with the Baloch rights movement going back to the early 1970s. He can be contacted at mmatalpur@gmail.com

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012\01\29\story_29-1-2012_pg3_2

Phantom Warriors of 1971

2012-01-28T20:44:00.001-08:00

FROM MY DEAR FRIEND BRIGADIER AJAB KHAN

AGHA.H.AMIN

An interesting unknown or little known facet of 1971 war in East Pakistan.

PHANTOM WARRIORS OF 1971: UNSUNG TIBETAN GUERRILLAS
By Manas Paul
13 Dec 2010
Dapon Dhondup Gyatotsang (left) and Dapon Ratu Ngawang (right). (@ Amnye Machen Institute)
Forty years ago in 1971 on a cool and scary November 14 night in Chittagong a Pakistani sniper of Special Service Group perched silently on his hidden location near his camp felt he saw a 'phantom'. The days were then uncertain and nights were too risky. So, the Pakistani soldier did not take any chance and opened fire. And the shadowy creatures just melted away in the darkness. One among them was, however, dying. He was shot at fatally. The Pakistani soldier did not know that he had just killed one of the toughest and CIAtrained Tibetan guerrilla leaders- Dhondup Gyatotsang. As Gyatotsang- a 'Dapon' or Brigadier in Tibetan language- died his comrades, all armed simply with a Bulgarian AK 47 and their Tibetan knives, made radio contact with a turbaned Sikh some kilometres away and across the border. The Sikh barked at them the order : carry on with the task you are assigned to. As the order came the Tibetan guerrillas once again spread in the darkness and coiled up behind the Pakistani barracks and posts .They remained as shadow as long as they wanted and when the right time came they just struck with a lightning speed raiding the Pak positions. One after another Pakistani posts fell as the Tibetans, who by this gained the title 'Phantom of Chittagong', swept the hills and valleys of the hilly district of East Pakistan and restrained the Pakistani military movement to only small pockets. Weeks before the real War actually broke on December 3 the Tibetan guerrillas turned Chittagong virtually a free zone with pre-emptive strikes for Indian army movement. On December 16, 1971 when Pakistan army surrendered, the Tibetan commandos were only 40 kms from the Chittagong Port. By this time they had successfully accomplished their task that their chief-Inspector General- Maj. Gen
Sujan Singh Uban had assigned to them: The Operation Mountain Eagle. They had, however, lost 49 of their comrades and had 190 injured.
Ratu Ngawang (far left), former brigadier of Establishment 22, escorted the Dalai Lama (right) on his way to India in 1959. Seen here with Sujan Singh Uban (2nd from right), the first inspector-general of the regiment, in Chakrata, India, 1972. (© Hindustan Times)
'Operation Mountain Eagle' launched by RAW in East Pakistan during 1971 Indo-Pak War was, perhaps, till date the most closely guarded and top most secret operation of Indian authorities in the eastern flank of the war areas. Officially the operation could not be recognised as the Tibetan guerrilla force- known as Special Frontier Force (SFF) or Establishment-22 or simply called 'two-two'- does not officially exists. The name it got from the fact that their first commander ( at the rank of Inspector General) Maj. Gen Sujan Singh Uban had once commanded 22 Mountain brigade. Since their inception in November, 1962, the Establishment22's direct engagement in Indo-Pak war is also significant for the mere fact that it was not their 'war' at all. They were fighting for the cause of their host country and for liberation of another country- not for Tibet. But never their sacrifice was officially or publicly recognized- neither by India nor by Bangladesh till today.
Formation of top secret force, Two-Two:
At the end of the 1962 Indo-China war the then Intelligence Bureau chief Bholanath Mullick took the initiative to form a special guerrilla force from the Tibetan youths who had been sheltered in India. Some documents indicate that former Chief Minister of Orissa Biju Patnaik had first come up with the idea while he was closely working with the CIA at the behest of Indian authorities in setting up of air surveillance ARC in Charbatia in his home state. Patnaik, a daredevil pilot with vast experience in several covert operations, according to Kenneth Conboy who authored an authoritative book on CIA operations relating to Tibet, wanted to raise a resistance force by the Tibetans in Assam .However, the IB continued with the plan which ultimately materialized with the help of Chu Shi Gandruk, main organization of the Khampa rebels and CIA.
The Dalai Lama and Maj. Gen. Uban inspect the SFF at Chakrata, June 1972 (The CIA's Secret War in Tibet).
Following the green signal from the Cabinet secretariat the Special Frontier Force or Establishment 22 or was formed on November 14, 1962.
According to the plan the force would formed with the Khampa rebels from 'Chu Shi Gandruk' –and most of them would be brought from CIA run overflowing Mustang base in Nepal that housed as many as 2032 members. The force would be handled and trained by the IB at their Chakrata base near Dehra Dun. The CIA would provide all other supports for their training and related matters.
CIA had first trained the Khampa rebels in Saipan in 1957 March and then Camp Hale in Colorado for guerrilla warfare so that they could be dropped in Tibet for sabotage against the Chinese. The operation under the code name of 'ST Circus' was first headed by a US marine Roger McCarthy. They trained in several batches about 259 Tibetan guerrillas. The CIA had also dropped some of them inside Tibet for sabotage and intelligence gathering.
"A formation agreement was signed in 1962. The parties to this formation agreement were the Indian Intelligence Service, the CIA and Chushi Gangdruk. General Gonpo Tashi and Jago Namgyal Dorjee, signed this three-party joint formation agreement on behalf of Chushi Gangdruk. Our organization took main responsibility for recruiting, and an initial strength of 12,000 men, mostly Khampas, were recruited at Chakrata, Dehra-dun, UP. Chushi Gangdruk sent two of the commanders to this new outfit to be political leaders in the initial stage", said Dokham Chushi Gandruk, a Tibetan organization fighting for the Tibetan cause.
Gyalo Thondup, elder brother of the Dalai Lama met the Khampas in Mustang. Konboy said, 'Gyalo also sought four political leaders who could act as the force's indigenous officer cadre....an initial contingent of Tibetans, led by Jamba Kalden, was dispatched to the hill town of Dehra Dun'.
"Our organization took main responsibility for recruiting, and an initial strength of 12,000 men, mostly Khampas, were recruited at Chakrata, Dehra-dun, UP. Chushi Gangdruk sent two of the commanders to this new outfit to be political leaders in the initial stage. Established under the direct supervision of the prime minister, the unit was named the Special Frontier Force... the unit was meant to be air-dropped into Tibet in the event of another war in the Tibetan frontiers", wrote Dokham Chushi Gandruk.
Soon, the CIA, sent eight of its advisers on a six-month temporary duty assignment. The team was led by a veteran CIA operative in several covert and deadly campaigns Wayne Sanford who was recipient of two Purple Hearts. "He was acting undercover from US Embassy as special assistant to Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith", wrote Konboy.
The USA provided all the weaponry to them mostly M-1, M-2 and M-3 machine guns. As the covert guerrilla force was raised Maj General Sujan Singh Uban was assigned the task to command them as their Inspector General. The SFF ultimately came to be known as 'Establishment 22' or simply 'Two-two'. The name it got from the fact that Maj. Gen Uban had once commanded 22 Mountain brigade. Interestingly, the guerrilla forces cap insignia was designed as if it was '12th Gorkha' regiment-crossed khukri with '12' on top. This was a deception tactics as at that time there were only 11 Gorkha regiments, seven regiments were with Indian army and four with the British after independence. It was so decided to confuse common people, in case of meeting the guerrillas, with Gorkhas as the facial features were same.
Major General Sujan Singh Uban
For next several years both Indian army, MARCOS, IB and CIA trained the guerrillas with special focus on para-trooping and sabotage as well as intelligence collection it was kept in mind that in case of another war with China they would be pressed into service. Some of the Camp Hale trained Tibetans were also included in the Establishment 22 and they held senior positions. They ultimately became one of best ever guerrilla forces of the world efficient in both land and water campaigns. While the 'Establishment 22' was commanded by Maj. Gen Uban, the guerrillas had their own political representatives and 'Dapon'- a position equivalent to 'Brigadier'- mostly held by first generation Camp Hale trained guerrillas.
The Dalai Lama was aware of the formation of the guerrilla force since the beginning but He and his Dharamshala officials always maintained a distance from them neither supporting nor opposing the Indian initiative. But according to some, Jawhar Lal Nehru had once visited the guerrillas in Charkatha and was impressed by their training and discipline. The Dalai lama also had visited them once but it was much later.
Until late 1960 the CIA officials had kept relations with the Establishment 22 at various levels, but since 1968 their connections with the Tibetan guerrillas both in Mustang and Charkatha started thinning. CIA link with Charkatha completely died out in 1970s. The USA under Richard Nixon tilted towards Pakistan and also developed secret negotiations with China as Indo-Pakistan war seemed imminent.
Operation Mountain Eagle:
Since the RAW headed by R N Kau was created on 21 September, 1968 the responsibility of the Establishment 22 also went to the agency. But their chief Maj Gen Uban had been worried at the way the trained commandos -as many as 64 companies, divided into eight battalions having six companies each and including other support units- were gathering moss in their Charkatha camps. They were not used against China or Pakistan for any real armed combat and the IG was worried that inaction and absence of field operations might reduce the morale and capabilities.
SFF members during the Bangladesh campaign, 1971
It was at that time the East Pakistan went up in flames with Pakistan army resorting to large scale massacres and rape on March 25, 1971 as 'Operation Searchlight'. Two days later Major Zia Ur Rehman- a Bengali military officer with the Pakistan army announced 'independence' in Chittagong radio and attacked the Pakistani army cantonment. Within a day, many more military officers followed and millions of refugees poured into India to flee the Pakistani Army's massacres and rapes. India was playing the card well and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was successful in garnering massive international support, barring USA and China of course, for the brutalized East Pakistani Bengali population. By this time Mukti Bahini was formed from the refugee youths sheltered in Indian states for launching guerrilla wars and intelligence collections inside East Pakistan against the Pakistani forces. The idea was to create a pre-emptive strike force before the Indian regular army moved in after the rainy season was over.
Incidentally, Maj Gen Uban was entrusted with the overall task for training of the Bengali forces like Mukti Bahini, Mujib Bahini.
Maj Gen Uban did not miss the chance and moved New Delhi to send his Tibetan forces to East Pakistan who, according to him were already better trained and itching for an operation. After initial hesitation Indira Gandhi was agreed to use the Tibetans for a third country cause, but sent the ball to the court of the Tibetans only.
Writes Tashi Dhundup, in article titled ' Not their own Wars', " Indira Gandhi in the lead-up to the SFF's deployment, Indira Gandhi wired a message to the Tibetan fighters, conveyed through their Indian commander: "We cannot compel you to fight a war for us," Gandhi wrote, "but the fact is that General A A K Niazi (the Pakistan Army commander in East Pakistan) is treating the people of East
Pakistan very badly. India has to do something about it. In a way, it is similar to the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans in Tibet, we are facing a similar situation. It would be appreciated if you could help us fight the war for liberating the people of Bangladesh."
Following the letter the senior commanders of the Establishment 22 guerrillas discussed and agreed to help the Bengalis of East Pakistan to achieve their new nation Bangladesh.
The Operation Mountain Eagle was launched in a second cool November night, apparently avoiding the Eastern Command directly by the RAW.
It was sometime in October third week of 1971 that one of the most top secret armed campaigns against the Pakistan army in East Pakistan the Operation Mountain Eagle was launched quietly launched. More than 3000 Tibetan commandos from Establishment- 22 were dropped at an obscure and extreme border village Demagiri in Mizoram. The Indian secret services used AN 12 plane from the ARC to bring the guerrillas by night sorties. Demagiri which was located across the river Karnafulli and Chittagong Hill Tracts in East Pakistan was by that time was crowded with refugees. The Tibetan stayed incognito with the refugees for sometimes and then began small hit-and-run raids in East Pakistan. They would cross the river and, strike a Pakistani force and return to Demagiri. In second week of November, 1971, the Tibetan guerrillas led by Dapon Dhondup Gyatotsang crossed the river using nine canoes went inside East Pakistan to launch a decisive guerrilla campaign. Since the Establishment 22 or SFF does not officially exist, Indian authorities to deny any complicity in any eventuality gave them Bulgarian AK 47s instead of Russian ones. On the very first night they ran over a Pakistani post. Within hours next morning they captured one more and they kept on sweeping and then stopped- for sometime- when their Dapon was shot dead. But again, they swung into action.
The task to Establishment 22 were clear: blow up Kaptai dam, damage the Pakistani military positions and kill as many as Pak soldiers- at that time popularly called as 'Khan Sena' possible, destroy the bridges, military infrastructures, and restrain the Pakistani military movement. Divided in three columns their hit and run modus operandi and the task specified were to create a situation that when the Indian army would move , they could march through the Chittagong hills and plains without much resistance from the Pakistanis.
According to the specialists on the subject the Establishment guerrillas were extremely successful in their campaign. It that time Pakistani 97th Independent Brigade and their 2nd commando battalion of SSG were positioned strategically in Chittagong. The guerrillas successfully restrained them in their respective positions and also cut off all the routes that the Pakistani soldiers thought of opening towards Burma. In fact the Pakistani soldiers were seeing ghosts in all the shadows and they were fighting against merciless ghosts who were always on the
prowl, would swoop down from nowhere and mercilessly eliminate the humans and destroy the posts and would immediately vanish for their next target. Within one month of their operations, the Tibetan guerrillas virtually cleaned up the Chittagong and when the Indian army moved in they did not face much resistance at all.
"About one-third of its full strength was developed adjacent to the Chittagong Hill Tracts as Mukti Bahini. They captured many towns and garrisons in the Chittagong Hill Tracts in continuous fighting of about one month", according to Dhokma Chushi Gangdruk.
In fact Maj Ge Uban and his guerrillas were keen to capture the Chittagong Port. They were very close and Pakistan army were not at all in a position to stop them. But Indian military and other authorities were not ready to assign them with the task as , though it would have been easier for the guerrillas to capture the Port, to keep it under their control they would have needed heavy artillery weapons-which they did not have with them.
According to a document, when the Chittagong Port was captured by Indian military, the guerrillas were then asked to sit quiet at about 40 kms away. However, on December 16 when Pakistan army surrendered in Dhaka, the Phantoms of Establishment -22 for the first time in their history, came out in the open on the Chittagong road rejoicing the victory of India over Pakistan. Not the common people were stunned by their sudden appearance -happy and rejoicing- virtually from nowhere, even many of the Indian soldiers who were also not aware of their presence in the vicinity were taken by surprise. But soon Maj Gen Uban was informed about the public appearance of the Tibetans on Chittagong roads and he just barked them back to shadows once again. They were never seen again. Their happy moment in the public was only for some hours.
Though the Tibetan guerrillas were arguably the main force that played key role in Chittagong in 1971 war,- sacrificed 49 ( according to Tibetans' estimate 56) including one of their top leader and 190 injured, they could not be Officially awarded.
"The Indian government gave awards to 580 members of the force for their active involvement and bravery in the battles. The contribution made by Establishment 22 in liberating East Pakistan was great and the price paid by the force was also high", said Dokham Chusi Gandruk, the New York based organization.
It then added: (The fight and sacrifice) would have been of great value had it been used against communist China, the intended enemy....The SFF never had a chance of being used in operations against its intended enemy, Red China, but it was used against East Pakistan with the consent of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 1971".
It is, however, a different story that the Establishment 22 was later used in many Indian operations including in Operation Blue Star, Siachen, Kargil. They are also being used a main anti terrorist operators in many parts of the country. According to a report, in between Indira Gandhi's assassination and formation of SPG, it was these Establishment 22 commandos who were in charge of Gandhi family's close protection. But in all the cases down the decades they remained unsung heroes- the 'unknown' warriors from a different country who fought and sacrificed for others.
Post Script : PHATOM FIGHTERS OF 1971 : UNSUNG TIBETAN GUERRILLAS is virtually an untold story of a top secret mission. A very handful of people including some foreign journalists who were in touch with Tibetans are aware of the operations. Many of the military generals including Gen JFR Jacob or Maj gen SS Uban who commanded the force did not dwell extensively on them but obliquely referred. So it is virtually revisiting a mission that was intended to be kept Top secret. Picture is taken from internet.
Source: http://www.tibetsun.com/archive/2010/12/13/phantom-warriors-of-1971-unsung-tibetan-guerillas/

http://www.scribd.com/doc/61839666/Indo-Pak-Wars-A-Pictorial-History

http://www.scribd.com/doc/21686885/TALIBAN-WAR-IN-PAKISTAN-AFGHANISTAN-A-WRITERS-PERCEPTIONS-FROM-2001-TO-2011

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22457862/Military-Decision-making-and-leadership

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22151765/History-of-Pakistan-Army-from-1757-to-1971-PRINTING-ENABLED-Do-acknowledge-to-the-author

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22455178/Letters-to-Command-and-Staff-College-Quetta-Citadel-Journal

http://www.scribd.com/doc/23150027/Pakistan-Army-through-eyes-of-Pakistani-Generals

http://www.scribd.com/doc/23701412/War-of-Independence-of-1857

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22107238/HISTORY

http://www.scribd.com/doc/21693873/Indo-Pak-Wars-1947-71-A-STRATEGIC-AND-OPERATIONAL-ANALYSIS-BY-A-H-AMIN-THIS-BOOK-CAN-BE-PRINTED-FROM-THIS-SITE

Akbar.S. Ahmed - a poet of great vision

2012-01-28T20:34:00.001-08:00

I dont know Akbar.S.Ahmed but I knew his most talented brother Brigadier Sikandar Ahmed who I met in Kharian back in September 1984.

Attached is a small bionote on Brigadier Sikandar that I wrote last year--

Brigadier Sikandar.S.Ahmed

Agha.H.Amin

It is not necessary that we have to discuss Napoleons and Guderians here on military history forums.

We can discuss potential Napoleon also.

It was August or September 1984 when I met then Major Sikandar Ahmad , then serving in 1 FF. Sikandar was an exceptional man intellectually ! A rare find ! His sense of humour was also historic and most unorthodox ! When his brigade commander one Syed Tanvir Hussain Naqvi visited him in the combined military hospital Kharian camtonment Sikandar who had a foot in plaster (a basket ball injury) when asked by Naqvi " Oh you can walk " retorted , I can hop also !

It turned out that Major Sikandar Ahmad belonged to an extremely educated and outstanding family and younger brother of one Akbar.S.Ahmad a CSP who was then commissioner of Sibi .

Sikandar as all brilliant and outspken men was in clash with authority , having inspired jealousy of smaller men who had higher ranks ! But as they say it the habit of stray village dogs to bark at eminent men !

Although I was a history enthusiast Sikandar played a role in polishing it by his analysis of history from a high vantage point , seeing the larger picture and guiding me how to do it !

He taught me how to write redress of grievances against your military superiors as per instructions given in Army regulations 193 and 194 originally conceived by the British and one of their greatest contributions to the military law.

With Sikandars guidance I became an expert in writing redress of grievances and in military law and helped many juniour officers in fighting and sometimes playing hell with careers of their intellectually dishonest commanding officers !

It is sad that while the Indian Army gave their officers basic rights in pakistan the army has laws of stone age !

We met again in Multan in 1985-86.

In 1987 or 1988 Sikandar was miraculously promoted to be a colonel. Miraculously I say because men of his very high calibre have no place in armies which in reality are citadels of mediocrity !

Sikandar was a chronic bachelor but suddenly he got married in 1988 or so ! He was on his honey moon and stayed at my fathers annexe in cavalry ground Lahore.

Major General Hameed Gul who initially was not in favour of Sikandar realised that Sikandar was an exceptionally talented man and I believe Sikandar did extremely well in the ISI under Gul.

I managed to visit Sikandar many times in the desert in tamewali when he was commanding his parent 1 FF regiment.We sat next to fire lit in the open and chatted.

This was 1988 or so .

I last talked with him in 1993 or so when I was commanding an independent squadron at Okara and he commanding an infantry brigade at Pano Aqil.He had been selected for the war course but the lesser souls with lesser intellects again conspired against him ! Sikandar did not have that shameless obsequeousness which you find in most officers.

I last met him in 2000 when he had retired .I wanted to present him my book but a major general expressed immense interest in it and i gave it to him ! I thought that I would give Sikandar another copy ! But then we lost contact !

I dont know where he is now ! In retrospect I can say that more harm on the pakistani state and army has been inflicted by its third rate senior officials than any enemy could do !

It was with this background in mind that I thus wrote in my article published in the command and staff college Quettas Citadel Journal; " many military systems that this world saw were a conspiracy against originality and boldness" !

Daily Times, Sunday, January 29, 2012

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012\01\29\story_29-1-2012_pg3_3

VIEW: Akbar Ahmed: a poet of great vision —Ishtiaq Ahmed

Surely the God Akbar Ahmed believes in is the God all good human beings would need to repair this world. Even rationalists, agnostics and atheists would not mind inventing such a God

Professor Akbar Ahmed is widely recognised as a proud Muslim and Pakistani, always willing to take up cudgels on behalf of his faith and country. While such concerns have remained constant for him, he has intellectually travelled a great distance in the correct direction: towards the recognition of common humankind.
Since many years now he has been on a personal spiritual and intellectual journey. That journey has helped him blossom as a Muslim, a humanist, a distinguished scholar and a talented poet. His fascination for Suleh-e-Qul (peace for all) now informs his writing as well as his social and cultural activism. That is a great asset in this world torn and traumatised by intolerance, extremism and war. Poetry is arguably a far more liberating medium to express feelings and emotions.
The poet Akbar Ahmed has shown great intellectual honesty and integrity by not editing or self-censoring the poems he shares with us in his Suspended: Somewhere Between (Washington DC: Busboys and Poets Press, 2011). It includes verses that could appeal to militant Islamists as well as verses that are in the best Sufi tradition of tolerance and embrace of others. Suspended: Somewhere Between is organised into five themes: Pakistan, Love, Islam, Echoes of History and Pensées.
The poems on Pakistan bring forth the profound emotions and pride the author felt when his family made the journey to Pakistan. Son of a civil servant — UP origin father of Arab extraction and Pukhtun mother — Akbar Ahmed arrived in Pakistan in a train from Delhi that luckily escaped an armed raid during the partition riots. The experiences in Pakistan have been multifaceted; deeply moving visits to Sufi shrines as well as exposure to the stark reality of the policeman's baton — something that Allama Iqbal failed to appreciate in his famous celebration of the master and slave becoming equals when standing together during prayers. He pays tribute to his mother, to the caliphs Umar (RA) and Ali (RA), to his friend Major Sabir Kamal who was witness to the blood dance that took place in Dhaka in March 1971. The social and cultural code of the Pakhtuns, Pakhtunwali, and the Khyber Pass are portrayed with tender insight. His poem "They are taking them away" on the 1971 civil war in the former East Pakistan is an outpouring of grief for all those who suffered: Bengali, Bihari; East Pakistani, West Pakistani. The last verse captures his agony pithily:
"there is no shame like the shame of
taking them away to the slaughter houses."
The poems grouped under Love include exquisite imagery fired by passion as well as homage to his mother and love for his wife and children. This section can be of great help to poets looking for inspiration to capture love in different contexts.
The third section of verses deals with the poet's love for Islam. Intellectually, this is the most daring section as he battles with the narratives about an Islam whose glory rests on conquest and expansion and the period of celebrated caliph Umar bin Khattab (RA) as well as the grandeur of God expressed through architecture, poetry and high culture created by distinguished men such as Jalaluddin Rumi, Ibn Khaldun, Omar Khayyam, Ghalib and others. He is elated by a visit to a mosque in Paris frequented by the Berbers — a North African group who converted to Islam at a very early stage. For him it proves that Islam appeals to all ethnicities and nationalities. His affiliation to Sunni Islam does not prejudice him towards the followers of other religions or sects. This is how he understands the message of the Quran and Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).
In the Echoes of History, Akbar Ahmed provides us with glimpses of his understanding of civilisation. He raises a voice of protest against those intoxicated by the power and might at their disposal. While he condemns the 9/11 terrorist outrage, he pours out his heart-felt grievances over how the high and mighty in the US turned that into a war against Muslims. He cautions that all empires ultimately slip into oblivion. Some verses dwell on the Mughals who conquered and built a fabled empire. A poem deals with his father's legacy of serving the British while retaining a lively interest in Ghalib and Iqbal. All such influences have left an impression on him and impacted on his understanding of the world as a citizen of the world.
Pensées was a new term for me. I now know it means pithy 'thoughts' or aphorisms about what people understand as truth. Pensées was given posthumously as the title for a defence of the Christian religion by the 17th century French philosopher and mathematician, Blaise Pascal. Akbar Ahmed ascribes a wider and more interesting meaning to his Pensées. For him nature, the universe, God — are objects of wonderment and awe. They dazzle him, they make him ponder the ultimate existentialist question: what is life all about? I present the last poem entitled, "What is that I seek?" in his book:
"A force of such might
It sets me free
A light so bright
It blinds me
I heard it in the voice of the nightingale
I know it was in the hearts of the wise
I sensed it in the lover's tale
I saw it in your eyes
I saw it in Rumi's poetry
I know it was in Gandhi's gaze
I sensed it in Mandela's oratory
I saw it in Jesus' ways...
What is this riddle and what is its parts?
What is this enigma and mystery?
What can reveal the secrets of the heart?
What has the power to change me?
It is God's greatest gift
It raises us high above
It is the bridge over the rift
It is love, love, love
Give it in generous measure
Give it as if there's no tomorrow
Give to all you meet this treasure
Give it and banish sorrow."
Surely the God Akbar Ahmed believes in is the God all good human beings would need to repair this world. Even rationalists, agnostics and atheists would not mind inventing such a God. The problem is of course the God of history in whose name so much blood has been spilled down the ages. I hope one day he reflects on the dialectical movement in the history of God and proposes a way out of this dilemma.

The writer has a PhD from Stockholm University. He is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Stockholm University. He is also Honorary Senior Fellow of the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. He can be reached at billumian@gmail.com

http://www.scribd.com/doc/61839666/Indo-Pak-Wars-A-Pictorial-History

http://www.scribd.com/doc/21686885/TALIBAN-WAR-IN-PAKISTAN-AFGHANISTAN-A-WRITERS-PERCEPTIONS-FROM-2001-TO-2011

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22457862/Military-Decision-making-and-leadership

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22151765/History-of-Pakistan-Army-from-1757-to-1971-PRINTING-ENABLED-Do-acknowledge-to-the-author

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22455178/Letters-to-Command-and-Staff-College-Quetta-Citadel-Journal

http://www.scribd.com/doc/23150027/Pakistan-Army-through-eyes-of-Pakistani-Generals

http://www.scribd.com/doc/23701412/War-of-Independence-of-1857

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22107238/HISTORY

http://www.scribd.com/doc/21693873/Indo-Pak-Wars-1947-71-A-STRATEGIC-AND-OPERATIONAL-ANALYSIS-BY-A-H-AMIN-THIS-BOOK-CAN-BE-PRINTED-FROM-THIS-SITE

Shia Killings, Jundullah, Mossad & Iran-Pakistan Pipeline.

2012-01-28T01:02:00.001-08:00

FROM MR AAMIR MUGHAL A RETIRED INTELLIGENCE OFFICER AND A BRILLIANT ANALYST

Shia Killings, Jundullah, Mossad & Iran-Pakistan Pipeline.

http://chagataikhan.blogspot.com/2012/01/shia-killings-jundullah-mossad-iran.html

EVEN as concerns about Iran`s nuclear programme have led to tougher sanctions by the United States and the European Union, Pakistan seems determined to continue with the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline. For this country there are two separate issues at hand. One is the question of Iran building nuclear weapons. As a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran must not be enriching uranium to levels required for weapons and should remain under inspection. As such, one hopes Tehran is dec-laring the full scope of its nuclear activities to the International Atomic Energy Agency and is only, as it claims, using nuclear material for energy and other peaceful purposes. Also, from the perspective of geopolitical priorities, the presence of another nuclear-armed neighbour is not in Pakistan`s interests, regardless of the current nature of the relationship with Iran. At the same time, Pakistan`s energy emergency has now become a matter of both prosperity and security. The country needs to pursue any practical and affordable sources of energy it can acquire, especially those that can begin delivering sooner than others. Along with LNG imports, gas from Iran is one such option and execution could be completed in two years if started in earnest today. The Tapi pipeline is beset with challenges, not the least of which is the security situation in Afghanistan. Given Pakistan`s limited options, it is hard to argue that the Iran project should not be pursued, despite America`s discouragement and its contention that there are quicker ways that Pakistan could explore to resolve its energy problem. According to the Foreign Office, the pipeline would not violate United Nations sanctions. And regulations are still being finalised to implement the latest US sanctions which will make it harder for foreign financial institutions that transact with certain Iranian banks to conduct business in America. If sanctions are indeed applied, an exception should be granted for the pipeline on the grounds that Pakistan`s gas and power needs pose urgent economic, political and security risks. Nor should Coalition Support Funds or funding from international lending agencies be held back as a form of pressure. Iran can be asked for assurances that proceeds from the pipeline will in no way contribute to the development of nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, Pakistan will still have to do the tough work of improving efficiency in power and gas delivery, creating a sustainable pricing structure, developing indigenous resources and taking other steps to set its own house in order. The Iran-Pakistan pipeline should be pursued but it will not be a silver bullet. REFERENCE: Iran-Pakistan pipeline http://www.dawn.com/2012/01/28/iran-pakistan-pipeline.html

JSOC - Americas Assassination Division

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz3K-TZS2kg

QUETTA, Jan 26: The Hazara Democratic Party (HDP) urged the government on Thursday to take action against the elements involved in the killing of the people of Hazara community. Addressing a meeting organised to mark the third death anniversary of HDP president Hussain Ali Yousufi, they appealed to the international community to raise its voice against the targeted killing of the Hazaras. Khaliq Hazara, Ahmed Ali Kohzad, Mirza Hussain Hazara, Reza Wakil and Asmat Naiz paid homage to the late leader for his struggle for the rights of Hazaras and other communities. They said Mr Yousufi was a moderate, progressive and nationalist who believed in co-existence. They said extremists and terrorists were targeting the Hazaras with impunity and the government had failed to arrest the killers. They expressed concern over the killing of missing and kidnapped people in the province and throwing of their bodies. They said it was the government's responsibility to trace those behind these cruel acts. They said the Hazara Democratic Party was ready to launch a struggle in collaboration with other communities and democratic forces against the anti-people forces to protect the lives of innocent persons. REFERENCE: Non-stop killings on sectarian grounds Hazaras demand protection from government Amanullah Kasi http://www.dawn.com/2012/01/27/non-stop-killings-on-sectarian-grounds-hazaras-demand-protection-from-government.html

When the State of Israel was declared, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister, expressed his views on the necessity of creating intelligence agencies to operate on behalf of the nascent state. On June 7, 1948, he held his first meeting on this matter with intelligence officials. On December 13, 1949, following detailed staff work, Ben-Gurion appointed foreign ministry special operations' adviser and former Jewish Agency state department official, Reuben Shiloah, to establish and head the 'Institute for Collating and Co-ordinating Intelligence Operations.' This date is considered the date the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations was established. On March 2, 1951, as a result of the experience gained in running State intelligence agencies, particularly in overseas' operations, Ben-Gurion ordered Reuben Shiloah to set up the 'Directorate,' within the Institute for Coordination, to take all overseas intelligence operations under its wing. The 'Directorate' was the initial incarnation of the main collection unit in the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations. REFERENCE: The Mossadhttp://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Society_&_Culture/mossad.html

Mossad also gathers genuine passports of other countries from immigrants to Israel on the pretext of "saving the Jews". These genuine passports are studied to prepare fake passports. Ostrovski identifies four kinds of passports used by Mossad for their operations; "top quality, second quality, field operation and throwaway". The low quality throwaway kind is mostly stolen from others and put in use when "needed only to flash them". They are not used for identification, since it cannot withstand through scrutiny. The field operation kind is "used for quick work in a foreign country, but not used when crossing borders". The second quality passport is a perfect one, "without no real persons behind" the details provided in it. The top-quality passport is the perfect kind, "which could stand up completely to any official scrutiny, including a check by the country of origin". The motto of Mossad in such delicate forgery is that, "no operation should be bungled by a bad document". Other tit-bits offered by Ostrovsky relating to the operation of Mossad are quite interesting.

"Sympathy for the Tamils runs high in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where 40 Million Tamils live. Many Sri Lankan Tamils, escaping the bloodshed, have sought refuge there, and the Sri Lankan government has accused Indian officials of arming and training the Tamils. They should be cursing the Mossad." The Tamil were training at the commando naval base, learning penetration techniques, mining landings, communications, and how to sabotage ships similar to the Devora. There were about 28 men in each group, so it was decided that Yosy should take the Tamils to Haifa that night while I took the Sinhalese to Tel Aviv, thus avoiding any chance encounters. The real problem started about two weeks into the courses, when both the Tamils and Sinhalese – unknown to each, of course – were training at Kafr Sirkin. " Look, we have a problem," said Amy. "We have a group of 27 SWAT team guys from India coming in." " My God," I said, "What is this? We've got Sinhalese, Tamils, and Now Indians. Who's next?" Page 130.

1) "The Mossad's main computer contained more than 1.5 million names in memory.

2) The London station of Mossad "owns more than 100 safe houses and rents another 50".

3) "In London alone, there are about 2,000 active sayanim (Jewish volunteer helpers) who are active, and another 5,000 on the list".

4) Margaret Thatcher was always called inside the Mossad as "the bitch", because "they had her tagged as anti-Semite".

5) For a long time since 1977, Mossad has hired "Durak Kasim, (Yasser) Arafat's driver and personal bodyguard" as their agent, and "he was reporting to them almost daily, sending messages through a burst radio communications system, receiving $2,000 a report. He also telephoned information and mailed it periodically..." REFERENCE: BY WAY OF DECEPTION An Insider's Devastating Expose of The Mossad by Claire Hoy & Victor Ostrovsky {Arrow Books 1988} http://www.amazon.com/Way-Deception-Making-Mossad-officer/dp/0971759502

Buried deep in the archives of America's intelligence services are a series of memos, written during the last years of President George W. Bush's administration, that describe how Israeli Mossad officers recruited operatives belonging to the terrorist group Jundallah by passing themselves off as American agents. According to two U.S. intelligence officials, the Israelis, flush with American dollars and toting U.S. passports, posed as CIA officers in recruiting Jundallah operatives -- what is commonly referred to as a "false flag" operation. The memos, as described by the sources, one of whom has read them and another who is intimately familiar with the case, investigated and debunked reports from 2007 and 2008 accusing the CIA, at the direction of the White House, of covertly supporting Jundallah -- a Pakistan-based Sunni extremist organization. Jundallah, according to the U.S. government and published reports, is responsible for assassinating Iranian government officials and killing Iranian women and children. But while the memos show that the United States had barred even the most incidental contact with Jundallah, according to both intelligence officers, the same was not true for Israel's Mossad. The memos also detail CIA field reports saying that Israel's recruiting activities occurred under the nose of U.S. intelligence officers, most notably in London, the capital of one of Israel's ostensible allies, where Mossad officers posing as CIA operatives met with Jundallah officials. REFERENCE: False Flag A series of CIA memos describes how Israeli Mossad agents posed as American spies to recruit members of the terrorist organization Jundallah to fight their covert war against Iran. BY MARK PERRY JANUARY 13, 2012 http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/13/false_flag?page=0,0

Seymour Hersh- US is funding Al-Qaeda to counter Iran - 1

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnUWcjXvdlo

The officials did not know whether the Israeli program to recruit and use Jundallah is ongoing. Nevertheless, they were stunned by the brazenness of the Mossad's efforts. "It's amazing what the Israelis thought they could get away with," the intelligence officer said. "Their recruitment activities were nearly in the open. They apparently didn't give a damn what we thought." Interviews with six currently serving or recently retired intelligence officers over the last 18 months have helped to fill in the blanks of the Israeli false-flag operation. In addition to the two currently serving U.S. intelligence officers, the existence of the Israeli false-flag operation was confirmed to me by four retired intelligence officers who have served in the CIA or have monitored Israeli intelligence operations from senior positions inside the U.S. government. The CIA and the White House were both asked for comment on this story. By the time this story went to press, they had not responded. The Israeli intelligence services -- the Mossad -- were also contacted, in writing and by telephone, but failed to respond. As a policy, Israel does not confirm or deny its involvement in intelligence operations. There is no denying that there is a covert, bloody, and ongoing campaign aimed at stopping Iran's nuclear program, though no evidence has emerged connecting recent acts of sabotage and killings inside Iran to Jundallah. Many reports have cited Israel as the architect of this covert campaign, which claimed its latest victim on Jan. 11 when a motorcyclist in Tehran slipped a magnetic explosive device under the car of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a young Iranian nuclear scientist. The explosion killed Roshan, making him the fourth scientist assassinated in the past two years. The United States adamantly denies it is behind these killings. REFERENCE: False Flag A series of CIA memos describes how Israeli Mossad agents posed as American spies to recruit members of the terrorist organization Jundallah to fight their covert war against Iran. BY MARK PERRY JANUARY 13, 2012 http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/13/false_flag?page=0,0

Seymour Hersh- US is funding Al-Qaeda to counter Iran - 2

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmk9FbGZC7U&feature=related

According to one retired CIA officer, information about the false-flag operation was reported up the U.S. intelligence chain of command. It reached CIA Director of Operations Stephen Kappes, his deputy Michael Sulick, and the head of the Counterintelligence Center. All three of these officials are now retired. The Counterintelligence Center, according to its website, is tasked with investigating "threats posed by foreign intelligence services." The report then made its way to the White House, according to the currently serving U.S. intelligence officer. The officer said that Bush "went absolutely ballistic" when briefed on its contents. "The report sparked White House concerns that Israel's program was putting Americans at risk," the intelligence officer told me. "There's no question that the U.S. has cooperated with Israel in intelligence-gathering operations against the Iranians, but this was different. No matter what anyone thinks, we're not in the business of assassinating Iranian officials or killing Iranian civilians." Israel's relationship with Jundallah continued to roil the Bush administration until the day it left office, this same intelligence officer noted. Israel's activities jeopardized the administration's fragile relationship with Pakistan, which was coming under intense pressure from Iran to crack down on Jundallah. It also undermined U.S. claims that it would never fight terror with terror, and invited attacks in kind on U.S. personnel. "It's easy to understand why Bush was so angry," a former intelligence officer said. "After all, it's hard to engage with a foreign government if they're convinced you're killing their people. Once you start doing that, they feel they can do the same." REFERENCE: False Flag A series of CIA memos describes how Israeli Mossad agents posed as American spies to recruit members of the terrorist organization Jundallah to fight their covert war against Iran. BY MARK PERRY JANUARY 13, 2012 http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/13/false_flag?page=0,0

Seymour Hersh- US is funding Al-Qaeda to counter Iran - 3

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD6pyqtV9lc&feature=related

A senior administration official vowed to "take the gloves off" with Israel, according to a U.S. intelligence officer. But the United States did nothing -- a result that the officer attributed to "political and bureaucratic inertia." "In the end," the officer noted, "it was just easier to do nothing than to, you know, rock the boat." Even so, at least for a short time, this same officer noted, the Mossad operation sparked a divisive debate among Bush's national security team, pitting those who wondered "just whose side these guys [in Israel] are on" against those who argued that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." The debate over Jundallah was resolved only after Bush left office when, within his first weeks as president, Barack Obama drastically scaled back joint U.S.-Israel intelligence programs targeting Iran, according to multiple serving and retired officers. The decision was controversial inside the CIA, where officials were forced to shut down "some key intelligence-gathering operations," a recently retired CIA officer confirmed. This action was followed in November 2010 by the State Department's addition of Jundallah to its list of foreign terrorist organizations -- a decision that one former CIA officer called "an absolute no-brainer." Since Obama's initial order, U.S. intelligence services have received clearance to cooperate with Israel on a number of classified intelligence-gathering operations focused on Iran's nuclear program, according to a currently serving officer. These operations are highly technical in nature and do not involve covert actions targeting Iran's infrastructure or political or military leadership. REFERENCE: False Flag A series of CIA memos describes how Israeli Mossad agents posed as American spies to recruit members of the terrorist organization Jundallah to fight their covert war against Iran. BY MARK PERRY JANUARY 13, 2012 http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/13/false_flag?page=0,0

Seymour Hersh- US is funding Al-Qaeda to counter Iran - 4

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwkrsenuEl0&feature=related

"We don't do bang and boom," a recently retired intelligence officer said. "And we don't do political assassinations." Israel regularly proposes conducting covert operations targeting Iranians, but is just as regularly shut down, according to retired and current intelligence officers. "They come into the room and spread out their plans, and we just shake our heads," one highly placed intelligence source said, "and we say to them -- 'Don't even go there. The answer is no.'" Unlike the Mujahedin-e Khalq, the controversial exiled Iranian terrorist group that seeks the overthrow of the Tehran regime and is supported by former leading U.S. policymakers, Jundallah is relatively unknown -- but just as violent. In May 2009, a Jundallah suicide bomber blew himself up inside a mosque in Zahedan, the capital of Iran's southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan province bordering Pakistan, during a Shiite religious festival. The bombing killed 25 Iranians and wounded scores of others. The attack enraged Tehran, which traced the perpetrators to a cell operating in Pakistan. The Iranian government notified the Pakistanis of the Jundallah threat and urged them to break up the movement's bases along the Iranian-Pakistani border. The Pakistanis reacted sluggishly in the border areas, feeding Tehran's suspicions that Jundallah was protected by Pakistan's intelligence services. The 2009 attack was just one in a long line of terrorist attacks attributed to the organization. In August 2007, Jundallah kidnapped 21 Iranian truck drivers. In December 2008, it captured and executed 16 Iranian border guards -- the gruesome killings were filmed, in a stark echo of the decapitation of American businessman Nick Berg in Iraq at the hands of al Qaeda's Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. In July 2010, Jundallah conducted a twin suicide bombing in Zahedan outside a mosque, killing dozens of people, including members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. REFERENCE: False Flag A series of CIA memos describes how Israeli Mossad agents posed as American spies to recruit members of the terrorist organization Jundallah to fight their covert war against Iran. BY MARK PERRY JANUARY 13, 2012 http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/13/false_flag?page=0,0

Seymour hersh and Scott Ritter on Iran 1-3

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17pghiRDcms

The State Department aggressively denies that the U.S. government had or has any ties to Jundallah. "We have repeatedly stated, and reiterate again that the United States has not provided support to Jundallah," a spokesman wrote in an email to the Wall Street Journal, following Jundallah's designation as a terrorist organization. "The United States does not sponsor any form of terrorism. We will continue to work with the international community to curtail support for terrorist organizations and prevent violence against innocent civilians. We have also encouraged other governments to take comparable actions against Jundallah." A spate of stories in 2007 and 2008, including a report by ABC News and a New Yorker article, suggested that the United States was offering covert support to Jundallah. The issue has now returned to the spotlight with the string of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists and has outraged serving and retired intelligence officers who fear that Israeli operations are endangering American lives. "This certainly isn't the first time this has happened, though it's the worst case I've heard of," former Centcom chief and retired Gen. Joe Hoar said of the Israeli operation upon being informed of it. "But while false-flag operations are hardly new, they're extremely dangerous. You're basically using your friendship with an ally for your own purposes. Israel is playing with fire. It gets us involved in their covert war, whether we want to be involved or not." REFERENCE: False Flag A series of CIA memos describes how Israeli Mossad agents posed as American spies to recruit members of the terrorist organization Jundallah to fight their covert war against Iran. BY MARK PERRY JANUARY 13, 2012 http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/13/false_flag?page=0,0

Seymour hersh and Scott Ritter on Iran 2-3

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMnadXCMBfo&feature=related

The Israeli operation left a number of recently retired CIA officers sputtering in frustration. "It's going to be pretty hard for the U.S. to distance itself from an Israeli attack on Iran with this kind of thing going on," one of them told me. Jundallah head Abdolmalek Rigi was captured by Iran in February 2010. Although initial reports claimed that he was captured by the Iranians after taking a flight from Dubai to Kyrgyzstan, a retired intelligence officer with knowledge of the incident told me that Rigi was detained by Pakistani intelligence officers in Pakistan. The officer said that Rigi was turned over to the Iranians after the Pakistani government informed the United States that it planned to do so. The United States, this officer said, did not raise objections to the Pakistani decision. Iran, meanwhile, has consistently claimed that Rigi was snatched from under the eyes of the CIA, which it alleges supported him. "It doesn't matter," the former intelligence officer said of Iran's charges. "It doesn't matter what they say. They know the truth." REFERENCE: False Flag A series of CIA memos describes how Israeli Mossad agents posed as American spies to recruit members of the terrorist organization Jundallah to fight their covert war against Iran. BY MARK PERRY JANUARY 13, 2012 http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/13/false_flag?page=0,0

Seymour hersh and Scott Ritter on Iran 3-3

URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gntZXoA46aM&feature=related

Rigi was interrogated, tried, and convicted by the Iranians and hanged on June 20, 2010. Prior to his execution, Rigi claimed in an interview with Iranian media -- which has to be assumed was under duress -- that he had doubts about U.S. sponsorship of Jundallah. He recounted an alleged meeting with "NATO officials" in Morocco in 2007 that raised his suspicions. "When we thought about it we came to the conclusion that they are either Americans acting under NATO cover or Israelis," he said. While many of the details of Israel's involvement with Jundallah are now known, many others still remain a mystery -- and are likely to remain so. The CIA memos of the incident have been "blue bordered," meaning that they were circulated to senior levels of the broader U.S. intelligence community as well as senior State Department officials. What has become crystal clear, however, is the level of anger among senior intelligence officials about Israel's actions. "This was stupid and dangerous," the intelligence official who first told me about the operation said. "Israel is supposed to be working with us, not against us. If they want to shed blood, it would help a lot if it was their blood and not ours. You know, they're supposed to be a strategic asset. Well, guess what? There are a lot of people now, important people, who just don't think that's true." REFERENCE: False Flag A series of CIA memos describes how Israeli Mossad agents posed as American spies to recruit members of the terrorist organization Jundallah to fight their covert war against Iran. BY MARK PERRY JANUARY 13, 2012 http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/13/false_flag?page=0,0

"QUOTE"

2008: Do not to allow Iran toehold in Pakistan: US

DAWN.COM

(7 hours ago) Today

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TAGS: PGOV, PK, PREL, PTER

SUBJECT: ZARDARI EXPRESSES DELIGHT WITH CHINA VISIT, LOOKS

TO FRIENDS FOR HELP ON CHALLENGES

Classified By: Anne W. Patterson, Reasons 1.4 (b), (d)

1. (S/NF) Summary: In a wide-ranging discussion with visiting SCA Assistant Secretary Boucher, President Zardari expressed complete satisfaction with his just concluded visit to China, reviewed planning for the Friends of Pakistan, and reiterated his determination to press the fight against extremism and the militancy in the tribal areas. He linked his ability to sustain the counter-insurgency fight to progress on addressing Pakistan,s economic woes, however, and chastised the IMF for only wanting to &take away8 in its negotiations. Zardari alerted Boucher to Iran's offer of concessional oil for Pakistan, an offer he did not believe he could refuse. Boucher reminded him of the Deputy Secretary's recent caution not to allow Iran to gain a toehold in Pakistan. End Summary.

2. (SBU) Visiting Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs Richard Boucher called on President Zardari at the Aiwan-e-Sadr, October 18. He was accompanied by the Ambassador, DCM (notetaker), and SCA Senior Advisor Hayden. Minister of Information Sherry Rehman joined Zardari.

China Visit

————-

3. (S/NF) Zardari told Boucher his visit to China was

&great.8 He confirmed that the Chinese had committed to building two additional nuclear power plants for Pakistan ) Chashma 3 and 4. He noted, however, that construction would not start until the completion of the Chashma 2 reactor, which he anticipated would require an additional five years. Commenting that the Chinese were providing only old technology, Zardari said that Pakistan had no choice but to accept &junk.8 Boucher told Zardari we would examine the implications of the new nuclear deal vis–vis the International Atomic Energy Agency and let the Pakistanis know if we anticipated any problems with the deal.

4. (S/NF) Zardari also told Boucher that the Chinese had committed to providing assistance to Pakistan,s security forces. Arguing that China was Pakistan,s only affordable option for needed security items, Zardari said the government plans to acquire armored vehicles, body armor, and small arms from China. The Chinese also plan to provide large scanners to Pakistan to help check the contents of trucks. Boucher and the Ambassador reminded Zardari that the U.S. is working with the Frontier Corps on a comprehensive train and equip program. (Comment: Embassy is preparing a letter to Zardari reviewing the details of the U.S. government's extensive support to the Frontier Corps. End Comment)

5. (C) Although silent on the question of possible Chinese balance of payments support to Pakistan, Zardari lauded Chinese &out-of-box8 thinking about business investment in Pakistan. As an example, he described a project to build a dam that would irrigate land that Zardari would then grant to women, who would grow flowers on the land for export to the Emirates. The Chinese will manage the marketing for the

project.

Friends of Pakistan

———————–

6. (C) Zardari confirmed that he wants to formally change the name of the group to Friends of Democratic Pakistan. In response to Boucher's question about the Saudi position, he provided Boucher with a convoluted description of his discussions with Prince Turki bin Abdullah, who requested Zardari,s participation in the Interfaith Dialogue that the King is organizing in New York. In exchange, Zardari expects that the Saudis will be full participants in the Friends group (see septel).

7. (C) As for other possible additions to the Friends group, Boucher suggested that Spain and the Scandinavians might be ISLAMABAD 00003339 002 OF 003 good additions. Zardari assented, and asked Boucher if the U.S. would support Libya's inclusion, to which Boucher agreed. Zardari suggested to Boucher that he would like China added to the steering group. Boucher was open to the idea but noted that the steering committee needed to remain small.

8. (C) Boucher reminded Zardari that the Friends group is not a &checkbook8 organization. He noted that we need to sit with the steering group and consider issues like membership and the role of the UN. We are hoping that the UN will help drive the process by providing a secretariat function. After the next meeting in Abu Dhabi, the U.S. vision would be to launch a series of experts meeting that would consider Pakistani policies and initiatives in a sector-by-sector review.

9. (S/NF) In an aside, Zardari mentioned that Iran has offered to provide Pakistan with concessional oil. How could he go to the National Assembly and tell them Iran had offered the assistance and Pakistan had turned it down, he asked rhetorically. Boucher reminded him of Ambassador Haqqani,s recent conversation on this issue with Deputy Secretary Negroponte in which the Deputy cautioned against providing Iran with a toehold in Pakistan.

Counter-Insurgency

———————–

10. (S) Zardari stressed repeatedly his determination to carry through with the fight against extremism and militancy. &I don't believe in talking to the Taliban,8 he said. &We won't do it on our side of the border.8 He noted that he has built a good relationship with the military and praised the leadership of Chief of Army Staff Kayani, ISI Director General Pasha, and Frontier Corps General Tariq Khan. To challenge the fundamentalists, however, Zardari needs to gain the confidence of the Army, the National Assembly, and the people. To do that, he believes he must address the economic situation and demonstrate that he can deliver on his economic promises. Zardari chastised the IMF for just wanting to &take away8 from Pakistan in the negotiations over a bailout package.

11. (C) In response to Boucher,s question about the National Assembly debate on Pakistan,s counter-insurgency strategy, Zardari expressed confidence that he would succeed in winning from the Assembly a consensus resolution on the government,s policy. (N.B.: A day earlier, both National Security Advisor Durrani and Information Minister Rehman expressed skepticism that an acceptable consensus resolution was achievable.) Nawaz Sharif,s Pakistan Muslim League is offering no help on Pakistan,s counter-terrorism policy, Zardari opined. Rehman added that Nawaz and Chaudhry Nisar have a &good cop/bad cop8 routine. Nawaz says good things about his party's commitment to cooperation, but Nisar does the opposite in the Assembly.

12. (C) Describing his legislative strategy going forward, Zardari said that proposed revisions to the Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR) are nearly ready to bring to the Assembly. He anticipates that the extension of the Political Parties Act to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (permitting political parties to organize and campaign in the tribal areas under the same regulations as apply to the rest of the country) would be introduced within three months. Zardari also described a de-radicalization program he plans on introducing in the Assembly. Zardari will propose a criminal regime for &small fries8 that would sentence them to seven years in a &special prison8 to be constructed for handling reforming militants. While in the prison, the militants would receive job training and would receive lenient treatment, including conjugal rights. &I won't stop pressing,8 Zardari declared, &either he (the militant) dies or he takes the option.8 Anyone caught a second time after going through the reform program will be sent to prison for ISLAMABAD 00003339 003 OF 003 life, Zardari declared.

13. (S) Turning to the fighting in Bajaur, Zardari asserted that the government needs a mechanism to get compensation into the hands of the victims of the fighting, suggesting that he thought one billion U.S. dollars might be sufficient. Responding that we anticipate the financial requirement would be less than that, Boucher and the Ambassador assured Zardari we are looking for ways that we can help. Zardari asked if the Friends of Democratic Pakistan might be of help, but Boucher reiterated that such assistance would likely fall outside the mandate of the group. Zardari then suggested that the Saudis could provide the necessary funds, noting that &the problem leads back to them.8 Rehman interjected that the National Assembly members were asking how the militants were getting their funds and raised the flow of funds from the Gulf to extremists in Pakistan. (DCM observed that efforts to stop funding terrorist groups were not helped by Pakistan,s obstruction of work in the UN 1267 Committee, mentioning specifically the hold on Katrina. Zardari expressed surprise that Pakistan was playing such a role, and Rehman made note of the issue.)

14. (S) As for the Pakistan-Afghanistan mini-jirga scheduled for Islamabad in a week's time, Zardari expressed the hope that it will re-occupy political space in the tribal areas. He expressed the hope that the jirga could re-consolidate the government,s position among the majority of the tribes, noting that the government,s greatest challenge in rooting out the extremists is when they are able to shelter among the population in the area. As for leadership of the Pakistani delegation to the jirga, Sherry Rehman noted that Asfandyar Wali Khan, who had been proposed as the senior Pakistani, will not be back in Pakistan in time for the meeting. She suggested that Asfandyar is in &bad shape8 following the terrorist attack on his home near Charsadda. Zardari indicated separately that he is helping Asfandyar relocate his family to Dubai and would provide him with an armored vehicle when he returns to Pakistan.

Friends: the U.S. and the UK

———————————–

15. (C) Zardari mused about the need to reach out to the new U.S. Administration after the elections and suggested that he would like to organize a &road show8 to visit the U.S. and explain Pakistan,s situation. Boucher suggested that such an effort could emphasize U.S.-Pakistani cooperation on the border coordination centers, the Joint Military Operations Coordination Center, and the Frontier Corps train and equip program.

16. (S/NF) As for the UK, Zardari expressed some concern that their support was getting wobbly. He believes that their views reflect their conviction that Zardari would fail and would be replaced by Nawaz Sharif. Boucher thought that the concerns are more a reflection of attitude than policy. If Zardari achieves results, he asserted, then the British will come around.

Comment

- – - -

17. (S/NF) Zardari was clearly buoyed by his visit to China and in good spirits as he looks ahead to the serious challenges that confront him and the country. He ran through numerous ideas for new initiatives to deal with the political, economic, and security problems, nearly all of which come with high price tags. In that regard, Zardari continues to express considerable optimism that, ultimately, his friends will ride to his rescue despite little evidence to support that view.

PATTERSON

2008: Do not to allow Iran toehold in Pakistan: US

http://www.dawn.com/2011/05/24/2008-do-not-to-allow-iran-toehold-in-pakistan-us.html

"UNQUOTE"

http://www.scribd.com/doc/61839666/Indo-Pak-Wars-A-Pictorial-History

http://www.scribd.com/doc/21686885/TALIBAN-WAR-IN-PAKISTAN-AFGHANISTAN-A-WRITERS-PERCEPTIONS-FROM-2001-TO-2011

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22457862/Military-Decision-making-and-leadership

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22151765/History-of-Pakistan-Army-from-1757-to-1971-PRINTING-ENABLED-Do-acknowledge-to-the-author

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22455178/Letters-to-Command-and-Staff-College-Quetta-Citadel-Journal

http://www.scribd.com/doc/23150027/Pakistan-Army-through-eyes-of-Pakistani-Generals

http://www.scribd.com/doc/23701412/War-of-Independence-of-1857

http://www.scribd.com/doc/22107238/HISTORY

http://www.scribd.com/doc/21693873/Indo-Pak-Wars-1947-71-A-STRATEGIC-AND-OPERATIONAL-ANALYSIS-BY-A-H-AMIN-THIS-BOOK-CAN-BE-PRINTED-FROM-THIS-SITE

Carve out Balochistan from Pakistan to beat Taliban-Louie Gohmert’s

2012-01-28T00:09:00.001-08:00

This was discussed in five articles of mine published in 2001-2005 and in our book development of TALIBAN FACTIONS in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Agha H Amin

http://low-intensity-conflict-review.blogspot.com/2011/08/ethnic-strategic-damper-best-strategy.html

04 August, 2011

The Ethnic Strategic Damper-The Best Strategy against Extremism

The Ethnic Strategic Damper-The Best Strategy against Extremism

A.H Amin

01 August 2011

A monotheist believer in God may state that states are created when God wants it !

Assessments cannot divine divine designs but assessments by mean mortals can assess designs of mortals !

While states are key players in state creation they do it when there is a indigenous element involved in the particular case !

This means that states can act as midwives to create a new state apart from divine design.

This has happened in India after 1940 when the Brits decided to divide India.The idea was first propounded by a British civil servant Sir Michael O Dwyer in late 1930s.

Bangladesh similarly was created with major Soviet and Indian role and the US also wanted to limit communist influence in East Bengal and saw Awami league as a alternative.

A de facto Kurdish state has already been created in Iraq but only with US help.

Bosnia and Kosovo were created with active US support.

Pakistan was created by British policy to punish the All India Congress which was refusing to be part of the British war effort and later of British strategic policy in Asia !

Thus the idea of Pakistan was given as a theme to Mr Jinnah by the British Governor General in September 1939 in order to counter the anti British Indian National Congress.

Pakistan was visualised as a British base against the USSR ! A cheap unstable state which could be manipulated with ease by the Brits ! In 1954 the Brits handed over Pakistan to the Americans !

The crux of the problem is that when the US with Saudi advice and Pakistani mercenary tradition started using Islam as a tool of strategy against the USSR the whole scheme went out of spin by 1999 !

It is clear now that the US is losing the war ecnomically and Pakistan and Saudi Arabia can be severely destabilised by extremist and even overwhelmed !

This is not the time to compose a funeral march but to find a median solution which leads to some counter check !

Seen in the above context if Pakistan was created by Imperialist design why cannot new states be created in the region now to counter extremism ?

The primer of this article was a conversation with a very senior Pakistani military official.

Having studied in Balochistan for many years and having served in the Pakistani military I have the unique opportunity of knowing the key players on both sides !

This includes the paranoid Pakistani intelligence officials whose paranoia in suspecting all even including their wives extends as far as their grandmothers!

In Balochistan what I am seeing is a new kind of Baloch nationalism in which even the Baloch Tribal Chief known as Sardar is becoming irrelevant.

Yes foreign hands are involved. But we must remember that foreign hands succeed only if there is an indigenous genuine insurgency inside a country. The same was true for Bangladesh, and now for Indian occupied Kashmir and Balochistan.

All is not inevitable .this is a failure of Pakistani policy and above all Pakistan Army.

This article may never be published in a Pakistani newspaper ?

This is so because in Pakistan everything is ethnic and ulterior because it is an imperfect , anachronistic state significantly manipulated by the military , by the military intelligence and by classes who have a very unfair advantage in this unstable and volatile state.

It is worth adding some background information for the foreign layman reader here.

How is it that Pakistans political and military establishment which now acts as judge jury and executioner , all three combined in one class became the masters of destiny of Pakistans lesser races ? The Bengalis before 1971 who were regarded a s inferior Dravidian race by this establishment ? The Baloch and Sindhis who this establishment still regards as an inferior race till to date !

The elite which collaborated with british was the Punjabi muslim , settled area Pashtuns and Urdu speaking who gained a position of unfair advantage after partition of India by eliminating the Hindu from competition exams as well as business and agriculture.

The above classes gained a position of unfair advantage in the pre 1947 British Indian Army not because they were more martial but because they collaborated with the British in killing Indians , both Muslim and non Muslim from 1857 till 1947 !

The idea of pakistan in reality was to gain a position of unfair advantage for the above elite by eliminating the Hindu and Sikh who held superiority in business , agriculture and civil service.

An eminent British scholar Francis Robinson has brilliantly explored this ulterior theme in his masterpiece book Muslim Separatism in India.

Jinnah , Pakistans founder represented the Bombay Gujrati business and this is why Adamjee the Bombay business tycoon gave him a blank cheque as support to Jinnahs Muslim Leagues quest for Pakistan.

The whole of jinnahs policy was dual standards.In a united India he wanted weak centre and strong provinces so that Hindu majority army could not chastise the above mentioned Muslim classes that the Muslim League represented. Once Pakistan was created Jinnah wanted strong centre and weak provinces and used army to chastise provinces the first time in Balochistan in 1948.

Kalat states accession to Pakistan was as dubious as accession of Kashmir to India.However this also happened because of Jinnahs self imposed faux pas !

This was when Jinnah rejected the British Viceroy Lord Mountbatten's most just proposal that Muslim majorirty princely states join Pakistan as a formula and vice versa for Hindu and Sikh majority states joining India .

Based on this Pakistan has no case on Kashmir as it joined India by a legal formula? Nehru committed a faux pas when he agreed to include the UN in the dispute and agreed to prospective plebiscite in Kashmir in order to decide whether the Kashmiris wanted to join India or Pakistan.

Based on same formula Pakistani military action in Kalat in 1948 is more illegal than indian military intervention in kashmir which was perfectly legal.

Even kashmir is an ethnic issue as linguistically kashmiris and punjabis are almost the same.

As stated earlier the above Pakistani ethnic cum class elite regarded the Bengalis , Baloch and even Sindhis as inferior and right from 1947 introduced an unfair monopoly in Pakistan.

When Bengalis were in majority in population this elite wanted distribution of funds not on basis of population , but when punjabis became majority this elite wanted distribution of funds on basis of population.

Religion was used by the above elite to further their monopoly. Punjab and parts of NWFP regarded as heart of Pakistan and others regarded as semi traitors or full traitors.

Even the defense strategy as taught at the Pakistani staff college and national defense college regarded north Punjab as centre of Pakistan's gravity and the main idea of the army was to defend north Punjab , specifically spelt as the triangle Lahore Rawalpindi Faisalabad.

While the above elite were king makers they came in open after 1977.The same elite conspired to launch the army in Balochistan in 1948,58,1960,1973.

Anyone who is outside the above elite is branded as traitor.

Religion and use of proxies was adopted in October 1947 as a policy, discarded temporarily after 1948 , re-picked with force after 1969 and fully enforced after 1977.

The battle in Pakistan is essentially over resources. Oil and gas being the centre of it. Even a kilogram of LPG quota can be allotted only by this elite in Pakistan.Needless to state most of the Oil and Gas industry is dominated by this elite.

War with India and Indian threat is used by this elite to justify its unfair monopoly.

Having given a background to the conflict lets discuss the present war on terror .

The Afghan mess was created by the above mentioned Pakistani elite when in order to perpetuate the illegitimate usurper military regime of General Zia this elite collaborated with the USA in the Soviet Afghan War.In the process the USA eliminated a much smaller strategic threat and replaced it with a much larger threat !

The Islamists ! Thus while the Soviet economy could not bear the strain of Afghan war the US economy is shattered thanks to the present ongoing war on terror.

How to kill the dragons that the USA created ! Only dragons can kill the dragons ! The best strategy to defeat terrorism may be to confront the terrorists ideological card with the ethnic card !

What is the threat from the dragons that the US created in the West Asian region from 1979 to 2001 ! The dragons can destabilise the whole region irrevocably and there potential to destroy and destabilise may only be rivalled by Armageddon !

While it is theoretically neat and cosmetically nice to advance the view point that the USA should withdraw from Afghanistan. The idea is far complicated at the strategic and operational level.

While it is true that the Pakistan and US sponsored so called Mujahideen did not follow the USSR into Russia,their successors the Taliban were allied with parties with a Pan Islamist outlook. Parties which wanted to carry Jihad into Europe,America and Africa.

The USSR withdrawal from Afghanistan was not a military defeat but a political act of withdrawal covered by the creation of the Northern Alliance which was half leftist and pro Russian.

The fact of the matter remains that USSR withdrawal was fallaciously interpreted as a great victory of Islam, while actually it was not so. This interpretation led to creation of many dreams of glory and carrying on of the Islamic Jihad into India, Bosnia, Chechniya etc.

Any US withdrawal from Afghanistan would create another delusion.While 9/11 was a traumatic event , what follows the US withdrawal would be traumatic par excellence !

A false conclusion that Islam has won and USA lost. It would boost morale in the Islamists and would lead to far greater chaos and confusion than ever witnessed before in modern history.

In brief the implications of a US withdrawal would be :-- (1) Collapse of the moderate Afghan regime created after billions of dollars of US and European/G 8 aid within a matter of months. (2) Creation of an unemployed and uncommitted reserve of Islamic extremists who are well trained in military art and would represent a greater threat to the Pakistani state as well as the region and the world than it presently exists . (3) A renewed civil war in Afghanistan with Taliban backed by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and the Northern Alliance backed by Russia, Iran, Central Asian Republics and possibly USA and China.

The key to the present disorder lies in Afghanistans neighbours and not in Afghanistan itself :--

(1) Pakistan and Saudi Arabian states regard Afghanistan as a battle ground in between Iran/Indian/Russian backed Northern Alliance and a Sunni puritan Talibans.

(2) Russia ,India,Central Asian Republics and G 8 in general regard Taliban as a threat to their countries and to the region.

A possible solution may be in the following :--

(1) Continued US presence retaining key military bases in North Afghanistan and in Baloch majority Nimroz as sword of Damocles for the Taliban. Withdrawal of US forces from South Afghanistan while retaining the Kabul Torkham Corridor which is safe in any case. The non Pashtuns and moderate Pashtuns regard the US as their saviour from Pakistan sponsored Taliban and will welcome US presence , failing which Afghanistan will plunge into another bloody civil war !

(2) Integrating Russia,India and Pakistan in a regional solution while creating an Independent North Afghanistan which is Non Pashtun majority, South Afghanistan which is Pashtun majority, and a Baloch Autonomous Region in the south west Afghanistan.

(3) Initiation of dialogue with the Taliban offering them South Afghanistan while withdrawing US/NATO forces north of the line Dilaram-Uruzgan-Ghazni-Paktiya-Paktika while retaining Baloch majority Nimroz.

Nothing in history is inevitable.Afghanistan was a province of Mughal,Saffavid and the Bokharan Uzbeks till 1747.It was controlled by a subsidy of 13 lakh per month by British from 1857 to 1919 and it was a neutral country with no threat to world peace from 1919 to 1978.

It is a misconception that Taliban control 90 % of Afghanistan or all population of Afghanistan is with Taliban unless you believe the Pakistani or Saudi establishment.The Saudi establishment fears the Shias and Iran far more than USA or Israel. Thus the deep Saudi interest in a Taliban dominated Afghanistan.

The fact is that Taliban control some 50 % of Afghanistan while some 60 % of Afghanistans population is against them.

If the USA withdraws what will happen to the 60 % who are against the Taliban ? These include Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmens, Hazaras and many educated Pashtuns .This would be a great political and strategic failure of USA and NATO ? The main winners in this case would be Russia,India and Iran in Afghamistans north and Pakistans generals and Saudis in the south.

A solution of war on terror and the Afghan war must be based on a combination of B-52 bombers, US Dollars, Divide and Rule and regional guarantees.

A non Pashtun state in Afghanistans north and extreme west will act as a strategic damper to the extremists in the North and will have Russian ,Iranian and Indian support.

A Baloch semi autonomous state at with confederal ties with Pakistan at some stage will be an invaluable strategic damper to the Taliban in the south of Afghanistan as well as against Iran.

The secular Baloch are the best strategic bet in this scenario.The Pakistani fears about losing its oil and gas can be removed by declaring Balochistan as a neutral zone and an oil and gas agreement guaranteed by international organizations like the Indus Basin Treaty of 1960s.

The above mentioned neutral Baloch zone Combined with the Baloch autonomous region in west Afghanistan in Nimroz province , western parts of Farah and Herat provinces in Afghanistan is a neat solution to the strategic and geopolitical dilemmas of regional stability as well access to oil and gas !

Through this corridor donors can gain access to Central Asian oil and gas without getting involved with the blackmailing Taliban. Irans designs to support perpetual disorder in South Afghanistan will also be defeated when this neat strategic corridor from Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean is in place.

A neutralised Balochistan with a border fenced with Talibanistan can also severely reduce Taliban export potential of hard drugs to the Arabian Sea.

The present international crisis requires great statesmanship in USA and the key actor states. The Ethnic Strategic Damper may be the best strategy in this situation.

But who will impose this strategy ! The myopic Americans who have everything but strategic vision ! Perhaps they should seek guidance from their far more talented English former masters !

Policy makers must remember that the Roman Empire was not built on military might or hardware alone but on Divide and Impera ! Even then when Rome relied extensively on military force it was overwhelmed by barbarians.

Edward Gibbon the greatest western historian in his magnum bonum Decline and Fall of Roman Empire has left a prophetic warning about the greatest threat to the Western civilization ? Islam !

There is nothing inevitable in history and in order to be effective a statesman must be agnostic in matters of policy ! Fear made men believe in the worst ! But in this case the fears expressed in this article are genuine to the best of this scribes convictions !

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2012\01\28\story_28-1-2012_pg1_5

Louie Gohmert's Afghan strategy

Carve out Balochistan from Pakistan to beat Taliban

LAHORE: Arguing that US President Barack Obama is losing the war in Afghanistan to the Taliban, US Republican Louie Gohmert proposed one way to win: create a new, friendly state within the borders of neighbouring Pakistan, The Huffington Post reported. The Texas Republican took issue with Obama's assertion that "the Taliban's momentum has been broken". He told the newspaper he had just visited Afghanistan and came away with a very different sense from talking to members of the Northern Alliance, a multiethnic confederation of warlords, and other forces who led the US-backed ouster of the Taliban in 2001. Gohmert argued that, far from being broken, the Taliban are feeling powerful enough to demand that members of the Northern Alliance apologise before the United States leaves in 2013. "If you look at the objective facts ... they're not on the run," Gohmert said. His solution was first to supply more arms to the Northern Alliance. But then, he said, the Afghan border with Pakistan needs to be shored up. "Let's talk about creating a Balochistan in the southern part of Pakistan," Gohmert told The Huffington Post. "They love us. They'll stop the IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and all the weaponry coming into Afghanistan, and we got a shot to win over there," said Gohmert, who accused Obama's national security advisers of giving the president bad intelligence on Afghanistan. "His strategy of working from ignorance and thinking we have them on the run is no way to go through life, son," Gohmert said, adding, "I'm about to borrow from an 'Animal House' line, but anyway, that's no way to go through life when you're that ignorant of what's really going on." The White House did not answer the newspaper's request for comment, and Gohmert's office did not elaborate on how the United States could even discuss carving off Balochistan from Pakistan. The United States recently has been talking about a truce with the Taliban. Gohmert, a member of the US House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, characterised such efforts as begging, backed by an offer to "let all these Taliban murderers" go free, The Huffington Post said. daily times monitor