Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

On her recent trip to New York, Sarah Palin palled around with one of the world’s most corrupt heads of state. She and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari shared some photo-op moments to burnish her foreign policy credentials. However, given that Governor Palin is so quick to point out other people’s "associations", it makes me wonder why she would choose to meet with a man famous in his own country for murder, theft, and corruption.

Asif Ali Zardari, widower of Benazir Bhutto, is known in Pakistan and the rest of South Asia as "Mr. 10%". He didn’t get the nickname because he is lazy and only puts out 10% effort. He got the nickname because, when his wife was prime minister of Pakistan, he presided over massive kickback and shakedown schemes that earned him over a billion dollars. He funneled his money into three Swiss banks accounts via shell companies he had set up in Dubai. The US Senate detailed some of these bank accounts and transactions in a 1999 report on international money laundering:

It has been reported that the government of Pakistan claims that Ms. Bhutto and Mr. Zardari stole over $1 billion from the country.

During the period 1994 to 1997, Citibank opened and maintained three private bank accounts in Switzerland and a consumer account in Dubai for three corporations under Mr. Zardari’s control. There are allegations that some of these accounts were used to disguise $10 million in kickbacks for a gold importing contract to Pakistan.

Mr. Zardari is also widely believed to have orchestrated the murder of Mir Murtaza Bhutto, his brother-in-law. Mr. Zardari also found himself in the middle of a bizarre case in 1990 when he was accused of "tying a remote-controlled bomb to the leg of a businessman and sending him into a bank to withdraw money from his account as a pay-off."

All told, Zardari has spent 11 and half years in jail for various corruption convictions. Until last year, Zardari claimed to have been suffering from "dementia, major depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder" to avoid prosecution in European courts. Now that he has been appointed Pakistan’s president, he claims he is feeling much better.

Asif Ali Zardari is the butt of jokes in Pakistan. Knowing Mr. Zardari’s history, why would Governor Palin choose to pal around with him? Someone should ask Sarah Palin why she chooses to associate with Pakistan’s "Mr. 10%".

On August 17, 1988 an American built C-130 Hercules transport plane nosedived into the Pakistani desert and exploded into flames. Before it plunged into the ground witnesses on the ground noticed the plane lurching violently in midair. The plane was carrying the Pakistani Islamist dictator General Zia-ul-Haq, other senior Pakistani generals, and the American ambassador to Pakistan Arnold Raphel. The group had just taken off from a nearby airport after attending a demonstration of an American Abrams tank. After Zia-ul-Haq blew up under mysterious circumstances, Benazir Bhutto came to power as Pakistan’s first female prime minister after the first open elections in more than a decade.

Nearly a decade earlier, Benazir’s father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was hanged on April 4, 1979 on dubious charges of corruption and for authorizing the murder of a political opponent. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had been the prime minister of Pakistan until General Zia-ul-Haq overthrew him in a coup in 1977. Two years earlier Bhutto had fired the army chief General Tikka Khan and replaced him with Zia-ul-Haq, passing over five other generals senior to Zia.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto himself had usurped the leadership of Pakistan, after failing to win a majority in the parliamentary elections, in 1971 by cutting a deal with another military ruler of Pakistan, General Yahya Khan. That agreement with the General ensured that Bhutto would preside over the disintegration of Pakistan that lead to an independent Bangladesh.

Two years after the daughter, Benazir Bhutto, came to power she lost the prime ministership to Nawaz Sharif, a protégé of blown-up military dictator Zia-ul-Haq. In 1998, Nawaz Sharif in his infinite wisdom decided to replace his army chief with General Pervez Musharraf. In 1999 Nawaz Sharif tried to fire Musharraf and refused landing rights in Karachi to the plane carrying Musharraf. This time, however, the General’s plane did not blow up. Instead the Pakistan military overthrew Sharif and installed Musharraf as the latest military dictator to run Pakistan. Sharif was accused and convicted of corruption and dispatched to Saudi Arabia in short order.

Lately the duo of Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto have been making noises of returning to power in Pakistan as General Musharraf’s grip on power has begun to wane. Last week Nawaz Sharif set the world record for return to exile after he was swiftly dispatched back into exile upon his much anticipated return to Pakistan. Sharif failed to do the necessary groundwork before his return. Bhutto, on the other hand, has learned from her father well. She is busy cutting a deal with General Musharraf that will facilitate her return to power in Pakistan. There is very little doubt that the generals will install her as a civilian prime minister while Musharraf moves into a revamped role as the President.

The United States, and the West, will declare that "democracy" has returned to Pakistan. Meanwhile Pakistan will continue to be ruled by the generals, as it has been, either directly or indirectly, for most of its history. The one constant in Pakistani politics has been the military - they have either installed or deposed corrupt civilian leaders as they saw fit. The goal has always been to further the Milbus.

Last week on NPR former CIA analyst Michael Sheuer referred to the Pakistani military as the "one institution in Pakistan that works". He referred to the civilian leadership in Pakistan as "kleptomaniacal" and accused the Bush administration of undermining "our best ally" in the region. He said that "when civilians are in power in Pakistan what you hear mostly is the flow of funds into their private accounts." Michael Sheuer is half right. He is right that the civilian political leaders in Pakistan are corrupt. What he fails to mention is that the Pakistani military is even more corrupt and has grown into a state within a state that lives to consolidate its business interests as much as it exists to defend Pakistan. Even ignoring the Pakistan military’s misguided notion of "strategic depth" that leads it to nurture the Taliban in the west and Islamist militants in the east, the Pakistan military’s lust for business is what makes it a rogue state.

The Pakistan military is more than an armed force - it is a business conglomerate. In the groundbreaking book, Military Inc., Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa takes a closer look at what it is the United States government has been funding for more than 50 years. The military businesses, known as Milbus, goes well beyond any notion of national security:

CORNFLAKES, cinemas, bakeries, petrol stations, insurance companies and an airline—these are but a few of the business interests that Pakistan’s generals, who have ruled the country for most of its history, have accrued. In a pioneering investigation, Ayesha Siddiqa, a tenacious Pakistani, estimates that the armed forces have gathered private assets worth $10 billion.

Ms Siddiqa defines military business as any capital appropriated by soldiers outside the defence budget. It includes five welfare foundations, two of them, the Fauji Foundation and the Army Welfare Trust, being Pakistan’s biggest conglomerates. These control thousands of companies, ostensibly to finance education and health care for military families. The foundations have a virtual monopoly on sectors including road-building and cement production; Ms Siddiqa estimates that they control one third of Pakistan’s heavy manufacturing.

Senior officers cite army welfare as justification for this empire with the same monotony as they cite national security to justify their coups. Ms Siddiqa suggests that the economic interests of a greedy military elite, mostly recruited from just three districts of Punjab, in fact goes a long way to explaining both.

Another of their justifications is that soldiers make more efficient managers than civilians. To this effect, President Pervez Musharraf, the current ruling general, recently praised the army’s contribution to Pakistan’s economy. But this seems to be as wrong as the notion that soldiers make better rulers than civilians. According to Ms Siddiqa, many, if not most, military businesses operate at a loss. To keep them afloat, the government has had to make bail-outs amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars.

It is a business empire that leads to millionaire generals and a poor population. The military controls or influences every sphere of civil administration and business in Pakistan. The Milbus has accelarated under the leadership of Pervez Musharraf:

That man, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the president, has been Pakistan’s leader for almost eight years. In that time, the nuclear-armed military has quietly exerted its influence over nearly every segment of Pakistani society.

Active-duty or retired officers now occupy most key government jobs, including posts in education, agriculture and medicine that have little to do with defense. The military also dominates the corporate world; it reportedly runs a $20 billion portfolio of businesses from banks to real estate developers to bakeries. And everywhere lurks the hand of the feared military-led intelligence services.

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It’s by the side of the road, where men in orange jumpsuits labor for a military-run foundation that controls a huge share of the nation’s construction industry. It’s also present up and down the ranks of the civilian bureaucracy, where government workers answer to retired military men and complain that loyalty is consistently rewarded over hard work or competence.

It is this Milbus that the Bush Administration funds to the tune of $2 billion a year.

Yet, the Bush Administration pays lip service to "free and fair" elections in Pakistan. Last month at a hearing in front of the House Committee of Foreign Affairs Depute Assistant Secretary for South Asia John Gastright delivered cringe-worthy testimony outlining the Bush administration’s support for Musharraf and his march toward "democracy":

The remainder of 2007 presents challenges and opportunities to accomplish fundamental tasks essential to achieving our long-term goals in Pakistan.  This year will help determine whether Pakistan makes a successful transition to a democratically elected, civilian government, and we intend to assist President Musharraf to fulfill his commitment to this goal.  We believe that Pakistan must transition to civilian democracy and we are backing the Pakistani government’s efforts to make that transition.  Civilian democratic rule will allow the Pakistani military to focus on its primary job of providing security for the people of Pakistan and ensuring that Pakistan fulfills its international obligations to combat terrorism and violent extremism.  I believe we have a good plan in place to work with Pakistan on all of these fronts.  The challenge is to maintain the right balance and implement the plan quickly and effectively.

Nowhere in the testimony was there discussion of rolling back the Pakistan military’s hold on all business in Pakistan. Talking about "democracy" while ignoring the Milbus is naive. Until the Milbus in Pakistan is directly addressed, the United States will continue to fund this state within a state, at the expense of true democracy. In doing so, it will achieve neither democracy nor stability. The farce of "democracy" will continue in Pakistan and the next generation of civilian frontmen will do the bidding of the Pakistan military. More generals will get blown up and more civilian front men will be hanged or exiled while the military gets richer and more corrupt.

The Washington Post today carries an article entitled (at least on its homepage) "Pakistani Immigrants Fret Over Fate of Homeland". Not to be outdone, the New York Times has its own article about Pakistan entitled "Al Qaeda Threatens; U.S. Frets". Both articles exhibit the fear and ignorance that has led the United States, over the last half century, to be the prime benefactor of Islamist extremism in the world.

The Washington Post takes a man-on-the-street approach by reporting the views of Pakistani immigrants in the Washington DC area. In a paragraph overflowing with ignorance, the Post captures the essential failure of American foreign policy vis-à-vis Islamist extremism. The Post writes about Pakistani immigrants and of Pakistan:

Although almost all are observant Muslims and many attend mosques, local Pakistanis tend to be moderate and well-integrated into American culture. Now, many say they fear that their once-tolerant native land — founded in 1947 as a Muslim democracy — could become the next victim of the violent militancy that is causing mayhem in many Islamic countries.

The Post seems to imply that somehow it is exceptional to both be moderate and attend mosques at the same time - a prejudice that obscures a more enlightened understanding of the struggles in the Muslim world. Then the Post reveals its ignorance further in the very next sentence. To state that Pakistan was a "once-tolerant native land — founded in 1947 as a Muslim democracy" it to ignore a half century of history. The name of the country, "Pakistan", means "Land of the Pure" - there is nothing tolerant in that formulation. To be "pure" means to be a "Muslim", that is, to be a "Muslim" untainted by cultural or other local "impurities". This is not a theoretical matter. In 1971 the Pakistan military slaughtered, with support from the Nixon administration, up to 3 million Bangladeshis - a spasm of insanity and genocide that was made possible because Bangladeshis were viewed as "impure" and tainted by Hindu and Bengali culture.

The New York Times, meanwhile, explains how Washington is "captivated" by the current Pakistani strongman:

Washington is captivated by General Musharraf because he is a secular moderate, which is not to be confused with a civil libertarian. John D. Negroponte, the deputy secretary of state who until late last year tracked the gathering Qaeda threat as the director of national intelligence, ended a trip to Pakistan a month ago convinced that General Musharraf’s government had, at long last, gotten the message about the tribal areas in the northwest officially known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. [Emphasis added by me.]

Washington is so captivated by the General that they fund him and his military to the tune of $2 billion a year, even though this money has resulted in failure after failure. Banking on Musharraf being a "secular moderate" is naive.

The New York Times continues:

Yet, when asked how the United States would respond if Al Qaeda were to plot a successful attack on the United States from the tribal areas, the answer from one intelligence officials was direct: “We’d go in and flatten it.” [Emphasis added by me.]

I hate to point out the obvious, but Al Qaeda did plot a successful attack on the United States from Pakistan on September 11, 2001. I am quite confident no "flatten"ing has occurred in Pakistan - in spite of the bravado.

Pakistan has been a breeding ground for Islamist extremists since its founding. The Pakistani Constitution itself institutionalizes religious persecution. The primary benefactor of Islamists in Pakistan has been the Pakistan military. The Pakistan military, through the Directorate of Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), has consistently stifled democratic opposition in the country while at the same time used Islamist extremists to carry out its domestic and foreign policy goals - the organization and funding of genocidal Islamist extremists in Bangladesh, the funding of Islamists extremists in Kashmir, and the creation and backing of the Taliban are only a few of the extreme examples. Throughout, from the Pakistani dictator Ayub Khan to Islamist General Zia-ul-Haq to Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistan military and the Islamist extremists have co-existed in a symbiotic relationship. The Islamists have acted as a support pillar for the military while the military has generously funded the Islamists and the growth of Islamist thought in Pakistan and beyond. Both groups share a common antipathy toward secular democracies. In this relationship, the Pakistani military is the dominant partner. An Islamist takeover of Pakistan is at best remote and certainly not necessary from the Islamist’s point of view. Islamists do not have to rule Pakistan to wield enormous power - many of their policy objectives are helped along by the Pakistan military, an institution that controls much of Pakistani society and is in no danger of collapsing. In this atmosphere, the occasional flexing of muscle by the military against extremists that go off the reservation is window dressing.

Pakistan was the birthplace of modern Islamist thought. The primary Islamist party in Pakistan, the Jamaat-e-Islami, has been, since its founding, at the forefront of political Islam, or Islamism. It is an ideology that is inconsistent with secular democracy and distinct from Islam, the religion that is practiced by me and more than a billion other adherents. It is also an ideology that cannot win the day in the Muslim world. However, it finds a home within military dictatorships as in Pakistan. The consequences of this coddling of Islamists by the military for Pakistan, South Asia, and now the world have been severe.

Yet, the United States has consistently supported military dictatorships in Pakistan at the expense of political freedom. It has done so while engaged in games of geo-political chicken, sacrificing wisdom for expediency. It has propped up Pakistan’s military dictatorship, and in doing so it has given aid to the very extremists it now hopes to combat. Dealing with Islamist extremism without first addressing its big brother in Pakistan is simply folly. Propping up the Pakistani military regime by sowing fear that Islamists will takeover otherwise is naive at best and disingenuous at worst.

Fretting however is not the answer.

The Bush Administration is contributing significantly to the militarization of South Asia. In pursuit of its War on Terror, the Bush Administration has been subsidizing General Musharraf and his military as they continue to cling to power in Pakistan. Pakistan is most definitely not a poster child for Mr. Bush’s "Freedom Agenda". Yet it is a poster child for everything that is wrong with Mr. Bush’s War on Terror.

The Bush Administration funds 20% of Pakistan’s military budget by writing big monthly checks to the Pakistan military. That American largesse is ostensibly to reimburse Pakistan for its expenses in the War on Terror. However, in reality the money flows regardless of any work Pakistan actually performs in support of Mr. Bush’s war. Today’s New York Times reports:

The United States is continuing to make large payments of roughly $1 billion a year to Pakistan for what it calls reimbursements to the country’s military for conducting counterterrorism efforts along the border with Afghanistan, even though Pakistan’s president decided eight months ago to slash patrols through the area where Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are most active.

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The monthly payments, called coalition support funds, are not widely advertised. Buried in public budget numbers, the payments are intended to reimburse Pakistan’s military for the cost of the operations. So far, Pakistan has received more than $5.6 billion under the program over five years, more than half of the total aid the United States has sent to the country since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, not counting covert funds.

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Some American military officials in the region have recommended that the money be tied to Pakistan’s performance in pursuing Al Qaeda and keeping the Taliban from gaining a haven from which to attack the government of Afghanistan. American officials have been surprised by the speed at which both organizations have gained strength in the past year.

But Bush administration officials say no such plan is being considered, despite new evidence that the Pakistani military is often looking the other way when Taliban fighters retreat across the border into Pakistan, ignoring calls from American spotters to intercept them. There is also at least one American report that Pakistani security forces have fired in support of Taliban fighters attacking Afghan posts.

Pakistan, a nation under arms, spends about 28% of its current expenditure budget on its military. As Pakistan’s despot, General Pervez Musharraf, tries desperately to rig the upcoming "elections" to stay in power, the concern in Washington is that if the Musharraf government falls there will be an Islamist takeover of Pakistan. This rationale is used to justify the large monthly money transfers to the Pakistan military:

The administration, according to some current and former officials, is fearful of cutting off the cash or linking it to performance for fear of further destabilizing Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who is facing the biggest challenges to his rule since he took power in 1999.

The concern over an Islamist takeover is fueled by Musharraf to continue to curry favor with the West. The Los Angeles Times reports today:

President Pervez Musharraf acknowledged that Islamic militancy was increasing across Pakistan and said tough measures were needed to fight it.

"We need to strongly counter it," Musharraf said in an interview aired late Friday by the private Aaj television channel.

If the rhetoric from Musharraf sounds familiar, it should. It is the same rhetoric used by the White House to continue to justify ongoing operations in Iraq. In both cases the status quo, the continued military occupation in the case of Iraq and the military rule in the case of Pakistan, fuels Islamist militancy and in both cases failure of the status quo is deemed unacceptable for fear of an Islamist takeover.

However, while in case of Iraq the resentment to American occupation creates a fertile ground for Islamist militants, in Pakistan the Islamist militants have active support from elements of the Pakistan military. Their rise during military rule in Pakistan is no accident. They are both used by the military to stay in power and used by the military as an excuse to scare foreign benefactors to maintain power.

The Pakistani military has a long history of patronizing Islamists. The military consolidates its power in Pakistan by squeezing out legitimate and moderate political voices and stifling any remnants of a democratic culture. It finds a natural ally in Islamists such as the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Taliban. It was, after all, the military dictator Zia-ul-Haq who promulgated the Hudood Ordinance that instituted Sharia Law in Pakistan. It was Pakistan’s powerful Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) that brought the Taliban to power in Afghanistan. There are elements in the military and ISI who continue to actively support and protect the Taliban as well as Islamist militants within Pakistan. Today’s New York Times article has this bit of unsettling news:

Two American analysts and one American soldier said Pakistani security forces had fired mortars shells and rocket-propelled grenades in direct support of Taliban ground attacks on Afghan Army posts. A copy of an American military report obtained by The New York Times described one of the attacks.

“Enemy supporting fires consisting of heavy machine guns and R.P.G.’s were provided by two Pakistani observation posts,” said the report, referring to rocket-propelled grenades. The grenades killed one Afghan soldier and ignited an ammunition fire that destroyed the observation post, according to the report. It concluded that “the Pakistani military actively supported the enemy assault” on the Afghan post.

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A second American analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said American soldiers had told him that Pakistani forces supported Taliban ground attacks with mortar fire and rocket-propelled grenades at least two dozen times in 2005 and 2006. Senior American military officials said that they had not heard of the incidents, but added that Pakistani tribal militia, not Pakistani soldiers, could be supporting the Taliban attacks.

It should surprise no one that the Pakistani military offers support to Taliban and Islamist militants. It should shock everyone that our tax dollars are paying for this support.

The most likely scenario in Pakistan if Musharraf falls is not an Islamist takeover. The most likely scenario is a coup by other enterprising generals. The Islamists will remain, as they always have, junior partners to the military in Pakistan. The real question is whether the United States should continue to fund this cozy arrangement. We the taxpayers should ask if this is money well spent.

"Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime. " - President George W Bush, Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People, September 20, 2001

Liar.

While we foster chaos and death in Iraq, those who attacked us on September 11, 2001 and those who supported and harbored them, and continue to support and harbor them, still enjoy our patronage. The American people have been hoodwinked into a neo-conservative wet dream of a war while our real enemies enjoy freedom and state dinners at the White House.

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I lived in the Pakistani city of Quetta when I was a little younger than Senator Barack Obama was when he attended school in Indonesia. My father was the only Bangladeshi civilian to attend Pakistan Army’s elite Command and Staff College in Quetta. For that privilege the Pakistan army tried repeatedly to kill him. Today Quetta is a hotbed of Taliban activity and is a major center for the shadowy activities of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Like Obama, I suppose I need the Taliban beaten out of me! But I digress…

It is an open secret that the ISI helped establish the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Pakistan army and intelligence services have long supported Islamists. Islamists have provided Pakistan with a proxy force to fight in Kashmir and have provided a source of intelligence and mischief inside its arch-rival India. In return, the army and the ISI have given the Islamists a comfortable home in Pakistan as well as political power. It was Pakistan’s American backed military ruler who enacted the Hudood Ordinance in 1979 that implemented Sharia law in Pakistan.

Today Pakistan and the ISI continue to support the Taliban, as Washington turns a blind eye. In a courageous article in the New York Times, Carlotta Gall asked the question that Mr. Bush needs to answer to the American people: "Have Pakistani intelligence agencies been promoting the Islamic insurgency?"

Ms. Gall reports from Quetta:

Western diplomats in both countries and Pakistani opposition figures say that Pakistani intelligence agencies — in particular the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence and Military Intelligence — have been supporting a Taliban restoration, motivated not only by Islamic fervor but also by a longstanding view that the jihadist movement allows them to assert greater influence on Pakistan’s vulnerable western flank.

More than two weeks of reporting along this frontier, including dozens of interviews with residents on each side of the porous border, leaves little doubt that Quetta is an important base for the Taliban, and found many signs that Pakistani authorities are encouraging the insurgents, if not sponsoring them.

She continues:

The Pakistani military and intelligence services have for decades used religious parties as a convenient instrument to keep domestic political opponents at bay and for foreign policy adventures, said Husain Haqqani, a former adviser to several of Pakistan’s prime ministers and the author of a book on the relationship between the Islamists and the Pakistani security forces.

The religious parties recruited for the jihad in Kashmir and Afghanistan from the 1980s, when the Pakistani intelligence agencies ran the resistance by the mujahedeen and channeled money to them from the United States and Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, Mr. Haqqani said.

In return for help in Kashmir and Afghanistan the intelligence services would rig votes for the religious parties and allow them freedom to operate, he said.

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The Inter-Services Intelligence once had an entire wing dedicated to training jihadis, he said. Today the religious parties probably have enough of their own people to do the training, but, he added, the I.S.I. so thoroughly monitors phone calls and people’s movements that it would be almost impossible for any religious party to operate a training camp without its knowledge.

She concludes her reporting with a quote from a local father who has lost his son to the ISI and the Taliban: ‘“All Taliban are I.S.I. Taliban. It is not possible to go to Afghanistan without the help of the I.S.I. Everyone says this.”

I called her reporting courageous, and here is why in a first-hand report from Ms. Gall:

My photographer, Akhtar Soomro, and I were followed over several days of reporting in Quetta by plainclothes intelligence officials who were posted at our respective hotels. That is not unusual in Pakistan, where accredited journalists are free to travel and report, but their movements, phone calls and interviews are often monitored.

On our fifth and last day in Quetta, Dec. 19, four plainclothesmen detained Mr. Soomro at his hotel downtown and seized his computer and photo equipment.

They raided my hotel room that evening, using a key card to open the door and then breaking through the chain that I had locked from the inside. They seized a computer, notebooks and a cellphone.

One agent punched me twice in the face and head and knocked me to the floor. I was left with bruises on my arms, temple and cheekbone, swelling on my eye and a sprained knee.

One of the men told me that I was not permitted to visit Pashtunabad, a neighborhood in Quetta, and that it was forbidden to interview members of the Taliban.

The men did not reveal their identity but said we could apply to the Special Branch of the Interior Ministry for our belongings the next day.

Make no mistake about it, this is how the Pakistani military and the ISI operate. I called the Pakistani leader, and our "ally", General Pervez Musharraf a thug a few months ago, and with good reason.

Carlotta Gall reports from Quetta at great risk to her personal security. Her reporting should prompt every American to ask the following of our commander-in-chief: Why are American bombs falling on Baghdad instead of Islamabad?

I quoted the Bush Doctrine at the beginning of this post. According to Mr. Bush’s own doctrine, we should be at war with Pakistan. Pakistan is harboring and supporting the Taliban. It is widely acknowledged that Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar are sheltering in Pakistan. There have been recent reports that the ISI itself is sheltering Mullah Omar in Quetta. Taliban are coming across the border from Pakistan and attacking American and NATO troops in Afghanistan. According to Mr. Bush, we should consider Pakistan a "hostile regime". Why don’t we?

The issue in Iraq is not between "surge" or no "surge". The issue is whether we should be there, even today, while our real enemies go unaddressed. I have to wonder if attacking the wrong country, while ignoring the real enemy, rises to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Justice was delayed 18 years, but today it has come:

A British man on Pakistan’s death row for 18 years was freed Friday and flew out of the country following an act of clemency by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that was hailed by human rights groups.

Mirza Tahir Hussain "is on his way back home," British High Commission spokesman Aidan Liddle told The Associated Press without providing further details.

Hussain has maintained his innocence for killing taxi driver Jamshed Khan in 1988.

On Wednesday, Musharraf ordered Hussain’s death sentence commuted to life behind bars, which under Pakistan’s sentencing rules equates to 14 years, meaning that he has served his time, the president’s office said.

Thanks to everyone who petitioned for his release. There are many others suffering like Tahir Hussain suffered for crimes they did not commit. Our focus should continue to be on the millions around the world who are unjustly denied a chance at life. That is the real freedom agenda - it doesn’t mean bombing people to free them of their bodies. It means freedom from poverty, freedom from desease, freedom from humiliation, freedom from persecution, freedom from fear, freedom to exist.

Today I am happy for Mirza Tahir Hussain and his family. He has 18 years of living to get back. Godspeed.

 [Thanks to Tess for bringing this to my attention.]

[Via Raw Story] President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan claimed on Tuesday that terrorism and extremism had been brought to Pakistan by the West. According to the Daily Times of Pakistan, Musharraf blamed the West for bringing terrorists and extremists to the region and Pakistan as a result of the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan:

President General Pervez Musharraf has blamed the West for breeding terrorism in his country by bringing in thousands of mujahideen to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and then leaving Pakistan alone a decade later to face the armed warriors.

Musharraf told the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee on Tuesday that Pakistan was not the intolerant, extremist country often portrayed by the West, and terrorism and extremism were not inherent in Pakistani society. “Whatever extremism or terrorism is in Pakistan is a direct fallout of the 26 years of warfare and militancy around us. It gets back to 1979 when the West, the United States and Pakistan waged a war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan,” Musharraf told EU lawmakers.

Musharraf apparently either does not know his history or was deliberately misleading the European Parliament. My guess is that Musharraf is pretty well versed in the history of extremism in Pakistan and was deliberately shifting blame to the West. No military man in Pakistan can ignore the intimate relationship between the Pakistani Army, the Pakistani Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and Islamist extremists in Pakistan - they have a long and troubled history together.

The nation of Pakistan has its roots in a form of Islamic fundamentalism known as Deobandi. The Deobandi movement began as a reformist movement in India against British oppression. Over time, part of the Deobandi movement coalesced around the idea of a Muslim state in the Muslim-majority parts of British India. From that movement, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, translated as "The Land of the Pure",  was born on August 14, 1947. According to journalist Bertil Lintner, the Deobandi movement in Pakistan "through its network of religious schools, or madrassas, developed into a breeding ground for Pakistan-centered Islamic fundamentalism. Over the years, the Deobandi brand of Islam has become almost synonymous with religious extremism and fanaticism." It is in the Deobandi madrassas in Pakistan that the Taliban movement has its beginnings.

Though originally opposed to the creation of Pakistan, the deobandi and Islamist political party in British India, Jamaat-e-Islami, eventually embraced the idea of Pakistan. Their original goal, to form a Islamic state in all of India, now became the creation of a strict Islamic state in Pakistan.  The Jamaat-e-Islami has been a breeding ground for extremism in Pakistan from early in its founding. In 1971, when war broke out between East Pakistan and West Pakistan, the Jamaat-e-Islami branch in East Pakistan joined the fighting on the side of the Pakistani army. The Jamaat-e-Islami were opposed to the secular nationalism of the Bengalis and therefore sided with the Pakistani military to try to preserve an Islamic state. The Jamaat-e-Islami took active part in the genocide of 3 million Bengalis in 1971. Jamaat formed notorious paramilitary units known as al-Badr and al-Shams to hunt down and execute secular Bengali intellectuals - most notably journalists, teachers, students, bureaucrats, scholars, doctors and poets. After the formation of Bangladesh at the end of the war in 1971, the Jamaat leadership in Bangladesh who had orchestrated the killings fled to Pakistan.

Jamaat-e-Islami and other Islamist parties in Pakistan received a significant boost in 1977 when Pakistani strongman General Zia-ul-Haq seized power in a coup d’état. In 1979, Zia-ul-Haq instituted Islamic Sharia law in Pakistan by enforcing what is known as the Hudood Ordinance. Since 1979 the Pakistani military and intelligence services have relied on the Islamist forces in the country for support and legitimacy.

After the Afghan conflict the ISI actively financed and supported both the Taliban and the Kashmiri militants. The Pakistani ISI formed the Islamist terrorist group Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, a militant wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami, to counter groups in Kashmir who are seeking independence. According to GlobalSecurity.org:

Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM) is one of the largest terrorist groups operating in Jammu and Kashmir and stands for the integration of J&K with Pakistan. Since its formation the HuM has also wanted the islamization of Kashmir.

The HM was formed in 1989 in the Kashmir Valley with Master Ahsan Dar as its chief. Dar was later arrested by security forces in mid-December 1993. It was reportedly formed as the militant wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI) at the behest of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s external intelligence agency, to counter the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), which had advocated complete independence of the State. Many of the early Hizb cadres were former JKLF members.

…

The HM is closely linked to the Jamaat-e-Islami, both in the Kashmir Valley and in Pakistan. Overseas, it is allegedly backed by Ghulam Nabi Fai’s Kashmir American Council and Ayub Thakur’s World Kashmir Freedom Movement in the USA. The HM had established contacts with Afghan Mujahideen groups such as Hizb-e-Islami, under which some of its cadre is alleged to have received arms training in the early 1990s.

The HM is reported to have a close association with the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence and the United Jehad Council, and other terrorist organizations operating out of Pakistan. Hizb chief Syed Salahuddin also heads the UJC.

The nexus of groups like the Jamaat-e-Islami, the Pakistani military, and the ISI have nurtured and sustained terrorism and extremism in Pakistan since its inception. The 1979 Afghan war simply imported more militants into an already ripe and welcoming breeding ground.

It serves Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani military and the ISI quite well to try to bury the long and sordid history of collusion between the military and the extremists. However, we ignore this nexus at our peril. To a very large extent extremism and terrorism in South and Central Asia has its roots in the Islamist movement in Pakistan. The very enemy we fight, al Qaeda, breathed its first breathe in Pakistan and now finds sanctuary within its borders. While George W Bush keeps his myopic and confused gaze upon Iraq and his Vice President profusely praises Musharraf, the extremism that we are presumably combating continues to thrive in Pakistan.

Five years after 9/11/2001, it is perhaps time to ask the General in Pakistan some tougher questions and expect some more introspection from him.

On April 29, 2003 Waleed bin Attash was arrested by police in Karachi, Pakistan. He is suspected of planning the attack on the USS Cole. He has since been "disappeared" into the secret detention centers of the Central Intelligence Agency. Six months earlier, his 17-year-old brother, Hassan bin Attash was arrested in Pakistan and handed over to American forces. Hassan is currently being held at Guantanamo Bay.

According to his lawyer, Hassan was initially sent to a U.S. run "Dark Prison" in Kabul, Afghanistan for about a week. He was then flown to Jordan on an extraordinary rendition flight. While in Jordan he was severely tortured  by Jordan’s General Intelligence Directorate, or GID. He was interrogated about his brother, Waleed bin Attash. According to his lawyer, Mark Falkoff, one favorite torture technique of the GID was to "beat the soles of his feet and then placed them in salt water". Ultimately, he signed "whatever was asked of him."

Hassan was moved from Jordanian custody back to the "Dark Prison" in Kabul on January 8, 2004. He was moved again to a prison in Bagram before ultimately arriving in Guantanamo Bay in May 2004. He has been there ever since. To keep it all in the family his 70-year-old father was picked up and detained in Saudi Arabia under U.S. orders.

Of Hassan, his lawyer had this to say:

“I couldn’t tell you whether he was guilty or innocent,” Falkoff said. “I have no clue because we haven’t been able to talk to him about anything other than the abuse he suffered, and the judge in his case refused to require the government to justify his detention. I don’t know what evidence the government claims to have against him or even the charges.”

Regardless of the his innocence or guilt, which apparently the U.S. government does not need to prove or pretend to prove, Hassan has been subjected to the grand tour of the U.S. torture archipelago. It now appears that his 70-year-old father has been subjected to the same. All of this because, it seems, of being related to an alleged al Qaeda operative. It begs the question why Osama bin Laden’s brothers and family are not subjected to the same treatment. Instead the Bush Administration flew them out of the U.S. immediately after September 11th without even questioning them. Could it be that torture is only doled out to those who do not have money and influence?

It looks like we have learned a thing or two from The Sopranos. 

 [Cross posted at Bloggers Against Torture]

[Hat tip to Beagle for bringing this to my attention in a comment.]

The Pakistan High Commission in London confirmed, on the day a protest was scheduled at its doorstep, that Mirza Tahir Hussain’s execution has been stayed again for another month. He is now scheduled to be executed on September 3.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf should, instead of torturing Mr. Hussain and his family with one-month stays of execution, do the right thing and pardon this man.

According to The Guardian:

The Pakistani high commission in London today confirmed reports that a British man being held on death row in Pakistan has been granted a stay of execution.

Mirza Tahir Hussain, 36, has spent half his life in jail awaiting execution after being convicted of the murder of a taxi driver in 1988 - a crime he has always maintained he did not commit.

Despite the Pakistani high court clearing his name in 1996 an Islamic court took over his case and reaffirmed the death sentence.

 

This morning, as 150 demonstrators gathered at the Pakistani high commission in London, Mahmood Ahmed, an official at the Adiala jail in Islamabad said he had received an order from the Pakistan president, General Pervez Musharraf, on Wednesday to postpone Mr Hussain’s execution until September 1.

 

Mr Hussain’s brother condemned President Musharraf for "playing a game of cat and mouse" with his brother’s life.

"We did not ask for a further stay of execution," Mr Hussain said. "We asked for President Musharraf to pardon my brother, or commute his sentence."

He said that the stay of execution was "prolonging the agony" of the family.

Sarah Green from Amnesty International said that the campaign group was deeply suspicious of the timing of the announcement.

"It’s worrying that the family were not told first, and that the news was given directly to journalists," she said.

"It reflects the way this case has happened and we suspect the information on the reprieve was given out in the hope that the protestors will go away."

Officials at the Pakistani high commission had earlier refused to confirm that Mr Hussain had been granted another month to live.

Click here to read the article in its entirety. Click here for background on his case.

The one-month stay of execution for Mirza Tahir Hussain has expired. Unless the Pakistani government intervenes to stop his execution he will be hanged for a crime that he did not commit. With the world watching will Pervez Musharraf allow an innocent man to be executed?

Mirza Tahir Hussain is a British citizen of Pakistani origin. In December 1988, he was visiting Pakistan with his family over Christmas vacation when he was involved in a struggle with a taxi driver who tried to rob him. In that struggle, the taxi driver’s gun went off killing him. Mr. Hussain drove the taxi to the nearest police station to report the incident. He was immediately taken into custody and charged with murder. After he was acquitted of murder by Pakistan’s High Court, the family of the taxi driver took the case to Pakistan’s Islamic court. In a split decision, Mr. Hussain was found guilty of murder by the Islamic court and sentenced to death.

Since being convicted of murdering the Pakistani taxi driver at the age of 18 by the Islamic court, Mr. Hussain has spent half his life on Pakistan’s death row. In May, under heavy international pressure, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf stayed his execution for one month to allow negotiations to proceed with the victim’s family. Under Islamic law, the victim’s family has the power to stop the execution in exchange for compensation. So far, they have refused as a matter of tribal honor to stop the execution.

Mr. Hussain was convicted of murder based on fabricated evidence by the police and without a witness as is required by Islamic law. In spite of the lack of evidence of his guilt and contrary evidence that strongly supports his innocence, he remains on death row and now faces imminent execution. For more details about his case, read my posts here and here. For further background from the Associated Press and Amnesty International, click here and here.

Mr. Hussain’s brother has traveled from Britain to Pakistan in a frantic effort to try to save his life. With time running out, it is left to Pervez Musharraf to end this ordeal and save this innocent life. Will America’s ally protect innocent life or will he allow a killing to go forward?