RUSSIA MOVES IN ON THE US-IRAN CHESS GAME

As Iran and the US sit down to play chess, which I discussed in the previous article, do you expect the grandmaster of Chess – the Russians to just sit and watch from the sidelines. Far from it!!


ANATOLY KARPOV, Russian GM. Don't miss the USSR flag :)

Most of the material for this article has been sourced from STRATFOR.

IRAN:

Iran suffers from severe energy problems, despite ranking among the top three countries in proven oil and natural gas reserves. The main problem is Iran’s lack of refining capacity, but another large problem is that the Iranians send crude northward for refining in the country’s population centers, while the export routes are mainly in the south. This is a costly arrangement. The oil swap program was meant to solve this problem, but none of the Caspian oil producers would fill the contracts because they had better alternatives. With all of Azerbaijan’s alternative energy routes threatened, things have changed for Iran.



This leads to the second situation: Iran will be able to export more oil instead of using so much domestically. Iran is the second-largest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, behind regional rival Saudi Arabia. However, thanks to a more favorable investment climate, Saudi Arabia produces nearly triple the amount of oil. Iran freeing up some of its oil for export is something Riyadh will definitely notice — and not happily.

Though Iran is a major energy producer, it is also the world’s second-largest gasoline importer due to inadequate refining capabilities, and currently lacks the infrastructure to both supply the domestic market with its own natural gas and export enough natural gas to turn a profit.

RUSSIA COUNTERING US MOVES TO LET IRAN PUMP GAS INTO NABUCCO

NABUCCO

The Moscow-planned South Stream pipeline, which will run Russian gas under the Black Sea to the south-eastern Europe, avoiding Ukraine, was put forward in order to stop the construction of the EU-backed Nabucco project.

The Ukrainian ambassador accused Russia of trying to secure all gas supplies from Azerbaijan so that no gas would flow if Nabucco is completed. “Nabucco is difficult, but it is possible. Look what the Russians are doing. It is not just South Stream; the Gazprom delegation spent months last year in Azerbaijan trying to persuade (Azerbaijan President Ilham) Aliyev to sell their gas to Gazprom. Tell me please why they needed gas from Azerbaijan?” Korsunskyi asked. Answering his own question, he said: “To put zero in Nabucco. If Azerbaijan is out of the game forget about Nabucco forever.”


SOUTH STREAM VS NABUCCO

OF A BURST PIPELINE AND POLITICS THEROF:

ON April 9, 2009 a natural gas pipeline running from Turkmenistan to Russia burst. Though Russia denied the explosion was politically motivated, it also conveniently failed to inform Turkmenistan earlier that it was reducing its intake of Turkmen natural gas. Since Turkmenistan was pumping more natural gas into the pipeline than Russia was taking out, the pipeline burst, leaving Ashgabat extremely irritated with Moscow.

To express its displeasure with Russia, the Turkmen government then made a very public demonstration of reaching out to the West by signing a major energy deal with German energy firm RWE. The Kremlin, however, was thinking two steps ahead and put Turkmenistan back in line when it threatened to withdraw security support for the extremely isolated and paranoid country. Soon enough, Turkmenistan was at Moscow’s feet again and the Turkmen government offered Russia ownership of a natural gas pipeline that runs from Turkmenistan to Iran.

The Iranians have ample reason to be concerned about this. Much of Russia’s geopolitical clout is derived from its array of energy networks that snake through former Soviet territory to supply the Western market. The Europeans have grown tired of Russia’s use of energy as leverage and have been seeking out alternative energy supplies and routes, such as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) and Nabucco pipelines that circumvent the Russian network. For Russia to ensure its long-term survival, it must follow a strategic imperative to block such projects every chance it gets.


BTC PIPELINE

Iran, which possesses the world’s second-largest natural gas reserves, offers a solution to the West’s energy problems with Russia. That is, of course, if Iran can first work out the plethora of thorny political issues with the West, thus allowing sanctions to be lifted and letting Western firms in to upgrade Iran’s creaking energy infrastructure and bring its massive untapped energy reserves online. Political complications notwithstanding, both Iran and the West are looking down the line at a prospective easing of tensions that would allow such an energy relationship to be reborn.

But not if the Russians have anything to do with it.

Should this deal with Ashgabat become final, Russia will then have control over two of Iran’s major energy arteries: the Turkmenistan-Iran pipeline and another pipeline that supplies Iranian natural gas to Armenia.

The Iran-Armenia natural gas pipeline, completed in 2007, was Iran’s way of opening up another avenue to extend its influence into the Caucasus. The pipeline has a capacity to carry 10 million cubic meters daily, but Iran so far supplies 1 million cubic meters per day, according to an agreement signed in early 2008. However, this pipeline was brought under Russian control before the Iranians even began pumping natural gas. Back in 2006, Russian state-owned energy firm Gazprom took control of ArmRosGazprom, the operator of the Iran-Armenia natural gas pipeline, which delivers natural gas to Armenian power plants that Iran in turn relies on for electricity.

The Turkmen-Iranian pipeline allows Iran to supply natural gas to the bulk of its population, located in its mountainous northern region. Iran imports about 8 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas from Turkmenistan through this pipeline annually, but has had a series of squabbles with Ashgabat during the past year over pricing that has led Turkmenistan to shut off the pipeline on a whim, much like the Russians do with the Europeans when Moscow feels the need to make its demands heard.

Any disruption to the supply from Turkmenistan puts Iran in a most uncomfortable spot. So, when Turkmenistan shuts off natural gas to Iran, Iran has to tap into the 7.3 bcm of natural gas that it sends annually via pipeline to Turkey, cutting deep into Iran’s already declining energy revenues. The Iranians were already having trouble with the Turkmen in ensuring a steady natural gas supply. Now that the Russians are expected to take ownership of this pipeline, Iran’s energy options appear even more restricted.

Russia wants to ensure that any Western dream of re-engaging with Iran to develop energy links and circumventing Russia remains just that — a dream. By taking ownership of Iran’s existing external energy links with Central Asia and the Caucasus, Moscow is now better equipped to influence Iranian actions.

Meanwhile, the Russians have an array of other tools — from nuclear fuel shipments to Bushehr to potential weapons sales — to encourage Iran to continue its belligerence against the West. After all, the longer the West remains preoccupied with the Iranians and related threats in the Islamic world, the less attention it can give to Russian moves in Eurasia.

Russia will not have a "problem" with US / NATO to ship arms through Iran's Chahbahar port – but only to a certain point to win against Taliban and see that Taliban do not overrun Afghanistan. After all, it is not in Russia's interest that Taliban overtake Afghanistan again. And in the bargain if US / NATO bleed in Afghanistan - better for Russia.


DMITRY ROGOZIN

Russia's ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, said: "I can responsibly say that in the event of NATO's defeat in Afghanistan, fundamentalists who are inspired by this victory will set their eyes on the north. First they will hit Tajikistan, then they will try to break into Uzbekistan ... If things turn out badly, in about 10 years, our boys will have to fight well-armed and well-organized Islamists somewhere in Kazakhstan". And, with a touch of irony, Rogozin insisted Russia wanted the military alliance to succeed in Afghanistan.

But Russia will not allow Iran to get swayed by West into pumping gas into Nabucco pipeline. Not at the cost of their South Stream – no way !

USA & IRAN - MAKING MOVES ON A CHESSBOARD

Why sit and play chess with Iran at all?

PAKISTAN – A LONG PREAMBLE:

STRATFOR writes:

The genesis is Afghanistan and the increasing exponential of risk parameters in moving goods through Pakistan. Pakistan is the primary channel through which U.S. and NATO supplies travel to support the war effort in Afghanistan. The reason for this is quite simple: Pakistan offers the shortest and most logistically viable overland supply routes for Western forces operating in landlocked Afghanistan.

In late 2008, as Pakistan continued its downward spiral, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) chief Gen. David Petraeus began touring Central Asian capitals in an attempt to stitch together supplemental supply lines into northern Afghanistan. Soon enough, Washington learned that it was fighting an uphill battle in trying to negotiate in Russian-dominated Central Asia without first reaching a broader understanding with Moscow. With U.S.-Russian negotiations now in flux and the so-called “northern distribution network” frozen, the United States has little choice but to face the reality in Pakistan.


CLICK ON FLAG FOR ENLARGED VIEW

This reality is rooted in the Pakistani Taliban’s desire to spread south beyond the Pashtun-dominated northwest tribal badlands (where attacks against the U.S.-NATO supply lines are already intensifying) into the Pakistani core in Punjab province. Punjab is Pakistan’s industrial heartland and home to more than half of the entire Pakistani population. If the Taliban manage to establish a foothold in Punjab, then the idea of a collapsing Pakistani state would actually become a realistic scenario. The key to preventing such a scenario is keeping the Pakistani military, the country’s most powerful institution, intact. However, splits within the military over how to handle the insurgency while preserving ties with militant proxies are threatening the military’s cohesion. Moreover, the threats to the supply lines go even further south than Punjab. The port of Karachi in Sindh province, where U.S.-NATO supplies are offloaded from ships, could be destabilized if the Taliban provoke local political forces.

In league with their jihadist brethren across the border in Afghanistan, the Pakistani Taliban and their local affiliates are just as busy planning their next steps in the insurgency as the United States is in planning its counterinsurgency strategy. Afghanistan is a country that is not kind to outsiders, and the overwhelming opinion of the jihadist forces battling Western, Pakistani and Afghan troops in the region is that this is a war that can be won through the power of exhaustion.

Key to this strategy will be an attempt to make the position of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan untenable by increasing risk to their supply lines in Pakistan.

For an excellent interactive map on the supply routes - click here for the Stratfor interactive page.

As the pre-eminent global maritime power, the United States is able to sustain military operations far beyond its coastlines. Afghanistan, however, is a landlocked country whose inaccessibility prevents the U.S. military from utilizing its naval prowess. Instead, the United States and NATO must bring in troops, munitions and militarily sensitive materiel directly by air and rely on long, overland supply routes through Pakistan for non-lethal supplies such as food, building materials and fuel (most of which is refined in Pakistan).

The deteriorating security situation in Pakistan now requires an effective force to protect the supply convoys. Though sending a couple of U.S.-NATO brigades into Pakistan would provide first-rate security for these convoys, such an option would be political dynamite in U.S.-Pakistani relations.

The sight of Western forces operating openly in the country would be a red line that Islamabad simply could not cross. Even if this were an option, U.S.-NATO forces are already stretched to the limit in Afghanistan and there are no troops to spare to send into Pakistan — nor is there the desire on the part of the United States or NATO to insert their troops into such a dicey security situation.

WHY DOES NOT NATO / US ENLIST PAK MILITARY TO ESCORT SUPPLIES?

Enlisting the Pakistani military would be another option, but the Pentagon has thus far resisted allowing the Pakistani military to take direct charge of protecting and transporting U.S.-NATO supplies through Pakistan into Afghanistan. The reasons for this are unclear, but they likely can be attributed (at least in part) to U.S. distrust for the Pakistani military-intelligence apparatus, which is heavily infiltrated by Islamist sympathizers who retain links to their militant Islamist proxies.

Instead, CENTCOM’s logistics team has given the security responsibility to private Pakistani security contractors.

Inadequate security allows for easy infiltration and manipulation by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which is already heavily penetrated by Islamist sympathizers. Drivers will often strike a deal with the militants allowing raids on the convoys in return for a cut of the proceeds once the goods are sold on the black market.

One indication of just how porous U.S.-NATO security arrangements are in Pakistan is that the commander of the most active Taliban faction in Khyber agency, Mangal Bagh of Lashkar-e-Islam (LI), is allegedly a former transporter himself now using jihad as a cover for his criminal activities.

MUSHARRAF in on the business of NATO logistics?

Many of the private Pakistani security companies guarding the routes are owned by wealthy Pakistani civilians who have strong links to government and to retired military officials. The private Pakistani security firms currently guarding the routes include Ghazi Security, Ready Guard, Phoenix Security Agency and SE Security Agency. Most of the main offices of these companies are located in Islamabad, but these contractors have also hired smaller security agencies in Peshawar. The private companies that own terminals used for the northern and southern supply routes include al Faisal Terminal (whose owner has been kidnapped by militants and whose whereabouts are unknown), Bilal Terminal (owned by Shahid Ansari from Punjab), World Port Logistics (owned by Major Fakhar, a nephew of former Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf), Raziq International, Peace Line, Pak-Afghan and Waqar Terminal.

SOUTHERN ROUTE:

U.S. logistics teams are revising the northern route by moving some of the supply depots farther south in Punjab where the security threat is lower (though the Taliban are attempting to expand their presence there)

KARACHI:

Both supply routes originate in Pakistan’s largest city and primary seaport, Karachi. The city is Pakistan’s financial hub and provides critical ocean access for U.S.-NATO logistics support in Afghanistan. If Karachi — a city already known to have a high incidence of violence — were to destabilize, the Western military supply chain could be threatened even before supplies embarked on the lengthy and volatile journey through the rest of Pakistan.

The recent spate of killings in Karachi, where 28 people (mostly Pashtuns) were killed is a reminder of this reality. Karachi has a Pashtun population of 3.5 million, making up some 30 percent of the city’s population. Moreover, Karachi police have reported that Taliban members are among the “several hundred thousand” tribesmen fleeing violence in the frontier regions who have settled on the outskirts of Karachi

For those convoys that make it out of the Peshawar terminal-depot hub, the next major stop is the Khyber Pass leading into Khyber agency, where the route travels along N-5 through Jamrud, Landikotal and Michni Post and then reaches the border with Afghanistan. The border area between Peshawar district and Khyber agency is called the Karkhano Market, which is essentially a massive black market for stolen goods run by smugglers, drug dealers and other organized-crime elements. Here one can find high quality merchandise at cheap prices, including stolen goods that were meant for U.S. and NATO forces. People have seen U.S.-NATO military uniforms and laptops going for $100 in the market place.

Khyber agency (the most developed agency in the tribal belt) has been the scene of high-profile abductions, destroyed bridges and attacks against local political and security officials. Considering the frequency of the attacks, it appears that the militants can strike at the supply chain with impunity, and with likely encouragement from PAKISTANI SECURITY FORCES.

Militiamen of the most active Taliban faction in Khyber agency, Mangal Bagh’s LI, heavily patrol the Bara area and have blown up several shrines, abducted local Christians and fought gun battles with police. LI is not part of Baitullah Mehsud’s TTP umbrella group but maintains significant influence among the tribal maliks. Mehsud is allied with another faction called the Hakimullah Group, which rivals a third faction called Amr bil Maarouf wa Nahi Anil Munkar (“Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice”), whose leader, Haji Namdaar, was killed by Hakimullah militiamen.

Not all the Khyber agency militants are ideologically driven jihadists like Baitullah Mehsud of the TTP and Mullah Fazlullah of the TNSM. Some are organized-crime elements who lack religious training and have long been engaged in smuggling operations. When the Pakistani military entered the region to crack down on the insurgency, these criminal groups saw their illegal activities disrupted. To continue to earn a livelihood, many of these criminal elements were reborn as militants under the veil of jihad.

The southern route into Afghanistan is the shorter of the two U.S.-NATO supply routes. The entire route traverses the 813-kilometer-long national highway N-25, running north from the port of Karachi through Sindh and northwest into Balochistan before crossing into southern Afghanistan at the Chaman border crossing.

About 25 to 30 percent of the supplies going to U.S.-NATO forces operating in southern Afghanistan travel along this route. Though most of the southern route through Pakistan is relatively secure, the security risks rise dramatically once the trucks cross into Afghanistan on highway A-75, which runs through the heart of Taliban country in Kandahar province and surrounding areas.

Once out of Karachi, the route through Sindh is secure. Problems arise once the trucks hit Balochistan province, a resource-rich region where ethnic Baloch separatists have waged an insurgency for decades against Punjabi rule. The Baloch insurgency is directed against the Pakistani state and is led by three main groups: the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), the Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF) and the People’s Liberation Army. The BLA is the most active of the three and focuses its attacks on Pakistani police and military personnel, natural gas pipelines and civil servants. The Pakistani military deals with the Baloch rebels with an iron fist, but the Baloch insurgency has been a long and insoluble one. (Balochistan enjoyed autonomy under the British, and when Pakistan was created it forcibly took over the province; successive Pakistani regimes have mishandled the issue.)

Once inside Balochistan, the supply route runs first into the major industrial town of Hub (also known as Hub Chowki) and then into the Baloch capital of Quetta. These are areas that have witnessed a number of Baloch separatist attacks in recent years, including the December 2004 bombing of a Pakistani military truck in Quetta (claimed by the BLA), the killing of three Chinese engineers working at Gwadar Port in May of the same year and, more recently, the abduction of the head of the U.N. refugee agency (an American citizen) in February 2009 from Quetta. Although the Baloch insurgency has been relatively calm over the past year, unrest reignited in the province in early April after the bodies of three top Baloch rebel leaders were discovered in the Turbat area near the Iranian border. The Baloch separatist groups claim that the rebel leaders died at the hands of Pakistani security forces.
The Baloch rebels have no direct quarrel with the United States or NATO member states and are far more interested in attacking Pakistani targets. But they have struck foreign interests before in Balochistan to pressure Islamabad in negotiations. Baloch rebels also demonstrated the ability to strike Western targets in Karachi when they bombed a KFC fast-food restaurant in November 2005. Although the separatists have yet to show any interest in attacking U.S.-NATO convoys running through the region, future attacks cannot be ruled out.

The main threat along this route comes from Islamist militants who are active in the final 150-kilometer stretch of the road between the Quetta region and the Chaman border crossing. This section of highway N-25 runs through what is known as the Pashtun corridor in northwest Balochistan, bordering South Waziristan agency on the southern tip of the FATA.

Although the supply route traversing this region has seen very few attacks, the situation could easily change. A number of jihadists who have sought sanctuary from the firefights farther north as well as Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Mohammed Omar and his Quetta Shura (or leadership council) are believed to be hiding in the Quetta area. The Pashtun corridor also is the stronghold of Pakistan’s largest Islamist party, the pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam. In addition, the al Qaeda-linked anti-Shiite group LeJ has been engaged in sectarian and other attacks in the region. Northwestern Balochistan also is a key launchpad for Taliban operations in southern Afghanistan and is the natural extension of Pakistani Taliban activity in the tribal belt. Although the Baloch separatists are firmly secular in their views, they have been energized by the rise of Islamist groups fighting the same enemy: the Pakistani state.

THE OUTLOOK:

The developing U.S. military strategy for Afghanistan suffers from a number of strategic flaws. Chief among them is the fact — and there is no getting around it — that Pakistan serves as the primary supply line for both the Western forces and the jihadist forces fighting each other in Afghanistan.

Pakistan’s balancing act between the United States and its former Islamist militant proxies is becoming untenable as many of those proxies turn against the Pakistani state. And as stability deteriorates in Pakistan, the less reliable the landscape is for facilitating the overland shipment of military supplies into Afghanistan. The Russians, meanwhile, are not exactly eager to make life easier for the United States in Afghanistan by cooperating in any meaningful way on alternate supply routes through Central Asia.

Jihadist forces in Pakistan’s northwest have already picked up on the idea that the long U.S.-NATO supply route through northern Pakistan makes a strategic and vulnerable target in their campaign against the West. Attacks on supply convoys have thus far been concentrated in the volatile tribal badlands along the northwest frontier with Afghanistan. But the Pakistani Taliban are growing bolder by the day and are publicly announcing their intent to spread beyond the Pashtun areas and into the Pakistani core of Punjab. The Pakistani government and military, meanwhile, are strategically stymied. They cannot follow U.S. orders and turn every Pashtun into an enemy, and they cannot afford to see their country crushed under the weight of the jihadists. As a result, the jihadists gain strength while the writ of the Pakistani state erodes.

But the jihadists are not the only ones that CENTCOM should be worrying about as it analyzes its logistical challenges in Pakistan. Islamist sympathizers in Pakistan’s security apparatus and organized crime elements can take — and have taken — advantage of the shoddy security infrastructure in place to transport U.S.-NATO supplies through the country. In addition, there are secular political forces in play — from the MQM in Karachi to the Baloch rebels in Quetta — that could tip the balance in areas now considered relatively safe for transporting supplies to Afghanistan.

The United States is becoming increasing reliant on Pakistan, just as Pakistan is becoming increasingly unreliable. There are no quick fixes to the problem, but the first step in addressing it is to understand the wide array of threats currently engulfing the Pakistani state.

As a US strategist – you would want to move on with the game and see other possibilities – however improbable.

On Feb 1st 2009, I wrote: CHABAHAR PORT TO FEED NATO IN AFGHANISTAN - WHY NOT?
In that I wrote: The shortest route to Afghanistan from a port, outside of Pakistan, to reach Afghanistan, lies through Chabahar port - IRAN. The port and the road in Afghanistan has been built by India. On 22nd Jan 2009, INDIA handed over to Afghan authorities ZARANJ - DELARAM highway built by it in the face of stiff resistance from Taliban.

Italy has already made use of this stretch to transport non-military hardwares to Afghanistan. Seeing that this route works – and the high risk facing US / NATO forces, US is making a pitch to Iran.

US & IRAN on CHABAHAR:

Barack Obama's plans "to transform the Khomeinist Islamic Republic's clenched fist against America into a helping hand by formally asking Tehran to permit the passage to Afghanistan of fresh US troops, weapons and supplies across Iranian territory."
CLEARED IN BACK CHANNELS:

In its follow-up of April 3, 2009 US defense secretary Robert Gates, Chief of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen and transport command chief Gen. Duncan J. McNabb, have laid before the president a detailed plan, which had been cleared in back-door meetings between US and Iranian officers.

IRAN’S IMPERATIVES:

Iran may be tempted to up the ante on its nuclear ambitions when the US becomes dependent on Tehran for its war supplies to Afghanistan.

The US Air Base at Al Udeid in Qatar would be the main hub for the air corridor taking US transport planes over the Persian Gulf, crossing the Iranian border and flying over southern and central Iran up to their destination, the US airbase near Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.

The sea route would hinge on the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' main naval base at Chah-Bahar, which is situated on the Arabian Sea near Iran's border with Pakistan.
Chah-Bahar has two sections, a small, run-down civilian harbor for small craft arriving from India and Pakistan, and a spanking new, modern military facility, home to Iran's main submarine force.

The US planners rated this section of Chah-Bahar an ideal port of call for US provisions to reach Afghanistan by a predominantly sea route. From this Arabian Sea port, consignments would head north through Iran's Sistan-va-Baluchistan up to the Iran-Pakistan-Afghanistan border intersection and then turn east by convoy to their destination at Kandahar.

THE US CARROT: IRAN TO SUPPLY TO NABUCCO PIPELINE.

For pipeline politics, read Great Game I and Ultimate Game II. (MUST READS)

Iran is about to become a major fuel supplier to the West as Washington is ceding Tehran the chance to feed its natural gas into the 3,000 kilometer-long Nabucco pipeline project (from the Caspian to the EU via Turkey).

However US knows it can be set up for blackmail should US become wholly obligated to Iran for its logistics to feed it in Afghanistan. (We are assuming that the dream of liberating Baluchistan has not yet happened).

THE US STICK:

the US Congress that aims to impose "crippling sanctions" on Iran by targeting its energy imports.

The Iran Sanctions Enhancement Act, introduced by a bipartisan group of US senators, states in its preamble that its purpose is "to enhance US diplomatic efforts with respect to Iran by expanding economic sanctions against Iran to include refined petroleum, and for other purposes".

If it gets implemented it will cause serious disruption in the Iranian economy. It is to be noted that both Iranian and Venezuelan economy suffered the most in the oil price falling due to the inherent nature of subsidies these totalitarian governments pay to keep its populace “happy”.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

It means the US is serious (very) about engaging Iran and using Chabahar port. Which means the US has given up on Pakistan as a logistics route – but more than that it signals a sea-change in the attitude of Washington that cannot be good news for Pakistan. The sands are quickly shifting below the feet of the Pakistani Generals and they need to invent more tricks from their magic bag to keep the US happy and engaged.

ISRAEL:

Israel will surely look upon the closeness of US & Iran with suspicion – not that it can do much as has been suggested time and again. If that be so, then a curious incident took place recently in Iran.

Russian intelligence warned Tehran that on Friday April 17 Israel was planning to destroy all 140 fighter-bombers concentrated at the Mehr-Abad Air Force base for an air show over Tehran on Iran's Army Day the following day. The entire fleet was accordingly removed to remote bases and the display cancelled. Iran blamed the weather for the cancellations ...

Whether it was precaution or good intelligence, Israel can single handedly derail any US bonhomie with Iran, if it feels threatened.

TWO INTERESTING EVENTS:

IRANIANS + PALESTINIANS in CARACAS, VENEZUELA

Another “incident” that Israel is watching keenly is that on Monday, April 27, Iran's foreign minister Mostafa Mohammed Najjar and intelligence chiefs secretly got together with visiting Palestinian Authority officials, led by Palestinian foreign minister Riyadh al-Maliki. The matchmakers were Hugo Chavez and the Qatar ruler Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa.

This can have serious repercussions on the security of Israel in particular and Middle East in general.

FBI DROPS CASE AGAINST AIPAC:

FBI abandoned an espionage-law case against two former lobbyists for a pro-Israel advocacy group, a case that had transfixed much of official Washington because of its potential to criminalize the exchange of sensitive information among journalists, lobbyists and policy analysts.

In asking a judge to dismiss charges against Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, formerly of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, officials said recent court rulings had changed the legal landscape and made it unlikely that they would win.

Prosecutors and investigators had used FBI wiretaps to pursue Rosen and Weissman for at least five years, building a complex case that involved secret court hearings and dozens of legal filings and rulings. The two men were charged in 2005 with conspiring to obtain classified information -- about topics including al-Qaeda and U.S. forces in Iraq -- and pass it to the Israeli government and journalists from The Washington Post and other news organizations.

GEN. PATRAEUS - NEXT TWO WEEKS CRITICAL FOR PAKISTAN

Gen Patraeus in his interview to FOX which I will reproduce in full below contains a few interesting points:



1. Next two weeks are critical to determining whether the Pakistani government will survive. The Pakistanis have run out of excuses" and are "finally getting serious" about combating the threat from Taliban and Al Qaeda extremists operating out of Northwest Pakistan, the general added.

2. The Pakistani army, led by Chief of Staff Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, is "superior" to the civilian government, led by President Ali Zardari, and could conceivably survive even if Zardari's government falls to the Taliban.


PATRAEUS & KIYANI

3. Even were Zardari's government to fall, it was still conceivable that Kayani's army could maintain control over the nuclear arsenal.



Point 1 demonstrates a clarity of thought that now exists with the US Centcomm.

Points 2 & 3 = same muddled thinking. Best to deal with Army rhetoric. Pakistan has always gone down when Army Generals were in power - yes it did give a single chain of command - but running a country is different ball game than running a platoon. And I see this as a clear signal for the military to again de-stabilize the civilian government through a wink and a nod from the US.

And pardon my french, but what the f*** does Gen. Patreaus mean when he states: "Even were Zardari's government to fall, it was still conceivable that Kayani's army could maintain control over the nuclear arsenal." What kind of complete BS is this?

For India - this cannot be good news.

REPRODUCING THE FOX ARTICLE:

Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command, has told U.S. officials the next two weeks are critical to determining whether the Pakistani government will survive, FOX News has learned.

"The Pakistanis have run out of excuses" and are "finally getting serious" about combating the threat from Taliban and Al Qaeda extremists operating out of Northwest Pakistan, the general added.

But Petraeus also said wearily that "we've heard it all before" from the Pakistanis and he is looking to see concrete action by the government to destroy the Taliban in the next two weeks before determining the United States' next course of action, which is presently set on propping up the Pakistani government and military with counterinsurgency training and foreign aid.

Petraeus made these assessment in talks with lawmakers and Obama administration officials this week, according to individuals familiar with the discussions.

They said Petraeus and senior administration officials believe the Pakistani army, led by Chief of Staff Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, is "superior" to the civilian government, led by President Ali Zardari, and could conceivably survive even if Zardari's government falls to the Taliban.

American officials have watched with anxiety as Taliban fighters advanced earlier this month to within 70 miles of the capital city of Islamabad. In recent days, the Pakistani army has sought to reverse that tide, retaking control over strategic points in the district of Buner even as the Taliban struck back by kidnapping scores of police and paramilitary troops.

The see-saw nature of the battles Wednesday demonstrated to U.S. officials that, as one put it to FOX News, "even with intent and superior technology, the capability may not be there" for the Pakistani army to defeat the extremists.

As for the security of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last Saturday, in an interview with FOX News in Baghdad, that the U.S. believes the arsenal to be "safe" but only "given the current configuration of power in Pakistan."

She described as "the unthinkable" a situation in which the the Zardari government were to be toppled by the Taliban, adding "then they would have the keys to the nuclear arsenal of Pakistan, and we can't even contemplate that. We cannot let this go on any further..."

The officials who spoke with Petraeus, however, said he and they believe that even were Zardari's government to fall, it was still conceivable that Kayani's army could maintain control over the nuclear arsenal.

That is because the Pakistani arsenal is set up in such a way -- with the weapons stockpile and activation mechanisms separated -- so as to prevent easy access by invaders. Moreover, the Taliban is not believed at present to possess the sophisticated technical expertise necessary to exercise full "command and control" over a nuclear arsenal, and would probably require weeks if not months to develop it.

The anxiety with which U.S. officials are monitoring events in Pakistan is compounded by a battle here at home over how best to help the Pakistanis. Some members of Congress want to attach benchmarks to any aid provided to Islamabad -- a move opposed by the Obama administration -- while still others wish to transfer authority over key funding streams from the Defense Department to the State Department, also opposed by the administration.

At a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday, Chairman Ike Skelton,D-Mo. asserted that the existing funding mechanism, the Coalition Support Initiative, under which the U.S. reimburses Pakistan for military expenditures undertaken in support of the U.S. global war on terror, "is not serving the interests of either our country or Pakistan very well."

Michele Flournoy, U.S. under secretary of defense for policy, rejected that view, saying the initiative has proved "absolutely critical" to the missions in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

At the same hearing, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher, whose bureau oversees South and Central Asia, told lawmakers the Obama administration favors the Defense Department retaining control over the new funding mechanism for Pakistan being proposed, a Title X provision entitled the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capabilities Fund (PCCF).

The goal of PCCF is to provide funding for the immediate training and equipping of the Pakistani army to fight a counterinsurgency war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The Pakistani army, U.S. officials say, has historically been modeled to fight a conventional war against India, as opposed to unconventional warfare against non-state actors like terrorist groups.

A final problem, officials told FOX News, was that no one in the U.S. possesses "an understanding of the Taliban's true objective." It remains unclear to policymakers here whether the group truly seeks to overthrow the Zardari government or merely to carve out a territory within Pakistan in which it can establish safe haven, impose Sharia law, and plot attacks on external targets.

MUST READ: COULD PAKISTAN DISSOLVE ALTOGETHER - Dr. THOMAS BARFIELD's interview to MOTHER JONES

Besides Dr. Barnett Rubin, Dr. Thomas Barfield is a person we should be listening to. Because American President and policy advisers in USA tend to depend heavily on their critical and pointed analysis.

However before you go to the article below - must see. Click on TALIBAN FEVER a 2 minute animated video.


BOSTON UNIVERSITY

Boston University anthropologist Thomas Barfield has been publishing relentlessly ever since the mid-1970s, when he wandered northern Afghanistan doing doctoral fieldwork. He has since emerged as one of America's foremost experts on the region, focusing on political development, provincial-state relations, and customary law. In 2006, Barfield, now president of the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies, received a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship to complete his upcoming book on the changing concepts of political legitimacy in Afghanistan. I caught up with the professor to discuss the P-word—Pakistan—and its role in our current predicament. At the time of our interview, Pakistan's government had not yet signed its agreement with the Taliban that allowed for the imposition of strict Islamic law in six northwestern regions, including Swat.


Dr. THOMAS BARFIELD


MOTHER JONES: MAY / JUNE 2009 ARTICLE:

Mother Jones: To what degree does future Afghan stability depend on reconciliation between India and Pakistan?

Thomas Barfield: Pakistan could also dissolve: The four provinces have very little holding them together.The India/Pakistan relationship is probably central. Pakistan has from its inception defined itself in opposition to India, and that makes it difficult. But Kashmir needs to be reconciled.

MJ: Dissolve into what?

TB: Four ministates or something, in which case your policy changes radically. If you're dealing with rump nuclear-armed Punjab and three separate, independent nations, then reconciliation almost becomes a moot point.

MJ: Can you make peace in Afghanistan without dealing with Kashmir?

TB: Yes, you can. Kashmir's a separate issue, and settling it would not necessarily stop the Pakistanis from meddling in Afghanistan—which they used to talk about as their fifth province.

MJ: And also an extension of their battle with India.

TB: They view everything as an extension of their battle with India. They bought our tanks and planes so that they could fight India, with which they have lost three wars. It's totally not in Pakistan's self-interest to do this, and yet they're utterly driven by it. But if you solve the India thing, I presume that would go a long way to providing regional peace.

MJ: What can the US do to facilitate this, given that India doesn't want outsiders involved in the Kashmir dispute?

TB: It's not clear Pakistan's military can survive without our subsidies—it's a bankrupt country. One of the things for us to tell Pakistan is that we may not want to get involved in this directly, but we want to see this problem solved. And in this the US is probably neutral, because there's no constituency in the United States that's keen on Kashmir one way or the other. Most people don't even know where it is.

MJ: Pakistan's army and ISI, its military intelligence service, basically made the Taliban what it is. Was this support driven by ideology or India strategy?

TB: Part of it was its India strategy, this "strategic depth" they talk about. The Pakistani belief was, "What if the Indians overran the plains? We would regroup in Afghanistan and drive them out." But one look at Afghanistan and you say, "Wait a minute, how are you going to move your equipment?" It's ridiculous. It's not strategic depth. It's nothing. The Pakistanis also have a paranoia—which they actually now might make true—that India is trying to surround them, since India has always had good relations with Afghanistan, and Afghanistan and Pakistan have always had bad relations.

MJ: How come?

TB: Afghanistan was the only state that voted against Pakistan's admission to the United Nations on the grounds that it was an illegitimate state, it shouldn't be allowed to exist. With Partition there were only two options: Join India or join Pakistan. The Afghans said there should be two more options, that the Northwest Frontier province and Baluchistan should be able to vote to become independent or join Afghanistan—they said people weren't given those options and therefore it was an unfair process. If you look at Afghan maps of Pakistan, they always include what they call Pashtunistan, which runs to the Indus River. As you can imagine, Pakistan is not real pleased to see maps like that, which give away half its territory. So there's been this hostility. And essentially, because India's been opposed to Pakistan, Afghanistan has had good relations with Delhi. But the big thing is that Afghans hold Pakistan responsible for most of the trouble in their country.

MJ: India has also been visibly doing good things in Afghanistan.

TB: Oh, a lot. When the truck bomb went off at the Indian Embassy last July in Kabul, the Indians saw that as a calling card from ISI saying, "Get out. This is our territory." And they responded by saying, "We're going to give Afghanistan another $400 million."

MJ: Wasn't Jalaluddin Haqqani the bomber?

TB: Yeah. But he's an Afghan who fights for the Taliban, and this wasn't a Taliban operation. This was a message from Islamabad to India. The bomb went off as India's military attaché was coming to work, so it wasn't just a bomb; it was an assassination specifically targeting one of their high military officials.

MJ: Does Pashtun nationalism play any role in Pakistan's military activities?

TB: Pashtuns are a small minority—something like 15 percent—so their nationalism is looked upon very critically. The government and military are dominated by people from the Punjab.

MJ: Right. In fact, many Pashtuns basically live on reservations, the tribal areas, that operate under a 1901 law.

TB: Yes, the Frontier Crimes Regulation Act. Some of the Pashtuns feel like they are a colony of Pakistan. They're not full citizens, and the act gives the Pakistani government the right to collective punishment, to burn down villages, to ban trade, and even to put whole tribes under interdict—even if they're not living in the area. So it's fairly draconian, and it comes directly out of British colonial rule.

MJ: So if the army isn't Pashtun, how does a smaller element like the ISI exert so much control?

TB: A lot of people in the ISI are Pashtuns because they had the language skills. During the Soviet War period, [Mohammad] Zia ul-Haq began Islamizing the army. Before, the army was fairly resolutely secular, but since the '80s you saw a greater and greater influence of Islamists in the army as well as the ISI. By the time they were helping the Taliban, some [army officials] were highly sympathetic to this idea of a Wahhabi-style Islamic state. Pakistan was formed as a state for Muslims separated off from India—it's name means "land of the religiously pure"—and it's always been like, "Well, are we Muslim enough?" All states founded as places to protect a religious group run into that problem. Israel has that problem with its right wing, and in Pakistan it's even stronger.

MJ: How has army support of the jihadis imperiled the Pakistani government?

TB: The easiest example: The jihadis took over Swat Valley, which is full of Pashtuns, but was under the direct rule of the government and always had been. It had become one of the more secular, progressive areas of the Pashtuns, because it was a resort. It had ski lodges, and was a big tourist place for foreigners in the '70s and '80s. Swat is only a couple hours drive from Islamabad. This is like rebels taking Fredericksburg and sending their representatives to Washington saying, "We want autonomy. Northern Virginia isn't good enough for us."

MJ: And Pakistan has basically bent over.

TB: Yes, it really has. They have trained their troops to fight conventional warfare on the plains with tanks, with missiles, against India. So in a place like Swat, where you've got guys with guns fighting in mountains, and who are experts on ambush, they have just trounced the Pakistan army. The army is able to take back the major roads, the major towns, but its people are not trained and they don't seem to have the stomach for taking these guys on in essentially a counterinsurgency.

MJ: Yet we've given the Pakistanis more than $10 billion, some $6 billion for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the border, ostensibly to fight the jihadis. Has Pakistan taken us for a ride?

TB: Oh sure. But they took us for a ride during the Soviet War, too. They feel they're experts at playing us for suckers. A lot of these problems were evident, three, four, even six years ago, but nobody, including the Bush administration, was particularly interested. All the attention has been on Iraq. So this gave the Pakistanis a lot of flexibility to cause mischief. As far as they were concerned, at some point the US was going to get out of there; their whole strategy was to keep the Taliban in reserve and keep their own options open. Now people are seeing that the whole region could go up. Pakistan has nuclear weapons. It has 173 million people. It's big. So the focus and the context—even the appointment of [US diplomat Richard] Holbrooke to be special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan—implies that both countries are part of the problem.

MJ: So what happens if Pakistan dissolves?

TB: There will probably be an independent Pashtun state, unlikely to join with Afghanistan, because for all the lip service Afghans give to Pashtunistan, they can count. If they were part of this state, they would be a minority, and that's probably not a good idea from their point of view. There could be an independent Baluchistan. That's Pakistan's major gas producing area, and there's been an insurgency there for a long time. Some people say Baluchistan might join with Sindh, the other major populated area. Sindh is mostly Shia, and they feel persecuted by these radical Sunnis. There's really a large number of Shias in Pakistan that these radical Sunnis consider to be heretics—they are mostly in the south. Also in the south, in Karachi, you have all the so-called Muhajirs, the people who left India to resettle in Pakistan. So effectively you'd get three or four states. The most powerful would still be the Punjab. That would be the one holding the nuclear arms—Islamabad, Lahore, that area.

MJ: Who would be in charge?

TB: The Punjabis. They see themselves as the dominant group in Pakistan. They're more moderate on the religious and political spectrums—as long as they can be in charge. The army that you see now is mostly Punjabi, so you'd have this large army overlooking this rump state with lots of nukes. The other thing to consider is the elites are highly modern and moderate, highly westernized: Could a social revolution break out in which the elites who have run the place since it was founded are displaced by an entirely different social class that is more radical—that doesn't have the same vested interests or education? The army has always stood to prevent that, so presumably if they would hold on to the army, the army would hold on to Punjab and prevent things from getting out of hand. But then the question would be, if it starts to fall apart like that, would India feel the need to make a preemptive strike to go after the nukes?

MJ: Yikes!

TB: Yes. They do not want to see it that way, because when people start planning three or four moves ahead and worrying about preempting this and that, things can get pretty dangerous pretty fast.

KGB PAID MONEY TO SONIA, RAHUL, RAJIV GANDHI & ALSO TO SONIA'S MOTHER IN ITALY

The greed of Sonia Gandhi and her family has crossed all bounds of decency.

With just three weeks to go before the Congress-led UPA government’s term ends, Ottavio Quattrocchi, the lone surviving suspect in the Bofors payoff case, no longer figures in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)’s list of wanted persons.

The 12-year Interpol Red Corner Notice (RCN) against the Italian businessman has been taken off the “Interpol Notices” section of the agency’s website.



Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Tuesday said it was a “farewell gift” from the Congress-led government to a “close friend” of party president Sonia Gandhi.

CONGRESS PARTY - SHOVING BOFORS AND "Q" CONNECTIONS UNDER THE CARPET



THE LOOT OF INDIAN MONEY CONTINUES: AFTER THE BRITISH EAST INDIA COMPANY – ITS NOW ______

In an article written on March 18th 2009: INDIA has $1.4 Trillion of Illegal money stashed in Swiss Banks - Time to bring it home !, I wrote in the first para: “Rajeev Gandhi’s untimely death left Sonia Gandhi extremely wealthy. The true extent of her wealth became known only when the Soviet archives were thrown open following the collapse of the Soviet Union. KGB archives revealed that as far back as 1982, when Indira Gandhi was still prime minister, Soviet trading agencies were channeling funds into a company controlled by her son and future Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

This was also brought to light by Harvard Russian scholar Yvgenia Albats in her book The State Within A State: The KGB and Its Hold on Russia. The Swiss news-magazine Schweizer Illustrierte (November 11, 1991) provided more details. Citing newly—opened KGB records, it reported that Sonia Gandhi, widow of the former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, was controlling a secret account worth 2.5 billion Swiss francs (about 2 billion dollars at current exchange rates) in a Swiss bank in her minor son's name.



“Dr. Yevgeniya Albats is a Soviet journalist who was appointed as member of the official KGB Commission set up by President Yeltsin in 1991. She had full access to secret files of the KGB.

PAYMENTS TO GANDHI FAMILY AUTHORIZED BY RESOLUTION IN RUSSIA:

Dr. Albats disclosed in her book that KGB chief Victor Chebrikov in December 1985 had sought in writing from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), ‘authorization to make payments in US dollars to the family members of Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, namely Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Ms Paola Maino, mother of Sonia Gandhi.’

CPSU payments were authorized by a resolution, CPSU/CC/No 11228/3 dated December 20, 1985; and endorsed by the USSR Council of Ministers in Directive No. 2633/Rs dated December 12, 1985. These payments had been coming since 1971, as payments received by Sonia Gandhi's family, and ‘have been audited in CPSU/CC resolution No. 11187/22 OP dated October 12, 1984.’

How precise must one get to book the guilty? These are official KGB records.

INDIAN ATTITUDE AT G-20: LUKEWARM TO FRENCH PROPOSAL

The Indian delegation attending G-20 summit did not seem at all keen on supporting the French demand to make tax havens transparent and create a new global financial architecture that has more regulation.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's reaction to the growing chorus for getting back ill-gotten wealth, squirreled in tax havens, has been quite casual. This makes it quite clear that he would not back the demands of French President, Nicholas Sarkozy, and others to regulate and tame the global financial system ahead of any coordinated stimulus.

Indians, Swiss bank sources claimed in 2006, have more than $ 1.4 trillion squirreled in their bank vaults. This figure could reach astronomical levels if the funds of Indians in other tax havens are added up. Experts estimate that the total quantum of money that has flown out to safe vaults abroad could go beyond $ 2-3 trillion dollars. So substantial is this amount that if it returns to India then it could make a serious difference in alleviating poverty and transforming its inadequate infrastructure. More importantly, it will also bring out in the open the identity of those who perpetrated this organised loot for so many years. Most of the illegal funds are sourced from defence deals, corruption and large scale siphoning off from development programmes. If the details of the Swiss bank account holders ever come out in the open, it will be a fascinating story of how India has been pauperised by its ruling elite.

CURIOUS CASE OF BILLIONS IN PUNE STUD FARM:CLOSE RELATIVE WITH CLOSE TIES WITH RULING PARTY !

For more than three years now, INDIA have not been able to make much headway in tracing the $ 8 billion found in a mysterious Pune-based stud farm owner's account in UBS, Switzerland. The money trail led to Virgin Island and to Saudi arms leader, Adnan Khashoggi, but the enforcement agencies have drawn no conclusions as one of the partners of the stud farm owner is a close relative of a big business family with close ties with the ruling party. This old business family, besides other interests, also serves as agents of some arms manufacturers. The belief is that pressure from this powerful group has prevented government to take its probe with the UBS to its logical conclusion.

However, after UBS wilted under US pressure to release the details of their nationals that evaded tax and parked their funds with them, there has been a flicker of hope in other countries too, that such details may finally see the light of the day. Indians have not shown much urgency in following up on US government's enterprise- due a host of reasons.

This is election time in India and a wrong time to follow bad money. Indian elections are funded through black money and a lot of cash sitting in foreign bank accounts returns through the hawala route.

DOMESTIC POLITICS: CONGRESS MAKES MONEY HERE TOO (and so does all other political parties too!)

Even in domestic politics it seems the Congress Party (referred to as Palm party) has made money making an art. The article by Maloy Krishna Dhar clearly alludes to a chain of command of making money . Maloy Dhar writes: What you have given here is the darshan money ( BuA: Indian word meaning giving money to someone just to see a person). It qualifies you to be short listed and your name to be forwarded by the Pradesh party to the High Command (HC). The High Command (whosoever it might be) would be the final arbitrator. The HC is helped by A, B. C. & D (no name please).

Once your name is forwarded, go over to Delhi with a few supporters meet A, B, C, & D with adequate lubricants. Carry trunk full of money. Do not forget to meet X Patel. He is the conscience keeper of the HC. Satisfy him with the demanded amount. The final satisfaction lay with the HC. If you have any conduit to reach the HC, spend lavishly and reach there. The entire process may cost you rupees 10 million (= Rupees one crore).

(BuA: Mr X Patel - hmmm, who can that be - Sonia's close confidante - AHMED PATEL??, HC = High Command a possible reference to SONIA GANDHI).

It’s India’s money that has been looted by foreigners and corrupt middlemen and most treasonously – by the executive branch of defense department of Govt of India. For every sub-standard defense procurement, look no further than the tax havens abroad where our politicians have stashed our hard earned money for their family. I will certainly not tolerate a flight of my country’s capital by foreigners – again !

At a time when our poor farmers are languishing in debt burden and economic crisis is hurting the average Indian – this illegal money stashed abroad is making us seethe in anger.


Unwinding of tax havens, MANY OF THEM UNDER THE CONTROL OF THE UK GOVERNMENT, would ensure that the development funds marked for the poor in Africa, Latin America and Asia do not find their way to the safes of banks in foreign countries. After all, many of the multinational banks have been recipient of drug money and kickbacks. History would bear testimony that some of the money in these banks have origin in opium. The world would be a different place when arms dealers, mercenaries and war-mongers, drug dealers have no place to hide their cash. Surely, this would impact terror funding, covert wars and so much of misery that this unaccounted wealth heaps on the poor of the world.

SIDE THOUGHT: WHAT IS IT ABOUT UK AND TAX HAVENS AND OPIUM ?

SUPER SIDE THOUGHT: INDIA PAYS NEARLY USD 2 BILLION FOR GORSHKOV.EX-KGB PUTIN INVOLVED IN DEAL MAKING. JUST A COINCIDENCE - I AM SURE :)

WAGES OF FEAR & APPEASEMENT - AYAZ AMIR

In my endeavour to bring important news from across the border, I have received permission from AYAZ AMIR to upload his excellent article in this blog.



Ayaz Amir is a renowned Pakistani journalist, and is a newly elected Member of National Assembly in Pakistan's Parliament.
He is also known as a politician. His columns are critical of the Pakistan Army's role in politics throughout the history of the country. He is considered to be liberal, arguing passionately the case for rule of law, democracy, and an end to failed military rule along with extremist versions of Islam.

In parliamentary elections, held on February 18th, 2008, Ayaz Amir won a seat in the National Assembly contesting from Chakwal (Punjab province), representing the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz)or PML-N.

Ayaz Amir was a captain in Pakistan Army who resigned/released his commission. He remained an MPA in the Punjab Assembly representing Chakwal.

THE ARTICLE : WAGES OF FEAR & APPEASEMENT:

When a state and its military forces mentally reconcile themselves to defeat, one can only mourn the event. There is nothing left to say. It's not that we don't recognise what has just happened or what the ANP government in the Frontier and the federal government in Islamabad, backed by the National Assembly, have just agreed to. Munich is written all over it.

But we are trying to put a gloss on it and are putting forward all sorts of justifications - that there was no way out and that signing the Nizam-e-Adl Regulation will bring lasting peace to Swat and its environs -- but in our heart of hearts we know that, our courage having fled and no vision worth the name to guide us, we have acquiesced in a great act of surrender.

Before India our eastern command laid down its arms in 1971, not its spirit or soul. Before the Taliban in Swat we have ceded a part of our national soul.

We can't stand up to the Americans. So we do their bidding in matters large and small and endure lectures from them on how to fix our problems. Any American functionary, high or low, has only to come to Islamabad to be treated like a colossus of diplomacy and military skill. We can't stand up to the Taliban, whether in Waziristan or Swat. So we sign deals with them from positions of abject weakness and call them acts of the highest statesmanship. We look like nothing so much as a ship lost on the open seas with no pilot on deck and no hand on the tiller.

Since when did victorious armies lay down their arms? The Taliban under the command of Maulana Fazlullah have been victorious in Swat, having fended off several operations -- I am afraid we have lost count--mounted by the army. Are we now expecting that these victorious hordes, in a reversal of history never before recorded, are about to don pacifist robes and meekly hand in the tools of their victory? Which world are we living in?

Losing is nothing unusual. It's part of life and happens all the time. The Americans were defeated in Vietnam but they put their signatures to no document of surrender. But the ANP government in the Frontier, reduced to despair--many of its leaders in Swat killed, many forced to flee from that idyllic vale -- is portraying surrender not as surrender but as singular redemption, the key to permanent peace.

It was smart of President Asif Zardari to send the "System of Justice Regulation" to the National Assembly so that the shame of it should be equally shared by all. The MQM was the only party to voice its objections and abstain in the voting for the resolution when it was put before the house. This is one of the ironies we must live with: a party whose hands are sullied with so much, emerging in this debate as the champion of sanity and moderation.

The Regulation as signed into law is a set of judicial procedures. On the face of it there is nothing wrong with these procedures and in fact their adoption in the rest of the country could well lead to a speedier dispensation of justice. But this is only the surface appearance of things.

The overriding implication of signing the Regulation is that the supreme power in Swat -and indeed not only in Swat but the whole of Malakand Division, a fair amount of real estate - is the Taliban. Government and army have ceded control of Malakand Division to the forces of Maulana Fazlullah. And they have done this at the point of the gun.

The Taliban have every reason to celebrate. But why is the Frontier government congratulating itself? This must be one of those rare occasions in Pakhtoon history - and the ANP is a Pakhtoon party - when one section of Pakhtoons is hailing defeat as victory. And it wants the rest of the country to go along with this charade.

Strange things are happening in Pakistan. Since emerging on the skyline of Karachi the MQM has dominated that city's politics with a mixture of popular support and, where needed, the unabashed use of force. There would be no soul so foolhardy as to speak against Maulana Fazlullah in Swat. It takes a brave soul to speak against Altaf Bhai in Karachi. General Pervez Musharraf helped the MQM in every way he could. The MQM returned the favour by being his most loyal ally. The bloodbath that took place in Karachi on May 12, 2007, who was responsible for it?

Altaf Bhai called me from London the other day and said that in order to save Pakistan we must all join hands and forgive and forget. He spoke at some length, with the passion and eloquence that are his forte. No one can disagree with his sentiments but if anyone could ask him to consider that if the media in Karachi live in fear of the MQM and if MQM supporters get touchy even at the faintest hint of criticism of the MQM leader, then what, in real terms, is the difference between the politics of Karachi and what we see in Swat? A harsh comparison no doubt but one I hope, in the new spirit of democracy he appears to be advocating, he will forgive me for making.

These are depressing times for Pakistan mainly because while our troubles are many, and our challenges daunting, there is no sense of direction and very little by way of reassuring leadership. Before the 'long march' things were easy in that everything could be blamed on Zardari (just as, before that, everything could be blamed on Pervez Musharraf). Now it's not so easy.

With the restoration of the judges deposed by Musharraf we have lost another slogan -- that of an independent judiciary -- behind which we could duck and ignore other issues. Now that luxury is no longer available.

There are no quick-fix answers to life's complications. Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry can improve the dispensation of justice. That is all. Political leadership has to come from the political class and military direction from the military.

The party in waiting, the self-declared party of the future, is the PML-N whose hallmark, when critical thinking is called for and hard decisions are to be made, is, alas, a fudge: sound and fury in which it is extremely hard to detect a coherent meaning.

Does the PML-N have any policy regarding what once-upon-a-time was the 'war on terror' and now God alone knows is what? The nation is dying for a lead, a clarion call to arms. But when the PML-N had a one-in-a-million chance to take a clear position on Swat's Justice Regulation all it could muster was another fudge. Here was an opportunity to say that while we were against American diktat we also could not go along with Taliban diktat. But it was lost.

Coming to power is not the problem. The PML-N is already in power in Punjab, and will make it to power at the centre when the opportunity comes. But will it be able to deliver? Can it give the lead the nation wants and the people of Pakistan deserve? That is the question. Nawaz Sharif has been prime minister of Pakistan twice before. He will have to be a better prime minister of Pakistan next time round if Pakistan is to get out of the woods and surmount the terrifying challenges it currently faces.

Pakistan's democracy needs more fine-tuning. Many of the Musharraf amendments in the Constitution need to be done away with. But, realistically speaking, Pakistan has all the democracy that it can safely handle. Democracy therefore is no longer the problem. Our national debate must move on and focus on the battle for national survival which is staring us in the face.

We must not dance to American tunes. We have done too much of this in our history and need to think for ourselves and stand up on our own feet. At the same time we don't need to buckle under the advancing threat of the Taliban. It requires exceptional optimism to think that after the Swat deal Fazlullah's Taliban will rest on their laurels and not exploit their victory.

The American presence in Afghanistan is the root of the troubles we face. But as long as it lasts -- and there is nothing we can do to force America from there -- capitulating before the Taliban and ceding more ground to them should be no option either. If we go down this path, there will be precious little left to save.

============================================================

KAMRAN SHAFI writing in DAWN asks: The ISPR (official Pakistan Army mouth-piece), when rebutting or complaining about the media actually copies its communications to the directorate general of the ISI! What does the ISI have to do with the media?

(BuA: Very interesting point above)

There is talk of a general amnesty for the Swat renegades, no matter what their crimes against humanity. Crimes such as decapitation; robbing graves and shooting up corpses and hanging them after decapitating the dead bodies; slaughtering women school teachers and 70-year old ex-servicemen. Amnesty for these Yahoos, sirs?

What is wrong with everyone? Must the Pakistani state debase itself in this manner? Must it prove again and again that it is mendacious enough to let its own monsters do what they will to whomever they will, and that it will then help them get away with it? Must the Pakistani nation, whose misfortune it is to live under this cruel and mindless state, be dishonoured to the extent that whilst murderers and executioners and thieves and robbers, many of them foreigners, are given ‘amnesty’, thousands of its poor brothers and sisters languish in its awful jails awaiting trial for petty offences such as gambling Rs10 in a game of cards, and other such ludicrous misdemeanours?

Who came up with this particular jewel of an amnesty for the Swat criminals please? They not only brought mayhem and death to that valley, but also took up arms against the state. Surely treason of the first order, what? And yet an amnesty is being considered for them? If you must give the Yahoos amnesty, then please open the gates of all the jails in Pakistan and release those who are lesser criminals.

AHMED & SALIM - TERRORISM A LA HUMOUR FROM ISRAEL

The creators of AHMED & SALIM series are Tom Trager and Or Paz



The new Israeli cartoon on YouTube, “Ahmed and Salim” launched in late February 2009 is intended to mock terrorists. That’s what animators Tom Trager and Or Paz claim.

Throughout the four-part series during each 3-4 minute episode (the first one viewed 400,000 times in one week), Ahmed and Salim's father tries to coerce them to kill Jews.

Although the Israel-based animators Trager and Paz state that they “do not think bad of Arabs,” and “simply dislike people in general,” it would be hard not to call the cartoon racist.

World-wide appeal

In an interview the creators said the show is not an attack on Arabs. “Ahmed and Salim are not about Arabs at all. It's mostly a metaphor for how idiotic religion is."

"Muslims are known to be extremists so we poke fun at them. We just like pissing off groups who take themselves too seriously - with Arabs though we have no problems at all.”

Depicted much worse than the prototypical “bad Arab," Ahmed and Salim's father, Yasser, is an anti-Semitic misogynist who rapes ten year olds, while trying to convince his kids to become “terrorists.”

Take one scene in an episode that shows the father reading to his kids a bedtime story – an anti-Semitic version of Little Red Riding Hood. “And what will you do Ahmed and Salim if you see a soulless Jew at your home?” the father asks.

“We’ll shoot him in the genitals and laugh!” they answer back.

When asked if Yasser the father reflected the way they viewed Arabs in Israel, Trager and Paz said, “Not at all, we have nothing against Arabs or Muslims and we certainly did not grow up being taught they were some kind of evil or anything like that.”

But, Habeeb told French TV, with Ahmed and Salim the historical context is lost. “I know enough about real life in Palestine to understand what is true and what isn’t, but most viewers won’t have that kind of background. And because the cartoons are subtitled (in English and Hebrew) they can be viewed by audiences worldwide."

Indeed, the characters speak gibberish, not Arabic, and the only discernible words actually spoken are English curses.

Meanwhile, the teens Ahmed and Salim are made more benign because they entertain the trappings of the West - watching Western TV, playing video games, and spending huge chunks of their time on Facebook.

Normalizing stereotypes

Whether or not Trager and Paz are aware that they are contributing to hateful stereotypes misses the point.

By all indications they don't think they are, but it would be hard to imagine that the two Israelis are unaware that Ahmed and Salim builds on a rich history of "Arab" vilification in the media.

Perhaps Israeli creators, Trager and Paz, did not intend to perpetuate myths of Arabs and Muslims in Israeli society and in the West, but Ahmed and Salim does just that.

Still, the cartoon's creators said: “Through Ahmed & Salim we learned to tolerate groups even more, and so do many other people who send us fan mail about being more open-minded since this show! What do you know? These two nerds may even bring peace to this world.”

The video may be provocative, stereotypes - however the kernel of truth is apparent. It is not a castigation of Islam or Muslims per se - but a satire on terrorism. The cartoons are meant to depict the ludicrousness not only of terrorism, but also our perceptions of terrorism in the western world. Everything in the show is intended to be hyperbolic, and I think by taking to the extremes these stereotypes, it makes a valid political satire of the futility of the moral justifications behind terrorism.

BuA: One of points mentioned above : Where Ahmed & Salim's father rapes 10 year olds - has its roots elsewhere - a fact we shall not get into now for all the jewels of Medina.

However its important to look at a recent (January 2009) pronouncement of the most senior Saudi cleric : DAILY NEWS it is permissible for 10-year-old girls to marry and those who think they're too young are doing the girls an injustice.

Excuse me, did you say - doing the girls an injustice ????

PART 1


PART 3