Monday, December 27, 2010
PAKISTAN ARMY ADMITS TO SENDING SUICIDE BOMBERS
Thanks to some bureacratic bungling, Pak Army website hosted this before blanking it out later.
Points to note:
1. Look at the OPERATIONS - It states SUICIDE ATTACK (how blatant can u get?)
2. Zulfikar Ahmed was treated in Delhi - documents with hospital prove it - where he died due to complications.
3. His treatment was funded by Pakistan Embassy.
Ergo - QED
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Ambassador Timothy Roeman and 9/11
Ambassador Timothy Roeman is doing yeoman service for the US government in trying to help bring business to the US from Indian government as well as from private companies. Nothing wrong in that, its his job and he is paving the ground for the visit of his boss – President Barack Hussein Obama.
However what is not reported in the press here in India is his dalliance with the 9/11 commission which got bribed and were put through other pressure to simply erase the role of Pakistan in the 9/11. In that I find Timothy Roeman guilty and we need to also see him in that light.
Yes, he is American and he will see his country’s interest first. But what was the interest in hiding the Pakistan’s ISI role in funding and executing the 9/11 attacks through al-Qaeda.
But guess what Ambassador Roeman: "Osama bin Laden living in comfort in Pakistan, says Nato official". You had a chance to nail Pakistan - you guys did not !!
The earlier article I wrote on this subject (Nov 21, 2008):
There was damning evidence linking ISI with Al Qaeda and 9-11. In fact, there has been serious evaluation and part of US Intelligence even stated that ISI masterminded 9-11, Al – Qaeda was a mere facilitator.
A few comments here, as I will deal with this in details in a later blog.
Arnaud de Borchgrave, editor of Washington Times stated: “ Former Pakistani intelligence officers knew beforehand all about Sept – 11 attacks. They even advised Osama bin Laden (OBL) and his cohorts how to attack key targets in the US with hijacked civilian aircraft. And bin Laden has been undergoing periodic dialysis treatment in a military hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan.”
CIA officer Gary Schroen who spearheaded US’ search for OBL in Afghanistan stated: “ISI officials – probably at the colonel level, are very well aware of OBL’s presence in Pakistan tribal areas. Musharraf was so afraid of the internal political consequences of finding OBL that he doesn’t want to know his whereabouts. I think the philosophy of the Taliban, this fundamentalist view , is popular there. So Bin Laden, I think, strikes them as heroic. He fought a jihad against the Russians, and he’s bloodied America’s nose time and again.”
THE MOST DIRECT LINK- WHICH FBI CONFIRMS: ISI wired money to 9-11 lead hijacker, through Omar Sheikh. Why then is Omar Sheikh not being dealt with when he is already under sentence of death? Astonishingly his appeal to a higher court against the sentence was adjourned for the 32nd time and has since been adjourned indefinitely. This is all the more remarkable when this is the same Omar Sheikh who, at the behest of General Mahmood Ahmed, head of the ISI, wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the leading 9/11 hijacker, before the New York attacks, as confirmed by Dennis Lormel, director of FBI's financial crimes unit.
GEN. MAHMOOD AHMED
OMAR SHEIKH
When Mahmood Ahmed, head of ISI, was exposed by the Wall Street Journal as having sent the money to the hijackers, he was forced to "retire" by President Pervez Musharraf.
Bruce Reidel, the then National Security Council senior director for South Asia in the Bill Clinton administration stated: “If there was a state sponsor of al-Qaeda, it was the Pakistani army, acting through its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)".
The following report was received by the 9-11 commission from “the” anonymous well connected Pakistani source : “The core issue of instability and violence in South Asia is the character, activities and persistence of the militarized Islamist fundamentalist state in PAKISTAN. No cure for this canker can be arrived at through any strategy of negotiations, support and financial aid to the military regine, or by a regulated transition to democracy. The imprints of every major act of international Islamist terrorism invariably passes through Pakistan, right from September – 11 ( 9-11) – where virtually all the participants had trained, resided or met in, coordinated with, or received from or through Pakistan – to major acts of terrorism across South Asia and South East Asia, as well as major networks of terror that have been discovered in Europe.”
Given that the 9-11 commission had extra-ordinary proof to implicate ISI and Pakistan for 9-11 along with Al-Qaeda, the final report does not find any reference to either ISI, Pakistan or indeed Saudi Arabia.
What transpired?
It seems the Pakistan foreign office paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobbyists in USA to get the “anti-Pakistan” references dropped from the 9-11 inquiry commission report.
Pakistan weekly, THE FRIDAY TIMES claimed, its story is based on disclosures made by foreign service officials to the Public Accounts Committee at a secret meeting in Islamabad (March 2006).
The sensational claim was – “some of the 9-11 commission members were also BRIBED to prevent them from including DAMAGING information about PAKISTAN. The disclosure sheds doubt about the integrity and honesty of the members of the 9-11 inquiry commission and, above all, the authenticity of the information in their final report.”
The report quoted an officer as saying that dramatic changes were made in the final draft of inquiry commission after the lobbyists got to work.
FRIDAY TIMES claimed, A LOT OF MONEY WAS USED TO SILENCE MEMBERS.
According to the report, the lobbyists also helped Pakistan win sympathy of 75 US Congressmen as part of its strategy to guard Islamabad’s interests in Washington.
This resulted in a complete U-Turn and Pakistan emerged as front runner in the fight against terrorism and US pumped in Billions of dollars to a doddering Pakistan economy on the brink of collapse.
Did not the 9-11 commission members have a patriotic duty to find the truth? The answer to that is NO. There were many skeletons in the closet.
Andrew Rice, chair of the 9-11 commission Committee of the Sept 11 Families For Peaceful Tomorrow organization is among millions of terribly frustrated Americans and he stated: “This official 9-11 commission was “fixed in” from the beginning.”
A senior EU Diplomat stated: “They (the 9-11 commission) seem to be interested in putting up a good show as a coverup; and of course they’re very worried about damage control.”
THE 9-11 INQUIRY COMMISSION – A FEW MEMBERS.
This commission comprised nine men and a woman, five Republicans and five Democrats.
Chairman Thomas Kean: His was the case of most devastating conflict of interest. The US $1 trillion lawsuit filed in August 2002 by the families of the victims of Sept 11 included TWO FORMER business partners of Kean – Saudi Billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz (brother in law of OBL) and Mohd. Hussein al-Almoudi. Mahfouz transferred millions of dollars from a Saudi Pension Fund to bank accounts in London and New York linked to Al-Qaeda. He is also the former director of BCCI – the Pakistani bank in the centre of $12 billion bankruptcy scandal and terrorist links.
KHALID BIN MAHFOUZ
A little digression to show the hand of Khalid Bin Mahfouz in India's terrorist funding too. See chart below. Click on it to view enlarged version.
(Note: Bush himself had business links with Mahfouz – various investments in Houston, TX).
Philip D Zelikow – ultimate Bush insider, who worked with Jim Baker. Co-wrote two books with Condolizza Rice. Mr Zelikow, a former academic, once tried to push through wording in a draft report that suggested a greater tie between Osama bin Laden and Iraq, in line with White House claims but not with the views of the commission's staff. Read this Telegraph UK article.
Jamie S Gorelick – very close to CIA director George Tenet. This means no chance for the commission to investigate dubious covert operations by the CIA which may forment terrorism instead of fighting it.
John Lehman – ex Navy secretary under Reagan and served alongside two of commissions’ key witnesses: Secretary of State Richard Armitage and former counterterrorism head Richard Clarke. Lehman is Kissinger’s man in the commission (de-facto Bilderberg group oversight).
It's unlikely fellow members at the 9-11 Commission will ask Kean to reveal to what extent he was aware of Mahfouz's links to al-Qaeda.
As to the 28 pages of the joint congressional committee detailing Saudi support to al-Qaeda, they also seem to have vanished into thin air.
The commission, for instance, also will not investigate the foreign policy that started it all in the late 1970s and early 1980s: the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA's) full support to the hardcore international Islamic brigades which joined the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan - and then turned against the US after the first Gulf War in 1991. This would mean that the commission would have to seriously investigate Secretary of State Colin Powell and his number two, Richard Armitage, key players in those 1980s proceedings.
Former national security adviser to Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, also one of the key members of the Council on Foreign Relations, was the mastermind behind the building of an Islamic network in Afghanistan - as part of a huge, covert CIA operation. To a large extent, the modern Islamic jihad exists thanks to Brzezinski. There are four members of the Council on Foreign Relations in the commission. There's hardly any chance of them investigating their fellow Brzezinski.
The commission report was anyway going to get whitewashed with or without Pakistan lobbyists pumping in money. Pakistan just helped itself get a clear name in the bargain. If the BIG BOYS were anyway going to play dirty, why not PAKISTAN?
The US always stated that the warlords in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal areas can be bought by the highest bidder. They forgot the mention that they too could be bought !
PAKSITAN – MONEY FLOW AFTER 9/11
The lobbyists not only got the name of Pakistan and ISI out of the final 9-11 commission report, it also helped Pakistan win sympathy of 75 US Congressmen as part of its strategy to guard Islamabad’s interests in Washington. It was a matter of time before the money came in.
Dr Farrukh Saleem, noted economist in Pakistan commented: “ The US Department of Defense has been depositing a cool $100 million a month in our treasury for the last four years. The US forgave $3 billion worth of bilateral debt, and then convinced the Paris Club lender nations to reschedule a large portion of $38 billion bilateral debt on easy terms. Add it all up – and thank OSAMA – for the total bonanza is going to be a colossal $40 BILLION.”
No wonder, in Pakistan, Al Qaeda is known as Al Faeda.
Faeda in Urdu means = BENEFIT.
Readers are free to draw their conclusions from this.
I only wonder, why Colin Powell is a friend of Pakistan (forget the military liking the military – is there a money trail, I wonder?)
=====================================================
USA - SKELETONS IN THE CLOSET?
NOT AT ALL, IT WAS FOR A GOOD CAUSE - WHY SHY AWAY FROM THEM ?!!
Zbigniew Brzezinski: "What was more important in the world view of history? The Taliban or the fall of the Soviet empire? A few stirred up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?"
Senator Orrin Hatch: "It was worth it. Those were very important, pivotal matters that played an important role in the downfall of the Soviet Union."
Osama bin Laden was the creation of Saudi Intelligence (Prince Turki) and CIA.
Dr. Azzam and al-Zawahari had fought for the CIA in Lebanon and Palestine.
Moro Islamic Liberation Front (milf) was funded by Al Qaeda and trained by ISI. These were Islamists in southern Philippines. You would expect USA to take good care of this overwhelmingly Christian island. But its eyes were locked on to Soviet demise and so "anything went". CIA cover flights had flown 200 MILF mujahidden from Chittagong (BANGLADESH) to Karachi (PAKISTAN), in the garb of special flights for HAJ pilgrims to fight in Afghanistan.
Small contingent of US Special Forces helped ISI airlift Pakistani mujahidden to GEORGIA anad adjoining ARMENIA. Some jihadis were also transferred by boat from TURKMENISTAN to SOUTHERN DAGESTAN from where they traversed to CHECHNYA. These were also favourite arms supply routes for the ISI and the CIA.
While Pakistan and Al Qaeda were focussed on creating an Islamic Caliphate, the US need not have worried about as Brzezinski said " A FEW STIRRED UP MUSLIMS" !!
====================================================
Post 9/11 a radical Al Qaeda cleric lunched at the Pentagon - its interesting what we are fed in the name of what is right.
The chief sponsor of Al-Qaeda, the Saudis are getting a whopping US $ 60 BILLION arms deal from the US in what is being sold as another right - to counter IRAN. The House of Saud is responsible for funding and creating Taliban and setting up madrassas based on wahabbi doctrine (from where Taliban and al-Qaeda draw irs foot soldiers from) - and it gets rewarded. So does Pakistan get rewarded by the US. And we are told - IT'S RIGHT :).
PERSONAL OPINION:
Ambassador Roemer is guilty of letting Pakistan’s ISI scot free. However it is my personal opinion that he may perhaps have been a patriotic American and not necessarily a Pakistan sympathizer. Be that as it may, it did India (and the world) no good.
A few transcripts of Roemer’s views and you will understand what I am saying.
In Washington Post article (excerpts) - Transcript - Rice's testimony on 9/11 :
KEAN: Congressman Roemer?
ROEMER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome, Dr. Rice. And I just want to say to you you've made it through 2 1/2 hours so far with only Governor Thompson to go. And if you'd like a break of five minutes, I'd be happy to yield you some of Governor Thompson's time.
(LAUGHTER)
Dr. Rice, you have said in your statement, which I find very interesting, "The terrorists were at war with us, but we were not at war with them."
Across several administrations of both parties, the response was insufficient. And tragically, for all the language of war spoken before September 11th, this country simply was not on a war footing.
You're the national security advisor to the president of the United States. The buck may stop with the president; the buck certainly goes directly through you as the principal advisor to the president on these issues.
And it really seems to me that there were failures and mistakes, structural problems, all kinds of issues here leading up to September 11th that could have and should have been done better.
Doesn't that beg that there should have been more accountability? That there should have been a resignation or two? That there should have been you or the president saying to the rest of the administration, somehow, somewhere, that this was not done well enough?
RICE: Mr. Roemer, by definition, we didn't have enough information, we didn't have enough protection, because the attack happened -- by definition. And I think we've all asked ourselves, what more could have been done?
I will tell you if we had known that an attack was coming against the United States, that an attack was coming against New York and Washington, we would have moved heaven and earth to stop it.
But you heard the character of the threat report we were getting: something very, very big is going to happen. How do you act on "something very, very big is going to happen" beyond trying to put people on alert? Most of the threat reporting was abroad.
I took an oath, as I've said, to protect...
ROEMER: I've heard it -- I've heard you say this....
RICE: And I take it very seriously. I know that those who attacked us that day -- and attacked us, by the way, because of who we are, no other reason, but for who we are -- that they are the responsible party for the war that they launched against us...
ROEMER: But Dr. Rice...
RICE: ... the attacks that they made, and that our responsibility...
ROEMER: You have said several times...
RICE: ... that our responsibility is to...
ROEMER: You have said several times that your responsibility, being in office for 230 days, was to defend and protect the United States.
RICE: Of course.
ROEMER: You had an opportunity, I think, with Mr. Clarke, who had served a number of presidents going back to the Reagan administration; who you'd decided to keep on in office; who was a pile driver, a bulldozer, so to speak -- but this person who you, in the Woodward interview -- he's the very first name out of your mouth when you suspect that terrorists have attacked us on September the 11th. You say, I think, immediately it was a terrorist attack; get Dick Clarke, the terrorist guy.
Even before you mentioned Tenet and Rumsfeld's names, "Get Dick Clarke."
Why don't you get Dick Clarke to brief the president before 9/11? Here is one of the consummate experts that never has the opportunity to brief the president of the United States on one of the most lethal, dynamic and agile threats to the United States of America.
Why don't you use this asset? Why doesn't the president ask to meet with Dick Clarke?
RICE: Well, the president was meeting with his director of central intelligence. And Dick Clarke is a very, very fine counterterrorism expert -- and that's why I kept him on.
And what I wanted Dick Clarke to do was to manage the crisis for us and help us develop a new strategy. And I can guarantee you, when we had that new strategy in place, the president -- who was asking for it and wondering what was happening to it -- was going to be in a position to engage it fully.
The fact is that what Dick Clarke recommended to us, as he has said, would not have prevented 9/11. I actually would say that not only would it have not prevented 9/11, but if we had done everything on that list, we would have actually been off in the wrong direction about the importance that we needed to attach to a new policy for Afghanistan and a new policy for Pakistan.
Because even though Dick is a very fine counterterrorism expert, he was not a specialist on Afghanistan. That's why I brought somebody in who really understood Afghanistan. He was not a specialist on Pakistan. That's why I brought somebody in to deal with Pakistan. He had some very good ideas. We acted on them.
Dick Clarke -- let me just step back for a second and say we had a very -- we had a very good relationship.
ROEMER: Yes. I'd appreciate it if you could be very concise here, so I can get to some more issues.
RICE: But all that he needed -- all that he needed to do was to say, "I need time to brief the president on something." But...
ROEMER: I think he did say that. Dr. Rice, in a private interview to us he said he asked to brief the president...
RICE: Well, I have to say -- I have to say, Mr. Roemer, to my recollection...
ROEMER: You say he didn't.
RICE: ... Dick Clarke never asked me to brief the president on counterterrorism. He did brief the president later on cybersecurity, in July, but he, to my recollection, never asked.
And my senior directors have an open door to come and say, "I think the president needs to do this. I think the president needs to do that. He needs to make this phone call. He needs to hear this briefing." It's not hard to get done.
But I just think that...
ROEMER: Let me ask you a question. You just said that the intelligence coming in indicated a big, big, big threat. Something was going to happen very soon and be potentially catastrophic.
I don't understand, given the big threat, why the big principals don't get together. The principals meet 33 times in seven months, on Iraq, on the Middle East, on missile defense, China, on Russia. Not once do the principals ever sit down -- you, in your job description as the national security advisor, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, the president of the United States -- and meet solely on terrorism to discuss in the spring and the summer, when these threats are coming in, when you've known since the transition that al Qaeda cells are in the United States, when, as the PDB said on August, bin Laden determined to attack the United States.
Why don't the principals at that point say, "Let's all talk about this, let's get the biggest people together in our government and discuss what this threat is and try to get our bureaucracies responding to it"?
RICE: Once again, on the August 6th memorandum to the president, this was not threat-reporting about what was about to happen. This was an analytic piece that stood back and answered questions from the president.
But as to the principals meetings...
ROEMER: It has six or seven things in it, Dr. Rice, including the Ressam case when he attacked the United States in the millennium.
RICE: Yes, these are his...
ROEMER: Has the FBI saying that they think that there are conditions.
RICE: No, it does not have the FBI saying that they think that there are conditions. It has the FBI saying that they observed some suspicious activity. That was checked out with the FBI.
ROEMER: That is equal to what might be...
RICE: No.
ROEMER: ... conditions for an attack.
RICE: Mr. Roemer, Mr. Roemer, threat reporting...
ROEMER: Would you say, Dr. Rice, that we should make that PDB a public document...
RICE: Mr. Roemer...
ROEMER: ... so we can have this conversation?
RICE: Mr. Roemer, threat reporting is: "We believe that something is going to happen here and at this time, under these circumstances." This was not threat reporting.
ROEMER: Well, actionable intelligence, Dr. Rice, is when you have the place, time and date. The threat reporting saying the United States is going to be attacked should trigger the principals getting together to say we're going to do something about this, I would think.
RICE: Mr. Roemer, let's be very clear. The PDB does not say the United States is going to be attacked. It says bin Laden would like to attack the United States. I don't think you, frankly, had to have that report to know that bin Laden would like to attack the United States.
ROEMER: So why aren't you doing something about that earlier than August 6th?
(APPLAUSE)
RICE: The threat reporting to which we could respond was in June and July about threats abroad. What we tried to do for -- just because people said you cannot rule out an attack on the United States, was to have the domestic agencies and the FBI together to just pulse them and have them be on alert.
ROEMER: I agree with that.
RICE: But there was nothing that suggested there was going to be a threat...
ROEMER: I agree with that.
RICE: ... to the United States.
ROEMER: I agree with that.
So, Dr. Rice, let's say that the FBI is the key here. You say that the FBI was tasked with trying to find out what the domestic threat was.
We have done thousands of interviews here at the 9/11 Commission. We've gone through literally millions of pieces of paper. To date, we have found nobody -- nobody at the FBI who knows anything about a tasking of field offices.
We have talked to the director at the time of the FBI during this threat period, Mr. Pickard. He says he did not tell the field offices to do this.
And we have talked to the special agents in charge. They don't have any recollection of receiving a notice of threat.
Nothing went down the chain to the FBI field offices on spiking of information, on knowledge of al Qaeda in the country, and still, the FBI doesn't do anything.
Isn't that some of the responsibility of the national security advisor?
RICE: The responsibility for the FBI to do what it was asked was the FBI's responsibility. Now, I...
ROEMER: You don't think there's any responsibility back to the advisor to the president...
RICE: I believe that the responsibility -- again, the crisis management here was done by the CSG. They tasked these things. If there was any reason to believe that I needed to do something or that Andy Card needed to do something, I would have been expected to be asked to do it. We were not asked to do it. In fact, as I've...
ROEMER: But don't you ask somebody to do it? You're not asking somebody to do it. Why wouldn't you initiate that?
RICE: Mr. Roemer, I was responding to the threat spike and to where the information was. The information was about what might happen in the Persian Gulf, what might happen in Israel, what might happen in North Africa. We responded to that, and we responded vigorously.
Now, the structure...
ROEMER: Dr. Rice, let me ask you...
RICE: ... of the FBI, you will get into next week.
ROEMER: You've been helpful to us on that -- on your recommendation.
KEAN: Last question, Congressman.
ROEMER: Last question, Dr. Rice, talking about responses.
Mr. Clarke writes you a memo on September the 4th, where he lays out his frustration that the military is not doing enough, that the CIA is not pushing as hard enough in their agency. And he says we should not wait until the day that hundreds of Americans lay dead in the streets due to a terrorist attack and we think there could have been something more we could do.
Seven days prior to September the 11th, he writes this to you.
What's your reaction to that at the time, and what's your response to that at the time?
RICE: Just one final point I didn't quite complete. I, of course, did understand that the attorney general needed to know what was going on, and I asked that he take the briefing and then ask that he be briefed.
Because, again, there was nothing demonstrating or showing that something was coming in the United States. If there had been something, we would have acted on it.
ROEMER: I think we should make this document public, Dr. Rice. Would you support making the August 6th PDB public?
RICE: The August 6th PDB has been available to you. You are describing it. And the August 6th PDB was a response to questions asked by the president, not a warning document.
ROEMER: Why wouldn't it be made public then?
RICE: Now, as to -- I think you know the sensitivity of presidential decision memoranda. And I think you know the great lengths to which we have gone to make it possible for this commission to view documents that are not generally -- I don't know if they've ever been -- made available in quite this way.
Now, as to what Dick Clarke said on September 4th, that was not a premonition, nor a warning. What that memorandum was, as I was getting ready to go into the September 4th principals meeting to review the NSPD and to approve the new NSPD, what it was a warning to me that the bureaucracies would try to undermine it.
Dick goes into great and emotional detail about the long history of how DOD has never been responsive, how the CIA has never been responsive, about how the Predator has gotten hung up because the CIA doesn't really want to fly it.
And he says, if you don't fight through this bureaucracy -- he says, at one point, "They're going to all sign on to this NSPD because they won't want to be associated -- they won't want to say they don't want to eliminate the threat of al Qaeda." He says, "But, in effect, you have to go in there and push them, because we'll all wonder about the day when thousands of Americans" and so forth and so on.
So that's what this document is. It's not a warning document. It's not a -- all of us had this fear.
I think that the chairman mentioned that I said this in an interview, that we would hope not to get to that day. But it would not be appropriate or correct to characterize what Dick wrote to me on September 4th as a warning of an impending attack. What he was doing was, I think, trying to buck me up, so that when I went into this principals meeting, I was sufficiently on guard against the kind of bureaucratic inertia that he had fought all of his life.
ROEMER: What is a warning, if August 6th isn't and September 4th isn't, to you?
RICE: Well, August 6th is most certainly an historical document that says, "Here's how you might think about al Qaeda." A warning is when you have something that suggests that an attack is impending.
And we did not have, on the United States, threat information that was, in any way, specific enough to suggest that something was coming in the United States.
The September 4th memo, as I've said to you, was a warning to me not to get dragged down by the bureaucracy, not a warning about September 11th.
ROEMER: Thank you, Dr. Rice.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
KEAN: Thank you, Congressman, very, very much.
======================================================
In another discussion :
KWAME HOLMAN: Commissioner Tim Roemer said a good deal of information about Khalid sheik Mohammed was known months before the 9/11 attacks. Roemer asked the panel of FBI And CIA Witnesses how that information was shared.
TIMOTHY ROEMER: According to the staff report .KSM was widely known to be planning some kind of an operation against the United States. The staff statement says, quote, many were even aware that he had been preparing operatives to go to the United States as reported by a CIA source in June of 2001. What did the CIA specifically do with that type of threat coming in from KSM, who is at the top of the rendition list, who is widely known to have associated with these terrorists and been involved in different activities, and he's sending people to the United States to do an operation. How would you prioritize that? What happened to this?
=======================================================
Be that as it may, the bottom line is this. US is plying Pakistan with Billions which it uses against India. And Timothy Roeman is urging India to pay Billions to the US for its planes, arms, nuclear plants.
To rub salt to wound, he was part of 9/11 commission that gave a clean chit to Pakistan and ISI. And also ensured US agent David Coleman Headley remains out of harm's way (de-facto Pakistan too remains out of harm's way).
However what is not reported in the press here in India is his dalliance with the 9/11 commission which got bribed and were put through other pressure to simply erase the role of Pakistan in the 9/11. In that I find Timothy Roeman guilty and we need to also see him in that light.
Yes, he is American and he will see his country’s interest first. But what was the interest in hiding the Pakistan’s ISI role in funding and executing the 9/11 attacks through al-Qaeda.
But guess what Ambassador Roeman: "Osama bin Laden living in comfort in Pakistan, says Nato official". You had a chance to nail Pakistan - you guys did not !!
The earlier article I wrote on this subject (Nov 21, 2008):
There was damning evidence linking ISI with Al Qaeda and 9-11. In fact, there has been serious evaluation and part of US Intelligence even stated that ISI masterminded 9-11, Al – Qaeda was a mere facilitator.
A few comments here, as I will deal with this in details in a later blog.
Arnaud de Borchgrave, editor of Washington Times stated: “ Former Pakistani intelligence officers knew beforehand all about Sept – 11 attacks. They even advised Osama bin Laden (OBL) and his cohorts how to attack key targets in the US with hijacked civilian aircraft. And bin Laden has been undergoing periodic dialysis treatment in a military hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan.”
CIA officer Gary Schroen who spearheaded US’ search for OBL in Afghanistan stated: “ISI officials – probably at the colonel level, are very well aware of OBL’s presence in Pakistan tribal areas. Musharraf was so afraid of the internal political consequences of finding OBL that he doesn’t want to know his whereabouts. I think the philosophy of the Taliban, this fundamentalist view , is popular there. So Bin Laden, I think, strikes them as heroic. He fought a jihad against the Russians, and he’s bloodied America’s nose time and again.”
THE MOST DIRECT LINK- WHICH FBI CONFIRMS: ISI wired money to 9-11 lead hijacker, through Omar Sheikh. Why then is Omar Sheikh not being dealt with when he is already under sentence of death? Astonishingly his appeal to a higher court against the sentence was adjourned for the 32nd time and has since been adjourned indefinitely. This is all the more remarkable when this is the same Omar Sheikh who, at the behest of General Mahmood Ahmed, head of the ISI, wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the leading 9/11 hijacker, before the New York attacks, as confirmed by Dennis Lormel, director of FBI's financial crimes unit.
GEN. MAHMOOD AHMED
OMAR SHEIKH
When Mahmood Ahmed, head of ISI, was exposed by the Wall Street Journal as having sent the money to the hijackers, he was forced to "retire" by President Pervez Musharraf.
Bruce Reidel, the then National Security Council senior director for South Asia in the Bill Clinton administration stated: “If there was a state sponsor of al-Qaeda, it was the Pakistani army, acting through its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)".
The following report was received by the 9-11 commission from “the” anonymous well connected Pakistani source : “The core issue of instability and violence in South Asia is the character, activities and persistence of the militarized Islamist fundamentalist state in PAKISTAN. No cure for this canker can be arrived at through any strategy of negotiations, support and financial aid to the military regine, or by a regulated transition to democracy. The imprints of every major act of international Islamist terrorism invariably passes through Pakistan, right from September – 11 ( 9-11) – where virtually all the participants had trained, resided or met in, coordinated with, or received from or through Pakistan – to major acts of terrorism across South Asia and South East Asia, as well as major networks of terror that have been discovered in Europe.”
Given that the 9-11 commission had extra-ordinary proof to implicate ISI and Pakistan for 9-11 along with Al-Qaeda, the final report does not find any reference to either ISI, Pakistan or indeed Saudi Arabia.
What transpired?
It seems the Pakistan foreign office paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobbyists in USA to get the “anti-Pakistan” references dropped from the 9-11 inquiry commission report.
Pakistan weekly, THE FRIDAY TIMES claimed, its story is based on disclosures made by foreign service officials to the Public Accounts Committee at a secret meeting in Islamabad (March 2006).
The sensational claim was – “some of the 9-11 commission members were also BRIBED to prevent them from including DAMAGING information about PAKISTAN. The disclosure sheds doubt about the integrity and honesty of the members of the 9-11 inquiry commission and, above all, the authenticity of the information in their final report.”
The report quoted an officer as saying that dramatic changes were made in the final draft of inquiry commission after the lobbyists got to work.
FRIDAY TIMES claimed, A LOT OF MONEY WAS USED TO SILENCE MEMBERS.
According to the report, the lobbyists also helped Pakistan win sympathy of 75 US Congressmen as part of its strategy to guard Islamabad’s interests in Washington.
This resulted in a complete U-Turn and Pakistan emerged as front runner in the fight against terrorism and US pumped in Billions of dollars to a doddering Pakistan economy on the brink of collapse.
Did not the 9-11 commission members have a patriotic duty to find the truth? The answer to that is NO. There were many skeletons in the closet.
Andrew Rice, chair of the 9-11 commission Committee of the Sept 11 Families For Peaceful Tomorrow organization is among millions of terribly frustrated Americans and he stated: “This official 9-11 commission was “fixed in” from the beginning.”
A senior EU Diplomat stated: “They (the 9-11 commission) seem to be interested in putting up a good show as a coverup; and of course they’re very worried about damage control.”
THE 9-11 INQUIRY COMMISSION – A FEW MEMBERS.
This commission comprised nine men and a woman, five Republicans and five Democrats.
Chairman Thomas Kean: His was the case of most devastating conflict of interest. The US $1 trillion lawsuit filed in August 2002 by the families of the victims of Sept 11 included TWO FORMER business partners of Kean – Saudi Billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz (brother in law of OBL) and Mohd. Hussein al-Almoudi. Mahfouz transferred millions of dollars from a Saudi Pension Fund to bank accounts in London and New York linked to Al-Qaeda. He is also the former director of BCCI – the Pakistani bank in the centre of $12 billion bankruptcy scandal and terrorist links.
KHALID BIN MAHFOUZ
A little digression to show the hand of Khalid Bin Mahfouz in India's terrorist funding too. See chart below. Click on it to view enlarged version.
(Note: Bush himself had business links with Mahfouz – various investments in Houston, TX).
Philip D Zelikow – ultimate Bush insider, who worked with Jim Baker. Co-wrote two books with Condolizza Rice. Mr Zelikow, a former academic, once tried to push through wording in a draft report that suggested a greater tie between Osama bin Laden and Iraq, in line with White House claims but not with the views of the commission's staff. Read this Telegraph UK article.
Jamie S Gorelick – very close to CIA director George Tenet. This means no chance for the commission to investigate dubious covert operations by the CIA which may forment terrorism instead of fighting it.
John Lehman – ex Navy secretary under Reagan and served alongside two of commissions’ key witnesses: Secretary of State Richard Armitage and former counterterrorism head Richard Clarke. Lehman is Kissinger’s man in the commission (de-facto Bilderberg group oversight).
It's unlikely fellow members at the 9-11 Commission will ask Kean to reveal to what extent he was aware of Mahfouz's links to al-Qaeda.
As to the 28 pages of the joint congressional committee detailing Saudi support to al-Qaeda, they also seem to have vanished into thin air.
The commission, for instance, also will not investigate the foreign policy that started it all in the late 1970s and early 1980s: the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA's) full support to the hardcore international Islamic brigades which joined the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan - and then turned against the US after the first Gulf War in 1991. This would mean that the commission would have to seriously investigate Secretary of State Colin Powell and his number two, Richard Armitage, key players in those 1980s proceedings.
Former national security adviser to Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, also one of the key members of the Council on Foreign Relations, was the mastermind behind the building of an Islamic network in Afghanistan - as part of a huge, covert CIA operation. To a large extent, the modern Islamic jihad exists thanks to Brzezinski. There are four members of the Council on Foreign Relations in the commission. There's hardly any chance of them investigating their fellow Brzezinski.
The commission report was anyway going to get whitewashed with or without Pakistan lobbyists pumping in money. Pakistan just helped itself get a clear name in the bargain. If the BIG BOYS were anyway going to play dirty, why not PAKISTAN?
The US always stated that the warlords in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal areas can be bought by the highest bidder. They forgot the mention that they too could be bought !
PAKSITAN – MONEY FLOW AFTER 9/11
The lobbyists not only got the name of Pakistan and ISI out of the final 9-11 commission report, it also helped Pakistan win sympathy of 75 US Congressmen as part of its strategy to guard Islamabad’s interests in Washington. It was a matter of time before the money came in.
Dr Farrukh Saleem, noted economist in Pakistan commented: “ The US Department of Defense has been depositing a cool $100 million a month in our treasury for the last four years. The US forgave $3 billion worth of bilateral debt, and then convinced the Paris Club lender nations to reschedule a large portion of $38 billion bilateral debt on easy terms. Add it all up – and thank OSAMA – for the total bonanza is going to be a colossal $40 BILLION.”
No wonder, in Pakistan, Al Qaeda is known as Al Faeda.
Faeda in Urdu means = BENEFIT.
Readers are free to draw their conclusions from this.
I only wonder, why Colin Powell is a friend of Pakistan (forget the military liking the military – is there a money trail, I wonder?)
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USA - SKELETONS IN THE CLOSET?
NOT AT ALL, IT WAS FOR A GOOD CAUSE - WHY SHY AWAY FROM THEM ?!!
Zbigniew Brzezinski: "What was more important in the world view of history? The Taliban or the fall of the Soviet empire? A few stirred up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?"
Senator Orrin Hatch: "It was worth it. Those were very important, pivotal matters that played an important role in the downfall of the Soviet Union."
Osama bin Laden was the creation of Saudi Intelligence (Prince Turki) and CIA.
Dr. Azzam and al-Zawahari had fought for the CIA in Lebanon and Palestine.
Moro Islamic Liberation Front (milf) was funded by Al Qaeda and trained by ISI. These were Islamists in southern Philippines. You would expect USA to take good care of this overwhelmingly Christian island. But its eyes were locked on to Soviet demise and so "anything went". CIA cover flights had flown 200 MILF mujahidden from Chittagong (BANGLADESH) to Karachi (PAKISTAN), in the garb of special flights for HAJ pilgrims to fight in Afghanistan.
Small contingent of US Special Forces helped ISI airlift Pakistani mujahidden to GEORGIA anad adjoining ARMENIA. Some jihadis were also transferred by boat from TURKMENISTAN to SOUTHERN DAGESTAN from where they traversed to CHECHNYA. These were also favourite arms supply routes for the ISI and the CIA.
While Pakistan and Al Qaeda were focussed on creating an Islamic Caliphate, the US need not have worried about as Brzezinski said " A FEW STIRRED UP MUSLIMS" !!
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Post 9/11 a radical Al Qaeda cleric lunched at the Pentagon - its interesting what we are fed in the name of what is right.
The chief sponsor of Al-Qaeda, the Saudis are getting a whopping US $ 60 BILLION arms deal from the US in what is being sold as another right - to counter IRAN. The House of Saud is responsible for funding and creating Taliban and setting up madrassas based on wahabbi doctrine (from where Taliban and al-Qaeda draw irs foot soldiers from) - and it gets rewarded. So does Pakistan get rewarded by the US. And we are told - IT'S RIGHT :).
PERSONAL OPINION:
Ambassador Roemer is guilty of letting Pakistan’s ISI scot free. However it is my personal opinion that he may perhaps have been a patriotic American and not necessarily a Pakistan sympathizer. Be that as it may, it did India (and the world) no good.
A few transcripts of Roemer’s views and you will understand what I am saying.
In Washington Post article (excerpts) - Transcript - Rice's testimony on 9/11 :
KEAN: Congressman Roemer?
ROEMER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome, Dr. Rice. And I just want to say to you you've made it through 2 1/2 hours so far with only Governor Thompson to go. And if you'd like a break of five minutes, I'd be happy to yield you some of Governor Thompson's time.
(LAUGHTER)
Dr. Rice, you have said in your statement, which I find very interesting, "The terrorists were at war with us, but we were not at war with them."
Across several administrations of both parties, the response was insufficient. And tragically, for all the language of war spoken before September 11th, this country simply was not on a war footing.
You're the national security advisor to the president of the United States. The buck may stop with the president; the buck certainly goes directly through you as the principal advisor to the president on these issues.
And it really seems to me that there were failures and mistakes, structural problems, all kinds of issues here leading up to September 11th that could have and should have been done better.
Doesn't that beg that there should have been more accountability? That there should have been a resignation or two? That there should have been you or the president saying to the rest of the administration, somehow, somewhere, that this was not done well enough?
RICE: Mr. Roemer, by definition, we didn't have enough information, we didn't have enough protection, because the attack happened -- by definition. And I think we've all asked ourselves, what more could have been done?
I will tell you if we had known that an attack was coming against the United States, that an attack was coming against New York and Washington, we would have moved heaven and earth to stop it.
But you heard the character of the threat report we were getting: something very, very big is going to happen. How do you act on "something very, very big is going to happen" beyond trying to put people on alert? Most of the threat reporting was abroad.
I took an oath, as I've said, to protect...
ROEMER: I've heard it -- I've heard you say this....
RICE: And I take it very seriously. I know that those who attacked us that day -- and attacked us, by the way, because of who we are, no other reason, but for who we are -- that they are the responsible party for the war that they launched against us...
ROEMER: But Dr. Rice...
RICE: ... the attacks that they made, and that our responsibility...
ROEMER: You have said several times...
RICE: ... that our responsibility is to...
ROEMER: You have said several times that your responsibility, being in office for 230 days, was to defend and protect the United States.
RICE: Of course.
ROEMER: You had an opportunity, I think, with Mr. Clarke, who had served a number of presidents going back to the Reagan administration; who you'd decided to keep on in office; who was a pile driver, a bulldozer, so to speak -- but this person who you, in the Woodward interview -- he's the very first name out of your mouth when you suspect that terrorists have attacked us on September the 11th. You say, I think, immediately it was a terrorist attack; get Dick Clarke, the terrorist guy.
Even before you mentioned Tenet and Rumsfeld's names, "Get Dick Clarke."
Why don't you get Dick Clarke to brief the president before 9/11? Here is one of the consummate experts that never has the opportunity to brief the president of the United States on one of the most lethal, dynamic and agile threats to the United States of America.
Why don't you use this asset? Why doesn't the president ask to meet with Dick Clarke?
RICE: Well, the president was meeting with his director of central intelligence. And Dick Clarke is a very, very fine counterterrorism expert -- and that's why I kept him on.
And what I wanted Dick Clarke to do was to manage the crisis for us and help us develop a new strategy. And I can guarantee you, when we had that new strategy in place, the president -- who was asking for it and wondering what was happening to it -- was going to be in a position to engage it fully.
The fact is that what Dick Clarke recommended to us, as he has said, would not have prevented 9/11. I actually would say that not only would it have not prevented 9/11, but if we had done everything on that list, we would have actually been off in the wrong direction about the importance that we needed to attach to a new policy for Afghanistan and a new policy for Pakistan.
Because even though Dick is a very fine counterterrorism expert, he was not a specialist on Afghanistan. That's why I brought somebody in who really understood Afghanistan. He was not a specialist on Pakistan. That's why I brought somebody in to deal with Pakistan. He had some very good ideas. We acted on them.
Dick Clarke -- let me just step back for a second and say we had a very -- we had a very good relationship.
ROEMER: Yes. I'd appreciate it if you could be very concise here, so I can get to some more issues.
RICE: But all that he needed -- all that he needed to do was to say, "I need time to brief the president on something." But...
ROEMER: I think he did say that. Dr. Rice, in a private interview to us he said he asked to brief the president...
RICE: Well, I have to say -- I have to say, Mr. Roemer, to my recollection...
ROEMER: You say he didn't.
RICE: ... Dick Clarke never asked me to brief the president on counterterrorism. He did brief the president later on cybersecurity, in July, but he, to my recollection, never asked.
And my senior directors have an open door to come and say, "I think the president needs to do this. I think the president needs to do that. He needs to make this phone call. He needs to hear this briefing." It's not hard to get done.
But I just think that...
ROEMER: Let me ask you a question. You just said that the intelligence coming in indicated a big, big, big threat. Something was going to happen very soon and be potentially catastrophic.
I don't understand, given the big threat, why the big principals don't get together. The principals meet 33 times in seven months, on Iraq, on the Middle East, on missile defense, China, on Russia. Not once do the principals ever sit down -- you, in your job description as the national security advisor, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, the president of the United States -- and meet solely on terrorism to discuss in the spring and the summer, when these threats are coming in, when you've known since the transition that al Qaeda cells are in the United States, when, as the PDB said on August, bin Laden determined to attack the United States.
Why don't the principals at that point say, "Let's all talk about this, let's get the biggest people together in our government and discuss what this threat is and try to get our bureaucracies responding to it"?
RICE: Once again, on the August 6th memorandum to the president, this was not threat-reporting about what was about to happen. This was an analytic piece that stood back and answered questions from the president.
But as to the principals meetings...
ROEMER: It has six or seven things in it, Dr. Rice, including the Ressam case when he attacked the United States in the millennium.
RICE: Yes, these are his...
ROEMER: Has the FBI saying that they think that there are conditions.
RICE: No, it does not have the FBI saying that they think that there are conditions. It has the FBI saying that they observed some suspicious activity. That was checked out with the FBI.
ROEMER: That is equal to what might be...
RICE: No.
ROEMER: ... conditions for an attack.
RICE: Mr. Roemer, Mr. Roemer, threat reporting...
ROEMER: Would you say, Dr. Rice, that we should make that PDB a public document...
RICE: Mr. Roemer...
ROEMER: ... so we can have this conversation?
RICE: Mr. Roemer, threat reporting is: "We believe that something is going to happen here and at this time, under these circumstances." This was not threat reporting.
ROEMER: Well, actionable intelligence, Dr. Rice, is when you have the place, time and date. The threat reporting saying the United States is going to be attacked should trigger the principals getting together to say we're going to do something about this, I would think.
RICE: Mr. Roemer, let's be very clear. The PDB does not say the United States is going to be attacked. It says bin Laden would like to attack the United States. I don't think you, frankly, had to have that report to know that bin Laden would like to attack the United States.
ROEMER: So why aren't you doing something about that earlier than August 6th?
(APPLAUSE)
RICE: The threat reporting to which we could respond was in June and July about threats abroad. What we tried to do for -- just because people said you cannot rule out an attack on the United States, was to have the domestic agencies and the FBI together to just pulse them and have them be on alert.
ROEMER: I agree with that.
RICE: But there was nothing that suggested there was going to be a threat...
ROEMER: I agree with that.
RICE: ... to the United States.
ROEMER: I agree with that.
So, Dr. Rice, let's say that the FBI is the key here. You say that the FBI was tasked with trying to find out what the domestic threat was.
We have done thousands of interviews here at the 9/11 Commission. We've gone through literally millions of pieces of paper. To date, we have found nobody -- nobody at the FBI who knows anything about a tasking of field offices.
We have talked to the director at the time of the FBI during this threat period, Mr. Pickard. He says he did not tell the field offices to do this.
And we have talked to the special agents in charge. They don't have any recollection of receiving a notice of threat.
Nothing went down the chain to the FBI field offices on spiking of information, on knowledge of al Qaeda in the country, and still, the FBI doesn't do anything.
Isn't that some of the responsibility of the national security advisor?
RICE: The responsibility for the FBI to do what it was asked was the FBI's responsibility. Now, I...
ROEMER: You don't think there's any responsibility back to the advisor to the president...
RICE: I believe that the responsibility -- again, the crisis management here was done by the CSG. They tasked these things. If there was any reason to believe that I needed to do something or that Andy Card needed to do something, I would have been expected to be asked to do it. We were not asked to do it. In fact, as I've...
ROEMER: But don't you ask somebody to do it? You're not asking somebody to do it. Why wouldn't you initiate that?
RICE: Mr. Roemer, I was responding to the threat spike and to where the information was. The information was about what might happen in the Persian Gulf, what might happen in Israel, what might happen in North Africa. We responded to that, and we responded vigorously.
Now, the structure...
ROEMER: Dr. Rice, let me ask you...
RICE: ... of the FBI, you will get into next week.
ROEMER: You've been helpful to us on that -- on your recommendation.
KEAN: Last question, Congressman.
ROEMER: Last question, Dr. Rice, talking about responses.
Mr. Clarke writes you a memo on September the 4th, where he lays out his frustration that the military is not doing enough, that the CIA is not pushing as hard enough in their agency. And he says we should not wait until the day that hundreds of Americans lay dead in the streets due to a terrorist attack and we think there could have been something more we could do.
Seven days prior to September the 11th, he writes this to you.
What's your reaction to that at the time, and what's your response to that at the time?
RICE: Just one final point I didn't quite complete. I, of course, did understand that the attorney general needed to know what was going on, and I asked that he take the briefing and then ask that he be briefed.
Because, again, there was nothing demonstrating or showing that something was coming in the United States. If there had been something, we would have acted on it.
ROEMER: I think we should make this document public, Dr. Rice. Would you support making the August 6th PDB public?
RICE: The August 6th PDB has been available to you. You are describing it. And the August 6th PDB was a response to questions asked by the president, not a warning document.
ROEMER: Why wouldn't it be made public then?
RICE: Now, as to -- I think you know the sensitivity of presidential decision memoranda. And I think you know the great lengths to which we have gone to make it possible for this commission to view documents that are not generally -- I don't know if they've ever been -- made available in quite this way.
Now, as to what Dick Clarke said on September 4th, that was not a premonition, nor a warning. What that memorandum was, as I was getting ready to go into the September 4th principals meeting to review the NSPD and to approve the new NSPD, what it was a warning to me that the bureaucracies would try to undermine it.
Dick goes into great and emotional detail about the long history of how DOD has never been responsive, how the CIA has never been responsive, about how the Predator has gotten hung up because the CIA doesn't really want to fly it.
And he says, if you don't fight through this bureaucracy -- he says, at one point, "They're going to all sign on to this NSPD because they won't want to be associated -- they won't want to say they don't want to eliminate the threat of al Qaeda." He says, "But, in effect, you have to go in there and push them, because we'll all wonder about the day when thousands of Americans" and so forth and so on.
So that's what this document is. It's not a warning document. It's not a -- all of us had this fear.
I think that the chairman mentioned that I said this in an interview, that we would hope not to get to that day. But it would not be appropriate or correct to characterize what Dick wrote to me on September 4th as a warning of an impending attack. What he was doing was, I think, trying to buck me up, so that when I went into this principals meeting, I was sufficiently on guard against the kind of bureaucratic inertia that he had fought all of his life.
ROEMER: What is a warning, if August 6th isn't and September 4th isn't, to you?
RICE: Well, August 6th is most certainly an historical document that says, "Here's how you might think about al Qaeda." A warning is when you have something that suggests that an attack is impending.
And we did not have, on the United States, threat information that was, in any way, specific enough to suggest that something was coming in the United States.
The September 4th memo, as I've said to you, was a warning to me not to get dragged down by the bureaucracy, not a warning about September 11th.
ROEMER: Thank you, Dr. Rice.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
KEAN: Thank you, Congressman, very, very much.
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In another discussion :
KWAME HOLMAN: Commissioner Tim Roemer said a good deal of information about Khalid sheik Mohammed was known months before the 9/11 attacks. Roemer asked the panel of FBI And CIA Witnesses how that information was shared.
TIMOTHY ROEMER: According to the staff report .KSM was widely known to be planning some kind of an operation against the United States. The staff statement says, quote, many were even aware that he had been preparing operatives to go to the United States as reported by a CIA source in June of 2001. What did the CIA specifically do with that type of threat coming in from KSM, who is at the top of the rendition list, who is widely known to have associated with these terrorists and been involved in different activities, and he's sending people to the United States to do an operation. How would you prioritize that? What happened to this?
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Be that as it may, the bottom line is this. US is plying Pakistan with Billions which it uses against India. And Timothy Roeman is urging India to pay Billions to the US for its planes, arms, nuclear plants.
To rub salt to wound, he was part of 9/11 commission that gave a clean chit to Pakistan and ISI. And also ensured US agent David Coleman Headley remains out of harm's way (de-facto Pakistan too remains out of harm's way).
Friday, September 17, 2010
INDIA - VISION 2020
2020 - status quo scenario
Pakistan’s population has grown to 220 million in 2020, 80% of children coming out from madrassas spewing venom on US, Israel and India. Poverty, climate change and militancy have taken firm grip with the military ruling either directly or indirectly.
Gilgit and northern areas have become a district in Pakistan and China military presence is fixed. Gwadar port has become a Chinese Navy docking point.
With above, Pakistan will with impunity engage in terrorism inside India knowing fully well that India has been finally surrounded by Chinese forces and will not be able to do much. And Pakistan will up the ante across the length and breadth of India, bleeding the economic progress and reducing the Indian elephant into a cancerous carcass exacerbated by incompetent, pliant and corrupt politicians too busy to look at the large picture.
If the above scenario is not acceptable to us, then one has to act today – so that in future our children have a better and safer India to live in.
2020 - the way forward
Today, Pakistan is not a country but a piece of land ruled by the military. PERIOD !
While India looks at cracks in Pakistan based on religious divisions (sunni, ahmediya, shia etc) or entho-linguistic division (Sindhi, Punjabi, Balochi, Pushtun) – it has overlooked a major crack inside Pakistan that can be exploited. India has been trying to weakly exploit the ethno-liguistic divisions in Pakistan but different PMs and Home Ministers of India have had differences of opinion on the policy driven by what they deemed “we can live in peaceful co-existence”. How do you live in peace when the vast majority of Pakistani population is fed a daily diet of hatred -which enslaves people to this ideology which is then exploited by the army through its various arms including terrorist groups under its wings?
Hence, Paksitan is a bane to the civilized world as it exists today. The people of Pakistan are like any other people around the world – if they are well educated, well rounded individuals. But Pakistan today, is a basket case of terrorism, spewing cheap foot soldiers dreaming of creating Khorasan and starting wars over the world through Ghazwatul Hind.
Read Ghazwatul Hind before proceeding further by clicking on the link.
The biggest crack Pakistan has is Gini co-efficient. The mix of wealth and the organized poverty it is leading to. More poverty = more terrorist foot soldiers. Wealth and land is in the hands of 1000 or so feudal lords and their extended family. Such is their clout that they are the politicians, the judges, the senior bureaucrats. Justice system for the poor simply do not exist and this alienation too is exploited by the terrorists.
Gini Co-efficient:
A Gini Coefficient of 0 would indicate equal income for all earners. A Gini Coefficient of 1 would mean that one person had all the income and nobody else had any. Thus, a lower Gini Coefficient indicates more equitable distribution of wealth in a society, while higher a Gini Coefficient means that wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few people. Sometimes, the Gini Coefficient is multiplied by 100 and expressed as a percentage between 0 and 100 ('Gini Index').
According to a US State Department report, released in 2006, the Gini Coefficient for Pakistan is 68.0 Such high rates are deemed good for revolutions.
The single most devastating factor for increased income and wealth inequalities in Pakistan remains the regressive tax system. Incidence of tax on the poor in the last 10 years has increased substantially (by about 35 per cent), while the rich are paying almost no direct tax on their colossal income and wealth. A study conducted by the Centre for Research on Poverty and Income Distribution (CRPID), 63 per cent of poor in Pakistan fall in the category of 'transitory poor'. The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has also admitted in its annual reports that the standard definition of 'transitory poor' includes those households that are below the poverty line for most of the time, but not always, during a defined period.
The remaining 32 per cent and five per cent of the population that subsist below the poverty line are 'chronic' and 'extremely poor', respectively. 'Chronic' and 'extremely' poor are those households that are below the poverty line all the time during a defined period. Similarly, on the other side, 13 per cent and 21 per cent of total non-poor (above the poverty line) are classified as 'transitory vulnerable' and 'transitory non-poor', respectively.
This portrays an alarming situation, as more and more people are moving from the 'transitory' category to the 'chronic category', courtesy inequitable distribution of income and wealth, monopoly over assets and regressive tax policies.
Ayman Al Zawahari is not wrong when he calls on the poor of Pakistan to start the revolution against this feudal class. They have done precious little during the floods, and most likely siphoned off millions of aid dollars into their overseas slush funds. It is strange how the short term goals of Indian intelligence and Al-Qaeda are similar – mainly overthrow of Pakistan Army and its feudal class. That is where our goals merge and end.
India has spectacularly failed to rally these poor peasants into an insurgency group tackling the rich feudal lords. Islam does not lend itself to Maoist philosophy, however right against wrong through Quran was not exploited. India has seen Maoist insurgencies in swathes of land where this income distribution is at its worst.
Click to read leftist view emanating from within Pakistan
That being said, it is a question of liquidating 1000+ soft targets in Pakistan to bring about social anarchy – much to the glee of Al-Qaeda. Let super powers fret whether Al-Qaeda will be able to exploit this and get their hands on nukes. India should not be worried about this.
Shaking the ground below the US / EU:
As long as the situation remains under the control of Pakistan Army, no Western nation will come to India’s aid to the rot it faces on its western border. Only if the situation appears to slip from the grasp of Pakistan Army will these countries wake up and dust off contingency plans that were prepared a while back. It is India’s duty to bring in social anarchy inside Pakistan without a single missile being fired from this side and to let the West sweat as Pakistan Army loses grip over Pakistan.
The flood would have shown Indian military planners the devastation it can cause to 1/5 of land mass of Pakistan. It knows what non-military vice grip it can hold over Pakistan. Time to open the tap towards social anarchy and leading to liquidation to over 1000+ feudal landlords to be blamed on rising peasant resentment and exploitation.
At the same time, India knows if there is Mumbai 2 – it will have to act, notwithstanding Peter Bergen’s version. But then India will be acting on Pakistan’s time (or even on US time – David Headley was an US asset) . India knows Mumbai 2 will happen – is waiting to happen.
Question is - Do we let another Mumbai 2 happen – assuming the best vigilance can stop 96 out of 100 attempts ( a fairy tale – but even assume this to be true) – 4 will never be detected. But do we wait for this to happen on their time when they are ready?
Integration of PoK:
Or dare I write here, we make Mumbai 2 happen on our time, on our terms. Its so easy to run an operation inside Pakistan against India through contacts inside Afghanistan. Any of the groups will be eager for shahadat. I am willing to extend here and hope that the next Mumbai 2 be known to us – so that we act and achieve a goal. The goal is not to eliminate terrorist camps – but to take over PoK and integrate it with India.
Chinese interest:
However, we must let Chinese interest remain – let the Karakoram highway be there and allow movement of oil & gas into China. The leverage of the road opening will be directly linked to Chinese behaviour on our border. If the Chinese are quiet, the road remains open. But the road will not allow Chinese arms to come to Pakistan – that is clear. It’s a one way energy corridor for China, be it oil or gas grid. But it will pass through Indian Kashmir – and yes token transit costs that can be swapped with Indian tourists going to Kailash Mansarovar.
Iran & Gilgit:
Iran will not have forgotten the brutality with which Pakistan, then under Pervez Musharraf joined hands with Osama bin Laden to kill local Shias of Gilgit and bring in hordes of Sunnis to settle down to have a better ratio skewed towards to Sunnis. India on liberating, PoK must ensure that these Punjabi Sunnis return to their lands in Pakistan and India allows opening of a consular office of Iran in Gilgit. We must return the Zahedan favour.
In one shot, India will have locked China & Pakistan in a game that will be based on equality and based on mutual respect. Paksitan will greatly feel the pinch of all water originating regions falling into India – the Indus water treaty notwithstanding. Climate change can be blamed for man-made disasters too – to keep Pakistan guessing.
If we are able to pull this off, 2020 will see a better neighbourhood that is based on hard geopolitics and leverages.
Pakistan’s population has grown to 220 million in 2020, 80% of children coming out from madrassas spewing venom on US, Israel and India. Poverty, climate change and militancy have taken firm grip with the military ruling either directly or indirectly.
Gilgit and northern areas have become a district in Pakistan and China military presence is fixed. Gwadar port has become a Chinese Navy docking point.
With above, Pakistan will with impunity engage in terrorism inside India knowing fully well that India has been finally surrounded by Chinese forces and will not be able to do much. And Pakistan will up the ante across the length and breadth of India, bleeding the economic progress and reducing the Indian elephant into a cancerous carcass exacerbated by incompetent, pliant and corrupt politicians too busy to look at the large picture.
If the above scenario is not acceptable to us, then one has to act today – so that in future our children have a better and safer India to live in.
2020 - the way forward
Today, Pakistan is not a country but a piece of land ruled by the military. PERIOD !
While India looks at cracks in Pakistan based on religious divisions (sunni, ahmediya, shia etc) or entho-linguistic division (Sindhi, Punjabi, Balochi, Pushtun) – it has overlooked a major crack inside Pakistan that can be exploited. India has been trying to weakly exploit the ethno-liguistic divisions in Pakistan but different PMs and Home Ministers of India have had differences of opinion on the policy driven by what they deemed “we can live in peaceful co-existence”. How do you live in peace when the vast majority of Pakistani population is fed a daily diet of hatred -which enslaves people to this ideology which is then exploited by the army through its various arms including terrorist groups under its wings?
Hence, Paksitan is a bane to the civilized world as it exists today. The people of Pakistan are like any other people around the world – if they are well educated, well rounded individuals. But Pakistan today, is a basket case of terrorism, spewing cheap foot soldiers dreaming of creating Khorasan and starting wars over the world through Ghazwatul Hind.
Read Ghazwatul Hind before proceeding further by clicking on the link.
The biggest crack Pakistan has is Gini co-efficient. The mix of wealth and the organized poverty it is leading to. More poverty = more terrorist foot soldiers. Wealth and land is in the hands of 1000 or so feudal lords and their extended family. Such is their clout that they are the politicians, the judges, the senior bureaucrats. Justice system for the poor simply do not exist and this alienation too is exploited by the terrorists.
Gini Co-efficient:
A Gini Coefficient of 0 would indicate equal income for all earners. A Gini Coefficient of 1 would mean that one person had all the income and nobody else had any. Thus, a lower Gini Coefficient indicates more equitable distribution of wealth in a society, while higher a Gini Coefficient means that wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few people. Sometimes, the Gini Coefficient is multiplied by 100 and expressed as a percentage between 0 and 100 ('Gini Index').
According to a US State Department report, released in 2006, the Gini Coefficient for Pakistan is 68.0 Such high rates are deemed good for revolutions.
The single most devastating factor for increased income and wealth inequalities in Pakistan remains the regressive tax system. Incidence of tax on the poor in the last 10 years has increased substantially (by about 35 per cent), while the rich are paying almost no direct tax on their colossal income and wealth. A study conducted by the Centre for Research on Poverty and Income Distribution (CRPID), 63 per cent of poor in Pakistan fall in the category of 'transitory poor'. The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has also admitted in its annual reports that the standard definition of 'transitory poor' includes those households that are below the poverty line for most of the time, but not always, during a defined period.
The remaining 32 per cent and five per cent of the population that subsist below the poverty line are 'chronic' and 'extremely poor', respectively. 'Chronic' and 'extremely' poor are those households that are below the poverty line all the time during a defined period. Similarly, on the other side, 13 per cent and 21 per cent of total non-poor (above the poverty line) are classified as 'transitory vulnerable' and 'transitory non-poor', respectively.
This portrays an alarming situation, as more and more people are moving from the 'transitory' category to the 'chronic category', courtesy inequitable distribution of income and wealth, monopoly over assets and regressive tax policies.
Ayman Al Zawahari is not wrong when he calls on the poor of Pakistan to start the revolution against this feudal class. They have done precious little during the floods, and most likely siphoned off millions of aid dollars into their overseas slush funds. It is strange how the short term goals of Indian intelligence and Al-Qaeda are similar – mainly overthrow of Pakistan Army and its feudal class. That is where our goals merge and end.
India has spectacularly failed to rally these poor peasants into an insurgency group tackling the rich feudal lords. Islam does not lend itself to Maoist philosophy, however right against wrong through Quran was not exploited. India has seen Maoist insurgencies in swathes of land where this income distribution is at its worst.
Click to read leftist view emanating from within Pakistan
That being said, it is a question of liquidating 1000+ soft targets in Pakistan to bring about social anarchy – much to the glee of Al-Qaeda. Let super powers fret whether Al-Qaeda will be able to exploit this and get their hands on nukes. India should not be worried about this.
Shaking the ground below the US / EU:
As long as the situation remains under the control of Pakistan Army, no Western nation will come to India’s aid to the rot it faces on its western border. Only if the situation appears to slip from the grasp of Pakistan Army will these countries wake up and dust off contingency plans that were prepared a while back. It is India’s duty to bring in social anarchy inside Pakistan without a single missile being fired from this side and to let the West sweat as Pakistan Army loses grip over Pakistan.
The flood would have shown Indian military planners the devastation it can cause to 1/5 of land mass of Pakistan. It knows what non-military vice grip it can hold over Pakistan. Time to open the tap towards social anarchy and leading to liquidation to over 1000+ feudal landlords to be blamed on rising peasant resentment and exploitation.
At the same time, India knows if there is Mumbai 2 – it will have to act, notwithstanding Peter Bergen’s version. But then India will be acting on Pakistan’s time (or even on US time – David Headley was an US asset) . India knows Mumbai 2 will happen – is waiting to happen.
Question is - Do we let another Mumbai 2 happen – assuming the best vigilance can stop 96 out of 100 attempts ( a fairy tale – but even assume this to be true) – 4 will never be detected. But do we wait for this to happen on their time when they are ready?
Integration of PoK:
Or dare I write here, we make Mumbai 2 happen on our time, on our terms. Its so easy to run an operation inside Pakistan against India through contacts inside Afghanistan. Any of the groups will be eager for shahadat. I am willing to extend here and hope that the next Mumbai 2 be known to us – so that we act and achieve a goal. The goal is not to eliminate terrorist camps – but to take over PoK and integrate it with India.
Chinese interest:
However, we must let Chinese interest remain – let the Karakoram highway be there and allow movement of oil & gas into China. The leverage of the road opening will be directly linked to Chinese behaviour on our border. If the Chinese are quiet, the road remains open. But the road will not allow Chinese arms to come to Pakistan – that is clear. It’s a one way energy corridor for China, be it oil or gas grid. But it will pass through Indian Kashmir – and yes token transit costs that can be swapped with Indian tourists going to Kailash Mansarovar.
Iran & Gilgit:
Iran will not have forgotten the brutality with which Pakistan, then under Pervez Musharraf joined hands with Osama bin Laden to kill local Shias of Gilgit and bring in hordes of Sunnis to settle down to have a better ratio skewed towards to Sunnis. India on liberating, PoK must ensure that these Punjabi Sunnis return to their lands in Pakistan and India allows opening of a consular office of Iran in Gilgit. We must return the Zahedan favour.
In one shot, India will have locked China & Pakistan in a game that will be based on equality and based on mutual respect. Paksitan will greatly feel the pinch of all water originating regions falling into India – the Indus water treaty notwithstanding. Climate change can be blamed for man-made disasters too – to keep Pakistan guessing.
If we are able to pull this off, 2020 will see a better neighbourhood that is based on hard geopolitics and leverages.
Friday, September 10, 2010
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
CHINA - HOW TO DEAL WITH IT - PART 1
The Chinese because of their short stature and shorter eyes always suffered an inferiority complex when standing in front of burly Americans or Pathans or even Punjabi officers from India. That is why they will go to any lengths to get a chair to make their short men be equal to their Indian counterpart while taking pictures. The Chinese men are rumored to have one of the shortest ***** and this makes them a centre of ridicule in campuses around the world - which they counter by showing skills in martial arts - but then most Chinese students are not good at it. On a macro level, this complex together with xenophobia makes the Chinese very nervous to the aims of its adversaries. It reacts by probing the relative strength and probes more if the country is silent. It encircles, plies the enemies of its adversaries with arms and ammunition, builds large buildings on loans from unstable banks creating a property bubble, and large ships to showcase its might in S China seas and later on in Indian ocean. Its navy is nothing compared to even the Japanese navy today, it will take China 10 more years to be a blue water navy. The recent positioning of 11,000 troops in Gilgit, if true, is manifestation of their desire to protect its core interest - and an inability from India to do anything about it. Karakoram highway is lifeblood of southwest China to warm waters of Gwadar. Pakistan wants it to integrate this region directly into Pakistan. Musharraf together with Osama bin Laden crushed the Shias of Gilgit Baltistan when he was in charge of the region by using militants belonging to Sunni - wahabbi doctrine.The routine incursions into India is the same tactics China has used for centuries - to poke and see, and poke some more and if required go in for a short swift localized war to psychologically humiliate a country.
However, what India should and can do will be explored in Part 2. Here in Part 1 - it is important to understand China. This article by Stratfor captures it best. Please read it carefully.
THE STRATFOR ARTICLE:
Contemporary China is an island. Although it is not surrounded by water (which borders only its eastern flank), China is bordered by terrain that is difficult to traverse in virtually any direction. There are some areas that can be traversed, but to understand China we must begin by visualizing the mountains, jungles and wastelands that enclose it. This outer shell both contains and protects China.
Internally, China must be divided into two parts: the Chinese heartland and the non-Chinese buffer regions surrounding it. There is a line in China called the 15-inch isohyet, east of which more than 15 inches of rain fall each year and west of which the annual rainfall is less. The vast majority of Chinese live east and south of this line, in the region known as Han China — the Chinese heartland. The region is home to the ethnic Han, whom the world regards as the Chinese. It is important to understand that more than a billion people live in this area, which is about half the size of the United States.
The Chinese heartland is divided into two parts, northern and southern, which in turn is represented by two main dialects, Mandarin in the north and Cantonese in the south. These dialects share a writing system but are almost mutually incomprehensible when spoken. The Chinese heartland is defined by two major rivers — the Yellow River in the north and the Yangtze in the South, along with a third lesser river in the south, the Pearl. The heartland is China’s agricultural region. However — and this is the single most important fact about China — it has about one-third the arable land per person as the rest of the world. This pressure has defined modern Chinese history — both in terms of living with it and trying to move beyond it.
A ring of non-Han regions surround this heartland — Tibet, Xinjiang province (home of the Muslim Uighurs), Inner Mongolia and Manchuria (a historical name given to the region north of North Korea that now consists of the Chinese provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning).
These are the buffer regions that historically have been under Chinese rule when China was strong and have broken away when China was weak. Today, there is a great deal of Han settlement in these regions, a cause of friction, but today Han China is strong.
These are also the regions where the historical threat to China originated. Han China is a region full of rivers and rain. It is therefore a land of farmers and merchants. The surrounding areas are the land of nomads and horsemen. In the 13th century, the Mongols under Ghenghis Khan invaded and occupied parts of Han China until the 15th century, when the Han reasserted their authority. Following this period, Chinese strategy remained constant: the slow and systematic assertion of control over these outer regions in order to protect the Han from incursions by nomadic cavalry. This imperative drove Chinese foreign policy. In spite of the imbalance of population, or perhaps because of it, China saw itself as extremely vulnerable to military forces moving from the north and west. Defending a massed population of farmers against these forces was difficult. The easiest solution, the one the Chinese chose, was to reverse the order and impose themselves on their potential conquerors.
There was another reason. Aside from providing buffers, these possessions provided defensible borders. With borderlands under their control, China was strongly anchored. Let’s consider the nature of China’s border sequentially, starting in the east along the southern border with Vietnam and Myanmar. The border with Vietnam is the only border readily traversable by large armies or mass commerce. In fact, as recently as 1979, China and Vietnam fought a short border war, and there have been points in history when China has dominated Vietnam. However, the rest of the southern border where Yunnan province meets Laos and Myanmar is hilly jungle, difficult to traverse, with almost no major roads. Significant movement across this border is almost impossible. During World War II, the United States struggled to build the Burma Road to reach Yunnan and supply Chiang Kai-shek’s forces. The effort was so difficult it became legendary. China is SECURE in this region.
Hkakabo Razi, almost 19,000 feet high, marks the border between China, Myanmar and India. At this point, China’s southwestern frontier begins, anchored in the Himalayas. More precisely, it is where Tibet, controlled by China, borders India and the two Himalayan states, Nepal and Bhutan. This border runs in a long arc past Pakistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, ending at Pik Pobedy, a 25,000-foot mountain marking the border with China, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. It is possible to pass through this border region with difficulty; historically, parts of it have been accessible as a merchant route. On the whole, however, the Himalayas are a barrier to substantial trade and certainly to military forces. India and China — and China and much of Central Asia — are sealed off from each other.
The one EXCEPTION is the next section of the border, with Kazakhstan. This area is passable but has relatively little transport. As the transport expands, this will be the main route between China and the rest of Eurasia. It is the one land bridge from the Chinese island that can be used. The problem is distance. The border with Kazakhstan is almost a thousand miles from the first tier of Han Chinese provinces, and the route passes through sparsely populated Muslim territory, a region that has posed significant challenges to China. Importantly, the Silk Road from China ran through Xinjiang and Kazakhstan on its way west. It was the only way to go.
There is, finally, the long northern border first with Mongolia and then with Russia, running to the Pacific. This border is certainly passable. Indeed, the only successful invasion of China took place when Mongol horsemen attacked from Mongolia, occupying a good deal of Han China. China’s buffers — Inner Mongolia and Manchuria — have protected Han China from other attacks. The Chinese have not attacked northward for two reasons. First, there has historically not been much there worth taking. Second, north-south access is difficult. Russia has two rail lines running from the west to the Pacific — the famous Trans-Siberian Railroad (TSR) and the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM), which connects those two cities and ties into the TSR. Aside from that, there is no east-west ground transportation linking Russia. There is also no north-south transportation. What appears accessible really is not.
The area in Russia that is most accessible from China is the region bordering the Pacific, the area from Russia’s Vladivostok to Blagoveschensk. This region has reasonable transport, population and advantages for both sides. If there were ever a conflict between China and Russia, this is the area that would be at the center of it. It is also the area, as you move southward and away from the Pacific, that borders on the Korean Peninsula, the area of China’s last major military conflict.
Then there is the Pacific coast, which has numerous harbors and has historically had substantial coastal trade. It is interesting to note that, apart from the attempt by the Mongols to invade Japan, and a single major maritime thrust by China into the Indian Ocean — primarily for trade and abandoned fairly quickly — China has never been a maritime power. Prior to the 19th century, it had not faced enemies capable of posing a naval threat and, as a result, it had little interest in spending large sums of money on building a navy.
China, when it controls Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Manchuria, is an insulated state. Han China has only one point of potential friction, in the southeast with Vietnam. Other than that it is surrounded by non-Han buffer regions that it has politically integrated into China. There is a second friction point in eastern Manchuria, touching on Siberia and Korea. There is, finally, a single opening into the rest of Eurasia on the Xinjiang-Kazakh border.
China’s most vulnerable point, since the arrival of Europeans in the western Pacific in the mid-19th century, has been its coast. Apart from European encroachments in which commercial interests were backed up by limited force, China suffered its most significant military encounter — and long and miserable war — after the Japanese invaded and occupied large parts of eastern China along with Manchuria in the 1930s. Despite the mismatch in military power and more than a dozen years of war, Japan still could not force the Chinese government to capitulate. The simple fact was that Han China, given its size and population density, could not be subdued. No matter how many victories the Japanese won, they could not decisively defeat the Chinese.
China is hard to invade; given its size and population, it is even harder to occupy. This also makes it hard for the Chinese to invade others — not utterly impossible, but quite difficult. Containing a fifth of the world’s population, China can wall itself off from the world, as it did prior to the United Kingdom’s forced entry in the 19th century and as it did under Mao Zedong. All of this means China is a great power, but one that has to behave very differently from other great powers.
China’s Geopolitical Imperatives
China has three overriding geopolitical imperatives:
1. Maintain internal unity in the Han Chinese regions.
2. Maintain control of the buffer regions.
3. Protect the coast from foreign encroachment.
Maintaining Internal Unity
China is more enclosed than any other great power. The size of its population, coupled with its secure frontiers and relative abundance of resources, allows it to develop with minimal intercourse with the rest of the world, if it chooses. During the Maoist period, for example, China became an insular nation, driven primarily by internal interests and considerations, indifferent or hostile to the rest of the world. It was secure and, except for its involvement in the Korean War and its efforts to pacify restless buffer regions, was relatively peaceful. Internally, however, China underwent periodic, self-generated chaos.
The weakness of insularity for China is poverty. Given the ratio of arable land to population, a self-enclosed China is a poor China. Its population is so poor that economic development driven by domestic demand, no matter how limited it might be, is impossible. However, an isolated China is easier to manage by a central government. The great danger in China is a rupture within the Han Chinese nation. If that happens, if the central government weakens, the peripheral regions will spin off, and China will then be vulnerable to foreigners taking advantage of Chinese weakness.
For China to prosper, it has to engage in trade, exporting silk, silver and industrial products. Historically, land trade has not posed a problem for China. The Silk Road allowed foreign influences to come into China and the resulting wealth created a degree of instability. On the whole, however, it could be managed.
The dynamic of industrialism changed both the geography of Chinese trade and its consequences. In the mid-19th century, when Europe — led by the British —compelled the Chinese government to give trading concessions to the British, it opened a new chapter in Chinese history. For the first time, the Pacific coast was the interface with the world, not Central Asia. This in turn massively destabilized China.
As trade between China and the world intensified, the Chinese who were engaged in trading increased their wealth dramatically. Those in the coastal provinces of China, the region most deeply involved in trading, became relatively wealthy while the Chinese in the interior (not the buffer regions, which were always poor, but the non-coastal provinces of Han China) remained poor, subsistence farmers.
The central government was balanced between the divergent interests of coastal China and the interior. The coastal region, particularly its newly enriched leadership, had an interest in maintaining and intensifying relations with European powers and with the United States and Japan. The more intense the trade, the wealthier the coastal leadership and the greater the disparity between the regions. In due course, foreigners allied with Chinese coastal merchants and politicians became more powerful in the coastal regions than the central government. The worst geopolitical nightmare of China came true. China fragmented, breaking into regions, some increasingly under the control of foreigners, particularly foreign commercial interests. Beijing lost control over the country. It should be noted that this was the context in which Japan invaded China, which made Japan’s failure to defeat China all the more extraordinary.
Mao’s goal was threefold, Marxism aside. FIRST, he wanted to recentralize China — re-establishing Beijing as China’s capital and political center. SECOND, he wanted to end the massive inequality between the coastal region and the rest of China. THIRD, he wanted to expel the foreigners from China. In short, he wanted to recreate a united Han China.
Mao first attempted to trigger an uprising in the cities in 1927 but failed because the coalition of Chinese interests and foreign powers was impossible to break. Instead he took the Long March to the interior of China, where he raised a massive peasant army that was both nationalist and egalitarian and, in 1948, returned to the coastal region and expelled the foreigners. Mao re-enclosed China, recentralized it, and accepted the inevitable result. China became equal but extraordinarily poor.
China’s primary geopolitical issue is this: For it to develop it must engage in international trade. If it does that, it must use its coastal cities as an interface with the world. When that happens, the coastal cities and the surrounding region become increasingly wealthy. The influence of foreigners over this region increases and the interests of foreigners and the coastal Chinese converge and begin competing with the interests of the central government. China is constantly challenged by the problem of how to avoid this outcome while engaging in international trade.
Controlling the Buffer Regions
Prior to Mao’s rise, with the central government weakened and Han China engaged simultaneously in war with Japan, civil war and regionalism, the center was not holding. While Manchuria was under Chinese control, Outer Mongolia was under Soviet control and extending its influence (Soviet power more than Marxist ideology) into Inner Mongolia, and Tibet and Xinjiang were drifting away.
At the same time that Mao was fighting the civil war, he was also laying the groundwork for taking control of the buffer regions. Interestingly, his first moves were designed to block Soviet interests in these regions. Mao moved to consolidate Chinese communist control over Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, effectively leveraging the Soviets out. Xinjiang had been under the control of a regional warlord, Yang Zengxin. Shortly after the end of the civil war, Mao moved to force him out and take over Xinjiang. Finally, in 1950 Mao moved against Tibet, which he secured in 1951.
The rapid-fire consolidation of the buffer regions gave Mao what all Chinese emperors sought, a China secure from invasion. Controlling Tibet meant that India could not move across the Himalayas and establish a secure base of operations on the Tibetan Plateau. There could be skirmishes in the Himalayas, but no one could push a multidivisional force across those mountains and keep it supplied. So long as Tibet was in Chinese hands, the Indians could live on the other side of the moon. Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Manchuria buffered China from the Soviet Union. Mao was more of a geopolitician than an ideologue. He did not trust the Soviets. With the buffer states in hand, they would not invade China. The distances, the poor transportation and the lack of resources meant that any Soviet invasion would run into massive logistical problems well before it reached Han China’s populated regions, and become bogged down — just as the Japanese had.
China had geopolitical issues with Vietnam, Pakistan and Afghanistan, neighboring states with which it shared a border, but the real problem for China would come in Manchuria or, more precisely, Korea. The Soviets, more than the Chinese, had encouraged a North Korean invasion of South Korea. It is difficult to speculate on Joseph Stalin’s thinking, but it worked out superbly for him. The United States intervened, defeated the North Korean Army and drove to the Yalu, the river border with China. The Chinese, seeing the well-armed and well-trained American force surge to its borders, decided that it had to block its advance and attacked south. What resulted was three years of brutal warfare in which the Chinese lost about a million men. From the Soviet point of view, fighting between China and the United States was the best thing imaginable. It demonstrated was the sensitivity of the Chinese to any encroachment on their borderlands, their buffers, which represent the foundation of their national security.
Protecting the Coast
With the buffer regions under control, the coast is China’s most vulnerable point, but its vulnerability is not to invasion. Given the Japanese example, no one has the interest or forces to try to invade mainland China, supply an army there and hope to win. Invasion is not a meaningful threat.
The coastal threat to China is economic, though most would not call it a threat. As we saw, the British intrusion into China culminated in the destabilization of the country, the virtual collapse of the central government and civil war. It was all caused by prosperity. Mao had solved the problem by sealing the coast of China off to any real development and liquidating the class that had collaborated with foreign business. For Mao, xenophobia was integral to national policy. He saw foreign presence as undermining the stability of China. He preferred impoverished unity to chaos. He also understood that, given China’s population and geography, it could defend itself against potential attackers without an advanced military-industrial complex.
His successor, Deng Xiaoping, was heir to a powerful state in control of China and the buffer regions. He also felt under tremendous pressure politically to improve living standards, and he undoubtedly understood that technological gaps would eventually threaten Chinese national security. He took a historic gamble. He knew that China’s economy could not develop on its own. China’s internal demand for goods was too weak because the Chinese were too poor.
Deng gambled that he could open China to foreign investment and reorient the Chinese economy away from agriculture and heavy industry and toward export-oriented industries. By doing so he would increase living standards, import technology and train China’s workforce. He was betting that the effort this time would not destabilize China, create massive tensions between the prosperous coastal provinces and the interior, foster regionalism, or put the coastal regions under foreign control. Deng believed he could avoid all that by maintaining a strong central government, based on a loyal army and Communist Party apparatus. His successors have struggled to maintain that loyalty to the state and not to foreign investors, who can make individuals wealthy. That is the bet that is currently being played out.
China’s Geopolitics and its Current Position
From a political and military standpoint, China has achieved its strategic goals. The buffer regions are intact and China faces no threat in Eurasia. It sees a Western attempt to force China out of Tibet as an attempt to undermine Chinese national security. For China, however, Tibet is a minor irritant; China has no possible intention of leaving Tibet, the Tibetans cannot rise up and win, and no one is about to invade the region. Similarly, the Uighur Muslims represent an irritant in Xinjiang and not a direct threat. The Russians have no interest in or capability of invading China, and the Korean Peninsula does not represent a direct threat to the Chinese, certainly not one they could not handle.
The greatest military threat to China comes from the United States Navy. The Chinese have become highly dependent on seaborne trade and the United States Navy is in a position to blockade China’s ports if it wished. Should the United States do that, it would cripple China. Therefore, China’s primary military interest is to make such a blockade impossible.
It would take several generations for China to build a surface navy able to compete with the U.S. Navy. Simply training naval aviators to conduct carrier-based operations effectively would take decades — at least until these trainees became admirals and captains. And this does not take into account the time it would take to build an aircraft carrier and carrier-capable aircraft and master the intricacies of carrier operations.
For China, the primary mission is to raise the price of a blockade so high that the Americans would not attempt it. The means for that would be land- and submarine-based anti-ship missiles. The strategic solution is for China to construct a missile force sufficiently dispersed that it cannot be suppressed by the United States and with sufficient range to engage the United States at substantial distance, as far as the central Pacific.
This missile force would have to be able to identify and track potential targets to be effective. Therefore, if the Chinese are to pursue this strategy, they must also develop a space-based maritime reconnaissance system. These are the technologies the Chinese are focusing on. Anti-ship missiles and space-based systems, including anti-satellite systems designed to blind the Americans, represent China’s military counter to its only significant military threat.
China could also use those missiles to blockade Taiwan by interdicting ships going to and from the island. But the Chinese do not have the naval ability to land a sufficient amphibious force and sustain it in ground combat. Nor do they have the ability to establish air superiority over the Taiwan Strait. China might be able to harass Taiwan but it will not invade it. Missiles, satellites and submarines constitute China’s naval strategy.
For China, the primary problem posed by Taiwan is naval. Taiwan is positioned in such a way that it can readily serve as an air and naval base that could isolate maritime movement between the South China Sea and the East China Sea, effectively leaving the northern Chinese coast and Shanghai isolated. When you consider the Ryukyu Islands that stretch from Taiwan to Japan and add them to this mix, a non-naval power could blockade the northern Chinese coast if it held Taiwan.
Taiwan would not be important to China unless it became actively hostile or allied with or occupied by a hostile power such as the United States. If that happened, its geographical position would pose an extremely serious problem for China. Taiwan is also an important symbolic issue to China and a way to rally nationalism. Although Taiwan presents no immediate threat, it does pose potential dangers that China cannot ignore.
There is one area in which China is being modestly expansionist — Central Asia and particularly Kazakhstan. Traditionally a route for trading silk, Kazakhstan is now an area that can produce energy, badly needed by China’s industry. The Chinese have been active in developing commercial relations with Kazakhstan and in developing roads into Kazakhstan. These roads are opening a trading route that allows oil to flow in one direction and industrial goods in another.
In doing this, the Chinese are challenging Russia’s sphere of influence in the former Soviet Union. The Russians have been prepared to tolerate increased Chinese economic activity in the region while being wary of China’s turning into a political power. Kazakhstan has been European Russia’s historical buffer state against Chinese expansion and it has been under Russian domination. This region must be watched carefully. If Russia begins to feel that China is becoming too assertive in this region, it could respond militarily to Chinese economic power.
Chinese-Russian relations have historically been complex. Before World War II, the Soviets attempted to manipulate Chinese politics. After World War II, relations between the Soviet Union and China were never as good as some thought, and sometimes these relations became directly hostile, as in 1968, when Russian and Chinese troops fought a battle along the Ussuri River. The Russians have historically feared a Chinese move into their Pacific maritime provinces. The Chinese have feared a Russian move into Manchuria and beyond.
Neither of these things happened because the logistical challenges involved were enormous and neither had an appetite for the risk of fighting the other. We would think that this caution will prevail under current circumstances. However, growing Chinese influence in Kazakhstan is not a minor matter for the Russians, who may choose to contest China there. If they do, and it becomes a serious matter, the secondary pressure point for both sides would be in the Pacific region, complicated by proximity to Korea.
But these are only theoretical possibilities. The threat of an American blockade on China’s coast, of using Taiwan to isolate northern China, of conflict over Kazakhstan — all are possibilities that the Chinese must take into account as they plan for the worst. In fact, the United States does not have an interest in blockading China and the Chinese and Russians are not going to escalate competition over Kazakhstan.
China does not have a military-based geopolitical problem. It is in its traditional strong position, physically secure as it holds its buffer regions. It has achieved it three strategic imperatives. What is most vulnerable at this point is its first imperative: the unity of Han China. That is not threatened militarily. Rather, the threat to it is economic.
Economic Dimensions of Chinese Geopolitics
The problem of China, rooted in geopolitics, is economic and it presents itself in two ways. The first is simple. China has an export-oriented economy. It is in a position of dependency. No matter how large its currency reserves or how advanced its technology or how cheap its labor force, China depends on the willingness and ability of other countries to import its goods — as well as the ability to physically ship them. Any disruption of this flow has a direct effect on the Chinese economy.
The primary reason other countries buy Chinese goods is price. They are cheaper because of wage differentials. Should China lose that advantage to other nations or for other reasons, its ability to export would decline. Today, for example, as energy prices rise, the cost of production rises and the relative importance of the wage differential decreases. At a certain point, as China’s trading partners see it, the value of Chinese imports relative to the political cost of closing down their factories will shift.
And all of this is outside of China’s control. China cannot control the world price of oil. It can cut into its cash reserves to subsidize those prices for manufacturers but that would essentially be transferring money back to consuming nations. It can control rising wages by imposing price controls, but that would cause internal instability. The center of gravity of China is that it has become the industrial workshop of the world and, as such, it is totally dependent on the world to keep buying its goods rather than someone else’s goods.
There are other issues for China, ranging from a dysfunctional financial system to farmland being taken out of production for factories. These are all significant and add to the story. But in geopolitics we look for the center of gravity, and for China the center of gravity is that the more effective it becomes at exporting, the more of a hostage it becomes to its customers. Some observers have warned that China might take its money out of American banks. Unlikely, but assume it did. What would China do without the United States as a customer?
China has placed itself in a position where it has to keep its customers happy. It struggles against this reality daily, but the fact is that the rest of the world is far less dependent on China’s exports than China is dependent on the rest of the world.
Which brings us to the second, even more serious part of China’s economic problem. The first geopolitical imperative of China is to ensure the unity of Han China. The third is to protect the coast. Deng’s bet was that he could open the coast without disrupting the unity of Han China. As in the 19th century, the coastal region has become wealthy. The interior has remained extraordinarily poor. The coastal region is deeply enmeshed in the global economy. The interior is not. Beijing is once again balancing between the coast and the interior.
The interests of the coastal region and the interests of importers and investors are closely tied to each other. Beijing’s interest is in maintaining internal stability. As pressures grow, it will seek to increase its control of the political and economic life of the coast. The interest of the interior is to have money transferred to it from the coast. The interest of the coast is to hold on to its money. Beijing will try to satisfy both, without letting China break apart and without resorting to Mao’s draconian measures. But the worse the international economic situation becomes the less demand there will be for Chinese products and the less room there will be for China to maneuver.
The second part of the problem derives from the first. Assuming that the global economy does not decline now, it will at some point. When it does, and Chinese exports fall dramatically, Beijing will have to balance between an interior hungry for money and a coastal region that is hurting badly. It is important to remember that something like 900 million Chinese live in the interior while only about 400 million live in the coastal region. When it comes to balancing power, the interior is the physical threat to the regime while the coast destabilizes the distribution of wealth. The interior has mass on its side. The coast has the international trading system on its. Emperors have stumbled over less.
Conclusion
Geopolitics is based on geography and politics. Politics is built on two foundations: military and economic. The two interact and support each other but are ultimately distinct. For China, securing its buffer regions generally eliminates military problems. What problems are left for China are long-term issues concerning northeastern Manchuria and the balance of power in the Pacific.
China’s geopolitical problem is economic. Its first geopolitical imperative, maintain the unity of Han China, and its third, protect the coast, are both more deeply affected by economic considerations than military ones. Its internal and external political problems flow from economics. The dramatic economic development of the last generation has been ruthlessly geographic. This development has benefited the coast and left the interior — the vast majority of Chinese — behind. It has also left China vulnerable to global economic forces that it cannot control and cannot accommodate. This is not new in Chinese history, but its usual resolution is in regionalism and the weakening of the central government. Deng’s gamble is being played out by his successors. He dealt the hand. They have to play it.
The question on the table is whether the economic basis of China is a foundation or a balancing act. If the former, it can last a long time. If the latter, everyone falls down eventually. There appears to be little evidence that it is a foundation. It excludes most of the Chinese from the game, people who are making less than $100 a month. That is a balancing act and it threatens the first geopolitical imperative of China: protecting the unity of the Han Chinese.
However, what India should and can do will be explored in Part 2. Here in Part 1 - it is important to understand China. This article by Stratfor captures it best. Please read it carefully.
THE STRATFOR ARTICLE:
Contemporary China is an island. Although it is not surrounded by water (which borders only its eastern flank), China is bordered by terrain that is difficult to traverse in virtually any direction. There are some areas that can be traversed, but to understand China we must begin by visualizing the mountains, jungles and wastelands that enclose it. This outer shell both contains and protects China.
Internally, China must be divided into two parts: the Chinese heartland and the non-Chinese buffer regions surrounding it. There is a line in China called the 15-inch isohyet, east of which more than 15 inches of rain fall each year and west of which the annual rainfall is less. The vast majority of Chinese live east and south of this line, in the region known as Han China — the Chinese heartland. The region is home to the ethnic Han, whom the world regards as the Chinese. It is important to understand that more than a billion people live in this area, which is about half the size of the United States.
The Chinese heartland is divided into two parts, northern and southern, which in turn is represented by two main dialects, Mandarin in the north and Cantonese in the south. These dialects share a writing system but are almost mutually incomprehensible when spoken. The Chinese heartland is defined by two major rivers — the Yellow River in the north and the Yangtze in the South, along with a third lesser river in the south, the Pearl. The heartland is China’s agricultural region. However — and this is the single most important fact about China — it has about one-third the arable land per person as the rest of the world. This pressure has defined modern Chinese history — both in terms of living with it and trying to move beyond it.
A ring of non-Han regions surround this heartland — Tibet, Xinjiang province (home of the Muslim Uighurs), Inner Mongolia and Manchuria (a historical name given to the region north of North Korea that now consists of the Chinese provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning).
These are the buffer regions that historically have been under Chinese rule when China was strong and have broken away when China was weak. Today, there is a great deal of Han settlement in these regions, a cause of friction, but today Han China is strong.
These are also the regions where the historical threat to China originated. Han China is a region full of rivers and rain. It is therefore a land of farmers and merchants. The surrounding areas are the land of nomads and horsemen. In the 13th century, the Mongols under Ghenghis Khan invaded and occupied parts of Han China until the 15th century, when the Han reasserted their authority. Following this period, Chinese strategy remained constant: the slow and systematic assertion of control over these outer regions in order to protect the Han from incursions by nomadic cavalry. This imperative drove Chinese foreign policy. In spite of the imbalance of population, or perhaps because of it, China saw itself as extremely vulnerable to military forces moving from the north and west. Defending a massed population of farmers against these forces was difficult. The easiest solution, the one the Chinese chose, was to reverse the order and impose themselves on their potential conquerors.
There was another reason. Aside from providing buffers, these possessions provided defensible borders. With borderlands under their control, China was strongly anchored. Let’s consider the nature of China’s border sequentially, starting in the east along the southern border with Vietnam and Myanmar. The border with Vietnam is the only border readily traversable by large armies or mass commerce. In fact, as recently as 1979, China and Vietnam fought a short border war, and there have been points in history when China has dominated Vietnam. However, the rest of the southern border where Yunnan province meets Laos and Myanmar is hilly jungle, difficult to traverse, with almost no major roads. Significant movement across this border is almost impossible. During World War II, the United States struggled to build the Burma Road to reach Yunnan and supply Chiang Kai-shek’s forces. The effort was so difficult it became legendary. China is SECURE in this region.
Hkakabo Razi, almost 19,000 feet high, marks the border between China, Myanmar and India. At this point, China’s southwestern frontier begins, anchored in the Himalayas. More precisely, it is where Tibet, controlled by China, borders India and the two Himalayan states, Nepal and Bhutan. This border runs in a long arc past Pakistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, ending at Pik Pobedy, a 25,000-foot mountain marking the border with China, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. It is possible to pass through this border region with difficulty; historically, parts of it have been accessible as a merchant route. On the whole, however, the Himalayas are a barrier to substantial trade and certainly to military forces. India and China — and China and much of Central Asia — are sealed off from each other.
The one EXCEPTION is the next section of the border, with Kazakhstan. This area is passable but has relatively little transport. As the transport expands, this will be the main route between China and the rest of Eurasia. It is the one land bridge from the Chinese island that can be used. The problem is distance. The border with Kazakhstan is almost a thousand miles from the first tier of Han Chinese provinces, and the route passes through sparsely populated Muslim territory, a region that has posed significant challenges to China. Importantly, the Silk Road from China ran through Xinjiang and Kazakhstan on its way west. It was the only way to go.
There is, finally, the long northern border first with Mongolia and then with Russia, running to the Pacific. This border is certainly passable. Indeed, the only successful invasion of China took place when Mongol horsemen attacked from Mongolia, occupying a good deal of Han China. China’s buffers — Inner Mongolia and Manchuria — have protected Han China from other attacks. The Chinese have not attacked northward for two reasons. First, there has historically not been much there worth taking. Second, north-south access is difficult. Russia has two rail lines running from the west to the Pacific — the famous Trans-Siberian Railroad (TSR) and the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM), which connects those two cities and ties into the TSR. Aside from that, there is no east-west ground transportation linking Russia. There is also no north-south transportation. What appears accessible really is not.
The area in Russia that is most accessible from China is the region bordering the Pacific, the area from Russia’s Vladivostok to Blagoveschensk. This region has reasonable transport, population and advantages for both sides. If there were ever a conflict between China and Russia, this is the area that would be at the center of it. It is also the area, as you move southward and away from the Pacific, that borders on the Korean Peninsula, the area of China’s last major military conflict.
Then there is the Pacific coast, which has numerous harbors and has historically had substantial coastal trade. It is interesting to note that, apart from the attempt by the Mongols to invade Japan, and a single major maritime thrust by China into the Indian Ocean — primarily for trade and abandoned fairly quickly — China has never been a maritime power. Prior to the 19th century, it had not faced enemies capable of posing a naval threat and, as a result, it had little interest in spending large sums of money on building a navy.
China, when it controls Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Manchuria, is an insulated state. Han China has only one point of potential friction, in the southeast with Vietnam. Other than that it is surrounded by non-Han buffer regions that it has politically integrated into China. There is a second friction point in eastern Manchuria, touching on Siberia and Korea. There is, finally, a single opening into the rest of Eurasia on the Xinjiang-Kazakh border.
China’s most vulnerable point, since the arrival of Europeans in the western Pacific in the mid-19th century, has been its coast. Apart from European encroachments in which commercial interests were backed up by limited force, China suffered its most significant military encounter — and long and miserable war — after the Japanese invaded and occupied large parts of eastern China along with Manchuria in the 1930s. Despite the mismatch in military power and more than a dozen years of war, Japan still could not force the Chinese government to capitulate. The simple fact was that Han China, given its size and population density, could not be subdued. No matter how many victories the Japanese won, they could not decisively defeat the Chinese.
China is hard to invade; given its size and population, it is even harder to occupy. This also makes it hard for the Chinese to invade others — not utterly impossible, but quite difficult. Containing a fifth of the world’s population, China can wall itself off from the world, as it did prior to the United Kingdom’s forced entry in the 19th century and as it did under Mao Zedong. All of this means China is a great power, but one that has to behave very differently from other great powers.
China’s Geopolitical Imperatives
China has three overriding geopolitical imperatives:
1. Maintain internal unity in the Han Chinese regions.
2. Maintain control of the buffer regions.
3. Protect the coast from foreign encroachment.
Maintaining Internal Unity
China is more enclosed than any other great power. The size of its population, coupled with its secure frontiers and relative abundance of resources, allows it to develop with minimal intercourse with the rest of the world, if it chooses. During the Maoist period, for example, China became an insular nation, driven primarily by internal interests and considerations, indifferent or hostile to the rest of the world. It was secure and, except for its involvement in the Korean War and its efforts to pacify restless buffer regions, was relatively peaceful. Internally, however, China underwent periodic, self-generated chaos.
The weakness of insularity for China is poverty. Given the ratio of arable land to population, a self-enclosed China is a poor China. Its population is so poor that economic development driven by domestic demand, no matter how limited it might be, is impossible. However, an isolated China is easier to manage by a central government. The great danger in China is a rupture within the Han Chinese nation. If that happens, if the central government weakens, the peripheral regions will spin off, and China will then be vulnerable to foreigners taking advantage of Chinese weakness.
For China to prosper, it has to engage in trade, exporting silk, silver and industrial products. Historically, land trade has not posed a problem for China. The Silk Road allowed foreign influences to come into China and the resulting wealth created a degree of instability. On the whole, however, it could be managed.
The dynamic of industrialism changed both the geography of Chinese trade and its consequences. In the mid-19th century, when Europe — led by the British —compelled the Chinese government to give trading concessions to the British, it opened a new chapter in Chinese history. For the first time, the Pacific coast was the interface with the world, not Central Asia. This in turn massively destabilized China.
As trade between China and the world intensified, the Chinese who were engaged in trading increased their wealth dramatically. Those in the coastal provinces of China, the region most deeply involved in trading, became relatively wealthy while the Chinese in the interior (not the buffer regions, which were always poor, but the non-coastal provinces of Han China) remained poor, subsistence farmers.
The central government was balanced between the divergent interests of coastal China and the interior. The coastal region, particularly its newly enriched leadership, had an interest in maintaining and intensifying relations with European powers and with the United States and Japan. The more intense the trade, the wealthier the coastal leadership and the greater the disparity between the regions. In due course, foreigners allied with Chinese coastal merchants and politicians became more powerful in the coastal regions than the central government. The worst geopolitical nightmare of China came true. China fragmented, breaking into regions, some increasingly under the control of foreigners, particularly foreign commercial interests. Beijing lost control over the country. It should be noted that this was the context in which Japan invaded China, which made Japan’s failure to defeat China all the more extraordinary.
Mao’s goal was threefold, Marxism aside. FIRST, he wanted to recentralize China — re-establishing Beijing as China’s capital and political center. SECOND, he wanted to end the massive inequality between the coastal region and the rest of China. THIRD, he wanted to expel the foreigners from China. In short, he wanted to recreate a united Han China.
Mao first attempted to trigger an uprising in the cities in 1927 but failed because the coalition of Chinese interests and foreign powers was impossible to break. Instead he took the Long March to the interior of China, where he raised a massive peasant army that was both nationalist and egalitarian and, in 1948, returned to the coastal region and expelled the foreigners. Mao re-enclosed China, recentralized it, and accepted the inevitable result. China became equal but extraordinarily poor.
China’s primary geopolitical issue is this: For it to develop it must engage in international trade. If it does that, it must use its coastal cities as an interface with the world. When that happens, the coastal cities and the surrounding region become increasingly wealthy. The influence of foreigners over this region increases and the interests of foreigners and the coastal Chinese converge and begin competing with the interests of the central government. China is constantly challenged by the problem of how to avoid this outcome while engaging in international trade.
Controlling the Buffer Regions
Prior to Mao’s rise, with the central government weakened and Han China engaged simultaneously in war with Japan, civil war and regionalism, the center was not holding. While Manchuria was under Chinese control, Outer Mongolia was under Soviet control and extending its influence (Soviet power more than Marxist ideology) into Inner Mongolia, and Tibet and Xinjiang were drifting away.
At the same time that Mao was fighting the civil war, he was also laying the groundwork for taking control of the buffer regions. Interestingly, his first moves were designed to block Soviet interests in these regions. Mao moved to consolidate Chinese communist control over Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, effectively leveraging the Soviets out. Xinjiang had been under the control of a regional warlord, Yang Zengxin. Shortly after the end of the civil war, Mao moved to force him out and take over Xinjiang. Finally, in 1950 Mao moved against Tibet, which he secured in 1951.
The rapid-fire consolidation of the buffer regions gave Mao what all Chinese emperors sought, a China secure from invasion. Controlling Tibet meant that India could not move across the Himalayas and establish a secure base of operations on the Tibetan Plateau. There could be skirmishes in the Himalayas, but no one could push a multidivisional force across those mountains and keep it supplied. So long as Tibet was in Chinese hands, the Indians could live on the other side of the moon. Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Manchuria buffered China from the Soviet Union. Mao was more of a geopolitician than an ideologue. He did not trust the Soviets. With the buffer states in hand, they would not invade China. The distances, the poor transportation and the lack of resources meant that any Soviet invasion would run into massive logistical problems well before it reached Han China’s populated regions, and become bogged down — just as the Japanese had.
China had geopolitical issues with Vietnam, Pakistan and Afghanistan, neighboring states with which it shared a border, but the real problem for China would come in Manchuria or, more precisely, Korea. The Soviets, more than the Chinese, had encouraged a North Korean invasion of South Korea. It is difficult to speculate on Joseph Stalin’s thinking, but it worked out superbly for him. The United States intervened, defeated the North Korean Army and drove to the Yalu, the river border with China. The Chinese, seeing the well-armed and well-trained American force surge to its borders, decided that it had to block its advance and attacked south. What resulted was three years of brutal warfare in which the Chinese lost about a million men. From the Soviet point of view, fighting between China and the United States was the best thing imaginable. It demonstrated was the sensitivity of the Chinese to any encroachment on their borderlands, their buffers, which represent the foundation of their national security.
Protecting the Coast
With the buffer regions under control, the coast is China’s most vulnerable point, but its vulnerability is not to invasion. Given the Japanese example, no one has the interest or forces to try to invade mainland China, supply an army there and hope to win. Invasion is not a meaningful threat.
The coastal threat to China is economic, though most would not call it a threat. As we saw, the British intrusion into China culminated in the destabilization of the country, the virtual collapse of the central government and civil war. It was all caused by prosperity. Mao had solved the problem by sealing the coast of China off to any real development and liquidating the class that had collaborated with foreign business. For Mao, xenophobia was integral to national policy. He saw foreign presence as undermining the stability of China. He preferred impoverished unity to chaos. He also understood that, given China’s population and geography, it could defend itself against potential attackers without an advanced military-industrial complex.
His successor, Deng Xiaoping, was heir to a powerful state in control of China and the buffer regions. He also felt under tremendous pressure politically to improve living standards, and he undoubtedly understood that technological gaps would eventually threaten Chinese national security. He took a historic gamble. He knew that China’s economy could not develop on its own. China’s internal demand for goods was too weak because the Chinese were too poor.
Deng gambled that he could open China to foreign investment and reorient the Chinese economy away from agriculture and heavy industry and toward export-oriented industries. By doing so he would increase living standards, import technology and train China’s workforce. He was betting that the effort this time would not destabilize China, create massive tensions between the prosperous coastal provinces and the interior, foster regionalism, or put the coastal regions under foreign control. Deng believed he could avoid all that by maintaining a strong central government, based on a loyal army and Communist Party apparatus. His successors have struggled to maintain that loyalty to the state and not to foreign investors, who can make individuals wealthy. That is the bet that is currently being played out.
China’s Geopolitics and its Current Position
From a political and military standpoint, China has achieved its strategic goals. The buffer regions are intact and China faces no threat in Eurasia. It sees a Western attempt to force China out of Tibet as an attempt to undermine Chinese national security. For China, however, Tibet is a minor irritant; China has no possible intention of leaving Tibet, the Tibetans cannot rise up and win, and no one is about to invade the region. Similarly, the Uighur Muslims represent an irritant in Xinjiang and not a direct threat. The Russians have no interest in or capability of invading China, and the Korean Peninsula does not represent a direct threat to the Chinese, certainly not one they could not handle.
The greatest military threat to China comes from the United States Navy. The Chinese have become highly dependent on seaborne trade and the United States Navy is in a position to blockade China’s ports if it wished. Should the United States do that, it would cripple China. Therefore, China’s primary military interest is to make such a blockade impossible.
It would take several generations for China to build a surface navy able to compete with the U.S. Navy. Simply training naval aviators to conduct carrier-based operations effectively would take decades — at least until these trainees became admirals and captains. And this does not take into account the time it would take to build an aircraft carrier and carrier-capable aircraft and master the intricacies of carrier operations.
For China, the primary mission is to raise the price of a blockade so high that the Americans would not attempt it. The means for that would be land- and submarine-based anti-ship missiles. The strategic solution is for China to construct a missile force sufficiently dispersed that it cannot be suppressed by the United States and with sufficient range to engage the United States at substantial distance, as far as the central Pacific.
This missile force would have to be able to identify and track potential targets to be effective. Therefore, if the Chinese are to pursue this strategy, they must also develop a space-based maritime reconnaissance system. These are the technologies the Chinese are focusing on. Anti-ship missiles and space-based systems, including anti-satellite systems designed to blind the Americans, represent China’s military counter to its only significant military threat.
China could also use those missiles to blockade Taiwan by interdicting ships going to and from the island. But the Chinese do not have the naval ability to land a sufficient amphibious force and sustain it in ground combat. Nor do they have the ability to establish air superiority over the Taiwan Strait. China might be able to harass Taiwan but it will not invade it. Missiles, satellites and submarines constitute China’s naval strategy.
For China, the primary problem posed by Taiwan is naval. Taiwan is positioned in such a way that it can readily serve as an air and naval base that could isolate maritime movement between the South China Sea and the East China Sea, effectively leaving the northern Chinese coast and Shanghai isolated. When you consider the Ryukyu Islands that stretch from Taiwan to Japan and add them to this mix, a non-naval power could blockade the northern Chinese coast if it held Taiwan.
Taiwan would not be important to China unless it became actively hostile or allied with or occupied by a hostile power such as the United States. If that happened, its geographical position would pose an extremely serious problem for China. Taiwan is also an important symbolic issue to China and a way to rally nationalism. Although Taiwan presents no immediate threat, it does pose potential dangers that China cannot ignore.
There is one area in which China is being modestly expansionist — Central Asia and particularly Kazakhstan. Traditionally a route for trading silk, Kazakhstan is now an area that can produce energy, badly needed by China’s industry. The Chinese have been active in developing commercial relations with Kazakhstan and in developing roads into Kazakhstan. These roads are opening a trading route that allows oil to flow in one direction and industrial goods in another.
In doing this, the Chinese are challenging Russia’s sphere of influence in the former Soviet Union. The Russians have been prepared to tolerate increased Chinese economic activity in the region while being wary of China’s turning into a political power. Kazakhstan has been European Russia’s historical buffer state against Chinese expansion and it has been under Russian domination. This region must be watched carefully. If Russia begins to feel that China is becoming too assertive in this region, it could respond militarily to Chinese economic power.
Chinese-Russian relations have historically been complex. Before World War II, the Soviets attempted to manipulate Chinese politics. After World War II, relations between the Soviet Union and China were never as good as some thought, and sometimes these relations became directly hostile, as in 1968, when Russian and Chinese troops fought a battle along the Ussuri River. The Russians have historically feared a Chinese move into their Pacific maritime provinces. The Chinese have feared a Russian move into Manchuria and beyond.
Neither of these things happened because the logistical challenges involved were enormous and neither had an appetite for the risk of fighting the other. We would think that this caution will prevail under current circumstances. However, growing Chinese influence in Kazakhstan is not a minor matter for the Russians, who may choose to contest China there. If they do, and it becomes a serious matter, the secondary pressure point for both sides would be in the Pacific region, complicated by proximity to Korea.
But these are only theoretical possibilities. The threat of an American blockade on China’s coast, of using Taiwan to isolate northern China, of conflict over Kazakhstan — all are possibilities that the Chinese must take into account as they plan for the worst. In fact, the United States does not have an interest in blockading China and the Chinese and Russians are not going to escalate competition over Kazakhstan.
China does not have a military-based geopolitical problem. It is in its traditional strong position, physically secure as it holds its buffer regions. It has achieved it three strategic imperatives. What is most vulnerable at this point is its first imperative: the unity of Han China. That is not threatened militarily. Rather, the threat to it is economic.
Economic Dimensions of Chinese Geopolitics
The problem of China, rooted in geopolitics, is economic and it presents itself in two ways. The first is simple. China has an export-oriented economy. It is in a position of dependency. No matter how large its currency reserves or how advanced its technology or how cheap its labor force, China depends on the willingness and ability of other countries to import its goods — as well as the ability to physically ship them. Any disruption of this flow has a direct effect on the Chinese economy.
The primary reason other countries buy Chinese goods is price. They are cheaper because of wage differentials. Should China lose that advantage to other nations or for other reasons, its ability to export would decline. Today, for example, as energy prices rise, the cost of production rises and the relative importance of the wage differential decreases. At a certain point, as China’s trading partners see it, the value of Chinese imports relative to the political cost of closing down their factories will shift.
And all of this is outside of China’s control. China cannot control the world price of oil. It can cut into its cash reserves to subsidize those prices for manufacturers but that would essentially be transferring money back to consuming nations. It can control rising wages by imposing price controls, but that would cause internal instability. The center of gravity of China is that it has become the industrial workshop of the world and, as such, it is totally dependent on the world to keep buying its goods rather than someone else’s goods.
There are other issues for China, ranging from a dysfunctional financial system to farmland being taken out of production for factories. These are all significant and add to the story. But in geopolitics we look for the center of gravity, and for China the center of gravity is that the more effective it becomes at exporting, the more of a hostage it becomes to its customers. Some observers have warned that China might take its money out of American banks. Unlikely, but assume it did. What would China do without the United States as a customer?
China has placed itself in a position where it has to keep its customers happy. It struggles against this reality daily, but the fact is that the rest of the world is far less dependent on China’s exports than China is dependent on the rest of the world.
Which brings us to the second, even more serious part of China’s economic problem. The first geopolitical imperative of China is to ensure the unity of Han China. The third is to protect the coast. Deng’s bet was that he could open the coast without disrupting the unity of Han China. As in the 19th century, the coastal region has become wealthy. The interior has remained extraordinarily poor. The coastal region is deeply enmeshed in the global economy. The interior is not. Beijing is once again balancing between the coast and the interior.
The interests of the coastal region and the interests of importers and investors are closely tied to each other. Beijing’s interest is in maintaining internal stability. As pressures grow, it will seek to increase its control of the political and economic life of the coast. The interest of the interior is to have money transferred to it from the coast. The interest of the coast is to hold on to its money. Beijing will try to satisfy both, without letting China break apart and without resorting to Mao’s draconian measures. But the worse the international economic situation becomes the less demand there will be for Chinese products and the less room there will be for China to maneuver.
The second part of the problem derives from the first. Assuming that the global economy does not decline now, it will at some point. When it does, and Chinese exports fall dramatically, Beijing will have to balance between an interior hungry for money and a coastal region that is hurting badly. It is important to remember that something like 900 million Chinese live in the interior while only about 400 million live in the coastal region. When it comes to balancing power, the interior is the physical threat to the regime while the coast destabilizes the distribution of wealth. The interior has mass on its side. The coast has the international trading system on its. Emperors have stumbled over less.
Conclusion
Geopolitics is based on geography and politics. Politics is built on two foundations: military and economic. The two interact and support each other but are ultimately distinct. For China, securing its buffer regions generally eliminates military problems. What problems are left for China are long-term issues concerning northeastern Manchuria and the balance of power in the Pacific.
China’s geopolitical problem is economic. Its first geopolitical imperative, maintain the unity of Han China, and its third, protect the coast, are both more deeply affected by economic considerations than military ones. Its internal and external political problems flow from economics. The dramatic economic development of the last generation has been ruthlessly geographic. This development has benefited the coast and left the interior — the vast majority of Chinese — behind. It has also left China vulnerable to global economic forces that it cannot control and cannot accommodate. This is not new in Chinese history, but its usual resolution is in regionalism and the weakening of the central government. Deng’s gamble is being played out by his successors. He dealt the hand. They have to play it.
The question on the table is whether the economic basis of China is a foundation or a balancing act. If the former, it can last a long time. If the latter, everyone falls down eventually. There appears to be little evidence that it is a foundation. It excludes most of the Chinese from the game, people who are making less than $100 a month. That is a balancing act and it threatens the first geopolitical imperative of China: protecting the unity of the Han Chinese.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
PAKISTAN - STATE SPONSOR OF TERRORISM
Can someone define what makes a state get the tag "State Sponsor of Terrorism"?
ISI, Pakistan's intelligence agency has been caught red handed with the following - these are documented evidence - some of which are publicly available in Wikileaks. Most of what has come out was already known to every Indian anyway.
a) Funding 26/11 attacks in Mumbai - purchasing boats etc to carry out the attacks.
b) Funding 1000 motorbikes to Haqqani group to carry out suicide attacks inside Afghanistan.
c) Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) runs a training facility in Quetta, and train Pakistani activists from Jamyat-Ul-Talabah and Harakat Islami Kashmir as well as Chechens, Uzbeks, Afghans and Arabs.
d) Pakistan Army SSG Commando - Ilyas Kashmiri goes underground and surfaces as Commando Head of Brigade 313 - the feared unit of Al -Qaeda.
e) A dead Taliban leader in Afghanistan was found to be a Pakistan Army Major but this was covered up by Britain.
It is a matter of time before people in West realize that Al-Qaeda mentorship passed from CIA to ISI and Osama bin Laden (if alive) is just a mere puppet in the hands of ISI. For plausible deniability ISI maintains its links to Al-Qaeda and Taliban thru divisions outside of official divisions.
An interesting article in Indian Express: "CIA watched ISI tap phones, help suicide bombers"
The Article:
=======
Washington's claim that it gave a heads-up to New Delhi on the leaked Af-Pak documents is loaded with irony. For, what these papers show is that Pakistani spy agency ISI supplied suicide bombers in Afghanistan with explosives-strapped motorcycles and listened in on telephone networks to supply them crucial information — all right under the nose of the US intelligence establishment.
In a threat assessment report dated August 27, 2007, one of the many leaked by Wikileaks, the US intelligence establishment admits it has information that all calls made to the largest mobile phone company in Afghanistan, Roshan, are routed through Pakistan.
With a non-existent landline network, most telephone users in Afghanistan — including coalition force members and foreign nationals — are dependent on this mobile network.
“Reporting from February 2007 indicates Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) is currently collecting and databasing all Roshan calls and numbers from Afghanistan. Reportedly, when a Roshan user places a call to any number — either inside or outside Afghanistan — the call is re-routed through Pakistan,” the intelligence report says.
However, no course of action was charted out even though the report went on to say that the ISI is known to share information with Taliban insurgents.
“Elements of the ISI and insurgents have cooperated in the past and it is possible that intercepted cell photo data can be passed to insurgents on a regular basis,” the report says.
While phone-tapping can yield information that can be used by insurgents, there is more evidence in the leaked documents that US was aware of ISI’s direct funding of Taliban insurgents and suicide bombers.
In May 2007, another intelligence report on the activities and plans of the Haqqani network reveals that the US was aware of ISI’s funding of suicide bombers. “On 25 April, 2007, ISI sent 1000 motorcycles to Mawlawi Jalaludin Haqqani for suicide attacks in Khowst and Lowgar Province,” the report says.
Yet another report dated March 2009 — just before Kabul saw stepped up violence — reveals that the US was aware that Pakistan had ordered Taliban fighters to intensify attacks in the Afghan capital.
“Several Taliban commanders leading approximately 100 armed fighters, along with 15 Chechen, have entered Afghanistan, passing through Iran. These have been appointed by Pakistan to conduct attacks, including suicide attacks, in Kabul Province,” the threat report says.
While former ISI chief Hamid Gul has denied that he was involved with the Taliban, US intelligence reports say he attended meetings with the top leadership of the terror organisation in 2006 and instructed them to target coalition soldiers and “make the snow warm in Kabul” with repeated attacks.
A December 2006 report says that Gul procured 50 mines for distribution to Taliban fighters for use against targets in Kabul.
“During this meeting, Gul claimed he dispatched three unidentified individuals to Kabul city to carry out IED attacks during the Eid celebration...reportedly Gul’s final comment to the three individuals was make the snow warm in Kabul, basically telling them to set Kabul aflame,” the report notes.
Another intelligence report reveals that US is aware of an ISI- run training camp in Quetta that is training Taliban fighters.
The report dated August 16, 2006, says that in a meeting in Quetta, which was attended by both Mullah Omar and Osama Bin Laden, instructions were given to six suicide bombers to target different parts of Afghanistan.
“Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) runs a training facility in Quetta, and train Pakistani activists from Jamyat-Ul-Talabah and Harakat Islami Kashmir as well as Chechens, Uzbeks, Afghans and Arabs,” the report says.
In a December 2007 intelligence report, inputs were received that the ISI could possibly be using children to carry out suicide attacks in Kabul and Khost.
“Extremist leaders in Pakistan, in coordination with a Pakistani intelligence agent (ISI), allegedly planned to send three children to conduct suicide attacks in the Afghan cities of Kabul and Khost on or shortly after the Eid ul-Adha holiday on 20 December 2007,” the threat report says.
On Hamid Gul, the last report on his meetings with the Taliban leadership is in January 2009 where he is described as planning operations to get suicide bombers into Afghanistan.
“Hamid Gul encouraged the AAF (Anti Afghan Forces) leaders to focus their operation inside Afghanistan in exchange for the government of Pakistan’s security forces turning a blind eye to the presence of AAF commanders and fighters in Pakistan,” the report says.
========================
In our penchant to blame ISI, we forget it actually reports to Pakistan Army and is headed by a 3 star general - which makes him obligtory to report to the 4 star general in Pakistan Army.
Which means - everything ISI does, has the sanction of Pakistan Army.
Which makes it a state policy of Pakistan.
Hence Pakistan is a state sponsor of terrorism.
But hold your horses - that is not how the real world works. Pakistan Army General Kayani's term has been extended by an unprecedented 3 years. And this is ostensibly been done to please the US - as is winds down its operations in Afghanistan - it needs a General it can rely on.
Hence Pakistan will never become a state sponsor of terror - cause USA will not allow it. USA has its own national interest for which it will do what it feels is right. Fine, but where does that leave India?
India, if it thinks USA will help it against Pakistan, it won't beyond moral boosting words that gather sound bites and looks good in newspapers. Behind it all, USA is plying Pakistan with military hardware it knows will only be used against India. USA / UK will never allow INDIA to have a common border with IRAN.
If India starts looking at its national interest only - US too will bend its knees instead of us always bending over backwards to accomodate the Anglo American empire !!
ISI, Pakistan's intelligence agency has been caught red handed with the following - these are documented evidence - some of which are publicly available in Wikileaks. Most of what has come out was already known to every Indian anyway.
a) Funding 26/11 attacks in Mumbai - purchasing boats etc to carry out the attacks.
b) Funding 1000 motorbikes to Haqqani group to carry out suicide attacks inside Afghanistan.
c) Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) runs a training facility in Quetta, and train Pakistani activists from Jamyat-Ul-Talabah and Harakat Islami Kashmir as well as Chechens, Uzbeks, Afghans and Arabs.
d) Pakistan Army SSG Commando - Ilyas Kashmiri goes underground and surfaces as Commando Head of Brigade 313 - the feared unit of Al -Qaeda.
e) A dead Taliban leader in Afghanistan was found to be a Pakistan Army Major but this was covered up by Britain.
It is a matter of time before people in West realize that Al-Qaeda mentorship passed from CIA to ISI and Osama bin Laden (if alive) is just a mere puppet in the hands of ISI. For plausible deniability ISI maintains its links to Al-Qaeda and Taliban thru divisions outside of official divisions.
An interesting article in Indian Express: "CIA watched ISI tap phones, help suicide bombers"
The Article:
=======
Washington's claim that it gave a heads-up to New Delhi on the leaked Af-Pak documents is loaded with irony. For, what these papers show is that Pakistani spy agency ISI supplied suicide bombers in Afghanistan with explosives-strapped motorcycles and listened in on telephone networks to supply them crucial information — all right under the nose of the US intelligence establishment.
In a threat assessment report dated August 27, 2007, one of the many leaked by Wikileaks, the US intelligence establishment admits it has information that all calls made to the largest mobile phone company in Afghanistan, Roshan, are routed through Pakistan.
With a non-existent landline network, most telephone users in Afghanistan — including coalition force members and foreign nationals — are dependent on this mobile network.
“Reporting from February 2007 indicates Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) is currently collecting and databasing all Roshan calls and numbers from Afghanistan. Reportedly, when a Roshan user places a call to any number — either inside or outside Afghanistan — the call is re-routed through Pakistan,” the intelligence report says.
However, no course of action was charted out even though the report went on to say that the ISI is known to share information with Taliban insurgents.
“Elements of the ISI and insurgents have cooperated in the past and it is possible that intercepted cell photo data can be passed to insurgents on a regular basis,” the report says.
While phone-tapping can yield information that can be used by insurgents, there is more evidence in the leaked documents that US was aware of ISI’s direct funding of Taliban insurgents and suicide bombers.
In May 2007, another intelligence report on the activities and plans of the Haqqani network reveals that the US was aware of ISI’s funding of suicide bombers. “On 25 April, 2007, ISI sent 1000 motorcycles to Mawlawi Jalaludin Haqqani for suicide attacks in Khowst and Lowgar Province,” the report says.
Yet another report dated March 2009 — just before Kabul saw stepped up violence — reveals that the US was aware that Pakistan had ordered Taliban fighters to intensify attacks in the Afghan capital.
“Several Taliban commanders leading approximately 100 armed fighters, along with 15 Chechen, have entered Afghanistan, passing through Iran. These have been appointed by Pakistan to conduct attacks, including suicide attacks, in Kabul Province,” the threat report says.
While former ISI chief Hamid Gul has denied that he was involved with the Taliban, US intelligence reports say he attended meetings with the top leadership of the terror organisation in 2006 and instructed them to target coalition soldiers and “make the snow warm in Kabul” with repeated attacks.
A December 2006 report says that Gul procured 50 mines for distribution to Taliban fighters for use against targets in Kabul.
“During this meeting, Gul claimed he dispatched three unidentified individuals to Kabul city to carry out IED attacks during the Eid celebration...reportedly Gul’s final comment to the three individuals was make the snow warm in Kabul, basically telling them to set Kabul aflame,” the report notes.
Another intelligence report reveals that US is aware of an ISI- run training camp in Quetta that is training Taliban fighters.
The report dated August 16, 2006, says that in a meeting in Quetta, which was attended by both Mullah Omar and Osama Bin Laden, instructions were given to six suicide bombers to target different parts of Afghanistan.
“Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) runs a training facility in Quetta, and train Pakistani activists from Jamyat-Ul-Talabah and Harakat Islami Kashmir as well as Chechens, Uzbeks, Afghans and Arabs,” the report says.
In a December 2007 intelligence report, inputs were received that the ISI could possibly be using children to carry out suicide attacks in Kabul and Khost.
“Extremist leaders in Pakistan, in coordination with a Pakistani intelligence agent (ISI), allegedly planned to send three children to conduct suicide attacks in the Afghan cities of Kabul and Khost on or shortly after the Eid ul-Adha holiday on 20 December 2007,” the threat report says.
On Hamid Gul, the last report on his meetings with the Taliban leadership is in January 2009 where he is described as planning operations to get suicide bombers into Afghanistan.
“Hamid Gul encouraged the AAF (Anti Afghan Forces) leaders to focus their operation inside Afghanistan in exchange for the government of Pakistan’s security forces turning a blind eye to the presence of AAF commanders and fighters in Pakistan,” the report says.
========================
In our penchant to blame ISI, we forget it actually reports to Pakistan Army and is headed by a 3 star general - which makes him obligtory to report to the 4 star general in Pakistan Army.
Which means - everything ISI does, has the sanction of Pakistan Army.
Which makes it a state policy of Pakistan.
Hence Pakistan is a state sponsor of terrorism.
But hold your horses - that is not how the real world works. Pakistan Army General Kayani's term has been extended by an unprecedented 3 years. And this is ostensibly been done to please the US - as is winds down its operations in Afghanistan - it needs a General it can rely on.
Hence Pakistan will never become a state sponsor of terror - cause USA will not allow it. USA has its own national interest for which it will do what it feels is right. Fine, but where does that leave India?
India, if it thinks USA will help it against Pakistan, it won't beyond moral boosting words that gather sound bites and looks good in newspapers. Behind it all, USA is plying Pakistan with military hardware it knows will only be used against India. USA / UK will never allow INDIA to have a common border with IRAN.
If India starts looking at its national interest only - US too will bend its knees instead of us always bending over backwards to accomodate the Anglo American empire !!
Monday, July 5, 2010
I WAS IN S AFRICA FOR THE WORLD CUP - HENCE NO POSTS
I was there for 10 days and caught the following matches:
1) USA - ALGERIA
2) ITALY - SLOVAKIA
3) ARGENTINA - MEXICO
4) BRAZIL - CHILE
It was a fascinating experience for me to mingle and meet with so many fans. Even had wonderful lunch at a Pakistani restaurant - Kashif's where the chef from Karachi himself prepared a meal for me. Good memories to bring back home. Blog after the World Cup gets over !
THE GRAND OLD MAN
THE KING
BRAZIL CHILE MATCH ABOUT TO START
THE MEXICAN FANS
THE SLOVAKIAN FANS
ITALY VS SLOVAKIA MATCH
THE ITALIAN FAN
THE USA FAN
1) USA - ALGERIA
2) ITALY - SLOVAKIA
3) ARGENTINA - MEXICO
4) BRAZIL - CHILE
It was a fascinating experience for me to mingle and meet with so many fans. Even had wonderful lunch at a Pakistani restaurant - Kashif's where the chef from Karachi himself prepared a meal for me. Good memories to bring back home. Blog after the World Cup gets over !
THE GRAND OLD MAN
THE KING
BRAZIL CHILE MATCH ABOUT TO START
THE MEXICAN FANS
THE SLOVAKIAN FANS
ITALY VS SLOVAKIA MATCH
THE ITALIAN FAN
THE USA FAN
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