Riaz Haq writes this data-driven blog to provide information, express his opinions and make comments on many topics. Subjects include personal activities, education, South Asia, South Asian community, regional and international affairs and US politics to financial markets. For investors interested in South Asia, Riaz has another blog called South Asia Investor at http://www.southasiainvestor.com and a YouTube video channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkrIDyFbC9N9evXYb9cA_gQ
What is the importance of the Middle East for the West? Is it energy resources to fuel the industrialized West? Or the key trade and shipping routes passing through the Persian Gulf and the Suez Canal used by ships to sail from Asia to Europe and North America?
Map of Greater Middle East (Morocco to Pakistan)
Why is oil, the most traded commodity, priced and traded in US Dollars? Does oil trade help maintain the US Dollar as the international trade and reserve currency and solidify US control of the global financial system, giving the US a very powerful tool to control the world?
What is the history of West's involvement in the Middle East? Can it be traced back to the fall of the Ottoman Empire in early 20th century?
When did the United States take over where Britain and France left off? Cold War? Iranian leader Mosaddegh's overthrow by CIA? Suez Crisis?
Energy revolution is in full swing in Silicon Valley with widespread use of solar panels, electric vehicles and storage batteries. Like other technologies emerging from Silicon Valley, this energy revolution will spread to the rest of the United States and the world in the next decades. How will it change US policy and posture in the Middle East?
Does the US involvement in the Middle East pose a threat to Pakistan? Is Pakistan next after Iran? Will Pakistan's nuclear weapons help keep Pakistan secure? What economic and other powerful tools does the United States have to put pressure on Pakistan or any other country?
ALKS host Faraz Darvesh discusses these questions with Misbah Azam and Riaz Haq (www.riazhaq.com).
Pakistan has seen more than 10-fold increase in the number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) operating in the country since 911. There is now one NGO per 2000 Pakistanis. A large slice of the billions of dollars in American aid to Pakistan has been funneled through these non-government organizations (NGOs). This has been particularly true since the passage of Kerry-Lugar-Berman aid bill in 2009 that tripled civilian aid to Pakistan from $500 million to $1.5 billion a year. Most of these new NGOs are not likely to survive the planned US aid cuts to Pakistan by the Trump Administration.
NGO Proliferation:
Pakistan has been massively NGO-ized since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, according to data compiled by Pakistan Centre for Philanthropy (PCP), a certification organization for non-government organizations (NGOs) and charity institutions. The number of NGOs has exploded from 10,000-12,000 in 2001 (source: Aga Khan Civil Society Index) to 100,000-150,000 mostly foreign-funded NGOs in 2016 as estimated by PCP.
NGOs Justification:
Why is there one NGO for every 2,000 Pakistanis? The usual justification for NGOs is that these organizations fill the gaps in services left by the state. An obvious example of such an organization is Edhi Foundation.
Edhi Foundation is widely recognized as a domestically funded legitimate NGO that provides badly needed emergency and other critical services in the remotest corners of Pakistan. Anatol Lieven, author of "Pakistan: A Hard Country" wrote the following about Edhi Foundation:
"There is no sight in Pakistan more moving than to visit some dusty, impoverished small town in an arid wasteland, apparently abandoned by God and all sensible men and certainly abandoned by the Pakistani state and its elected representatives - and to see the flag of Edhi Foundation flying over a concrete shack with a telephone, and the only ambulance in town standing in front. Here, if anywhere in Pakistan, lies the truth of human religion and human morality."
There are many many foreign-funded, mostly US-funded, NGOs whose work is not as visible and their funding and activities lack transparency.
US Aid Boost in Pakistan:
The United States decided to increase civilian aid to Pakistan after the 911 attacks. A big part of this aid was funneled through non-government organizations. This was particularly true after Kerry-Lugar-Berman aid bill in 2009 that tripled civilian aid to Pakistan from $500 million to $1.5 billion a year.
Why does the United States choose to funnel aid through NGOs? The answer to this question can be found in the following excerpt from a US State Department document:
"We will reach beyond governments to offer a place at the table to groups and citizens willing to shoulder a fair share of the burden. Our efforts to engage beyond the state begin with outreach to civil society--activists, organizations, congregations, journalists who work through peaceful means to make their countries better. While civil society is varied, many groups have common goals with the United States, and working with civil society be effective and efficient path to advance our foreign policy goals". (DoS, 2010, pp 21-22)
The notable part of this statement is that the NGOs represent an "effective and efficient path to advance our foreign policy goals". These US goals are not necessarily the same as the interests of the countries where these NGOs operate.
Tools of Imperialism?
In "Confessions of an Economic Hitman", author John Perkins has detailed his own experience as an EHM (economic hit man) to control and exploit resources of developing nations for the benefit of major US corporations. Perkins says EHMs like him persuade leaders of target countries to hire their firms to do the projects at highly inflated costs which are financed by the World Bank, USAID and regional development banks. The borrowed money and the natural resources extracted flow to the coffers of US corporations while the developing countries are left under heavy debt. The leaders who refuse to cooperate with EHMs are overthrown or assassinated by "Jackals" (Perkins term for CIA agents). If the jackals fail, the US military invades the countries in defiance to bring them to heel.
Many believe that proliferating western-funded NGOs are the latest tools in America's toolbox described by John Perkins in his book. NGOs are seen as a cheaper alternative to military invasions to achieve desired outcomes in developing countries.
CIA-NGO Collaboration:
In 2011, the US CIA used a Pakistani doctor working with Save the Children NGO to conduct a fake vaccination campaign in KP in search of Usama Bin Laden's whereabouts. This revelation caused a major setback to Pakistan's efforts to eradicate polio and harmed many children who went unvaccinated.
As recently as in 2014, the New York Times reported that USAID Office of Transition Initiatives works with the C.I.A. on hi-tech propaganda and destabilization programs in developing nations.
Professionalization of NGOs:
Well funded NGOs are capitalizing and professionalizing activism. Instead of organizing the masses at the grass-roots level to fight for their interests, NGOs are being accused of using them for their own benefit.
American activist Stephanie McMillan from South Florida describes the process of modern NGO creation in the following words:
"For those of us involved in organizing, there is an eerily familiar pattern: Some atrocity happens, outraged people pour into the streets, and once together, someone announces a meeting to follow up and continue the struggle. At this meeting, several experienced organizers seem to be in charge. These activists open with radical language and offer to provide training and a regular meeting space. They seem to already have a plan figured out, whereas everyone else has barely had time to think about the next step. The activists exude competence, explaining—with diagrams—how to map out potential allies, as they craft a list of specific politicians (or others) to target with protests."
NGO Shake-out:
The lion's share of NGO funding is likely to dry up with the Trump Administration's decision to significantly cut aid to Pakistan. It is likely that many NGOs, particularly those reliant on US funds, will not survive. This will cause a major shake-out in Pakistan's NGO industry. Some of the money will likely still be pumped into the country by the CIA but it is unlikely to make up for the lost aid money.
This will not affect legitimate NGOs like Edhi Foundation which is almost entirely funded by donations in Pakistan by Pakistanis.
Summary:
Pakistan has seen more than 10-fold increase in the number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) operating in the country since 911. There is now one NGO per 2000 Pakistanis. A large slice of billions of dollars in US aid has been funneled through non-government organizations. This was particularly true after Kerry-Lugar-Berman aid bill in 2009 that tripled civilian aid to Pakistan from $500 million to $1.5 billion a year. Most of these new NGOs are not likely to survive the planned US aid cuts to Pakistan by the Trump Administration.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) recently acknowledged the practice of hiring journalists vetted by MI5, the UK intelligence agency, to keep out the "subversives".
The CIA is believed to have driven American investigative reporter Gary Webb to suicide after he exposed the agency's use of drug deals to fund Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
American researcher Joseph Overton has described a spectrum from "more free" to "less free", known as the Overton Window, with regard to the US government intervention in the media.
Here's how American philosopher Noam Chomsky has explained the US establishment's media management strategy: “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum."
It seems that "free speech" in the West is really not so free.
The BBC recently acknowledged its long relationship with the British security establishment that started in 1933. When questions were asked about it, the BBC policy was to "keep head down and stonewall all questions".
Vetting by the MI5 applied to all new BBC staff except "personnel such as charwomen". Since the start of the policy, journalists were always subject to vetting, but a "review in 1983 resulted in about 2,000 posts being removed from the list - including some junior editorial jobs - bringing the total number down to 3,705".
When asked whether any staff are vetted these days, a BBC spokesperson responded:"We do not comment on security issue".
CIA and Media:
In the course of investigating US CIA's support of Contra rebels in Nicaragua, American journalist Gary Webb discovered a drug connection. He found that the CIA was trafficking drugs sold in poor African American neighborhoods to fund Contra rebels war against Nicaragua's Sandinista government in 1980s. Webb published his findings in a 3-part report "The Dark Alliance" carried by his employer San Jose Mercury News.
Webb's report provoked outrage among African Americans for the harm it did by promoting drug addiction in their poor neighborhoods. It became a public relations nightmare for the CIA.
The CIA responded to the crisis by using what Nicholas Dujmovic, a CIA Directorate of Intelligence staffer described as “a ground base of already productive relations with journalists.” The CIA top brass was overjoyed to see the nation's largest newspapers destroy the reputation of Gary Webb that eventually led to his suicide.
Veteran journalist Carl Bernstein, famous for his reporting on Watergate along with Bob Woodward, investigated CIA's use of the American media and wrote a piece describing "How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up". Here's what he said:
"Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were William Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), Henry Luce of Time Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the Louisville Courier‑Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), the Associated Press (AP), United Press International (UPI), Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps‑Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald‑Tribune".
Overton Window:
American researcher Joseph P. Overton said that ideas may range a spectrum from "more free" to "less free" with regard to government intervention. The mainstream media, particularly commercial media, tend to limit the public discourse within the range they define as permissible at any given time. This is done by designing editorial policies.
The Overton window is not static. It is guided by what is seen as vital national interest by the US national security establishment as we saw during the Cold War and subsequently in the "war on terror".
Social Media:
Social media have created new media management challenges for the western security establishment as we saw with Brexit and Trump victory in 2016. It's created an outrage that is likely to result in new social media regulations unless the likes of Facebook and Twitter agree to self-censorship.
There's so much pressure on major social media platforms that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was forced to acknowledge regulation as "inevitable".
"The internet is growing in importance around the world in people's lives and I think that it is inevitable that there will need to be some regulation," said Zuckerberg to a US Congress committee at a recent hearing.
The western security establishment will now make sure that the new social media platforms are tamed to stay within the "Overton Window" just like the legacy electronic and print media.
Summary:
Recent BBC acknowledgement of its staff vetting by British secret service and revelations of CIA's role in American media management have confirmed what American academic Noam Chomsky has been saying for a while: “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum." There are now moves afoot to tame the new social media platform to stay within the "spectrum of acceptable opinion".
Does Lord Meghnad Desai's question "A country of many nations, will India break up" raised in his latest book "The Raisina Model" make any sense? Why would India break up? What are the challenges to India's unity? Is there an identity crisis in India? Is it the power imbalance among Indian states? Is it growing income disparity among peoples and states? Is it religious, ethnic, caste and/or regional fault lines running through the length and breadth of India? Is it beef ban?
Why is Pakistan expelling dozens of foreign-funded NGOs? Is it the fall-out from Save The Children NGO's alleged collusion with the CIA in fake polio vaccination scheme to find Osama Bin Laden? Is it a general concern about the NGOs role in subverting and corrupting society as explained by Stephen Kinzer's book "The Brothers" about John Foster and Alan Dulles? Is it the State Department documents describing US-funded international NGOs as "force multipliers", "partners", "agents of change" and "an efficient path to advance our foreign policy goals"?
Map of India(s) on the eve of British conquest in 1764
How did Democrat Doug Jones' pull off a win in the US Senate race in deep red Alabama? Did the allegations of sexual harassment against Republican Roy Moore play a big role? Or was it the heavy turn out of black voters that overwhelmed the vast majority of white voters (65% of white women, 74% of white men) who voted for Roy Moore? Would the result have been different if more women voted for Moore? Does it save considerable embarrassment for the Senate Republicans to see an openly racist, Islamophobic, homophobic, pedophile Judge Rpy Moore lose in a state in the Deep South?
Viewpoint From Overseas host Faraz Darvesh discusses these questions with Misbah Azam and Riaz Haq (www.riazhaq.com)
It is well-known that Mr. Husain Haqqani, who served as Pakistan's ambassador to the United States from 2008 to 2011, has a long history of opportunism. He has switched loyalties many times since he began his career in Karachi, Pakistan in 1980s.
Does former Ambassador Haqqani's latest Washington Post Op Ed titled "Yes, the Russian ambassador met Trump’s team. So? That’s what we diplomats do" signal yet another shift in his ever-changing loyalties?
Is the Washington Post Op Ed an attempt by Mr. Haqqani to ingratiate himself with President Donald Trump by defending the Trump campaigns' controversial contacts with Russia? Is he doing what his current employer Hudson Institute, a conservative right-wing think tank, expects him to do? Is he also reminding the Trump administration of the valuable services he rendered to the United States while working as Pakistan's ambassador in Washington by confessing that "I had facilitated the presence of large numbers of CIA operatives" in Pakistan?
Haqqani's Shifting Loyalties:
Husain Haqqani began his career in 1980s as General Zia ul Haq's loyalist when he was affiliated with Islami Jamiat Talaba (IJT), a right-wing student group with close ties to the Jamaat-e-Islami, a political party in Pakistan.
On August 21, 1988, Husain Haqqani covered Gen Zia's funeral as coanchor of PTV, the state-run television network. After the funeral, Haqqani spoke with Los Angeles Times correspondent Mark Fineman and said as follows:
"When Zia was alive, they (Zia's supporters) didn't have to come out. In fact, on most recent Fridays, when I went to prayer, my maulvi (Islamic preacher) has been blasting Zia as a phony and un-Islamic....Yesterday (after Zia's death), he was crying. The basic division in our society is between the Islamicists and the secularists, and this crowd today is saying that the highly religious segment of society cannot be ignored now that Zia is gone."
After the death of the general in a fiery air crash, Haqqani joined Prime Minister Sharif's right-leaning Muslim League and served as his press secretary followed by ambassadorship in Sri Lanka.
When Nawaz Sharif lost his job, Husain Haqqani joined left-leaning Pakistan People's Party and became Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's spokesman.
In a piece published in 1999 by Asian Wall Street Journal, Haqqani explained his changing loyalties in the following words: "Over the last three decades, I have alternated between being attracted to and repulsed by political Islam". The fact is that Mr. Haqqani has always been attracted to whoever is in power.
Currently, Haqqani is doing what is expected of him by his bosses at the right-wing Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank funded by the extreme right groups in the United States. Gatestone Institute, an offshoot of the Hudson Institute, is actively engaged in funding and promoting Islamophobia in America.
Washington Post Op Ed:
Ambassador Husain Haqqani has said in his Washington Post Op Ed that "I had facilitated the presence of large numbers of CIA operatives" in Pakistan.
Here's an excerpt from it.
"Among the security establishment’s grievances against me was the charge that I had facilitated the presence of large numbers of CIA operatives who helped track down bin Laden without the knowledge of Pakistan’s army — even though I had acted under the authorization of Pakistan’s elected civilian leaders."
Since the Op Ed claims to tell the world "what diplomats do" as part of their duties representing their nations abroad, it raises the following questions:
1. Is it part of an ambassador's job to send foreign intelligence agents into his or her own country without the knowledge and consent of his country's intelligence folks?
2. Can an ambassador trust that foreign intelligence operatives will only do what they promise in the ambassador's home country? Could it be that Bin Laden hunt was just an excuse to let in "large numbers of CIA operatives "who most likely have a far wider wider agenda, including tracking Pakistan's nuclear assets and spying that could risk Pakistan security?
3. Can an ambassador trust foreign intelligence agents more than his country's intelligence professionals?
4. How can an ambassador make sure that undercover foreign agents unknown to Pakistan's intelligence agencies would stick to doing only what they say they will do?
Husain Haqqani's Grudge:
Since his dismissal as Pakistan's ambassador in Washington, Mr. Husain Haqqani is nursing a grudge against Pakistan that is evident from his "research recommendations" for US policy on Pakistan.
In 2012, barely a year after he was let go as Pakistani ambassador, Mr. Haqqani recommended that the United States "divorce" Pakistan.
For example, in a 2015 Wall Street Journal piece, he questioned "why are we sending this attack helicopter to Pakistan?" The "we" here is noteworthy given that he is currently a citizen of Pakistan. Mr. Haqqani's main worry was that "American weapons will end up being used to fight or menace India".
In 2016, Mr. Haqqani argued against US sales of F-16s to Pakistan and agreed with the Indian lobbyists that the F-16s would be used against India, not for fighting terror as Pakistan said.
Pakistan People's Party's Role:
Pakistan People's Party leaders have rejected Husain Haqqani's claim that he "acted under the authorization of Pakistan’s elected civilian leaders" when he "facilitated the presence of large numbers of CIA operatives" in Pakistan.
The PPP parliamentary leader Mr. Khursheed Shah has denounced Haqqani as a traitor and said “This man is issuing statement in an effort to gain attention of new US administration.”
Summary:
Mr. Husain Haqqani has a long history of changing loyalties. He has often recommended US policy positions that are seen as detrimental to US-Pakistan ties, especially since his 2011 dismissal as Pakistan's ambassador in Washington. He has recently said he "had facilitated the presence of large numbers of CIA operatives" in Pakistan when he served as Pakistani ambassador in Washington from 2008 to 2011. His claim that he did so with Pakistani government's authorization has been rejected by the leaders of the Pakistan People's Party that governed the country at the time.
Here's a video of Riaz Haq rebutting Husain Haqqani:
There continues to be a concerted effort by some western and Indian governments and the mainstream media to demonize the ISI, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency of Pakistan. Some Pakistanis, particularly Pakistani liberals, are also part of this anti-ISI campaign.
To put unrelenting attacks on the ISI in perspective, let's read some excerpts from an interview of ex CIA officer and chief Bin Laden hunter Michael Scheuer on ISI, and watch the following video:
1. ISI is like all other intelligence services--like the Australian service or the American service.
2. ISI works for the interest of their country, not to help other countries.
3. The idea that ISI is a rogue organization is very popular--and even the Pakistanis promote it---but having worked with ISI for the better part of 20 years, I know the ISI is very disciplined and very able intelligence agency.
4. Pakistanis can not leave the area (AfPak) when we (Americans) do. They have to try and stabilize Afghanistan with a favorable Islamic government so they can move their 100,000 troops from their western border to the eastern border with India which---whether we like it or not, they see as a bigger threat.
5. We (US) have created the mess in South Asia and the Pakistanis have to sort it out. Our (US) problems in Afghanistan are of our own making.
6. Al Qaeda has grown from just one platform (Afghanistan in 2001) to six platforms now.
After a reportedly successful US-Israeli stux-net cyber attack on Iranian nuclear installations last year, there is now a report in the New York Times that the Obama administration has considered deploying cyber warfare against Pakistan as well.
The New York Times quotes unnamed US officials as acknowledging that the US "military planners suggested a far narrower computer-network attack to prevent Pakistani radars from spotting helicopters carrying Navy Seal commandos on the raid that killed Osama bin Laden on May 2." It says the idea of cyber attack on Pakistani air defense system was dropped, and radar-evading Black Hawk helicopters and stealthy RQ-170 Sentinel surveillance drone were instead used to for the raid in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad. The CIA spied on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan by video transmitted from a new bat-winged stealth drone, the RQ-170 Sentinel, which hovered high above Abbottabad for weeks before the raid. There are speculations that the US might be doing such aerial surveillance in other parts of Pakistan, particularly on Pakistan's nuclear installations.
Recently, officials at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada acknowledged a virus infecting the drone “cockpits” there, according to Wired magazine. The source of the virus has not been identified. Back in 2009, the Wall Street Journal reported that militants in Iraq used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they needed to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.
At the 2009 World Economic Forum, the U.S.-based security software firm McAfee's CEO Dave Walt reportedly told some attendees that China, the United States, Russia, Israel and France are among 20 countries locked in a cyberspace arms race and gearing up for possible Internet hostilities. He further said that the traditional defensive stance of government computer infrastructures has shifted in recent years to a more offensive posture aimed at espionage, and deliberate disruption of critical networks in both government and private sectors. Such attacks could disrupt not only command and control for modern weapon systems such as ballistic missiles, but also critical civilian systems including banking, electrical grid, telecommunications, transportation, etc, and bring life to a screeching halt.
In a Sept 2010 report, the Wall Street Journal quoted cyber security specialists saying that "many countries including the U.S., Russia, China, Israel, the U.K., Pakistan, India and North and South Korea have developed sophisticated cyber weapons that can repeatedly penetrate and have the ability to destroy computer networks".
Last year, Chinese hackers apparently succeeded in downloading source code and bugs databases from Google, Adobe and dozens of other high-profile companies using unprecedented tactics that combined encryption, stealth programming and an unknown hole in Internet Explorer, according to new details released by the anti-virus firm McAfee and reported by Wired magazine. These hack attacks were disguised by the use of sophisticated encryption, and targeted at least 34 companies in the technology, financial and defense sectors, exploiting a vulnerability in Adobe’s Reader and Acrobat applications.
While the Chinese cyber attacks on US and India often get wide and deep coverage in the western media, a lower profile, small-scale cyber warfare is also raging in the shadows between India and Pakistan, according to some reports. These reports indicate that around 40-50 Indian sites are being attacked by Pakistani hackers on a daily basis whereas around 10 Pakistani sites are being hit by their Indian counterparts.
Here is how Robert X. Cringeley described the potential effects of full-scale India-Pakistan cyber war in a June 2009 blog post captioned "Collateral Damage":
"Forget for the moment about data incursions within the DC beltway, what happens when Pakistan takes down the Internet in India? Here we have technologically sophisticated regional rivals who have gone to war periodically for six decades. There will be more wars between these two. And to think that Pakistan or India are incapable or unlikely to take such action against the Internet is simply naive. The next time these two nations fight YOU KNOW there will be a cyber component to that war.
And with what effect on the U.S.? It will go far beyond nuking customer support for nearly every bank and PC company, though that’s sure to happen. A strategic component of any such attack would be to hobble tech services in both economies by destroying source code repositories. And an interesting aspect of destroying such repositories — in Third World countries OR in the U.S. — is that the logical bet is to destroy them all without regard to what they contain, which for the most part negates any effort to obscure those contents."
Coming back to the US, it is no secret that the Pentagon and the CIA have increasingly been using America's significant technology edge for war fighting in many parts of the world in recent years. One example is the growing fleet of the remotely controlled stealthy drones being deployed in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere for espionage and attacks. Among other new developments, the modern drone is just one of the ways to fight wars covertly in remote places at low cost to America in terms of dollars and casualties, often without so munch as declaring such wars.
The Pentagon now has some 7,000 UAVs, compared with fewer 50 just 10 years ago. The US Air Force is now anticipating a decrease in manned aircraft but expects its number of “multirole” aerial drones like the Reaper — the ones that spy as well as strike — to nearly quadruple, to 536, according to NY Times. Already the Air Force is training more remote pilots, 350 this year alone, than all of the fighter and bomber pilots combined.
The covert nature of drone warfare is particularly true outside Afghanistan and Iraq which are declared wars. In Pakistan, for instance, the secret war is being fought by the CIA, an intelligence agency, not the American military. This war is not even publicly acknowledged by the US administration, and it's a clear violation of international laws and all conventions of war.
The US politicians, spies and generals seem to be calculating that the American people would be more willing to support such wars if they don't bust the US budget and result in as few American body bags as possible. However, this calculation ignores the basic fact that most international conflicts, including terrorism, are essentially political in nature, and must be solved by political rather than the military means.
Once hailed by President Ronald Reagan as "moral equivalents of America's founding fathers" and described by US Congressman Charlie Wilson as “goodness personified”, the Haqqanis of Afghanistan are now bedeviling the US military efforts in Afghanistan and straining US-Pakistan alliance as never before.
In addition to echoing and justifying the latest American allegations against Pakistani spy agency ISI of supporting the "Haqqani network", the New York Times has some additional interesting facts about the Haqqanis and the history of US ties with what the Times now describes as "the Brutal Haqqani Crime Clan".
Here are some of the key elements of the Times story:
1. The Haqqani clan is led by veteran Afghan fighter Jalaluddin Haqaani, who was welcomed to the White House by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and his two sons: Sirajuddin and Badruddin.
2. The group has an estimated 5,000 to 15,000 fighters in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
3. The Haqqanis will outlast the United States troops in Afghanistan and command large swaths of territory there once the shooting stops.
4. One former American intelligence official, who worked with the Haqqani family in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, said he would not be surprised if the United States again found itself relying on the clan. “You always said about them, ‘best friend, worst enemy.’ ”
5. Over the past five years, with relatively few American troops operating in eastern Afghanistan, the Haqqanis have run what is in effect a protection racket for construction firms — meaning that American taxpayers are helping to finance the enemy network.
6. Maulavi Sardar Zadran, a former Haqqani commander, calls this extortion “the most important source of funding for the Haqqanis,” and points out that a multiyear road project linking Khost to Gardez in southeastern Afghanistan was rarely attacked by insurgent forces because a Haqqani commander was its paid protector.
7. The Haqqanis are Afghan members of the Zadran tribe, but it is in the town of Miram Shah in Pakistan’s tribal areas where they have set up a ministate with courts, tax offices and radical madrasa schools producing a ready supply of fighters. They secretly run a network of front companies throughout Pakistan selling cars and real estate, and have been tied to at least two factories churning out the ammonium nitrate used to build roadside bombs in Afghanistan.
8. American intelligence officials believe that a steady flow of money from wealthy people in the gulf states helps sustain the Haqqanis, and that they further line their pockets with extortion and smuggling operations throughout eastern Afghanistan, focused in the provinces of Khost, Paktia and Paktika. Chromite smuggling has been a particularly lucrative business, as has been hauling lumber from Afghanistan’s eastern forests into Pakistan.
9. For Americans who worked with them in the 1980s, the fact that the Haqqanis are now fighting their former American allies is no shock. The Russians were the foreign occupiers before; now the Americans are. “The Haqqanis have always been the warlords of that part of the country,” said Mr. Sageman, the former C.I.A. officer. “They always will be.”
10. The new urgency for a political settlement in Afghanistan has further limited Washington’s options for fighting the Haqqani network. During high-level discussions last year, Obama administration officials debated listing the group as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization,” which allows for some assets to be frozen and could dissuade donors from supporting the group. While some military commanders pushed for the designation, the administration ultimately decided that such a move might alienate the Haqqanis and drive them away from future negotiations.
As the Afghan war becomes less and less popular at home, and the Obama administration works toward significant troop withdrawals before the next presidential elections, I see a new high level desperation at the Pentagon in Washington and the CIA headquarters at Langley, particularly since the latest series of daring Taliban attacks in the heart of the Afghan Capital Kabul. This desperation is the reason why they are now scapegoating Pakistan to cover up their own failures and those of their Afghan allies. I just hope that this CYA exercise in America does not trigger a new wider war in the region that does not serve the best interests of the Americans or the Pakistanis. I think it's time for real diplomats to take over the crucial US-Pakistan relationship from the spies and warriors to guide it to a better outcome for all parties involved.
Here's a video clip of the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on US role in creating militancy in Pakistan:
"Well, first of all, I would say, based on 27 years in CIA and four and a half years in this job, most governments lie to each other. That's the way business gets done."
That was Defense Secretary Robert Gates' straight talk in response to the phony outrage by Senator Patrick Leahy on the news of Pakistan arresting 5 CIA informants following Osama bin Laden's killing by US Navy Seals in Abbotabad.
Here is the text of the exchange between Gates and Leahy during the US Senate hearing on Pakistan that began with Leahy asking Gates how long the U.S. will be willing to "support governments that lie to us?"
GATES: Well, first of all, I would say, based on 27 years in CIA and four and a half years in this job, most governments lie to each other. That's the way business gets done.
LEAHY: Do they also arrest the people that help us when they say they're allies?
GATES: Sometimes.
LEAHY: Not often.
GATES: And -- and sometimes they send people to spy on us, and they're our close allies. So...
LEAHY: And we give aid to them.
GATES: ... that's the real world that we deal with.
Outgoing Secretary Gates is clearly not a politician. He does not share the basic consensus among mainstream US politicians and media about American exceptionalism which gives them a broad license to criticize and denigrate others for some of the same or worse transgressions(or accomplishments) that the Americans are themselves guilty (or proud) of.
Another instance of plain talk by an American leader is the one where former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is reported to have said:
"There is only one thing more dangerous than being America's enemy; it's being an American ally".
With the recent series of extraordinary humiliations inflicted by Obama administration on their Pakistani allies, I think the current Pakistani leadership can wholeheartedly attest to Dr. Kissinger's enduring assertion.
The publicly-acknowledged recent deaths of several CIA agents and Blackwater personnel in a suicide bombing in Khost, Afghanistan, have once again brought the CIA's and its private contractors' combat role into sharp focus. Apparently, the attacker was a potential CIA "asset" recruited to identify targets for covert missions in Pakistan. He appears to have worn an explosives-laden suicide vest under an Afghan National Army uniform, two NATO officials told the media. The attack happened close to dusk, when some people at the base were relaxing before dinner. In a statement to the C.I.A.’s work force, President Obama said that the spy agency had been “tested as never before,” and that C.I.A. operatives had “served on the front lines in directly confronting the dangers of the 21st century.”
The CIA personnel regularly take foreign agents onto their base along the border before sending them on intelligence collection missions in eastern Afghanistan and across the border into Pakistan, said one Pentagon consultant who works closely with the C.I.A. in Afghanistan, according to a report in the New York Times. The CIA's drone war over Pakistan has recently been in high gear. Under the Obama administration, the CIA launched more than 50 reported robotic strikes, killing several hundred people, reportedly mostly civilians. Compare that to 2008, when there were just 36 drone attacks, according to an article by Noah Schachtman in Wired magazine. Slightly at variance with the Wired report, Pakistani government estimates indicate there were 44 predator strikes carried out by US drones in the tribal areas of Pakistan over the past 12 months, and only five were able to hit their actual targets, killing five key Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders, but at the cost of over 700 innocent civilians. These statistics represent the loss 140 innocent lives for every militant killed by US drones, a reckless disregard for lives of Pakistanis in the tribal belt. And now there are strong rumors of further expansion of the U.S. drone strikes inside Pakistan in 2010, with potential for even greater innocent civilian casualties fueling further unrest in the country already wracked by extreme violence. The false denials by both the American and the Pakistani officials of the existence of an understanding on the drone attacks and the presence of Blackwater personnel on Pakistani soil have been exposed by the investigative media and Google Earth images showing U.S. Predators parked on a Pakistani runway. In fact, the CIA publicly acknowledged what it has been doing for years when it announced that it was cutting Blackwater’s contract for servicing and arming the drones in Pakistan. The US Air Force acknowledged its attacks in Pakistan when it let slip that their drones were running missions east of the Durand Line. But counterinsurgency experts continue to worry that the robotic attacks could destabilize the region as they continue into 2010 and expand to a new front: Yemen.
While the new and more restrictive guidelines have been enacted for drone attacks by the US Air Force in Afghanistan to prevent growing civilian death toll, the CIA drone strikes in Pakistan remain essentially unconstrained. As the CIA demands cooperation from the ISI, it refuses to share with the ISI any intelligence from the CIA informants and "assets" on the ground in Pakistan that help pick the targets. Such secrecy raises suspicions that the CIA agents and "assets" in Pakistan are possibly engaged in subversive activities that the Americans want to hide from their Pakistani allies. There are also concerns about the Americans preparing to "secure" Pakistani nuclear weapons as alleged in a recent New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh.
In addition to the increasing drone attacks and rising suspicions about the role of the CIA, there are new and explosive revelations about the role and the strength of Blackwater contractors in the region. A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine have alleged that Blackwater chief Erik Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life." The number of US contractors working for the US military and the CIA in the region exceeds the total strength of the US troops and CIA personnel, according to estimates by Jimmy Scahill who has researched and written extensively about Blackwater. The presence of over 80,000 US military and intelligence contractors in Afghanistan and Pakistan makes the level of privatization of war unprecedented.
There have also been credible reports by Jeremy Scahill in the Nation that Blackwater has been working with US special forces JSOC on American forward operating bases (FOBs), like the one in Khost, in various parts of Pakistan, including Karachi, on "snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive actions inside and outside Pakistan. The US FOBs in the region are known to recruit and create an informants network, as confirmed by the accounts of what happened with suicide bombing and killing of CIA agents at Khost FOB in Afghanistan. While Pakistanis must accept responsibility for their own unwise actions in the past, there is no doubt that the US presence in the region has had a huge negative impact on Pakistanis. Some of the actions by Americans, starting with the use of the "Mujaheddin" during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, have clearly contributed to the problems Pakistan faces today. These problems have been further exacerbated by the use of heavy-handed US tactics in the region, American policy of targeted assassinations by the CIA, and the use of private contractors like Blackwater who view themselves as "Christian Crusaders tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe". There were few religious militants and no incidents of suicide bombings in Pakistan before the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. There was only a small presence of the Taliban or al Qaeda in Pakistan prior to the tragic terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in the United States. But in recent years, thousands of Pakistani soldiers have died fighting, killing or capturing the militants who fled into Pakistan from Afghanistan. And the civilian death toll from terrorist attacks in Pakistan is continuing to increase on a daily basis. The US secret war in Pakistan is not so secret any more, and it is clearly counterproductive with the rapidly deteriorating situation threatening to destabilize the nuclear-armed Islamic nation.
Pakistan is just too big to fail. Although things are likely to get worse with the latest US surge before they get better, the United States will eventually leave the region, in a year or two. And in spite of all of the serious problems it faces today, I remain optimistic that Pakistan will not only survive but thrive in the coming decades. With a fairly large educated urban middle class, vibrant media, active civil society, assertive judiciary, many philanthropic organizations, and a spirit of entrepreneurship, the nation has the necessary ingredients to overcome its current difficulties to build a democratic government accountable to its people.
Here's a video clip of Jeremy Scahill talking about the US covert war in Pakistan:
Here's former CIA official Michael Scheuer talking to NPR about the Chapman incident involving suicide bombing and killing of CIA agents:
US private contractor Blackwater, renamed Xe after it gained notoriety in Iraq, is now facing charges of secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support. The New York Times is reporting that "Blackwater approved the cash payments in December 2007, the officials said, as protests over the deadly shootings in Nisour Square stoked long-simmering anger inside Iraq about reckless practices by the security company’s employees".
There have been strong rumors swirling about the arrival of Blackwater personnel in Pakistan in recent months. The rumors and the opposition have gained strength with a November 4 report in the Nation newspaper alleging the arrival of 202 Blackwater personnel in Islamabad.
“Of the 274 passengers, who boarded Pakistan’s national flag carrier-PIA, flight PK-786 from Heathrow Airport UK, 202 were foreigners but they were fluently speaking Urdu language,” the paper said. The report quoted officials on duty at Shaheed Benazir International Airport Islamabad as saying, “We had instructions to allow the foreigners entry without custom procedure.”
It seems that the Blackwater personnel have been on Pakistani soil for years before the current rumors surfaced. From a secret division at Blackwater's North Carolina headquarters, it has assumed a role in Washington's most important counterterrorism program: the use of drones to kill Al Qaeda's leaders, according to government officials and current and former employees who talked with the New York Times.
The division's operations are carried out at hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where Blackwater contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft, work previously performed by C.I.A. employees. They also provide security at the covert bases, the officials said.
Last month, the CIA disclosed that it had hired Blackwater to kill senior al-Qaida leaders. The targeted assassination program has come under strong criticism in Washington. However, German publication Der Spiegel has learned that the level of cooperation between the CIA and the paid mercenaries at Blackwater has been deeper than previously known. The firm has also been heavily involved in CIA's secret rendition program of kidnapping, jailing and torturing terrorism suspects, according to persistent reports.
In addition to the increasing drone attacks and rising suspicions about the role of the CIA, there are new and explosive revelations about the role and the strength of Blackwater contractors in the region. A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine have alleged that Blackwater chief Erik Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life." The number of US contractors working for the US military and the CIA in the region exceeds the total strength of the US troops and CIA personnel, according to estimates by Jimmy Scahill who has researched and written extensively about Blackwater. The presence of over 80,000 US military and intelligence contractors in Afghanistan and Pakistan makes the level of privatization of war unprecedented.
There have also been credible reports by Jeremy Scahill in the Nation that Blackwater has been working with US special forces JSOC on American forward operating bases (FOBs) in various parts of Pakistan, including Karachi, on "snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive actions inside and outside Pakistan.
The stakes are now much higher in Pakistan than in Afghanistan or Iraq. The elite commandos of US Navy Seals, mentioned recently by Seymour Hersh in his New Yorker article, are reportedly part of a US team allegedly training to "secure" Pakistani nukes. Blackwater, renamed Xe, was founded in 1998 by former Navy Seals. Xe is on record as saying it has prepared tens of thousands of security personnel to work in hot spots around the world, without naming such hot spots. Soon after 911 terrorist attacks, the Bush-Cheney administration deployed private security firms on an unprecedented scale. Almost overnight, Blackwater transformed itself into a huge business funded to the tune of $1 billion by US taxpayers. The company obtained 70 percent of its contracts without going through the normal bidding process.
With the resources and backing of the US government agencies, Blackwater, aka Xe, has developed a lot of clout using a combination of large bribes and US government pressure. Given the well-known and widespread lack of transparency in Pakistan, is it possible that Blackwater is using the same combination of money and power to persuade Pakistani politicians and officials to allow it operate with impunity? Only time will tell. But the signs are clearly troubling.
Here's a video about Blackwater mercenary army activities:
Here's another video clip about Blackwater by Jeremy Scahill:
Two of the high-level reports on Pakistan and Afghanistan that have been forwarded to the White House in recent weeks have called for broadening the target area to include a "major insurgent sanctuary" in and around the city of Quetta, according a report in the New York Times. With the potential risk of significant loss of civilian life in a large population center, such strikes on the provincial capital of Baluchistan would represent a major expansion in America's CIA-run covert war well inside Pakistani territory.
As President Obama considers any CIA recommendations to expand the war deep inside Pakistan, he should remember the following three of the five paradoxes from the US military's counter-insurgency manual:
Paradox 3: The hosts doing something tolerably is often better than foreigners doing it well.
Paradox 4: Sometimes the more force is used, the less effective it is.
Paradox 5: Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction.
As the US seeks Pakistani cooperation in its Afghan war, the continuing American Predator strikes, strongly resented by the government and the people alike, represent the biggest stumbling block in the way of serious and committed US-Pakistan military alliance in Pakistan-Afghan border areas.
A serious but unintended and extremely dangerous consequence of the expanded US air strikes in Pakistan is that the militants are continuing to move further inland from FATA in to Pakistan's settled area such as Swat, Quetta and beyond. They are finding more new recruits for their cause and threatening to destabilize the entire country. A destabilized, nuclear-armed Pakistan will be far more dangerous to the interests of the US, the region and the world than anything we have seen in Afghanistan or Iraq.
So far, the Obama response to the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan is to order more Predator strikes and thousands of more US troops. This assumes that the problems are mainly the lack of firepower and of troop strength. But it's likely to have the opposite effect. More Predator strikes and more troops mean more fighting which will lead to more American and Afghan civilian casualties. And it will only increase the public opposition to the US presence there, and make the entire region a much more powerful magnet to draw more global Jihadists from around the world. These "holy warriors" love nothing better than to kill the American soldiers and achieve "martyrdom" for themselves.
This latest reported escalation recommendation risks further enhancing support for the militants and insurgents fighting America's presence in Afghanistan. It will also make it less likely for the Pakistani military and the severely weakened Zardari government to turn a blind eye to such open provocation by the CIA in a major Pakistani city, especially if it results in mass civilian casualties.
Mr. Obama has inherited a messy war in Afghanistan. He should listen to the advice of former Bush adviser David Kilcullen offered in his book titled "The Accidental Guerrilla". Kilcullen's advice, as reported by David Ignatius of the Washington Post, consists of three "don'ts." Don't do it again; don't make it worse by overescalation; don't think you can pull out now without damaging U.S. interests. For Obama, that means a measured commitment, somewhere between a major escalation and a minimal force.
Any expansion of the predator strikes into Quetta will put the U.S. on a slippery slope of deeper and prolonged involvement in the region. I hope that President Obama will seriously consider the long term consequences of US actions to prevent a repeat of Indochina in South Asia, rather than give in to the short-term temptation of temporary gains against the Taliban in Afghanistan. No amount of the proposed US aid increase will compensate for such a reckless escalation by the CIA in Quetta.
