_______ ____ ______
/ |/ / /___/ / /_ // M I D - E A S T R E A L I T I E S
/ /|_/ / /_/_ / /\\ Making Sense of the Middle East
/_/ /_/ /___/ /_/ \\© http://www.MiddleEast.Org
News, Information, & Analysis That Governments, Interest Groups,
and the Corporate Media Don't Want You To Know!
--------------------------
IF YOU DON'T GET MER, YOU JUST DON'T GET IT!
To receive MER regularly email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
THE NEW WORLD ORDER...CONTINUED
"If America attacks Afghanistan, I myself
will kill George Bush. The Muslims of the
world are united. We are the real
superpower. If America attacks, it will be
the beginning of World War Three."
Zikria Agha, 18
Islamabad, Pakistan
MID-EAST REALITIES © - MER - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 9/16:
Like the term "Star Wars" before it "New World Order" had too many negative
associations, too much imperial baggage. George W. has however evoked the refrain
"This will not stand", just as his father did before him a decade ago. What is in
essence a continuation of the building of the "New World Order" designed by the
Americans to replace the "Cold War" paradigm is now being heavily masked under tons of
rhetoric about "the war against international terrorism".
Like most serious wars, underneath all the saber rattling and patriotic slogans
are imperial goals. The U.S is at this historical moment the only "superpower"; but
both China and Europe are asserting themselves quickly, with the Chinese very much
aware that a combination of economic, military, and information power is required if
they are to assert their own "interests" in our world in juxtaposition to the
Americans. As for the Arab countries, they remain essentially carved up and de facto
rather than de jure occupied, the lingering result of the end of World War I and the
Paris "Peace To End All Peace" Conference arranged by the dominant European powers of
that day as they created the "New World Order" of their era -- the bloodiest in
history to date.
Eleven years ago Richard Cheney, then Secretary of Defense, Prince Bandar bin
Sultan, still the Saudi Ambassador in the U.S., and Colin Powell, then Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs, rushed to Riyadh to tell the Saudi Royals that the American military was
on the way big time. It was not a consultation as publicly presented, it was in
actuality a demand for compliance, a statement of fact. Unknown to most Americans at
the time -- and certainly not known to the Saudi and Arab publics -- was the fact that
in the decade past the U.S. had "invested" nearly $200 billion in building
infrastructure and pre-positioning supplies precisely to keep the corrupt al-Sauds and
al-Sabahs, et. al., on their thrones and the black gold flowing in huge amounts at
concessionary prices. The Saudi establishment was having quite an internal debate
and leaning at the time toward not encouraging what they realized would be a masked
American armada taking over Saudi Arabia in strategic terms. Osama bin Laden emerged
from this historic crucible, already hardened by the Afghan war against the Soviet
Empire in which he essentially served as an agent of the Saudi Government itself
serving as a proxy for the Americans. Himself the heir to a vast petrodollar fortune
from one of the wealthiest families in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden is known to have
personally debated with King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah themselves at the time,
retaining until this week important connections with senior persons in "The Kingdom".
Now the need for the Americans is to use once more Pakistan. But Pakistan, very
much unlike Saudi Arabia, is a country teeming with nearly 150 million Muslims and
with a long history of fiercely guarding its independent and religion. General
Musharraf -- the Pakistani military ruler who dethroned the elected government by coup
after the former Prime Minister rushed to the U.S. for an emergency meeting with then
President Clinton on July 4th 1999 where he was told what the Americans wanted him to
do vis-a-vis the Kashmir crisis with India -- has himself been told what the U.S.
"demands" are. He will attempt to comply in a way that does not outrage the world's
only superpower; and in the process there are American sanctions and a crushing
national debt of $38 billion he will attempt to remove in the hope of somehow
pacifying his own people. However whether General Musharraf will still be around to
greet the new American armada when it begins to arrive big time; and more importantly
what effect all of this will have on the future of Pakistan and other Muslim and Arab
countries throughout the world, including the sad fate of the Palestinian
people....those are the real questions of our day, not really the fate of Osama bin
Laden.
PAKISTAN WALKS FINE LINE IN COOPERATION WITH U.S.
By Pamela Constable
[The Washington Post - Islamabad, Pakistan, Sept. 14] -- Every Friday at 1 p.m.,
hundreds of Muslim men and boys in white cotton clothing and
skullcaps hurry to the Red Mosque to pray and hear their imam, or mosque leader,
deliver his weekly message.
Today, the message was about the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, and it
was unforgiving.
"This is the wrath of Allah," said the imam, his voice ringing out over a loudspeaker
across the silent stone patios. "You Americans commit oppression everywhere, in
Kashmir, in Palestine, and you do not see the blood spilled." No Arab country had the
means to launch such attacks, the voice declared. "But when Allah catches hold of you,
there is no escape."
Afterward, worshipers spilling out of the mosque seemed confused, anxious and angry.
Many said they were sorry so many Americans had been killed and felt the attacks were
wrong. Yet they also expressed bitter resentment against the United States and said it
would be equally wrong to retaliate against Afghanistan, home to Osama bin Laden, the
purported terrorist U.S. officials call the prime suspect in Tuesday's suicide
hijackings.
"If America attacks Afghanistan, I myself will kill George Bush," vowed Zikria Agha,
18, his eyes and voice cold with conviction. "The Muslims of the world are united. We
are the real superpower. If America attacks, it will be the beginning of World War
Three."
While not shared by all Pakistanis, the intense, defiant emotions stirred here in the
wake of the terrorist attacks half a world away partly explain why the government of
Pakistan now finds itself in a dilemma as U.S. officials press its leaders to
cooperate in a manhunt for bin Laden and possible military strikes against Afghanistan.
For years, Pakistan has been a society with a split personality. The majority of its
140 million people are poor, devout Muslims with little hope of bettering their lives
and little faith in their political rulers. Instead, they have increasingly turned to
Islam, and to an identification with suffering Muslims in other countries, whom they
view as victimized by Israel and the West.
On the other side is a minority of more educated, religiously moderate Pakistanis who
see their country's future as dependent on improved economic and political ties with
Western powers. They fear that if Pakistan is tarred with the Islamic extremist label,
it will risk economic collapse, international isolation and a bleak future.
Until now, the clash between these two Pakistans has been mostly rhetorical. The
government of President Pervez Musharraf, an army general who seized power in October
1999, has tried to placate influential Islamic groups at home while seeking
credibility among Western governments and lending institutions abroad.
But the terrorist attacks in the United States, and the enormous pressure now being
brought to bear on Musharraf to cooperate with U.S. intelligence gathering and
possible military actions, have crystallized these contradictions in the starkest
possible terms, and they may well force him to choose between risking domestic
upheaval and international isolation.
"This is a defining moment for Pakistan and a critical choice for Musharraf," said
Rifaat Hussain, a professor of strategic and defense studies at Quaid-I-Azam
University here in Pakistan's capital. "Do we swim with the current of world opinion
against terrorism, or do we condemn ourselves to being on the wrong side of history?
There is really no choice, but it will be a very difficult one for Musharraf to
handle."
The government's dilemma is not a simple confrontation between religious sentiment and
pragmatic politics. It is also deeply intertwined with Pakistan's troubled history of
shifting international alliances, failed democratic governance, ambivalent relations
with Afghanistan and nuclear rivalry with India -- a much larger, Hindu-dominated
country from which Muslim Pakistan was split off in 1947.
During the 1980s, Pakistan was squarely aligned with the United States against the
Soviet Union, which occupied Afghanistan for a decade. Pakistan's military ruler at
the time, Gen. Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, was a ruthless dictator and an ardent supporter of
Islamic militancy, but also a clever Cold War strategist who worked closely with
Washington to assist and arm the Afghan resistance movement.
>From 1979 to 1989, the United States spent $3 billion arming and equipping the
>Islamic guerrillas who eventually drove the Soviet army from Afghanistan. They fought
>mostly in the high mountains and isolated valleys that characterize the Afghan
>landscape, but their support base was in Pakistan, where the CIA funneled weapons and
>supplies through Pakistan's security services.
Once the Soviets withdrew in 1989, however, the scenario changed abruptly. The U.S.
money and involvement evaporated, leaving Afghanistan to slip into violent civil
conflict and Pakistan to cope with the growing influence of militant Islamic movements
that had been nurtured with U.S. dollars.
Out of this volatile situation emerged the Taliban, the Islamic militia that now
controls 95 percent of Afghanistan and harbors bin Laden as a Muslim "guest."
The Taliban, which has imposed a harsh system of governance and justice based on its
own interpretation of Islamic laws, has been condemned by the West and sanctioned by
the U.N. Security Council for sheltering bin Laden and violating human rights. Only
Pakistan and two other countries recognize the regime as a government.
"In an ironic reversal of roles, it is this militancy, born in the crucible of the
Cold War and baptized in Afghanistan by the U.S. itself, which the U.S. now proclaims
as its principal enemy," columnist Ayaz Amir noted in the Dawn newspaper today. "Osama
is not the cause but the consequence" of American arrogance and bias, he wrote,
suggesting that Washington needs to reflect on the "fury of despair" that motivates
Muslim terrorists to commit extreme acts. "Thus do demons come to haunt their own
creators."
Many Pakistanis have little love for the Taliban or bin Laden, viewing both as a
threat to Pakistan's stability at home and credibility abroad. Yet even middle-class
professionals, while expressing deep concern for the loss of life in Washington and
New York, said they understand why some Pakistanis and other Muslims would find grim
satisfaction in the assaults on American symbols of power.
"People here do not favor what happened, but there is so much poverty here and in
Afghanistan, and any American attack on Osama would hurt so many innocent people too,"
said a communications company manager named Ardeshir. "Instead of going after one man,
the U.S. should try to find out the root causes."
In some conservative mosques and Islamic schools, the Taliban is viewed as a movement
of admirable, "pure" Muslims, and bin Laden as a symbol of heroic defiance against the
West. In fact, many Taliban members were raised in the refugee camps and Islamic
schools, known as "madrassas", of Pakistan's northwest frontier province, a rugged
region bordering Afghanistan, where much of the population is of Afghan origin and
where Muslim traditions are deeply conservative.
Since the end of the Afghan war, many Pakistani Islamic groups that provided fighters
against the Soviets have maintained strong ideological ties to the Taliban, but have
turned their religious and military attention to a different so-called holy war -- the
armed Muslim insurgency in Kashmir.
The insurgency erupted in 1989 in the Indian portion of Kashmir, the disputed
Himalayan border region divided between India and Pakistan and claimed by both. It has
been publicly championed and covertly aided ever since by Pakistan, which views
Kashmir as the vulnerable Achilles' heel of its arch-rival.
For years the Kashmir conflict gained little international attention, in part because
both India and Pakistan were under civilian control and there seemed little risk of
full-fledged war. But in 1998, India and Pakistan both tested nuclear weapons, sharply
raising the stakes. Then in 1999, Pakistan-backed fighters invaded India's Kargil
mountains and Pakistan's unpopular prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, was overthrown by the
army, raising further international alarm.
Since taking power, Musharraf has tried to establish his regime as friendly to Western
governments and investors, whose favor is crucial to reviving Pakistan's ailing
economy. Yet he has persisted in twin foreign policies that are popular among many
Pakistani Muslims but widely condemned abroad: overt support for the Taliban in
Afghanistan and covert support for the Kashmir guerrillas.
Although Musharraf is widely viewed as a moderate Muslim and well-intentioned leader,
he has largely been held hostage by the influence of conservative Islamic groups in
Pakistan, who have access to weapons, command passionate support from a vocal minority
of Muslims, provide crucial support for the Kashmir conflict and have close ties to
some segments of the military.
In the aftermath of this week's attacks on the United States, Musharraf has condemned
terrorism and said he will cooperate with U.S. authorities, while Pakistani officials
have continued to insist that they prefer to "engage" with the Taliban and have little
influence over their actions in any case. But day by day, as the American case for
targeting bin Laden gains momentum and world support, Pakistan's contradictory policy
becomes increasingly untenable.
"If Musharraf handles this right, he has an opportunity to turn a perilous situation
into a grand opportunity. The question is how much he can concede to the Americans
before he feels the domestic heat," said Najam Sethi, publisher of the Friday Times,
an influential weekly newspaper here.
"The public mood is very anti-American right now, but people will probably not be too
upset if Pakistan ditches Afghanistan. The army is pragmatic, and they know Pakistan
faces economic ruin if it does not stand with the United States on this," Sethi said.
"But if the Americans want to go after the larger umbrella of Pakistani groups that
are linked to Kashmir, it will create enormous problems."
Musharraf reportedly has met with Islamic leaders here this week and told them not to
make provocative statements or threats on the Afghan situation. But if Musharraf does
agree to collaborate with a U.S. attack on Afghanistan, today's message from the Red
Mosque suggests he could face more than wrathful rhetoric from the disaffected,
desperate and devout Muslims of Pakistan.
"America is against Osama because he is a true Muslim and a defender of Islam, not
like our Pakistani leaders who are so-called Muslims," said Mohammed Rafiq, 50,
shaking with rage as he stood in a crowd outside the mosque. "The Americans bombed
Hiroshima, and they can do it to Afghanistan now, but history will never forgive them."
----------------------------------
MiD-EasT RealitieS - http://www.MiddleEast.Org
Phone: 202 362-5266
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Fax: 815 366-0800
To subscribe email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with subject SUBSCRIBE
To unsubscribe email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with subject UNSUBSCRIBE
