THE DAY OF THE VAMPIRES

Crunch time for Pakistan


December 16, 2009 was a day of celebration for Pakistanis. The 17 judges of Pakistan’s Supreme Court had unanimously struck down the abominable presidential ordinance NRO, popularly known as the National Robbers Organisation though its creators, the wretched Musharraf in collaboration with his foreign backers, had given this national disgrace an altogether more lofty title. People rejoiced as they sensed deliverance from the clutches of corrupt and greedy rulers, the blood sucking vampires who wallowed in obscene wealth and luxury amid the widespread poverty of Pakistan. Following the Supreme Court’s decision the vampires looked shaken and ashen faced as they sat hugging their seats of power.

The question that was uppermost in people’s minds was one of justice being seen to be done. Is it possible for an accused minister to prosecute himself fairly? The expectation was that all those accused of criminal acts would resign and defend themselves in court - they would resume their duties only if they were declared innocent.

A few days later the situation looks quite different. Sensing the discomfort of the vampires who faithfully serve American interests, the American ambassador in Pakistan is said to have swung into action. The Pakistani press has commented on the meetings she has held with various politicians - possibly to breathe new life into the anaemic vampires and fortify them with a potent dose of fresh blood. We now hear that our billionaire president and ministers have declared themselves to be innocent and they are casting aspersions on the motives of the Supreme Court judges. No one is resigning, and it is implied that the Supreme Court’s decision to declare the corruption-sustaining ordinance null and void is a politically motivated act!  

Pakistan’s second largest political party, which had campaigned for an independent judiciary earlier this year and had played a pivotal role in the restoration of the Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, is strangely silent. It is said that it now regrets having campaigned for an independent judiciary, which has turned out to be exactly that: truly independent, above politics and beholden to no one. The opposition leader is said to be fearful that if he lends his support to those who seek fair and open trials for the vampires in powerful government posts then those vampires will hit back and give him as good as they get (yes, his reputation for similar orgies of blood sucking in the past refuses to lie down).

Things seem to be heading towards a mighty showdown between the judiciary and the government. This is the last thing we need at a time of grave danger to the very existence of Pakistan when terrorist acts of the utmost savagery are common and Pakistan’s armed forces have their hands full fighting foreign-backed rebels and mercenaries in Swat, South Waziristan and the adjoining tribal areas.

In the meantime, the Americans are piling on pressure for Pakistan to “do more” when it is already fully stretched and is hardly in a position to fight the Afghan Resistance against the Americans. The USA forces have lost fewer than 1000 lives in Afghanistan while Pakistan’s army has lost well over 20,000 officers and javaans. The wave of terrorism in Pakistan’s cities in the last two months alone has resulted in 500 deaths while the spate of illegal drone attacks in Waziristan has caused the deaths of hundreds, possibly thousands, of innocent citizens. According to Jeremy Scahill, an American investigative journalist who revealed the covert CIA/military operations in Pakistan in his breathtaking article ‘Blackwater’s Secret War in Pakistan’, “drone strikes are sometimes done with very little regard for how many civilians may die in the pursuit of one ‘bad guy’ - in fact, my military intelligence source said to me if there’s one guy we’re trying to hit and there are 34 other people in the building, 35 people are going to die that day.” Can you imagine anything more chilling than this? So much for the “civilized” and “humanitarian” Americans! Pakistani lives are dirt cheap while a great hue and cry goes up each time an American soldier dies in Afghanistan in pursuit of the selfish designs of the USA government!

As a result of revelations by American investigative journalists, and the evidence collected by Pakistan’s army in Swat and South Waziristan, there appears little doubt that the USA and India are pursuing a policy of destabilising Pakistan. Another journalist, Seymour Hersh, has gone so far as to say that a team of American commandos is already in Pakistan with the sole object of taking possession of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal once the country is sufficiently destabilised.  

Any remaining doubts about American designs on Pakistan have been removed by Declan Walsh’s article in ‘The Guardian’ on 21 December, 2009. The article recounts the revelations of a former NATO officer talking about the USA military’s clandestine raids on Pakistani territory. Walsh quotes his source as saying, “The Pakistanis were kept entirely in the dark about it. It was one of those things we wouldn't confirm officially with them"!

In addition to the ongoing war between the Pakistani state and the collection of rebels and mercenaries known as ‘Pakistani Taliban’, trained and funded by foreign powers, two further scenarios of immense importance to Pakistan appear to be taking shape:

1.  1.  A confrontation between Pakistan’s Judiciary and the Executive, the latter enjoying the support of foreign elements.

2.  2.  A two-fold confrontation between the USA military and Pakistan’s armed forces: one, as the American drones attack a major city, Quetta, allegedly to wipe out what the Americans call “the Quetta Shura”, there will be tremendous pressure on our armed forces to shoot down the drones; two, as the USA’s “troops surge” translates into raids into Pakistani territory, Pakistan’s armed forces will be forced to retaliate.

SINGLE ISSUE WARRIORS

BLACK FRIDAY, 4 December 2009

As Pakistan lurches from one crisis to another there is a tendency for Pakistani newspapers and websites to concentrate mainly on single issues of immediate importance. Self-styled pundits become obsessed with the symptoms of various ills that beset Pakistan today while the root causes are left untouched. Following the massacre in a Rawalpindi mosque during the Friday prayers on 4 December, one Pakistani website lamented “Why, one asks, why? Why do they hate us so?” (“they” in this context is supposed to refer to fellow Pakistanis generally referred to as ‘Taliban’ while “us” refers to the privileged Pakistani middle class!). Sounds familiar? Yes! This rhetorical question was coined by the "crusader" George Bush, and his gang of Neocons, in relation to the Muslims!

Let us turn the question around and ask ourselves: what has the class of privileged Pakistanis done to make others love itself? If we were honest with ourselves we would have to say: very little. To put it bluntly, we have a system in Pakistan which is unable to provide justice and equality for all and it is universally reviled for its pervasive corruption, moral and financial. The irony is that we have given our country the title "Islamic Republic of Pakistan" while the social system we have is the very antithesis of Islamic teachings. Worse, we are a people devoid of self-esteem, ignorant of our history and traditions, and ever willing to learn parrot-fashion what foreigners choose to teach us in their language! Little wonder that we despise our own people and we cling to the language and culture of those who had ruled over us once.

In my opinion our “Taliban” problem is essentially a social problem, which has taken on a religious hue. The genie of Taliban was spawned by the stark contrast between widespread poverty of ordinary people and the brazen acquisition of wealth by those who found themselves in positions of power - the politicians, the bureaucrats, and the senior commanders of our armed forces. It is unthinkable that the madrassahs, dispensing a degraded form of Islamic teachings which defy common sense, would have flourished but for rampant injustice and poverty in the “Islamic Republic” of Pakistan.

Since we specialise in hating the Jews, let us take a quick look at their performance. In the diaspora they were lost souls, detested and loathed by all. Then they somehow got hold of a piece of land they called Israel and they never looked back. They revived a dead language, Hebrew, created a strong sense of identity and grew exponentially, culminating in the establishment of a feared nuclear power that can treat the only acknowledged superpower in the world with contempt.

We Pakistanis, on the other hand, never tire of blaming others for our misfortunes. True, our weaknesses have been exploited and taken advantage of by others but the root cause of our ills remains our many flaws and imperfections.  We get what we deserve, no more and no less. That is how Allah addresses mankind in the Qur'an but we have shut our eyes to its Message and we have turned our Deen into a weird religion which is little more than a form of worship, the rites and rituals for which differ from sect to sect.    

Today we find ourselves in a position where the Americans and the Indians have got a stranglehold over our country by bringing in sophisticated weapons through the porous Pakistan-Afghan border and training/brainwashing the poor, dispossessed Taliban into a fearful fighting force. Pakistan at the moment is teeming with American mercenaries- the contractors supplied by the infamous corporation Blackwater/Xe Worldwide -apparently reporting to the USA embassy and to CIA agents operating in the country. 

We have no option left except to fight on two fronts: on the one hand, we have to confront the monster of Pakistani Taliban, created by the neglect of our corrupt middle class and the machinations of successive USA administrations (with Indians in tow); on the other hand, we have to destroy the network of Americans/Indians/Pakistani traitors within the country. If the latest atrocity of Black Friday does not open up our eyes, nothing will: six senior Pak Army officers and three Javaans killed, a retired Lt General wounded and the army officers’ children murdered in cold blood while praying.

Please click the link below to learn how desperate things have become. No less a personality than the American Ambassador in Pakistan is suspected of having bribed Pakistani officials to issue licenses for the import of illegal weapons for the use of Blackwater/Xe Worldwide contractors who are being used by the Americans in a wide range of defensive and offensive duties all over Pakistan.

http://www.ahmedquraishi.com/latest_col.php?id=112

While we follow a short-term strategy to control the Taliban menace and the in-house intrigues of foreigners and home-grown traitors, we also need to put into effect a long term strategy to remove the conditions which enable religious demagogues to influence impressionable young minds and push them in a direction that leads to a dead end. In between, we need a middle-term strategy of bringing to justice those who have destroyed Pakistan – financially, and in other ways. Starting with the NRO robbers, we need to work back and dispense justice to the great and the good who have ruled Pakistan in the past. Some, such as the American stooge Musharraf and his sidekick Shaukat Aziz, probably enjoy the protection and patronage of foreign powers but we need to assert our independence just as Israel has managed to do. If we fail to get rid of our terrible inferiority complex in relation to the Americans and the British, we will for ever be chided and cajoled by them to “do more” even though what we have done so far is far more than anybody else has been able to achieve.  Pakistan’s destruction in the cause of those countries’ interests means nothing to them.

For a long-term strategy to bring justice and equality of opportunity to ALL Pakistanis, please see my blog archive for October (“Pakistan’s colonial set-up” and “Islam spin”).


TAILPIECE:


Websites run by effete members of Pakistan's westernised middle class are calling the Taliban "cowardly" while maintaining a respectable silence in relation to the mayhem unleashed by the Americans on Pakistan and Afghanistan. I left a comment at one of these websites today (8 December), which you can read below.

"Cowardly attacks"?!! What is cowardly about offering up your own life in pursuit of whatever rubbish you believe in? Please have the honesty to see things as they really are.

The Taliban are stupid, brainwashed, ignorant and utterly merciless BUT they are fearless and courageous beyond description.

The real cowards in all this are the hypocritical Americans who think nothing of stabbing a so-called friend in the back. The sooner we sever all links with the USA the better it will be for us.

Do you know that in all the years the Americans have been in Afghanistan fewer than one thousand USA soldiers have died? In the last few years alone Pakistan has lost more than 20,000 of our javaans and officers while the death toll for Afghans and Pakistani citizens runs into hundreds of thousands (possibly, a million). The cowardly Americans sit comfortably in their remote military bases in the USA and play vile video games with human lives, raining down drones on Pakistanis and Afghans, which mostly kill innocent citizens - which the heartless Americans dismiss contemptuously as "collateral damage".

Wake up Paki middle class before the inferno of Civil War that the duplicitous Americans have gifted us destroys you and your families. No more drones: we'll fight our fellow Pakistani rebels in our own way. Get the American marines, the CIA agents, the mercenaries, "trainers" and an army of "diplomats" out of the country. And ask them just one simple question:

WHY ARE YOU IN AFGHANISTAN? (and brace yourself for a torrent of lies and abuse)