| (Vividly recalls and describes for the August occasion of the 60th Anniversary of the Independence of Pakistan how its conniving with the US and the UK between 1954 and 2000 to undermine India has contributed to the agony of Pakistan.) | ||||
| The US and the UK must | ||||
| End this farce in Pakistan | ||||
| By R. V. Pandit | ||||
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There is a revealing entry on
Wednesday, October 3, 2001 in Alastair Campbell's diary of 2001 in the
just published collection, "The Blair Years - Extracts from the
Alastair Campbell Diaries". "…The security committee, which advised on TB's own safety had met yesterday and basically would prefer that he didn't go to Pakistan, but if he did, they wanted us to use the VC10. We had endless coming and going on that, including at one point Cherie coming to see me, quivering with rage, bottom lip trembling, telling me I was mad to allow it and 'Do you want to be a martyr or what?' She said it was the most stupid visit there had ever been…" Of course, TB is Tony Blair and Cherie is the wife of the then Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Mrs Cherie Blair was raging at 10 Downing Street about Tony Blair's hurriedly arranged visit to Islamabad while verbally thrashing Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman and Director of Communications and Strategy. The UK Prime Minister flew from London to Islamabad in a military aircraft into a military airport. Some 18 months before the Blair visit, President Bill Clinton had flown, on 25 March 2000, to Islamabad in a decoy aircraft - not the Air Force One or anything resembling it, for a 5-hour visit, spent mostly at a military airport. (During President Clinton's and later President Bush's visit to India, Air Force One arrived and departed from airports the Indian public uses, and the AFO was parked at these airports for all to see. Prime Minister Tony Blair also used the civilian airports). Note that the two U.S. Presidents and a British Prime Minister were concerned about their personal and their entourage's safety while in Islamabad, representing at the highest level their respective countries. And we are discussing Pakistan, a neighbour politically created and imposed on India by Britain, as is amply evident now from the British Cabinet papers of 1940s recently available to the public. India lives with it, and that is history India accepts. |
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Jinnah's
successors turn a dream into a monster and the US and the UK nurture it |
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"What kind of a
monster have I created?" Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of
Pakistan, moaned to an aide while on a visit to Quetta, a few weeks before
he died on 11 August 1948. 'No, Mr Jinnah, Sir, and may your soul forever rest in peace, you did not create a monster. Whatever the past, your 11 August 1947 address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan gave a wise and a brave outline of the Pakistan you had embarked upon to shape, and you would have, had you lived even for five years from that historic day, you would have built a nation close to your dream. No, you did not create a monster. But your successive successors after Liaquat Ali Khan and Khwaja Nazimuddin have turned your dream and the dream of millions of your followers into a monster, turning your dream into a fifty-five years long nightmare for the people of Pakistan'. |
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| Stalin from the USSR, triumphant after crushing Hitler's army in the east and capturing Berlin in May 1945, and just a little later Mao from China, after the incredible Long March, vanquishing Chiang Kai-Shek, and Mao's even more triumphant entry into Peking in 1949 were historic events that Washington and London viewed with paranoia, somewhat irrationally, as posing a grave, imminent threat to the West. And here was this fellow, Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of the newly independent India, wretchedly poor and more dangerous, democratic to boot, representing more people than the then combined population of the USA and Europe, applauding the Communist triumphs! And preaching co-existence with the Communists from any and every pulpit he could mount!! He and his non-aligned country need to be fixed - 'you are with us or against us' is not a George W. Bush original (Co-existence, incidentally, is what ensures world peace now for 64 years, and what has diluted Communism). So India, had to be taught a lesson, kept largely in darkness - backward - as the British had done as colonial masters for the preceding century and a half. | ||||
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And what better stick to browbeat India with than the newly created State of Pakistan, almost rudderless, confused, orphaned within a year after Independence, upon the death of its founder, Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Consider, then, this the beginning of the US-UK intrigue: From 19.10.1951 to 17.4.1953 Mohammad Ali Bogra (a Pakistan Foreign Service officer) was the Ambassador to the USA, almost a nobody in politics. Upon the sacking of Khawaja Nazimuddin as the Prime Minister on 17.4.1953 by the Governor General Ghulam Muhammad of Pakistan, Bogra was appointed the Prime Minister of Pakistan, while still the Ambassador in Washington. And he flew back to Karachi the same day as the Prime Minister of Pakistan (despite the fact that Nazimuddin enjoyed majority in the Constituent Assembly!) From that day on hardly any civilian or a General has come to power in Pakistan without the US nod, mostly diktats. And most have lost their jobs or commands at the American command. |
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Anglo-American
intrigue: Pakistan firmly in the US, UK embrace, ushering in the jackboot rule over the country |
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Incidentally, the then US President Dwight Eisenhower approached the
Congress on the third day of the Bogra appointment to seek authorisation
to ship hundreds of thousands of tons of wheat to Pakistan. And arms and
weapons followed. Pakistan was firmly in the US camp, and during Bogra's
Prime Ministership, Pakistan joined the now defunct CENTO and SEATO.
Amusing to the Pakistan/US watchers, Ghulam Muhammad, the Governor
General, was forced to resign on 8 August 1955, and Major General Iskandar
Mirza stepped in as the Governor General on the same 8 August 1955 and
also on the same day he sacked Mohammad Ali Bogra as the Prime Minister.
The very same day Bogra was appointed as Ambassador to Washington as
Pakistan's Ambassador (recalled-on-popular-demand, may I
add?) to the US! These events capture the murky history of the first few
years of Pakistan, after the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan on 16
October 1951, Jinnah's lawfully elected successor, and the sacking of
Khawaja Nazimuddin in on 17 April 1953. The USA was the patron of Pakistan
during these murky years, which laid the foundation of the 55 murkier
years that have followed. The Anglo-American intrigue hurt India, and Nehru, and many pro-West Indians, this writer included (the US was the moral standard bearer of the world, during and immediately after the WWII - also a champion of Independence for India), cried foul only to spur the conspirators to press on: they felt their designs were succeeding! But throughout history's short centuries, immoral undertakings have earned bitter consequences. And the result of the American-British conspiracy against India implemented mostly through Pakistan almost till the early nineties has very bitter consequences for the US and the UK - baby monsters from Pakistan bred by the Generals and the Mullahs are now stalking them even in their homelands. Hundreds of millions of sane, decent people elsewhere in the world, are in pain and agony to be a witness to this enfolding nightmare. Sadly and horrifyingly, the worst consequences of these intrigues are afflicting the 170 million brothers and sisters of Indians (more than a 100 million Indian Moslems and an equal number in Pakistan have blood links between them) across the border in Pakistan - the mother monster created by the US-UK conspiracy is there, littering. The Baghdad-like situation that prevails in Karachi, in Islamabad, in Waziristan and in the NWFP is the fruit of the seeds the conspirators against India planted by hired Pakistani hands, mostly military, but also by some civilian Pakistanis suffering from the cancer of cleverness! Superiority complex? "A Pakistani soldier is equal to 10 Indian jawans," their military commanders taught the officer recruits! In a poetic twist to these intrigues, the US and the UK always had sneaking admiration for the Indians, and only contempt for the politicians, some bureaucrats and the Generals of Pakistan, as has been exposed several times during the last 50 odd years whenever the US-Pakistan 'friendship' was under strain. Observers have been for long predicting that the people of Pakistan will eventually fight for, gain, and enjoy democracy and the civilian rule as much as their brothers and sisters across the border in India enjoy democracy and the rule of law (despite many well-publicised failures). But for democracy to usher in Pakistan sooner than the designs of the neo-conservative mafia in the White House and the self-survival urges of the ISI would permit, the moral elements in Washington and London must act together to frame a time-table for General Pervez Musharraf to shed his uniform, hold a free and fair national assembly election (with new, revised electoral rolls), and persuade the General to not contest the election for President, even without the uniform. |
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| Phoney democracy for Pakistan? | ||||
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Any political arrangement sponsored or blessed by Washington and London
that brings Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto and/or Nawaz Sharif together is
bound to be a set back for Pakistan - all three are seriously tainted with
persisting allegations of serious wrong-doing; President General Pervez
Musharraf having repeatedly violated the Oath of Office with a treasonable
frequency. Musharraf's bid to get himself re-elected for another term assss
president or declaring a state of national Emergency will be adding insult
to the millions of wounded Pakistan hearts - and a spur to other jackboots
in the queue to become Chief Executives of the hapless country. Benazir
Bhutto or Nawaz Sharif contesting the general election (and God forbid,
winning) to be the Prime Minister of Pakistan without Bhutto clearing her
and husband's name in the allegations of salting away the accruals of the
couple's involvement in corruption, and Nawaz Sharif clearing his name in
the charges in connection with the (1) storming of the Supreme Court in
Islamabad on November 28, 1997, (2) explaining his role in obstructing the
scheduled landing of the PIA flight PK 805 of October 12, 1999, from
Colombo that was carrying General Musharraf till the fuel tanks were
almost empty, and (3) clearing his name in various corruption charges
against him, will make a mockery of the aspirations of the people of
Pakistan. Any shortcuts Washington or London proposes/supports will end up in prolonging the agony of the people of Pakistan, and give only a false start to democracy as we know it. The emergence of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry from 'suspended' Chief Justice to an inspiring persona of courage of almost mythical dimensions in the Pakistani conditions in a brief 100 days is proof enough that Pakistanis have what it will take to fight for democracy and the rule of law face and overcome the chaos and noise true democracy will initially bring - that is a baptism of fire Pakistan that has stalled democracy for 55 years has to undergo. Yet, it is never too late. Look at the Portuguese success with democracy, and now the Russian effort. Further still, the world community must persuade the Army in Pakistan to allow Dr A. Q. Khan to be interviewed by the IAEA to determine the real extent of the damage Pakistani Generals have done to your and my children's and their children's future safety - where all Dr Khan's military sponsors have sold, mortgaged, and to whom the nuclear wares they criminally acquired? (Only the naïve may believe the Army was not the main sponsor and the beneficiary of Dr Khan's dealings). That will lend substance to what IAEA says in context of Iran. That will also indicate to what extent the world community is still blindly led to disaster by Washington. |
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Generals
and Mullahs for the US and the UK; agony for the people of Pakistan |
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If Washington has to reclaim some of the lost moral authority and global
stature that is America's earned heritage, then it is the Capitol Hill
that has to take the lead in driving the White House to some morally sound
initiatives in Pakistan, in the least to atone for the sins of the past.
The United States of America has to make intelligent, moral moves now to
ensure that Pakistan does not turn into another Baghdad against the
Americans, as is presently inevitable, considering the mutual
manipulation, misuse of the US power and 'partnership' in that country.
The Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) battle provided a glimpse of the gravity of
the threat the West faces. One can safely claim that even in the violent,
early stages of the post-Shah Ayatollah regime in Iran the clerics did not
groom and arm teenage girls to be the fundamentalist keepers of the faith. Imagine the consequences for America (and also for the UK) of the really possible scenario in that Osama bin Laden or his deputy hides in a Pakistani Madarassa - an Islamic Studies Seminary as the Red Mosque in Islamabad was - and the US Intelligence learns of this hideout and does the logical thing: bomb. (This is what exactly happened in Islamabad in July 2007, except that the bombers were the security forces of Pakistan, taking the long stalled action - the consequences of the deliberately delayed action against the mosque complex and its teen jehadists have just begun to flow - much more is in store). The consequences for the US and the UK of such an assault will pale the horrors of 9/11 and 7/11 into mere play of toy planes and trains exploding! For that is the nature of today's Islamic fundamentalism, the myths about martyrdom and the real hurt caused to the Moslems by post WWII Anglo-American impositions in the Middle East, and the continuing destruction of Iraq - the only secular Moslem nation in the world throughout the Saddam years, coinciding with the advent of TV, Cable TV, the Internet and the spread of higher education among Moslems. The USA and the UK well know why India had to have a developing nuclear capability: not against Pakistan for India has taken the No First Strike Pledge. The July 2007 version of the US-India Nuclear deal is a belated recognition of India as a responsible Nuclear State, and the dangerous geopolitical reality in the region, created by faulty UK-US manoeuvres of the past. Yet, no serious questions are asked of Pakistan Army in regard to its arsenal and the need for it, even though it is the military in Pakistan that has the finger on the nuclear button! And all this despite the fact that the leaders of the US and the UK do not trust Pakistani security forces even for their rudimentary personal safety when in Pakistan as 'guests'! And India has to live with this reality, this neighbour. What kind of a game is Washington into where Pakistan is concerned? How much more dangerously irresponsible do the Americans and the Britons want Islamabad to be before they act rationally? Where is the US and international concern of non-proliferation in relation to Pakistan? America has helped create the monster and America knows how to tame it. Not by threatening to 'bomb Pakistan back to the stone age' as General Musharraf claims in his memoir, "In the Line of Fire", the Americans warned Pakistan in the aftermath of 9/11. Civilian, democratic rule now is the only possible prescription for slowly defusing the tinderbox. The United States of America is a great nation, a moral, generous people. Most millionaires and billionaires of America have bleeding hearts for those who are deprived. They will help Pakistan rebuild once the Army returns to the barracks. Tragically, these days the White House does not necessarily represent the moral America as was almost a given till the 1960s. The people of Britain too have similar heritage of greatness. America suffered more than the Vietnamese in the infamous Vietnam War, and the American defeat - they are yet to recover from it fully. The British and the Americans have already realised that although they have almost destroyed Iraq, killing more than 500,000 mostly innocent Iraqis, the damage to America and to Britain is greater than the damage inflicted on Iraq - Iraqis are a mere 22 million as against at least 200 million Americans and 50 million Britons whose moral conscience their elected leaders have sharply pricked by what they have done and continue to do in Iraq. And if the Americans and the British continue their warped-minded policies and threats in Pakistan, delaying the advent of true democracy and the rule of law, increasing the suffering of the 170 million people of Pakistan, then America and Britain will suffer even more than the Pakistanis. Clever, educated Pakistanis in considerable numbers are now well-to-do, well placed American and British citizens, and no matter what they say, most of them will be Moslems from Pakistan first. The stark reality of the situation does not bear asking: What will the cost be to the Americans and to the British if these two countries continue to 'accommodate' one military dictator after another military dictator in Pakistan, each of them beholden to the increasingly fanatical and lethally armed Mullahs and their seminarians, all this 'accommodation' for a variety of ingenuous reasoning, in pursuit of half-baked security theories for the South Asian subcontinent? There is this very revealing entry in the Campbell Diary on Wednesday, September 19, 2001 in "The Blair Years -Extracts from the Alastair Campbell Diaries": "....We are also worried that Bush's 'dead or alive, head on a platter' type of rhetoric would not be helping in Pakistan, which had the potential to be a tinderbox. We could only get at Mullah [Mohammed] Omar [leader of the Taliban] and OBL with Taliban and Pakistan cooperation and even that was doubtful unless we gave them Kashmir...." |
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| 6, August 2007. | Write to the author at rvp@ipfonline.com | |||
| For posting a comment Click Here | ||||
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| R. V. Pandit, 76, has been an editor and publisher in India for almost 58 years. He wrote and sponsored a full-page advertisement, A State within a State - a modern Rogue Army - with its finger on the nuclear button! in The Washington Post of 28 June 1999, The New York Times of July 1, 1999 and The Times, London of July 6, 1999 and in several other newspapers when in view of this writer the Kargil adventure of General Musharraf threatened to blow into a possible nuclear war. A Catholic, he is the godfather to Ness Wadia, a Catholic and the great grandson of M. A. Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, and knows that country quite well through books, the media and some visits. | ||||
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| Reproduced below in full is the main editorial from Dawn, Pakistan's national daily (founded by the founder of Pakistan, M. A. Jinnah), to mark the 60th Anniversary of Pakistan on 14 August 2007. The above article by R. V. Pandit was written on 6 August 2007. By coincidence, the forgotten chronology of what led to the long-running disaster for Pakistan, in events and conclusions is the same as specifically pointed out by RVP. The anguish, the reprimand and the hope expressed by Dawn in the editorial is almost similar to that expressed by the Indian writer. | ||||
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PAKISTAN today is 60 years
old. To say that we have achieved nothing over these six decades is to
deny the truth. True, we have made blunder after blunder, committed
terrible crimes against our own people, and in the process lost half the
country in 1971. Yet it is not a record all that bleak. All said and done,
there has been progress, though, admittedly, the rate could have been
faster. The literacy rate has crossed the 50 per cent mark. Some other
countries, like China, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Kenya, have done better and
achieved much higher results. But we had to contend with enormous
problems, foremost being the compulsion to spend on defence more than what
we could really afford. Also, despite the gross neglect of science over
the decades, Pakistan has been able to develop a pool of scientific
talent, and when India left us with no choice by testing a nuclear device,
we responded in kind and thus could raise our head in pride. In May 1998,
Pakistan became the Muslim world’s only nuclear power in spite of being
a relatively poor and largely illiterate Third World country with a
burgeoning population, large land-holdings under feudal control and
elitist domination of the government apparatus. Besides, there was an
ill-planned industrialisation process that saw industry concentrated in a
few hands instead of being evenly spread, as well as rural poverty, the
consequent rural migration, and urban chaos and tensions. These were
challenges which called for firm and systematic handling by an enlightened
leadership which could mobilise the people’s energies in the country’s
development and give them a sense of participation in governance.
Regrettably, all this has been missing. Looking back over the six decades of our existence, what would strike any observer of Pakistan’s domestic scene is the nation’s failure to develop a good democratic system. What is happening today is merely the continuation of a nasty tradition laid down as far back as 1953-54 when Governor-General Ghulam Mohammad sacked the Nazimuddin ministry, which enjoyed the confidence of the Constituent Assembly, and later dissolved the assembly itself. The ambassador in Washington, Mohammad Ali Bogra, was recalled to Pakistan and made prime minister, while the serving army chief, Gen Ayub Khan, was made defence minister in the cabinet in violation of democratic norms. Ayub by then had developed a taste of power, staged a coup d’etat in 1958 and repealed the constitution. This set a pattern in which other generals would show a similar contempt for the Basic Law. Once in power, Ayub did things that later military dictators followed more or less in similar fashion. He pledged to give a new system “suited to our genius”, held a referendum which gave him an over 98 per cent ‘Yes’ vote and then introduced a system under which the national and provincial assemblies were indirectly elected. Following widespread riots in 1968-69, Ayub quit and handed over power to army chief Gen Yahya: the system he had created collapsed. Two more generals were to seize power — Ziaul Haq in 1977 and Pervez Musharraf in 1999. Both overthrew elected governments, though the former set a new record in tyranny by having his political enemies flogged and hanging the prime minister he overthrew. Both Zia and Musharraf held referendums that lacked credibility, and both made arbitrary changes in the 1973 Constitution to strip it of its parliamentary character. Zia’s presidential system was undone by his own protégé, Nawaz Sharif, while Musharraf reintroduced the changes made by Ziaul Haq and turned the 1973 Constitution once again into a military-civilian mix in which all the powers are vested in the president. Once again the big question is: will this system survive Gen Musharraf’s exit from power? Now Musharraf has plans to have himself re-elected president by the existing assemblies while insisting that he will remain the army chief. This reduces democracy to a mockery. Let Gen Musharraf discard his uniform, and let all those leaders who want to return to Pakistan come home. The cases against them, whether genuine or politically motivated, will be decided by a judiciary that has recently regained its confidence and independence. If at all Gen Musharraf wants to give a gift to the people of Pakistan celebrating the 60th anniversary of their country’s independence, it should be unfettered democracy in the form of a truly free and fair election later this year. |
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| Pakistanis deserve the vigourous, unconditional support of the world to strip President General Pervez Musharraf of his uniform, and give the country a 60th Anniversary gift to usher "unfettered democracy in the form of a truly free and fair election later this year". | ||||
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| Reproduced below, in full, is the actual Rogue Army advertisement that appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today, The Times (London) and some other newspapers between the 28th of June 1999 and the 9th of July 1999. Musharraf refers to this ad in his Memoirs, "In the Line of Fire" pages, 95 & 137. RVP is on the rogue General's hit list ever since. | ||||
