Wampum

Former presidential candidate and current parliament speaker Ali Larijani said the United States was implicated in Sunday's bomb attack. ‘We consider the recent terrorist attack to be the result of US action. This is a sign of America's animosity against our country. Mr. Obama has said he will extend his hand towards Iran, but with this terrorist action he has burned his hand."

Iranian state television is citing informed sources claiming that Britain was directly involved in the attack.

According to Fars, the dead include General Nour-Ali Shoushtari, adjoint commander of the Revolutionary Guards' ground forces and a senior officer in the Quods force, General Mohammad-Zadeh, commander of the Revolutionary Guards in Sistan-Baluchestan province, and [rank unknown] Amir-al Momenin, commander of the Revolutionary Guards in the city of Iranshahr.

Collaterals include another 25 persons, a mix of lower ranking RG personnel and local tribal notables at the target site, and the same number of wounded. The targets were engaged with a man-pack munition, and Abdolmalek Rigi's Jundollah (God's soldiers) is credited with the primary operational role.

Keep in mind that Baluchistan has a nationalist movement of its own, see this, and Pakistan credits India with supporting opfors operating in Baluchistan, in addition to the well-known proxy conflict in Afghanistan, and US forces are present on Iran's eastern boarder, in Baluchistan, and a non-trivial amount of gas and oil is present, and the investment target of China's development of the port at Gwadar (part of Oman until 1958), and of course, "Baluchistan" for some includes the Sistan and Baluchestan Province of Iran, where the demographic is non-Persian and confessionally Sunni.

Posted by EBW at 07:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Pakistan media was mostly shutdown yesterday, including Geo, the popular television station. Oddly, there is little coverage of the attack on the media(there) in the media (here or there), so amongst the "journalists" the theory of embedding (or no media except uniformed media) continues.

Meanwhile, guess who made the following utterly unnewsworthy demands:

1. the state must charge and try former dictator Pervez Musharraf
   
2. the state must cease accommodating foreign military operations
   
3. the state must cease accommodating foreign mercenary operations
   

If you guessed the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi spokesperson sent these out on their letterhead in a presser yesterday, coordinated with the squad-level operation at a gate to the GHQ that managed to kill one Brigadier and one Colonel, or about 0.025% of the senior officer corps, where more than 50% of the senior officer corps are present, you'd be informed, by guesswork, better than by reading the MSM.

If you conclude that an operation that cost an entire 8 person operational group, undertaking a senior personnel targeting operation, which managed to inflict a cost of 2 targeted persons, in an area of operations where several hundred persons meeting the targeting criteria are present daily and accessible to any attacker with very modest means (sidearms and above), is either an astonishingly poor allocation of resources, or an astonishingly poorly executed operational plan, then you'll probably wonder why (a) the media was crushed during the op, (b) why the op is framed as state-shaking trauma, and (c) why anyone is talking nukes.

Oh, and (d) why Pervez Musharraf gets a media pass today, and why (e) foreign military and (f) foreign mercenaries also get media passes today.

Posted by EBW at 08:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammed Chaudhry and nearly 50 judges were sacked by General Pervez Musharraf almost two years ago. President Zardari (PPP) refused to honour the promises and pledges made with Nawaz Sharif (PML-N) about the restoration of the deposed judges, during the election, in particular, the restoration of the Chief Justice.

Hence the Long March of the present week, and the mass arrests by the PPP in power of lawyers, human rights activists, and PML-N party officials.

There's still more to go to defuse this crisis, which has little if anything to do with the massacres carried out by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and the CIA in the Tribal Autonomous Region, or the semi-permanent force-on-force balance between the periphery (Baluchistan, NW Territories, Sindh) and the Punjabi state.

Posted by EBW at 11:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tahira Abdullah: "They came very early in the morning just after dawn. They came in a huge truck full of police men, plus two police women, plus a plain clothes intelligence agent and a magistrate. They did not serve me any papers. They rang the bell, but I did not open the door. They picked up a brick and started hammering down the kitchen door."

She was threatened with 90 days in Adiala jail, but when the news of her arrest got out there was a panic in government -- her "crime" is to have been in the forefront of the lawyers’ movement, and human rights movements for more than a decade. She was released within hours, but it was a wake-up notice this morning that the "crackdown" on the lawyer's movement and/or the PML-N has the potential to remake Pakistan's democracy along the lines of Egypt's necrotic fiction.

Juan Cole's got a long piece up and I'll be reading him, and other than a technical glitch this morning, Dawn is still operating.

Meanwhile President Zardari was in the city of Mashhad in the northeastern province of Khorassan Razavi, Iran, on Wednesday to pay a visit to the holy shrine of Imam Reza, the 8th Imam of Shiite Muslims, and in Tehran the next day to attended the 10th summit of the Economic Cooperation Organization.

Posted by EBW at 05:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As the Obama Administration attempts to find its own, rather than the prior regime's, course in Afghanistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, it would be useful to remember this:

April 8th, 1865.
General R.E. Lee, Commanding C.S.A.:
Your note of last evening in reply to mine of the same date, asking the conditions on which I will accept the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, is just received. In reply I would say that, peace being my great desire, there is but one condition I would insist upon,--namely, that the men and officers surrendered shall be disqualified for taking up arms against the Government of the United States until properly exchanged. I will meet you, or will designate officers to meet any officers you may name for the same purpose, at any point agreeable to you, for the purpose of arranging definitely the terms upon which the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia will be received.
U.S. Grant, Lieutenant-General

Early this morning 30 of the Punjabi State's local police at the Shamozai police post in Swat surrendered to local militia forces. This afternoon they were released, on condition. Ils ont promis aux talibans de démissionner de leurs fonctions et qu'ils ne participeraient plus à aucune opération contre les talibans.

As fierce as the fighting is in Swat, and as profound as the differences between the Punjabi State intent on "extending the writ of law", which is to say, the monopoly of force of the Islamabad Punjabi military elite, and the tribal institutions, militias included, intent on retaining autonomy pre-existing the dissolution of "British India" (1947), and even the establishment of the "Durand Line" (1893), honorable terms are possible.

And the name of this series is Is Pakistan?.

Posted by EBW at 08:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dawn has a long piece about the town, and the social context, and comments from the father of the surviving member of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and Jamaat-ud-Dawa attack team that carried out the Mumbai attack. It makes interesting reading, here's the link.

Posted by EBW at 06:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Via the Hindu. New Delhi: India has proof of the involvement of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency in last week’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai but will not level a public accusation because the ensuing tension in bilateral relations would play into the hands of those responsible for the incidents, authoritative sources claimed here on Thursday.

Asked for the sort of proof linking the ISI to the attacks, the sources said investigators had “the names of the handlers and trainers, the locations where the training was held, and some of their communication through Voice over Internet Protocol have addresses that have been used by known ISI people before.”

The sources also clarified that contrary to media reports in India and Pakistan, the demarche which was handed over to the Pakistani side earlier this week did not contain the list of 20 most wanted terrorists that had first been given to Islamabad in 2000. Once the media started saying India was demanding the immediate handing over of the 20 fugitives, of course, the Government could hardly contradict these reports since their return has been a long-standing Indian demand, the sources added.

The demarche made only a pro forma reference to the return of unnamed fugitives but was otherwise exclusively focused on the Lashkar-e-Taiba and its leader Hafiz Saeed, whom New Delhi regards as the perpetrators of the Mumbai terror strikes.

The sources said that India did not believe the civilian government in Pakistan was involved in the incidents. Asked about the Pakistani Army chief’s potential role, they said it would be surprising if the ISI were able to operate without the military leadership’s knowledge.

Describing Pakistan as a country with a fragmented power structure, the sources said India’s response to what has happened in Mumbai could not be the same as in December 2001, when a terrorist attack on Parliament triggered the offensive deployment of troops on the border and the suspension or downgrading of transport and diplomatic links. “Then, we were dealing with one Pakistan. There was Musharraf and that was it. Today, the situation is different.”

The Pakistani Army would very much like a military crisis on the border with India because that would relieve the pressures it was facing on the Afghan front. “Our dilemma is that we don’t want to play their game — we want them to continue being engaged in the fight against terrorism in the west because that’s also our war. But we can’t give them a pass either. The perpetrators have to be fixed.”

It was because of this complexity, the sources added, that India’s public response has been very limited.

The sources said that on September 24, the CIA provided further details in response to a request from the RAW. In this second warning, the U.S. agency expressly stated that the Lashkar was planning an attack on targets where large numbers of foreigners were present, including the Taj Mahal hotel.

Both warnings corroborate the testimony of the arrested Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist, Mohammad Ajmal Amir Iman. He told the Mumbai police that the original plan was to despatch the 10-man squad from Karachi to Mumbai on September 27. He also told the police interrogators that he did not know why the operation was deferred.

The warnings also corroborated the information generated by the Intelligence Bureau that suggested that the Lashkar had conducted reconnaissance operations in Mumbai.

A senior government official said the delay raised the possibility that the CIA had quietly exerted pressure on Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate to terminate the Lashkar operation.

In the alternative, he surmised, elements in the ISI may have leaked information that the CIA was monitoring the operation. “No intelligence agency discloses all it knows even to allies. So it is probable the CIA knows more than it told us in September. We hope more information will be forthcoming,” the official said.
Phone call trail

India is also hoping for assistance in accessing electronic evidence on phone calls made and received by the terrorists during the attack – which provided what one police described to The Hindu as a “running commentary” on the operation.

Forensic experts at the RAW have determined that the calls were routed through voice-over-internet service providers based in New Jersey and Vienna. VOIP services allow subscribers to create a virtual phone number, from which cheap international calls can be made and received.

According to a source within the investigation, tracing the calls to their final destination posed “a formidable technical challenge.”

Mumbai police officials listening in to the conversation heard the terrorists inside the Taj Mahal hotel tell their controller that their operation had scored a “bonus” with the killing of the “Police Commissioner.”

The investigators believe that the terrorists inside the hotel had most likely seen television reports on the killing of Anti-Terrorism Squad chief and Joint Commissioner of Police Hemant Karkare.

As first reported in this newspaper, the terrorists used at least six mobile phones fitted with SIM cards purchased three weeks before the strike from Kolkata and New Delhi.

Kolkata police investigators have determined that three of the SIM cards used by the terrorists were part of a set of 10 Aircel and Vodaphone prepaid numbers purchased four weeks ago.

A city resident whose identification was used to buy the cards has been detained for questioning.

Delhi police officials also told The Hindu that efforts were on to discover who had purchased three other SIM cards.

Posted by EBW at 06:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Pakistan will divert troops to its border with India and away from fighting militants on the Afghan frontier, if tensions erupt in the wake of the attacks on Mumbai, a senior Pakistani security official said on Saturday."

Yes. That's why. I've been trying to explain this and this quote just fell into my lap. via Dawn.

Posted by EBW at 10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

BBC (Urdu) has reported that the Pakistani cabinet meeting today has decided that no personnel from the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) will be sent to India "until solid proof of Pakistan's alleged involvement in the Mumbai attacks is provided".

The ISI are world famous as bad actors, and if their senior leaders aren't available for forensics, there will be doubt. From Afghanistan to Kashmir to Baluchistan, India and Pakistan have been fencing, and this just isn't good.

Posted by EBW at 08:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

These two men are the heads of quasi-governmental talks with the Taliban, the first for the tribal councils the border region of Afghanistan, the second for the tribal councils of the border region of Pakistan. They are inviting the Talibans and others, all the armed oppositions involved in conflicts with the two states, and the foreign forces, to establish contacts between the oppositions in both countries, joint contacts, through this joint tribal council.

Unfortunately, not only will the foreign fighters from West Asia with the suicide vests ignore this follow-up to the 2007 "Peace Jirga", but the foreign fighters from North America and Europe with the drones and rockets will ignore this too.

Still, Abdullah Abdullah & Owais Ghani are doing the difficult, but better work.

Posted by EBW at 06:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

MB turned to me and asked "Was that a good answer?" I answered "No."

A good answer would start like the answer to a question about Kurds in Iraq. Somewhere in the scope of the statement and the recitation of capability and intent would be "Kurdistan", a non-state occupied by Turkey, Iran, Syria, Armenia and Iraq, and the relationships, variably based upon power projected by the state, and consent based upon advantage.

There is a reason why the Autonomous Areas are Autonomous, and there is the history of the integration of Baluchistan into British India, and the division of the Pashtun region into Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Pakistani state, the Punjabi state, is obsessed with the extent of the state's writ. The Punjabi political classes, civil and military, pursue a policy towards the non-Punjabi political classes that ranges from assassination to military occupation, and from time to time, political compromise. Whatever the United States thinks it is doing in the Pashtun and Baluchi and Sindi ares of Pakistan, hunting OBL, eastern containment of Iran, or naval facilities for regional logistics, it is "in" the center-periphery, the Punjabi-non-Punjabi balance of forces, and usually uncritically aligned with the Punjabi political classes, civil and military.

For US goals to be implemented, that is, no "safe havens", pervasive "strike anywhere, strike anytime" has to be as real as the military selling the solution claim, and maintained indefinitely, or the safety of the havens eliminated by the local forces. The "blow up Mullah Omar to get Bin Ladin" approach has been tried, and both are still capable quasi-state actors. We haven't tried "build up Mullah Omar to get Bin Ladin", which the Punjabi elites don't want India or the US or Iran or Russia to try, for any minor Mullah Omar equivalent, in its "Pakistan".

At some point, the US has to be for local government by means other then foreign forces, in particular Punjabi forces constituting Pashtun government. The US has to get out of being "pro-Karachi" (and being "pro-Tel Aviv") and get pro-progress, and not tilt the local balances of forces to temporary, unstable, non-federated, non-negotiated, dominance-by-firepower solutions.

So no, Senator Obama doesn't have "it" yet, under his plan, the US will continue to send money to Punjabi state to continue its attempt to reduce non-Punjabi autonomy within the fractions of the non-Punjabi states -- Baluchistan and the Pashtun-i-stans (note the plural, some are in "Afghanistan").

Which subordinates whatever the US goals are to the hegemony of the Punjabi elites.

Posted by EBW at 08:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's a puzzle: On August 7th Asif Zardari (PPP) and Nawaz Sharif (PML-N) signed a 7 page agreement drafted by themselves and the others members of their teams one week ago. The agreement has two clauses of interest today, the clauses which have not been implemented by the signers.

First, the clause that that the deposed judges would be reinstated within 24 hours after the impeachment or resignation of Gen (retd) Musharraf.

Second, the clause that that "in case the office of the president still retains the powers acquired under the 17th Amendment, a nationally respected, non-partisan and pro-democracy figure acceptable to the coalition partners will be put forward as the presidential candidate. In case the 17th Amendment is repealed and the powers of the president are restricted to the original powers as envisaged in 1973 Constitution, the PPP will have the right to put forward its own candidate."

The rationale for the non-implementation of the first of these two by Federal Information Minister Sherry Rehman, of Mr. Zardari's party, is that "our other internal and external allies wanted us to take our own route after the resignation of President Musharraf."

The PPP hasn't moved the 17th Amendment question in the legislature, where it leads the four-party ruling coalition.

Mr. Zardari has filed papers as the PPP's candidate for the Sept 6 presidential election.

Mr. Shaif announced the PML-N willl file papers for former chief justice Saeeduz Zaman Siddiqui is its candidate for the Sept 6 presidential election.

So if Mr. Zardari's spokesperson's statements are to be taken at face value, which of Chief of Army Staff Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani (internal ally) or the United States, the United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia (external allies), is opposed in principle to the restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and the political independence of the Pakistani judiciary?

Restated, which prefers a Pakistan returned to horrific political enmities of the late 1980s and early 1990s, a divided and weakened civil government? And why does Prince Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud want to keep the former dictator from being charged with crimes? Since the 1999 coup d'état not a few people have come to violent ends at the hands of the state, e.g., veteran Baloch nationalist leader and former Chief Minister of Balochistan, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, who was killed, along with his grandson, Nawabzada Baramdagh Bugti, an as-yet unnamed second grandson, Mir Azaad Khan Baloch, General Secretary, Government of Balochistan in Exile, and 34 other persons, on August 26th, 2006, in a military operation in Chalgri area of Bhamboor hills of Dera Bugti district. And there's more.

Posted by EBW at 05:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The issues that have to be resolved within hours are reinstatement of the deposed judges, the 17th Amendment, which "constitutionalized" the 2002 Legal Framework Order of General Pervez Musharraf, and Article 58-2(b) which empowers the president to dissolve the National Assembly.

If the controversial amendment stays, a non-partisan person enjoying respect and confidence of all the four coalition partners will be elected to the office of the president

One possibility is General (ret.) Jahangir Karamat, who's name was floated the day General (ret.) Musharraf left President House. Another is deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. The Gallup polling data gives him an approval rating of 85%.

There's a real issue too that's not getting press attention in the US media markets, accountability. What are the consequences of letting a dictator go quietly into retirement? What did the ambassadors from London, Washington and Riyad do to the rule of law in Pakistan when they extracted concessions from the ruling coalition, which was, for the first time in Pakistan's history, peacefully, constitutionally, ending a period of dictatorship?

Posted by EBW at 08:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

General (ret.) Musharraf left President House while Senate Chairman Mohammadmian Soomro was sworn in as caretaker president.

The oath of office as caretaker President was taken by Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar. An election is expected in the next few weeks.

The photo is from 18 August, taken as the ex-dictator was removed from the President House.

Posted by EBW at 08:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Chief of Army Staff Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani was in Kabul today, apparently without prior notice to President Hamid Karzai or the Afghan Defense Ministry. The IASF command is in Kabul, so General Kayani could have been meeting with Gen. David McKiernan. Meetings in person and by phone were added on with Defense Minister Mohammad Zahir Azimi and President Hamid Karzai. Oddly, yesterday Karzai did a presser and announced he is running for re-election.

Someone else is due in today, President Nicolas Sarkozy, after 10 members of the 8e RPMIa were killed and another 21 were wounded in an ambush 60 kilometers east of Kabul over night. As the French unit was doing recon, it is possible that it took close to 100% casualties during the three hours of fighting and had combat air support failed, would not have been able to self-extract or prevent capture, beyond the four reported captured and subsequently killed, either by hostile or friendly fire.

The Daily Times has a paragraph from two dozen political leaders on the resignation. Some want him tried under Article 6 of the Constitution and Article 58-2 (b) abolished. Some just want to Move On.

The coalition leaders are discussing replacing General (ret.) Musharaff.

• Baloch leader Attaullah Mengal,
• former chief justice (r) Saeeduz Zaman Siddiqi,
• Justice (r) Wajeehuddin Ahmed,
• Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Faryal Talpur,
• Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader Ghous Ali Shah,
• Awami National Party (ANP) President Asfandyar Wali,
• former Defence minister Aftab Shaaban Mirani and
• Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam chief Fazlur Rehman

Not on the list is Tehreek-e-Insaaf Chairman Imran Khan, which is sort of odd since his signature issue was the sacking of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and the political independence of the judiciary.
Gallup fielded a poll overnight and 85 per cent of the respondents want Iftikhar Chaudhry and other judges to be reinstated immediately.

The 10-member National Command and Control Authority which controls Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is not (yet) making the news.

Musharraf will leave for Saudi Arabia with his family for Umra, then go to either London or the US.

Musharraf resigned following an agreement with the ruling coalition that it would provide him security and would not try him after declaring any of his actions as unconstitutional. The US, the UK, Saudi Arabia and General Ashfaq Kayani are guarantors to the agreement.

Posted by EBW at 07:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I credit Shaheen Sehbai, who wrote the South Asia Tribune from WDC, and the actually free (not fictionally free) press in Pakistan, chiefly Dawn, for making today possible.

Coverage in Dawn:

President Pervez Musharraf resigns ISLAMABAD, Aug 18: General (Retd) Pervez Musharraf announced his resignation from the office of President of Pakistan on Monday, August 18. He said he was sending his resignation to the Speaker of the National Assembly. He asked his well-wishers to accept his decision in the interests of Pakistan. He said his decision was on the slogan of Pakistan first and he wanted the country to prosper. (Updated @ 14:32 PST)

Next are the lawyers and judges who kept Pakistan a nation of law, and who were obviously beaten, and less visibly, imprisoned or confined to their residences. The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers and The Second Coup of Pervez Musharraf.

Pakistan's Musharraf announces resignation ISLAMABAD, Aug 18 (AFP) -Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf announced his resignation on Monday in the face of looming impeachment charges, ending a turbulent nine years in power. “After viewing the situation and consulting legal advisers and political allies, with their advice I have decided to resign,” a grim-faced Musharraf, wearing a sober suit and tie, said in a televised address to the nation. “I leave my future in the hands of the people.” Musharraf said he would hand his resignation to the speaker of the national assembly (lower house of parliament) later on Monday. He made the shock announcement after denying that any of the impeachment charges against him could stand and launching into a lengthy defence of his time in power.“Not a single charge in the impeachment can stand against me,” Musharraf said. “No charge can be proved against me because I never did anything for myself, it was all for Pakistan.” He said that there was now law and order in the country, that human rights and democracy had been improved and that Pakistan was now an crucial country internationally. “On the map of the world, Pakistan is now an important country, by the grace of Allah,” he said. Musharraf's popularity slumped last year amid his attempts to oust the country's chief justice and then during a wave of Taliban suicide bombings that killed more than 1,000 people, including former premier Benazir Bhutto. He imposed a state of emergency in November last year to force his re-election to another five-year term through the Supreme Court, but his political allies were trounced at the February polls.The coalition of parties which won the February election, led by Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, finally overcame months of divisions and agreed to impeach Musharraf on August 7. It piled on the pressure with no-confidence votes in Pakistan's four provincial assemblies last week. Then on Sunday it said it had drawn up impeachment charges and would lodge them in parliament this week. The charges reportedly included violation of the constitution and gross misconduct. Officials say that Musharraf's aides have been in talks with the coalition, brokered by Saudi Arabia, the United States and Britain, to allow him to quit in return for indemnity. Musharraf's spokesman had repeatedly denied in recent days that he was about to quit, and it was not immediately clear what would happen next. But a lack of apparent support from Pakistan's army, which he left in November, apparently made other options -- including dissolving parliament or even declaring another state of emergency -- impossible. Speculation over Musharraf's fate intensified overnight when US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that granting asylum to Musharraf was not currently under consideration by the United States. “That's not an issue on the table, and I just want to keep our focus on what we must do with the democratic government of Pakistan,” Rice said. Western allies want Pakistan to resolve the crisis over Musharraf so it can deal with the fight against Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, where nearly 500 people have died in the past week.The government is also struggling to deal with a severe economic crunch. (Posted @ 14:56 PST)

And finally there are the electoral political parties, those which boycotted the election held during the "State of Emergency", the Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan, Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan, Tehrik-e-Jafaria Pakistan and Jamiat Ahle Hadith, and those which did, the PPP, the PML-Q, the Awami, etc.

The entirety of Dawn's coverage of the resignation is highly recommended.

See also: Musharraf goes down as fourth military ruler of Pakistan at the Hindi, and Musharraf resigns as Pakistan President is the banner story at the The Times of India. The Daily Times (Lahore) hasn't published the resignation news, but its another source to read. I haven't looked, but will later, at Juan Cole et Cie's coverage at their blogs.

On July 20, 2007, I wrote "Coup or exile?". I've been writing "Is Pakistan?" since the Hizb ut Tahrir put me on their mailing list in March 2004 with "Musharraf is transforming Pak Army into Colonial American Army". They didn't get the replacement of Americans-by-proxy (Generals) by clerics, rather it was clerks, law clerks.

Posted by EBW at 07:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Some idiot on Faux asked Condi Rice if Pervez Musharraf could get asylum in the US. Its a pretty dumb question, since it wouldn't make the PPP+PML-N very happy, and it means the Faux Volk haven't really figured out what to do with regime change applied to one of their properties.

It really got picked up in the Pakistani and Indian media though. You'd almost think someone was signaling something.

Posted by EBW at 09:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While Condi Rice is in Georgia, Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz is in Islamabad, doing something slightly more important. Costing out the extraction of Musharaff.

Posted by EBW at 03:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

They've sorted it out.

ISLAMABAD, Aug 7: The Co-chairperson of Pakistan Peoples Party Mr Asif Zardari said the ruling coalition had decided to start proceeding to impeach President Musharraf, a local tv channel reported. Mr Zardari was addressing a press conference in Zardari House in Islamabad. The PMl-N chief Mr Nawaz Sharif was sitting alongside Mr Zardari when he made the announcement. Mr Zardai said General Musharraf’s policies had weakened the federation of Pakistan and brought the economy to an impasse. Mr Zardari said the coalition believes it has become imperative to remove General Musharraf as President and will initiate proceedings under Article 47 of the constitution. AFP adds: The landmark agreement came after three days of marathon talks between coalition leaders Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif. “We have good news for democracy,” Zardari said at a joint news conference with Sharif in Islamabad. “The coalition believes it is imperative to move for impeachment against General Musharraf.” The government had summoned the National Asembly to sit on August 11 and could begin the impeachment proceedings then, a senior coalition official said. (First Posted @ 18:54 PST Updated @ 19:32 PST)

I like how they refer to the person by the only lawful title available -- General. Most of American public figures refer to the current regime without noticing that the Rehnquist Court appointed the current executive.

source: http://www.dawn.com/2008/08/07/welcome.htm

Posted by EBW at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Mushy was going to Beijing, then canceled because of the the PPP-PML-N meeting. Being smarter and more flexible than our King, and in country where lawyers actually turn and face police rather than run, and judges actually refuse to take loyalty oaths that violate the Constitution, and take each take the obvious consequences, beatings, firings, etc., a country with more of the internal life of what is called "Democracy", Mushy re-appointed the famous eight hold-out judges to the Sindh High Court.

Taking the Oath means approving the November 3rd Emergency Order, unless the 1973 text is used, and even then, its complicated, and divides the judiciary.

So now Mushy is free to go Beijing, Pakistan's other senior partner, leaving the PPP + PML-N to sort out the wreckage of their plan.

The thing about the judges in Sindh is that in Sindh the pro-Mushy PML-Q is in the majority coalition formed by the PPP and the PML-N, so a move to impeach would also put the provincial government in a crisis.

If the "leader of the Progressive Dems" and the "leader of the Blue Dogs" met to schedule an impeachment vote, and got confused because King George threw Gonzales under the Judicary bus, then we'd have a domestic version. But we don't.

Posted by EBW at 07:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The winners at the ballot box, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) agreed yesterday to formally ask Pervez Musharraf to step down and to impeach him through parliamentary measures if he did not oblige. Asif Zardari and Nawaz Sharif and their teams met for six hours Tuesday to work out their differences over the status of the Chief Justice, the Judiciary, and the personal status of Pervez Musharraf. Directly after the meeting of the PPP and the PML-N, senior members of each team briefed the leaders of the Awami National Party’s (ANP) and the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-F, Asfandyar Wali Khan and Maulana Fazlur Rehman, respectively.

The meeting will re-convene this evening.

Posted by EBW at 09:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In the last cycle there was Gen. Wes Clark thinking out loud that the Saudis could bring lawnorder west of the Pecos. Today more mental fluff is being aired by Senator Barack Obama. He's going to take pot shots at bad guys -- in Pakistan -- from Afghanistan.

Obama is not our problem, but the prospect of artillery duels across a second "line of control" in a second "disputed Kashmir" with Pakistan, like India and Pakistan play out over the first "line of control" in the first "disputed Kashmir", minus the civilizing bits of cricket matches between Pakistan and the US, is amusing.

And why continue the military adventure in Afghanistan anyway? Aren't past military adventures the root of the problem in west central Asia, and isn't development, minus all the patro-jingo that has been tacked on the US AID mission since forever, more likely to produce distinguishable outcomes?

Posted by EBW at 09:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

General Musharaff may resign before the restored judiciary (60 justices and the Chief Justice) are re-instated, which now seems a certainty as members of the PML-Q in the Senate are now forming a "forward block" (split from the party leadership) and joining the PPP+PML-N+ANP. When the justices and the CJ are re-instated, General Musharaff's "re-election" last November will be nullified, leaving him ... in need of a non-governmental job.

Just like the election in Gaza, Bush and Rice have gone overboard to keep Musharaff after 3/4ths of a 40% turn-out voted to dump him.

Robert Gates is in New Delhi, along with 50 of his closest fiends from the DoD and the Iron Triangle. via Dawn:

Speculation is rife that Mr Gates will be offering the Indian Navy the soon-to-be decommissioned USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier if the Indian Navy agrees to purchase 65 of the newest model Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornets to be operated off of it.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) is expecting to purchase almost 130 new fighter aircraft, with Boeing and RSK-MiG both in the field of six contenders. A comment reported from Tuesday's interaction in Delhi saying that Mr Gates "made it clear that India and the US military-to-military ties will continue independent of the civil nuclear agreement" may hold the key to the high pressure parleys between the two sides.

For an intelligent shoppers comparison of the RSK-MiG vs F/A-18E/F, I suggest Venik's Aviation. Venik has prices.

Posted by EBW at 01:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Another gem from the anonymous blogger at Dawn -- Need of the hour. In this piece the surface of what I've been writing about since January, 2005, the unresolved structural problem of the relation between Baluchistan and the Punjabi State, and attendant economic problems (who gets access to Gwadar Port and the Sui gas field, the unnecessary military execution of Nawab Akbar Bugti ... The PML-Q "won" in Baluchestan, but the local parties boycotted the election, and had Akbar Bugti not been murdered, and had he contested the election, neither the PML-Q, or the PPP, or even the PML-N would have shown more than a seat. Anyway, enjoy. I know I do. For any read who's forgotten, all the hydrocarbons in PK are in Baluchistan, some of which was part of Oman up until quite recently, and the rest is as close to Tehran as it is to Islamabad.

I wish Shaheen Sehbai was still editing the South Asian Times. His work was outstanding.

There has been much of talk about the need for a government of "national consensus" to deal with the major issues confronting the country. Asif Zardari has said that the federation is under threat due to the discontent of minority groups. He insists that only a national government can alleviate the situation.

At the moment, there is talk of a three-way alliance between PPP, PML-N and ANP. The parties with the strongest showings in Sindh, Punjab and the Frontier would thus be represented in the central government. But such a situation would exclude Baluchistan, where the PML Q, consigned to the opposition benches in the National Assembly, has maintained its position as the largest party.

There is a pressing need to give the Baluchis a strong voice in any future set-up. The Baluchi people have been in a state of agitation, angry at the exploitation of their natural resources and exclusion from the mega-development projects taking place in their own province. The establishment has only been able to control the situation through the ruthless use of military force, killing former Chief Minister Nawab Akbar Bugti when he openly rebelled against the government.

The PML Q's position in Baluchistan, however, is already looking shaky. It has already lost two legislators in the province, one to an unfavourable vote-recount and the other to a heart attack. The PPP is actively seeking to woo independents and members of the PML-Q, some of whom have already expressed an interest in working with the PPP. If the PPP succeeds in forming the government in Baluchistan, its strong position in the centre would allow it to effectively protect the province's interests. One can only hope, for the sake of Pakistan's unity, that the Baluchi people's grievances are quickly redressed.

Posted by EBW at 04:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The latest entry from Dawn's blog:

February 18 marked a return to accountability and democracy for the Pakistani people. However, not everyone in Pakistan was given the opportunity to express their political will. The Federally Administered Tribal Areas are home to an entire community of people living within the geographical boundaries of Pakistan, who do not receive the benefits of statehood and are restricted from fully participating in the political process.

Education within the region is abysmal. Less than five per cent of women in the region are literate. Economic opportunities are similarly scarce. Up to 60 per cent of the population lives below the national poverty line, relying on subsistence farming for their basic needs. With no other way to generate revenue, many turn to smuggling contraband such as opium and weapons.

The economic and political isolation of the region has created a vacuum which has been filled by radical elements from Pakistan and abroad. In desperation the Musharraf government chose military rather than political engagement in Waziristan. However, as evidenced by the Sinhalese government in Sri Lanka, the suppression of a disenfranchised minority is bound to be a failure in the long term. The whole-scale isolation of an entire community from the Pakistani state does not bode well for the health of our political system. What is needed is constructive engagement and a reintegration with Pakistani politics and economics.

How does the emergency unravel? Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, who's still under house arrest, telephoned the Sindh High Court general body meeting to notify the newly-elected National Assembly that the Proclamation of Emergency and Provisional Constitutional Order of Nov 3, 2007 are unconstitutional.

Those watching Mushy and the PPP-PML-N aren't watching the hotest pot on the fire, which is the lawyers and civil society.

has warned the newly-elected National Assembly against endorsement of the Nov 3, 2007, proclamation of emergency and the Provisional Constitution Order promulgated under it.

Posted by EBW at 04:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Juan Cole's got a longish piece anyone who doesn't already know the history of Pakistan's civilian and military governments could read and benefit from. Its a rebuttal of John McCain's (and a host of others) ideas about Pakistan, but serviceable as a nutshell political history. Here's the link.

The unfortunate thing about reaming McCain for having been a party to the creation of present (nice photo of Reagan and the pre-cursors to the Afghan Taliban in the White House) is that ... it is a real challenge to discern the differences between McCain, Clinton and Obama on how they frame issues -- all three are Neo-Cons, or trapped in the Neo-Con web of lies.

If you are able to read French, there's three pages of analysis in yesterday's Le Monde, untroubled by any of the artificial favors of koolaide being sloshed around the media outlets and what used to be blogs (now campaign new-media properties) -- Primaires américaines : "le néoconservatisme continue à structurer la pensée des candidats".

Rather than translate, which is a lot of work, cause I can't keep myself from rewriting, I'll steal three happy paras from the WaPo which Cole links to, to show the truth of the assertion that there isn't any distance between Obama's "strikes" and Bush's "strikes". Of course, in Juan's view, this is exculpatory rather than damning. In my view the opposite is true. So (drumroll, circus tent voice) ...

Which of the following is preferable:

In the predawn hours of Jan. 29, a CIA Predator aircraft flew in a slow arc above the Pakistani town of Mir Ali. The drone's operator, relying on information secretly passed to the CIA by local informants, clicked a computer mouse and sent the first of two Hellfire missiles hurtling toward a cluster of mud-brick buildings a few miles from the town center.

The missiles killed Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior al-Qaeda commander and a man who had repeatedly eluded the CIA's dragnet. It was the first successful strike against al-Qaeda's core leadership in two years, and it involved, U.S. officials say, an unusual degree of autonomy by the CIA inside Pakistan.

Having requested the Pakistani government's official permission for such strikes on previous occasions, only to be put off or turned down, this time the U.S. spy agency did not seek approval.

That's the choice shared by McCain, Huckabee, Clinton and Obama. How about this:

In the predawn hours of Jan. 29, Abu Laith al-Libi was served with an arrest warrant issued by the North Waziristan criminal courts in Mirumshah [Miran Shah]. The warrant was served by a police officer from Mir Ali, the second largest town in North Waziristan, where Abu Laith al-Libi was in hiding.

The arresting officer was supported by a joint force composed of the Darwesh Khel tribal militia, acting under the authority of the Waziri Jirga and the North West Frontier Corps, acting under the authority of the Pakistani state. Abu Laith al-Libi was taken into custody and transported to Mirumshah for arraignment.

The arrest of Abu Laith al-Libi is the latest in a series of arrests of fugitives under the Collective Responsibility Acts in the Frontier Crimes Regulation.

One answer just bumps the rungs of the chain of command ladder, as everyone who's served in wartime knows, the other has another outcome. One is wicked flashy, and costs a lot of tax dollars that get spent in a couple of safe-Republican districts, and a lot more tax dollars that get spent in the logistical tail across monarchies and dictatorships, and generate excellent-dude kerpowie eye-candy for the safe-Republican media outlets, and the other doesn't have those ... partisan characteristics.

Seen any law-and-order candidates lately?

Its something to keep in mind, unless the French have it totally wrong, and LE PAKISTAN, BAPTÊME DU FEU DU FUTUR PRÉSIDENT is simply a cocktail party gag.

Posted by EBW at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Final NA Results by map

Posted by EBW at 09:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A little over 24 hours ago, before the early returns were in, enough to give the first contours of the outcome, when massive vote fraud was till a very real possibility, vote fraud sufficient to keep the MMA and PML-Q parties in power, the writer at Dawn's blog wrote this:

Can elections ever be construed as free and fair if a certain segment of society is prevented from partaking in them? In case you are wondering which segment I'm referring to - the correct answer is women.

Of course less the 40% of the electorate actually did vote, but the largest hidden vote suppression is the suppression that doesn't require that names be dropped from the rolls, or that voters be turned away from the polling station, its the suppression that the voter is less than equal, that nothing is on the ballot that actually matters, and that the personification of liberation by the ballot has been shot and bombed in plain sight.

Only 40% of the electorate in Pakistan is literate, and that's males and females, averaged. Parties use symbols. One uses a lantern, to symbolize the light that could come to Pakistan.

Others writing about the election:

Juan Cole published a medium sized piece this morning with analysis and copy also from Dawn.

The Cursor has two paras of links, none to South or West Asian source. I don't read the cursor, but others do.

William Harting has a piece at one of Josh Micah Marshall's sites, unfortunately, its again sources far from Asia and mostly cover for Joe Biden's most recent offer to increase the US contribution to Pakistan without specific condition, specific like engage in disarmament with India or increase the funding of girl's eduction.

That's about it in the greater leftish blogodome for PK coverage.

Posted by EBW at 06:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The people in the NWFP voted out of power the religious parties. I don't expect that this fact will make it to the foreign policy talking heads inside the beltway, but it means that the Pashtun resistance to the Punjabi military isn't about Islamic fundamentalists vs secular modernists. That isn't the only take-away. Is the Pashtun resistance to the NATO military a conflict between Islamic fundamentalists and secular modernists?

According to Geo TV, the combined total for the PML-N and the PPP is 139 seats, more than half of the 272-seat National Assembly, with the PPP winning 77 seats, and the PML-N winning 62 seats. The PML-Q managed to win only 34 seats.

Dawn's blogger writes:

The general mood in Pakistan is buoyant. The streets in Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi are filled with youthful supporters and party activists, cars blaring traditional party music and walls coloured in PML (N) and PPP flags.

The remaining biggies? Is the PPP+PML-N+minor-parties coalition a simple or two-thirds majority? On that question hangs impeachement. Will the judiciary be restored? On that question hangs the legality of General Musharaff's re-election.

Posted by EBW at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Results for 125 out of 272 constituencies are in.

Nawaz Sharif's PML-N picked up 50 seats.

Benazir Bhutto's PPP picked up 39 seats.

Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi's PML-Q only managed 18 seats.

Smaller parties and independents also managed 18.

Update: Results for for 179 out of 272 constituencies are in.

The PML-N has won 56 seats.

The PPP has also won 56 seats.

The PML-Q has managed just 21 seats.

Posted by EBW at 12:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Polls closed 2:45 minutes ago.

Dawn is live blogging the vote. See blog.dawn.com.

Early returns show the PML-Q losing nearly every seat contested by the PPP.

The South Asian media hasn't got anything up on their main sites.

Updates as usual.

1. Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed (PML-Q) is trailing behind Javed Hashmi (PML-N) and second place Sardar Shuakat Hayat (PPP) in Rawalpindi. He's been minister of railways in the Musharaff government, has won seven prior elections, and is a "close confident" of the General.

2. Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain (PML-Q), and party chairman, has lost one of his two current parliamentary seat to a candidate from the PPP.

3. Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain (PML-Q), and party chairman, has lost the other of his two current parliamentary seat, also to a candidate from the PPP.

Posted by EBW at 03:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Three platforms in crib:

• 5 Es -- employment, energy, education, environment and equality -- PPP
  
• "RESTORE" -- Restoration of (pre-Nov 3) judiciary, democracy and the (pre-Oct 1999 coup) 1973 constitution, Elimination of military's rule in politics, Security of life and property, Tolerance, Overall reconciliation, Relief for the poor, and Education and employment -- PML-N
  
• 5 Ds -- democracy, development, defence, devolution and diversity -- PML-Q
  

In the last few hours Chaudhry Asif Ashraf, a candidate of the PML-N, for the Punjab provincial assembly was shot to death, and nine other party worker were wounded by an armed group in Lahore. Another armed group engaged a polling office of the PML-N at Lahore, killing one party worker and wounding several others.

Jemima Khan, the former wife of Imran Khan, has an interview with Mushy The politics of paranoia in The Independent on Sunday. A teaser:

The likely winners, boosted by the "martyr factor", are likely to be the PPP, followed by the party led by ex-prime minister Nawaz Sharif, the PML-N. There will have to be some uncomfortable but expedient alliances between sworn enemies. Sharif jailed Zardari. Musharraf jailed and exiled Sharif, Musharraf jailed Zardari, Zardari's wife jailed Sharif's father. Sharif brought corruption charges against Zardari's wife after she brought charges against him. And so on. It would be amusing to see this group all wrangling with each other for power, if only the consequences were not so dire.

Also worth reading is the re-working of a piece she's supposed to have written for The Independent on Sunday, an interview with Mushy. I can't find the original, but here's the link to the reworking of it in Dawn -- Musharraf predicts majority seats for PML-Q, MQM.

Joe Biden, Chuck Hagel and John Kerry are in Islamabad to observe the election. I hope they have the sense to do some reading.

US coverage? The NYTimes is aware there is a PPP, a PML-N, and a PML-Q, however, their narrative is the "fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the region", so as far as the Gray Lady is concerned, what began as a fight against al-Qa'ida and the Taliban in the NWFP hasn't become a Pashtun uprising against the Punjabi army, and the majority sympathy is with the Pashtuns. The LATimes is aware there is a PPP, but not much else. So much for press coverage of the central front in the war on mumbleisms.

Posted by EBW at 11:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif met for lunch yesterday at Sharif's home outside of Lahore, their second lunch date this week. My impression is that there will be a coalition PPP - PML-N majority, two of the four possible post-election outcomes. Vote-rigging blocked their parties from obtaining a majority in the 2002 elections, and the PML-Q (pro-Mushy) "won" and held power until 2007, until replaced by a "caretaker" government. A repeat of the 2002 vote-rig covers the other two possible post-election outcomes.

There were bombings and shootings during the day yesterday, the largest was the bombing of a PPP rally at a candidate's home in Parachinar in the Kurram tribal agency (in the NWFP), wounding 90 and killing 40. Both the PPP and the PML-N canceled their final events in Lahore, advantage PML-Q, which oddly benefits from every breakdown in security for its electoral rivals.

Posted by EBW at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Actually, there are many Muslims in India, as well as many Sikhs. Delhi is a cosmopolitan city. Watching the Pakistani news outlets and the Indian news outlets (between the scads of channels devoted to either singing and dancing romantically, or singing and dancing spiritually, or just plain old every-day-is-Sunday TV preachers) was interesting. Everyone is dancing on, or around, the question of what General Musharaff will do after the PML-Q is trounced.

Just as the November election will be about Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and the remainder of the primary race will be about Ohio and Texas on March 4th, and Pennsylvania on April 22nd, the election in Pakistan is all about the Punjab.

The PPP is sweeping the rural areas of the Sindh and the MQM is holding its edge in the Sindh's urban areas. Polls have the PPP at 40 and the MQM at 16 of the directly elected national seats.

The Balouch and Pakhtun nationalist parties are boycotting the election, leaving the pro-regime MMA to take some seats in Balochistan, and the PPP, PML-N and PML-Q to take the balance of the Balochistan's directly elected national seats.

In the North West Frontier Provice, where everyone from Wes Clark to Barak Obama has proposed parachuting in the Saudi Army, or the Utah National Guard, to Hunt for Red Ossama, the MMA has collapsed and Jamaat-i-Islami is now canvassing openly. Again, polling data has the PPP and the ANP (Awami National Party) spliting most of the NWFP's directly elected national seats.

But the Punjab elects 148 of the 272 directly elected seats, so to repeat the obvious, the "national election" in the Punjabi state and its occupied peripheries, governed by the Punjabi Military, is really all about the Punjab, about the balance of forces within the Punjabi state.

Its a three-plus way. The PPP is running on "revenge through democracy" and is running second in the major cities, Nawaz Sharif's PML-N is ahead in the urban areas and picking up surprise seats in Rawalpindi. Rural Punjab is divided, with candidates formerly members of the MMA now scattered to PML-N, PML-Q, the PPP, and the MMA. Like the democratic primaries to date, accumulating delegates with no strategic advantage to either remaining active candidate, the post-election construction of a majority coalition is the only issue. Will the PPP have enough to form a majority without another major party partner, the PML-N in particular? No one asks if the MNA and the PML-Q will have a majority, except through vote fraud.

Major Party Websites:

• PPP, leader: Benazir Bhutto (assassinated)
  
• PML-N, leader: Nawaz Sharif
  
• PML-Q, leader: Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi [Musharaff]
  
• MMA, leader: General Musharaff
  

As an exercise, color in the blank outline map according to the authoritative news available to you.

Remember, the title for this series is "Is Pakistan?", and related to the question "What will Mushy do if?" is the question "What will Georgie do when?"

Answers in comments.

Posted by EBW at 03:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Susie's sent a wicked brilliant piece over the transom to Joe Trippi [link], and something that I've been mulling over in the few idle moments Jonah and the gang and work leave me with ... what if we advised the Edwards campaign? I mean, threw stuff at them, because, they need to pull a rabbit out of a hole in a hat.

When Susie read us the script and got to the Chris Mathews moment I _knew_ the next line would be "Senator Edwards, how much did you pay for your haircut?"

So, Pakistan. Bhutto, Nukes, Baluchistan and Iran, and the Tribal Autonomous Areas.

Senator Clinton opined that there should be a independent, international investigation into Benazir Bhutto's assassination, suggesting that Pakistani security forces or military might have been involved.

She's spot-on that in the history of political successions in Pakistan, the military and the intelligence service have acted with lethal agency, but dreaming that the UNSC (China in particular) would vote to compel a Hariri-like investigation, and further dreaming that the military and the intelligence service could be compelled, in a state under their control, to cooperate and assume culpability for even negligence, or worse. Day dreaming.

Senator Clinton also opined that she would try to get Musharraf to share the security responsibility of the nuclear weapons with a delegation from the United States and perhaps Great Britain so that there is some failsafe.

To quote Jeff Lewis, who has a day job as an academic arms control policy wonk:

First, there is simply no way Pakistan would ever agree to it.

Second, it would complicate both U.S.-Indian relations and deterrence on the subcontinent. My eyes cross when I begin to think about the implications of an American/British failsafe in the context of a Pakistani-Indian nuclear standoff.

Third, it would violate the NPT. Article I of the NPT requires nuclear-weapon States like America to not in any way to assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear weapon State to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons. Under the NPT, Pakistan is a non-nuclear weapon State.

Next there is Baluchistan and Iran, for which Senator Clinton is not particularly on record. But we are and so John Edwards could be, cause we're way ahead of the curve. We don't really want to frustrate China's attempt to get a straw into the Sui gas field and Gulf oil, because we're not sipping Dick Cheney's mint koolips, and we don't think the whole damn world revolves around nuclear end games for peak oil. That said, we don't give a damn if Baluchistan rejoins Oman or stays in Pakistan, but if it stays in Pakistan, the Punjabi state needs to figure out what "federalism" means, and how they can broker sales of Baluchi natural gas to India. The other side of the Baluchi-Punjabi relationship is the Iranian frontier, and there are US troops there, wicked far away from OBL in or north of, the Autonomous Tribal Areas, doing nothing useful. But doing it far too close to Iran's defense perimeter. They need a movement order, to Diego Garcia or Kuwait or Europe or back home.

Finally there is the Tribal Autonomous Areas. The OBL problem. The worst proposal to come from a Democratic candidate came from Wes Clark in the last cycle -- turn it over to the Saudis and let them ... do it. The value in this is its wrongness. The Pakistani state has never controlled the Tribal Autonomous Areas, it is why they are called the Tribal Autonomous Areas. Whatever our interests are in the area, we are less likely to achieve those interests if we ignore the autonomous and tribal nature of those areas. We have a relationship with the Punjabi state. We need a relationship with the Pashtuns as well, and a constructive one, not just a sequence of special ops. We need to build schools for girls, it is the better choice and it is our enemies weakest spot.

There, less than 2 minutes to make four points in a debate, points that are really about what we'll be doing in 2012, dancing around the same campfire, graced with another many-k of US and Iraqi skulls and crossbones, or out, and comforting the afflicted, creating less long-term risk to ourselves in passing.

Posted by EBW at 12:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Pervez Musharraf has today allowed as how it is just possible that Benazir Bhutto died as a result of one or more gunshot wounds to the head and neck. Up until today the official line was skull fracture -- the "lever theory".

Something worth reading is this -- The future of democracy in Pakistan, by Asif Ali Zardari, the husband of Benazir Bhutto and a former Pakistani senator, and co-chairman of the Pakistan People's Party. Recall that Wes Clarke wanted to turn the hunt for OBL over to the Saudis, which is the equivalent of using foreign troops to end the political autonomy of a portion of "Pakistan" that has not been under the complete control of the Punjabi military since the Partition of British India, so daftness abounds in all things Pakistani even on the the left hand side of the dial.

Today the Daily Times (Lahore) has a SECOND EDITORIAL: PPP's report on pre-rigging

The PPP Election Cell has unsealed a report that the late PPP leader Ms Benazir Bhutto was going to send to the US revealing the role of the state intelligence agencies in what is called "pre-rigging". The 45-page report graphically describes the activities of one state agency in Balochistan, clearly aimed at boosting the PMLQ candidate in Dera Bugti while eliminating his opponents through intimidation and such devices as abductions. One candidate was unable to file his candidature because he simply "disappeared". Also, in the 45 districts of Punjab -- especially Chakwal, Bahawalpur, Attock and Lahore -- the nazims were found actively engaged in boosting PMLQ candidates.

The PML-Q is part of the Musharaff government. I've written several times in the past on Baluchistan, the category is Is Pakistan?.

Oh! Surprise! (not). The Bush Regime just floated (via the ever-accommodating Gray Lady) the news that it is considering expanding covert military and intelligence operations in Pakistan.

Posted by EBW at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Qui Bono?

I've thought a bit about the universe of possible authors of the successful political assassination operation conducted on December 27th at Liaquat Bagh, in Rawalpindi. I've gotten mail from members of the Hizb ut Tahrir which I've organized here. The Hizb position is that elections as practiced are inherently flawed, a position shared by Ralph Nader, John Edwards, and just about everyone aware of the role of overt institutional influences -- corporate, religious, military, etc., and covert institutional influences -- criminal organizations, foreign agencies, etc -- have in determining the "correct" outcomes of one-person-one-vote contests, See in particular the Political Program of the Hizb ut-Tahrir, which dates from the attempt by Uzbeck Dictator Islam Karimov and Bush ally to award blame for three coordinated explosions that took place in Tashkent in August, 2004.

So, probably not the Hizb or any Hizb-like movement, even those with operational abilities.

Then there's the AQP theory, denied by Baitullah Mehsud as soon as the government's finger pointed towards "Al Qaeda", whether domestic or foreign. Benazir's brothers operated in the same area with the same local tribal vs Punjabi political alignments, from Soviet-occupied Afganistan against the Zia ul Haq dictatorship, the prior incantation of military rule in Pakistan. Assassination of the opposition PPP candidate (or the PML-N candidate) would not weaken the Musharaff dictatorship, unless of course, the "AQP" could hang responsibility on the government or its political supporters -- or Inter-Services Intelligence operatives.

So, probably not the AQP or any AQP-like movement with operational abilities.

In fact, individual assassination isn't going to change the balance of forces overtly organized as political parties with political platforms and material interests, as there is always a "next in succession".

Random shooters don't manage two hitters plus enough bodies to flood the killing zone and block escape by the target vehicle.

So, what organization is capable, and can expect a better outcome from assassination prior to the election than from allowing the target to survive the election and re-acquire limited command and control over the state?

From Dawn's January 2nd edition:

Benazir was set to file dossier on rigging
KARACHI, Jan 1: Benazir Bhutto was poised to reveal proof the night she was assassinated that the Election Commission and a shadowy spy agency were seeking to rig the elections, a top aide said on Tuesday.

Senator Latif Khosa, who authored a 160-page dossier with Ms Bhutto documenting rigging tactics, said they ranged from intimidation to fake ballots, and were in some cases unwittingly funded by US aid.

Ms Bhutto had been due to give the report to two visiting US lawmakers over a dinner on Dec 27, the day she was killed in a gun-and-bomb attack.

"The state agencies are manipulating the whole process," Mr Khosa, a top aide of Ms Bhutto and head of the PPP election monitoring unit, told Reuters.

"There is rigging by the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence), the Election Commission and the previous government, which is still continuing to hold influence. They were on the rampage."

President Pervez Musharraf's spokesman Rashid Qureshi dismissed the claim as "ridiculous".

"It makes one laugh," he said. "The president has said a free, fair, transparent and peaceful election is essential, which forms part of his overall strategy for transforming Pakistan into a fully democratic (nation)."

"Benazir's coming back to Pakistan was part of a national reconciliation ordinance," he added. "Take it from me, it's going to be perhaps the best election that Pakistan has ever had."

Mr Khosa said the report, entitled "Yet another stain on the face of democracy", details how the spy agency was planning to issue 25,000 pre-stamped ballots for each of 108 candidates for NA seats in Punjab from the party that backs President Musharraf and formed his government. "They have used intimidatory tactics, they intimidated the returning officers into rejecting nomination papers ... they prevented candidates from submitting their nomination papers," Mr Khosa said. "This happened in Balochistan and in the other central areas of Pakistan. It happened in Sindh." --Reuters

McClatchy is running a piece that is surprising to find in the US media market. Commentary: Sins of omission and sins of commission haunt Bush in Pakistan, by Joseph L. Galloway. Via Susie.

That's part 1. There's a part 2.

Posted by EBW at 09:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Two interesting posts about Pakistan.

1. Barnett Rubin has published a wicked good piece (and the comments really add to it) at ICGA: Pakistan's Power Puzzle (With Corrections from Comments), via Juan Cole

2. Ahmed Rashid has published an incisive analysis from Pakistan in Yale Global Online, via Barnett Rubin's post (above)
   

Posted by EBW at 03:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm still trying to figure out what former first-lady and presently junior Senator from the State of New York could possibly have in mind when suggesting an international investigation into the murder of PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto. It is a reasonable political posture to make, to look tough and set up the personal narrative of Hillary vs Mushy, but it isn't substantive. The UNSC can't possibly vote without a veto by China, to impose a foreign investigation, which may be a multi-lateral facade in the best of circumstances, so that leaves ... a bilateral facade or the best that expectations of rule of law can accomplish.

Assistant Inspector-General of CID Chaudhry Abdul Majeed and a four-member police team started investigation into the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. They hope to identify the people who forced Ms. Bhutto's car to stop while she was leaving the rally. They may not come to the same cause-of-death conclusion that the government came to within minutes of the execution of the assassination operation at Liaquat Bagh.

Pakistanis will have to work around the domestic minefield of the Army, the SIS, the domestic bombers, and the comforting myth of a foreign bomber, its their Bush vs Gore, their case that can't be cited.

I'm much more impressed with former Vice-Presidential nominee Edwards telephoning General Musharaff, which puts all the rigged election cards on the table, even if none are face up.

Posted by EBW at 02:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Medical reports had at least one entry/exit pair, thorax or skull, mostly both, with brain matter protruding, and eye witnesses who transported the not yet pronounced body and who washed the pronounced corpse reported multiple entry/exit wound pairs to the neck and head.

The government selected the narratives of fatal self-injury, clarified subsequently to fatal secondary blast rebound. Definitely, no bullet wounds, no fragments either, in the body of Ms. Bhutto, according to the government.

Fixation on mechanism is a distraction from determination of agency.

This morning's dispatches in Le Monde had a quote from a woman in the vehicle directly behind Bhutto's vehicle, who recounted that she had just remarked with alarm to another person in the party that suddenly there were several unknown faces with Bhutto badges at the vehicle staging point and that she was looking away from the point of attack, distracted, when the first shot was fired.

There is footage of the shooter adjacent to another person prior to the attack, and footage of the shooter, firing, several times, at a distance of less than 4 meters from Ms. Bhutto.

Which puts the attack team at no less than two persons, and potentially larger, large enough to flood the security periphery and provoke the "sudden new faces with badges" impression in a survivor.

More than 800 people have been killed in bombings in Pakistan this year. It is unlikely that a single agency is the author of all of these operations, and in the history of political successions in Pakistan, the military and the intelligence service have acted with agency.

The Election Commission has now formally delayed the January 8th legislative election.

Posted by EBW at 10:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Pakistan:
Dawn

The Daily Times (Lahore)

India:
The Hindu

Times of India

Iran:
IRNA

[Originally posted on 11.05.07, bumped to 12.28.07]

Posted by EBW at 09:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Benazir Bhutto, top right, is seen with her family in July 1978. From left to right are her mother, Nusrat Bhutto, her brother Shahnawaz Bhutto, her father, former Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Her brother Murtaza Bhutto is at bottom left and her sister Sanam Bhutto is at bottom right. (AP Photo)

In 1979 Zulfikar Ali was the the victim of a judicial murder (hanging after conviction by a military court) staged by Muhammad Zia ul Haq, then military dictator of Pakistan. In 1985 Shahnawaz was found dead in his French Riviera apartment in Nice. He and Murtaza had organized an armed opposition to the Zia ul Haq dictatorship from Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. In 1996 Murtaza was shot to death by police in Karachi, a homicide that is still "unsolved".

Posted by EBW at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We are saddened by the assassination of former Primer Minister Benazir Bhutto, and hope that the planners of this political murder are discovered, and the rule of law, which lawyers and judges in Pakistan have sacrificed so much to protect and maintain, remains intact and protects the innocent.

Via The Hindu:

A doctor on the surgical team said a bullet in the back of her neck damaged her spinal cord before exiting from the side of her head. Another bullet pierced the back of her shoulder and came out through her chest, he said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. She was given an open heart massage, but the spinal cord damage was too great, he said.

Posted by EBW at 03:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

... an expansion of the CENTCOM Area of Operations to eastern, southern and of course, western Iran, the possibility that SIS-Appointed Musharaff and Rehnquist-Appointed Bush have created a favorable situation can't be dismissed. Freedom of maneuver for Taliban presidential assassination squads as far as Rawalpindi from the North West is profoundly surprising.

The January 8th legislatives are likely to be cancelled and a new state of emergency, somewhat fictive after Musharaff's last one just to rid himself of judicial scrutiny, is certain.

Posted by EBW at 02:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Benazir Bhutto (PPP) was shot once in the neck at close range, and suffered head injuries from the follow-up blast which killed or wounded many people proximal to the shooter and his target, and was pronounced dead in a hospital in Rawalpindi.

A few minutes before the assassination. Here's Dawn's coverage:

Benazir Bhutto Assassinated

Benazir Bhutto dies ISLAMABAD, Dec 27: Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto succumbed to her injuries in the hospital, tv channels reported. She had received grievous bullet injuries in the neck region and head injuries from the bomb blast at the election meeting at Liaquat Bagh which also claimed at least 20 more lives. (Posted @ 18:28 PST)

About 20 killed in blast after Benazir rally RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, Dec 27 (AP) An explosion went off shortly after opposition leader Benazir Bhutto addressed a political rally in Rawalpindi's Liaquat Bagh, killing at least 20 people, witnesses said. An Associated Press reporter at the scene could see body parts and flesh scattered at the back gate of Liaquat Bagh. He counted about 20 bodies, including police, and could see many other wounded people. Police official Abdul Karim said Benazir had already left the area in her vehicle when the blast went off. (First Posted @ 16:05 PST Updated @ 17:34 PST)

Also in Rawalpindi gunmen opened fire on supporters of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif (PML-N) killing four.

Posted by EBW at 08:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Cassidy and Associates just dumped Gen.Musharraf. The C&A Pakistan contract was managed by Senior VP Robin Raphel, a former assistant secretary of state for South Asia (1993 to 1997). C&A represents Orcs, so this is surprising.

Posted by EBW at 03:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I mentioned this a few weeks ago in Criminals, careerists and courtiers at Al Asad Air Base.

Elsewhere, Pakistani elites are carrying on pretty much as if nothing is forecast that would dampen the political quadrille around the presidential election, which means that neither Musharaff or Bhutto have been briefed that a movement order is pending that would zero out their respective domestic calculations.

In my view, the skirmishes in the NWFP and Baluchistan areas of operations are unremarkable, insufficient to motivate either non-accommodation with the political opposition parties, or yesterday's sudden coup d'etat, which could just as easily tilt towards civil resistance as military relaxation.

Is the better explanation Iran?

Posted by EBW at 09:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Of the nineteen justices on the Supreme Court, fifteen, including Chief Justice ftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, were "removed" and arrested over the weekend. Of the twenty seven justices on the Sindh High Court, twenty three judges, including Chief Justice Sabihuddin Ahmed were "removed" and arrested over the weekend.

The device employed is a requirement to "take oath" under the Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO) that was issued by the Musharraf Regime directly after its proclamation of a "state of emergency" on Saturday.

Thomas Moore refused to swear the Oath of Supremacy of 1534, which made Henry Tudor head of the Church of England, was charged with praemunire, tried for treason, sentenced to death, and beheaded at London Tower. His last words were The King's good servant, but God's First. The translation to modern Pakistan, or the US after Gore v Bush, substitutes "Constitution" for "God".

Shaukat Aziz has just made the first official announcement of the scope of the arrests -- between 400 and 500 "preventative arrests". At this point, just about anyone you could name from the bench or the courts or the opposition parties is either in custody or has been issued a "30 day house arrest", so its Burma write a bit larger, with nuclear weapons, and $11,000,000,000 in military aid from the Bush Regime, which held its own coup in December 12, 2001.

Posted by EBW at 12:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Tariq Aziz and Rehman Malik have been meeting for months, negociating on behalf of their principals. Yesterday their principals, President and General Pervez Musharraf and former Prime Minister and leader of the PPP, Benazir Bhutto, flew from Islamabad and London, respectively, to meet in Abu Dhabi yesterday. The meeting was unannounced and follows eight years of extreme hostility between them.

I expect a Constitutional amendment to change the current two-term limit to three, and Musharraf to surrender command of the Army, contemporanious with Bhutto's return from exile and standing as the PPP's candidate for President, with the actual intent to be re-appointed as Prime Minister under the (less unitary executive) third-term Musharraf presidency.

Posted by EBW at 09:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Today was a court and travel day, so this is half-a-day-old "news". Lawyers beat Army one nill in the playoffs today. The net is that Musharaff have to figure out an alternative to standing (legally) for re-election in the next general election.

Coup or exile?

Posted by EBW at 11:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Since the US press is chock-a-block with AQinPAK noise, for the usual indiscriminate value of AK and PAK, I thought it would be useful to post this snippit from Dawn's coverage of the persistent armed friction between the periphery and the center of the always problematic Pakistani (or Punjabi) Military State.

Militants have intensified attacks on the security forces since a local Taliban Shura announced last week that it had scrapped a peace agreement with the government.

As attacks on security forces mount in the troubled region, the government has convened a 45-member inter-tribal jirga in Peshawar on Thursday to launch a fresh bid to revive the now defunct September 5 [2006] peace agreement in North Waziristan.

Fata Additional Chief Secretary Javed Iqbal said that he was confident that negotiations would help revive the 10-month-old peace agreement.

"It is in the collective interest of us all. It is in their (tribal people's) interest and it is in our interest. Tribesmen are very pragmatic people and I am confident they will return to negotiations," he said.

The militants said they would not revive the peace agreement unless the government withdrew troops from checkpoints and stop military operations.

However, just as "Homeland Security" threat levels must rise when the domestic political tides of the RNC fall, AQ is now the proud owner of some (or all, depending on which paper and pundit are taken as gospelkoranic truth) of PAK.

Posted by EBW at 01:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Islamabad District Bar Association was engaged today with a man-packed munition 20 minutes before Chief Justice Iftikar M Chaudhry was scheduled to speak. The bomber detonated his payload underneath the speaker's dias, killing at least 10 people and wounding another 35.

The question of the moment is was the CJ the target, or was Benizer Bhutto's party, the PPP, the target. Most of the killed and wounded are PPP, but had the payload been detonated 20 minutes later, the CJ would have been a casualty.

Bhutto is the only opposition leader to have welcomed the July 11 attack on Lal Masjid and expressed unqualified support for Musharaff.

Updates as they come in.

Update: U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher: We all recognize that the agreement in North Waziristan hasn't worked, because the government doesn't have direct control., and [the U.S. will help Pakistan boost its Frontier Corps] so they become a different kind of force that's able to deal with the severe problems, but also stabilize the area.

If the Punjabi state had direct control over North Waziristan, no agreement would be necessary. As for making the FC able to deal with the severe problems (more firepower) and stabilize (less firepower), at $2bn/yr already, what does Assistant Secretary Boucher have in mind? Booster chairs?

Posted by EBW at 01:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I wrote about North Waziristan yesterday but it appears that either (a) I wrote it in my dreams, or (b) the USENET line eater bug evolved out of cyberia and manifested as a MT feature. Anyway, the gist of what I wrote was that I'd not been writing about the standoff at a mosque in Islamabad because I didn't think that situation very relevant to the question "Is Pakistan?" Compared to the questions of which political parties and leaders are allowed to contest the next election, of whether Musharaff will run again, and if so, again as head-of-army and head-of-state, of whether there is an independent judiciary, of whether Baluchistan or the Waziristans or ... even the Sind have greater or lesser access to the real centers of military and civil power in the Punjabi Military and its State, a firefight between dozens of bearded suicides and several reinforced companies of infantry, with air and armor executing some fire missions is ... well ... absurd.

In fact, it is something of a distraction from the real problems faced by the Musharaff regime within the Punjabi Military, serving to legitimate the current notion of "Pakistan" and its dominant institutions. One actor or another, whether Musharaff or Bush or Bhutto or ... will use it as a pretext.

Over the weekend the truce between Islamabad and the North Waziristan ended. The September 2006 peace agreement between center (labeled "legitimate") and periphery (labeled "Taliban") called for the removal of military checkpoints in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), which the military unilaterally imposed while conducting defense reduction operations at the Lal Masjid-Jamia Hafsa (Red Mosque) in Islamabad, resulting in at least 75 KIA.

Predictably, there was a response. A military convoy traveling into North Waziristan was engaged with a vehicle-transported munition which killed 24 soldiers and the following day Taliban men distributed pamphlets in Miranshah, the main town in the tribal agency, announcing that the Shura [trans: council] had scrapped the September 2006 peace agreement with the Government. Another convoy was targeted with three vehicular-transported munitions in the Swat district, which killed 10 soldiers, and a paramilitary recruitment center in Dera Ismail Khan was engaged with yet another vehicular-transported munition, which killed 18 paramilitarys.

The net of the weekend is that the government employees and their families left the provincial capital of Miranshah Sunday, and the government radio station there went silent for want of staff.

The Chief Minister for the NWFP is trying to keep the military from treating every school, hospital and public building as targets for search-and-seize (or destroy) missions, and the district's jirga of notables, representatives of different political parties and district nazims (chiefs and sub-chiefs) criticised the provincial government for calling out the army, finding no urgency sufficient to justify the deployment of thousands of troops in Swat and Lower Dir.

Your pick for which actor(s) used the stand-off at the Lal Masjid as a pretext. The Pakistani Foreign Office went on record that it was "absurd" to suggest that the government had taken action against the Lal Masjid-Jamia Hafsa administration to appease the United States, and "as far as the government of Pakistan is concerned, it has not scuttled the deal and negotiations with the tribal elders are continuing."

In other news, yesterday the charge of judicial misconduct against Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry was withdrawn. The exercise of over charging a targeted political figure, in this case the Chief Justice, is now reduced to just allegations that the Chief Justice Chaudhry abused his office for securing a government job for his son and privileges/protocol for him -- a slightly absurd charge given the nepotism of the Musharaff regime. Recall that the Constitutional issue is whether General-President Musharaff may legally exercise both the head-of-army and head-of-state authorities, and whether he may legally stand as a candidate in the next election for head-of-state. Chief Justice Chaudhry is of the view that the Constitutional answer to both questions is "no".

Posted by EBW at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry was scheduled to address the Sindh High Court Bar Association today on on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the establishment of that court. Recall, the Chief Justice of Pakistan was removed from office nine weeks ago without cause, and attacks on lawyers by "the forces of order" started the next day. Click on this link to take you back to March 12th. Further reading is there for you if you're interested in the western province of Baluchistan on the Iranian border, and in the tribal agencies of North and South Wazirstan on the Afghan border, or in the lack of transparency in what is a military dictatorship dressed up as a pluralistic democracy, coincidently both a Bush GWOT property and has an inventory of 30-50 uranium-based, and 3-5 plutonium-based nuclear devices, already weaponized and operationally managed by a problematic command structure lacking secure launch authority, and historically "leaking" proliferation technology in a variety of directions.

The Sindh Home Secretary wrote the Chief Justice requesting he postpone his Karachi visit, citing intelligence reports indicating a threat of a terrorist attack. The Sindh High Court in turn ordered the Sindh government to provide security and allow the Chief Justice to address the Bar Association.

That was the situation last night when the Pakistan Dawn went to bed last night.

The form of the terrorist attack was a counter-rally by the pro-Musharraf Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), which runs Karachi, and nothing else. At least 50 people have been shot in Karachi today, a third of them fatally, most of them members of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif's Pakistani People's Party (secular) and the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, a (non-secular) opposition alliance.

Reuters reports that local camera crews were able to film roadblocks and attacks by the AK-47 armed MQM gunmen, including footage of the wounded and dying. The Hindu press in India has similar reporting.

And how does the political party that controls the largest city in the country, and which has blocked all roads connecting the airport, with overturned trucks, buses and so on, where the Chief Justice is stuck?
Its mourning the "martyrs who were killed during the firing on the MQM's peaceful rally by the armed terrorists".

What do the Bushies call the Musharraf regime? Our firm ally or something equally loopy? And the MSM was created by the ISI just to keep Benazir Bhutto out of power.

Update: The number of killed by gunshot is now 34, and overwhelmingly they were members of the PPP and allied opposition parties, and not MQM. Numbers when I have them, and yes, it was state-sponsored.

Posted by EBW at 09:22 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

This year what passes for parliamentary elections are likely to be held by the Punjabi State. General Pervez Musharraf removed Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry on Friday. No cause was given.

It is possible that the motive is to suppress the political independence of the judiciary, unfortunately there is another possibility -- cooking the Con Law books and keeping General Musharraf in power after 2007, and/or freezing all judicial inquiry into ministerial-level corruption until after the elections.

Reports are that more than twenty lawyers who met outside the Supreme Court building in Islamabad were injured. No fatalities have been reported.

Posted by EBW at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Mahmud Ali Durrani campaigned for the emancipation of women, for reform of the laws concerning rape laws concerning marriage. She organized a marathon open to men and women. In the peculiar mix of military dictatorship and participatory multi-party democratic contrivance of Pakistan, she was, until yesterday, the Minister for Society in the government of General Pervez Musharraf.

She was shot once in the head yesterday while participating at a political rally at the headquarters of the Moslem League. The man who shot and killed her disapproved of political feminism.

Posted by EBW at 10:48 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

On my way across the Oxnard plain this morning I caught part of a morning show on AQ and the tribal areas of Pakistan. I missed 10 minutes getting breakfast tacos at Dona Roas's, and more when the Santa Monica mountains cut off everything.

I wasn't impressed with the questions posed to the Ambassador of Pakistan, so this evening I wrote and asked if the Ambassador would be willing to exchange some notes here.

Posted by EBW at 01:56 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Just a reminder. The important things are:

1. a second, larger, plutonium-production reactor at Kusab, augmenting a gas centrifuge uranium enrichment facility at Kahuta, and a small plutonium-production heavy water reactor at Kusab and an existing inventory of 30-50 HEU-based, and 3-5 Plutonium-based nuclear warheads,
   
2. sale of 18 new F-16 fighter aircraft as well as 26 old F-16s,
   
3. China's access to Gwadar, both for oil and gas, and for naval basing, and
   
4. control of the Sui gas field.

How one goes about "bombing into the stone age" a state with 30-50 air deliverable weapons is a wicked big gamble.

Anyway, ignoring the Pakistani Kabuki in a week of High Kabuki in Washington City (non-liability under US law for military-political torture, non-liability under US law for asthema and precipitation abatement for soot, non-liability under US law for ...), there is theater being played out in Baluchistan:

via Dawn

QUETTA, Sept 20: A grand jirga of Baloch tribes convened by the Khan of Kalat, Mir Suleman Daud, will be held in Kalat on Thursday. All Baloch tribal sardars in Balochistan, Sindh and Punjab have been invited to the jirga which will discuss the situation in the province with special reference to the killing of former governor Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti in Kohlu area in a military operation.

The Khan of Kalat will preside over the grand jirga said to be the first of its kind in 100 years.

Sources said a large number of sardars would attend the jirga and arrangements had been completed for the event.

Posted by EBW at 07:58 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The following was published as an unsigned editorial in the NYTimes. I am so surprised. What next? Inbound links from the Grey Lady? I hope Shaheen Sehbai, the guy who was the South Asia Tribune, sees this.

Published: September 3, 2006

There are dangerous international terrorists hiding out in the mountain caves of Pakistan. But Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, 79, the Baluch tribal leader, politician and rebel, was not one of them.

Now Bugti is dead and the impoverished but energy-rich province of Baluchistan is in an uproar after an ill- explained military operation last month. After a week of contradictory government statements, the only things now clear are that Bugti's body was buried in the rubble of his blown- up mountain hideout, and that antigovernment fury in the restive province is at a new pitch of intensity.

The last thing Pakistan needs is an upsurge in violence and repression in Baluchistan. That would only be a distraction from far more important challenges, like developing a chronically underachieving economy; restoring a damaged democracy; and placing a dangerous nuclear weapons establishment, including exports of bomb-related technology, under firm and reliable civilian control.

And there are far more crucial things that Pakistan's military could be doing than hunting down Bugti and his followers. For example, it could finally seal its scandalously porous border with Afghanistan, making it much harder for the Taliban to infiltrate into that country the fighters killing American, NATO and Afghan soldiers. It could permanently shut down the Pakistan-based Kashmiri terrorist groups that have survived past crackdowns by reopening under new names, with little interference from Pakistani authorities. Not least, it could make a more serious effort to find and arrest Osama bin Laden, widely believed to have spent much of the past four and a half years on Pakistani soil.

Any of these efforts would stir up opposition in one part or another of the Pakistani military, the only constituency that Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, ever really cares about. So long as elections are brazenly rigged, opposition parties are banned and Washington's uncritical support remains guaranteed, Musharraf has little incentive to take up any of these vital challenges.

When Musharraf comes to the United States, he loves to be lauded as a leader in the war on terrorism. Back home, his government too often acts like a garden-variety military dictatorship.

Is Pakistan?

Posted by EBW at 03:37 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Politicians present:

Talal Bugti, a son of Nawab Akbar Bugti, was present, as were tribal leader Ataullah Mengal, former Chief Minister of the province, and Elahi Buksh Somroo, former Speaker of the National Assembly.

The Bugti family made it clear on Monday night that it did not want anyone from the provincial government, a coalition of the Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid) and the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, to attend.

The above material is via The Hindu.

The Dawn material is here, and its list of Baluch political leaders is much longer: Nawabzada Jamil Bugti and Nawabzada Talal Bugti, sons of Nawab Akbar Bugti; Sardar Ataullah Mengal, former National Assembly speaker Ilahi Bakhsh Soomro, Mohammed Aslam Bhootani, deputy speaker of the Balochistan Assembly; Dr Hayee Baloch of the National Party, Mir Humayun Marri and Senator Shahid Hasan Bugti of the JWP, Senator Nawab Ayaz Khan Jogezai of Pushtoonkhwa Milli Awami Party, Sardar Sanaullah Zehri, chief of Jhalawan; Sardar Akhtar Mengal of BNP-M, Arbab Zahir Kasi of Awami National Party, Mir Sher Ali Mazari, Allama Yaqoob Tawasoli, Jamal Jogezai of PPP, Hakim Lehri of BNC, Moheem Baloch of BNP-A, former provincial governor Amirul Mulk Mengal, Sardar Bakhtiar Domki, grandson of Nawab Bugti, and Mir Hasil Bizenjo.

This is being treated as a political assassination ordered by Musharaff, conducted with an as yet unidentified, satellite phone tracking capable third-party, to keep the fragile fiction of "Pakistan" intact. The culprit is identified as Jinnah, as well as Musharaff. There are 10,000 people in the Quetta stadium.

It is a non-event in the US, at least on August 27th and 28th. The New York Times carried a 91-word news item. The WaPo ran a 28-word brief item. Los Angeles Times carried a brief agency story. The Christian Science Monitor and Chicago Tribune didn't cover the event at all.

Posted by EBW at 10:32 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

He was born in 1927, to Nawab Mehrab Khan Bugti, son of Sir Shahbaz Khan Bugti, KBE, educated at Karachi Grammar School, Aitchison College in Lahore, and Oxford, and heriditary Sardar of the Bugti Tribe. Elected to the National Assembly of Pakistan in May 1958 as a Republican, he served as Minister of State (Interior) in the government of Prime Minister Malik Sir Feroz Khan Noon (Republican) from September 20, 1958 to October 7, 1958, when the cabinet was dismissed on the declaration of Martial Law by President Iskander Mirza. In 1960 he was arrested and convicted by a Military Tribunal, and subsequently disqualified from holding public office.

In early February 1973 he informed then President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (Pakistan Peoples Party) of the "London Plan" to dismember Pakistan by the National Awami Party, and the day after the dismissal of the provincial governor as well as the Chief Minister Sardar Ataullah Khan Mengal and his cabinet (February 14, 1973), the Federal Government appointed him Governor of Balochistan. Ten months later he resigned, citing the brutality of the Punjabi military operations in Baluchistan.

In 1988, he joined the Balochistan National Alliance and was elected Chief Minister on February 4, 1989. His government frequently disagreed with the Federal Government led by the Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto (Pakistan Peoples Party).

He resigned on August 6, 1990 when the provincial assembly was dissolved by Governor of Balochistan General Muhammad Musa Khan in accordance with the instructions of President Ghulam Ishaq Khan, who also disolved the Pakistani parliment. In the 1990 General Elections, he formed his own political party, the Jamhoori Watan Party (JWP), Balochistan's single largest party and was elected to the provincial assembly. In 1993, he was elected to the National Assembly of Pakistan representing the JWP in parliament.

On August 26th, veteran Baloch nationalist leader and former Chief Minister of Balochistan, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti was killed, along with his grandson, Nawabzada Baramdagh Bugti, an as-yet unnamed second grandson, Mir Azaad Khan Baloch, General Secretary, Government of Balochistan in Exile, and 34 other persons, in a military operation in Chalgri area of Bhamboor hills of Dera Bugti district. The Punjabi Army reported a colonel, two majors, three captains, and 21 soldiers killed in the operation, which was conducted with heavy weapons and helicopter gunships.

According to security sources the government traced the whereabouts of the Bugti through a satellite tracking system, and launched the operation. Pakistan has no communications satellites, so a third-party provided the targeting data.

The AP description of Akbar Bugti is "a rebel tribal leader", and the rational offered for his being in a cave, rather than his home (demolished by heavy weapons in a surprise attack on 17 March, 2005), or anywhere else, is "he went into hiding in late 2005 after tribal militants made an attempt on the Pakistani president's life."

The AP's narrative is ... simply amazing. It won't stop the sale of any F-16s.

On January 2nd, 2005, Dr. Shazia Khalid, an employee of Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL), posted to Sui to treat PPL employees, was gang-raped by Captain Emad and three soldiers from the Defense Security Guards. On January 7th, after the failure of Baluch police to arrest and interrogate military personnel, conflict in the area of Sui sharpened.

From the second part of my Is Pakistan? series. January 23rd, 2005 (part 1), and January 25th, 2005 (part 2):

So what really happened?

A Captain in the Punjabi-domainated Army that has garrisoned the Dera Bugti District (Sui gasfield) since 2002 (as well as the 25 other districts of Baluchistan), raped a doctor at the hospial in Sui. The local police have not been able to take him into custody. The hospital serves the Bugti tribe, as well as the foreign Sui gasfield workers. The Bugti responded by fielding several thousand tribal troops, described as heavily armed, well trained and organised, equiped with satellite telephones. The tribal troops interviewed explained that they mobilized to defend their Sheik and their sovereingty. The Bugti troops were joined by troops from the Mengals, Mazaris and Marris tribes. They set up pickets (checkpoints, firing points) throught Dera Bugti, and from January 11th to the 16th there was pitched battle with the Frontier Corps (Punjabi troops).

During the battle Bugti troops fired 430 rockets and 60 mortar rounds at the Sui gas works and held the gas company compound for a day. The Punjabi State rushed thousands of troops and paramilitary forces to Sui.

This is the fifth insurgency by Balochis seeking political autonomy and control over their natural resources.

1st: 1947-48, lead by Mir Ahmad Yar Khan, invoking the Treaty of 1876, resistance to annexation of Kalat by Pakistan.

2nd: 1958-59 lead by Nawab Nowroz Khan, resistance to integration of Beluch Province into the single administrative unit of West Pakistan.

3rd: 1962-63 See the Tribal Belt, part of Paul Wolf's (much) longer work on Pakistan. Here is a telling line: Should Baluchistan emerge as a separate pro-Soviet entity, the Soviets would be in a position to force greater Afghanistan compliance with Soviet demands. The speaker was Mohammad Yunus (protect) Ministry of Foreign Affairs Director General for Middle East, Arab States, Afghanistan and CENTO Affairs.

4th: 1973-77 lead by Mir Hazar Khan Marri, Marri and Mengal tribes form BPLF, exile in Soviet-Afganistan in 1977, Iraninan AF conducts major air ops against tribes in Pakistani-Baluchistan.

5th: 2002-200?

Dr. Shazia Khalid and her husband are reported to be living quietly in Canada. Her attackers are still at liberty. In the extended entry is an interview of Nawab Akbar Bugti, the leader of the Bugti tribe, by telephone. by the Aisa Times Online.

Continue reading "An almost nameless man" »

Posted by EBW at 01:03 PM | Permalink

At the last weekly news briefing in Islamabad, Ms. Tasneem Aslam, the spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry reported that there would be a letter of offer from the United States and acceptance from Pakistan following approval by the Congress of the sale of 18 new F-16 fighter aircraft as well as 26 old F-16s. During the Q&A period she dismissed reports in some section of media that the United States had conveyed to Pakistan that the equipment supplied for war against terrorism should not be diverted for other uses. Ms Aslam stated that the deal contains no extraordinary conditions.

So all that is left is for the U.S. Congress to approve the package.

But Ed Markey (D-MA) introduced a bill the week before to bar the sale unless President George W. Bush certifies that Pakistan has stopped building a big, newly-reported, plutonium-production reactor.

So a very few days ago an ISI asset became "time sensitive" and some few South West Asians in "Pakistan" (Baluchistan, Waziristan, etc., where the Punjabi military state is not uncontested by indigenous polities), and two dozen more in London and the Thames River Valley, are rolled up by the ISI and the Metropolitian Police.

Juan Cole speculates

The only circumstance that I can imagine that would cause the Pakistani authorities to move in that way is that the Lahore and Karachi cells were planning to do something very violent in the very near future.

The last time I wrote about anyone from the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi was March 20, 2005. This story has Ramzan Mengal, a member of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, arrested last June in Quetta, as a principle ISI asset. The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi historically hit Pakistani confessional targets, not international solidarity targets, and historically the Pakistani Regime links Lashkar-e-Jhangvi to Al Qaeda.

The BLA is another story. I miss Shaheen Sehbai's SATribune. Its archives¹ are no longer on-line.

The liquid explosives potential has been known for over a decade, and as recently as the death-penalty phase of Zacarias Moussaoui's trial last March, was presented as an intent and ability element by the prosecution.

So far, no one's actually been convicted of manufacture or posession of liquid explosives, "weaponized" for use, manually or delay fused, in a highly controlled environment. Its above odd that non-liquid explosives are still being used, manually fused, against highly controlled environmental targets in an area of sharp conflict between international solidarity forces and the targeted state, and can't actually be found elsewhere, though their existance is regularly argued as a threat justification, and for state prosecution.

Things to keep in mind: In February of last year the Mehsud tribe was paid $540,000 dollars (32m rupees) by Lt Gen Safdar Hussain (Pakistani military) for a debt incurrred to Al Qaeda for operating expenses in Afganistan and the Wazaristan provinces, and ... this is where a link to the BLA should go.

¹P1_bla.htm 59.7 kb Fri, 11 Mar 2005 20:52:28 GMT

I kept a copy!!! I'll post it tomorrow.

Posted by EBW at 08:30 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The report by David Albright and Paul Brannan is here (4pp .pdf). Basically, they're looking at a 5m sphere and reasoning from published data. No different from what I did in a seminar lead by Louis Alverez during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. The net-net is, assuming reasonable engineering and operational best practices, the weaponized PK fissile inventory (~ 75 HEU packages), can be augmented by ~50 PU packages, for each year that the facility operates.

The Punjabi military regime needs OBL in the Tribal Area, to justify the Bush Regime (and its nominal opposition in the co-opted wing of the Democratic Party) support for suppression and control of Baluchistan's gas deposits, incidental to the not very productive attempt to "pacify" and "disarm" the Iran/Afgan/Kashmir borders. The Bush Regime needs OBL somewhere, to justify its suppression and control of domestic opposition to its foreign adventures.

Duncan is confused by our policies towards Pakistan. I think the policy is painfully obvious. Let no pot cool, let no contract lapse.

Posted by EBW at 10:48 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I broke out in giggles when I read the justification for the sale of 36 F-16C/D Block 50/52 aircraft to the Musharraf regime.

Apparently, we're supposed to be molified by the representation that they are "without nuclear warhead carrying capability". I'm at a complete loss to know how (a) the folks at Fort Worth anticipated the airframe and avionics requirements of Pakistan's existing nuclear inventory, assuming these can't be field fru'd into the basic JDAM or MK-82/84 sets of constraints, and (b) just what part of the US package inventory is designed to be delivered in quantities one by tactical aircraft.

Posted by EBW at 04:54 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

During Jonah's sleep events the past years I've spent a lot of time reading what the googling monkies have brought to me from the West Asian presses (note the plural, govt., free, blog). Easily the most important find for my "Is Pakistan?" series, which really is a collateral branch from my "Return of the ... One True King" series (what is the plural of series?) on Iranian politics, along with my untitled series of posts on the balance of forces, primarily naval, but also petro-chemical and nuclear, in West and South Asia, has been -- Shaheen Sehbai's South Asia Tribune.

Who else publishes Deux vieu KGB schnooks thinking outloud about the original Beluchistan Liberation Army and real politick, and throws some wicked cold water on the standard fictions concerning the US, Pakistan, and the calculus of illusions? There's more, that's just the piece that can't be found anywere else, except at DEBKAFile, and then, with dubious provenance.

I like the way Shaheen Sehbai thinks about the actors, their actions, and the underlying codes. His last piece is uncomforable reading -- Pak political oppo elites haven't done anything useful during the Kashmir Quake emergency, less than the feeble effort of (off-the-clock) DNC staffers joining the corporatist Red Cross at NOLA as fungible volunteers, which is so vastly less than the efforts of radio hams, wireless isp weenies, and ... unreconstructed hippies. Pak political pro-gov elites on the other hand, after their own deer-in-headlights 48 hours, have mobilized, and have improved the government relief effort, so unlike the Bush/Rove/Cheritoff/Brown FEMA debacle.

It can't be comforting, as a committed critic of a dictatorship ruling after stolen elections (Pak, not US), to realize that Black Saturday may have made the junta more legitimate than the opposition, and that the dictator of the Punjabi state, the commander of the Punjabi army, is likely to be elected, for real, as head-of-state of Pakistan in '07, on a platform of ... competency and relevance.

In the United Mistakes we don't have to confront the beady eyes of that cobra. The NOLA disaster hasn't proved the Bush regime capable of momentary reality-based policy, and even the arrival of irate Moonmen is unlikely to provide Occupied Washington with a lease on life after the '08 general election. Of course, that could be stolen too, making it three out of three.

One basic purpose of this site was to demonstrate to the world that if one man decides and he is determined, he can make a difference. When this site started in August of 2002, no one could imagine that within a few months it would become of the most talked about web places in Pakistan and outside.

Posted by EBW at 06:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

If the strategies common to Wes Clark and John Abizaid for the destruction of Osama Bin Ladin and the forces that escaped from Tora Bora between the 28th and the 30th of November 2001, via the obvious escape routes, which Tommy Franks didn't close with rotary wing deployed light infantry, to Pakistan, were effected, the result would be destruction via bombardment, primarily aerial, of Miran Shah, Razmak, Bajorr, Wana and minor built-up areas of the areas that constitute the Federally Administered Tribal Area of the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan -- the Khyber, Kurram, Bajorr, Mohmand, Orakzai, South Waziristan and North Waziristan Agencies.

It would differ in scope from the Saturday morning seismic event that has devastated Azad Kashmir, the Northern Areas, the North West Frontier Province, and the Badakhshan, Nurestan, and Konar provinces of Afganistan. However it would not differ in its inate indifference to civilians and combatants.

The Kashmir Quake of 8 October 2005 is a human tragedy of the first magnitude, like the Bam Quake of 26 December 2003, and the Asian Tsunami of 26 December 2004. It is, magnified, what the political policy of the Bush Regime achieves, where ever it is articulated by military means.

The Bush Regime would like to expend a lot of money blowing up bits of Pakistan, a desire shared by far too many of his critics who mounted campaigns in the last cycle, and who are already mounting camaigns in the next cycle. But schools for girls, aid for women of child-bearing age, economic development, and policing, within the societies that stand, by mutual intent, outside of the Punjab State, is the better choice. It was Judith who beheaded Holofernes (Judith 13,1-10), and more, rather than fewer, Judiths, is feminist policy.

The link is to Artemisia Gentilesch's work of 1620. I spent some time there, comparing her work to Caravaggio's work of 1598-1599. I prefer Gentilesch's realism.

Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, who is running a competitive campaign, has already expressed her dissatisfaction over the Muhareff government�s rescue efforts that center around the upmarket F-10 residential tower in Islamabad, which is now a pile of photogenic rubble, and fail to deliver aid to the northern areas where vastly larger human tragedy is abandonded off-camera.

Update: Le Monde reports that the surviving population in Muzaffarabad, largely left to their own resources by the Punjabi state "ont pris d'assaut des camions d'aide" (are seizing by force the relief goods in the trucks being sent into the area). If this follows the obvious trajectory, "who lost Azad Kashmir and the Northern Areas" will become part of the next Punjabi electoral cycle, and more importantly, when a referendum is eventually held, Pakistan's claim to Kashmir will finally be exhausted.

Posted by EBW at 10:34 AM | Permalink

The South Asia Tribune just published an interesting piece. Here's the blurb:

This is a considered paper written after long discussions between thinking friends to come up with concrete proposals to let the Army get out of politics. There could be no better way. link

Something to re-read is an earlier piece, also in the SATrib. Deux vieu KGB schnooks thinking outloud about the original Beluchistan Liberation Army and real politick. It throws some water on the standard fictions concerning the US, Pakistan, and the calculus of illusions.

Another interesting piece in the SAT is Kaushik Kapisthalam's Guarding Pakistan's nuclear estate, which was published 10 days ago.

Posted by EBW at 06:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I was not surprised to see the paid media speculate that yesterday's bombing of a Sufi shrine in Fatahpur, Baluchistan during the annual pilgrimage is already linked to al Qaida. The death toll will approach 100. There are conflicting reports that there were two timed bombs, one of which exploded, the other was detected and removed, and that there was one bomb and suicide bomber.

Some facts.

The spokesperson for the Baluchistan Liberation Army (reading the BLA story in the satribune is manditory, the link is in the prior installment of this series) has already claimed responsibility for the bombing. This was reported in The Nation, an english language Baluch newspaper that I haven't gotten my hands on yet, but is cited in the Chinese press, and quoted in several South Asian media outlets.

This doesn't make a lot of sense, since there are some wicked good targets elsewhere in Baluchistan, like the gas lines out of the Sui field, which when shut down during the January clashe between Mari tribe militias and the Punjabi Army/Frontier Corps, shut down all gas consumption, residential and industrial, in Pakistan for a week. The Punjabi Army/Frontier Corps just tried to assassinate the Bugti tribe chief in Dera Bugti on Thursday, I'll update the casualties here later this morning, but at present there are about 1,500 Bugti militias and about the same number of Pak Army/FC in place at Dera Bugti, facing off with RPGs, morters, heavy machine guns and the usual infantry weapons against helicopter gunships, tanks, artillery, mechanized infantry, and the usual infantry weapons. The three or four trainline and power line bombings since Thursday are more in keeping with prior Baluch response, and tend to isolate Baluchistan (periphery) from the Punjabi center.

There was an arrest of an al Qaeda linked person, who appears to have killed quite a few people, about two weeks ago. Ramzan Mengal, a member of the outlawed Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militant group, was arrested March 4 in the provincial capital, Quetta. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is an Al Qaeda-linked group.

The targeted population, Sufi pilgrims, were comingled with Sunnis, Shi'is, and Hindus -- between ten and twenty thoursand and all peacefully sitting down for an evening meal, when someone blew a hole in the dinner hour. The pilgrimage to the shrine of Raqil Shah in Fatahpur is the largest, and most non-sectarian event of the year in Baluchistan.

Religious Beliefs Jhall Magsi District

As already mentioned, Muslims and Hindus reside in the district. Muslims are in a overwhelming majority. According to the 1981 census 97 percent of the population was Muslim and 3 percent Hindu. The Muslims are divided into Suni and Shia sects. The majority of the Suni sects is Brailvi or follower of the saints (Sofi). The mullah, he performs Nikah, leads Eid, Juma, prayer at the time of a burial (Janaza) and five times prayers. Persons belonging to the Syed family are also respected and are called Sain.

Important festivals are Edi-ul-Fitur, Eid-ul-Zuha, Eid-Milad and Mohrum. In addition, when an important Sofi dies, a three days gathering is held, called Uris or Milla. During these three days different singers called Faqir sing the poetry of the Sofi. A very important gathering of this type was held at Fithapur, when Sofi Rakhal Shah and Chaizel Shah died.

The influence of the religion in the district is positive. There are no fundamentalist trends. Religious practices are limited to saying prayers at the time of birth, death and marriages.

Hindus have their different religious belief. Their religious leaders are called Bava or Bambhan. A Bambhan is usually a Brahman, while a Bava is the religious leader of a specific temple called Marhi. Important Hindu festivals are Shiv, Holi, Dasahra and Dewali, which are celebrated in February, March, August and October respectively, according to adjustment to their own calendar. Hindus are divided into two sects vegetarians and non-vegetarians.

Government of Balochistan

I suppose it is too much to ask why Musharraf decided to start a war with the Bugti tribe in central Baluchistan, and someone else decided to blow up a mostly Sufi pilgrim group, also in Baluchistan, allowing finger pointing at both Sunni and Shi'i extreamists, or al Qaeda, or the BLA, days after Condi Rice left Karachi.

Update:

To tie two events together:

The government should be asking why so many people in Balochistan support the BLA.

Former chief minister Nawab Akbar Bugti

Rice came and left. Musharraf tried to hit Akbar Bugti on Thursday, and on Saturday the BLA "takes credit" for the least popular act in Baluchistan since the gang rape of Dr. Shazia Khalid, the OBGYN at the Sui gas field hospital last January. Dr. Khalid fled from Pakistan with her husband Friday or Saturday, and is now in England, in route to Canada.

Posted by EBW at 11:20 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Update: I really should have read this in the South Asia Tribune before I wrote this.

I've been thinking about Wes Clark's position paper on the pursuit of Osama Bin Ladin and the al Qaida network or movement. It might work, but ... the reading I've done for the Baluchistan and adjacentcies (trans-boarder Afgan/Pak/Iran) series (i,ii,iii,iv,v) and the Pakistani exiles and election series: (a,b), and the Arabian and Persian Gulfs, Indian Ocean and Andoman and Nicobar Command Sea Power series: (A,B,C), causes me to reach a different recommendation.

First, I don't thiink that the target is correctly identified. I think the best course forward is investigatory, followed by arrests, the legal response within the international law framework, a course rejected by Bush, possibly even before 9/11, not retaliatory pursuits, the military response within the force structure framework. The intelligence product of these two approaches can be distinguished, and the point of last August's article in Le Monde is that European law enforcement and intelligence services have reached conclusions different from the American military and intelligence services. The European legal and Intel consensus is that a second generation of planning and operational leadership now exists, and is in fact adapting to conditions. I covered this August 21st, 2004.

Second, the Bush program of retaliatory pursuits is unilateralist. It does not predicate action on the cooperation of local law enforcement, rather, it predicates acton on the destruction of local law enforcement. In a nutshell, the Bush program is to blow up a lot of the trans-boarder Afgan/Pak/Iran region, with the happy concurrence of the military dictatorship in Islamabad that wants to repeat the 1970s war against Kalat (Baluch) nationalists, using the Americans instead of the Shah of Iran's force, and the ambivalent concurrence of the narcotics dictatorships that, when the TV cameras aren't rolling, are the "state" in most of Afganistan, and over a vast number of hypotetically dead bodies of Iranians -- Iranians who inter-alia assisted in the American-lead but multinational invasion of Afganistan, and who have been bagging and holding al-Qaida operatives for most of the past three years -- see my pieces on the MEK cadres held at Camp Ashraf (i,ii,iii).

There is an alternative.

First, we can abandon the shoot-first, aim-second, ask-questions-later model, and put law enforcement back in charge. Second we can define the Iranian state, and the tribal societies that the Punjabi state exploits for oil and gas resources and nuclear weapons testing sites and "strategic depth" for the next Pak-India war as our partners in the elimination of banditry and worse in the trans-boarder region, and abandon the worst ambitions of both the Bush regime vis a vis Iran, and the Mushareff regime vis a vis the North West Territory and Baluchistan.

More broadly, we can stay the course with the existing states model colonial period left, which requires the US to entice then betray the Iraqi Kurds (Turkish and Iranian states beneficiaries), the Marsh Arabs (Iraqi state beneficiary), the Baluch (Iranian and Pakistani states beneficiaries), and the Sindh (Pakistani state beneficiary), and maintain cordial relations with the centers of each state, at least until their internal dissonances force them to war with each other, or we can do something different.

That's where I'd gotten before opening up Al Jazeera and the South Asia Times this morning. Overnight Nawab Akbar Bugti, the leader of the Bugti tribe, and one of the three Sheiks (Nawabs in Punjabi) who took 10,000 troops into safety, in exile in Soviet Afganistan, until forced to leave Taliban Afganistan, was in the media explaining the circumstaces of the heavy firefight that took place at Dara Bugti yesterday. So far, at least 20 Punjabi Army and Frontier Corps troops are reported KIA, with wounded counts several multiples of the KIA number, under circumstances that suggest that General Mucharaff has decided to assassinate Sheik Akbar Bugti.

What happend yesterday in Dara Bugti and Quetta was really important. Helicopter gunships firing on escaping groups of the mothers, wives and daughters of opposition leaders. Artillary fire on the occupied residences of opposition leaders. Telephone intercepts and targeted assassinations, all in one dawn-to-dusk period. Apparently the Army achived a 5-1 kill ratio firing on tribal militias, women and children, using air and artillary, as well as infantry assault weapons, and of course, the element of surprise.

I highly recommend the South Asia Tribune, in addition to Al Jazeera. Condi Rice might have noticed that her host just tried to eliminate a Baluch leader and provoke war with the Bugti tribe, who own the area where the US is sending troops (Khuzdar, Baluchistan).

I've written about the South Asian nuclear weapons inventories, but that's more a consequence of writing about the uranium enrichment issue [todo: collect links].

If you want, you can write comments to info@wespac2004.com. Rather than out-source the problem to the Saudi military, which has no more clue than anyone else 1,500 km distant from the area of operations, going to Oman and asking Persians, Baluch, Afgans and Punjabis to meet on neutral (or historic) territory and discuss law enforcement and economic development as regional issues, not issues monopolised by periphery-suppressing states seems the better course. We want the local LEOs to suppress banditry and worse, not simply because we can pay the ones we decide not to wipe out as incidental collateral damage, but because suppressing banditry and worse is what they want to do for their own interests.

Posted by EBW at 07:48 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Jonah and I were up again this morning conducting some quality research time -- he's pretty amused by the out-takes for Elektra, a US attempt at the "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" genre -- people who run up trees and fly through the air are neat. We used to watch bull riding, which for some reason is in our local cable mix in the pre-dawn hours, for the same ballistic effects.

The research outcome of this morning's jaunt though OPD (other people's data) was the surprising discovery that the Mehsud tribe was paid $540,000 dollars (32m rupees) on Monday by Lt Gen Safdar Hussain for a debt incurrred to Al Qaeda for operating expenses in Afganistan and the Wazaristan provinces. Restated, a la the South Asian TImes, "Pakistan Army Pays Al Qaeda Half a Million Dollars". The "surrender cerimony" of senior Talibs to the Pakistani Army (an armistice is more accurate) was concluded with "Death to America" chants. It is left to the imagination whether the Punjabi military and civil authorities present joined in the chorus, sat on their hands, or counter-chanted "Death to everybody present not holding a commission from Islamabad".

Getting the truth cost the lives of two journalists, Mir Nawab and Allah Noor were killed, and two others, Anwar Shakir and Zardad Khan were wounded when the press pool bus came under attack by assassins.

Also, NATO has submitted a request to Islamabad for a logistical hub in Karachi, and a major NATO base in Herat, on the Afgan-Iran border is in the works. The US is also re-opening logistics facilities it abandoned at the Karachi and a nearby military airfields after the fall of Kabul, indicating a planned logistical load beyond the capacities of its Kabul hub, and/or logistical requirements more proximal to Karachi than Kabul.

The US has asked for the use of a base near Khuzdar in Balochistan province (about 400 kilometers from Karachi), which will soon be operational for US troops. More on FOB Khuzdar (or Kamp Kudzu or whatever) as the information develops.

Update: Owais Ahmed Ghani, the "provincial governor" (Islamabad appointee) of Baluchistan is asking for US military assistance in controlling "drugs and arms smuggling", and that prior to this new spate of "drugs and arms smuggling", Baluchistan had no insurgency, historic, latent, or actual, just some small criminal gangs.

Today's quiz has two parts: 1. What, other than fishery, was the historic economy of Gwadar? 2. What did the Baluch cricket teams use for bats in the 1970-1973 test match against Pakistan? For extra credit, how uninformed does Owais Ahmed Ghani think the CENTCOM Intel wallahs are, and would he be correct if the same question were posed about Secretary Rice?

Posted by EBW at 01:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Writing in theSouth Asian Times Shaheen Sehbai has it all, from the federal, constitutional democracy point of view -- Balochistan Insurgency: Musharraf's Snowball, Spinning Out of Control. A half-dozen more bombings of rail lines, gas pipelines, and microwave relay masts in the past 24 hours, and lots of political figures running for some kind of cover within a nationalist framework and attempting to prevent the Army from suspending the fiction of civil government in half, or all, of the country, and comparing Pervez Musharraf to Yahya Khan, who lost East Pakistan.

Of course, competition with the Army for institutional power isn't without risk for trade unionists or capitalist magnates, who shoot or jail as well as anyone else. But Punjabi Army vs Punjabi Politicians isn't a complete characterization of the actors. When I started the Return of the ... one true King project my mailbox started getting content from the Hizb -- here and here. That is another critique of both Pervez Musharraf and his generals, and their modernist competitors -- the parlimentarians -- one Americans are predisposed to think of as "Islamic Fundamentalist", though it isn't Wahabist.

But those critical frameworks are just paper. In Wazaristan and Baluchistan the criticism transcends paper, though not yet posture. It is getting hotter.

If Pakistan survives Bush's war against Iran, it won't be Pakistan. It will be something closer to North Korea, or Rumania, with an Army that has survived in power against tribal societies, civil society, and religious societies. A "dirty war on every front". It will be more distant from democratic India than at any time since the Partition, and probably doomed, as some Indian analysts think, even without an American War. And it wii have most, perhaps all, of its nuclear weapons arsenel, or control over its nuclear weapons arsenel will have been seized by the US, or India.

If Pakistan does not survive Bush's war against Iran, it won't be Pakistan. Its nuclear weapons arsenel will have ... found its fullest expression, or have vanished, to appear elsewhere, later.

Rhetorical "freedoms" really aren't comenserate with city-sized fireballs, with fallout for the lucky down-wind survivors of the prompt mortality events. Who thinks it will stop there?

Posted by EBW at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Writing in the South Asia Tribune, Wajid Shamsul Hasan and I appear to be reading similar tea leaves. His piece is Will Pakistan Army Invade Balochistan as per the NIC-CIA Plan.

I recommend the interested readers, that is, anyone who knows that Iran is bordered by Iraq, Afganistan, Baluchistan (province of Pakistan), and the Gulf of Oman/Arabian Gulf, follow the link, then look at the discussion fora. Pak nuke futures are right up there.

[update: Again, courtesy of a grant from Jonah's temporally offset research fellowship fund, our Book of Hours now includes Pak politicians wierd enough to be drop-ins to the DeLay/Frist/Bush coteries. One just did a think-tank event on the theme that the US is preparing to attack Pakistan, steal Baluchistan, and so on. He and the Baluch Sheiks agree that the US is preparing to take over operational control of the Port of Gwadar and the transport system through Quetta (catching the Sui gas fields en passant). What these two points of prognostication differ on is whether the US is (a) dangerously liberating Balushistan, aka "Kalat" from Punjab, aka "Pakistan", by force of arms, necessarily including theater (well, strategic if you live there) nuclear weapons (General Loonie), or (b) dangerously occupying Kalat, aka "Baluchistan" on behalf of Punjab, aka "Pakistan", by force of arms, conducting trans-boarder (well, global if you live there) armed conflict (Nawab Bugti, et alia).

Elsewhere, speaking of Gwadar's historic economy (trafficing in human beings since at least the 1700's), Oman is complaing that thousands of West and South Asians are infiltrating into Oman via the Iranian and Gwadar (Omani up until 1956) coasts. This means the security of the eastern Iranian boarder (bi-directional) is about as good as the Maine - Quebec boarder, for moose and squirrel (plural to local taste). The Gulf of Oman commuters are generally looking for work, about 600 are in gaol this week waiting to be flown back to Karachi after being fleeced by the GoM species of coyotes, but some might be "employed", to the potentially serious annoyance of Oman and the rest of the GCC states.]

Posted by EBW at 06:52 PM | Permalink

Today's Al Jazeera has a summary of this week's conflict in Baluch, but it lacks nuance and depth. Here is the link.

Its counter-intuitive that Nixon should stand head-and-shoulders above all other American heads-of-state in the post-war period in policy space generally known as Federal-Indian Law.

Trying to explain that to people for whom Nixon is defined by his 1950 race against Helen Gahagan Douglas for the US Senate ("Tricky Dick" came from that race, Nixon said of Douglas she was "pink right down to her underwear", which was an anti-Communist slur for those too young to recall political blood sport before the present) or his sweaty debate against JFK, or his "Peace with Honor" pledge in the 1968 race against Humphrey, or the "Nixon Doctrine" (Vietnamization, oddly familiar today), or the Secret War in Cambodia, or the Christmas Bombing campaign (also familiar today as operations during Ramadan), or the 60% of the popular vote to crushing the Democrats under George McGovern in 1972, or Watergate and hubris, is about as easy as getting a badger to get out of your path. Or pursuading a moose to move out of the middle of the street.

So here's the counter-intuitive quiz: Under which basic form of Pakistani regime, parlimentary democracy or military dictatorship (and Pakistan has had two of each), have the Buluchi tribes benefited, and under which basic form have they benefited ... not so much.

Answers in comments.

And no, you can't "get" FIL unless you get why Indians who do Federal policy test every administration, and every candidate, against Nixon and the Germans, Haldeman and Ehrlichman. The highwater mark for the United States as an Occupying Power in the second-half of the 20th century.

Posted by EBW at 05:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Jonah was kind enough to schedule some research time between 12:30 and 3am this morning, putting a fine finish on Kezzie's half-birthday -- if the "terrible twos" were shown in color, like fall foliage, she peaked yesterday and is blazing crimson. Fortunately our home is not regularly televised so the Gypsies won't be warned off.

The Washington Moonbeam ran recycled nuttery from the London Telegraph yesterday morning to the effect that the Pak FO blames Iran for this year's Test Match (played with RPGs, HMGs, and IEDs) in Baluchestan. ThePak FO contradicted this plant yesterday afternoon.

In Quetta the rail line to Karachi was bombed overnight.

So what really happened?

A Captain in the Punjabi-domainated Army that has garrisoned the Dera Bugti District (Sui gasfield) since 2002 (as well as the 25 other districts of Baluchistan), raped a doctor at the hospial in Sui. The local police have not been able to take him into custody. The hospital serves the Bugti tribe, as well as the foreign Sui gasfield workers. The Bugti responded by fielding several thousand tribal troops, described as heavily armed, well trained and organised, equiped with satellite telephones. The tribal troops interviewed explained that they mobilized to defend their Sheik and their sovereingty. The Bugti troops were joined by troops from the Mengals, Mazaris and Marris tribes. They set up pickets (checkpoints, firing points) throught Dera Bugti, and from January 11th to the 16th there was pitched battle with the Frontier Corps (Punjabi troops).

During the battle Bugti troops fired 430 rockets and 60 mortar rounds at the Sui gas works and held the gas company compound for a day. The Punjabi State rushed thousands of troops and paramilitary forces to Sui.

This is the fifth insurgency by Balochis seeking political autonomy and control over their natural resources.

1st: 1947-48, lead by Mir Ahmad Yar Khan, invoking the Treaty of 1876, resistance to annexation of Kalat by Pakistan.

2nd: 1958-59 lead by Nawab Nowroz Khan, resistance to integration of Beluch Province into the single administrative unit of West Pakistan.

3rd: 1962-63 See the Tribal Belt, part of Paul Wolf's (much) longer work on Pakistan. Here is a telling line: Should Baluchistan emerge as a separate pro-Soviet entity, the Soviets would be in a position to force greater Afghanistan compliance with Soviet demands. The speaker was Mohammad Yunus (protect) Ministry of Foreign Affairs Director General for Middle East, Arab States, Afghanistan and CENTO Affairs.

4th: 1973-77 lead by Mir Hazar Khan Marri, Marri and Mengal tribes form BPLF, exile in Soviet-Afganistan in 1977, Iraninan AF conducts major air ops against tribes in Pakistani-Baluchistan.

5th: 2002-200?

A story I don't expect anyone will touch is that some Intel shop is planting stories that the 'Graph and the Moonbeam carried over the weekend, casting Iran as the cause for the 5th Baluchi insurgency against the 1947 annexation of Kalat by Punjab.

Posted by EBW at 10:38 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

It wasn't in 1971, when the Punjabi-dominated state and military of Pakistan pursued a military solution to Bengali agitation for provincial autonomy. Wikipedia has a readable summary of the run-up to the November 1971 War. Take note of the diplomatic details.

Is it today?

Fortunately, Jonah gave me several hours of time uninterrupted by sleep to grovel about the Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, and the Arabic and Farsi press (in translation) to dredge up the dimly remembered and the never-previously known. The search key was (unpublished, via bharat-rakshak.com, while researching, partly published, background on my notes on the blackout of independent humanitarian assistance to the indigenous peoples of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands by the Indian Military, and the force structure of the Indian Navy, the 7th largest in the world), was a note that a four Indian Naval vessels pointedly conducted a good-will visit to Bander Abbas, under the non-alignment doctrine, last September. That got Gwader (or Gwadar or Gawadar) as a search key. The rest should be obvious.

Beluchistan wasn't part of British India in 1947, in fact up until 1957 the coastal area of Gwadar was part of Oman. There was shooting war in Pakistani-Beluchistan in 1970, which the Punjabi-dominated state and military of Pakistan won with the assistance of Iran, then under Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and supressing Baluchis in Iranian-Baluchistan. The three principle shieks of Pakistani-Beluchistan and more than 10,000 tribal soldiers went into exile ... in Soviet Afganistan (re-read carefully the diplo-portion of the Wiki entry cited above). With the fall of the Soviet regime in Kabul, the Beluchi tribal governments and militaries in-exile returned to Pakistani-Beluchistan and non-war with "the center" -- the Punjabi State ruling from Islamabad.

The Gwadar project vision is simple -- link the Central Asian States pipelines to a deep-water port, and the Sin gasfield to the Punjabi State. China benefits (and is financing) via access to foreign energy (re-read carefully the diplo-portion of the Wiki entry cited above), and Pakistan benefits by being the port of entry to a new "Northern Road", from the Gulf of Oman to the Central Asian States, a major deep-water port, the Sui gas field connect. The Beluchis get what the Sindhs got. Gwadar transformed from a comfortable multi-tribal hamlet of thousands and the customary economy of non-state water-borne commerce (aka "smuggling"), to a second Karachi, population 9.25 million, and all foreigners, that is, Punjabis and other trans-nationals. Karachi was the size of Gwadar in the early 18th century. It was a Sindh coastal town.

What are the fundamental (yes, in both senses) issues in the region of Pakistan that abuts Iran (and also Afganistan)? These two blind quotes show the political instutional conflict.

Blind Quote #1:

That powers over legislation, finance and natural resources should be vested with the provincial governments and barring defence, currency and foreign affairs, all other powers should be transferred to the provinces.

There are two ways in which people can react to this situation. They can say they are sick and tired of �tribal Sardars holding the state to ransom� and standing in the way of the state�s centralizing and leveling mission in pursuit of a �unified and enlightened� nation. Such people see backward remnants and aggressive defenders of tribalism as an obstacle to progress measured in terms of transiting from pre-capitalist social structures based on special bilateral agreements and arrangements to market economies based on universal, contractual laws. In this perspective, Nawab Bugti and his tribes are anachronistic blackmailers who should be dealt with ruthlessly by the state so that the multinational oil and gas companies can get on with their job.

Then there are those who, like their opportunistic political predecessors, would rather buy off the Nawab and his Bugtis for a token in ransom rather than incur their wrath and be compelled to take military action against them. No one really wants to draw attention to yet another fault line in the country�s body politic.

Before 4am this morning I'd never heard of Zakris, or knew that most of them lived in Gwadar, up until the massive deportation of most of the indigenous population into the nearly waterless interior in 2002. Some links are in the extended entry. I'll put up space imagery of the Gulf of Oman and the lower Persian Gulf.

So there is shooting and bombing in Baluchistan, and its been going on for two years. And what is the critical view of the three Sheiks? Gwadar and the Iran-abutting coast is simply going to be handed over by the Punjabis to the Americans, and the Baluchis will get nothing but deportations into the waterless interior, as well as turfed out of the Sin field, which they happend to be living on.

This is getting disjointed. Another episode of "While the Chickens Sleep" ... courtesy of Jonah's sleep disorder. It just occured to me that I never once looked at the current news, after seeing that the Moonie Press was running a Tehran-aids-bad-insurgents-in-Pakistan story, I mean, what's news during a blizzard?

Continue reading "Is Pakistan?" »

Posted by EBW at 03:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Over on Atrios, Tena has a piece on the latest alleged al-Zawahri tape. In it, the speaker is calling on the citizens of Pakistan to rise up and overthrow their pro-American government link.

Owing to my Return of the ... One True King series, I now get press releases from Naveed Butt, spokesman (in Pakistan) for the Hizb ut-Tahrir, see also link. See Alisher Khamidov's piece from last Fall in Eurasianet for slightly dated background on this particular central asian underground radical Islamic organization.

The press release is entitled "Musharraf is transforming Pak Army into Colonial American Army", and in two longish, but not unstylishly so, paragraphs, argues that case, and inter alia, for the replacement of Americans-by-proxy (Generals) by Mullahs.

Folks needing to see the original drop me a note.

Posted by at 05:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)