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Only the army has the power to withstand U.S. diktat. Our politicians can’t. For this reason alone, all patriotic forces should get together to prevent Benazir from ever becoming prime minister again, else you can kiss goodbye to your nuclear assets and to Dr. A. Q. Khan and get used to American forces running all over Pakistan.
By HUMAYUN GAUHAR
Sunday, 9 December 2007.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan–America has two immediate objectives in Pakistan. One: neuter our nuclear program by bringing it under its control. Two: get the Peoples Republic of China out of Pakistan; particularly out of every strategic advantage that it has here, otherwise its encirclement would be futile.
The latter is part of the U.S. grand design has made it a bull in China’s shop. There can only be one result: bull burgers, or perhaps sweet and sour bull.
Everything else that it claims to be promoting, like ‘democracy’ and the ganging up of U.S. stooges and agents euphemistically called ‘moderate forces’ are just weapons of mass destruction to create chaos and weaken us to achieve these two objectives.
Not to put too fine a point on it, America wants to make Pakistan a complete vassal state (partial it already is, like nearly all other countries, except China and Russia); a vassal State that runs only according to Washington’s will and to its advantage.
Some Pakistanis might find this an interesting proposition and even welcome it. Some would be happier still if we were to become America’s 51st state. But the vast patriotic majority balks at this bleak possibility.
To achieve these nefarious objectives America is trying to create a false justification for political and military intervention just as it did with Iraq: that Pakistan is the most dangerous place in the world because its nuclear arsenal is under tenuous control and will be totally out of control if Muslim extremists take over the state, of which, if America is to be believed, there is an imminent possibility. (Actually, this could only happen if America does actually attack Pakistan either from the inside or outside).
Since Pakistan is much bigger than Iraq and Afghanistan, and far more powerful, they dare nott attack us frontally. It could lead to Armageddon. So they are using the old Soviet trick that was applied in Afghanistan: force a stooge leader to become top dog and get him (her in our case) to ‘invite’ America into the country to restore peace and fight the militants.
Thus to make the danger of “terrorists with Pakistani nukes rampant” sound real, America weakened President Musharraf (though it is Musharraf’s fault for starting target practice on his foot with a single-minded obsession) and threw Pakistan’s political process, which otherwise was well on course towards its next objective of elections after the parliaments had run their terms for the first time ever, into turmoil.
When Musharraf was weakened enough they forcibly re-insinuated that malfeasance Benazir Bhutto into our body politic. America and its Pakistani stooges talk ad nauseam of the rule of law, but to reintroduce Benazir into Pakistan, Musharraf had to make a complete mockery of the law, one law for her and another for the rest of us. Not a squeak out of America and its Pakistani stooges when that happened.
She stung Musharraf faster than any of us had predicted and this marriage made in the hell called Washington D.C. between the General and the ‘Daughter of the West’ (as Tariq Ali calls her) hit the rocks in the honeymoon suite.
To its utter disbelief the United States soon discovered that Benazir has become delusional and lived in a time warp. Worse, and far from being ‘the most popular leader in Pakistan’ who owns the ‘only national party with the largest following’ Benazir has emerged only as a smalltime subnationalist from rural Sindh.
America the Democrat has allowed Pakistan’s greatest grand larcenist off the hook because it bought this false notion thanks to the British and Benazir-hired PR firms and lobbyists. Washington fell for the greatest confidence trick in post-Bangladesh Pakistani history. A bigger con job than this one was when her father convinced so many fools in West Pakistan that he had actually won the election of December 1970 and so ought to be prime minister. It led to the disintegration of Pakistan.
Having been conned, it was felt that Benazir being let off the hook for her crimes was inequitable. To balance this, Mr. Nawaz Sharif was also allowed back into the equation, though, needless to say, there is one law for him too and another for Benazir. How else could his and his brother’s papers be rejected by the Election Commission? Because he has been convicted and she hasn’t? What nonsense!
They could easily have made another perfidious law that would allow him specifically to contest elections regardless, but not any other convict. And as far as I know his brother has not been convicted of any crime. It would seem that America is promoting corruption, Benazir-style in the name of democracy, anti-Islamism in the name of secularism, and fascism in the name of moderation, fascism being the pursuit of the most retrogressive ends (like fortifying feudalism) by employing the most progressive rhetoric (Islamic Socialism). This is exactly what Father Bhutto’s government achieved.
Mercifully, the chances that elections will make Benazir prime minister are near zilch. However, no party is likely to win a majority, so there will have to be a coalition government again. The chances that the PML (Q) will win the most seats are the highest. Chances are, too, that it will not need PPP seats to achieve a majority.
But if the army is forced by America to force Benazir into the coalition with the PML (Q) kicking and screaming, then we are in for chaos, precisely what America wants in order to enter ‘this ungovernable country’, because such a cat and dog coalition would not last long.
But if by the time of the elections Musharraf has lifted the emergency, which he has officially said he might, then only the army will have the power to withstand U.S. diktat. Who would bet on that? For this reason alone all patriotic forces should get together to prevent Benazir from ever becoming prime minister again, else you can kiss goodbye to your nuclear assets and to Dr. A. Q. Khan and get used to American forces running all over Pakistan.
President Musharraf has already warned the West against forcing its various versions of electoral democracy, which took them hundreds of years to achieve, down our throats.
He should go further. When the emergency ends he will be a tiger with one tooth. What’s the point? A U.S.-based opinion poll has it that Musharraf’s popularity has increased to 74 percent after he became a civilian president and 79 percent feel that democracy will be strengthened.
This is the time to strike. Musharraf has said that he will leave if the election results are not to his satisfaction. Good. Why does he not really resign as president after the elections, enter politics formally, head his own political party and eventually become prime minister himself?
It won’t take long, given the pathetic opposition. Chaudhry Shujat Hussain has offered that he is ready to vacate his position as president of the Pakistan Muslim League for Musharraf. This is one hell of an offer, which will be good for Pakistan and good for Musharraf. He will be surprised at how many people from the ’silent majority’ who always supported him but never went public join his party.
Niccolo Machiavelli said this about elections: “Each candidate behaved well in the hope of being judged worthy of election. However, this system was disastrous when the city had become corrupt. For then it was not the most virtuous but the most powerful who stood for elections, and the weak, even if virtuous, were too frightened to run for office.”
Mr. Gauhar is an eminent Pakistani political commentator. This column is an edited version of the original published by the Pakistan’s daily The Nation.
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