Pakistan's Feckless Leaders Must Respond to Mullen's 'Wild' Accusations
"Pakistanis
are startled and perturbed at the stunning muteness of our elites. Their
reticence to respond has confused our people out of their wits, leaving them dumbfounded,
troubled and perplexed. … To build a story of success to deceive their own
people and the world at large, America has peddled nothing but outright lies."
Jalaluddin Haqqani, some time in the 1990s: A Pastun and a fierce leader of the resistance to Soviet occupation, he now leads a pro-Taliban group of fighters have been mounting increasingly effective attacks on U.S. and Afghan forces.
As the U.S. bluster against
Pakistan menacingly gains viciousness by the day, Pakistanis are startled and
perturbed at the stunning muteness of our elites. Their reticence to respond has
confused our people out of their wits, leaving them dumbfounded, troubled and
perplexed. Amazingly, across the board, the political leadership behaves as if American
bullying, bluster and threats are none of its concern. No less disturbing is
the quietude of the military command. Pakistanis would certainly have preferred
to do without the evasive and philosophical treatise on perceptions delivered in
lifeless diplomatic language by the minions in the Foreign Office.
[Editor's Note: The cause of
this latest flare-up in Pakistani anger was this comment by Admiral Mullen
before the Senate Armed Services Committee: "The Haqqani network ... acts
as a veritable arm of Pakistan's internal Services Intelligence Agency. With
ISI support, Haqqani operatives planned and conducted that truck bomb attack, as
well as the attack on our embassy. We also have credible intelligence that they
were behind the June 28 attack on the Inter-Continental Hotel in Kabul as well
as a host of other smaller but effective operations." Watch full video
below].
Neither were Pakistanis
hankering for the mumbling of the foreign minister about America losing
Pakistan if it continued its gaudy charade or the tardy response from the
military command, such as the one its spokesman dished out on some news
channels that rebutted the wild allegations of America and its Afghan
sidekicks, which implicates Pakistan in the deadly strikes by Afghan insurgents
on Kabul’s high-security diplomatic zone.
In the face of America's spiraling
arrogance and jingoism, our people have no stomach for such meaningless jargon.
They crave language that speaks at least a few blistering home truths that
would bring the chicanery and deceits of America’s movers and shakers into the
spotlight.
Indeed, the people of
Pakistan were looking to hear a response that knocked the bottom out of this deceitful
contrivance, which is meant to put a deceptive gloss on the Afghanistan collapse
mounted by America's commanders and their political masters.
The Americans are really in a
spot, which is unarguably of their own doing. They have been to Afghanistan for
over ten years now, yet they have palpably and spectacularly failed in pacify
it - notwithstanding the tall tales and boisterous braggadocio that hardly holds
up against ground realities. To build a story of success to deceive their own
people and the world at large, they have peddled nothing but outright lies, pretences
and hoaxes to their embedded corporate media - albeit unsuccessfully.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
The harsh fact is that Afghanistan
is more unsettled than it was when the U.S.-led raiders descended on, invaded
and occupied it. North and west Afghanistan, which they craftily hold up as
regions of relative peace, have in fact been divvied up between regional and
local warlords who are often at each other’s throats, none of which are amenable
to Kabul’s control.
The south still lives largely
under the sway of the Taliban, as for the most part does the east. The less
than infrequent deadly insurgent assaults on NATO security assets, right in the
heart the principal city in the south, Kandahar, mock David Petraeus, the outgoing
American commander of foreign coalition forces, who brags of having pacified
the region.
Pakistan
Army Chief General Ashfaq Kayani meets with U.S.
Joint
Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, at a NATO meeting
in
Spain, Sept. 16. Pakistanis are outraged again, after Mullen
told
the Senate Armed Services Committee that Pakistan's
intelligence
service, the ISI, is a veritable arm of the Haqqani
terrorist
network, and helped plan a recent attack on U.S. forces.
And revealingly, the U.S.
military’s much-touted Mirjah hoax is also coming apart. This cluster of
villages where the U.S. occupiers have paid for security by bribing tribal
elders is still very much the abode of Afghan insurgents, who are also expanding
north and west.
The occupiers of Afghanistan,
Americans in particular, are increasingly haunted by their shenanigans and by
the CIA’s subversive covert activities aimed at destabilizing the neighborhood,
a purpose for which they have made Afghanistan their hub.
Deep within Afghanistan, the
CIA has incubated a veritable state, swarming with the non-Pashtun and mostly Tajik
Northern Alliance,
who are congenitally anti-Pashtun, anti-Pakistan and pro-India. After ages of
trying, Tajiks, together with other minorities, were able to grab the reins of
power in a land traditionally ruled by Pashtuns or their appointees. So while this
hidden state, with the CIA’s blessing, has worked meticulously to keep the mainstream
political doors blocked to Pashtuns, it cunningly fanned the flames of anti-Pakistan
animosity while creating space for India to embed itself in the country.
So as a result of their own
devious methods, the Americans are in an Afghan pickle. They have alienated the
Pashtuns, while they confront an insurgency that is in fact an upsurge of Pashtun
nationalism against them. Meanwhile, the Tajiks and other minorities are also angry
with them over U.S. plans to withdraw by 2014, since this will deprive them of
the support they need to survive in a polity with a Pashtun majority. But above
all, peace has doggedly refused to return to the occupied country, a fact for which
the Americans have vilely selected Pakistan to pay for.
One would have thought that our
political and military leaders would have huddles to come up with a coherent
way to respond to America's mounting jingoism against our nation. Yet they have
not.
At least at this late hour they
must do so. Let the defense minister and army chief come out at a press
conference with a response befitting America's churlishness. If American Defense
Secretary Leon Panetta and top U.S. soldier Admiral Mike Mullen can publicly hurl
wild accusations and arrogant threats at Pakistan, why can't Defense Minister Ahmed Mukhtar and General
Ashfaq Parvez
Kayani speak some home truths in America's direction?
