Whose war

Uncle Sam has stage-managed the State of Pakistan through various backdoor inducted and supported governments, and brought it down on its knees to the point of total indignation, as witnessed last week in Washington, where the Pakistani president together with Afghan puppet President Karzai, was made to flank Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, and subsequently John Kerry a mere senator in the US government, while briefing the American press. His brief audience with Obama it seems did not even merit a photo session. This was the worst ever treatment of a Pakistani head of state. To cap it, there was the highly dicey and consequential Afghan Transit Trade Agreement, which would do nothing but facilitate two belligerent countries conspiring and operating against Pakistan, now under American tutelage. It is unpardonable that the Agreement was inked between two independent nations in a third country, and clearly suggests that it was done by the president without any mandate from the Pakistani government, under coercion by the US, and supervised by Hillary Clinton. Ironically, the American pressure created by pronouncing the Pakistani government as weak, more than worked. The Swat 'peace deal' has been prematurely called off and military action launched to prove the strength of the people's government. The mass exodus caused by the military action could soon translate into hatred for the Pakistani armed forces alongside the inept government, fitting perfectly into the game plan. The genuine Taliban, desirous of an Islamic social order in Pakistan fast sinking into moral turpitude and social injustice, have been successfully infiltrated by enemy agents and opportunists. Clearly, Baitullah Mehsud, Fazlullah, Muslim Khan and the likes of them, are enemy agents and not Taliban, whose image has been smeared by design; a grand design. The latest Saleg Harrison column in the Washington Post magnifying an exaggerated separatist movement among Pakistan's Pushtun population, has made a sinister suggestion to include Pushtun territories of FATA, Balochistan and Punjab into the Frontier province, towards the fulfilment of its nefarious plan of greater Pushtunistan and further fragmenting the rocking boat of Pakistan. The long orchestrated campaign against Pakistan which has picked up pace after its detonation of the nuclear device, is now almost ripe for deliverance. Every time, Pakistan has tried to negotiate peace, there have been protests from the US and its proxies in Pakistan as has been seen recently in Swat, where a possible peace was preemptively frustrated under constant US pressure forcing army action, which has caused an unprecedented exodus and displacement of locals within their own country. The US has promptly endorsed the action while the MQM have raised hue and cry over a million war-ravaged people from Swat and Buner seeking refuge all over the country including Karachi or parts of Sindh, and heartlessly suggested that they be settled in camps close to their abodes and not let them come to Karachi. Instead of taking the destitute in their fold for sustenance, the political leadership is indulging in photo sessions in these ill-provided camps, while all kinds of vultures are pouncing upon the misery to either partake of any assistance or recruit them as potential rebels, which could be born out of their maltreatment. The countless affectees reaching the camps are giving heart-rending accounts of mismanagement, contest the official claims that more than 1.100 local and foreign militants have been killed and maintain that a number of their kith and kin have perished. not a single person killed among 750 plus so-called miscreants, are foreign or local militants but their own kith and kin peaceful non-combatant men, women and children. Ironically one learns, that the army has landed its paratroopers in Swat, as if it was an enemy territory. You do not airdrop land forces in your own country, and it only shows how precariously placed, is the writ of the government. In pursuance of its longstanding designs of taming and using Pakistan as a corridor to establish its hegemony over Central Asian resources, and contain the rising power of the People's Republic of China by pitching and using India against it, the Pakistan Army has been made to launch an Operation by the government under American pressure, without first arranging properly organised vacation, screening, registration, camping and provision of food and healthcare, besides iron clad security, which is imperative in such a volatile situation. Soft targets that these refugee camps could become for infiltration or even attacks by extremist elements, require extraordinary vigilance, which is so far lacking desperately. Is it not sheer callousness to merely put on notice a hapless population to vacate and shift to safer places? We have blamed the military government for army action in East Pakistan causing its separation from the State. What do we have to say about similar action under a democratically elected government? Uncle SAM in saying that the US was concerned about a weak Pakistani civilian government, was in fact reflecting its disappointment with the present system, which had not thus far proved to be as pliable as the military governments in the past; a one-window operation which Uncle SAM has been accustomed to. Had the civilian government remained steadfast, it could have become a tribute to the civilian rule. One hopes that General Kiyani, the cool customer that he has proven to be so far, will not get sucked into the customary bait from Obama & Co, telling them that their inference about Pak Army's perceptions about its friends and foes was patently tainted, because the armed forces of Pakistan were performing their national duties as assigned by the elected government, and not acting on their own. It would be fitting that henceforth the military establishment completely withdraws from any direct engagement with the American administration. If this indeed is a government decision for whatever reasons, it should not sit on the sidelines and make the army face the brunt of the backlash. The armed forces, which is barely out of the woods yet, needs to continue rehabilitating its image among the people, and if one may suggest, should confine themselves to the task assigned and brief the civilian government, who in turn must face the public and the press. Why pray Should the Nizam-e-Adl (Islamic version of Justice) in Pakistan or any part of it, have been of any concern to the US? It was also time, that on the heels of the in-camera briefing to the Senate by the Pakistani interior minister about Indian, Afghan and Russian involvement in Swat, Balochistan and the Karachi turmoil, the issue would be squarely dealt by the Pakistani president during his American visit. Far from being on the receiving end as conjectured over an Indian TV channel, he ought to have frontally posed the question to his host and demanded immediate halt to these incursions in Pakistan besides the drone attacks, as a quid pro quo for Pakistani support to its war. Pakistan should have considered suspension of the dialogue process with India as a blessing in disguise, in order to be able to look back and re-evolve its strategy over the peace process and the so-called Confidence Building Measures, which had delivered nothing to Pakistan so far, and by diversionary tactics, only helped India to water down the Kashmir issue and choke its irrigation sources. In order to fight for its life, Pakistan ought to now go to the UN or the International Court of Justice for the restitution of its rights to Chenab Waters besides reversing the unlawful Indian decision on construction of the Baglihar and a dozen other dams on the rivers flowing from the disputed territory of Occupied Kashmir threatening remote controlling its waters, the lifeline of the Pakistani land mass. Just when the Muslim World was beginning to have a sniff of hope from the westerly winds, the Obama administration has unmasked its intentions by continuing with only a slightly modified version of his predecessor's stance in carrying out the global US agenda where it continues to hire mercenary support to accomplish its goals. Pakistan has been its recent victim although long on the cards, and is already being made to feel the heat and face the fallout of the dirty job it stuck its neck out to perform, while India skilfully stayed away and used 9/11 to divert from its own issue of Kashmir with Pakistan. If the Pakistani leadership was naive, the US certainly was aware of the cobweb it was knitting around it by addicting you to the crumbs of aid rather than the country strive for self-sufficiency, besides social and economic justice. With the estranged Muslim neighbour, Pakistan needs to mend fences, as with its Balochi and Pushtun countrymen. Is it not a shame that leave alone the mass of Afghan refugee influx caused by the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, you have rendered well over a million of your own countrymen homeless, causing a dangerous ethnic confrontation. The situation no doubt has been precipitated by external forces but it is Pakistan, which has to find the answers itself. It is Pakistan itself that has brought to naught, the fraternity and brotherhood it created by hosting an unprecedented over three million Afghan refugees. Clearly, it was never Pakistan's war, but by bringing it right into its backyard, it has been made to be one. Now that the Pakistan Army has been pushed into it, there is no choice for it but to succeed. We wish it all the luck and God speed. The writer is a freelance columnist