That duplicity was on display when U.S. lawmakers were induced to invade Iraq in response to the mass murder of 9-11. That crisis alone, however, was insufficient. Military mobilization required a “consensus” belief in Iraqi WMD, Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda, Iraqi mobile biological weapons, Iraqi meetings in Prague, and so forth. Though all were false, those “facts” proved sufficient to induce an invasion of Iraq.

Such agent provocateur operations typically include collateral incidents as pre-staging for the intended main event. Ongoing incidents suggest a follow-on operation is underway. Recent history suggests we’ll see an orgy of evidence that plausibly indicts a pre-staged Evil Doer. Though Iran is an obvious candidate, Pakistan is also a possibility where outside forces have been destabilizing this nuclear Islamic nation with a series of violent incidents.

Will it be coincidence if the next war—like the last—is consistent with the expansive goals of Jewish nationalists?

The Indo-Israel Alliance

December 2007 saw the murder of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Mark Siegel, her Ashkenazim biographer and lobbyist, assured U.S. diplomats that her return was “the only possible way that we could guarantee stability and keep the presidency of Musharraf intact.”

President Pervez Musharraf had announced that resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict was essential to the resolution of conflicts in Iraq and neighboring Afghanistan. That comment made him a target for Tel Aviv.

During Bhutto’s two terms as prime minister, Pakistani support for the Taliban—then celebrated as the freedom-fighting Mujahadin—enabled her to wield influence in Afghanistan while also catalyzing conflicts in Kashmir. By fueling tension with India, she also fueled an Indo-Israel alliance as Tel Aviv provided New Delhi an emergency shipment of artillery shells during a conflict over the Kirpal region of Kashmir.

In January 2009, Israel delivered to India the first of three Phalcon Airborne Warning & Control Systems (AWACS) shifting the balance of conventional weapons in the region. That sale confirmed what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had earlier announced: “Our ties with India don’t have any limitation….” That became apparent in April when Israel signed a $1.1 billion agreement to provide India an advanced tactical air defense system developed by Raytheon, a U.S. defense contractor.

In August 2008, Ashkenazim General David Kezerashvili returned to Georgia from Tel Aviv to lead an assault on separatists in South Ossetia with the support of Israeli arms and training. That crisis ignited Cold War tensions between the U.S. and Russia, key members of the Quartet (along with the EU and the UN) pledged to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Little was said about the Israeli interest in a pipeline across Georgia meant to move Caspian oil through Turkey and on to Eurasia, using Israel as an intermediary while undermining Russia’s oil industry.

More Game Theory Warfare?

Bhutto’s murder ensured a crisis that replaced Musharaff with Asif Ali Zardari, her notoriously corrupt husband. By Washington’s alliance with Zardari, the U.S. could be portrayed as extending its corrupting influence in the region.

On August 7, 2008, the Zadari-led ruling coalition called for a no-confidence vote in Parliament against Musharraf just as he was departing for the Summer Olympics in Beijing. On August 8, heavy fighting erupted overnight in South Ossetia. As with many of the recent incidents in Pakistan, this violent event involved armed separatists.

But for pro-Israeli influence inside the U.S. government, would our State Department have installed in office the corrupt Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, leading to record-level poppy production? Is the heroin epidemic presently eroding Russian society traceable to Israel’s infamous game theory war-planners? (See “How Israel Wages Game Theory Warfare” and “Israel and 9-11.”)

In late November 2008, a terrorist attack in Mumbai, India’s financial center, renewed fears of nuclear tension between India and Pakistan. When the attackers struck a hostel managed by Chabad Lubavitch, an ultra-orthodox Jewish sect from New York, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni announced from Tel Aviv: “Our world is under attack.” By early December, Israeli journalists urged that we “fortify the security of Jewish institutions worldwide.”

Soon after “India’s 9-11” was found to include operatives from Pakistan’s western tribal region, Zardari announced an agreement with the Taliban to allow Sharia law to govern a swath of the North West Frontier Province where Al Qaeda members reportedly reside.

Pakistani cooperation with “Islamic extremists” created the impression of enhanced insecurity and vulnerability for the U.S. and its allies. That perceived threat was marketed by mainstream media as proof of the perils of “militant Islam.”

With the Taliban and Al Qaeda portrayed as operating freely in a nuclear-armed Islamic state, Tel Aviv gained traction for its claim that a nuclear Tehran posed an “existential threat” to the Jewish state. Meanwhile Israel’s election of an ultra-nationalist/ultra-orthodox coalition further delayed resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

More delay is destined to evoke more extremism and gain more traction for those marketing the “global war on terrorism.” Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni argued after the assault in Mumbai: “Israel, India and the rest of the free world are positioned in the forefront of the battle against terrorists and extremism.”

In announcing that list, Islamabad was indicted by its exclusion even though Pakistan is dominantly Sunni and, unlike Iran’s Shi’a, abhors theocratic rule. The fact patterns suggest that Pakistan, not India, was the target of the murderous terrorism in Mumbai.

Advised by legions of Ashkenazim, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent mission to Islamabad was a diplomatic disaster. Abrasive and arrogant, America’s top diplomat reinforced Pakistani concerns that it is surrounded by hostile forces and that the nation is being set up to fail by Jewish nationalist advisers to a nation it considered an ally.

In a climate of heightened tensions, Clinton undermined U.S. interests, boosted the Israeli case for a global war on “Islamo-fascism” and lent credence to the Clash of Civilizations.

Destabilization as a Prequel to Domination

As Afghanistan and Pakistan join other nations being destabilized by outside forces, key questions must be answered:

· Was India’s 9-11 a form of geopolitical misdirection meant to serve both the tactical goals of Muslim extremists and the strategic goals of Jewish nationalists? Who benefits—within Pakistan—from humiliation at the hands of India and the U.S.?

· With Bhutto’s murder and Musharraf’s departure, the crisis in Mumbai drew Pakistani forces to the Indian border and away from the western tribal region. Was that the geostrategic goal of these well-timed crises? What role, if any, did Israel play?

· Is delay in ending the occupation of Palestine part of an agent provocateur strategy? Was the latest assault on Gaza part of this strategy?

Each of these crises incrementally advanced the expansionist agenda of Colonial Zionists. Do these collateral incidents trace their origin to a common source? Is that source again using serial events to pre-stage a main event?

The public has an intuitive grasp of the source of this oft-recurring behavior. An October 2003 poll of 7,500 respondents in member nations of the European Union found that Israel was considered the greatest threat to world peace.

Is terrorism limited to “Islamo-fascists”? Are mass murders also deployed—from the shadows—as a strategy of geopolitical manipulation by those who Ashkenazim philosopher Hannah Arendt described as “Jewish fascists”?

‘Daisy Cutters and Poppy Wearers.’ Some people may be wondering what this means.

The Daisy Cutter is the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the American armoury.

Even larger bombs are currently being developed. The Daisy Cutter has an explosion similar to a small nuclear or atomic bomb. They say that when one was dropped in Iraq, the explosion lit up the entire front. Many Iraqi soldiers defected after seeing that bomb.

Several of these were dropped in Afghanistan, especially in the battles of Tora Bora.

Tony Blair is an example of a poppy-wearer. The poppy represents international peace. I got the idea for the title of this article from a cartoon I saw in one of the national newspapers. It was at the time when daisy-cutters were being dropped in Afghanistan and it was international peace day. The cartoon depicted a picture of Tony Blair wearing a poppy and an explosion behind him. The caption simply read: ‘Daisy-cutter…Poppy-wearer’.

We are entering an age where the visual media is gaining increasing influence on human societies, especially the 24-hour news channels, which have now become the most popular of all channels. A lot has been written about the shaping of public opinion.¹

I would like to mention some of the things that characterize the visual news media.

First, thought and emotion control. By relying upon the global news channels for information, the public tacitly allow themselves to be influenced in their thoughts and opinions about global events, on the spurious assumption that such information is unbiased and ‘independent’. A more ominous recent development, possibly, was illustrated by the case of Princess Diana’s death. The virtually unending media coverage generated the huge public outpouring of grief, so uncharacteristic of the British people. Individuals who would not normally have paid the story much of a second thought were influenced by the unceasing media coverage, repeatedly telling them how devastated they (the British public) were, that they found themselves believing it and even feeling it.

News channels have short memories. This was partly my reason for writing this article. The material we are currently seeing on the news channels about Afghanistan, the Taliban and the war — it is as if everything that led up to that point has been forgotten. The comments being made about the Taliban seem as if they come from a vacuum, as if everything that has led up to this point has been erased from the public mind.

When most people think about the Taliban and opium, they have the impression that the Taliban are heavily involved in the opium trade. That is in fact the message that is coming through from the media at the current time, sometimes through hints, and sometimes more explicitly. Whereas, in reality, as we shall see, the Taliban were responsible for stopping the opium production in Afghanistan and reducing it to zero.

The Pentagon now spends more than $550m on what it calls ‘public affairs’, not including personnel costs. So huge amounts of money are being put by the American military into what is referred to as ‘perception management.’ It involves manipulating and using the media to convey a certain message. I will present a couple of examples of this.

It is clear that the media is not a neutral institution. For example, Tony Blair met Rupert Murdoch three times in the run up to the invasion of Iraq. Rupert Murdoch owns large sections of the western news media, including Fox News, Sky, the Times newspaper, the Sun, News of the World, at least one of the large American newspapers and much of the Australian news media.

Although ‘Muslim’ channels such as the Emirates’ Al-Jazeera, Pakistan’s Geo News, and others, may superficially give the impression of being pro-Muslim, this is certainly not the case. In fact, there is little difference between such channels and mainstream UK or US news channels. These Arab or Pakistani news channels represent the secular, westernised tier of those societies. Despite the differing national allegiances, they ultimately share common values with their ex-colonial masters, i.e., democracy, secularism and often a belief in a capitalist economy. However, it should be remembered that this West-imitating class is a minority in Muslim countries.²

An example of how the news media has been responsible for manipulating public opinion occurred prior to the war against Iraq, when Iraq had invaded Kuwait. Prior to the American and British led attack, there was a widely reported story of Iraqi soldiers killing Kuwaiti babies. At a congressional human rights caucus, a young woman called Nayirah relayed a shocking story of what she had allegedly witnessed. The press latched on to the story, and the initial account of fifteen babies was soon exaggerated in sectors of the press up to 312. Several members of congress said that this story had influenced their vote to approve the military action against Iraq. President Bush frequently mentioned it in the lead up to the war. In the Senate, six senators specifically cited the story in their speeches supporting the resolution to give Bush authorization to use American forces in Kuwait.³

Shortly after the war ended, it became clear that this story was fabricated. ABC News and Amnesty International amongst others reported that there was no evidence that this had occurred. Finally, the New York Times made the shocking revelation that Nayirah was in fact the 15-year-old daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador in America.

Similarly, before Iraq was invaded following the September 11th attacks, most Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was somehow behind 9/11 or that he was directly linked to Al Qaeda, despite the fact that no such link existed. In fact, Salafi jihadist groups such as Al Qaeda (supposing we assume that such an organisation substantially exists outside of its media construct) are ideologically vehemently opposed to secular leaders like Hussein, considering them to be apostates, worse than ‘disbelievers.’⁴

Some polls found that 7 in 10 Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in September 11th attacks. This public attitude was engineered by the state department. President Bush, Dick Cheney and co were hinting at links between the two in public speeches. The journal Perspectives on Politics published a study in which they looked at this issue. The authors mention: “Our analysis of Bush’s speeches reveals that the administration consistently connected Iraq with 9/11…” They go on to mention how the media colluded with the Bush et al.: “New York Times coverage of the president’s speeches featured almost no debate over the framing of the Iraq conflict as part of the war on terror. This assertion had tremendous influence on public attitudes, as indicated by polling data from several sources.”⁵

This eventually led to Iraq being invaded.

History of the Global Opium Industry

Now, going into the main subject of the article, I am going present you with two historical narratives and they interlink. One of them is the history of the global opium/heroin trade. The other is the story of the Taliban. Part of the intention of this presentation is just to remind people of historical facts. I will not indulge in conspiracy theory or anything of that sort; I simply wish to mention historical realities and allow people to judge the facts for themselves. The information about the Taliban is drawn from sources that are in not in any way pro-Taliban. The two main books to which I refer are The Taliban by Ahmad Rashid, which many western leaders were reading (it was said to be Tony Blair’s bedside reading leading up to the war), and Reaping the Whirlwind by a journalist called Michael Griffin. Neither author is a fan of the Taliban

I present the reader with historical facts which are often obscured or omitted from our dominant sources of news. People have a right to know the truth, and the British people have a right to know why their sons and daughters are fighting and being killed in a faraway land called Afghanistan. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: “The best jihad is the word of truth in front of a tyrant ruler.”

The narcotics industry is amongst the largest international businesses in the world. The U.N estimates approximately $400 billion a year is involved.⁶ Kofi Anan, the ex-secretary general of the United Nations, claimed that the illegal narcotics industry is greater than the global oil and gas industry and twice as large as the overall automobile industry.

This gives us an idea of the scale we are dealing with. We know that the oil and gas or global energy industry is one of the largest industries in the world. Oil is so central to the global economy that it is referred to as an ‘oil-based economy’.

It is clear that this is a huge, highly organised and integrated international industry. There must be very powerful players where such vast amounts of money are involved. This is not about a few Pakistanis smuggling Afghan heroin and selling it in Bradford. That is just the very lowest point of the chain.⁷ There are far bigger players involved, and they are literally making billions.

The 18th and 19th centuries were the height of the British Empire. In the 20th century, America emerges as the major world power and proceeds to sideline Britain, France and the old colonial powers.

Let us examine the ‘Opium Wars’, also called the ‘Anglo-Chinese Wars.’

The East India Company was owned by British aristocracy and major British traders. It was a shareholder company and the names of all of the owners can be easily looked up. The East India Company is described as the mother of modern corporations and, interestingly, it had its own army.

The Mughal Empire was in decline when, in 1757, the East India Company conquered Bengal. This was a major opium growing region. The East India Company pursued a monopoly on the production and export of opium.⁸ It was only later, towards the end of the 19th century, that heroin was first synthesized from opium. Prior to that, it was the opium that was smoked.

In 1773, 75 tonnes were exported to China. The East India Company was selling the opium to China in exchange for Chinese commodities such as silk and tea.

This was against Chinese law. The Chinese had outlawed opium in their land because of the detrimental effects on their people. However Britain continued. By the 1830’s, England had become the major drug trafficking organisation in the world, through the East India Company. Many opium addicts were coming about in China. The British government gave the East India Company a monopoly on trade with China.

Heroin Destroys Lives

Opium is a devastating addiction. When people become addicted to opium or heroin, they will give all of their wealth to feed their addiction. When they run out of money they will start stealing, from their own family, from their neighbours. Many women will go into prostitution to pay for their habit. It’s a very, very addictive drug.

As a side note, many people of my generation did not get into hard drugs like heroin because of the public awareness campaigns that took place in the 1980’s when we were going through school. Many of my generation will remember the ‘Just Say No’ campaign that began in America and crossed over to the UK in the 1980s. The fact that we still remember it shows, firstly, how powerful the visual media is in our lives, and, secondly, how easily it can be used as a force for good if the will is there. It makes you wonder why such campaigns are not seen any longer and why steps are not taken to prevent the glamorisation of drug use in the media.

From a purely business point of view, this is the best commodity you can imagine. You sell this to someone and they will come back for more.

Many heroin addicts soon start injecting the drug so that it goes straight into the bloodstream. This often causes infections and abscesses.

When they keep injecting into the same veins, they clot up so they have to keep finding new ones. Many end up injecting into their groin or even the base of the tongue.

The Opium Trade in the Nineteenth Century

Moving now into the 19th century, the opium trade was increasing. By the 1820’s it had gone up to 900 tonnes of opium annually from India to China. Once again the Imperial Chinese government made the opium imports illegal, but Great Britain continued. By 1837, 2500 tonnes were being exported. This was more than all other British exports to China combined.

In effect, the opium trade was fuelling the East India company, and — considering that India was the richest and most productive region of the empire — was a major driver for the empire itself.

The First Opium War came about because the Chinese were resisting the import of opium into their country. Great Britain sent warships to face the Chinese. It has been described as “perhaps the most sordid, base and vicious event in European history.” The Chinese were defeated and were forced to sign a treaty in 1842. They were forced to pay 6 million dollars for the opium that the Chinese police had destroyed. Hong Kong was handed over to Britain, and access to Chinese ports was agreed.

Over the next 30 years the opium trade more than doubled.

France was Britain’s main colonial rival.

In 1856, because of the devastating effect on the Chinese people, the Chinese once again made attempts to resist. The Second Opium War broke out and Britain was again victorious. This time Great Britain demanded complete legalisation of opium and the free propagation of Christianity in China, to which the Chinese had no choice but to submit.

In 1858, the East India Company was dissolved and the British government itself took on the governance of India. Incidentally, John Stewart Mill, one of the fathers of modern capitalism, made a ‘valiant defence’ of the East India Company.

Following the second opium war, China gave up trying to stop the influx of opium and, to minimise the economic impact of the British trade, decided to grow opium itself,. By the end of the 19th century, 90 million out of 300 million Chinese were addicted to opium. Almost a third of the population were addicts.

The Opium Trade in the Twentieth Century

Let us move on to the 20th century which has been triumphantly described as “the American Century”. It seems strange for anyone to want to claim the 20th century, as it was, no doubt, the most bloody, horrific century known to recorded history, which witnessed two world wars and the slaughter of millions. One of the signs of the End Times according to the Prophet (may blessings and peace be upon him) is widespread bloodshed.

As Shaykh Hamza Yusuf⁹ has mentioned, the 20th century, especially the first half of it, can be seen in the light of the power struggle between the new American power and colonial rivals Britain and France, with the US emerging victorious. Many of the events of the 20th century can be looked at in that light.

Looking at America, let us examine actions rather than words.

As Noam Chomsky points out, “Britain can appeal to an imperial tradition of refreshing candor, unlike the United States which has preferred to don the garb of saintliness as it proceeds to crush anyone in its path.” In other words, the British were openly racist and imperial in their outlook. With the United States, we find a different approach. They always claim to be doing ‘good’ while, in fact, crushing anyone in their path to power and dominance.

If we concentrate on rhetoric and the public stances of politicians, we will simply be lost in circles of half-truths, avoidance, and illogicity. If we examine actions, we may arrive at a clearer understanding of reality.

Coming into the 20th century, China eventually managed to stop Britain exporting opium to it. Significantly, it only achieved this with the assistance of the USA. China had tried in vain for 150 years and fought two wars to stop Britain bringing opium into China, but it had failed.

In 1911, US president Theodore Roosevelt intervened to break up the British opium trade. This was, no doubt, a significant blow for Britain’s imperial economy. Of course, the American stance was that they were doing it for a good cause.

Through the forum of the Shanghai International Opium Conference, the US pressed for legislation aimed at suppressing the sale of opium to China. Britain and France had to agree.

By 1917 China had stopped producing and importing opium. In the 1950s, all opium production in China ceased with the communist regime. Before the Second World War, it was producing most of the world’s opium.

Opium production shifted away from China to neighbouring countries which became known as the golden triangle: Thailand, Laos, Burma, all bordering China on the south-west side. In the 1970s, 67 % of the world’s opium was coming from this area. In 1972, one third of US soldiers coming back from Vietnam were addicted to opium.

Wherever the United States intervenes, politically or militarily, in different opium producing regions, opium production invariably increases. The US, of course, will blame one factor or another for this, and often claims to be struggling valiantly to fight the drug problem. Once again, witness ‘the garb of saintliness’ that Chomsky describes.

For example, in the 1970s, Nixon launched his ‘war on drugs.’ He successfully shut down the heroin supply chain through Turkey and France (the so-called ‘French connection’), but “inadvertently” ended up creating a new market for the South-East Asian heroin. The long term consequence of this drug war was in fact increased global opium production and rising heroin consumption.¹⁰

In a well-referenced article by Peter Dale Scott, professor at the University of California, Berkley, under the sub-title, ‘Expanded World Drug Production as a Product of US Interventions,’ he shows that every time America becomes politically or militarily involved in any drug producing country, drug production multiplies.¹¹ Here are some examples he gives for opium production:

Burma: 40 tonnes in 1939 – 600 tonnes in 1970
Thailand: 7 tonnes in 1939 – 200 tonnes in 1968
Laos: Less than 15 tonnes in 1939 – 50 tonnes in 1973

In Columbia, US troops have been intervening since the late 1980s in another so-called ‘war on drugs,’ but in fact the coca production (which is what cocaine is produced from) has tripled between 1991 and 1999. Cultivation of the opium poppy has increased by five times in the region.

Once again, either you can look at realities on the ground or you can listen to the rhetoric. There are many reasons why they have been unable to curtail drug production, for example, “We were unable to control the situation here,” or “the insurgents are causing trouble so we are unable to control the drug trade,” etc.

However, with a repeated pattern, excuses start becoming a little lame, to use a colloquial expression. This is a huge cake, and people want part of the cake. The CIA has been widely implicated in the international drugs trade.¹² ,¹³ ,¹⁴

Afghanistan became important as it began producing a lot of opium. After the defeat of the communists in 1989, Afghanistan descended into chaos with multiple warlords, each commanding his own territory and establishing the rule of brute force.

The opium trade flourished. By the 1990s, half of the world’s heroin and 90% of European heroin was coming from Afghanistan. In 1996, the Taliban took power in Kabul. Initially the Taliban allowed the opium production to continue. Although opium is illegal in Shariah law, they justified their position by saying that stopping the opium trade would have a devastating impact on Afghanistan’s impoverished economy, and, secondly, that Afghan opium was being exported to non-Muslim lands, so it was not the Taliban’s concern.

Insight into the players involved in the international drug trade

In 1986, Major Zahooruddin Afridi of the Pakistan Army was caught driving to Karachi from Peshawar with 220 kilograms of high grade heroin. This was the largest seizure in Pakistani history. Two months later, Air Force officer, Flight Lieutenant Khalilur Rahman was caught with 220 kilograms of heroin on the same route. He calmly confessed that this was his fifth mission. The total value of just these two seizures was $600 million, equivalent to the entire US aid to Pakistan that year.¹⁵

This brings home the vast sums of money involved. If this is the value of just two seizures, it is perhaps not surprising, bearing in mind human nature, that top government officials and army personnel are involved. Both men were put in jail in Karachi but soon mysteriously disappeared.

Ahmed Rashid mentions that “western anti-narcotics agencies in Islamabad kept track of drug lords, who became Members of the National Assembly… Drug lords funded candidates to high office in both Bhutto’s PPP and Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League.”¹⁵ This is what money can do.

At the end of 2000, Mullah Omar, no doubt under pressure from other ulema, reversed the Taliban position and issued the fatwa to ban the opium poppy, despite the economic repercussions on his country.

The United Nations confirmed that by spring, which is the time of year for the opium harvest, opium production had gone down to almost zero.

Half of the world’s heroin had been stopped by that one act of Mullah Omar. Martin Jelsma, in the International Journal on Drug Policy, states, “The Taliban opium ban in 2000/2001 had, there is no doubt, the most profound impact on opium/heroin supply in modern history.”¹⁶

You can imagine that some very powerful people were not too happy about this.

Soon after this, the September 11 attacks took place in New York, leading, within months, to the invasion of Afghanistan. America and Britain brought back all of the old drug lords, the so called Northern Alliance. Opium production went straight back up to what it had been before the ban by the Taliban.

It is by no means clear who engineered the September 11 attacks. Iraq had nothing to do with September 11, but it was invaded as a direct result. September 11 led to America gaining direct control of Iraq, with its huge oil reserves, and Afghanistan, with its huge opium crop. American forces were extremely efficient in immediately seizing and securing the Iraqi oil fields, but are not organised enough to this day to provide basic amenities for the Iraqi people, or stop the opium/heroin production in Afghanistan.

An important point about the poppy growth in Afghanistan is that it is relatively simple for the US to eradicate it. All of it is well mapped out by satellite imagery. By satellite, you can read what is written on a cigarette packet so it is no problem identifying the massive opium fields. Sophisticated computer programs can map out exactly where the opium is growing.¹⁷ The US forces could destroy the crops using aerial spraying techniques. They do not even have to go on the ground, they can simply fly over, spray and destroy. This is not denied by the US and its allies, but other reasons are given to justify why opium poppies are not destroyed.

A recent development is that the media has started to portray the Taliban as the cause of the current explosion in heroin and opium production.

In 2002, following the American-led invasion, the United Nations drug agency issued an urgent warning that the allied forces need to act quickly to destroy the poppy crops before the end of spring. Otherwise the heroin that the Taliban had stopped would flood back. However, the Bush Administration-CIA decided not to destroy the poppy crop in Afghanistan, saying, “We decided not to destroy Afghanistan’s opium over fears that such an act may destabilise Pakistan.”¹⁸

Just $200 given to each Afghan poppy farmer would compensate for their opium crop. For just $20 million in total, America could get the farmers to stop growing opium by simply paying them off.

A significant point to note in this regard is the ease and rapidity with which the Taliban were able to eradicate opium production In Afghanistan, despite having none of the sophisticated technology or resources available to western agencies. The results of the Taliban opium ban shocked the world anti-narcotics agencies, including the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which have been operating for decades on a budget of billions to fight against the global illegal drugs trade. The only sensible conclusion we can draw from this is that there are powerful forces working to prevent easy and effective strategies from being implemented by anti-narcotics agencies. In view of the effectiveness of the Taliban opium ban, claims by anti-narcotics agencies that they have been unable to find effective means of fighting the ‘war on drugs’ despite the immense resources thrown at them by the US and other governments are implausible. Rashid mentions that several members of the US Drugs Enforcement Administration in Pakistan in the 1980s resigned from their posts or requested to be relocated as the CIA refused to allow them to do their job.¹⁹

In 2009, opium production has continued to escalate dramatically. Recent figures from the UN show that 90% of the world’s heroin now comes from Afghanistan.

History of the Taliban

It was 1989 that the Soviet troops finally left Afghanistan. America and Pakistan had been helping the so-called Mujahidin fight against the communists. The puppet communist government left behind by the Russians was overthrown by 1992.

Following that, Afghanistan descended into an anarchic state, and it was in 1994 that the Taliban emerged. Ahmad Rashid says, “Afghanistan was in a state of virtual disintegration just before the Taliban emerged… The country was divided into warlord fiefdoms… The warlords seized homes and farms and abused the population at will.”¹⁹ They were kidnapping boys and girls for sexual pleasure and robbing merchants in the markets.

Traditional the ulema mention that an hour of anarchy is worse than 40 years of a tyrant. You may have a tyrant ruler but he maintains law and order. People can go about their normal life. But when you have anarchy, a complete breakdown of authority, the poor and the weak in society are the ones who suffer most.

Ahmad Rashid is an Afghan himself. He met several of the original Taliban, friends of Mullah Omar. They told him that during the time after the communists were defeated, some of the mujahidin, like Mullah Omar, went back to their madrasas (schools) to continue studying and teaching. All of the anti-communist fighters were referred to as mujahidin but some were doing it for the sake of God, some evidently were not.

Mullah Omar himself had a school where he was teaching students in the south of Afghanistan. His companions mention that they used to sit and discuss what they could do about the state of the country. They agonised over the abuses taking place and the suffering of the people.

In the spring of 1994, the initial event that took place is quite widely reported and probably true. Two teenage girls were abducted by one of the commanders, taken to a military camp, their hair shaved, and they were repeatedly raped. Some of their family came to Mullah Omar and asked for his help. Mullah Omar took thirty students with sixteen rifles between them. They freed the girls and hung the commander from the barrel of a tank. Mullah Omar said later, “We were fighting against Muslims who had gone wrong. How could we remain quiet when we could see crimes being committed against women and the poor.”

Word got around of this incident. People started coming to Mullah Omar and asking for his help. A few months later, two commanders were fighting over a young boy that both wanted to rape. Several civilians were killed in that fight. Omar and the students freed him. This led, as Rashid describes it, to Mullah Omar emerging as a ‘Robin Hood figure,’ helping the poor against the warlords and druglords. From this beginning, the Taliban (or ‘Students’) eventually took control of Kandahar and then the south of Afghanistan. Within two years, they had marched into the capital, Kabul.

Mullah Omar Declared ‘Commander of the Believers’

In Kandahar, there is a museum which contains a burdah (a cloak) which is attributed to the Prophet himself, and is considered the most holy shrine in Afghanistan. The cloak is rarely taken out of the museum. For Mullah Omar, it was brought it out for the first time in 60 years. Draped in the blessed cloak, the ‘students’ pledged allegiance to him and declared him ‘Ameer al Mu’mineen’ (Commander of the Believers).

Strict Interpretation of Islam

The Taliban were criticised for was their strict interpretation of Islam. This aspect is routinely used as a justification for invading the country. Journalist, Michael Griffin mentions the following acts of the Taliban when they took Kabul:

They made an announcement on the radio ordering: “All those sisters working in government offices are hereby informed to stay at home until further notice”. They were probably concerned about unislamic free-mixing in government departments. This paralysed the government, of which 25% staff were women.

They made the full body covering (Niqaab) obligatory for women. Men had to wear shalwar kameez apparently, not western clothing, grow long beards and forced to go to the mosque five times a day. They prohibited toothpaste, insisting on the natural tooth-cleansing root, miswak. All of the following were forbidden: TV, kite flying, pigeons, dancing, music, singing, chess, marbles, cigarettes, and using paper as a wrapper in case it was printed with extracts of the Quran.

I don’t know what really happened. How many times have you seen Taliban ambassadors or representatives on television, explaining their point of view? You have to give people a chance to speak; this is a fundamental aspect of justice. One of the most effective techniques of media control is simply not to give the ‘enemy’ a voice.

One of the rare exceptions was when Taliban Envoy, Saeed Rahmatullah Hishami, was interviewed on the American radio station, Talk of the Nation, prior to the September 11 attacks.

He protested at the biased reporting and demonisation of the Taliban by western media: “If I had all my knowledge of Taliban from the media here, I would hate the Taliban as well.”

He was asked why the Taliban stopped girls going to school. He repeatedly said, “The Taliban have never said that girls should not go to school.” In fact, he stated that the Taliban had appealed to the international community to help Afghanistan provide facilities for girls to obtain a segregated education. The United Nations had responded by building several girls’ colleges there which had been running successfully under the Taliban. He also stated that contrary to the media depiction of the Taliban as misogynous zealots who did not allow women to leave their houses, the Taliban had respect for women and had improved the situation for Afghan women, making it safe for them to walk the streets. He said that women were working in several government ministries under Taliban rule.

He also claimed that the Taliban had offered the US to try Bin Laden in Afghanistan if the US provided evidence that he was involved in attacks on civilians in Tanzania and Kenya. Anyone convicted of killing civilians under Taliban rule would get capital punishment. The US rejected this offer. The Taliban made a further offer agreeing to an international monitoring committee to be present in Afghanistan to watch Bin Laden’s activities for the rest of his life, to ensure that he was not politically active. This was also rejected by the US.

Saeed Hishami emphasised that the Taliban had done what no one else had done for Afghanistan: bring law and order, disarm the people, establish peace and security, make it safe for women to walk the streets, and stop opium production, but, he lamented, “the world has only sent us cruise missiles, sanctions, isolation and criticism.”

From the limited information I have, I suspect the Taliban did have a strict interpretation of Islam. But one thing you can see from the list of prohibitions is that it is according to the traditional Hanafi school of law. If you read the later books of Hanafi jurisprudence, you will find that the Taliban rulings pretty much follow them to the letter. Was there wisdom in enforcing such a strict set of rules suddenly upon the people? That is debatable, but really the whole discussion about the Taliban’s interpretation of shariah obscures and deviates attention from the real issues at hand

Muslims are becoming a persecuted minority in the UK, sometimes living in an atmosphere of fear if they wish to speak the truth. One of the things we appreciate in this country is freedom of speech. There is an increasing tendency to see things in the ‘you’re either with us or with the terrorists’ fashion of George W Bush.

I do not support terrorism or attacks on innocent civilians in this country or any other, but does this mean I have to support an unjust foreign policy of the UK government? Do Muslims not have a right to express dissent without being labelled a ‘fifth column’ or ‘traitors in our midst’?

America’s War Against the Taliban

When the Taliban came into power, perhaps they had a strict interpretation of Islam, but they brought law and order to the country, and it was a widely popular movement, because the poor and the oppressed, who were suffering from the anarchy, drug lords, and warlords, welcomed them. The poor and weak were the ones who benefited because the Taliban brought justice and security. They brought strict punishments, but for people who wanted to be law abiding citizens, go out and work, earn their daily living and feel safe on the streets, they were heroes and saviours. They are aggressively demonised in the global media. It is difficult to see the reality through the propaganda, and they are certainly not a media-savvy group.²⁰

In 1996, the Taliban came into power in Kabul. In the beginning they were welcomed by the Pakistan and US administrations. People do not know this but there were Taliban ambassadors in America trying to work out a deal for a gas pipeline through Afghanistan. An American oil company and an Argentinean one were competing for this contract. So the US was dealing with the Taliban. At that time the Taliban were allowing the opium production to continue.

Pakistan was particularly pleased because the Taliban had made the roads safe, and Pakistani trade could transit through Afghanistan to Turkmenistan and other central Asian destinations. A few feminist voices objected to alleged abuse of women’s rights, but Pakistan recognised the Taliban government, as did Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

But in early 2001, they stopped the opium.

After September 11 2001, the USA delivered the following ultimatum to the Taliban: The Taliban should hand over all the leaders of al Qaeda, release all imprisoned foreign nationals, close immediately every terrorist training camp, and give the United States access to terrorist training camps for inspection.

The Taliban responded that if the US gave them evidence that Bin Laden was guilty, they would hand him over. They said that they had no evidence in their possession linking him to the September 11 attacks. The response was not unreasonable: give us evidence and we will hand him over.

On 4th October, it is believed that the Taliban offered to turn Bin Laden over to Pakistan to have a trial in an international tribunal according to Islamic Shariah. Pakistan refused. On 7th October, the military threat was building up, and the Taliban offered again to detain Bin Laden and try him under Islamic Law, if the United States made a formal request and presented evidence. This was also immediately rejected by the US.

When the American-led forces attacked Afghanistan, Pakistan entered into full cooperation with the American forces, allowing them to use her land and airspace. Faced with the full might of Washington and her allies, Pervez Musharraf committed one of the most treacherous acts in Islam’s history. Fellow Muslim neighbours and brothers whom Pakistan had supported were ignominiously forsaken to gain American favour.

If Pakistan had simply remained neutral, it would have saved some honour. Even Russia refused its airspace to be used by America until only a few weeks ago, when Barack Obama finally persuaded Putin and colleagues to allow it.

I was in Syria when Iraq was invaded. I attended Friday prayer at the mosque of Shaykh Said Ramadan al-Buti. In the sermon, he said, “Not one leader of the Arab countries has stood up. Not one voice has been heard from any Arab leader against the invasion of Iraq.” Baghdad has been bombed and Iraq has been invaded and not a voice heard from her Arab neighbours. Shaykh Buti said that it would have been better for us to die, for all of us to have been killed [referring to the Arab people], then to suffer such a humiliation and disgrace.

Whereas Musharraf capitulated, Mullah Omar remained steadfast. The Taliban were clearly desperate not to enter a conflict with America and her allies. They made offer after offer to the United States to try and resolve the issue, but they were not willing to hand over a man against whom they were given no evidence.

The Voice of America radio station conducted an interview with Mullah Omar through satellite phone just before the commencement of the war. The US National Security Council raised objections and it was never broadcast in America. However it was published in full in the UK in the Guardian newspaper — not front page news though. Most people probably missed it. This is a transcript of the interview:

VoA: Why don’t you expel Osama Bin Laden?

Mullah Omar: This is not an issue of Osama Bin Laden, it is an issue of Islam. Islam’s prestige is at stake. So is Afghanistan’s tradition.

VoA: Do you know the US has announced a war on terrorism?

Mullah Omar: I am considering two promises. One is the promise of God, the other is that of Bush. The Promise of God is that ‘My land is vast.’ If you start a journey on God’s Path, you can reside anywhere on this Earth and will be protected. The promise of Bush is that there is no place on Earth where you can hide and I cannot find you. We will see which one of these two promises is fulfilled.

VoA: But aren’t you afraid for the people, yourself, the Taliban, your country?

Mullah Omar: Almighty God is helping the believers and the Muslims. God Says He will never be satisfied with the infidels. In terms of worldly affairs America is very strong. Even if it was twice as strong, or twice that, it could not be strong enough to defeat us. We are confident that no one can harm us if God is with us.

VoA: You are telling me you are not concerned but Afghans all over the world are concerned.

Mullah Omar: We are also concerned. Great issues lie ahead but we depend on God’s Mercy. Consider our point of view. If we give Osama away today, Muslims who are now pleading to give him up would then be reviling us for giving him up. Everyone is afraid of America and wants to please it, but Americans will not be able to prevent such acts like the one that has just occurred because America has taken Islam hostage. If you look at Islamic countries the people are in despair, they are complaining that Islam is gone but people remain firm in their Islamic beliefs. In their pain and frustration some of them commit suicide acts. They feel they have nothing to lose.

VoA: What do you mean by saying America has taken the Islamic world hostage?

Mullah Omar: America controls the governments of the Islamic countries. The people ask to follow Islam but the governments do not listen because they are in the grip of the United States. If someone follows the path of Islam, the government arrests him, tortures him or kills him. This is the doing of America. If it stops supporting those governments and lets the people deal with them then such things won’t happen. America has created the evil that is attacking it. The evil will not disappear even if I die and Osama dies and others die. The US should step back and review its policy. It should stop trying to impose its empire on the rest of the world, especially on Islamic countries.

VoA: So you won’t give Osama Bin Laden up?

Mullah Omar: No. We cannot do that. If we did it means we are not Muslims, that Islam is finished. If we were afraid of attack, we could have surrendered him the last time we were threatened and attacked. So America can hit us again and this time we don’t even have a friend.

VoA: If you fight America with all your might, can the Taliban do that? Won’t America beat you and won’t your people suffer even more?

Mullah Omar: I am very confident that it won’t turn out this way. Please note this. There is nothing more we can do except depend on Almighty God. If a person does then he is assured that the Almighty will help him, have mercy on him, and he will succeed.²¹

Afghanistan Post-Invasion

By 2006, a few years after the invasion, the Washington Post reported that opium production in Afghanistan, now providing more than 90% of the world’s heroin, broke all previous records.²²

The United Nations office of drugs and crime in 2006 reported that the harvest in Afghanistan was going to be a world record, and up to 92% of the world’s heroin was now originating in Afghanistan.

The Daily Mail on 21 July 2007 carried an article by Craig Murray, British ambassador in neighbouring Uzbekistan from 2002 to 2004, entitled: “Britain is protecting the biggest heroin crop of all time”. He asks why British troops are being killed in Afghanistan. He says, “The Taliban had reduced the opium crop to precisely nil. That is an inconvenient truth that our spin has managed to obscure…”

“They were as unlikely to sell you heroin as a bottle of Johnny Walker” (alluding to the fact that they are strict Muslims). “They stamped out the opium trade and impoverished and drove out the drug warlords, whose warring and rapacity had ruined what was left of the country after the Soviet war.”

Murray says that since the invasion, Afghanistan has progressed from simple opium production to actually manufacturing heroin. Now, “opium is converted into heroin on an industrial scale, not in kitchens but in factories. Millions of gallons of the chemicals needed for this process are shipped into Afghanistan by tanker. The tankers and bulk opium lorries on the way to the factories share the roads, improved by American aid, with Nato troops.”
He goes on to say in the article: “The four largest players in the heroin business are all senior members of the Afghan government. This is the government that our soldiers are fighting and dying to protect”.

Murray is vehemently anti-Taliban but he is willing to speak the truth, and his concern is that British soldiers are dying in an unjust war.²³ This is very relevant because recently there has been a new upsurge in fighting and the propaganda machine has been working in overdrive to provide fresh justifications for continued British involvement in Afghanistan.

Hamid Karzai is reported to have acted as a consultant for US oil company, UNOCAL, and is an ex-CIA operative. Following the invasion, he was made president of Afghanistan. George Bush was not a very subtle player.

Karzai’s brother has been linked to the heroin trade. The New York Times on October 4 2008 reported that an enormous cache of heroin was found under some concrete blocks. Karzai’s brother phoned the commander who had seized the heroin and instructed him to release the vehicle and the drugs. Two years later a similar incident took place. Once again his brother was involved.²⁴

In fact the article goes on to state that it is widely known that Karzai’s brother is heavily involved in the international heroin trade. It mentions that the White House ‘favoured a hands off approach’ toward Karzai’s brother. (This means they will not get involved). The White House justified its position by alluding to “the political delicacy of the matter”.

Current Situation in Afghanistan

As the British death toll escalates, the propaganda machine has gone into overdrive to keep the British public on board. According to the media, the Taliban are responsible for all of Afghanistan’s problems including the opium/heroin production. The Taliban are the enemies of the Afghan people and it has fallen to the valiant efforts of the allied forces to save them from them. If you look carefully, however, the facts do surface from time to time. On December 2 2006, the Washington Post admitted that the Taliban were not to blame for the record levels of opium: “…most experts believe it is largely an organized criminal enterprise. According to a major report on the Afghan drug industry jointly released last week by the World Bank and the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, key narcotics traffickers “work closely with sponsors in top government and political positions.”,,,”²⁵

Barack Obama came into power with a lot of enthusiasm, even from sections of the Muslim world. The first major step he took, after visiting London to tackle the economic crisis, was to gather European leaders together in Paris to initiate a new offensive against the Taliban. As a direct result, two million people so far have been made homeless in the northwest frontier region.²⁶

Let’s keep an eye on what he does, not what he says.

1. Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman have done some of the pioneering work on the subversive role of mass media in western societies. For example, see the classic work: Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. See also: Chomsky, Media Control, The spectacular achievements of propaganda [Seven Stories Press]
2. NASR, Islam and the Plight of Modern Man, [ITS], p. 207.
3. Douglas Harbrecht, “Another Clouded Clinton Appointee,” Business Week, 8 Nov 1993.
4. Bernard Haykel: “Radical Salafism,” Hindu Times, 1 Dec 2001.
5. Amy Gershkoff and Shana Kusher (2005). Shaping Public Opinion: The 9/11-Iraq Connection in the Bush Administration’s Rhetoric. Perspectives on Politics, 3 , p. 525-537.
6. Calvani, S., “Eastern Horizons,” UN International Drug Control Programme, #1, March 3, 2000.
7. Kopp, Political Economy of illegal drugs, p. 23, “…we know almost nothing of the functioning of the segments of the chain that enable the drugs to move from the wholesalers to the final resellers…”
8. Many books have been written on the British Government-East India Company involvement in the opium trade, for example: Trocki, Carl A., Opium, empire and the global political economy [Routledge]
9. Director, Zaytuna Institute, California, and one of the leading traditionalist Islamic scholars in the West.
10. Detailed statistics on global drug production and use can be found in the annual ‘World Drugs Report’ of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
11. Scott, P., “Afghanistan: Heroin-ravaged State”, Global Research, 8 May 2009.
12. Rashid, A. Taliban: Islam, oil and the new great game in central Asia, [Pub: I B Tauris], p. 121: “The heroin pipeline in the 1980s could not have operated without the knowledge, if not the connivance, of officials at the highest level of the army, the government and the CIA.”
13. McCoy, A., The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade [Lawrence Hill Books]. McCoy discusses in detail how U.S. drug policies and actions in the Third World has created “America’s heroin plague.” McCoy notes that every attempt at interdiction has only resulted in the expansion of both the production and consumption of drugs.
14. Haq, I., ‘Pak-Afghan drug trade in historical perspective,’ Asian Survey, Vol. 36, No. 10 (Oct. 1996), p. 945-963: “During…the Cold War…CIA intervention provided the political protection and logistics linkage that joined Afghanistan’s poppy fields, through Pakistan’s land mass to heroin markets in Europe and America,” p. 945.
15. Rashid, p. 120-121.
16. Jelsma, M., ‘Learning lessons from the Taliban opium ban,‘ International Journal of Drug Policy, Vol. 16, Issue 2, March 2005, p. 98-103.
17. Deyoung, K., “Afghanistan Opium Crop Sets Record,” Washington Post, 2 Dec 2006.
18. Smith, C., “Bush Will Not Stop Afghan Opium Trade,” Newsmax, 28 March 2002.
19. Rashid, p. 121.
20. Chris Sands, “Afghans back Taliban, says abducted senator,” The National, 2 Oct 2008.
21. ”Mullah Omar — in his own words,” The Guardian, 26 September 2001.
22. Deyoung, K., “Afghanistan Opium Crop Sets Record”, Washington Post, 2 Dec 2006.
23. Murray, ‘Britain is protecting the biggest heroin crop of all time,è Daily Mail, 21 July 2007.
24. Risen, J., “Reports Link Karzai’s Brother to Afghanistan Heroin Trade,” New York Times, Oct 4 2008.
25. Deyoung, K., “Afghanistan Opium Crop Sets Record,” Washington Post, 2 Dec 2006.
26. Walsh, D., “Swat valley could be worst refugee crisis since Rwanda, UN warns,” The Guardian, 19 May 2009, p. 16.

The Monster returns. He’s unconventional, though. Not with the horns and the fangs and all. But with dark circles, the sunken, dimmed eyes, the creased-up face with his advancing years, the silver in his hair. Sun-beaten, sun-worn, threadbare — my definition of the Monster. The definers have hammered the definition on me with authoritative finality. I succumb — like everybody else. I ought to believe he is dangerous. I am supposed to condemn him, get frightened of him, loathe him, spit in his face, and righteously pronounce him horrendously sinful, perverted, hideous, damned, hell-bound, with all the wealth of jingoistic and religious rhetoric at my disposal. I cannot but obey. I join the chorus. Like everybody else.

And I kill me softly. I stifle the human essence, the still small voice that resists. The voice that questions. The militant voice — always politically incorrect. It questions ‘why?’ It does not allow me the comfort of following the crowd and biding my time. It discomforts me with the instinct to seek out the answers for myself. It makes me wonder why I have to buy the definition and believe that the pathetic grey man was a vile monster. It makes me wonder why, after all, he was a monster, perhaps — or so it seems?

I do not judge. I do not allow myself the terrible privilege. I just wonder, and want my right to ask questions. I want my right to feel, to understand. I want my right to be and stay human. And I simply wonder what went wrong…

In 2001, when the United States pounded Afghanistan with their firepower just across the border on a flimsy pretext, my people here in Pakistan were hurt too, because the national boundary running through the northern tribes does not cut across eon-old tribal affiliation. With the Pashtuns on the other side of the Durand Line under occupation, the Pashtuns on this side considered it a tribal obligation and religious duty to assist. That is the ethic running in the blood of the Pathans — the ethic they grow up with, just as their fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers had grown up with it. You cannot hope to extort it from the hearts of men. The freedom they prize is a treasure they would not give up for the world. This fierce defence of their freedom is something you simply cannot hope to extricate. Not with all your arsenal, your marines armed to the teeth.

The United States and its ‘non NATO ally’ failed to understand this simple truth. Afghanistan bled, and Pakistani tribesmen, those once-upon-a-time heroic sons of the soil suffered with it. Yet we did not fall to brutalizing each other. The myths, on the other hand — Terrorism, Extremism, Fanaticism, Fundamentalism, Enlightened Moderation — continued to proliferate, and the Great Fiction encroached upon sanities. Yet we did not fall to brutalizing each other.

Till, a couple of years down the line, the Former General imperiously ordered an operation in Waziristan. It came to pass. In the thick of the darkness, in the hush of the night. The country taken by surprise. In clandestine moves, the trigger-happy military men advanced and we waited with bated breath. The usual collateral damage. Men, women, children, masjids, madrassas, schools, earthen huts. With a fell sweep, on orders of a Dictator. We still did not fall to brutalizing each other.

Things took their logical course and the resistance began. A Pashtun resistance. Earlier, aggravated by their country’s alliance with the US and the establishment of American military bases in the north to assist the NATO-sponsored slaughter and occupation in Afghanistan, the Pashtuns had expressed resentment. Their government had refused to budge. Now, they were cannon fodder, officially. And for Somebody Else’s interests.

Faced with a guerrilla resistance in a rugged terrain by ruddy mountain dwellers imbued with the tribesman’s fighting spirit, the khakis were in a quagmire soon enough. To save face, and the little that was left, they sought reconciliation with the irate tribesmen. It materialized, with pledges on both sides — the tribesmen agreeing to put down arms and let go the foreign militants (stationed in Pakistan ‘officially,’ and by Washington’s invitation, since the Soviet-Afghan war); and the Army agreeing to end the operation. We dared to hope.

Till the drone zeroed in on what we call Sovereignty. And on human lives — madrassas, schools, wedding parties, followed by official apologies for ‘misguided missiles’ or ‘intelligence failure.’ Collateral Damage. Full Stop.

In 2006, before the TTP (Tehreek Taliban Pakistan) was ever heard of, right after a successful settlement between the government and the tribal leaders which promised a durable peace in the restive north, American UAV ‘drones’ battered a village searching ‘militants’, leading to several civilian deaths. And so the talks derailed, the guns were picked up again. With blessings from Washington. The TTP raised its head shortly afterwards — a group much more militant and even violent in character than the original Afghan Taliban of yore who do not very proudly profess association with these Pakistani neo-Taliban. The TTP was a child begotten of the vicious cycle of violence and injustice.

The Pakistan govenment’s complicity in the intermittent and incessant drone attacks is poorly disguised by pathetic foreign office spokespeople. First there were the official apologies. Then, the flabbergasted attempts to explain the bloody ‘deal’. And soon enough there were none. Just the raining missiles and the human mincemeat. And handshakes and high-profile visits.

But the victims do not forget their dead. They are not taken in with prettily phrased official apologies which cannot bring their dead back. The hurt festers. It turns poison. It maddens. It dehumanizes. It turns men into suicide bombs. It makes life pointless, worthless. It makes the world a cruel, hateful place. It ignites the sense of honour and incites a burning revenge. And it makes my maddened countrymen, brutalized by unashamed tyrants, fall to brutalizing one another.

And it is as simple as that.

Blending into the chorus, soaking up the definitions, the headlines, the jingoism and the propaganda, the simple fact gets lost somewhere in the morass of our sensibilities. We righteously condemn, we judge, we toss our heads from side to side with disapproval and nod it up and down in assent. Just where and when we are wanted to. And we harden up to this simple fact, failing to understand. Failing to question. Dehumanizing ourselves.

Journalist Hamid Mir recounted his firsthand experience of visiting the injured in a primitive hospital in Waziristan after a US airstrike. A young boy, having lost his limbs, informed that his mother too had died in a similar attack, and that, in her dying moments, she had instructed him to avenge in Islamabad — where the decisions to maim and kill are made — what was done to her in Bajaur. Years later, his elder brother was caught in Islamabad attempting to blow himself up in a high-security area.

It is as simple as that. It is, plainly, human nature distorted brutally out of shape. It is, plainly, the work of our own hands. And it shall come to pass.

A ‘Winter Soldier’ working for the US Army in Iraq decided to quit the job, among several others like him. Addressing a meeting of the Iraq Veterans Against the War, he said: ‘Let me reverse the equation for a while. Let me ask you, that if a foreign force was to land in America on the excuse of democracy or freedom or whatever it may be, would not every patriotic American come out of his house with a shotgun? Would we not resist? What would you do?’ His voice trailed off in the midst of uproarious applause.

It is as simple as that. It is about being able to reverse the equation, and asking oneself ‘what would anyone do?’ It is about overturning the definitions and refusing to buy the propaganda. It is about refusing the official amnesia imposed on us all.

And it is not about Islam. It is not about an ‘Extremist Ideology’ out there to take you over by storm. It is not about monsters and demons. It is not about bloodthirsty suicide bombers with an inbuilt genetic drive to bomb the hell out of you. It is about human beings like you and me. It is about human beings horribly gone wrong. It is about the sinned-against who become sinning in this dreadful mire of poverty, disease, lawlessness, corruption. It is about naked, barbaric injustice and oppression. It is about human beings being made ‘as flies to the wanton boys.’

And it is as simple as that. As simple as Newton’s third law of motion. An equal and opposite reaction. To every action of ours.

So I refuse to sit in judgement. I refuse to self-righteously condemn. I refuse to sing along. And I demand my humanity, my right to think for myself, my right to question, my right to reclaim the Truth. ‘And if anyone of you would punish and lay the axe on the evil tree, let him see to its roots. What judgement would you pronounce on him who slays in the flesh and yet is slain in the spirit? And how persecute you him who is a deceiver and oppressor and yet in himself is aggrieved and outraged?’ (Kahlil Gibran).

I stand the risk of being misunderstood and misjudged. I do not condone the ongoing violent attacks in civilian areas all over Pakistan which victimize innocents. I cannot possibly justify them, nor can any human being in his right mind. But I think I can understand why. I can dare just that much.

And this understanding is important. Because it is through understanding that you reach the heart of the matter, and it is reaching the heart of the matter that you find the solution and begin the healing process. And the heart of the matter is the simple truth about human nature. The heart of the matter is to understand. The heart of the matter is looking to the roots. It is as simple as that.

To begin the healing, we need to set the record straight that this war never was ours, and that the critical transition from ‘theirs’ to ‘ours’ is the triumph of the mighty empire that seeks to export its wars to lands it can buy over with a few billion dollars. We need to face the wrongs we have done. We need to realize that there is no profit in the billions made out of the blood of innocents. We need to realize that violence begets violence. We need to realize that we willed this all, and that ending this vicious cycle of violence is our responsibility, because ‘a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent assent of the whole tree. So the wrong-doer cannot do wrong but with the secret will of you all.’ (Kahlil Gibran).

We need to realize that armies and weaponry can never win this war — just like it never could in Vietnam, or in Iraq, or even in Afghanistan. And we need to realize that it is never too late or too impossible to sit down and talk things out with your own people, no matter how alienated they are. The troops must be withdrawn, the operation must end and we must get talking. These aren’t monsters, these were my countrymen, and it is never too late to get talking — only my enemy would tell me otherwise.

There isn’t another way. The other option is to let this madness go on, making madmen of us all. The other option is the madness turning visible in all the horrors of spiraling violence — bombs going off in the midst of my thriving cities, the gored flesh and the pools of blood, the gripping fear, the haunted, deserted roads. Just like the death and destruction reigning the dirt-streets of some unnamed village in Waziristan. It comes full circle.

Every bomb going off adds to the horrible, crippling Terror that sinks into my bones. The fear and hysteria is of far more import than the death and destruction. When I am frightened to hell, I am easily manipulated, and when I am easily manipulated, I am owned, controlled, made to do what Somebody requires of me. I lose my sovereignty, my identity, my everything. I become the etherized patient spread over the operating table. Somebody Else’s operating table.

And every bomb going off strengthens the case of the Somebody Else who tries to tell us their war is ours, and that we must do their dirty work and shut up with the billions of dollars of aid doled out. Every bomb going off will be quoted in Somebody’s speeches, telling us with triumphalism and authority how terribly important it is for us to stay the course, to keep on this self-destructive path. It will keep us terrorized so Somebody can promise us security with his Blackwaters and Dynacores. It will keep us impoverished so Somebody can win us with promises of aid. It will keep us enslaved so Somebody can convince us only they can truly liberate. And it will keep us repeating the old refrain: ‘Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength, and War is Peace.’

It is as simple as that.

This ongoing crisis of sovereignty became critically intense when Pakistan, following the September 11 attacks, allowed the United States to conduct military operations in Afghanistan from Pakistani territory and dramatically increased the influence of the United States over national policy making, against the popular will. According to Ajay Behera writing for The Hindu, “Such developments have led to a dilemma regarding a clash between Pakistan’s national security policies and its very sovereignty. This development, however, is entirely self-generated,”¹ as a result of critical foreign policy choices made by the Musharraf regime after 9/11.

Musharraf, flaunting his ‘moderate’ and ‘progressive’ credentials, wanted a pretext to break free from the country’s ties with the Taliban regime, and , at home, with Islamic groups hitherto supported and sustained by the military and intelligence. 9/11 provided Musharraf with the pretext to achieve this by force and with support from the country’s Western allies and its secular-liberal elite. However, while this was to be done in order to restore sovereignty ‘for the supreme national interest’, in actuality it undermined the internal sovereignty of the state. Pakistan’s engagement in the US-led War on Terror and its operation in Waziristan leading to civilian damage was widely opposed and decried for being done under ‘diktat’ from the United States.

The War on Terror came home, but was seen as America’s war imported to the country by a sell-out pro-Western regime. Regular drone attacks by American spy planes resulting in huge collateral damage reinforced the image of the US as “an ally with a predatory footprint on sovereignty… The US-operated drone has become a powerful symbol of US violation of Pakistan’s territorial integrity.”² A backlash from the fiercely independent tribal areas began, engulfing the entire country, with suicide attacks and targetted hits on security and law enforcement agencies. In the midst of it all, a clumsy, failing government seemed utterly helpless to stem the tide, at best ‘looking Westwards’ for assistance in doing the West’s ‘dirty job’. Pakistan was at war with itself, its very sovereignty and national integrity at stake. It must be added, however, as Ajay Behera wrote in 2002, that the situation is inherently paradoxical, as “Pakistan has been forced into this situation by the Americans, yet it depends on their support to overcome it… While Pakistan tries to restore its internal sovereignty from the militants, it is gradually losing its external sovereignty to the United States… And, as the state is perceived to be losing its external sovereignty to the US, anti-US and anti-ruling class feelings are bound to grow. Pakistan’s self-generated dilemma will persist.”²

The United States needs a rethink on policy vis a vis Pakistan, disassociating it from its strategy in the occupied state of Afghanistan. If the United States truly wants a stable Pakistan, as it has claimed too often, it needs to look for options that respect the sovereignty of the country and take into account public unease against alliance with “a partner that makes a target out of another partner.”² Carrot and stick tactics do not work, and the massive public disapproval of US aid through the Kerry-Lugar bill should send that message to Washington. Washington’s policies have invariably centred around sitting regimes, the military and the intelligence, which is one reason that explains public disquiet over alliance with the United States. With all the frills and flounces of a ‘change’ in policy towards Pakistan, none seems to be on the horizons any time soon: “For now, the broad dynamic of seeking a partnership on strategic goals with reference to terrorism remains the same as under Bush. It remains driven by military tactics and the diplomatic management of negative outcomes… the Pentagon still remains the font of policy planning as well as execution.”² The war in Pakistan, however, is not winnable by military might_ just as it never was winnable in Vietnam, or Iraq, or in Afghanistan.

There are lessons, on the other hand, for policy makers in Pakistan. To rescue diminishing sovereignty, the ‘democratic’ representatives of the people must realize that true sovereignty, (in its temporal aspect), in any democratic state, resides in the people, and that public sentiment must be taken seriously. The spontaneous outpouring of public anger over the government’s role in the War on Terror expressed during the visit of Interior Minister Rehman Malik to the International Islamic University after a terrorist attack should be a wake-up call. Pakistani leaders need to see how the Kerry-Lugar Bill is in fact a litmus-test for the state’s representatives to salvage its threatened sovereignty. They need to rise to the occasion and reject the unpopular Bill with a single voice to “prove their worth as people who are capable of promoting and protecting the interests and dignity of the citizens of the country. Otherwise, whether democracy or dictatorship, Pakistan’s parliament is merely a rubber-stamp which follows the will of a handful of individuals who exercise their authority overlooking constitutionally defined institutional mechanisms.”³

To surmount the challenge to sovereignty, we need to redefine it and see for ourselves where it truly lies. Does it, as Washington’s neo-imperialists would have it, lie with the most powerful in might and main in the global arena, legitimizing military adventurousness and aggrandizement? Or does it, as our own ideological guides would tell us, lie in honouring and living by the ideological premise that defines us, and in empowering the people to whom the nation belongs? It is in reaching our answers through the signposts all along history’s boulevard that hope for winning back true sovereignty lies. We have arrived at the crossroads, where the ‘two roads diverge in the wood’, and the fatal choice confronts us. It is to be Now or Never.

1. Ajay Behera, ‘Pakistans Dilemma’, The Hindu, May 22, 2002.
2. Sherry Rehman, The News, May 14, 2009.
3. Nasim Zehra, ‘Kerry-Lugar Bill: A Critique’, The News, October 17, 2009.

It’s getting to the point that it’s hard to tell who is the biggest opponent of Obama’s plans to bring peace to AfPak: the Taliban, the Pakistani government, or the Nobel committee. Oh yes, or virtually the entire world beyond the Washington beltway.

As the world marked the eighth anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan on 7 October, the Taliban were stronger than ever – their forces have increased nearly fourfold since 2006. “We fought against the British invaders for 80 years,” Mullah Mohammad Omar reminded the world on the Taliban’s website. “If you want to colonise the country of proud and pious Afghans under the baseless pretext of a war on terror, then you should know that our patience will only increase and that we are ready for a long war.” A statement from the leadership insists, “We had and have no plan of harming countries of the world, including those in Europe. Our goal is the independence of the country and the building of an Islamic state.” They call for the immediate withdrawal of foreign troops as the only solution.

So far, there is no hint that Obama is even considering this no-brainer. On the contrary, the war is now being fought on two fronts, with the US and Britain starting an extensive training programme for Pakistan ’s Frontier Corps (FC) in Baluchistan, the new battleground.

It is part of the Obama administration’s massive military aid package to AfPak – Pakistan will get $2.8 billion over the next five years in addition to $7.5 billion in civilian aid, but only if it satisfies US benchmarks by making progress in “anti-terrorism and border control”. The Pakistani government and army are furious, not to mention the 60 per cent of Pakistanis who see the US as the greatest threat to Pakistan – with good cause. In the past few months, US forces have stepped up their aerial bombardments of villages in the northern tribal areas. According to the Pakistani press, of the 60 cross-border US drone strikes between January 2006 and April 2009, only 10 were able to hit their targets, killing 14 Al-Qaeda leaders and 687 civilians. Even official US policy (to kill no more than 29 civilians for every “high-value” person) is being violated. At least 23 Al-Qaeda leaders should have been killed, nine more than the actual 14. This assassination campaign is a more ruthless version of Operation Phoenix in Vietnam, and can only spur the Taliban and Al-Qaeda’s recruitment efforts.

True, Taliban control of the Pakistan frontier province SWAT was brought to a brutal end during the past six months by the Pakistani army, though civilian corpses continue to be dumped, with accusations of revenge and official terror labelled at the army. And the almost complete lack of reconstruction aid by the Pakistan government – with winter approaching – means the Taliban will probably regain SWAT. Local opposition to the war against both Afghanistan and Pakistan’s frontier region, especially Baluchistan, continues to grow, with the long-simmering Baluchi campaign for independence gaining new life daily.

Obama’s war plans have reached a critical stage. In an arrogant gamble, much like General MacArthur’s challenge to president Harry Truman in 1951 over the Korean war, General Stanley McChrystal recently demanded publicly that Obama provide 60,000 more troops for Afghanistan, boldly stating the war would be lost without them. Faced with a similarly outspoken MacArthur, Truman just as publicly fired him.

McChrystal is said to have offered the Commander in Chief several alternatives “including a maximum injection of 60,000 extra troops”, 40,000 and a small increase. Common in military planning is to discuss three different scenarios in order to illustrate why the middle option is preferable, though this is usually done privately. But the Obama administration faces growing hurdles within his Democratic Party if he decides to go with even the middle option.

Obama’s review of AfPak is now centring on preventing Al-Qaeda’s return to Afghanistan – a narrower objective that could require fewer, if any, new American troops. Obama-Biden no longer see the primary mission in Afghanistan as completely defeating the Taliban or preventing its involvement in the country’s future, a policy strongly opposed by Defence Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Gates-Clinton have a point: once the Taliban are acknowledged as legitimate players who are of no strategic danger to the US, then the horror of the past eight years becomes excruciatingly clear. The defeat of the whole criminal project becomes inevitable and will be just as devastating for the US as the Soviet defeat was for the USSR.

But the Gates-McChrystal super-surge is just about impossible in any case. The Institute for the Study of War reported recently that the US military has only limited troops ready for deployment, meaning that forces might not reach the warzone until the summer of 2010. There are only three Army and Marine brigades – 11,000-15,000 troops – capable of deploying to Afghanistan this year. Troops are plagued by a severe lack of helicopters and all-terrain vehicles.

Whatever Obama decides – 60,000, 40,000 or 2 – the troops will have little time after they arrive to turn things around. Even super-loyal Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper just reaffirmed that Canadian troops will under no circumstances stay in Afghanistan after 2011. Any plans for the indefinite occupation of Afghanistan as touted by some NATO and US officials are fantasy; Canada’s retreat will be part of a flood. Canadian government support for the war, like that of its bigger brothers the US and Britain, has all along been motivated by Afghanistan’s untapped resource potential. The TAPI gas pipeline – so named for its 1680 kilometre path from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan, Pakistan, and eventually India – is slated to be constructed starting next year on the very soil that Canadian and US troops now occupy in southern Afghanistan.

Harper’s best-case scenario is for the pipeline to go ahead with Canadian participation and for a miracle to occur – the Taliban’s sudden and unexpected defeat, allowing Canadian troops to come home, the pipeline and other resource deals signed, and assuring him of a Conservative majority in the next election.“ Canada has the potential to beat rivals because it has such an uncheckered history in that part of the world,” argues Rob Sobhani, president of Caspian Energy Consulting. “People like Canadians, Canadians are apolitical.” Even if the miracle doesn’t happen and the pipeline deal collapses, Harper realises his political goose is cooked unless the troops come home, so he is forced to wash his bloody hands of this betrayal of Canada’s traditional international role of peacekeeper.

Obama needn’t rely on the Taliban as advisers on how to end the war. Deputy-general of the China Council for National Security Policy Studies Li Qinggong reflected official Chinese thinking on 28 September in Xinhua: The United States should first put an end to “the anti-terror war” and “end its military action. The war has neither brought the Islamic nation peace and security as the Bush administration originally promised, nor brought any tangible benefits to the US itself. On the contrary, the legitimacy of the US military action has been under increasing doubt.” Obama should take advantage of international opinion to withdraw troops immediately. This is no doubt also the hope of the Nobel committee that put its own credibility on the line by awarding him the Peace Prize. The UN Security Council permanent members should “draft a roadmap and timetable”, including deployment of an international peacekeeping mission.

The delicious irony of the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan (and Iraq) is that it is China, the US ’s real international rival, that has benefited most. Chinese investments (and workers) have been pouring in to both US warzones. The main effect of George W Bush’s two wars and Obama’s AfPak has been to promote Chinese business interests, leaving the US bankrupt and its army in tatters.

If one explores this idea in the context of recent history both on Wall Street and in Washington’s current overseas adventures, it become clearer why very few folks in Imperial Washington — though not in the rest of the country — want to get out of Iraq or Afghanistan. The projection of military power overseas becomes compensation for the shrinking economic power of Wall Street. Liberal and right-wing believers whose stock in the church of capital has fallen can still feel good about themselves as long as their mission continues overseas against the Muslim and peasant hordes. As for the heretics within, let the loudmouth preachers of right wing radio condemn those citizens to the mercies of the angry white men and Sarah Palin — their Joan of Arc. Once the heretics have been burned at the stake of right wing rhetoric, the armies of the right will end their Tea Parties, pick up their weapons and take back the White House, installing a white person back in the Presidential bedrooms. Once done, that black man who’s in those bedrooms right now would no longer be a threat, having been emasculated just like a Scottsboro Boy.

So, while Mr. Obama (that black man) ponders whether or not he should continue the US projection of power into Afghanistan begun by his predecessor, Texan George Bush, or pull out, one wonders if Obama is part of the hunting party on par with the plantation’s generals or is he just the guy who must retrieve and dress the kill?

If he accepts General McChrystal’s call for more troops and the consequent increase in bloodshed, does Obama then become a trusted equal to the generals or the Pentagon’s Stepin’ Fetchit? If he rejects this and future calls to escalate this fruitless war, will he be sent back into the kitchen to wait for the bell telling him to bring out the next course or will it represent a defeat for the current crop of General Custers?

Then again, there’s the Biden option. This proposal would repackage the war in Afghanistan under its original wrapping as part of the “war on terror.” This repackaging would require a bit of convoluted convincing since national security adviser Ret. General James Jones told the media that “fewer than 100 Al-Qaida (the bogeymen of Islamic terror) are operating in Afghanistan.” Of course, the hawks in DC counter this statement with the argument that it is precisely because there are US troops in Afghanistan that Al Qaida’s strength has diminished. However, the fault in this line of reasoning can be found in the supposition of its supporters that the Taliban must be defeated to keep Al Qaida on the run. Why? Because at the same time that Al Qaida’s activities in Afghanistan have diminished, the strength of Taliban and other resistance forces have grown. In other words, even though Al Qaida forces have almost ended operations in Afghanistan, the resistance to western occupation has grown.

Then there’s the question of Pakistan. In recent weeks, US officials have begun to suggest the existence of a Taliban formation in the Baluchistan province of Pakistan. Furthermore, US Ambassador Anne W. Patterson and a junior US diplomat — Deputy Head of Mission Gerald Feierstein in Pakistan — have threatened US air strikes on the city of Quetta where this grouping — called the Quetta shira by western media — are supposed to be quartered. These threats have been met by calls for the expulsion of these diplomats in at least one Pakistani media outlets. If US troop numbers are increased in Afghanistan, the staging of a ground invasion into Waziristan or Baluchistan or air strikes not carried out by drones launched in Nevada becomes that much easier. If changing the situation in Pakistan is a dominant reason for the current debate over mission and troop numbers in Afghanistan and the battle in Afghanistan is considered just part of that equation, then there is little doubt that US troops will remain in that country for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, the likelihood of their numbers increasing becomes even greater. On Monday Obama said withdrawal from Afghanistan wasn’t an option. Bearing in mind Lao Tzu’s observation that he who rejoices in victory delights in killing, this writer awaits.

The American agenda for Pakistan is not a state-secret. Rather, it is only thinly disguised as perpetually fighting the “insurgents” in a lifetime of war, the World War IV. Whereas, in reality, both the “insurgency”, and the “counter-insurgency”, are entirely designed and fabricated in the USA as part of the evolving tactics of Hegelian Dialectics. They are enacted on the ground by various two-bit errand boys and expert trigger pullers. The already well-known existence of black-ops assassination squads in Pakistan/Afghanistan, known to the local peoples for years as the real prime-movers behind the heinous local terrorist acts, belatedly confirmed by NYT, WP, and NYT, in August 2009. See these two December 2008 reports on the Mumbai terrorist Act as reportedly orchestrated by Ali Baba from his perch in the Hindu Kush. The arrival of the black-ops in the region is not recent, albeit the public disclosures might be.

Starting in the immediate aftermath of 911, and perhaps even earlier, Pakistan may well have become the largest deployment region for the CIA in modern times, both covert (unknown to Pakistani government and secretly working to destabilize Pakistan), and overt (with Pakistani military’s aiding and abetting, in full view of the world, ostensibly fighting the “insurgents”, “Bin Laden”, “Al-Qaaeda”, but in the process mainly “tickling” its own innocent civilians in many a barbaric way).

And since Jundallah got launched to destabilize Iran, Baluchistan along with the Pak-Afghan regions have been awash with black-ops, and obviously of course, also with officially recognized US soldiers manning American military bases on Pakistani soil. But these soldiers of freedom were rarely spotted in the streets of major cities before. The below video report of September 08, 2009, portends of ominous whirlwinds imminently engulfing Pakistan:

The multimodal approaches to destabilizing, and consequently balkanizing Pakistan are so transparent that today, many a retired con-fession artist are getting in on the act to claim the flag of patriotism. Going for hajj after having eaten 900 mice is the favorite pastime of Pakistani praetorian guards. I am only waiting for any sitting Pakistani General to rise to that occasion, if it’s not already too late! But I am afraid it probably is – see here, here, here, and here. The decapitation of Pakistan by Pakistan’s finest. The shameful and criminal dislocation of up to 2.4 million civilians in May of this year was rightly described as “an exodus that is beyond biblical.”

Just as from the USSR’s point of view in yesteryear, the “insurgency” against them in Afghanistan was foreign inculcated, entirely fabricated in the USA (as we know today but held as a closely guarded secret then), which thus forced the Soviets to apply counter-insurgency measures, and subsequently, an outright invasion of Afghanistan (read Brzezinski’s own statements in Saving Pakistan cited below, and watch Brzezinski speak in the video clip devilishly crafting the “insurgency” for the Russians on the Pak-Afghan border); the so called “insurgency” in Pakistan is also calculatingly fabricated, ab initio, in the USA through covert intervention and black-ops. Subsequently, with sufficient “tickling,” and by astutely harvesting all the natural cracks and lacunae of the people, the “insurgency” acquires a life of its own. That latter stage is Machiavellianly projected in the news media, by the native informants, and the Mighty Wurlitzer, as justification for barbaric counter-insurgency operations, thus creating a self-sustaining destabilization.

The innocent Pakistan military, not too well-versed in political science or Hegelian Dialectics based Machiavellian state-craft (I presume), is similarly being compelled to take real counter-insurgency measures like the Soviets. Aided and abetted of course by high ranking traitors from within their own ranks, and by their foreign paymasters’ militaries (NATO, Blackwater now renamed Xe, and other un-named foreign divisions operating within Pakistan which I call “Jundallah-plusplus” to distinguish them from “Jundallah” which is apparently targeting Iran from Pakistani soil). The simple fact that Pakistan is supplying all the drinking water (bottled by Nestle), and full logistics channel for war-making supplies to NATO in Afghanistan is telling in and of itself. With the US, Pakistan is co-equally responsible for destroying the Afghan society, the Afghan people, and there is no less spilled-blood of innocent Afghani Muslims upon Pakistan’s hands over the past 30 years than upon the United States’ hands.

The Pakistani military helped destroy Afghanistan, and they are now helping to destroy Pakistan. No Pakistani civilian I know, including myself, ever authorized the Pakistani military to destroy Afghanistan, or aid the United States in its own hegemonic plans on the Grand Chessboard. Do you know anyone? So from where did they get their mandate? I would rather have clean drinking water in my tap, damn it! What good are the bloody nukes when they become the raison d’être for our very destruction in this manner without ever firing a single missile at the drones that are killing our own peoples?

It gives me no pleasure to repeatedly rehearse this footnote to history. What is not already obvious to the Pakistanis? It must surely still occur to many a reasonable military man serving with genuine zeal and honor in the real pivot of power in Pakistan that the end is drawing near. What are they doing idly watching the battle of their lives from the sidelines – when they are not shooting or displacing their own peoples that is? As quoted from a Dawn newspaper column, “THIS article poses two questions: on the day after US/Nato forces invade and occupy some of Balochistan and Waziristan, what will we say we should have done, and why aren’t we doing it now? Is this far-fetched? … One hopes that a small group of patriotic officers in Pakistan are also asking themselves what can be done, and why aren’t we doing it now.”

Ron Jacobs: I heard you speak about the US war in Afghanistan a couple months ago. You mentioned that you had “embedded” yourself with the Afghan Taliban. Could you tell us how you did so and, more importantly, what you observed?

Anand Gopal: I have some well-placed Taliban contacts and I was offered a chance to come out and see how the insurgents really operate. Since there is so little about this in public domain, it seemed like an excellent opportunity. Passing from Kabul to the rural countryside where the Taliban holds sway was pretty illuminating: all traces of government presence vanish and instead the streets are filled with gun-toting insurgents. The Taliban rule through fear, but they also have a degree of support in the areas in which they exist. In some cases I saw locals coming up and offering them food or shelter.

The insurgents, like most rural Afghans, were uneducated and not very worldly. However, they managed to develop a somewhat sophisticated analysis of the situation in Afghanistan. They felt that they were fighting to free their country from foreign oppression, and they felt that they were fighting to preserve their culture and values.

We shouldn’t read this to mean that they are heroic guerrillas or liberators of the Afghan people. They represent the values and outlook of rural Pashtun life, something that is not applicable to the rest of society, whether that be the urban population or non-Pashtun ethnic groups. This is why, for example, the Taliban has little support among these groups.

RJ: Are the resistance forces getting stronger, like all the generals are saying? Would more US troops change anything in terms of their chances for victory?

AG: The insurgency is certainly getting stronger. The amount of area it controls grows yearly, and in the Pashtun areas it is much stronger than the Afghan government. This trend has occurred despite the yearly increase of troops in the country, so clearly just adding more troops is not enough to stem the insurgents’ growing influence. Whenever new troops enter an area, the insurgents usually melt away or move to a neighboring area. It’s very difficult to stamp out a guerrilla force by pure force of arms.

Undercutting the growth of the insurgency would require bringing development, providing jobs and opportunities for social advancement to rural Pashtuns. It would also require bringing an honest and responsive government.

RJ: Back in July, officials in DC said that the new commander of the occupying forces in Afghanistan, Gen. McChrystal, will order all international forces in Afghanistan to stop starting fights with militants near the homes of Afghan civilians. The troops will still be allowed to return fire if they are “in imminent danger,” but the preferred option will be to withdraw from the area. He also went on record stating that he would reduce the number of US air strikes. From your perspective and knowledge of the situation, has this really happened? Do you actually think this will occur in practice and, if so, will it make any difference in Afghan opinion regarding the presence of foreign troops?

AG: It’s still too early to say what effect McChrystal’s directives will have. The number of civilian casualties do appear to be down from last year, although its very difficult to say with certainly since many such cases are not reported. Moreover, the premise of the new strategic thinking from the U.S. military here is that there is a strict division between civilians and the insurgents. In fact, the dividing line is sometimes hard to draw. In many places where the insurgents operate, for example, they enjoy the active support and protection of the locals. How do you deal with such locals–as accomplices to the insurgents or civilians duped into supporting the guerrillas? It’s one thing to draw this line on paper, but a completely different issue to do it in the heat of battle.

For example, McChrystal’s order to bar international forces from starting fights with militants near the homes of Afghan civilians would mean that very little fighting happens at all, since the Taliban (for example) are rooted in the villages and operate there.

Moreover, McChrystal has made clear that the military component is only part of the strategy to turn things around here–equally if not more important is bringing good governance and economic opportunities. There has been no announcement of a plan to do this, nor is the military capable of doing it, so I suspect that the military will continue fall back on what it does best–fighting. On the same day that McChrystal announced his revamped counterinsurgency doctrine, U.S. forces raided a hospital, for example–a clear violation of international law and the new doctrine.

RJ: Now, to Pakistan. What is going on in the Northwestern territory and other tribal areas?

AG: There has been a very perceptible shift in the last six months in Pakistan, starting this spring. The Pakistani Taliban was close to the height of its power then–they controlled large parts of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and significant swathes of the North West Frontier Province. But they seem to have overplayed their hand on two fronts. First, their rather brutal regime induced a popular backlash–many ordinary Pashtuns in these areas who initially supported the Taliban started to turn against them. Second, they moved close to the province of Punjab, which is the heart of Pakistan and the seat of the ruling establishment. While the Pakistani Taliban grew out of the radicalization surrounding the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, in recent years it turned its sights on the Pakistani state. By this year, things started to destabilize throughout the country, not just in the tribal areas. This induced a backlash by the Pakistani state, who dealt a swift defeat to Taliban forces in Bajaur agency and later moved into Swat and removed Taliban rule there.

The series of setbacks for the Pakistani Taliban have continued into this summer. Their leader Baitullah Mehsud was recently killed by an American drone strike, and he was the glue holding together a very fractured movement. There are dozens of rival commanders, some at war with the Pakistani state, some at peace with Islamabad and at war with the Americans in Afghanistan, and some at war with each other. This has led to some disarray amongst the insurgent forces there, which very visibly affects the fight in Afghanistan. Last fall, for example, NATO and U.S. army supply routes (which comes through Pakistan and into Afghanistan) were in danger because the guerrillas kept attacking them. But this summer we’ve seen very few such attacks, which is a great boon to U.S. forces.

RJ: Can you briefly describe what you see as the differences between the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban? Do they coordinate activities at all? Is there shared leadership at any level that you know of?

AG: The Afghan and Pakistani Taliban are distinct entities. The Pakistani Taliban is primarily at war with the Pakistani state, while the Afghan Taliban is entirely focused on fighting the Afghan state and the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. Of course, the differences aren’t entirely this clear cut–there are Pakistani Taliban commanders who don’t fight against Islamabad and focus their energies solely in Afghanistan, for example. But overall the Pakistani Taliban has very little presence in Afghanistan, while the Afghan Taliban don’t fight in Pakistan.

The Afghan Taliban are products of the war-ravaged rural Afghan countryside. The Pakistani Taliban however are as much the product of the gross social and economic inequalities of the Pakistani tribal areas as they are of the events in Afghanistan. This means that the two movements have a very different character. The Pakistani Taliban tend to attack village chiefs and some landowners, creating an almost Robin Hood air about them–one of the reasons for their initial support amongst local populations–whereas the Afghan Taliban do nothing of the sort. The latter are allied with village chiefs and landlords. Moreover, the Pakistani Taliban are a product of the factious nature of tribal politics–the movement is delineated along tribal lines; often if two tribes are at war it means that the Taliban commanders from those tribes will be at war with each other as well. In Afghanistan, however, 30 years of warfare have eroded tribal structures in many parts of the country and we rarely see the Taliban caught up in tribal conflicts.

The two movements are allies and do support each other when possible–for instance, Pakistani Taliban commanders run training camps and send suicide bombers into Afghanistan. But each group is mostly focused on the conflict in its own territory so this sort of coordination isn’t substantial. Most of the Pakistani Taliban commanders have pledged fealty to Mullah Omar, the leader of the Afghan Taliban. But in practice, this means very little, since the Pakistani Taliban have complete operational and political independence.

RJ: In the past couple years I have interviewed and communicated with members of the Labour Party of Pakistan–a left organization in Pakistan. Now, I know the Pakistani Left was decimated in the 1970s, but you mentioned in your talk that there is a Left in Pakistan. Do you think they have the potential to influence Pakistani politics, given the corrupt and autocratic nature of the bourgeois politicians, the authoritarian military, and the influence of Islamist forces?

AG: The Left has shown that it has tremendous potential to influence Pakistani politics–the lawyers movement, which sought to reinstate sacked judges and defend the rule of law in the face of dictatorship–is a prominent example. One of the biggest challenges for the Pakistani left, however, is that its reach is limited in the tribal areas and the North West Frontier Province. This means that there are few credible alternatives for the millions of disillusioned and disaffected Pashtuns in those areas outside of traditional religious structures and extremist movements like the Taliban. And the burden that the Pakistani left bears is especially great considering the fact that there is essentially no left in Afghanistan. As many in the Pakistani left will tell you, a fundamentally transformative solution to the problems in Afghanistan cannot occur without a concomitant push to solve the problems of Pakistan.

RJ: Thanks, Anand. I have a feeling we will be communicating with each other again about this subject.

Our interest in Afghanistan is to prevent it from becoming a haven for terrorists bent on attacking us. That does not require the scale of military operations that the incoming administration is contemplating. It does not require wholesale occupation. It does not require the endless funneling of human treasure and countless billions of taxpayer dollars to the Afghan government.

– Bob Herbert, New York Times, January 6, 2009

I don’t want to just end the [Iraq] war, but I want to end the mind-set that got us into war in the first place.

– Presidential candidate Barack Obama, January 31, 2008

If we are strong, our character will speak for itself. If we are weak, words will be of no help.

– John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) 35th U.S. President

No nation ever profited from a long war.

– Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War

A solid majority of Americans (54 percent) now oppose President Obama’s Afghanistan-Pakistan War. In fact, among Democrats, only twenty-six (26) percent support such a foreign war. In other words, by enlarging this conflict, President Obama is governing as if the opinion of a majority of Americans and of his own political base did not matter. In a democracy, a politician can do that for a while, but not for very long.

This undeclared war, just like LBJ’s Vietnam War (1959–1975) and George W. Bush’s Iraq War, is an adventure with no clear objective and no clear exit strategy, but with tremendous costs in lives and money. Nobody can tell if the U.S. and NATO are killing people in Afghanistan and in Pakistan because this is an operation to stop al-Qaeda terrorists from mounting future Sept. 11-type attacks, or because it is part of a larger plan to counter a Taliban insurgency and prevent this Pashtun Islamist party to regain power. But also, it has been said that it is a war waged to protect a pipeline crossing Afghanistan. Such a pipeline would move oil from the Caspian Basin to the coast of Pakistan through Afghanistan. Nevertheless, since this is not clearly explained, the war remains a blur for most people. The reason why such a war brings fewer open protests than the Vietnam War is essentially because it is waged with mercenaries.

That may be a reason why such open-ended wars fought with mercenaries can last for so long. For its part, Great Britain, a country used to colonial occupations, says through its incoming military Chief of Staff, General Sir David Richards, that it could stay in Afghanistan for 40 years. Even Germany seems to have regained its taste for military adventures, as its Defense Minister says it could occupy Afghanistan for ten years.

With this frame of mind, the world could be back in the nineteenth century, a century characterized by the anarchy of lawless armed conflicts, with militarized empires involved in prolonged wars, if not perpetual wars, with colonial and imperial military occupations. If the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991 has simply ended the restraining its presence imposed on other empires from being lawless and imperialistic, then the world may be on a very dangerous course. It will be back to the future. All the democratic ideals of the second part of the twentieth century would be gone.

One has the feeling that such badly designed military adventures as the Afghanistan war, with no clear objectives in sight, are primarily launched and expanded to keep the military establishment busy and the military-industrial complex prosperous.

Mired in financial scandals and plunged into a deep economic recession, many Americans suffer from war exhaustion. There seems to be too many of these endless and costly wars, even though the professional warmongers relish them. For his part, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates declares that the American public is “pretty tired” of the seemingly endless war in Afghanistan, and he believes that the situation has to be turned around in a year.

Indeed. Only a few months ago, a substantial majority of Americans thought they had kicked the Bush-Cheney neocon warmongering crowd out of power. Those who favor American-led wars of aggression had a choice in voting for Republican candidate John McCain. But, to no avail. The Obama-Biden soft-neocon crowd seems to be in the same camp as Bush and McCain. Nothing of substance has changed, or hardly.

At least in terms of foreign policy, the question can be asked if the Obama-Biden administration is anything more than a third term of the Bush-Cheney administration? The Obama-Biden administration did not arrive in power determined to take control of the government apparatus and to change its direction. In fact, the reverse seems to have happened: It was pre-empted and subdued by the entrenched governing nomenklatura. This reflects a lack of preparedness, dedication and vision.

As soon as it was sworn in, the Obama-Biden administration began planning to enlarge the Afghan conflict with more troops and more mercenaries, and, to make its intentions crystal-clear, kept in his post Bush’s Secretary of Defense (Robert Gates) while asking Congress for $109 billion more funds to finance the adventure. Then President Obama fired Gen. David McKiernan, who had been in charge in Afghanistan, and replaced him with Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, a former Green Beret who lead the secretive Joint Special Operations Command, an outfit of commando teams that was involved in widespread murder and carnage in Iraq. And, what is strange, Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal proposed to President Obama the adoption of a Soviet Strategy of building bases and troop build-up for Afghanistan. With friends like this, Barack Obama needs no enemies.

As a matter of fact, Obama’s political enemies, beginning with Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, but also other right-wing corporate media, are salivating at the thought. I wonder how many editorials the WSJ will write supporting candidate Obama in 2012!

But the die is cast: President Barack Obama now “owns” the Afghanistan-Pakistan (AfPak) war and he will have to live with the consequences. If the British and Soviet examples of foreign occupations in that part of the world are good indications of things to come, Commander-in-Chief Obama is going to be bogged down in this devastated mountainous land for years to come, and this may very well cost him his presidency in 2012. For a while, the Republicans and some neocon Democrats are going to cheer him. But later on, most Americans are going to turn against him.

Let’s place things in perspective here. Just as in Vietnam, the U.S. is intervening in a civil war involving Pashtuns (40% of the Afghan population), Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Hazara Shiites, among over ten minority groups sharing a traditional and often repressive and barbaric Islamic culture, in a country called Afghanistan. And it is waging guerrilla warfare in Afghan villages and towns in order to support a corrupt and illegitimate Islamist government.

The foreign soldiers are trying to “flush out the Taliban from villages” just as they were trying to flush out the Vietcong from villages. Since such wars cause many civilian deaths, sooner or later, the entire population will turn against the foreign military invaders and they are likely to be kicked out. That was the story in Vietnam and there is little doubt that this will be the story in Afghanistan-Pakistan. Sending more troops to this Asiatic region will only make matters worse. The advantage for the military establishment, besides generals getting a few stars on the shoulder, is that a prolonged conflict will keep the money flowing in their coffers and in those of their suppliers.

But wait. Now Obama is enlarging the Afghan conflict, not only by waging a drone war against tribesmen in Pakistan, but he also wants to turn the Afghanistan war into a war against Afghan drug lords. The logic here, I gather, it to multiply your enemies: the Taliban, al-Qaeda, Pakistan tribesmen, Afghan drug lords, etc. The more you have, the more likely the conflict will endure.

When you forget that the initial objective in Afghanistan, after the 9/11 attacks, was a narrow one, i.e., to prevent that country from becoming again a haven for terrorists, it is easy to widen a conflict ad nauseam. As a matter of fact, this was tried before in Afghanistan. The Soviets tried it for nine years, from December 1979 to February 1989, and despite sending in hundreds of thousand troops, they did not succeed. It was the Soviet Union’s Vietnam War, to paraphrase Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s Security advisor.

Similarly, Obama’s war in Afghanistan-Pakistan would require hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground. Like the Soviet Union, the U.S. is building large military bases in Afghanistan and its commanders think there are never enough troops. Presently, the U.S. has some 60,000 troops in Afghanistan. Next year, it is easy to predict it will have more than 100,000 troops in that remote country, if the current policy is followed.

And under what legal basis? It is stretching quite a bit the terms of the U.N. Security Council’s resolution 1368 of September 12, 2001, to justify an open-ended war in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. That resolution was adopted under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter that affirms the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense. Since the 9/11 terrorists had trained in Afghanistan under Taliban control, such training camps had to be dismantled, either by the Afghan government or by external forces. Since the Taliban government refused to comply, the U.S. was in its right to intervene. Thus the overthrow of the Taliban government and the destruction of al-Qaeda training camps in that country. This was done in the fall of 2001.

On December 20, 2001, the U.N. Security Council (Resolution 1386) authorized the creation of a NATO-led military international force to assist the newly established Afghan Transitional Authority in creating a secure environment in and around the capital Kabul and to support the reconstruction of Afghanistan. That’s the legal reason why there are foreign soldiers in Afghanistan. They operate under the umbrella of the so-called International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), whose mission has been expanded, year after year, to cover most of Afghanistan (see U.N. Security Council Resolution 1510).

Later, the U.N. Security Council also authorized a mission of assistance in Afghanistan. In March 2002, the U.N. Security Council organized an Assistance Mission in Afghanistan’s (UNAMA) with the adoption of Resolution 1401. UNAMA’s primary mandate is “to manage all humanitarian, relief, recovery and reconstruction activities.” That mandate has been renewed in March of each year, the last time on March 23, 2009, extending it until March 23, 2010.

But now we are in 2009, eight years after 2001. Is there really a legal basis for the U.S. to drop bombs over villages in Pakistan and to occupy Afghanistan indefinitely with foreign troops? There is some play with words here. For example, the European countries participating in the NATO-U.S.-led mission in Afghanistan talk about a “police mission” to justify the presence of their soldiers in Afghanistan. In fact, this so-called police mission has turned into a permanent military occupation of Afghanistan and into a guerilla war against local militants and insurgents, in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Let’s keep in mind that many of the so-called “militants” or “insurgents” in Afghanistan, the Mujahideen and to a certain extent the Taliban, used to be called “Freedom fighters” by President Ronald Reagan (see the Reagan Doctrine) when they were fighting the Soviet invaders, with the help of the American C.I.A., Saudi Arabia and the Pakistani secret police (ISI). This shows how such “freedom fighters” conveniently change names when they switch camp! They have gone from being called “heroic” to being called “insurgents”. Such is the propaganda of war. —An historical fact remains: The unintended consequence of the Reagan Doctrine is the current Afghanistan-Pakistan war, and it may have played an important role in preparing the ground for the 9/11 catastrophe.

Nevertheless, let us say that this is stretching the U.N. Charter to the limit to say that it now permits the permanent military occupation of a sovereign country by foreign troops. It is true that the U.N. Charter, under Chapter VII (Action with Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace and Acts of Aggression), can authorize collective action against a country for good reasons. But the intent of such a military intervention is to be short-term and not be turned into a permanent colonial occupation.

In conclusion, let us say that since the Obama administration is clearly enlarging the Afghan conflict and has authorized drone bombings in Pakistan, it would seem that the U.N. Security Council should be called to authorize or condemn such an enlargement of the conflict. It should also indicate that it favors a compromise solution to the conflict.

Those officials, led by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, have been arguing that Kayani is committed to ending support the Taliban and other radical Islamic movements receive from the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate, but that he is not yet able to control ISI operatives.

Late last year, U.S. officials were reportedly pressing Kayani for far-reaching changes in the ISI that would end its role in support of insurgents in Afghanistan and Kashmir. Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) demanded that the ISI be put under civilian control and threatened to introduce legislation making military assistance to Pakistan conditional on evidence that the Pakistani military had ended such support to the Taliban.

But Kerry dropped his proposal for conditioning U.S. military assistance to Pakistan on ending the ISI-Taliban program. In February Kerry said conversations with Mullen and “other players” had persuaded him that Kayani and his choice for new ISI chief, Ahmad Shuja Pasha, had “a willingness to engage in transformation” of the ISI.

The Kerry-Lugar legislation passed by Congress in June provides 2 billion dollars in military aid as well as 4 billion dollars in economic assistance to Pakistan over five years and makes no mention of evidence of military aid to the Taliban. It merely requires the Secretary of State to certify that the “security forces of Pakistan” are making concerted efforts to prevent the Taliban and associated militant groups from using the territory of Pakistan as a sanctuary from which to launch attacks within Afghanistan.”

Obama’s national security team established a critical basis for its argument to Congress by leaking a story to the New York Times asserting that Kayani would not be able to control the activities of ISI in the short run.

The story, published March 26, acknowledged “direct support from operatives” of the ISI for the Afghan Taliban insurgency, but quoted anonymous U.S. officials saying it is “unlikely that top officials in Islamabad are directly coordinating the clandestine efforts” — a carefully chosen formula that does not deny that they are presiding over a policy of aiding the Taliban.

The story said unnamed U.S. officials “have also said that mid-level ISI operatives occasionally cultivate relationships that are not approved by their bosses.” That statement diverted attention away from whether the Pakistani military leadership has approved military assistance to the Taliban.

Mullen has been suggesting that Kayani has demonstrated good faith by purging the ISI. He told Trudy Rubin of the Philadelphia Inquirer in early April that the new head was “handpicked” to change the ISI.

Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee May 21, Mullen emphasised that Gen. Kayani had changed “almost the entire leadership of ISI” over the previous six months.

After a conversation with Mullen, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius quoted him in a June 29 article as saying that Kayani and his choice for ISI Chief “have committed very specifically to change the culture of ISI,” but that “that’s not going to happen overnight.”

Mullen has carefully avoided saying that Kayani has given assurances he intends to halt the military assistance to the Taliban, however.

The historical evidence on Kayani’s past relationship to the issue suggests that he has no intention of changing Pakistani policy toward the Taliban.

Kayani himself served as head of ISI from late 2004 to late 2007 and presided over the development of a major logistical and training program for the Taliban forces operating out of Pakistan’s Baluchistan province.

The ISI military assistance program was first revealed in a NATO report of a two-week battle by NATO forces against a determined Taliban offensive in Kandahar province in September 2006.

During the battle, NATO forces captured a number of Pakistani fighters who detailed the ISI role in supporting the Taliban offensive. The NATO account, reported in The Telegraph by Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid on Oct. 6, 2006, described two ISI training camps for the Taliban near Quetta in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province. It also documented the provision by the ISI of 2,000 rocket-propelled grenades and 400,000 rounds of ammunition — just for that one Taliban campaign.

The size and scope of the programme of support described in the report were hardly consistent with the idea that assistance to the Taliban is a rogue operation by ISI operatives.

Mullen and Defence Secretary Robert Gates presumably know about Kayani’s past support for the Taliban assistance program. Evidence of continuing ISI assistance to, and safe have for, Taliban forces after Kayani replaced Musharraf as the top Army general was compiled in an intelligence assessment circulated to the top national security officials of the George W. Bush administration in mid-2008, according by David Sanger’s book The Inheritance.

Kayani was also overheard in a conversation intercepted by U.S. intelligence referring to a high-ranking Taliban leader, Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, as a “strategic asset,” according to Sanger’s account. Haqqani was a Taliban minister during that organisation’s brief period in power during the late 1990s, and his network has been a key target for the U.S. campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan during 2008 and 2009.

Kayani is not the first Pakistani military leader to assure the U.S. that he is purging the ISI of pro-Taliban elements. President Perverz Musharraf did the same thing to ease pressure from Washington to toe the line on Afghanistan in early October 2001.

Musharraf claimed he had made far-reaching changes in the ISI by removing its director, Mahmood Ahmad — who he said had been affiliated with Islamic extremists. But Musharraf never changed his pro-Taliban policy; despite his pledge to do so immediately after the 9/11 terror attacks.

The March 26 Times story reported Pakistani officials as portraying their Taliban policy as “part of a strategy to maintain influence in Afghanistan for the day when American forces would withdraw” leaving “a power vacuum to be filled by India.”

After the Times story, Gates began arguing that the U.S. must convince Pakistani leaders that it will not abandon the war in Afghanistan.

In a March 29 interview with Fox News, Gates said the Pakistanis had ties with the Taliban “partly as a hedge against what might happen in Afghanistan if we were to walk away or whatever.” The U.S. has to convince the Pakistanis that “they can count on us and that they don’t need that hedge,” Gates said.

Mullen and other U.S. military leaders have an interest other than Afghanistan — which appears to driving their willingness to overlook Kayani’s past and present support for the Taliban. They once had close ties with the Pakistani military, which they touted for decades as a basis for U.S. influence in the country, despite persistent and sharp divergences in U.S. and Pakistani strategic interests.

Those ties were cut off in the 1990s because of legislation requiring an end to military cooperation over Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. Mullen and other military leaders now argue that close relations must be a top U.S. priority.

As Mullen told the Inquirer’s Rubin, “One of my strategic objectives is to close this gap in the relationship with the Pakistani military.”

But setting aside the platitudes that comprised most of Clinton’s speech and looking closely at her remarks that actually spoke meaningfully towards U.S. policy under the Obama, a different picture emerges, one not of a change of course from Bush but rather of near perfect continuity between the two administrations.

Obama’s foreign policy parallels Bush’s. The train may have switched tracks, but it’s still headed in the same direction.

Take, for starters, the framework Clinton established early on in her speech. “Liberty, democracy, justice and opportunity underlie our priorities”, she said. “Some accuse us of using these ideals to justify actions that contradict their very meaning. Others say we are too often condescending and imperialistic, seeking only to expand our power at the expense of others. And yes, these perceptions have fed anti-Americanism, but they do not reflect who we are.”

See, U.S. foreign policy doesn’t really contradict enlightened rhetoric and declarations of benevolent intent from policy makers. The U.S. isn’t really condescending or imperialistic. It doesn’t really seek only to expand its power at the expense of others. No, these are merely “perceptions”, and false ones. The obvious corollary is that we musn’t change our policies, only work to correct these warped perceptions that cause people to unjustly oppose U.S. actions.

It hardly needs to be said that there’s nothing new about that formula.
The multilateralism touted by Obama is different from Bush’s unilateralism, but only slightly. The difference is that Bush openly declared that if you aren’t with us, you’re against us. Obama’s team is being more nuanced and diplomatic in talking about building the “architecture of global cooperation.”

But in the end, it’s still about furthering U.S. interests as percieved by Washington and the corporate oligarchy. Cooperation and multilateralism, as it was under Bush, is fine, so long as it serves our “interests” as defined by that minority segment of the population. Obama’s strategy is quite different in terms of rhetoric about diplomacy, but the actual policy goal goals are indistinguishable from previous administrations.

One means by which policy goals are accomplished is through NATO, a matter that Clinton addressed. She observed that NATO was designed for the Cold War. But rather than becoming obsolete with the end of the Cold War, even now, two decades later, NATO must instead be restructured “to update its strategic concept so that it is as effective in this century as it was in the last.”

This is precisely the same policy as previous administrations.
Or take Clinton’s remarks about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She says the Obama administration “wasted no time in starting an intensive effort on day one to realize the rights of Palestinians and Israelis to live in peace and security in two states.”

President Bush said exactly the same thing in not dissimilar language, only to implement an actual policy that fully supported Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians, including it’s 23-day full-scale military assault on Gaza beginning December 27.

U.S. policy under Obama hasn’t altered that framework one iota. The House of Representatives, for example, just approved Obama’s foreign aid budget that rewards Israel for it’s massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and other violations of international law with an additional $2.2 billion, on top of $555 million already allocated earlier this year.

Still, we are supposed to believe that the Obama administration is doing something “to ease the living conditions of Palestinians, and create circumstances that can lead to the establishment of a viable Palestinian state.” Clinton offers no evidence that the U.S. has done anything more than spout rhetoric about this, rendered meaningless by the U.S.’s actual actions.

Bush and Obama alike have paid lip service to the rights and aspirations of the Palestinians, but the actual facts about U.S. foreign policy point to an opposite conclusion from the one Clinton would have the public believe.

Clinton’s remarks on Iran similarly reflect perfect continuity from the Bush administration framework, asserting “the Iranian march toward a nuclear weapon” as fact, despite the complete lack of evidence to support the claim, and even the conclusion of the U.S.’s own intelligence community to the contrary.

The Obama administration has made it’s position clear. It is willing to engage in “diplomacy” with Iran. The proposed “dialogue” and offer “to engage Iran” would entail “giving its leaders a clear choice: whether to join the international community as a responsible member” by acquiescing to U.S. demands to halt uranium enrichment, “or to continue down a path to further isolation” by refusing to accept the U.S. ultimatum.

This policy doesn’t differ from Bush’s one jot or one tittle, except inasmuch as it is an escalation of the Bush policy. “We remain ready to engage with Iran,” Clinton reminds us, “but the time for action is now. The opportunity will not remain open indefinitely.”

As Clinton has explained earlier, sanctions even more stringent than those imposed under Bush, “crippling sanctions” in her words, will follow. Iran must be punished for refusing to bow to the will of Washington, and if there’s a change, it’s that Obama is even more eager than Bush to inflict it.

The policy formula for Afghanistan and Pakistan is familiar enough: “In Afghanistan and Pakistan, our goal is to disrupt, dismantle, and ultimately defeat al-Qaida and its extremist allies, and to prevent their return to either country.” This warrants little comment, other than the observation that Obama hasn’t only continued Bush’s policy here, but escalated it by “sending an additional 17,000 troops and 4,000 military trainers to Afghanistan.”

Or take Iraq, where the Obama administration is “developing a long-term economic and political relationship … as outlined by the US-Iraq Strategic Framework Agreement” that was implemented under the Bush administration. No comment is required here.

And what about U.S. policy towards “enemy combatants”? Clinton asserted, “We renewed our own values by prohibiting torture” — but torture has always been prohibited under U.S. law. Obama’s Executive Order didn’t do anything new, it merely reiterated already existing prohibitions.

Clinton said the administration is “beginning to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.” What she meant is that they’ve begun the process of beginning the process to close “Gitmo.” It’s a long ways from actually closing, and there’s plenty of opposition and other obstacles to overcome before this can happen, assuming the administration is sincere in its stated desire to shut Gitmo down.

There’s little reason to doubt their sincerity; shutting down Gitmo would be a useful way to do away with what has become a symbol for the unjustness of U.S. detention policy while doing little or nothing to actually alter that policy.

Obama, for instance, has not challenged, but accepted and reinforced the assumption of Executive power employed under the Bush administration under which detainees were captured and imprisoned in Gitmo in the first place.

On policy issue after policy issue, the continual torrrent of media commentary to the contrary aside, the Obama administration represents a continuation of the existing power establishment and goals and means of furthering U.S. strategic interests as defined by that very narrow and entirely self-interested segment of American society.

The CFR itself is among the prominent means by which these narrow interests perpetuate themselves. Clinton, herself a member, made some telling offhand remarks before beginning her scripted speech. Remarking on the CFR’s new headquarters in Washington, D.C., she said, “I am delighted to be here in these new headquarters. I have been often to I guess the mother ship in New York City, but it’s good to have an outpost of the Council right here down the street from the State Department. We get a lot of advice from the Council, so this will mean I won’t have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future.”

And so it goes, business as usual.

The fireworks and hosannas had ended since his inauguration, but already within the several months of his official presidency Obama roused up some ruckus with the media that cried foul on the sudden reversal of promises. Columnists, bloggers, and civil watch groups had denounced his backpedaling on torture, wiretapping, and the sudden embrace of Bush-era shenanigans and secrecy. On July 1st of the New York Times, executive director Anthony D. Romero of the American Civil Liberties Union said that despite of the rhetoric, “there is no substantive break from the policies of the Bush administration.”

Probed for some justification, the confronted Obama skillfully argues about shifting realities on the ground, or about looking towards the future and not the past. Despite the rhetorical finesse, many relented and challenged the implied defense of Bush’s unconstitutional doctrines and the surrender of justice that was greatly overdue. On the other side of the veneer, Obama’s faithful diehards still cooed, countering any criticism of the president’s domestic and foreign policies with a fusillade. They charged that Obama was misunderstood, that the perceived missteps were merely a glowing part of his superb flexibility and competency.

Patience was preached for Americans to bear the status quo. If Obama continues the smooth rhetoric while strumming the goodwill of the public, it’s likely that people would continue to praise him on flexibility, rather than beating around the bush.

There’s much ado about Obama reversing course: it reveals a stunning betrayal of his original vision to end what Bush supposedly started, thus compelling everyone to speculate what changes he’s really professing. The brilliant, cosmopolitan, and eloquent Obama may captivate audiences and unite opposing political forces; but rhetoric aside, he had set America for a different and unexpected kind of change.

Torture

The planned January closing of Guantanamo Bay unveiled itself to be one of Obama’s symbolic changes on ending torture. However, in a stunning show of defiance and mockery for the rule of law, Obama announced “constitutionally tweaked” military tribunals for Guantanamo prisoners. The scathing news drew fire and a royal lambasting from civil liberty watchdogs and scholars, many who insisted that detainees should instead be swiftly tried in a legitimate federal court. In a statement by executive director Anthony D. Romero of the American Civil Liberties Union, despite these revamped tribunals, “the commissions system is inherently illegitimate, unconstitutional and incapable of delivering outcomes we can trust,” insisting that the whole system was designed to “ensure convictions, not achieve justice.”

The Obama administration was also drafting an executive order to employ “preventative detention,” a new system of imprisonment for terror suspects where the hard-to-charge and hard-to-convict would be whisked away to other detention centers and held indefinitely. What’s the incentive of shutting Guantanamo down if this administration opts for preventative detention? This farcical show of virtue with the prison closure is ruefully cosmetic than anything genuine.

Guantanamo became a brilliant symbolic ploy, a strategic cover allowing Obama to preserve other excruciating parts of Bush’s old terror policy like the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program and the denial of habeas corpus to combatants held in other prisons like Bagram, Afghanistan.

To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Obama released a statement on June 26 where he said that his administration was “committed to taking concrete actions against torture and to address the needs of its victims.” This grandiose statement of good intentions doesn’t absolve Obama from refusing to prosecute George W. Bush or Dick Cheney for allowing torture in the first place, nor does it absolve him of invoking the “states secrets” privilege to banish legitimate torture lawsuits against the government.

Obama also supported the suppression of newer detainee abuse photos on the basis that it would inflame anti-American sentiment, even though it is known that the growing number of civilian deaths by US Forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, had already triggered such sentiment within the local populaces. It’s likely these photographic revelations would prove that torture was a widely systematic operation involving the collusion of other higher ranking officials who wished to avoid prosecution. Obama would successfully shield them from their fates.

This torturous chronicle of theatrics fired up again on July 2nd when the Washington Post reported that the Obama administration continued to use tainted confessions obtained from torture to justify indefinite confinement. Mohammed Jawad, 17, was captured in December 2002 in Afghanistan as an enemy combatant. Since his capture as a juvenile at the age of 12, he had been whisked away to Guantanamo and subject to torture, beatings, and coercive interrogations for many years. According to The Public Record:

The judge in Jawad’s military commission proceedings suppressed statements made by Jawad to Afghan and US officials following his arrest for allegedly throwing the grenade at US soldiers, concluding that [his confessions] were the product of torture and were made after Afghan authorities threatened to kill his family. However, the Obama administration, like the Bush administration, continues to rely on those same statements in arguing that Jawad should be held indefinitely.

It’s no mystery why Obama desires to preserve and amplify parts of Bush’s terror policy abroad in which his voters had entrusted him to vanquish: he still intends to fight the perpetual war on terror on a newer front: Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Middle East and South Asia

Iraq’s Sovereignty Day, conveniently marked alongside America’s own Independence Day, was proclaimed on June 30th by the pro-US Iraq government to commemorate the American “troop withdrawal” and hand over control to Iraq’s local forces. However doubts arose as Iraq experienced a violent backlash of bombings which continue to blight Iraq.

In an unsurprising turn of events, the purported withdrawal hyped by the US media was only a farce: US Troops were merely relocating and retiring to other military outposts outside of Iraq’s major cities, not departing from the country entirely. According to McClatchy, Obama’s plan would keep a force between 35000 to 50000 troops well after August 2010 to advise Iraq’s local forces. US Forces are not primed to withdraw from Iraq until Dec 2011 according to the Status of Forces Agreement (SoFA), but even this date can be extended indefinitely.

The Obama promise of “ending the war” must’ve been a knee-slapping jest for neo-conservative war planners and think-tanks. The word “Sovereignty” is a euphemistic term for hand-holding and puppetry by its country’s occupiers; just as a country being “pro-democractic” is a euphemism for any pro-Western satellite nation that is hopelessly subservient to its interlopers.

But there’s much reason to believe that the US won’t be retreating so soon even as the declared pullout date approaches. The US Had invested billions of dollars to build a complex military infrastructure here, including the largest embassy in the world that houses more than a thousand personnel to advise and influence every administrative aspect of Iraq. To dispel the myth of complete withdrawal, the July 9th Mother Jones highlights the incredible stake Washington holds here:

Such a concentration of foreign officialdom in such a gigantic regional command center—and no downsizing or withdrawals are yet apparent there—certainly signals Washington’s larger imperial design: to have sufficient administrative labor power on hand to ensure that American advisors remain significantly embedded in Iraqi political decision-making, in its military, and in the key ministries of its (oil-dominated) economy.

Because of US militaristic interventionism, the unstable, war-ravaged and ethnically splayed Iraq remains devoid of peace with more than a million Iraqis dead since the occupation.

As Obama plucked heartstrings and played on hopes to “end” the Iraq war, albeit differently, Obama had intensified operations in Pakistan’s northern provinces, and surged the troop count in Afghanistan to almost 70000. In late June, a US Drone attack killed as many as 70 people in Warziristan, prompting Pakistan to call an end to the indiscriminate strikes. Cornering Pakistan in an uncomfortable position against its own people, Obama had been bombing the remote provinces of Pakistan since the first days of his presidency killing scores of innocent civilians.

The ultra-traditional Pashtun people residing in Waziristan, bracing themselves every night at the creeping prospect that they may be ripped apart by missile strikes the next day, are poignantly aware of the Pakistani government’s complicity who command a joint offensive operation that contributed to the deaths and displacement of their people. The civilian government also long denied its duplicity in the missile strikes, merging their voices with the afflicted as if to feign sympathy while they declare the attacks should be halted and Pakistan’s sovereignty respected. Back in February 2009, the Predator drones were revealed to have originated from a secret US Base in Pakistan, confirming the deeper counter-terrorism and security symbiosis between the two nations. It’s no wonder Pakistan desires to shy itself away from its American counterpart during the bad press.

The continued bombing and offensives in Waziristan primes an inescapable chain of events: as Jihadist charities and groups here continue to console the afflicted while fomenting anti-Western support, anti-American sentiment would engulf the region in a violent fervor, finally forcing angry Pashtuns to capitulate to an insurgency to repel the broader occupation. As they vow to extract vengeance, Pakistan is pitted into a state of peril; Pakistan becomes a parallel of Iraq where civil war arises and the rest of the nation is driven into political and economic instability. Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal becomes endangered, and neo-conservative think-tanks and war sympathizers would finally flaunt this as a pretext to justify denuclearization, a plethora of troop escalations or even a full-scale invasion of Pakistan.

The myth about Pakistan “not being serious” about terrorism, thus justifying an American intervention, must be shamefully put to rest: the Talibanization and terrorism of these remote provinces is due solely to the American presence. Imran Khan, Pakistani opposition politician and leader of Movement of Justice, revealed on Democracy Now that the growing instability was a direct result of America’s meddling in the region:

…there was no terrorism in Pakistan, we had no suicide bombing in Pakistan, [until] Pakistan sent its troops under pressure from the US. General Musharraf capitulated under the pressure and sent Pakistani troops into the tribal area and Waziristan. So it was that that resulted in what was the new phenomenon: the Pakistani Taliban. We had no militant Taliban in Pakistan, until we got in—we were forced into this US war on terror by a military dictator, not by the people of Pakistan…

The Real Meaning of Change

Obama might’ve thought he’d be cut some slack from other foreign policy blunders: like supporting rose-revolution Georgia while mistakenly accusing Russia as the aggressor in the South Ossetia war, or failing to condemn Israel’s disproportionate attacks on Gaza last winter that resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians. However, coupled with his overall progress in Middle East foreign policy, all of this isn’t a sign of incompetence or flexibility, but evidence that he intends to stay the course with the imperial war machine while deliberately crafting rhetoric to pretend otherwise.

Blaming Obama as just a cunning politician is only part of the grander picture. There’s an existential significance on why such a smart and glowing man like Obama engages in a quiet tactical repackaging of all his political endeavors, especially in a time when America’s image languishes at an all-time abysmal low. Anthony Arnove in an interview with Socialist Worker puts it into perspective:

Essentially, during the Bush administration, whole sections of the left acted as if empire began with George W. Bush. As if it was something managed only by a handful of people: George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, sections of the neo-conservative movement, perhaps even the Republican Party more generally. That takes the events of the last eight years out of the context of a history of US empire and aggression and intervention in global affairs going back to the 19th century. So in a sense, [Obama] does continue some of Bush’s policies, minus unilateralism, but ultimately is preserving the neo-conservative foreign policy agenda.

That must be the meaning of change. The goal was not to restore the rule of law and constitutional legitimacy, but to transcend the Bush administration’s cowboy unilateralism and tactfully reassert a neo-conservative normalcy in America’s foreign policy. America unwittingly received a repackaged war program for those so hyperfocused on Bush-era crimes that they forgot these imperialistic dreams of American empire existed past the times of the Bushes. Obama coddled and kept his war hawk administration, continues the destabilization of Pakistan, and marches on with the broader war on terror.

It’s no mystery why he continues the mimicry of due process yet engages preventative detention, the further suppression of abuse photos, and the denial of habeas corpus to foreign enemy combatants. The Iraq withdrawal facade and his funneling of troops and resources into Afghanistan and the Pakistani frontier, reveals that while preaching good intentions and a faux openness with the public, he still cannot escape the bipartisan war agenda.

Promises are lofty and bittersweet until voters realize that the two-party system is a dead construct with only counterfeit solutions. For Obama, change is just politics as usual.

In a manner reminiscent of Ronald Reagan’s New Cold War policies, Obama has vastly increased the military budget, increased the number of combat troops, targeted new regions for military intervention and backed military coups in regions traditionally controlled by the US. However Obama’s roll-back strategy occurs in a very different international and domestic context. Unlike Reagan, Obama faces a prolonged and profound recession/depression, massive fiscal and trade deficits, a declining role in the world economy and loss of political dominance in Latin America, the Middle East, East Asia and elsewhere. While Reagan faced off against a decaying Soviet Communist regime, Obama confronts surging world-wide opposition from a variety of independent secular, clerical, nationalist, liberal democratic and socialist electoral regimes and social movements anchored in local struggles.

Obama’s roll-back strategy is evident from his very first pronouncements, promising to reassert US dominance (‘leadership’) in the Middle East, his projection of massive military power in Afghanistan and military expansion in Pakistan and the destabilization of regimes through deep intervention by proxies as in Iran and Honduras.

Obama’s pursuit of the roll-back strategy operates a multi-track policy of overt military intervention, covert ‘civil society’ operations and soft-sell, seemingly benign diplomatic rhetoric, which relies heavily on mass media propaganda. Major ongoing events illustrate the roll-back policies in action.

In Afghanistan, Obama has more than doubled the US military forces from 32,000 to 68,000. In the first week of July his military commanders launched the biggest single military offensive in decades in the southern Afghan province of Helmand to displace indigenous resistance and governance.

In Pakistan, the Obama-Clinton-Holbrooke regime successfully put maximum pressure on their newly installed client Zedari regime to launch a massive military offensive and rollback the long-standing influence of Islamic resistance forces in the Northwest frontier regions, while US drones and Special Forces commandoes routinely bomb and assault villages and local Pashtun leaders suspected of supporting the resistance.

In Iraq, the Obama regime engages in a farcical ploy, reconfiguring the urban map of Baghdad to include US military bases and operations and pass off the result as “retiring the troops’ to their barracks”. Obama’s multi-billion-dollar investment in long-term, large-scale military infrastructure, including bases, airfields and compounds speaks to a ‘permanent’ imperial presence, not to his campaign promises of a programmed withdrawal. While ‘staging’ fixed election between US-certified client candidates is the norm in Iraq and Afghanistan where the presence of US troops guarantees a colonial victory, in Iran and Honduras, Washington resorts to covert operations to destabilize or overthrow incumbent Presidents who do not support Obama’s roll-back policies.

The covert and not-so-invisible operation in Iran found expression in a failed electoral challenge followed by ‘mass street demonstrations’ centered on the claim that the electoral victory of the incumbent anti-imperialist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a result of ‘electoral fraud’. Western mass media played a major role during the electoral campaign exclusively providing favorable coverage of the opposition and negative accounts of the incumbent regime. The mass media blanketed the ‘news’ with pro-demonstrator propaganda, selectively presenting coverage to de-legitimize the elections and elected officials, echoing the charges of ‘fraud’. The propaganda success of the US-orchestrated destabilization campaign even found an echo among broad sections of what passes for the US ‘left’ who ignored the massive, coordinated US financing of key Iranian groups and politicos engaged in the street protests. Neo-conservative, liberal and itinerant leftist ‘free-lance journalists’, like Reese Erlich, defended the destabilization effort from their own particular vantage point as ‘a popular democratic movement against electoral fraud.’

The right/left cheerleaders of US destabilization projects fail to address several key explanatory factors:

1. None, for example, discuss the fact that several weeks before the election a rigorous survey conducted by two US pollsters revealed an electoral outcome very near to the actual voting result, including in the ethnic provinces where the opposition claimed fraud.

2. None of the critics discussed the $400 million dollars allocated by the Bush Administration to finance regime change, domestic destabilization and cross border terror operations. Many of the students and ‘civil society’ NGO’s in the demonstrations received funding from overseas foundations and NGO’s – which in turn were funded by the US government.

3. The charge of electoral fraud was cooked up after the results of the vote count were announced. In the entire run-up to the election, especially when the opposition believed they would win the elections – neither the student protesters nor the Western mass media nor the freelance journalists claimed impending fraud. During the entire day of voting, with opposition party observers at each polling place, no claims of voter intimidation or fraud were noted by the media, international observers or left backers of the opposition. Opposition party observers were present to monitor the entire vote count and yet, with only rare exception, no claims of vote rigging were made at the time. In fact, with the exception of one dubious claim by free-lance journalist Reese Erlich, none of the world’s media claimed ballot box stuffing. And even Erlich’s claims were admittedly based on unsubstantiated ‘anecdotal accounts’ from anonymous sources among his contacts in the opposition.

4. During the first week of protests in Tehran, the US, EU and Israeli leaders did not question the validity of the election outcome. Instead, they condemned the regime’s repression of the protestors. Clearly their well-informed embassies and intelligence operative provided a more accurate and systematic assessment of the Iranian voter preferences than the propaganda spun by the Western mass media and the useful idiots among the Anglo-American left.

The US-backed electoral and street opposition in Iran was designed to push to the limits a destabilization campaign, with the intention of rolling back Iranian influence in the Middle East, undermining Tehran’s opposition to US military intervention in the Gulf, its occupation of Iraq and, above all, Iran’s challenge to Israel’s projection of military power in the region. Anti-Iran propaganda and policy making has been heavily influenced for years on a daily basis by the entire pro-Israel power configuration in the US. This includes the 51 Presidents of the Major America Jewish Organizations with over a million members and several thousand full-time functionaries, scores of editorial writers and commentators dominating the opinion pages of the influential Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times as well as the yellow tabloid press.

Obama’s policy of roll back of Iranian influence counted on a two-step process: Supporting a coalition of clerical dissidents, pro-Western liberals, dissident democrats and right-wing surrogates of the US. Once in office, Washington would push the dissident clerics toward alliances with their strategic allies among pro-Western liberals and rightists, who would then shift policy in accordance with US imperial and Israeli colonial interests by cutting off support for Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas, Venezuela, the Iraqi resistance and embrace the pro-US Saudi-Iraq-Jordan-Egypt clients. In other words, Obama’s roll-back policy is designed to relocate Iran to the pre-1979 political alignment.

Obama’s roll back of critical elected regimes to impose pliant clients found further expression in the recent military coup in Honduras. The use of the high command in the Honduras military and Washington’s long-standing ties with the local oligarchy, which controls the Congress and Supreme Court, facilitated the process and obviated the need for direct US intervention—as was the case in other recent coup efforts. Unlike Haiti where the US marines intervened to oust democratically elected Bertrand Aristide, only a decade ago, and openly backed the failed coup against President Chavez in 2002, and more recently, funded the botched coup against the President-elect Evo Morales in September 2008, the circumstances of US involvement in Honduras were more discrete in order to allow for ‘credible denial’.

The ‘structural presence’ and motives of the US with regard to ousted President Zelaya are readily identifiable. Historically the US has trained and socialized almost the entire Honduran officer corps and maintained deep penetration at all senior levels through daily consultation and common strategic planning. Through its military base in Honduras, the Pentagon’s military intelligence operatives have intimate contacts to pursue policies as well as to keep track of all political moves by all political actors. Because Honduras is so heavily colonized, it has served as an important base for US military intervention in the region: In 1954 the successful US-backed coup against the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz was launched from Honduras. In 1961 the US-orchestrated Cuban exile invasion of Cuba was launched from Honduras. From 1981-1989, the US financed and trained over 20,000 ‘Contra’ mercenaries in Honduras which comprised the army of death squads to attack the democratically elected Nicaraguan Sandinista government. During the first seven years of the Chavez government, Honduran regimes were staunchly allied with Washington against the populist Caracas regime.

Obviously no military coups ever occurred or could occur against any US puppet regime in Honduras. The key to the shift in US policy toward Honduras occurred in 2007-2008 when the Liberal President Zelaya decided to improved relations with Venezuela in order to secure generous petro-subsidies and foreign aid from Caracas. Subsequently Zelaya joined ‘Petro-Caribe’, a Venezuelan-organized Caribbean and Central American association to provide long-term, low-cost oil and gas to meet the energy needs of member countries. In more recent days, Zelaya joined ALBA, a regional integration organization sponsored by President Chavez to promote greater trade and investment among its member countries in opposition to the US-promoted regional free trade pact, known as ALCA.

Since Washington defined Venezuela as a threat and alternative to its hegemony in Latin America, Zelaya’s alignment with Chavez on economic issues and his criticism of US intervention turned him into a likely target for US coup planners eager to make Zelaya an example and concerned about their access to Honduran military bases as their traditional launching point for intervention in the region.

Washington wrongly assumed that a coup in a small Central American ‘banana republic’ (indeed the original banana republic) would not provoke any major outcry. They believed that a Central American ‘roll back’ would serve as a warning to other independent-minded regimes in the Caribbean and Central American region of what awaits them if they align with Venezuela.

The mechanics of the coup are well-known and public: The Honduran military seized President Zelaya and ‘exiled’ him to Costa Rica; the oligarchs appointed one of their own in Congress as the interim ‘President’ while their colleagues in the Supreme Court provided bogus legality.

Latin American governments from the left to the right condemned the coup and called for the re-instatement of the legally-elected President. President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton, not willing to disown their clients, condemned unspecified ‘violence’ and called for ‘negotiations’ between the powerful usurpers and the weakened exile President – a clear recognition of the legitimate role of the Honduran generals as interlocutors.

After the United Nations General Assembly condemned the coup and, along with the Organization of American States, demanded Zelaya’s re-instatement, Obama and Secretary Clinton finally condemned the ousting of Zelaya but they refused to call it a ‘coup’, which according to US legislation would have automatically led to a complete suspension of their annual ($80 million) military and economic aid package to Honduras. While Zelaya met with all the Latin American heads of state, President Obama and Secretary Clinton turned him over to a lesser functionary in order not to weaken their allies in Honduran Junta. All the countries in the OAS withdrew their Ambassadors…except the US, whose embassy began to negotiate with the Junta to see how they might salvage the situation in which both were increasingly isolated – especially in the face of Honduras’ expulsion from the OAS.

Whether Zelaya eventually returns to office or whether the US-backed junta continues in office for an extended period of time, while Obama and Clinton sabotage his immediate return through prolonged negotiations, the key issue of the US-promoted ‘roll-back’ has been extremely costly diplomatically as well as politically.

The US backed coup in Honduras demonstrates that unlike the 1980’s when President Ronald Reagan invaded Grenada and President George Bush (Papa) invaded Panama, the situation and political profile of Latin America (and the rest of the world) has changed drastically. Back then the military and pro-US regimes in the region generally approved of US interventions and collaborated; a few protested mildly. Today the center-left and even rightist electoral regimes oppose military coups anywhere as a potential threat to their own futures.

Equally important, given the grave economic crisis and increasing social polarization, the last thing the incumbent regimes want is bloody domestic unrest, stimulated by crude US imperial interventions. Finally, the capitalist classes in Latin America’s center-left countries want stability because they can shift the balance of power via elections (as in the recent cases in Panama, Argentina) and pro-US military regimes can upset their growing trade ties with China, the Middle East and Venezuela/Bolivia.

Obama’s global roll-back strategy includes building offensive missile bases in Poland and the Czech Republic, not far from the Russian border. Concomitantly, Obama is pushing hard to incorporate Ukraine and Georgia in NATO, which will increase US military pressure on Russia’s southern flank. Taking advantage of Russian President Dimitry Medvedev’s ‘malleability’ (in the footsteps of Mikail Gorbechev) Washington has secured free passage of US troops and arms through Russia to the Afghan front, Moscow’s approval for new sanction against Iran, and recognition and support for the US puppet regime in Baghdad. Russian defense officials will likely question Medvedev’s obsequious behavior as Obama moves ahead with his plans to station nuclear missiles 5 minutes from Moscow.

Roll-Back: Predictable Failures and the Boomerang Effect

Obama’s roll-back strategy is counting on a revival of right-wing mass politics to ‘legitimize’ the re-assertion of US dominance. In Argentina throughout 2008, hundreds of thousands of lower and upper-middle class demonstrators took to the streets in the interior of the country under the leadership of pro-US big landowners associations to destabilize the ‘center-left’ Fernandez regime. In Bolivia, hundreds of thousands of middle class students, business-people, landowners and NGO affiliates, centered in Santa Cruz and four other wealthy provinces and heavily funded by US Ambassador Goldberg, Agency for International Development and the National Endowment for Democracy took to the streets, wrecking havoc and murdering over 30 indigenous supporters of President Morales in an effort to oust him from power. Similar rightist mass demonstrations have taken place in Venezuela in the past and more recently in Honduras and Iran.

The notion that mass demonstrations of the well-to-do screaming ‘democracy’ gives legitimacy to US-backed destabilization efforts against its democratically-elected adversaries is an idea promulgated by cynical propagandists in the mass media and parroted by gullible ‘progressive’ free-lance journalists who have never understood the class basis of mass politics.

Obama’s Honduran coup and the US-funded destabilization effort in Iran have much in common. Both take place against electoral processes in which critics of US policies defeated pro-Washington social forces. Having lost the ‘electoral option’ Obama’s roll back looks to extra-parliamentary ‘mass politics’ to legitimize elite effort to seize power: In Iran by dissident clerics and in Honduras by the generals and oligarchs.

In both Honduras and Iran, Washington’s foreign policy goals were the same: To roll back regimes whose leaders rejected US tutelage. In Honduras, the coup serves as a ‘lesson’ to intimidate other Central American and Caribbean countries who exit from the US camp and join the Venezuelan-led economic integration programs. Obama’s message is clear: such moves will result in US orchestrated sabotage and retaliation.

Through its backing of the military coup, Washington reminds all the countries of Latin America that the US still has the capability to implement its policies through the Latin American military elites, even as its own armed forces are tied down in wars and occupations in Asia and the Middle East and its economic presence is declining. Likewise in the Middle East, Obama’s destabilization of the Iranian regime is meant to intimidate Syria and other critics of US imperial policy and reassure Israel(and the Zionist power configuration in the US ) that Iran remains high on the US roll-back agenda.

Obama’s roll-back policies in many crucial ways follow in the steps of President Ronald Reagan (1981-89). Like Reagan, Obama’s presidency takes place in a time of US retreat, declining power and the advance of anti-imperialist politics. Reagan faced the aftermath of the US defeat in Indo-China, the successful spread of anti-colonial revolutions in Southern Africa (especially Angola and Mozambique), a successful democratic revolt in Afghanistan and a victorious social revolution in Nicaragua and major revolutionary movements in El Salvador and Guatemala. Like Obama today, Reagan set in motion a murderous military strategy of rolling-back these changes in order to undermine, destabilize and destroy the adversaries to US empire.

Obama faces a similar set of adversarial conditions in the current post-Bush period: Democratic advances throughout Latin America with new regional integration projects excluding the US; defeats and stalemates in the Middle East and South Asia; a revived and strengthened Russia projecting power in the former Soviet republics; declining US influence over NATO military commitments , a loss of political, economic, military and diplomatic credibility as a result of the Wall Street-induced global economic depression and prolonged un-successful regional wars.

Contrary to Obama, Ronald Reagan’s roll back took place under favorable circumstances. In Afghanistan, Reagan secured the support of the entire conservative Muslim world and operated through the key Afghan feudal-tribal leaders against a Soviet-backed, urban-based reformist regime in Kabul. Obama is in the reverse position in Afghanistan. His military occupation is opposed by the vast majority of Afghans and most of the Muslim population in Asia.

Reagan’s roll back in Central America, especially his Contra-mercenary invasion of Nicaragua, had the backing of Honduras and all the pro-US military dictatorships in Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and Brazil, as well as rightwing civilian government in the region. In contrast, Obama’s roll-back coup in Honduras and beyond face democratic electoral regimes throughout the region, an alliance of left nationalist regimes led by Venezuela and regional economic and diplomatic organizations staunchly opposed to any return to US domination and intervention. Obama’s roll-back strategy finds itself in total political isolation in the entire region.

Obama’s roll-back policies cannot wield the economic ‘Big Stick’ to force regimes in the Middle East and Asia to support his policies. Now there are alternative Asian markets, Chinese foreign investments, the deepening US depression and the disinvestment of overseas US banks and multi-nationals. Unlike Reagan, Obama cannot combine economic carrots with the military stick. Obama has to rely on the less effective and costly military option at a time when the rest of the world has no interest or will in projecting military power in regions of little economic significance or where they can attain market access via economic agreements.

Obama’s launch of the global roll-back strategy has boomeranged, even in its initial stage. In Afghanistan, the big troop build-up and the massive offensive into ‘Taliban’ strongholds has not led to any major military victories or even confrontations. The resistance has retired, blended in with the local population and will likely resort to prolonged decentralized, small-scale war of attrition designed to tie down several thousand troops in a sea of hostile Afghans, bleeding the US economy, increasing casualties, resolving nothing and eventually trying the patience of the US public now deeply immersed in job losses and rapidly declining living standards.

The coup, carried out by the US-backed Honduran military, has already re-affirmed US political and diplomatic isolation in the Hemisphere. The Obama regime is the only major country to retain an Ambassador in Honduras, the only country which refuses to regard the military take-over as a ‘coup’, and the only country to continue economic and military aid. Rather than establish an example of the US’ power to intimidate neighboring countries, the coup has strengthened the belief among all South and Central American countries that Washington is attempting to return to the ‘bad old days’ of pro-US military regimes, economic pillage and monopolized markets.

What Obama’s foreign policy advisers have failed to understand is that they can’t put their ‘Humpty Dumpty’ together again; they cannot return to the days of Reagan’s roll-back, Clinton’s unilateral bombing of Iraq, Yugoslavia and Somalia and his pillage of Latin America.

No major region, alliance or country will follow the US in its armed colonial occupation in peripheral (Afghanistan/Pakistan) or even central (Iran) countries, even as they join the US in economic sanctions, propaganda wars and electoral destabilization efforts against Iran.

No Latin American country will tolerate another US military putsch against a democratically elected president, even national populist regimes which diverge from US economic and diplomatic policies. The great fear and loathing of the US-backed coup stems from the entire Latin American political class’ memory of the nightmare years of US backed military dictatorships.

Obama’s military offensive, his roll-back strategy to recover imperial power is accelerating the decline of the American Republic. His administration’s isolation is increasingly evidenced by his dependence on Israel-Firsters who occupy his Administration and the Congress as well as influential pro-Israel pundits in the mass media who identify roll-back with Israel’s own seizure of Palestinian land and military threats to Iran.

Roll back has boomeranged: Instead of regaining the imperial presence, Obama has submerged the republic and, with it, the American people into greater misery and instability.

He had of course declared Iraq a war of choice on the campaign trail. But to do so in this international forum was a little surprising, as it could be read as an implicit acknowledgment that the war was a violation of international law. (What is a war of choice after all but a war crime?) But in Cairo Obama — who declines to investigate Bush era officials for war crimes — merely pronounced some bromides about seeking wisdom along with power from now on and vowed to henceforth be a “partner” of Iraq rather than its “patron.”

Obama’s strongest criticism of the Iraq War during the campaign was that it was a “strategic blunder,” and course it would be rather too much to expect a U.S. president to denounce any U.S. imperialist war in truly heartfelt fashion. But he might in Cairo have returned to a theme he broached in October 2002 during the buildup to the war, in his famous Chicago “antiwar speech”:

“What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.” http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99591469

He might have noted that this particular war of choice was largely a war based on lies playing upon anti-Arab and anti-Muslim stereotypes disseminated as “intelligence” by neocons like the aforementioned Wolfowitz, Perle, “Scooter” Libby, and Douglas Feith whose “ideological agenda” involved (and continues to involve) “regime change” throughout Muslim Southwest Asia. It was a war to advance the interests of corporate America and the oil companies (although they didn’t necessarily drive it) — and also to create a better security environment for Israel so central to those neocon “ideological agendas.”

The war was justified in part by a false association between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden conjured up by Feith’s “Office of Special Plans.” The very idea that the secular Baathist regime of Saddam would have had a close working relationship with the fanatically Salafist al-Qaeda only made sense to those with highly simplistic views of the Islamic world (or those knowing better but trying to use those with such views). It assumed a readiness to conflate altogether dissimilar Muslims and a racist essentialization of Arabs.

Simply put, the al-Qaeda-Iraq link cynically exploited stereotypes. In that sense it and the entire “war on terror” are indeed anti-Muslim as often charged. Obama can declare as he did in Cairo (to applause), “I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.” But if he makes no fundamental changes in U.S. policy his words ring hollow.

Those who lied about Iraq-bin Laden links also lied about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. They provided the disinformation behind the carefully timed references by top officials in the fall of 2002 to a “mushroom cloud over New York City” designed to terrify the American people. (Libby was on the White House Iraq Group that came up with that “let’s hope the smoking gun’s not a mushroom cloud over New York” sales pitch.)

Are there not similarities between that propaganda and the “nuclear Holocaust” propaganda of hysteria currently being circulated by those praying for the U.S. to bomb Iran on behalf of Israel? What is Obama doing to fight the AIPAC crazies working overtime to thwart the U.S. intelligence community’s actual, empirical assessment that Iran has no active nuclear weapons program and to rather impose their hypothesis that it most definitely has one?

And speaking of “negative stereotypes,” what is Obama doing to challenge the preposterous notion that the Iranian leadership is prepared to use nukes on Israel, knowing that that would mean massive retaliation against Iran? The argument is that the mullahs so hate the Jews that they are rushing to produce nukes in order to use one against the Jewish state armed with a couple hundred of its own, consciously inviting the inevitable nuclear response from Israel and/or the U.S., provoking the annihilation of millions of their own people.

They will willingly accept that toll, the argument continues, because the Shiite Islam of the Iranian mullahs, with its peculiar martyrdom complex, makes them indifferent to this apocalyptic result of their planned attack. It’s a nonsensical caricature of a regime that told the Bush administration in 2003 it was prepared to accept the Arab League Peace Initiative to Israel, allows the largest Jewish community in the Middle East outside of Israel representation in the Majlis, and leads a country that has attacked no other in modern times.

Obama: “Make no mistake . . . No debate . . . Afghanistan a War of Necessity”

In any case, turning in Cairo to the war in Afghanistan, Obama contrasted it with that in Iraq as a war of necessity. It was and is a clear-cut, righteous cause beyond debate. He lectured the Muslim world:

We did not go by choice, we went because of necessity. I am aware that some question or justify the events of 9/11. But let us be clear: al-Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day. The victims were innocent men, women and children from America and many other nations who had done nothing to harm anybody. And yet al-Qaeda chose to ruthlessly murder these people, claimed credit for the attack, and even now states their determination to kill on a massive scale. They have affiliates in many countries and are trying to expand their reach. These are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with.

Make no mistake: we do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan. We seek no military bases there. It is agonizing for America to lose our young men and women. It is costly and politically difficult to continue this conflict. We would gladly bring every single one of our troops home if we could be confident that there were not violent extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can. But that is not yet the case.

The lack of creativity here was striking. This could have been written by Bush “Axis-of-Evil” speech writer and Richard Perle associate David Frum in early 2002. This was emphatically not an explanation for U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2009 but rather an obvious example of obfuscation. In declaring Afghanistan a war of necessity Obama failed to really establish links between the 9-11 attackers and the Taliban. He didn’t show that those engaging in armed struggle against the regimes in power in Afghanistan and Pakistan today are really determined to “kill as many Americans as they possibly can,” or if they have become so determined, where and why. One might say he set up a straw man, a straw jihadi, for GI Joe to attack.

Surely the Taliban nurtured al-Qaeda after 1996; the families of Mullah Omar and bin Laden even established marriage ties. But the Taliban were not bin Laden’s initial hosts in Afghanistan upon his return to the country from Sudan. The Taliban did not set up bin Laden in his camps; these date back to the 1980s when he was working with the CIA. The Taliban was a conservative Pashtun-based xenophobic Sunni Muslim movement rooted in the Pakistani madrassas attended by Afghan refugees. Formed in the early 1990s, it was backed for years by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Saudi Arabia.

There was a time when Zalmay Khalilzad could argue (in a op-ed piece in the Washington Post in 1996), that the Taliban were not anti-American and could be negotiating partners. He himself as a UNOCAL executive was happy to host Taliban officials on his Texas ranch to negotiate about the TAPI natural gas pipeline. Colin Powell was able to negotiate a highly successful opium eradication program with the Taliban in early 2001. The organization’s embrace of an anti-U.S. jihad along al-Qaeda lines is largely a function of the U.S. conflation of the two organizations (the Bushite “you’re either for us or against us” doctrine — in practice a “you’re either for us or against us, especially if you’re Muslim” doctrine). It’s a result of the U.S. attack.

Al-Qaeda is primarily an Arab international jihadi movement with an anti-American ideology born out of the stationing of U.S. troops on Saudi soil in the months prior to the first Gulf War. It has a vision of a revived Caliphate. It’s actually quite different from the Taliban and there was mounting tension between the two from at least 1999 when al-Qaeda’s international terrorist actions began to cost its hosts. This al-Qaeda has in any case largely been driven from Afghanistan, with the exception of some Uzbeks of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan who are based in the north.

The current confrontation in Afghanistan is not about al-Qaeda, or the issues that prompted some renegade Saudis to attack the Twin Towers and Pentagon eight years ago. It’s about Afghan dislike of outside interference, Pashtun nationalism, outrage at U.S. bombing (that has even caused MPs to shut down Parliament in protest on occasion), disillusionment with corruption in the Karzai-warlord regime, a certain comfort level some had with the previous socio-political order. Surely Islam has something to do with it in that the Qur’an calls upon the believer to fight injustices inflicted upon fellow Muslims. But for Obama to say the war in Afghanistan at this point is “necessary” because of 9-11 is disingenuous.

If it’s “necessary,” it may be so because Afghanistan runs between the gas fields of Turkmenistan and the Indian Ocean ports which could carry it to world markets avoiding Iran and Russia. A pipeline deal was signed in 2002 but its provisions can’t be carried out until the country’s stabilized. As a declining superpower competing, among others, with a resurgent Russia flush with oil and gas money, the U.S. experiences geopolitical, capitalist-imperialist necessities. Its energy corporations need to compete for access to that gas oil, and the profits that can be obtained from them, while the Pentagon strategizes about how to control global access to energy in the event of war.

But these necessities have nothing to do with 3000 dead eight years ago. And yes, we can debate the Afghan War, however much Mr. Obama may want to close off discussion with reference to those innocent victims and that painful day.

Holbrooke to Refugees: “Glad the army came in, even though you were driven out of your homes?”

The very same day Obama was speaking, Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke was in Pakistan, offering high-level symbolic support for the Pakistani Army’s campaign against what has become a full blown insurgency conducted by the Pakistani Taliban. (This is a Taliban that did not exist before U.S. invaded Afghanistan.) That counter-insurgency effort had involved the strafing of a city of 375,000 and produced 2 million refugees from the Swat Valley which had been taken over by militants. Fighting reportedly continues and the refuges have yet to return.

According to the Washington Post: “In a message he repeated several times, Holbrooke told the Pakistanis here that President Obama and the people of the United States cared about them and were helping their government to aid them. Even as he spoke, he said, Obama was reaching out to Pakistanis and other Muslims around the world in a major address in Cairo.” Holbrooke asked some of the refuges if they were “glad the army came in, even though you were driven out of your homes?” Perhaps he was trying to reassure himself that this was indeed the case.

“We will be happy when there is peace,” one refugee told him. “We want this thing to end so we can go back to our own land,” an elder shouted to him. “We are fed up with living like this.” “America has given a lot of assistance and food,” Holbrooke replied. “But it’s up to the Pakistan army to give you security. That’s not our job.”

Having thus detached the U.S. from responsibility for the crisis, Holbrooke made an ominous response to an AFP reporter’s question in a separate interview. “I don’t want to be alarmist here,” he said, “but I’m predicting some massive influx. There are concerns that there may be some spillover as there was in the past.”

He was referring to an influx of refugees from Afghanistan — the result of the “surge” of 21,000 additional U.S. forces in that country — an admission in passing of one outcome of the toppling of the Taliban due to that “war of necessity” in 2001.

It’s apparent to many Muslims and others around the world that the initial U.S. response to 9-11 has produced many negative ripple effects, including the destabilization of Pakistan, the world’s second most populous Muslim nation. That is to say, what for many Americans is the “good war” foil to the bad blundering war in Iraq is for much of the world part of the same bloody thing: at minimum, a heavy-handed reaction to an attack by rogue Saudis that indiscriminately targeted unrelated Muslim (Afghan and Iraqi) civilians — and for that matter Taliban militants who, whatever the backwardness of their ideology and brutality of their policies, had little to do with the foreigners operating secretly in their midst and planning international terrorist actions.

The U.S. set up a new regime in Afghanistan following the Loya Jirga orchestrated by George Bush and his special envoy Khalilzad, the Afghan-American neocon. It delivered power from the Talibs to the Northern Alliance warlords in the Tajik-Uzbek north and failed to deliver much of a state apparatus at all in Pashtun areas. These areas were inexorably reclaimed by the former rulers, despite the U.S.’s attempt to build an army of 132,000 which (as one U.S. officer wryly put it) a country as poor as Afghanistan “will never be able to afford.”

The administration has taken to referring to Afghanistan and Pakistan together as “Af-Pak,” recognizing that that they constitute a single problem for itself (if not acknowledging that that particular problem was generated by U.S. action). Holbrooke sort of let it slip to AFP that there’d been “spillover” from the 2001 invasion. Now there’s something much more dire happening.

Retired CIA analyst Bruce O. Riedel, who chaired a special interagency committee to develop President Obama’s policies on Afghanistan and Pakistan, told the Council on Foreign Relations last month:

“In Pakistan, we face a growing coalescence of jihadist militant groups, not just in the tribal areas, but in the Punjab and in the major cities including Karachi. This is threatening the very survival of the Pakistani state as we have known it. It is not inevitable and it is not imminent, but there is a real possibility of a jihadist state emerging in Pakistan sometime in the future. And that has to be one of the worst nightmares American foreign policy could have to deal with.”

Note the truly grim tone. The survival of the Pakistani state “as we have known it” (as opposed to a Taliban State # 2 Plus Nukes) is a stake. Maybe the subtext is that the Bush administration by taking its “eye off the ball” in Afghanistan and going into the “war of choice” in Iraq miscalculated the Afghan-based Taliban, which is now (given its fundamentally pan-Pashtun character, which the neocons probably didn’t think about) capable of wreaking havoc in Pakistan. (The Taliban is rooted among the Pashtuns who make up 42% of the Afghan population — 14 million — and who also make up 15% of Pakistan’s population — 26 million. They are separated by the Durand Line, the border between the two countries, a line drawn by a British colonial officer’s pen in the 1890s which means nothing to the Pashtun tribes.)

Clinton: “The Existential Threat to the State of Pakistan”

On April 23 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Congress, “I think we cannot underscore [enough] the seriousness of the existential threat posed to the state of Pakistan by the continuing advances [of the Taliban],” adding that Pakistan also potentially poses a “mortal threat” to the U.S. and other countries. More recently General David Petraeus, Commander of U.S. Central Command, told the Pakistanis via Fox News that their “very existence” was threatened by Taliban militants and that “clearly, there is going to be a tough fight,” while Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a meeting of defense ministers in Singapore that the Taliban’s emergence in Pakistan is an “existential threat” to the country.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair John Kerry was in Pakistan early in the month contributing to the sense of crisis, telling reporters, “The government has to ratchet up the urgency” in the counterinsurgency. It seems Kerry doesn’t think “that the effort has been resourced the way that it needs to be either in the personnel or the strategy.” (Former Lt. Kerry having won medals fighting Vietnamese freedom fighters apparently considers himself qualified to counsel the Pakistanis about countering insurgents.)

In April 1971 this Kerry as an antiwar activist famously asked the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” Boston University professor Andrew J. Bacevich, perhaps the country’s preeminent military historian, has recently noted that Kerry also testified to Congress at that time that he and other soldiers were “probably angriest” about all the lies they’d been told about Vietnam and “the mystical war against communism.”

Bacevich likens “the mystical war on terrorism” with the “mystical war against communism” and says it “prevents us from seeing things as they are.” He says the “jihadist threat” in both Afghanistan and Pakistan “falls well short of being existential.” He also realizes that the war in Afghanistan is precisely what’s generating the Pakistani Taliban. But the consensus in Washington seems to be that the survival of Pakistan is at stake and that the U.S. has to somehow respond by altering its strategy in the region—in the direction of escalation justified my explanations that prevent us from seeing things as they really are. Surely what Barbara Tuchman called the “March of Folly.”

Interestingly enough, on that very same day Hillary Clinton made her “existential” remark the new Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman stated that Israel’s biggest “existential threat” was not Iran (which it had been touting for many months as such) but in fact Pakistan. The Israel Lobby had been using that term “existential” a lot in reference to Iran’s supposed threat to itself — proposing that its nuclear power program constituted a threat to global Jewry unprecedented since Nazism — dangerously ratcheting up the tension between Tehran and Washington. Now Lieberman was holding up the specter of a Talibanized Pakistan (which unlike Iran, actually has nukes) as an even greater threat, while Clinton was impressing on Congress that Pakistan was in deep trouble and U.S. resources were urgently needed in “Af-Pak.”

Since April, the Pakistani Army has indeed taken action against the Pakistani Taliban — to loud expressions of U.S. approval. When Petraeus made his comment about the Taliban threatening Pakistan’s existence he followed up by praising the Pakistan Army for taking “the kind of action, with the size of forces they have in the western part of the country, [which] demonstrates that they understand that there is a more immediate threat to the country” than some other unspecified one.

It may seem odd that the U.S. military is expressing appreciation that the Pakistani military is showing an understanding of the security threat that the Taliban poses to itself on its own home turf. But twice before, in 2005 and 2008, Pakistan’s army has attacked the insurgents only to meet with defeat, cut deals and withdraw over U.S. murmurs of disapproval that this was not helping the effort in Afghanistan. This time the Pentagon hopes the Pakistani military is serious and will not just “pacify” Swat but move on to an engagement with the forces of Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud in South Waziristan. The Swat operation was a dress rehearsal for this much larger, riskier campaign.

The U.S.-Pakistani Relationship

The U.S. does not exactly enjoy a neocolonial-type relationship with the Pakistani military, which dominates state affairs. Riedel refers to the latter’s enduring resentment of the Pressler Amendment sanctions imposed by the first President Bush, which from 1990 singled out Pakistan for punishment for its nuclear weapons program (itself a response to India’s explosion of a nuclear device in 1974). After a decade of close cooperation with the Pakistani military in the 1980s (in “bleeding the Soviet Union in Afghanistan”), following the end of the Cold War Washington decided it didn’t need Pakistan so much and cut off various forms of aid. (Meanwhile the Najibullah regime finally fell to the Northern Alliance jihadis in 1993, throwing Afghanistan into new bloody paroxysms for which the Pakistanis had to pay while the Gulbuddin’s Hekmatyar’s paymasters quietly left the stage.)

Strong military and political ties resumed after 9-11 but only after Islamabad was bludgeoned into obedience. The real “existential threat” to Pakistan loomed right after the attacks, when the U.S. State Department conveyed to President Musharraf the message that Pakistan should “prepare to be bombed, be prepared to go back to the Stone Age” if it didn’t cooperate in this war against the Taliban. Musharraf later, in an interview with BBC, called this a “very rude remark.” (By the way, what Iranian leader has ever made such a threat to any country?) The fact that Musharraf could publicly complain about such nuclear diplomacy may show a measure of independence. But of course at the time he capitulated to U.S. demands, much as they were to cost his country.

The Pentagon has recently reported to Congress that U.S. aid to Pakistan for fighting terrorism has been misused for purchasing combat aircraft among other things for conventional conflict with India. There appear to be deep issues of trust here on both sides. Pakistan is after all a Muslim state, born out of Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s dream of a state formed from the Muslim-majority parts of the British Raj in distinction from what became overwhelmingly Hindu India. It was a vision of a secular state, but Islam is likely to be a strong part of any Pakistani military officer’s personal identity. Surely this is apparent U.S. officers (likely to be sincere Christians) having any personal contact with Pakistani counterparts as they collaborate and cooperate on border missions. It may leave some of them secretly wondering whether the Pakistanis can really handle the problem of anti-American Taliban militant activity in their country.

When you look at the biblical packaging of the daily intelligence briefings that circulated high up in the Defense Department in the early months of the Iraq war, or consider that a Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence under Bush spoke in uniform at churches saying the Christian God is “bigger” than the Muslim one (since “his was an idol”), you can imagine that the Pentagon brass might suspect the Pakistanis, and that the Pakistanis might legitimately suspect that the U.S. is involved in a global effort against their religion. You can imagine, that is, a certain mutual wariness in the relationship between the militaries in whatever capacity they cooperate.

Then there is this matter Petraeus alludes to indirectly: “a more immediate threat to the country.” By this he obviously meant India, which the U.S. is cultivating as a regional superpower and ally vis-à-vis China and Russia. This is the India which, like Israel and Pakistan, never signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty but acquired nuclear weapons and was subject to U.S. sanctions as a result (although never as damaging to it as those applied to Pakistan).

The Commander of U.S. Central Command obviously thinks that the Taliban is a more immediate threat to Pakistan than India. He is a representative of a country whose Congress just passed the “123 Agreement” opening India’s vast nuclear industry to investment by U.S. firms. The Indian Parliament is expected to soon pass a Logistics Support Agreement that will allow refueling, maintenance and servicing of U.S. military ships and planes at Indian ports and bases and vice versa. Obviously the official U.S. position is that India is no threat to Pakistan at all.

In this context, as Pakistan copes with the consequences of the Swat crackdown, as the Pentagon urges the Pakistanis to move against Mehsud in South Waziristan — producing many more refugees; and and as State Department and Pentagon officials admit that they have no real plan about how to proceed in Afghanistan as the Taliban consolidate its position there, Obama through Holbrooke assures the Pakistani people and army of his “concern.”

Holbrooke: “I don’t want to be alarmist here, but I’m predicting some massive influx. There are concerns that there may be some spillover as there was in the past.”

In late 2001 the CIA station chief in Islamabad had concluded that the Taliban was a “spent force” even as the Guardian reported its leadership relocating to luxurious villas in Pakistan. Nowadays that “spent force” has regained control of much of the south and east of Afghanistan. Most of the real fighting is along the border with Pakistan. President Hamid Karzai realizes that the insurgency is not going to go away and has repeatedly offered to negotiate with the Taliban, including Mullah Omar. The Taliban-aligned forces of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i Islami are meanwhile advancing on Kabul, and as AP notes matter-of-factly, summer is “traditional fighting season in Afghanistan” when U.S. combat deaths already at record levels are likely to increase.

One recalls Marx’s observation that world-historical events occur twice, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. The initial “spillover” to which Holbrooke alluded cost the lives of over 1,100 Pakistani troops and 8000 insurgents, as well as (according to the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies) 1,765 civilian deaths between October 2008 and March 2009 alone, and culminated in a refugee crisis involving two million people. These were the tragic and probably unintentional consequences of U.S. action in Afghanistan.

But here you have Obama’s special envoy to “Af-Pak” predicting even more refugees, as the consequence of the “surge” of 21,000 more troops next door, while Pakistan copes with the blowback of the U.S. actions to date. Another huge refugee exodus is predicted from South Waziristan as the Army moves in at U.S. urging. U.S. forces are proceeding ahead consciously towards a show-down with the Taliban aware that this may well destroy Pakistan “as we know it.”

“But let us be clear,” says Obama, “al-Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day.”

So that’s why we’re still in Afghanistan, you see, with more troops on the way, as waves of people stream across Pakistan. What a farce.

Ross and Holbrooke: “Everybody Needs to Worry About Iran”

Now, while over 50,000 U.S. troops alongside the Afghan army-in-training will be confronting local guerrillas (and attacking some across the border in Pakistan too) in order to prevent another 9-11, just imagine what all might be happening in the surrounding world.

Pakistan is not just bordered by Afghanistan but by India, China and Iran. It has generally had good relations with Iran, despite the fact that Iran’s Shiite theocracy opposed Pakistan’s policy of cultivating the fiercely anti-Shiite Taliban in Afghanistan. If the U.S. attacks Iran in the coming year (or if Israel does so) it will surely confirm in the minds of Muslims throughout the world — Pakistanis among those most directly affected — that the U.S. is engaged in a Crusade against them. All of them: Sunni and Shiite, from the more or less secular (Saddam’s Iraq) to the deeply traditional (the Taliban’s Afghanistan).

Holbrooke is, along with Dennis Ross, Hillary Clinton’s top advisor on Iran, the author of a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece that ran just nine months ago. Entitled “Everybody Needs to Worry About Iran” it strives to “mobilize the power of a united American public in opposition” to what it terms the Iranian regime’s drive to become “a nuclear state.” (Ross has been Special Advisor for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia to Hillary Clinton but has left that post for a more powerful White House job.)

Linger on that statement alone for a moment. Here are Holbrooke and Ross writing ten months after the NIE in which the U.S. intelligence community declared with “high confidence” that Iran had no nuclear program that they want to mobilize public opinion to believe the exact opposite. This should make every aware person with an awareness of U.S. history (and the mobilization of public opinion around lies targeting Muslims) sick to their stomach.

Ross is known to favor a policy of “diplomatic engagement” with Iran whereby the Iranians are asked to to stop doing something every NPT signatory nation is legally entitled to do (enrich uranium) and when they decline to do so, attack them or give the green light to Israel to do so on the “existential threat”/”nuclear Holocaust” preemptive war causus belli pretext.

Perhaps Holbrooke does feel some alarm when he imagines how people in Afghanistan and Pakistan might respond to an infidel attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran — maybe in the context of massive refugee spillovers and civil wars all supposedly “necessitated” by the U.S. response to 9-11. Afghanistan is 19%, Pakistan 20% Shiite, and while Shiite belief does not necessitate sympathy with Shiite Iran under imperialist or Zionist attack it is a likely predictor of it.

I don’t want to be an alarmist here, but I will observe that Bush’s vaguely conceived “war on terror” is spilling over into Pakistan, big time. It could hardly be otherwise given the artificiality of the border, and its permeability, a legacy of Islamabad’s (necessarily) gentle hand in dealing with the tribes in the North-West Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. By demanding Islamabad take action against militants on the border Washington has actually forced its Pakistani allies to repeatedly provoke the tribesmen, thus destabilizing a country of 173 million, armed with nukes and with a history of three wars with neighboring India and ongoing conflict over Kashmir.

They say in Pakistan “All Taliban are Pashtuns, but not all Pashtuns are Taliban” and it does seem that support for the Taliban is very limited. But the prospect that Riedel raises — of a “jihadist state” — is disturbing, and the potential for such perhaps exists as an Army deployed to suppress the jihadis repeatedly cuts deals with them, trading peace for the implementation of the sharia. But how could they have done otherwise, given the balance of forces in a country that Washington began to knock off balance in 2001?

As Pakistani opposition figure Imran Khan told the Middle East Institute recently, about 25 percent of the troops involved in recent campaign against the Taliban in the Swat Valley are Pashtuns. “Pakistan is at risk,” he declared. “How long will the government soldiers keep fighting their own people? If ever the Taliban were discredited and the public was behind the military operation, it was during the Swat operation. But the anger against the army is much greater. When the true horrors of the collateral damage are known . . . the Taliban will have won” through new recruits.

Holbrooke was in Pakistan to testify that that Pakistani Army, driving people out of their homes in the Swat Valley, is on the same side as Barack Obama. But he’s no doubt concerned about the prospect that the crackdown on the Pakistani Taliban will produce blowback for the U.S. He’s nervous about the prospects for the anti-Taliban effort retaining “hearts and minds” long-term as homelessness and war continue.

That’s the big picture: U.S. preparations for a dramatic acceleration of the Terror War in “Af-Pak,” still justified by tired references to that tragedy eight years ago, while the U.S. continues to threaten Iran and to make everything much worse still.

This isn’t Bush’s war anymore. It’s Obama’s slightly prettified War on Terror, Part II, Af-Pak Theater. And it’s not about 9-11. It has never been, really; that’s just been the rhetoric addressed to the U.S. masses designed to exploit to the max the recollected pain of that one day, and to the world to justify aggression in the name of national security.

It’s really about empire — endless “surges” on behalf of empire justified by urgent appeals for action against existential threats. It’s a farce with ongoing tragic consequences for people in the region, and pain the American people themselves have only begun to feel. So far the combined U.S. death toll for the Iraq and Afghan aggressions is just a little over 5,000. But lately the casualties in Afghanistan are nearly matching those in Iraq.

Those who’ve hoped or thought Obama would be an anti-war president: please watch his deputies Holbrooke and Ross carefully. They’re not so dissimilar from the neocons they’ve replaced and their visions of regime change may spell more ruin for the world.

And of course, “collateral damage”: As was reported in The News in Pakistan May 19:

Several persons, including women and children, were killed and a number of others sustained injuries when families fleeing the military operation in Swat’s Matta town were shelled while crossing a mountainous path to reach Karo Darra in Dir Upper on Monday, eyewitnesses and official sources said. Eyewitnesses, who escaped the attack or were able to reach Wari town of Dir Upper in injured condition, said they were targeted by gunship helicopters. However, police officials said they might have been hit by a stray shell. Local people said they saw some 12 to 14 bodies on a mountain on the Swat side but could not go near to retrieve them or help the injured for fear of another aerial attack.

What a nightmare scenario for Pakistan.

We’re talking about the Pakistani Army sometimes fighting over the last year to retake towns from Taliban forces in the Buner region of the North-West Frontier Province that are closer to the capital of Islamabad than the Afghan border. And while the Talibs apparently lack popular support, even among the Pashtuns (who are 15 % of the Pakistani population—26 million and 42% of the Afghan population—14 million) they have been able to inflict embarrassing defeats on the army.

Tehreek-i-Taliban leader Baitullah Mahsud, head of the militant forces in South Waziristan, established his credentials when his forces captured 300 Pakistani soldiers and traded them for about 30 imprisoned militants in the fall of 2007. Time and again, the several (sometimes rival) “Taliban” forces, which did not exist before the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan created them, have forced the government to negotiate terms. Most recently in February, Islamabad agreed to the implementation of the Sharia in the Swat Valley in exchange for peace. The Taliban broke the agreement in April, or so the story goes, and the army claims it’s killed 1,100 militants since.

But curiously, as of Sunday it claimed to have killed only 10 Taliban, while boasting of seizing (according to AP) “a spot nicknamed ‘bloody intersection’ because militants routinely dumped the mutilated bodies of their victims there.” On Monday, I read of another four dead militants but the Taliban announced through a spokesman that they would maintain “aides” in place in the city, cease fire, and advise civilians to return. It appears most have retreated to other towns, including Buner and Daggar where fighting goes on now. This they can do under cover of the masses of refugees of course.

Now think of what has happened here. Whether or not this was Osama bin Laden’s conscious plan, the local, ethnically-based, ideological movement most receptive to his own (i.e., the Taliban, or more precisely, multiple talibans on the Pakistan side of the border) has flourished since the U.S. attack upon Afghanistan in response to the 9-11 attacks. The imperialist response to 9-11 inflamed Pashtunistan. The toppling of the Taliban itself aroused indignation among many Pakistani as well as Afghan Pashtuns. Some militants fleeing east met with the traditional Pasthtunwali welcome, as they would under less stressful circumstances, and beyond that political sympathy.

The drone missile attacks, the civilian deaths, the contemptuous official denials, the repeated insults to national sovereignty, the connivance of the regime in power, have angered many, perhaps most, Pakistanis. While the Taliban has undergone a quiet resurgence in southern Afghanistan, leading U.S. generals to conclude that a military solution to the war is impossible, bands of religious “students” gathering around tribal leaders and warlords in Pakistan forming the umbrella “Movement of the Taliban” or Tehreek-e-Taliban under Mahsud have been able to generate this kind of chaos.

The Army had been deployed before against Indian forces. But the disproportionately Pashtun force had never confronted or been trained to confront fanatical Pashtun jihadis–particularly when the issue was the implementation of the Sharia. Not surprisingly it performed badly and Islamabad wound up cutting a deal in February to implement Islamic law in the Swat Valley. U.S. Defense Secretary Gates can criticize that judgment in stating, “We want to support [the Pakistanis]. We want to help them in any way we can. But it is important that they recognize the real threats to their country.” And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can tell Congress, “I think the Pakistani government is basically abdicating to the Taliban and the extremists [by making a peace deal in Swat]. Changing paradigms and mindsets is not easy, but I do believe there is an increasing awareness of not just the Pakistani government but the Pakistani people that this insurgency coming closer and closer to major cities does pose such a threat.”

It’s easy to lecture about such things, to judge the actions of another government facing a crisis. But isn’t it obvious that (what Clinton has, since at least April, been calling) Pakistan’s “existential threat” wouldn’t be closing in on the cities of that country had the U.S. not responded to 9-11 with the knee-jerk bombing of Afghanistan and the toppling of the Taliban? President Pervez Musharraf recalled that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told him soon after 9-11 to “prepare to go back to the Stone Age” if he didn’t cooperate with the U.S. in the war on terrorism. The existential threat to Pakistan was the Bush administration!

The Bush administration pressured Musharraf to deploy the Pakistan Army in border provinces where it had never been deployed and where its very presence was perceived as a provocation. The result was the September 2005 “peace agreement” in which the government agreed to halt military operations along the border and dismantle checkpoints in return for tribal leaders’ commitment to end support for militancy and prevent cross-border incursions into Afghanistan. It was a face-saving defeat for the regime that drew U.S. criticism, as have all subsequent deals with the militants, which have in any case broken down, like the February deal in Swat.

The 2005 agreement followed the notorious Lal Masjid episode in Islamabad when the security forces stormed an important seminary and hotbed of Islamist activism. The khatib (prayer-leader) had been dismissed for issuing a fatwa stating no Pakistani Army officer could be given an Islamic burial if died fighting the Taliban, and then the mosque had risen up in general rebellion, sparking solidarity attacks on government forces by militants in North Waziristan and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). The government was forced to back down.

That’s been the pattern ever sense. Get tough on the “insurgents,” with U.S. prodding, funding, and threats of funding reduction and direct intervention. Then negotiate with tribal and religious leaders, recognizing locals’ mistrust of outsiders, the Pakistani state, and its international backers, which the mullahs may identify as U.S. imperialism and Zionism. And watch both carrot and stick policies fail as Pakistan’s own homegrown Taliban insurgency swells alongside the recrudescent original next door.

Now, while the Pakistani Army is still struggling to take control of Mingora and the Taliban is regrouping, the insurgents have pulled off a brazen attack on the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) office compound in Lahore, in eastern Pakistan, on the border with India, killing about 30 and injuring 250. The irony here of course is that the Taliban was nurtured by the ISI in the 1990s and the attackers may well have known the location of ISI offices for that very reason.

Such terror has Bush’s war on terror visited on Pakistan, with no end in sight. And Obama’s war in “Af-Pak,” reliant on a troop surge, more Predator drone attacks, and maybe some “divide and conquer” tactics, hold out little promise for relief. U.S. officials screw up their faces as if genuinely puzzled about while the Pakistanis aren’t doing more–as if puzzled about why they don’t understand that their existence is at stake. The fact is that they are the ones on the outside looking in, who do not understand that the interests of U.S. imperialism do not cause religious and national and ethnic sensibilities to disappear or make it possible for local leaders, even those on the imperialist payroll, to snap their fingers, crush local resistance and produce social peace. The interests of U.S. imperialism in this case, in the form of regime change in Afghanistan, and the way it was done, have antagonized much of the Pakistani population.

This is Washington’s unwanted gift to Islamabad, for which Islamabad keeps getting paid and keeps paying.

The refugees from Swat — in the north of Pakistan, near the Afghanistan border — are victims of a Pakistani Army offensive, backed by the U.S., against forces of the Taliban, which operate in both countries. Under pressure from the U.S., the Pakistani military broke a ceasefire arrangement with the Taliban and is carrying out a scorched-earth assault — with the excuse that this is the only way to flush out Taliban fighters. But the civilian population is paying a terrible price.

The nightmarish scene in Swat and other areas in the north marks the latest stage of Pakistan’s crisis, brought to a boil by the U.S. escalation of its war in Afghanistan, which is spilling across the border. But it also a sign of the deepening contradictions of Pakistani politics following the downfall of the U.S.-backed strongman, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, last year amid growing unrest.

Musharraf was replaced by Asif Ali Zardari, the husband of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party. But Zardari, who has a long record of corruption, has quickly lost credibility. He only reinstated Pakistan’s Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry — whose ouster by Musharraf spurred a mass movement spearheaded by lawyers — after huge protests in March forced his hand. Now, with the attacks in Swat, the Pakistani military is regaining the initiative.

Saadia Toor, an assistant professor of Anthropology and Social Work at Staten Island College and part of the group Action for a Progressive Pakistan, talked to Ashley Smith about the situation in Pakistan today.

Ashley Smith: For last few weeks, the media have been filled with reports of the “imminent threat of the Taliban,” and then coverage of Pakistani military assault on the Taliban in Swat. Why has the Pakistani military abandoned the former peace and launched this attack?

Saadia Toor: Finally, we’re beginning to see a lot of good analysis coming out of the left media. Earlier, the U.S. government’s rhetoric was being picked up uncritically. We’ve seen scaremongering in the media over the imminent takeover of Pakistani nukes by the Taliban.

The U.S. has created this bizarre new moniker “Af/Pak” as a way to cover over their expansion of the war from Afghanistan into Pakistan. Building consent for this expansion has been what all the State Department, Pentagon and media propaganda has been about in the last few weeks.

To address your question about why the Pakistani Army abandoned the peace, we have to step back and understand the relationship between the Army and the Taliban. The Pakistani military has not been interested in dealing with the Taliban because the Taliban don’t appear as a threat to them. The military’s primary and existential obsession is with India, and that’s where the majority of the Pakistani Army is deployed. The Pakistani Army knows that the Taliban is, in part, its own creation, and it can deal with them.

Moreover, the military knows very well that the Taliban are not in any sense an existential or military threat to the country. The army therefore allowed the Taliban to enter Swat. They accepted that Swat and some of the other border provinces are incompletely integrated into the country, and allowed the Taliban to exert its control.

The army has been under massive pressure from the U.S. to deal with the “Taliban problem,” and the fact that the Taliban broke the peace deal allowed the army to prove to its American masters that it’s a reliable ally. So now the military has driven back the Taliban quite easily from Buner and pummeled them in Swat.

The Pakistani Army isn’t concerned about what their attack on the Taliban would do to the civilian population in Swat, so what we have now is a humanitarian nightmare, with over a million internally displaced civilians.

Why did the Obama administration push Pakistan to abandon the peace deal?

Saadia Toor: The U.S. doesn’t respect any Pakistani rules or laws. It has its own imperial ambitions and priorities in the region. So it pressured Pakistan to essentially rip up the peace deal, and go on this brutal offensive.

The peace deal with the Taliban that was struck by the ruling party in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) was pragmatic. The Taliban had been upping its threat in NWFP. It had killed ruling politicians and threatened their families. The civilian ANP government in the province also got no support from the army, and so was backed into a corner and had to accept the peace deal.

But the U.S. told the Pakistani government to ignore that deal after the Taliban attack on Buner.

Still, that’s only the superficial cause for the U.S. to back the assault on the Taliban. Tom Hayden has a fabulous piece in The Nation entitled “Understanding the long war” that goes a long way to explaining what U.S. ambitions are.

To understand those, you have to step back and examine the whole “war on terror.” It’s in reality a renewal of the “Great Game” of rivalries in the region over who’s going to control the oil and natural gas resources. Beyond that geopolitical battle, the military industrial complex has a material interest in perpetual warfare.

The U.S. wants to wind down its occupation in Iraq, which it sees as a distraction, and push ahead with a much larger scenario — what the U.S. State Department calls the arc of instability, from North Africa to the Middle East to South and Central Asia. The U.S. is gearing up for, in the shocking words of one official, 50 years of warfare in this area.

The question of resources is central. This is the new Great Game — between the U.S., Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Iran, to name a few — that we have been observing since the beginning of the war in 2001. The U.S. had planned a pipeline to go from Central Asia through the Pakistani province of Balochistan. It saw Afghanistan as strategically important in these designs.

Balochistan, in particular, is under the radar right now, but it’s going to be a key region in the imperial competition. The Chinese have already been active in Balochistan; they helped build one of the ports. To counter this Chinese presence, the CIA has overrun Balochistan. With the help of the Pakistani military, it’s also also been training forces for black ops in Iran.

You said that the Pakistani Army is primarily focused not on the Taliban, but India. How has the recent tilt by the U.S. toward India affected this?

Saadia Toor: The U.S. has cultivated India, which has been happy with this new relationship, and shifted toward a much greater alignment with the U.S. India has made a huge break with its traditional non-alignment posture of the past.

We saw that come together dramatically right after 9/11, when India, the U.S. and Israel formed a block of so-called democracies against terror. We saw the reactivation of this alignment after the terror attacks in Mumbai. Sadly and tragically, the attack in Mumbai gave India the boost it needed to convince the U.S. to pay attention to India’s strategic needs in relationship to Pakistan.

So in the State Department’s Af/Pak policy document, you see that India isn’t considered one of the regional players that needs to sit together and be told what to do. India has bought itself out of this trap. It’s not going to be asked to do anything.

For example, the U.S. isn’t going to pressure India to do anything about Kashmir. Because extremist groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, as well as the Pakistani military, are so Kashmiri-focused, the logical thing would be to force India and Pakistan to sit down with the Kashmiris to work out a solution that respects the Kashmiri people’s wishes.

Of course, if that were to happen, the Pakistani military wouldn’t change, nor would Lashkar-e-Taiba or Jaish-e-Mohammed disband. But it would result in stability along the border with India.

Since India has managed to extricate itself from these regional talks, it has avoided getting pressured toward a solution in Kashmir. But this, in turn, guarantees an ongoing conflict between Pakistan and India over Kashmir, at the expense of the region, and especially the people of Kashmir.

Couldn’t U.S. plans backfire and cause of further destabilization not only of Afghanistan, but now Pakistan as well?

Saadia Toor: We can’t underestimate the hubris of an imperialist state like the U.S. Despite eight years of war, occupation and counter-insurgency, and seeing that they aren’t working and are, in fact, backfiring, U.S. thinking doesn’t seem to be shifting at all.

In Pakistan, the U.S. policy could really destabilize the country. A military coup is a real possibility. The military is always happy to step in and overrule civilian democracy. The reason that it hasn’t done so is because it suffered such a severe public relations crisis in the last few years of the Musharraf regime. It did not feel it could come back.

But given the way things are going — especially all the finger-wagging by Secretary of State Hilary Clinton against the civilian government for being fragile and incapable of handling things–it seems like the U.S. might support a return to military dictatorship.

The U.S. has always been happier dealing with the Army, whether it has been in power or not. And the Pakistani Army’s most important backer is the U.S. state. The U.S. has fed the army, nurtured it and allowed it to become the monster it is. Certainly, the Pakistani military has had no support from below — that all comes from above, and from the U.S. in particular.

The army suffered this huge PR crisis under Musharraf because it was seen as doing the U.S.’s dirty work — which, to be honest, it has been doing for 50 years. So it retreated. Gen Ashfaq Kayani has been very happy to work behind the curtain of the civilian government, because the military ultimately knows that it’s always in control. It will do whatever it has to, and let the blame fall at the feet of the civilian government.

But if events turn in such a direction and the army is successful in winning back moral authority, it could take power. Part of the hysterics about “the Taliban are coming; the Taliban are coming” was drummed out for the U.S., and part was for the domestic consumption of the Pakistani elite.

The liberal elite supported the Pakistani Army in attacking the Taliban. This is just after having pushed Musharraf out of power.

There’s a constant vacillation among the liberal elite between democratic rule and the Pakistan Army. So knowing that the Pakistani military helped create and backed the Taliban in the first place, the liberal elite supported the attack. This is dangerous, since it is re-legitimizing one of the most reactionary forces in Pakistan — the military.

Recent opinion polls in Pakistan show the majority of Pakistanis are concerned about the economic mess, and not terrorism. What do you make of this?

Saadia Toor: What you see in these polls is the split between the haves and have-nots.

The aim of the army has been to win back the liberal elite. Of course, the military would love the support of the masses. But the liberal elite is what matters to them. And on the ground, conditions are so dire for the masses of the people that nothing the Pakistani military is doing is going to shore up mass support for it.

For example, people in Swat say that before this current operation, the Pakistani military targeted the Taliban. In the U.S. and Pakistani media, military leaders played out a drama for our consumption — they pretended to attack the Taliban, when, in fact, they weren’t.

The Pakistani state has always provided safe haven to the Taliban, as well as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, even when Musharraf declared them illegal. That was only done to please the U.S. It was obvious these groups were never repressed. When the military raided the offices, no one was there. When it arrested people, it wasn’t the leadership. This was all a drama staged for American consumption.

In Swat, the Pakistani military was doing nothing but terrorizing civilians. On top of that, those who lived close to the border with Afghanistan have had to deal with the U.S. drone strikes. So the masses of people feel completely helpless and angry at all sides.

The Pakistani military will never be able to win over those people who actually experienced what is happening on the ground. And certainly those people are not Taliban supporters either, since they have experienced the terror of the Taliban.

But the elite sitting in the cities are really terrified of the Taliban. Now, if one could assume the Taliban could become a major force in those cities, there would be something to be afraid of. But that’s not going to happen. My worry is that this whole fear of the Taliban will function to make that the Pakistani elite willing to accept anything else — from the former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, with all of his connections to the fundamentalists, to the military itself.

How has U.S. pressure for Pakistan to attack the Taliban affected the lawyers movement that developed in opposition to Musharraf after he got rid of Pakistan’s chief justice? Now the movement has had to confront the new president, Asif Ali Zardari, the corrupt husband of assassinated political leader Benazir Bhutto who succeeded Musharraf. Does the lawyers’ movement offer hope for progressive social change in Pakistan?

Saadia Toor: To begin with, some of leadership of the lawyers movement did come from the upper class, but the main section came from the middle class–the petty bourgeoisie–and extended on down from there.

So when the confrontation between the lawyers movement and Zardari came to a head, the liberal elite was against the Long March to demand that Zardari restore the chief justice. The elite’s biggest fear is the Taliban — that is, this religious takeover of Pakistan.

Never mind that they have been fine with the general religiosity that has flooded Pakistan since General Zia-ul-Hak’s dictatorship. They felt that it had no effect on their lives; they could go to their clubs and say, “So what if the rest of Pakistan is becoming more and more religious.”

The liberal elite was thus complicit with this spread of Islamism. It failed to step up and make secularism mainstream the way it used to be. In the 1970s, the political discourse was so different than it is now. This liberal elite therefore supports Zardari uncritically because it sees him as the only secular force.

Musharraf made his whole political career by saying that if it weren’t for him, the fundamentalists would take over. He sold this very effectively to the U.S., but also to the upper-class liberals. They very much saw him as their man until that was untenable.

This same kind of thinking is now behind the uncritical support for Zardari, because the elite wrongly believe that if it weren’t for him, the whole country would be taken over by the Taliban. The upper-class liberals were therefore critical of the Long March because they thought it was attacking Zardari, and any action or criticism would therefore open the floodgates for the fundamentalists or the army.

How has the left in Pakistan responded to the military operation against the Taliban?

Saadia Toor: The left is very fragmented and small in Pakistan. That, of course, has its own history because of its complete decimation under the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Zia-ul-Haq. Among some elements of the left, there is tremendous confusion about the situation.

For example, I can speak about the Communist Party of Balochistan and its positions. It has been anti-Taliban and pro-secular, and trying to speak from the position of the Swati people. But the discussion for a long time on its e-mail list was that it should support the army going in and attacking the Taliban.

This is a disastrous position. It does not take a very sophisticated analysis to see that the army stands to gain from this whole operation. The action is designed to build up support for the army and show that it is an effective force that needs more money.

Of course, there are always small groups and individuals which have taken a principled stand.

There have also been a few altercations between the principled left and the liberal elite on this issue. The elite’s position has been pro-army. The principled leftists have argued against army action because the army is deeply involved in creating this mess, isn’t interested in addressing the main issue of the Taliban, and the whole action is window-dressing. So there were actual altercations at public meetings between these two positions.

What should the principled left position be?

Saadia Toor: The principled position is always to be anti-army — not just on an abstract level, but drawing on the actual history of the relation of the army to groups like the Taliban and the Pakistani people. If you’ve been paying any attention to these things, it boggles the mind that someone would call on and expect the army to protect the people. It shows the ideological confusion.

It’s not so long ago that we were marching against the army for its cozy relationship with the US, the “war on terror,” and the disappearances under Musharraf. I don’t understand the basis on which the left would be calling on the Pakistani Army to solve the current problem.

I think a principled position would denounce the army for its disinterest in dealing with these groups, for actually cultivating these groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan, for its continuing extraction of money from the U.S., and for its ongoing mobilization against India.

Now with India’s investment in Afghanistan growing, the Pakistani Army investment in the Taliban is even higher. The Pakistani Army supported the Taliban against the Northern Alliance, which they perceived to be supported by India.

With India giving aid to Afghanistan, establishing an embassy there, and supporting infrastructural projects, the Pakistani Army will have a greater stake in supporting forces like the Taliban as a counterweight. The Pakistani Army is locked in this conflict with India, which is increasingly a sub-imperial power in the region.

What should the left say about the Taliban?

Saadia Toor: It’s sad and shocking to hear people talk about the Taliban as an expression of class anger. At one level, that analysis is really troubling because it presumes the Taliban has a vast amount of popular support. But if you talk with refugees coming from Swat, it’s clear that the Taliban doesn’t. We must oppose the Army, but clearly not because we support the Taliban. A principled left position is to oppose both.

A left position must talk about the disenfranchised and the federal issues in Pakistan, as well as expose the Pakistani military and the entire ruling elite’s complete disinterest in its people. The Pakistani state has never honored the rights of its federated units. [In the war of 1971], the ruling West Pakistani establishment was happy to let go of East Pakistan [now Bangladesh], rather than give in to its demands for a more balanced relationship between the center and the provinces. And East Pakistan was not a small federated unit; it was the majority of the population at the time.

The West Pakistani establishment constructed an image of East Pakistan as a hotbed of Hindus and communists, and during the army action in 1971, the army brutalized the population of East Pakistan, for which the Pakistani state has never apologized. That’s the real face of the army and its relation to the Pakistani people.

A left position should focus also on the developing class anger and struggles among the peasants, as well as among the proletariat across whole of the country, including in Punjab. These struggles must be reported and not ignored. The fact that they are ignored has a huge impact on the balance of power in the political sphere.

If you don’t acknowledge that these struggles exist and that they matter, then it can seem as if the Islamists are the only opposition to injustice and imperialism. That’s simply not the case, as the massive lawyers movement, as well as these many local class struggles, prove.

What should the U.S. antiwar movement say about Obama’s new surge in Afghanistan and his expansion of the war into Pakistan?

Saadia Toor: In liberal circles, Iraq is looked upon as the bad war, of course. That was Obama’s main argument. He was never an antiwar candidate. He was against the war in Iraq to some extent as a distraction.

But now, after his election victory, we’ve seen the split in the antiwar movement between people who opposed the entire “war on terror” and those who just opposed the Iraq war. So there is no effective antiwar movement to counter Obama’s escalation of the war into Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In this context, the American military is having a field day. It’s obvious for anyone to see that Obama has carried over the personnel, the ideologies and the policies of the Bush Administration.

The Obama administration is certainly trying to repackage essential continuity with the Bush administration’s policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But there isn’t a whole lot of finessing that needs to be done to sell this to the American public, since there is a whole lot of agreement that the Afghan war is the moral war, and that Pakistan is thought of as an untrustworthy and reluctant ally that is crawling with militants.

In this context, the antiwar movement must educate people about the true situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It must demand that the drone attacks stop, and that the U.S. get out of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The rhetoric of the Obama administration is disingenuous; the concern is not about getting bin Laden if it ever was. They have had eight years to do this and haven’t succeeded. Their real ambitions have little to do with bin Laden, and are actually much larger.

As Pepe Escobar, Tom Hayden and Gareth Porter have argued, the U.S. is planning a 50-year engagement, a new Great Game for control of the region — and that is not something that the U.S. antiwar movement should endorse. The antiwar movement should not let Obama continue this imperial policy of aggression into Afghanistan, Pakistan and potentially lots of other states.

These are in order of importance:

1) Washington’s attempt to push for a joint economic stimulus program among the 20 biggest economies at the G-20 meeting in April 2009;

2) Calls for a major military commitment from NATO to increase the number of combat troops in conflict zones in Afghanistan and Pakistan to complement the additional 21,000 US troop buildup (Financial Times, April 12, 2009 p.7);

3) Plans to forge closer political and diplomatic relations among the countries of the Americas based on the pursuit of a common agenda, including the continued exclusion of Cuba and isolation of Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador (La Jornada (Mex. D.F.) April 20, 2009);

4) Weakening, isolating and pressuring Iran through a mixture of diplomatic gestures and tightening economic sanctions to surrender its nuclear energy program (Financial Times, April 16/17, 2009 p. 7);

5) The application of pressure on North Korea to suspend its satellite and missile testing program in addition to dismantling its nuclear weapons program. (Financial Times, April 13, 2009 p.4);

6) Securing an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority for a ‘two state solution’, in which Israel agrees to end and dismantle its illegal settlements in exchange for recognition of Israel as a ‘Jewish State’ (Financial Times, April 13, 2009, p.5);

7) Pressuring the government of Pakistan to increase its military role in attacking the autonomous Northwest provinces and territories along the Pakistan-Afghan border in support of the US war against Islamic resistance movements, especially among the Pashtun people (over 40 million strong), in both Afghanistan and Pakistan (FT, April 23, 2009 p.3); and

8) Securing a stable pro-US regime in Iraq capable of remaining in power after a withdrawal of the majority of US occupation troops (FT, April 8, 2009).

What is striking about Obama’s objectives is the continuities with the previous administration of GW Bush, even as the mass media proclaims ‘significant changes’. (American Conservative April 14, 2009)

Policy Continuities: Failures of Stimulus Proposals at the April 2009 G20 Summit

Like his predecessor Bush, Obama’s first economic priority is to pour trillions of borrowed dollars into the financial system as opposed to directing state resources toward reviving popular demand, reconstructing the manufacturing sector, creating a universal health system and directly employing the 5 million workers unemployed in the last year. Obama’s economic regime is totally dominated by Wall Street bankers and completely devoid of any representatives from labor, manufacturing and the health sector (FT, April 2, 2009 p11). In essence, Obama has reinforced and deepened the ‘finance-centered’ model of capitalist development, which demands that the G20 countries follow financial stimulus plans – ignoring job creation through the financing of public investments focused on manufacturing. For Obama, ‘economic stimulus’ means reconstructing the power of finance capital, even if it means running hung budget deficits, which undermine other public investments. The ‘theory’ justifying the finance-centered focus is based on the belief that the US world empire is built on the recovery of the supremacy of finance capital – to which the industrial powers should submit (FT, April 15, 2009, p.9). The conflicts at the G20 summit and the ultimate failure of Obama to secure support for his so-called ‘stimulus’ proposal was that he was promoting a financial centered ‘stimulus’ while the rest of the economic powers – with the exception of the UK – were concerned with ‘stimulating’ manufacturing, employment and commodity exports (FT, April 2, 2009 p.4). The pressures of labor and manufacturers in Europe – especially in Germany and France – have far more weight in shaping economic policy than in the United States (FT, March 26, 2009 p. 1).

The incompatibility of the finance-dominated regime of Obama and European, Asian and Latin American regimes reflect the latter’s more economically diversified ruling class, has led to the White House failure to secure a ‘coordinated’ stimulus policy.

Summit of the Americas: Isolation and Divergences

Conflicts of interest prevented Washington from securing any favorable economic agreements at the ‘Summit of the Americas’ Conference in April. The breakdown of the US finance-centered empire and its negative impact on all of the countries of the Americas undermined Obama’s efforts for reassert US hegemonic leadership (see Economic Commission for Latin America – Report to Summit April 17-19, 2009). The White House already knew the futility of any effort to revive a regional free trade agreement. Worse still, Washington’s argument for the advantages of ‘globalization’ were seriously undermined by Obama’s promotion of ‘financial protectionism’ in which US subsidiary banks in Latin America were directed to channel their financial resources back to the home office, drying up financing and credit for Latin American exporters. In other words, under the stress of the economic depression, ‘globalization’ led to the reverse flow of financial resources out of Latin America, prejudicing US influence and leverage while increasing regional ties and economic nationalism among the Latin American countries.

The result was that the Obama regime’s financial-centered empire had nothing to offer and everything to lose in any deep diagnosis of the impact of the recession/depression. The While House had nothing to offer in the way of expanding markets, capital flows or in stimulating productive investments to create employment. In these dire circumstances, the Obama regime preferred vacuous platitudes and systematic evasions of the most pressing economic issues in order to create the illusion of ‘good feeling’ among the participants (La Jornada, April 20 2009). Rather than ‘project power’ in the hemisphere, Washington was reduced to reiterating bankrupt policies justifying the Cuban embargo in splendid isolation (La Jornada, April 17, 2009).

The decline of US power based on its crisis-ridden finance centered empire is evident in its inability to sustain its traditional client rulers or to destabilize adversarial presidents. Even as the Summit was transpiring, in Bolivia a group of armed mercenaries, contracted by US backed economic elites in the separatist province of Santa Cruz to overthrow the Morales regime, were captured or killed by the Bolivian military (La Jornada, April 20 2009). After three years of US financing and deep involvement with regional elites engaged in political and economic warfare against Evo Morales, and after suffering several electoral defeats, Washington and its regional allies could only muster a tawdry hotel shoot-out between Eastern European contract hit-men and the Bolivian army, ending in ignominious defeat.

The political weakness of the Obama regime is even more evident in the major electoral defeats it has suffered in Ecuador, where President Correa was re-elected with over 52% of the vote – a 22% margin over the nearest pro-Washington candidate, Lucio Gutierrez (La Jornada, April 27, 2009). In Nicaragua, Bolivia, Venezuela, El Salvador and Honduras, the electorate voted decisively for left and center-left candidates, defeating right-wing US-supported candidates. The only exception was Panama where a right-wing millionaire was elected in May 2009. Though few of the center-left regimes pursue economic-nationalist policies, they do exercise a degree of independence in their foreign and domestic policies, especially with regard to relations with Venezuela and Cuba, trade, investment, state intervention and opposition to the dictates of the IMF.

Moreover, the financial collapse in the US and the accompanying economic depression has led to a major crisis and conflict between North and South American with profound long-term consequences. The implosion of cross-border lending resulting in US (and European) banks returning capital to their domestic markets is depressing regional and world finance for the foreseeable future (Financial Times, April 30, 2009 p. 7). Wall Streets’ financial crash has dealt a strategic blow to financial ‘globalization’ (imperialism). Between April-December 2008 US financial institutions ‘repatriated’ $750 billion dollars from their overseas subsidiaries. Foreign holdings of US banks are shrinking as a share of their total balance sheets – especially hitting Latin American regimes dependent on US capital flows. US investors in Latin America, unable to secure credit, have curtailed their overseas activity. The process of ‘de-capitalization’ of Latin America has accelerated with US and European ‘state-intervention’ of banks, which has led to ‘financial protectionism’ where the ‘state’ banks push for domestic lending at the expense of foreign operations (Financial Times, April 30, 2009 p7). This especially harms countries like Brazil, Mexico and Argentina, where repatriating US (and Spanish) financial institutions own a significant percentage of the domestic banks. The withdrawal of capital to the imperial states, financial protectionism and the decline of US official financing means that Obama’s ‘recovery plan’ is based on the de-capitalization of Latin America and the drying up of credit for exporter/importers, exacerbating the recession. The policy implications are readily visible: Obama has few economic assets to pressure Latin America and many liabilities to address.

Given the low priority assigned to Latin Americca in the current crisis, Washington must rely on local elites, which have been weakened economically by Wall Street and the IMF’s declining presence and are now more dependent on state intervention to confront the drop in export market demand. Obama’s economic priorities and financial protectionist policies go directly against any ‘harmonization of interest’ and strengthen nationalist, regionalist and statist political and economic policies and governments in Latin America. The ‘historic movements’ in opposite directions between the US and Latin America are exacerbated by Obama’s commitment to military-centered empire building. While Latin America’s civilian regimes are desperately looking for new markets, credits and investments to buttress their declining capitalist system and forestall domestic social challenges from below, Obama projects the US empire through militarism. Obama’s failed policies in Latin America are the result of structural relations dependent on financial markets (and their breakdown) and global militarism. Over time the diverging composition of regimes and socio-economic policies will become more acute as the recession deepens into a major depression in Latin America. One consequence of this divergence can be seen in the increasing trade between Latin America and the Arab countries, which has tripled since 2005 (Al Jazeera, March 31, 2009).

The most striking indicator of the United States’ declining economic presence and political influence in Latin America is found in the trade figures of Brazil, Latin America’s biggest and most industrialized country. In April 2009, total trade between Brazil amounted to $3.2 billion dollars, while its trade with the US was $2.8 billion (Telegraph, (UK) May 10, 2009). This was the second straight month that China surpassed the US as Brazil’s biggest trading partner, ending 80 years of US primacy. Just as the US pours hundreds of billions of dollars into military-driven empire building, China has steadily pursued its overseas economic empire via billion dollar trade and joint investment agreements with Brazil in oil, gas, iron ore, soya and cellulose. China has already displaced the US as Chile’s primary trading partner, and is increasing its share of trade with Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Argentina – and even with staunchly US clients, like Colombia, Peru and Mexico.

As regional wars and economic depression cause the US to retreat from Latin America, the region’s ruling classes look to Asia, especially China, to meet their trade and investment requirements.

Sooner rather than later, issues of superior economic production and growth trump pure military power in shaping the hierarchy of nations in the world economy. This process of an upwardly mobile economic power displacing a crisis-ridden world military power as the chief interlocutor is now being played out in Latin America. While the transition may have begun well over a decade before his administration, the policies of President Obama are accelerating the shift in Latin America away from US dominance.

NATO Conference: Obama’s Military Escalation in Search of Allies

On April 4, 2009 Obama attended the NATO Conference in Strasbourg in order to push for allied support for expanding the war in South Asia. South Asia, and especially the Afghan-Pakistani (Af-Pak) border regions, has become the centerpiece of Obama’s foreign policy. This is the area where the US is most vulnerable to strategic military and political losses and where he has had the most difficulty winning material and man-power support from the NATO allies. From the first day in office, Obama has emphasized the ‘strategic’ importance of winning the war in Afghanistan, reversing the advances of the Taliban and other resistance fighters and establishing a stable pro-Washington client regime in Kabul. To that end, Obama has announced a massive escalation of combat troop deployment (over 21,000) to Afghanistan, an additional $80 billion dollars in funding to the already $750 billion dollars allocated for the Pentagon, and has pursued an aggressive epolicy of pressuring European and Asian allies for substantial addition of combat troops and financial aid. At the April NATO conference, Obama’s proposals were bluntly rejected (Financial Times, April 2, 2009 p7). The principle allies agreed to send 5,000 additional troops in temporary and non-combat roles, including 3,000 to ‘monitor’ elections in August 2009 and then to withdraw; two thousand to act as trainers and ‘advisers’ in non-conflict-ridden surroundings (Financial Times, April 8, 2009 p.2). What Obama fails to recognize is that the NATO countries do not consider Afghanistan an area of strategic importance to European security. They do not see the forces engaged as a threat to their safety; they do not see the prospect for a quick, low-cost victory. They do not relish following Obama’s proposed to extend the war into Pakistan – thus multiplying resistance to his plans. They do not want to alienate the vast majority of their own population and destabilize their own power.

European and most Asian allies are not willing to pour scarce resources and military personnel into a losing war, in a non-strategic region at a time of deepening economic recession. Obama on the other hand, following Bush and various other predecessors, and embedded in military-driven empire building, talks diplomacy while vigorously pursuing wars of conquest. His attempts to elevate the local conflict into a threat to world security based on the presence of a tiny number of Al Queda fighters in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, is hardly convincing. Obama’s failure to recognize that the Taliban and other groups have access to vast contiguous and porous borders with ethnic, clan and religious allies capable of sustaining prolonged guerrilla warfare, leads him to extend the frontiers of warfare and escalate the number of US troops. The expansion of the war in turn multiplies enemies and armed recruits. In Pakistan, this creates a wider swath of armed political opposition, which undermines Obama’s client in Islamabad (Financial Times, May 6, 2009 p.1; see also Gareth Porter, “Errant Drone Attacks Spur Militants in Pakistan IPS April 16, 2009). Under strong pressure from the White House, Pakistan launched a major military campaign in the Swat region causing the mass flight of 2 million refugees and failing to defeat the Taliban.

Pouring billions of dollars into a prolonged colonial war with little possible economic gain at a time when GDP is declining by 6% and exports by 30% demonstrates the continued centrality of military-driven empire building and Obama’s role as ‘willing executioner’ (BBC News, April 2, 2009).

The divergence between Europe/NATO and the US/Obama is structurally rooted in their conflicting visions of world power: The former emphasize financing their economies to recover and expand exports versus the latter, which operates under the delusion that prolonged colonial wars in remote regions of the world are essential for the ‘stability’ of world capitalism. Obama’s failure to secure NATO support for the Af/Pak expansion underlines his complete political and military isolation in one of the primary areas of his administration’s policy goals. This means that the US will shoulder the entire cost of a war in Afghanistan, which has spilled over into Pakistan, and bear worldwide condemnation as thousands of civilian casualties mount and millions of refugees flee the air and ground wars (BBC News, May 7, 2009).

Iran: The Zionist Presence and Lost Opportunities

Obama’s stated policy approach to Iran was to ‘turn a new page’, open negotiations without prior conditions in order to secure an agreement to end Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program, and its alleged support for ‘terrorist’ organizations, namely Hamas and Hezbollah. In addition, Obama hopes to secure co-operation in the US war in Afghanistan as well as propping up the Maliki client regime in Iraq (Financial Times, March 6, 2009 p. 5).

From the very start, Obama’s policy got off on the wrong foot. He appointed two of the most pro-Israel and virulent enemies of Iran to key posts in Treasury and the State Department. Stuart Levey was reappointed as Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence in the Treasury Department and Dennis Ross (often called ‘Israel’s Lawyer’) has been appointed the State Department’s point-man on Iran. Stuart Levey has led a world-wide crusade of intimidation and coercion against any business, bank or oil company that has any economic dealings with Iran. Ross, who left an Israeli government-funded think tank to take up his new position in the Obama Administration, endorsed a document in late 2008 supporting the ‘military option’ against Iran. Ross and Levey are hardly likely to ‘open a new page’ in US Iranian relations. More to the point, they fit in with a bellicose policy advocating greater confrontation and increasing the likelihood of a new US-Middle East war.

The appointment of Hilary Clinton as Secretary of State will not favor an opening to Iran. She is on public record as advocating the ‘obliteration’ of Iran during the Presidential campaign in 2008 and now in office backs ‘crippling sanctions’ for force Iran to dismantle its nuclear energy program. Her approach follows closely the script of the previous Bush Administration (Financial Times April 23, 2009 p.3).

The Obama regime has not pursued ‘negotiations’ – instead it has been actively engaged in securing tougher sanctions against Iran while dictating the outcomes of any meeting with Tehran.

Under the guiding hand of the Israel-First lobby AIPAC, Congressinal leaders of both parties are backing new and harsher sanctions against companies, “including Lloyds of London, Total (France) and British Petroleum unless they end their involvement in the export of refined oil to Iran or the construction of refineries in that country” (Financial Times, April 23, 2009 p.3). Vice President Biden, in attendance at the annual Washington DC AIPAC Conference (May 1-3, 2009) supported war-like sanctions against Iran. Clearly Obama’s conciliatory rhetoric is in direct contradiction with his hard-line appointments and the harsh sanctions his regime pursues. Obama’s appointment of hard-core Zionists linked directly to Israel to strategic positions reflects the powerful influence which the Zionist Power Configurations exercises over strategic Middle East issues. As a result, Obama’s policy toward Iran is skewed in the direction of serving Israel’s military interests rather than the broader economic and strategic interests of the US empire (Financial Times, February 24, 2009 p. 13).

Obama is pursuing a policy of ‘negotiations’ on exclusively Zionist terms: By demanding Iran surrender its internationally recognized and closely regulated program of nuclear enrichment and abandon strategic allies and principles of solidarity with the rights of the Palestinian people or face a US economic blockade, the White House is rejecting any possibility of a peaceful negotiated settlement.

In pursuing an iron-fist policy toward Iran to satisfy the demands of the Zionist Power Configuration acting on behalf of Israel, Obama is missing major diplomatic, economic and political opportunities to stabilize US imperial interests in the region. Through a process of give and take, Washington could secure Iranian co-operation in stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan. In the past Iran has demonstrated its willingness to support US puppet rulers in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the case of Afghanistan, Iran directly aided the US occupation by attacking fleeing Taliban forces in the Western frontier regions. In contrast, Washington’s close relation with Israel strengthens the Taliban in Afghanistan and Muslim resistance to its occupation of Iraq.

While opposing the Israeli government policy of dispossession of the Palestinians, Iran has declared its willingness to accept a ‘two state solution’ if “that is what the Palestinians want”. The new far-right Israeli regime of Netanyahu/Liebermann, backed by the major American Zionist organizations, openly rejected a ‘two-state solution’, in repudiation the public position of the Obama government during his May 18, 2009 Washington meeting with Obama (BBC News, May 19, 2009).

The US National Intelligence Agencies published a report in November 2008, which publicly refuted Israel’s claim that Iran is engaged in weaponizing its enriched uranium. On the ground investigations by the United Nations and international inspectors from the International Atomic Envery Agency, found no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons programs (IAEA Report On Iran February 19, 2009). By choosing to endorse Israel’s unfounded claims of an ‘existential threat’ from Iran, the Obama Administration has become an accomplice in Israel’s overt preparations for war against Iran. By refusing to use the findings of the international inspectors and its own intelligence agencies to come to terms with Iran’s nuclear-energy program, Obama runs the risk of becoming embroiled in a devastating war provoked by the government of Israel.

In a time in which the US exports have declined by over 30% in the first quarter of 2009 and the economy is mired in a prolonged deep recession, the Obama regime prioritized military relations with Israel on highly unfavorable terms. In this regard, overall economic losses from Obama’s policy of exclusive dealings with a minor economic player like Israel – has led to the losses of many billions of dollars of potential trade with Iran (BBC News, April 29, 2009). Unlike the highly unfavorable US trade balance with Israel and the monstrous $30 billion-dollar ‘aid’ handout to the Jewish State, Iran offers a major investment outlet and lucrative market for US petroleum, agro-business, chemical and financial enterprises.

By following Israel’s blockade and boycott policies against duly elected Arab leaders, especially Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, Washington supports harsh corrupt dictatorships in the West Bank, Egypt and Jordan simply because they are allied to Israel. If, as the Obama regime claims, electoral processes will stabilize the region, then its commitments to Israel and its allies is destabilizing the region.

Instead of pursuing new policies toward Iran designed to secure imperial interests in the region, the Obama regime chooses confrontation which undermines its ‘conciliatory rhetoric’ and, worst, has led to increasing tensions. New sanctions against gasoline exporter could provoke a new, expanded war, which will surely sent the US into an even deeper depression.

North Korea: The Unmasking of a Policy

The Obama regime has undermined the tentative nuclear disarmament agreements reached between the Bush Administration and the North Korean Government. The original agreement was based on reciprocal concessions, in which North Korea agreed to dismantle its nuclear weapons program in exchange for economic and energy aid from the US, Japan, China, South Korea and Russia. The North Koreans complied with the agreement, but the economic aid was not forthcoming, in large part because of demands by the US to include intrusive inspections (Financial Times, April 15, 2009). The incoming Obama administration did not take any initiative to move aid programs forward. On the contrary, in response to an experimental rocket launch of a satellite, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton called for and secured a condemnation of North Korea’s legal right to space technology and called for the implementation of new economic sanctions (Financial Times April 13, 2009 p. 4). These harsh reprisals caused the North Koreans to end negotiations and to re-start their nuclear weapons program, raising military tensions in the peninsula and undermining the peace process (Al Jazeera, April 14, 2009). In the brief period of three months, the Obama White House has reversed almost a decade of peace negotiations adding a new arena of military confrontation.

Afghanistan-Pakistan: Extending Warfare and Destabilizing a Client

In response to the resurgence of the Afghan resistance and the expansion of its influence beyond its southern strongholds, Obama opened new fronts of conflict in Pakistan by engaging in systematic bombing of villages and communities. As a result, Pakistani fighters and their Afghan allies have drawn increasing popular support extending their influence throughout the Northwest Territories. By pressuring the weak and unpopular Zadari regime to intensify military operations against Pakistanis opposed to the US bombing raids, the Obama regime has eroded what little support it had within the state apparatus (Financial Times, April 2, 2009 p. 7). Over 2 million Pakistanis in the region have been driven from their homes by the military offensive (BBC News, May 19, 2009) Obama’s Pakistan policy is an extension of its failed Afghan military strategy of targeting entire civilian areas (in this case the over 40 million strong Pashtuns) influenced or controlled by the anti-US resistance in the hope of eliminating some Taliban fighters among the thousands of civilian deaths. The result is predictable: The Pakistan Army, the main prop of the weak US client President Zadari, becomes increasingly compromised as a tool for furthering US colonial war aims and surrendering sovereignty in the face of systematic US cross-border attacks. By forcing the divided and over-extended Pakistani regime to engage in large-scale warfare against its fiercely independent citizens in the Northwest Territories, Pakistani cities and towns will have to contend with the catastrophe of over 2 million internal refugees driven from their homes and communities. Obama increases the possibility of a military revolt by nationalist-islamist soldiers and officers, which would shift the entire balance of power in the region (and beyond) against Washington (BBC News, May 8, 2009). Instead of ‘containing’ and limiting the area of combat in Afghanistan, Obama’s Pakistan policy has widened the front and implicated a large but fragile client state in an extended war which could bring about its downfall – not unlike the overthrow of the Shah of Iran (Financial Times, April 27, 2009 p.5).

Obama’s escalation in Afghanistan precludes a negotiated national settlement with the Taliban, which confines it to Afghanistan, in exchange for limiting its role as a safe haven for Al Queda. Under increased US attack, the Taliban have internationalized their fight beyond their contiguous borders with Pakistan raising the specter of the US extending deeper into that country in support of their failed client in Islamabad.

Israel-Palestine Policy

White House policy toward the Israeli occupation of Palestine has been characterized by ritual reiteration of policy ( a ‘Two-State Solution’), indecisive and inconsequential attempts to formulate a coherent strategy and capitulation to Israel’s continued territorial expansion (BBC News April 18, 2009). Obama is faced with an openly annexationalist newly-elected far-right government, which rejects even the language of a ‘Two-State Solution’ in direct repudiation of his stated policy (BBC News, April 1, 2009). Washington passively submits to Israeli rebuffs. Obama’s Middle East policy appointees from top to bottom are mostly Israel-Firsters. The Obama regime and the Democratic Party leadership in the Congress are indebted to the Zionist lobby, which rejects any attempt to even ‘pressure’ Israel – thus disarming any of the possible economic or military levers which could be used to pry concessions from the Netanyahu-Leiberman regime. Worse still, Washington supports the Israeli blockade of Gaza ruled by the democratically elected Hamas government in power, thus strengthening Israel’s iron grip on the Palestinians.

One of President Obama’s most egregious foreign policy failures took place during his May 18, 2009 meeting in Washington with Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu. After having made as Israeli-Palestinian ‘two-state’ settlement one of his major foreign policy goals, Obama failed to even secure a verbal commitment from the Israeli extremist leader (BBC News, May 19, 2009). After 4 hours of discussion, Netanyahu rejected Obama’s offer to consider a time limit on diplomatic overtures to Iran (with the implicit threat of a military option) in exchange for the Likud Prime Minister mouthing the ‘three words’: ‘two state solution’! Worse still from the White House view, Natanyahu insisted that any negotiations with the Palestinians were conditional on their recognition of Israel as a Jewish State, thus disenfranchising the 1.5 million Palestinian Muslim and Christians who remained after the mass expulsions.

As if to flaunt his disdain for Obama’s call for a freeze on new settlements, Netanyahu’s regime accelerated plans for 20 new Jewish housing settlements in the occupied West Bank – precisely on the day of their meeting. Worst of all, Obama came out of the meeting displaying his utter impotence – he could not even make a ‘show’ of having any influence on the extremist Jewish Prime Minister. Netanyahu’s brazen and public repudiation of Obama was based on his clear understanding that the power of the US Zionist Power Configuration in Congress and in the Executive branch guaranteed that Obama would not counter Israeli extremism by threatening to decrease US financial or military aid to the Jewish state. After weeks of rumors and stories of Obama’s ‘willingness’ to confront or pressure Netanyahu to accept a two state solution, the end result was a humiliating public debacle in which Obama secured absolutely nothing.

Following his meeting with Obama, Netanyahu (the visitor) went to the US Congress with his power base among a huge majority of members of the House and Senate and top Zionist Jewish leaders, where almost the entire elected US representative body re-affirmed its unconditional support for Israeli policy – strictly on Netanyahu’s terms. The impotence and failings of President Obama in his dealing with Netanyahu was not lost on the entire world (especially the Arab world). Hamas Spokesman, Fawzi Barhoum summed up the general perception thus: “The statements (about a two-state solution) by Obama are nothing but wishes on which we do not much count” (Al Jazeera, May 19, 2009).

The Obama reigme ‘immersion’ in Zionist-Israeli politics blinds it to the favorable opportunities for a grand accord in the region. Hamas leaders have shut down all rocket retaliatory attacks on Israel and called for a 10-year cease fire (New York Times, May 4, 2009). The Arab League (including the Gulf States) has reiterated its willingness to recognize Israel and open diplomatic relations in exchange for an end of the occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza. The European Union has opened dialog with Hamas and Hezbollah while postponing extending ‘special’ economic status to Israel. Even Iran has agreed to accept a Palestinian settlement based on the Two-State Solution. Faced with major shifts and concessions, the Obama regime remains impotent It is unable to put any muscle behind its proposals; it struggles even to set conditions for the resumption of peace negotiations. In the meantime, the Zionist Power Configuration inside and outside presses forward with new and more dangerous sanctions against Iran. During the AIPAC Conference in Washington (May 1-5), six thousand Israel-Firsters set their goal on securing Congressional majorities in favor of provocative blockades and sanctions against companies which export refined petroleum products into Iran (Jerusalem Post, May 1, 2009). The Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act (IRPSA) currently in the Congress and authored by AIPAC operatives is viewed as a weapon the crush the Iranian economy and overthrow the government. By attempting to entice AIPAC and Israel with the claim that a peace agreement with Palestine would lead to a ‘consensus’ to confront Iran, the Obama regime surrenders its diplomatic option to Iran in favor of Israel’s militarist approach – without securing any changes in its policy toward Palestine.

Conclusion: Consequences of Obama’s Failed Policies

Early on the Obama regime’s foreign policy has suffered a series of important set-backs on major policy issues.

Its G20 economic initiatives to secure or support proposals to coordinate stimulus policies based on financial bailouts and larger deficits were rejected. The re-vitalization of the IMF via an injection of $750 billion dollars was not welcomed by the ‘emerging market’ countries because of the IMF’s harsh conditions. The NATO summit spurned Washington’s demands for more combat troops to Afghanistan. Of the 5000 troops promised, three-fourths are to serve for the duration of the Afghan Presidential election (August 2009) and the rest as trainers and advisers far from the frontlines.

The Summit of the Americas was a fiasco for Washington. It was completely isolated in its defense of US policy toward Cuba, the Cuban Embargo and its designation of Cuba as a ‘state supporter of terrorism’. Obama offered nothing in the way of new policies in the face of the US-induced regional economic recession. At the same time the Latin American countries turned elsewhere – to Iran and China, as well as within the region, for opportunities to stimulate their economies. Obama’s bellicose posturing toward North Korea reversed 6 years of negotiations, resulting in the revival of tensions and the reassembly of Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program. The escalation of the US-NATO war in Afghanistan and its extension into Pakistan undermines US clients in the region and makes it likely that the US military will find itself in an unending colonial war with no possibility of a victory.

Obama’s deep ties to American Zionist policies and organizations and their loyalties to the new far right wing Israeli annexationist regime precludes the pursuit of any policy which could open the way toward a ‘two-state’ resolution of the conflict. The hard-line White House position of escalating sanctions against Iran and the buildup of Israeli long-distance offensive weapons precludes any meaningful new initiatives toward Tehran (Financial Times, March 23, 2009 p.3). The result of these failed policies is that Washington is increasingly politically isolated: Alone in fighting wars in Sough Asia; alone in aiding and abetting Israeli intransigence; alone among its fellow nations in the Western Hemisphere in its imposition of an embargo against Cuba. Political isolation means the political and economic costs of Obama’s military-driven empire building will be borne almost exclusively by the US Treasury and citizenry – at a time of unprecedented peacetime deficits and a deepening recession.

Obama’s focus on foreign military adventures, domestic financial bailouts and promoting the IMF has caused the countries of Latin America to turn away from their big traditional partner in Washington and sign up for major trade and investment agreements elsewhere. Brazil welcomed a hundred member delegation of business leaders form Iran, headed by its Prime Minister and composed of a wide array of business and banking leaders to seal multi-billion and co-investment deals. In late May, President Da Silva promoted a big increase in trade and investment with its biggest trading partner – China. The response by Secretary Clinton was pathetic: Instead of recognizing the economic eclipse of the US and seeking to increase the economic presence, she cited the threat of Iranian terrorism – among oil, agribusiness and banking executives (www.presstv.com, May 2, 2009).

Obama’s continued backing for rightwing regional leaders in Bolivia and Ecuador against reformist Presidents, has contributed to the latter repeated electoral victories and the political isolation of the US. Obama’s rhetorics of ‘opening up’ to Venezuela, accompanied by harsh attacks on the dangers of ‘Chavismo’, including unfounded charges of its complicity in drug trafficking, has led to Venezuela’s growing trade and joint investment links with China, Iran and Russia..

Failed policies have consequences. The pursuit of long-term large-scale overseas military commitment in a time of economic depression is self-destructive, self-isolating and doomed to failure. Satisfying Israeli illegal colonial aspirations and military goals sacrifices hundreds of billions of dollars in trade with Iran, the Gulf States and South Asian economies.

The greater problem is not that the Obama regime is pursuing wars that will lead to defeats, but that the entire notion of pouring resources into military-driven empire building at a time of deepening recession is leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees throughout the world, while destroying the livelihoods and social safety new of millions of American citizens.

The meeting at the White House on 6 May was fashioned to give the impression that the new US administration is both “serious” and “committed” about resolving the crises plaguing Afghanistan and Pakistan, which are imprudently reduced to that of a Taliban resurgence in the former, and a Taliban- inspired militant encroachment in the latter. Obama declared the meeting “extraordinarily productive” as the three nations, he said, are joined by the common goal to “defeat Al-Qaeda and its extremist allies in Pakistan and Afghanistan”.

The skewed reading of reality didn’t cease there. “I am pleased that these two men, elected leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan, fully appreciate the seriousness of the threat that we face and have reaffirmed their commitment to confronting it,” Obama said. Both leaders listened solemnly as to reflect the level of their “seriousness”.

For a fleeting moment one did in fact hope that Obama would bring with him more than a new language; rather, an entirely new take on US foreign policy. That hope is already in tatters.

“Obama conveyed the right message last week by hosting Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari. The meeting at the White House reflected the close link between Pakistan and the anti-Taliban struggle in Afghanistan. Indeed, nests of Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and other extremists sheltering on the Pakistani side of the border have become a grave threat to Pakistan itself,” opined a Boston Globe editorial. But the Globe also counseled: “As recent events suggest, US military strikes against militants in both countries inevitably provoke anger and indignation among civilians.”

This is as much as most US media — and of course, the US administration — are willing to concede as far as US responsibility in lethal wars, civil strife and militancy in both countries is concerned. In fact, if one is to delineate a major difference in the Bush and Obama administrations regarding Afghanistan, it’s the fact that Obama apologizes when the number of innocent civilians killed by US air strikes is too harrowing to ignore. Another notable difference is that he has committed 17,000 additional troops to the already war-devastated country, promising more bloodshed.

“I wish to express my personal regret and certainly the sympathy of our administration on the loss of civilian life in Afghanistan,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in her public apology to the killing of over 100 civilians in two Afghan villages 4 May. The apology, however, was obliquely qualified by the US military in comments made by Tech Sergeant Chuck Marsh on 9 May: “Reports also indicate that Taliban fighters deliberately forced villagers into houses from which they then attacked ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces] and Coalition forces,” he said.

So, somehow, the US is still not responsible.

Now the war is flaring up in Pakistan. Hundreds of thousands of Pakistani families have fled the area, and the main town of Migora has been virtually emptied of its inhabitants. Reuters reported that, “Pakistani forces attacked Taliban fighters in the Swat Valley with artillery and helicopters after the United States called on the government to show its commitment to fighting militancy.” One has to wonder who is giving the orders in this foolish war, anyway? Moreover, does Obama genuinely think that the Pakistani “Taliban” can be defeated using the exact approach that failed against the Taliban of Afghanistan?

The escalation in Pakistan is not entirely surprising, however, as US officials and media pundits have been adamant in advising the new administration that it was not Afghanistan that posed the greater threat to US interests, but Pakistan. It was similar to the attitude of neoconservatives in the Bush administration after its failure in Iraq. It was not Iraq that the US should have attacked, but Iran, they tirelessly parroted, hoping to generate yet another war.

What we are not told, however, is that unremitting US bombings of the utterly poor and neglected northern provinces of Pakistan have garnered untold animosity towards the US and its central government allies. It provoked, in some areas, total chaos and lawlessness, which in turn gave rise to the Pakistani “Taliban”. History is repeating itself, but the US administration is taking no notice of the obvious pattern.

A Pakistan writer, Abd Al-Ghafar Aziz, wrote for Al-Jazeera’s Arabic website: “Since the US attack on Afghanistan, the province [of Balochistan] has been accused of supporting terrorism and harboring the leaders of Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Since then, US planes, especially drones, have been striking what it calls ‘precious targets’, resulting in the death of over 15,000 people.” Aziz described the people of that region “like orphans without shelter, and without protection.” Naturally, tribe leaders, militant groups and others moved to fill the gap.

If there is one outstanding similarity between the Afghanistan and Pakistan cases it is the fact the US is using the same flawed logic that responds to most delicate conflicts with bullets, whether those of its own or its allies. If the new administration is keenly interested in reversing the misfortunes of that region, it has to understand the uniqueness of every country and appreciate the untold harm inflicted on civilians by the US and other militaries. Only dialogue and truly respecting the sovereignty of Afghanistan and Pakistan can begin to stabilize the fractious situation.

There are an estimated one million Pakistanis already on the run in the northern and eastern parts of the country. They are threatened by fighting, hunger and all sorts of predators, including US drones circling overhead.

This is the fourth time in less than three years that the Swat area has been subjected to a military operation. However the latest offensive is of a different character.

First, this military operation was hastily launched. The United States threatened to use drones in Swat if the Taliban were not stopped from advancing into the neighboring districts of Dir and Boner.

Second, it is not a mock operation. This time the army is targeting the Taliban.

Third, the mainstream Pakistani media and major political parties are openly supporting this military action. Previously the mainstream Islamist and right-wing parties, including former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N, were sympathetic to the Taliban and opposed targeting them. This time around, the PML-N is siding with the ruling coalition, led by Bhutto’s PPP.

The general public is turning against the Taliban. The swing in the public’s perception was catalyzed by a video showing the Taliban whipping a girl. This shocked Pakistanis. However Taliban spokesperson Muslim Khan defended the punishment and asserted that the girl should have been stoned.

While the media had been dominated by pro-Taliban anchor persons and columnists, they are not siding with the Taliban this time. Ridiculed as Media Mujahidin, many pro-Taliban journalists have now begun criticizing them. However it is the liberals in the media who are proving to be the worst warmongers. Back in 1999 they were the first to welcome the military takeover, hoping that General Musharraf would rid Pakistan of the “beards.” Later, disillusioned by Musharraf, they pinned all their hope on Uncle Sam.

Ironically one finds far-left and Islamist parties on the same side of the fence: both oppose the military operation, but for different reasons.

FAR LEFT AND FAR RIGHT ON SAME SIDE OF THE FENCE

Islamist parties see an opportunity for themselves with the Talbanisation of the society. Even if Islamists did not bag more than four percent of the votes in the 2008 general election, they have been able to encroached on Pakistan’s democratic and social liberties. Only couple of weeks ago two elite colleges in Lahore, 400 kilometers from Swat, introduced a dress code on their respective campuses: girl students have been advised not to wear jeans and to dress modestly.

The far left, on the other hand, considers military action counter-productive. The left views Taliban as a threat to civil society and particularly the working classes. But the threat cannot be bombed out of existence.

In the wake of 9/11, U.S. forces drove the Taliban out of Kabul, but only temporarily. Not merely are the Taliban back in Afghanistan, but Pakistan’s Tribal Areas and Frontier province have gone over to the Taliban.

Pakistan’s leading left-wing group, the Labour Party Pakistan (LPP), in a recent press statement opposing the military operation, declared: “The fight against religious extremism can only be successful insofar as the basic problems of the working class in social, political and economic fields are solved. In addition to developing a system of free education with a secular syllabus for all, this must mean an end to feudalism, implementation of land reform and an end to the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan.”

The military operation in Swat covers up the reality that the Pakistan military considers the Taliban an asset and is not willing to sacrifice that asset to please the USA. While the army is flushing the Taliban out of Swat, the Jihadi-infrastructure (training camps, seminaries, newspapers, charities that front for the Taliban) remain intact in other parts of the country.

THE PAKISTAN MILITARY IS PART OF THE PROBLEM

The Jihadi infrastructure cannot be dismantled by any civil government because the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the all-powerful intelligence wing of the military, blocks all such attempts. Ironically, the residents of Swat who are now displaced by the military’s Operation Rah-e-Haq 4, upon reaching refugee camps find themselves hosted by Lashkar-e-Tayyaba “war on terror” causes mass exodus in Swat.

It was the LeT that engineered the terrorist attack on Bombay last November by eight black-hooded gunmen. Following the Bombay episode, the Pakistan government banned the LeT and the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JD), its charity front.

According to the Guardian newspaper, “The Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF) offers food, medical care and transport to villagers fleeing into Mardan district.” Citing experts and some FIF members, the newspaper asserts that the group is merely the renamed relief wing of Jamaatud Dawa, a group the Pakistani government banned last December after the UN declared it a terrorist organization.

The FIF relief camp is located outside Sher Gur in Mardan, a few hundred meters from the border with Malakand, where the fighting is concentrated. Present in the camp is Abdur Rauf, the FIF head and the former head of Dawa’s welfare wing. Rauf told the Guardian that the group’s 24-hour kitchens had fed 53,000 people in roadside camps and schools where people were living. He added that a fleet of 23 mini buses had transported victims from the battle zone. Seven ambulances took the injured to hospital.

This is not for the first time that a militant outfit was prescribed but remained functional, simply under a different name. Under U.S. pressure, General Musharraf banned half a dozen groups, but all these outfits remain operative only with a name change.

The military refuses to give these outfits up for two reasons. One, a substantial section of Pakistan military, particularly the ISI, has an ideological bond with the bearded militants. Second, the military wishfully plans to use these irregulars in a proxy force that can re-capture Kabul and keep things boiling in Kashmir.

As a matter of fact, the Taliban would not have been able to establish a foothold in Swat had they not been lent a helping hand by Khakis (army). Most importantly is the fact that the Taliban has had a radio station for many years. This radio played a crucial role in establishing Taliban control precisely because it gave them an effective method to transmit their propaganda. In fact, Fazlulla, the Taliban warlords in control of Swat, earned the nickname Mullahs Radio. For four years, the military was “unable” to locate the radio site or jam its transmission. Meanwhile Mullahs Radio was threatening Swat residents by issuing fatwas and intimidating opponents every day after morning prayers. Hence the slogan gaining popularity:

Yeh jo dehshatgardi hey
Iss key peechay wardi hey

(Behind all this terrorism is the military).

WHY PAKISTAN’S MILITARY HELPED TALIBANIZE SWAT

In the wake of 9/11 the hawks in the Pakistan military developed the perspective of “defeating” the USA through a proxy-Taliban militia, the way the Red Army was driven across the Oxus River. Thus, in a short-sighted and roundabout way, the Pakistan military brought Uncle Sam into Pakistan.

Under U.S. pressure, General Musharraf’s regime took some cosmetic measures against Jihadi elements, but it did not touch the Taliban. Every time it was asked to do more, some Arab militants were rounded up and sent to the Gitmo Gulag. However, because of his pro-U.S. policies certain Jihadist elements turned against Musharraf and tried to assassinate him. The Musharraf regime consequently targeted these elements but nonetheless kept patronizing those willing to co-operate.

In order to wage a proxy war against NATO/US forces, Khakis helped the Taliban turn the Tribal Areas and districts of the frontier province into their base camp. The locals resisted the Taliban take over, but their out-dated guns proved no match for the modern arsenal at the Taliban’s disposal.

These Taliban-controlled regions became a launching pad for Jihadist activities in Afghanistan. Then the Bush White House, irritated at the dual role played by Pakistan military, decided to take matters in its own hands. Since 2006, it has been using drones to attack suspected Taliban hideouts in the Tribal Areas. During the waning months of Bush’s office these attacks became more frequent but have escalated since the beginning of Obama’s presidency. “When in doubt, escalate the war is an old imperial motto,” Tariq Ali reminds us. In fact, the drone strikes against Pakistan bring to mind President Nixon’s desperate bid to salvage the Vietnam war by bombing and invading Cambodia.

Over 700 people have been killed in U.S. drone attacks on Pakistan since 2006, with 164 killed in 14 attacks under Obama’s watch. These drone attacks are further fueling anti-U.S. sentiments.

Instead of finding an exit strategy in Afghanistan, the Obama administration is practicing an Iraq-style surge. But it is U.S. presence in the region that will sustain the conditions that breed Talbanisation. The longer the USA stays in Afghanistan, the longer the Taliban’s defeat will be delayed and the suffering of the poor masses prolonged. For those lucky enough to survive bombs dropped by the Pakistan military in Swat, they will also have to deal with the possibility of having their throats slit by Taliban hit squads. Or they have the option to become refugees in their own country.

US tactics and strategy toward the region becomes relevant, only if we take account of the recent historical, economic and political changes in Latin America and the evolving political alignments.

A realistic assessment of US policy by necessity must go beyond policy pronouncements and Washington’s ‘projection of power’ to an analysis of its existing capabilities and the resources available to implement Obama’s agenda for Latin America. In evaluating Washington’s policy, the key is to analyze its coherence and feasibility in light of its political diagnosis of Latin America. This provides a basis for determining the compatibility or conflict of interests between the two regions. A basic question arises: How do the Obama regime’s policies, objectives, and available resources square with the development needs of different Latin American countries in a time of deepening world depression?

To answer that question, requires we examine the recent policies and political alignments in Latin America. It would be utterly foolish to over or underestimate the degree of US “hegemony” or Latin American “autonomy,” especially in light of major shifts in power relations over the past two decades, and continuing today.

Latin America’s relations with the US are decisively influenced by internal events, including class conflicts, which determine the correlation of political forces, as well as external events such as US intervention and outward expansion, and world market conditions. The shifts in Latin America’s political-economic relations can be divided into distinct periods, which provide an overview of the relative degree of hegemony and autonomy with regard to the US empire.

The Changing Contours of US-Latin American Relations: 1990-2009

Any “general overview” of US-Latin American relations is subject to exceptions and variations in particular country experiences, even as it highlight ‘dominant trends’ in the region.

The first two decades from 1980-2000 establish certain parameters for recent policies particularly the conflicts and divergences of interests.

The period from 1980-1999 was defined for Washington and Wall Street as the ‘Golden Age’ in US-Latin American relations. The regimes accepted and promoted US hegemony, following the precise terms of the IMF, the Washington Consensus and a US centered model of capital accumulation.

This included the lifting of trade barriers, the privatization of public enterprises (including banks, oil wells, mines, factories and telecoms) and their subsequent denationalization or transfer to US and European multinational corporations (MNCs).

The US and EU took over these public enterprises at exceptionally favorable prices and terms, which led to the massive transfer of profits, interest and ‘rent’ payments to the MNCs and provided them with extensive leverage over the entire financial/credit-system and access to local savings in the Latin American countries.

On the political level, the incumbent regimes embraced and promoted the US sponsored free market ideology known as “neo-liberalism” and backed US diplomatic and political intervention in the region as well as overseas.

The plunder of public treasuries and private savings by the MNCs and the resulting concentration of wealth and political power polarized society and precipitated major political economic crises. This led to popular upheavals throughout most of the region during the period from 2000-2004. Latin America witnessed the ousting of several US client regimes, serious widespread questioning of the free market ideology and a growing potential for radical structural changes.

As a consequence of the new correlation of forces, US political power declined and its influence was largely confined to political and economic elites at the margins of governance and under political siege from mobilized movements and disaffected electorates.

The ‘third period’ reflected ‘hybrid regimes’, which spoke to the populist demands and critiques of ‘neo-liberalism’ (empire-centered economic structures and policies) without actually reversing any of the unpopular structural/property legacies imposed by the earlier client regimes. The rise and consolidation of a wide range of highly differentiated ‘center-left regimes’ benefited from world economic conditions, especially high commodity prices, which facilitated social welfare programs and economic recovery as well as the relative ‘decline’ of US political power. This decline was intensified by the US involvement in a series of prolonged wars in the Middle East and South Asia and its ‘global war on terror’.

The ‘third period’ featured an increase in the relative autonomy of Latin America aided by huge windfall profits from exceptional prices and expanding markets in Asia, and from the regional political-economic initiatives of Venezuela’s Chavez government.

The end of the primary commodity boom and the emergence of a world-wide depression mark the beginning of the fourth period. Two contradictory phenomena impacted on US-Latin American relations. Because the US was the epicenter of the world economic crisis and its financial and investment institutions turned insolvent, finance and investment fled or were repatriated, weakening the US presence in Latin America and its economic leverage in a region with huge foreign reserves. Secondly, the over-extension of US military forces in other regions (Middle East/Asia/Eastern Europe) lessened its capacity for military intervention in Latin America. While developments in the world-economic and military situation opened opportunities to exercise greater Latin American autonomy, the decline of export markets, the drying up of credit markets and foreign capital inflows exposed the vulnerability of the ‘center-left’ regimes with their dependency on ‘export strategies’. The contradictory features of the ‘fourth period’ shaped the framework for contemporary US-Latin American relations and define some of the key issues facing Latin American rulers and the Obama regime.

Rising Militarism, Financial Protectionism and Declining Trade

The policies of the Obama regime toward Latin America are negatively framed by its three top policy priorities. The Obama regime’s foreign policy builds and expands the military-driven empire building of his predecessors. Contrary to the hopes and expectations of many of his progressive and leftist advocates of peace, Obama has staffed his regime with committed militarists, Zionists and Cold Warriors.

The major difference between Obama and Bush’s policy is the diplomatic language, which accompanies empire building and the scope and depth of military activity. Obama has adopted a rhetoric of ‘reconciliation,’ ‘negotiation’ and ‘change’ as opposed to Bush’s overtly bellicose rhetoric of confrontation, even as Obama has accelerated and extended military activities beyond the Bush regime.

A systematic analysis of the Obama regime’s policies reveals the overriding emphasis on projecting military power as the main instrument for sustaining the empire throughout the world.

South Asia

The Obama regime has increased US military forces in Afghanistan by over 40% — by 21,000 troops added to the current 38,000 — and increased financing for doubling the size of the Afghan mercenary army and police to over 200,000. Washington has extended the field of warfare in Pakistan, escalated its bombing attacks in the Swat Valley on a daily basis and increased cross-border commando operations. The Obama regime has formally extended the US war-zone deeper into Pakistan territory and extended its reach into Pakistan intelligence institutions.

Despite Obama’s intense pressure on the European Union and its allies and clients around the world, few countries have pledged combat forces in support of Obama’s military strategy. Just as during the Bush era, Obama unilaterally pronounces a major military escalation and then expects his allies to follow. The Obama military and intelligence apparatus has moved even more intrusively into Pakistani institutions with the clear intent to purge nationalist officers and select officials who will more aggressively repress the communities, organizations and leaders opposed to US intervention in Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East.

Iraq

The contrast between Obama’s diplomatic rhetoric of military withdrawal and military escalation is most blatant in the case of Iraq. The Obama regime has extended the time frame of US military occupation and increased funding for permanent military bases and related infrastructure. His military strategy envisions a massive mercenary Iraqi army and police force to control the population and repress any nationalist resistance. Obama will double the number of Iraqi mercenaries spread throughout the country under the Pentagon’s command.

Iran

The most striking policy adopted by the Obama regime toward Iran is his adding new and even harsher sanctions to the existing economic embargo. Obama continues to threaten Iran with a pre-emptive military assault in line with the contingency war plans developed by top Pentagon officials held over from the Bush regime. In pursuit of this saber-rattling posture, Obama appointed two of the most bellicose Israeli-American ideologues, includng Dennis Ross, as chief emissary to Iran and Stuart Levey to the Treasury in charge of imposing economic sanctions. Washington is making a major diplomatic effort to isolate Iran, through negotiations with Syria, Russia and China. In the face of these ‘facts on the ground’ Obama’s public rhetoric about offering Iran a ‘new policy,’ is blatant propaganda stunt. The massive US air and naval armada off the coast of Iran continues to threaten Teheran with a blockade or even massive air and naval strikes. The Obama regime continues to fund and train terrorist groups to infiltrate Iran from their bases in Iraq and Pakistan and to attack Iranian government facilities and officials. Israeli military threats to strike Iran are made more probable with the Obama regime’s transfer of new military technology, including the most advanced anti-missile system and ‘bunker-buster’ bombs designed to destroy underground Iranian government facilities.

Palestine/South Lebanon/Syria

The Obama regime’s military policy is clearly evidenced in its unconditional backing of Israel’s murderous military assault on Gaza, its selective assassination of Palestinian activists in the West Bank and its threats against Hezbollah.

The Obama regime, together with both houses of Congress, has backed every Israeli act of war– including its brutal economic blockade of Gaza and the systematic eviction of Palestinian residents in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The Obama administration is deeply infested with prominent pro-Israel Zionists at all levels precluding any change in Washington’s robust military ties even with the far right militarist Netanyahu-Lieberman regime.

East Africa

Obama’s regime continues to pursue a confrontational policy toward Muslim Sudan by funding the armed separatists in South Darfur and by a recently reported air attack on a Sudanese military convoy. In the face of its failed military intervention in Somalia by its Ethiopian proxy, Washington has opted for a new Somali client coalition backed by African mercenaries from Uganda.

Russia/Eastern Europe

Under Obama, the provocative military encirclement of Russia continues via the recruitment of new client NATO ‘members’ among the former Soviet Republics and the building of bases on the very frontiers of Russia. Obama combines a double discourse of diplomatic conciliation while building new military bases, missile sites and advanced radar stations from Poland southward toward Ukraine and Georgia. Washington’s ‘diplomatic overtures’ to Russia are driven by its logistical needs in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and especially its war preparations toward Iran. The Obama regime is demanding that Russia provide logistical support for the US/NATO Afghan-Pakistan war and occupation while demanding Russia cancel its sale of advanced missiles as well as its nuclear power plant contract agreement with Iran in exchange for US ‘good will’…

China

Although the Obama regime is acutely aware of its dependence on China’s continued financing of the US economic deficits, it has nevertheless engaged in a high risk naval confrontation in China’s off shore economic zones. Recent Pentagon reports on Chinese military preparedness are laced with lurid Cold War rhetoric designed to inflate China’s ‘threat’ to US dominance in Asia and its ‘lack of transparency’. Once again, the Obama regime presents the double discourse of friendly diplomacy and aggressive militarist policies.

China faces a US military encirclement along an arc of US bases from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Japan, to South Korea, as well as a new military doctrine labeling China a ‘threat’ to be ‘contained’ in Asia.

Obama’s Latin American Policy

To decipher the real content of the Obama regime’s policy to Latin America one needs to look at the foreign policy priorities, the allocations of financial resources and public policy commitments and ignore its inconsequential diplomatic rhetoric. The first major pronouncement, in line with its global military policies, was to militarize the US-Mexican frontier, allocating nearly one-half billion dollars in military and related aid to the right wing Calderon regime. The entire focus of White House policy toward the Mexican and Colombian regimes over the problem of narcotics and narco-violence is the military ignoring its socio-economic structural roots:

Millions of young Mexican peasant and small farmers driven into bankruptcy, unemployment and poverty by the North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA), created a large pool of recruits for the narco traffickers.

The expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Mexican immigrant workers from the US and the new militarized borders has closed off a major escape for Mexican peasants fleeing destitution and crime. In contrast to the formation of the European Union, which provided tens or billions to the less competitive countries, like Spain, Greece, Portugal and Poland, entering the European Union, the US has provided Mexico with no compensatory funds to upgrade its productive competitiveness and provide needed employment for its people.

The highly militarized Colombian regime, notorious for its violation of human rights, is currently the biggest recipient of US military aid in Latin America. Under Plan Colombia, the US financed counter-insurgency program, Bogota has received over 5 billion dollars, the most advanced military technology and thousands of American military advisers and sub-contracted mercenaries. The Obama’s support for the right-wing Colombian regime is his response to the emergence of democratically elected populist and radical governments in Ecuador and Venezuela.

Obama’s policies toward Latin America are driven by his extension of the military defense/priorities of the Bush Administration, including the economic embargo of Cuba and its virulent hostility toward Venezuelan nationalism. There are no new economic initiatives. Beyond the rhetorical support for free trade, Obama upholds past quotas and tariffs on more competitive imports from Brazil, even adding new protectionist measures against Mexican trucks and truck drivers.

Obama’s relentless pursuit of military-driven empire building while in the midst of an ongoing and deepening domestic economic depression forms the basis for understanding Washington’s contemporary relation with Latin America today. His regime’s military approach to Latin America is reflected in his inability or unwillingness to allocate economic resources and underscores his concern to sustain two major US clients, Colombia and Mexico through military aid programs. Obama’s limited interest and sparse commitment of economic resources to Latin America reflects the very low foreign policy priority it has in the current White House. Latin America is a fifth level priority after the US domestic economic depression, the Middle East and South Asian wars, coordinating economic policies with the European Union and formulating economic strategies and military relations with Russia and China. With these priorities, the Obama regime has little time, interest, or programmatic offerings to help Latin America cope with the onset of the economic recession.

At the most basic level the Obama regime is following a three-fold strategy of (1) retaining support from rightist regimes (Colombia, Mexico and Peru); (2) increasing influence on ‘centrist regimes’ (Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay); and (3) isolating and weakening leftists and populist governments (Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua).

What is most striking about the supposedly “progressive” Obama regime’s policy for Latin America are the continuities with the previous reactionary Bush administration in almost all strategic areas. These include:

   1. Latin America’s very low priority in US global policy;
   2. The US emphasis on military (“security”) drug enforcement collaboration over any long term socio-economic poverty alleviation and drug addiction treatment programs;
   3. Its close collaboration with the most rightwing regimes in the region (Mexico and Colombia);
   4. The continuation of the US economic embargo of Cuba, despite the loss of its last two Latin American backers;
   5. Obama’s double discourse of talking free markets while practicing protectionism;
   6. The US financing and strengthening the role of the IMF as an instrument of imperial expansion;
   7. The US policy of driving a wedge between ‘centrist regimes’ (Lula in Brazil, Fernandez in Argentina, Vasquez in Uruguay and Bachelet in Chile) and ‘left and center-left nationalist regimes’, (Chavez in Venezuela, Morales in Bolivia, Correa in Ecuador and Ortega in Nicaragua) and
   8. Its support for separatist regional elites’ actions to destabilize center-left governments operating from their traditional far right-wing bases in Sta Cruz (Bolivia), Guayaqul (Ecuador) and Maracaibo (Venezuela).

In other words the Obama regime has embraced overall the strategic agenda of the Bush Administration essentially intact, while making several secondary changes having to do with adaptations based on the decline of US power. In addition, Obama has facilitated a few major negative changes, which go further than the Bush administration in harming Latin America’s financial and trading position. While reiterating the anachronistic demands for Cuba to convert to capitalism (dubbed a “democratic transition”) as a condition for ending the US embargo, Obama has slightly eased travel restrictions for US-based Cuban families to visit relatives in Cuba and send them money. The State Department relies less on confrontational diplomatic language and has made overt gestures to centrist regimes, including White House meetings with Lula Da Silva (March 2009) and Vice President Biden’s attendance at a meeting with centrist Presidents (March 27-28, 2009) in Chile. Obama’s resort to “soft power”, which is not backed by any new economic initiatives and which continues the basic policies of his predecessor has not gained him new allies.

However, there is one set of ‘changes’ resulting directly and indirectly from the US depression and Obama’s gigantic deficit financing, which has a very negative impact on Latin America’s economic recovery. The Obama regime is absorbing most of the Hemisphere’s credit to aid the financial bailout. This policy makes it difficult for Latin American exporters to finance their sales. Moreover, the Obama regime’s demands on the financial sector to expand their capital reserves and to direct their lending to the American domestic market has led banks to repatriate capital from their Latin American subsidiaries at the expense of Latin American borrowers — extending and deepening the recession in Latin America.

The Obama regime’s diplomatic and linguistic changes and affirmation of free trade have little substance: the White House continues the double discourse of talking up “free trade” while introducing a new and more virulent financial protectionism. In addition to the twenty billion dollar subsidies to agricultural exporters, the Democrats have pushed the “Buy American” provisions in Federal procurement policy and multi billion dollar subsidies to the auto industry.

Latin America faces a rising tide of US protectionism as the Obama regime reacts to the domestic economic depression by forcing Latin America to seek new trading partners, to protect their internal markets and to seek new sources for trade and credit.

Latin America Faces the World Crisis

Throughout Latin America, the economic depression is wrecking havoc on the economy, the labor market, trade, credit and investment. All the major countries in the region are headed toward negative growth, and experiencing double digit unemployment, rising levels of poverty and mass protests. In Brazil in late March and early April, a coalition of trade unions, urban social movements and the rural landless workers movement convoked large scale demonstrations — including participation from the union confederation, CUT, which is usually allied with Lula’s Workers Party.

Unemployment rates in Brazil have risen sharply, exceeding 10%, as massive lay-offs hit the auto and other metallurgical industries. In Argentina, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador, strikes and protests have begun to spread in protest over rising unemployment, the increase of bankruptcies among exporters facing world-wide decline in demand and unable to secure financing.

The more industrialized Latin American countries, whose economies are more integrated into world markets and have followed an export growth strategy, are the ones most adversely affected by the world depression. This includes Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and Mexico. In addition, countries dependent on overseas remittances and tourism, like Ecuador, the Central American and Caribbean countries and even Mexico, with their ‘open’ economies, are badly hit by world recession.

While the US financial collapse did not have a major and immediate impact on Latin America- largely because the earlier financial crashes in Argentina, Mexico, Ecuador and Chile led their governments to impose limits on speculation — the indirect results of the US crash, especially with regard to the credit freeze and the decline of world trade, has brought down productive sectors across the board. By mid-2009, manufacturing, mining, services and agriculture, in the private and public sector were firmly in the grip of a recession.

The vulnerability of Latin America to the world crises is a direct result of the structure of production and the development strategies adopted the region. Following the ‘neo-liberal’ or empire-centered ‘restructuring’ of the economies which took place between the mid-1970s through the 1990s, the economic profile of Latin America was characterized by a weak state sector due to privatization of all key productive sectors. The de-nationalization of strategic financial, credit, trading and mining sectors increased vulnerability as did the highly concentrated income and property ownership held mainly by small foreign and domestic elite. These characteristics were further exacerbated by the primary commodity boom between early 2003 until the middle of 2008. The regimes’ further shift toward an export strategy relying on primary products set the stage for a crash. As a result of its economic structure Latin America was extremely vulnerable to the decision taken by US and EU policy makers in charge of key economic sectors. De-nationalization denied the state the necessary levers to meet the crisis by reversing the direction of the economy.

Structural changes imposed by the IMF/World Bank and its domestic ‘neo-liberal’ ruling class partners ‘opened’ the countries to the full blast of the world depression while dismantling the very state institutions which could have protected the economy or at least avoided the worst effects of the crisis.

Privatization led to the concentration of income, lessened local demand and heightened dependence on export markets while depriving the state of levers to control investment and savings, which could counteract the decline of overseas inflows of capital and the collapse of its overseas markets.

Denationalization facilitated the outflow of capital especially in the financial sector, deepened the credit crises and adversely affected the balance of payments. Foreign ownership made Latin American countries subject to strategic economic decisions made by overseas economic elites looking at the costs and benefits to their economic empires. For example, in Brazil the closing of US-owned auto factories and the mass firings of workers are based on ‘global market’ cost calculations, totally divorced from the needs of the Brazilian labor market.

The ‘export strategy’ was dependent on the state subsidizing the expansion of agro-business plantations producing staples for export markets. This came at the expense of small farmers, landless peasants and rural workers, weakening the domestic market as an alternative to a collapsing overseas markets, increasing dependence on food imports and undermining food security.

Export strategies depend on holding down labor costs, wages and salaries, thus weakening domestic demand and making employment dependent on the fluctuations of overseas demand. Specialized production in a vast complex international division of labor is central to the multinational corporation. This has dramatically reduced the national diversification of industry and integral manufacturing where all components of a product are produced within a single geographic region. Under the current division of labor, a Brazilian manufacturer of car brakes is totally dependent on external demand determined by the MNC. The strategic disadvantages of this ‘specialization’ in a global capitalist chain of production have become strikingly evident in this depression.

Despite these deep structural weaknesses, inherited from previous regimes, the current center-left regimes in Latin American have not moved toward any structural changes to decrease their economic vulnerabilities, with the partial exception of Chavez’s Venezuela.

The March 2009 summit of self-styled ‘third way’ regimes (plus the Obama-Biden and British Labor governments) met in Santiago, Chile where they studiously avoided even mentioning the flawed internal structures which have brought on the economic crises and promise to deepen it.

The consensus proposals of the “third way” regimes repeated anachronistic appeals for greater capital flows divorced from reality of the current crises. They called on the US, EU and Japan to resurrect collapsing markets and to promote trade. Specifically the Santiago meeting called for increased funding for the Inter American Development Bank (IDB, BID in Spanish), and encouraged the G20 leaders to promote stimulus packages and to pledge against protectionism. They called on Latin American regimes to increase spending and liquidity, to lower interest rates and to prop up, financial institutions and promote exporters.

The center-left regimes meeting in Santiago made no mention of plans to increase domestic demand through intervention in the labor market by preventing industrialists from firing workers. They did not mention increasing the minimum wage. They avoided any discussion on increasing demand in the rural areas through income generating agrarian reforms. They did not consider establishing publicly funded import substitution industrialization, which could generate employment for workers dismissed from export sectors.

In the face of rising food prices, no provisions were proposed to subsidize low income families, the unemployed, children and pensioners on fixed income. The center-left regimes’ proposals demonstrated high structural rigidity and their incapacity to break with failed strategies tied to the powerful agro-mineral export ruling class. Instead their proposals reaffirm their dependence on the ‘expansionary’ stimulus programs of the ruling classes in the US and Europe. Their repeated calls for ‘free trade’ and appeals to avoid ‘protectionism’ fell on deaf ears as all the imperial countries follow a dual policy of promoting free trade for their dynamic overseas multinationals and protectionism for their financial and troubled manufacturing sectors at home.

While eschewing any structural domestic changes that would favor unemployed workers, peasants, public employees and small businesses, they persist in following policies favoring the bankers, export elites and multi-national corporations. The main economic focus of Latin America’s center-left regimes is not internal reform; it is the pursuit of new overseas markets and investors.

In early April, Latin American leaders and their business elite met with their Arab counterparts in Qatar to expand investments and trade through joint ventures. Similar missions to China, Russia and Japan have led to investments almost exclusively in capital intensive extractive industries (petroleum and minerals) and mechanized export agriculture. Inter-regional trade via MERCOSUR has been highly asymmetrical as evidenced by Argentina’s $4 billion dollar trade deficit with Brazil. The center-left is structurally incapable of recognizing that the world depression has in large part undermined the ‘export strategy’; that the elites cannot overcome their internal contradictions and class constraints by ‘exporting’ their way to economic recovery. The search for new markets and investors in Asia and Middle East may provide a limited boost to the export enclaves but they will have little or no impact on the industry, service and related sectors, which employ the mass of workers and employees. Moreover, the Middle East and Asian countries are in serious crises as trade (both imports and exports), manufacturing and employment decline. Moreover, China has opted for a vast economic stimulus plan based on increasing domestic demand. Asia can provide Latin American regimes with little relief from the crises.

The one country absent from the Santiago meeting of the center-left regimes was Venezuela, in part because President Chavez has pursued an alternative economic strategy to the world depression.

Chavez strategy includes the nationalization of key economic sectors like and oil and gas, which increases state revenue; protection of strategic social sectors/food processing and distribution sectors; and the expansion of agrarian reform to increase local production of food. The government has a program of subsidized food prices, a 20% increase in the minimum wage to cushion the effects of inflation and public spending on labor intensive infrastructure projects which has resulted in a drop in unemployment with the creation of 280,000 new jobs in Jan-Feb 2009.

Chavez is pursuing a radical Keynesian program, which depends on large scale public investments to expand the domestic market and social subsidies targeting a large swath of the lower classes. His state investment policy relies on the ‘cooperation’ of the still-dominant private sector, especially finance, construction, agro-mining and manufacturing, either via financial incentives and state contracts or through threats of intervention or nationalization.

Chavez’ domestic structural reforms are complemented by his promotion of regional political-economic pacts, like PETROCARIBE and ALBA, with Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua and several Caribbean and Central American states. He is counting on the growing financial and investment agreements with China, Middle East, especially Iran, and Russia, particularly in joint ventures in the petroleum and mining sectors.

While Chavez’ strategy represents a clear break with and alternative to the center-left ‘export-elite’ centered approach, it still confronts a series of serious contradictions. Venezuela is over-dependent on a single export (petroleum) for 75% of its foreign exchange earnings and a single market (the US). Secondly it is rapidly depleting its foreign reserves. Thirdly, its efforts to promote regional integration have not prospered as the principle countries in Latin America look toward the G20 for salvation. State intervention and nationalization have increased national leverage over the economy but has not confronted the mal-distribution of income, property and power. As a result, a wave of worker/employee strikes in education, mining, smelting and manufacturing have hit the economy.

Equally serious a 30% rate of inflation has eroded buying power for those with fixed incomes and salaries undermining recent increases in the minimum wage. Increases in the price of foodstuffs, over 90% of which are imported, adversely affects the balance of payments. The immediate future could pose a threat to the social stability of the Venezuela.

Latin America and the Deepening Depression

The participation of several major Latin American countries in the G20 meeting in London, April 2, 2009, and the subsequent agreements reveal the political bankruptcy of the current political leadership. The declaration of a major new “stimulus” package was belied by the fact that most of the funds cited ($1.1 trillion dollars) were already allocated before the meeting and would have no effect. The actual amount of ‘new money’ was only a “fraction” ($250 billion dollars) and mostly geared to rescuing the financial sector.

The G20 solemn agreement to oppose protectionist legislation was belied by an OECD report that 17 of the 20 countries have recently adopted measures protecting local industries and restricting overseas financing. The biggest winner at the G20 was the IMF, which was promised an additional $500 billion dollars to provide credit lines and financing. Given the US-EU dominance of the IMF and given its past history of imposing restrictive conditions favoring the imperial countries, the strengthening of the IMF poses a major obstacle to any progressive Latin American recovery. The high expectations of Latin America’s center/left and rightist regimes that G20 would provide a meaningful stimulus were dashed.

On the left, Fidel Castro and like-minded allies in Latin America cite China as an alternative market and investment partner. Yet China’s overseas investments are almost always directed to the extractive export sectors (minerals, petrol) and, to a lesser degree, agriculture. As a result, Chinese investment in Latin America has created few jobs while favoring sectors that pollute the environment. Latin America’s export profile with China is reduced to a primary goods monoculture, highly vulnerable to the fluctuations of world prices. Moreover, China’s trade agreements with Latin America include the import of Chinese manufactured good produced by non-union, super-exploited workers which undermines any recovery of Latin America’s manufacturing sector.

Latin American leaders, who look to China to pull them out of the depression, are committed to a neo-colonial style recovery based on a raw material export model. Likewise, the turn to Russia as a new market and stimulus is a highly dubious proposition, given Russia’s petrol-gas dependent economy, its lack of competitive industries and above all its deepening depression with an economic decline of over 7% for 2009.

The Latin American leaders’ search for a new stimulus package from the US and EU or new trade alternatives with China and Russia are desperate efforts to save the failing elite export model. The idea promoted by Brazil that since the imperial countries caused the world depression, they should provide the solution, is a non-sequitor, especially in light of their incapacity to stimulate their own economies. The US promotion of the IMF is directed toward undermining any progressive Latin American policies and independent regimes, and not helping them recover from the crisis.

Conclusion

Because of the Obama regime’s profound and costly commitment to military-driven empire building and the multi- trillion dollar refinancing of its banking sector (while backing credit-financing protectionism), Latin America’s ruling classes cannot expect any “stimulus package” from US.

The deep political divisions between the US and Latin America (and between the classes within Latin America), divergent national and class strategies preclude any ‘regional strategy’. Even among the left nationalist regimes, apart from some limited complementary initiatives among the ALBA countries, no regional plan exists. In this regard it is a serious mistake to write or speak about a “Latin American” problem, or initiative. What we can observe today is a generalized breakdown of the export-driven model and divergent social responses, between income protecting policies of Venezuela and export subsidy policies of Brazil, Argentina and Chile, Peru and Colombia. Throughout the recession, these center-left regimes have demonstrated a high degree of structural rigidity, making no effort to deepen and expand the domestic market and public investment, let alone nationalize bankrupt enterprises. The crisis highlights the process of de-globalization and the increasing importance of the nation state.

The deepening economic crisis adversely affects incumbent regimes, whether they are center-left or right, and strengthens their opposition. In Argentina the right and far-right have dominated the streets, with a growing power base in the ‘interior’ among the Argentine agrarian elite and the middle class in Buenos Aires. The progressive trade union, CTA, which has organized strikes and protests, is not connected with any new left alternative political organization.

Brazil has witnessed similar protests by social movements and trade unions against rising unemployment of over 10% and the decline in export-oriented industries. But the principle political beneficiary of the declining popularity of Lula’s self-styled “Worker’s Party” is the Right.

In contrast, the center-left will benefit where rightist regimes are currently in power — namely Mexico, Colombia and Peru. But as is the case elsewhere, the mass movements lack an organized political response to a collapsing capitalism.

Moreover neither Cuba nor Venezuela offers a ‘model’ for the rest of Latin America. The former is highly dependent on a vulnerable tourist economy while the latter is a petrol economy. Given the systemic collapse of capitalism, these countries will need to move beyond ‘piecemeal reforms’ (such as Chavez food subsidies) and piecemeal nationalizations and toward the socialization of the financial, trade and manufacturing sectors.

Mass protests, general strikes, and other forms of social unrest are beginning to manifest themselves throughout the continent. No doubt the US will intensify its support for rightist movements in opposition and its existing rightist clients in power. US ‘hegemony’ over the Latin American elite is still strong even as it is virtually non-existent among the mass organizations in civil society. Given the overall militarist-protectionist posture of the Obama regime, we can expect intervention in the form of covert operations as class struggle escalates and moves toward a socialist transformation.