The news all over the media is that the US army “is developing a plan to send around 100 trainers to work with a Pakistani para-military force that is the vanguard in the fight against Al Qaida and other groups in Pakistan’s restive tribal areas.” This report further states that “US trainers initially would be restricted to training compounds, but with Pakistani consent could eventually accompany Pakistani troops on missions ‘to the point of contact’ with militants as American trainers now do with Iraqi troops in Iraq.” Eventually, the Pentagon plans to build a training base and spend more than $400 million over the next several years on this project. US officials are giving the impression that all of this is being planned as a benevolent act of American altruism and generosity to help a friendly country (Pakistan) to fight a counterinsurgency that is threatening its very existence.
In other words, in America’s view (and of the apologists for Musharraf’s and the US perspective in Pakistan), Pakistan is facing so-called “extremism” and “terrorism” on its soil and the war against it will have to continue indefinitely. The implicit message is that the “war on terror” is neither only an American war nor one of General (retd) Musharraf’s exclusively designed political doctrine — it is Pakistan’s war, where a specific segment of its citizenry (especially Pashtuns in the northern area of the country) have gone ideologically berserk (because Islam is violent) seeking martyrdom for “hoors” (heavenly beauties) in the life hereafter. The road to this imaginary Heavenly Kingdom is sought by these misled miscreants by identifying Bush’s noble and cavalier America as the enemy. In addition, all those who support Bush’s so-called worthy enterprise of democracy and freedom are on the death list of these gone-mad Muslim terrorists.
Indeed, this whole approach is absurd. In fact, all this anti-Islamic propaganda is a set-up to plan American military presence in Pakistan that will expand gradually with time and finally give the Americans a permanent military base (or bases) from which to conduct its global agenda of economic-military-political expansion all the way to the Central Asian Islamic States. It is precisely for this reason that the Americans are supporting Musharraf’s presidency and prefer to deal with a dictator rather than a democratic establishment in Islamabad.
If Pakistan has to survive as a peaceful progressive democratic nation then four matters will have to be settled at once: First, General (retd) Pervez Musharraf will have to go immediately; this will deprive the Americans of their vital contact and present control over instant decision-making in Islamabad (in accordance with their dictates). Equally important is the need to develop political processes by which all matters relating to any kind of military or civil engagement with the United States will have to be decided in the Pakistani parliament by a competent and appropriate legislative body. Three, Pakistan’s military establishment from now on should have only an advisory role (through parliamentary hearings) even when business with the US is purely of a military nature. Fourth, in all matters pertaining to American engagement with Pakistan, the media’s involvement as a forum of debate will have to be an integral mechanism of political decision-making in this country. This will promote the democratic process and public input in national policy-making.
However, the immediate concern that Pakistan’s newly elected parliament should have is the Pentagon’s plan to send over 100 American trainers to the work with and train the Frontier Corps, paramilitary forces of nearly 85,000 members recruited from ethnic groups on the border. For God’s sake, don’t let this happen. It is a plan, if it materializes, that will have catastrophic effects and lasting impacts on Pakistan’s recently elected democratic establishment’s ability to promote its own independence, free of American pressures, and to pursue its national interests in all of its political-military decision-making vis-à-vis the US.
What Pakistan generals, successive political establishments and foreign-policy managers have failed to understand, time and again, are the American political strategies and fundamentals that operate behind its military planning. It would be instructive for the in-coming Pakistani government in Islamabad to have an in-depth review of American intentions, historically documented, that the placement of military advisors and trainers is a first step towards procuring permanent military bases all over the world. This is always projected as benevolent behavior of a super-power towards a friendly country (in fact, towards pro-American orchestrated dictatorships and elitist regimes). It happened in the pre-and-post WWII era. It happened all over Latin and South America. It happened in the pre-and-post Vietnam war. It happened in the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and in every nook and corner around the world wherever the Americans could spread their reach for economic and political exploitation and the promotion of ideological capitalism. It is happening now in Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa and has been happening in the Middle East forever. The American appetite for political control and economic exploitation is insatiable.
It is to be thoroughly understood that the US is a country that thrives on the continuation and expansion of conflicts and promotes them globally as a part of its foreign policy enterprise. The plan to send 100 military trainers to Pakistan is an integrated part of the American conflict-promotion venture that would escalate internal political strife and antagonism and would eventually give the US an opportunity to expand its military presence in this country — a step towards its future plan to subdue the entire region from Pakistan all the way to Central Asia.
With the possibility of Musharraf gone, the newly elected Pakistani political leadership has a historical chance to alter the nature of future global politics. History has its own precious moments — visionary leadership can capture this golden opportunity thrust on it by the fast changing events and transform its own destiny as well as have an impact on humanity’s future.
The issue of 100 American trainers coming to Pakistan, at its face-value, seems inconsequential and of rather marginal importance. But the fact of the matter is that it is NOT — consult anyone who understands American history, its temperament, its arrogance, its plans and strategies and, above all, its ability to inflict terror and you will be told:
For God’s sake, don’t let America do it… Don’t let America destroy our nation…!
For God’s sake, don’t let America pitch us against each other… Don’t let America make us kill each other…!
For God’s sake, let’s not sell ourselves to America… This is what the Pakistani people must force its political leadership to respect… its verdict to be a sovereign independent nation.