PAKISTAN

Today, as the American campaign in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province continues despite continued protests in Pakistan (protests which started after last Wednesday’s first publicly-acknowledged ground raid by American forces on Pakistani soil), a few notes on the current political situation in that country:

After some under-the-table dealings with the always-intrigue-inclined US ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, Benazir Bhutto’s widower, Asif Ali Zardari, has been sworn in as president of Pakistan. As Tariq Ali noted recently in an article for Comment is free, Zardari is poised to be a particularly pliant leader, the Pakistani equivalent of neocon favorite Hamid Karzai. Zardari is indebted, after all, to American neoconservatives (most notably, the US ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad) not just for his new position as president but also for reversing the freeze on his Swiss bank accounts (the second richest person in Pakistan, Zardari’s accounts had been frozen due to pending corruption charges).

To be fair, as Graham Usher points out in this week’s Al-Ahram, none of the charges leveled against Zardari by Pakistani intelligence agencies (for which the new president spent eleven years in jail) have managed to stick in court, and moreover, following Benazir’s death last winter, Zardari did managed to form the largest coalition in the history of Pakistan, unseating a military ruler in the process. But Zardari’s shady financial dealings, not to mention his disdain for Pakistani lawyers and his reluctance to restore the country’s judiciary—his fear of the rule of law, as Usher calls it—still leave him one of the most loathed figures in Pakistan, particularly among intellectuals and the urban middle class.

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At a talk given on 11 September at the London Review Bookshop--coinciding with the release of his latest book, The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power (Simon & Schuster, 2008), Tariq Ali offered a brief political history of Pakistan, as well as an analysis of the most recent developments--some, according to Ali, quite unprecedented--in Pakistani politics: last year's "forced arranged marriage" between Benazir Bhutto and Pervez Musharraf; Bhutto's assassination; the election of her widower (and current head of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party), Asif Ali Zardari, as Pakistan's president; and the raids carried out in recent weeks by US Special Ops in the border regions of Pakistan, unsanctioned by the Pakistani government. Pakistan's dependence on the United States (coming mostly in the form of military aid) and the US's "partial dependence" on Pakistan as a regional ally dates back, Ali says, to the early 1950s, when the US was appealed to by Pakistani political elites to fill the vacuum left by the British on the eve of the creation of the Pakistani state. The US's interest in the region lay primarily in India, according to Ali, until India become a major player in the non-Aligned movement and the US, fearing a Vietnam-style "domino effect" in the region, began assembling a network of security pacts, including the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, the Central Asian Trade Organization, and the Baghdad pact, all of which were buttressed by the United States and Great Britain. The years 1958-1969 saw a military dictatorship (that of Ayub), backed by Washington, until mass mobilizations in October 1968--calling for Pakistan's withdrawal from all security pacts with the West--toppled the regime, and eventually led to the secessionist movement in East Pakistan that led to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. Ali was quick to point out that the 1968 insurrection in Pakistan was the only one of the fabled mass movements of '68 that actually succeeded. The dictatorship of Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, from 1977-1988 was, according to Ali, the darkest period of Pakistan's history to date; it "brutalized" the political culture of Pakistan, and brought religion to the forefront of Pakistani politics in a way that was unprecedented in the history of the state. During the Zia dictatorship, the state poured money into Islamic organizations, giving them control of education and communication ministries, which facilitated the spread of their anti-secularist and anti-radical messages. Mass purges of these elements in the country's political establishments ensued. As in Afghanistan, the money Washington gave to Pakistan's leadership during this time went toward funding those who are now denounced as terrorists, and Pakistan during this period (particuarly during the Afghan-Soviet war) was conceived of in Washington as a frontline in the war not on terror, but on communism.

As far as recent developments go, Ali finds that the mobilizations in favor of the embattled judiciary that consumed Pakistan during the last 18 or so months of Musharraf's rule as the most pivotal, and heartening, events in recent memory in Pakistan--though notes that these were so little reported on in the Western press because of Pakistan (and Musharraf's) perceived status as allies of Washington and Britain. He laments the ease with which the PPP accepted that Benazir's son should inherit leadership of the party, with her widower at the helm until her son comes of age. Calling Asif Ali Zardari "the most corrupt politician even in Pakistan's chequered history", he notes that if it comes out that Zardari had prior knowledge of Bush's secret order authorizing raids into Pakistan, his time as President will surely be cut short. Ali also remarked on the unpredecented warning the head of Pakistan's military gave to Washington, saying that if American forces do mount an invasion into the sovereign territory of Pakistan, they will be resisted. And though he is loath of conspiracy theorizing, Ali did wonder whether or not the recent raids, aimed at creating a "mini-war" situation in Pakistan, were designed to bolster the campaign of John McCain. Ali ultimately finds an "incredibly grim situation" in Pakistan at the current moment, with little to no alternative for a population caught between the military and political corruption that have been part and parcel of Pakistan virtually from its founding. With the war in Afghanistan going horribly (and with the vast majority of the Pakistani population being fundamentally opposed to NATO actions in the region), Ali says that the next weeks and months in Pakistan are critical; yet he admits that more innocent people can be expected to die as Washington toys with the idea of opening a new front in its sorrowful "war on terror". The solutions for Pakistan are land reforms, to modernize the countryside and bring the poor peasantry of Pakistan into a national political dialogue, as well as a regional solution involving India, Iran, Pakistan, and Russia (because NATO and the West are so completely mistrusted), aimed at bringing about at least twenty years of peace so that the Pakistani population might have time to psychologically recover, and so that social reconstruction might be given a chance.

Well-Made World 33

Of note in Israel this week was a remark by Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai, in which he threatened a 'shoah' in Gaza if Qassam rocket attacks do not cease; the word is rarely used other than to refer, of course, to the Holocaust. The situation in Gaza worsens, with nearly 40 Palestinians--including civilians, and, of those, nine were children--dead in the past few days. The physical attenuation of Gaza's population continues. Electronic Intifada's Ali Abunimah with reaction.

An interesting article from former Israeli journalist Yonatan Mendel on the coextensiveness between the Israeli press and the Zionist project. Mendel looks in particular at the curiosities and double-standards of language that are scattered throughout Israeli journalism.

America's Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, noted Thursday that the security situation in Afghanistan is worsening, with President Karzai controlling not even a third of the country. Karzai, the Guardian notes, denies the American intelligence assessment (which itself echoes earlier, more critical reports by various think-tanks), claiming that his government in fact controls a vast majority of the country. Declan Walsh finds the explanations given by Nato commanders curious. Those commanders claim that the steady increase in suicide bombings is evidence that the Taliban is being "worn down." This claim--which hints at the fact that suicide bombing is an act marked significantly by desperation--is one never heard with regard to suicide bombings in Israel, which are discursively framed as proof of a larger looming (pan-) Arab threat. Walsh also credits the safe haven offered to Taliban fighters in Pakistan with playing a huge role in the Taliban's resurgence.

In his latest piece for Counterpunch, Patrick Cockburn discusses Turkey's bold-faced invasion of Northern Iraq (the only part of the country, he notes, that was at peace until last week), comparing Turkey in their hunt for PKK Turkish Kurd Gorillas to Israel in their repeated incursions into Gaza. He points out that this most recent development in Iraq weakens the state of the Kurdish Regional Government, which, according to Cockburn, was "one of the few concrete achievements of the US and British invasion of Iraq five years ago." Cockburn goes on to provide another useful counter-narrative to the relatively cheery reporting on the "surge" offered by the Times and its cohorts.

'Pillars of society, pimping for torture'--Perry Anderson on the European Union

In a recent piece for the London Review of Books, Perry Anderson refutes the somewhat pathetic but surprisingly common (at least for Western neo-liberals, that is) notion that Europe will prove itself to be the world’s exemplar of freedom and stability for the twenty-first century (or, as it is alternately known in the minds of its champions, the "New European Century," a terminology frightening in its resemblance to its now-defunct American counterpart). Citing an unprecedented degree of 'political vanity' across the EU, Anderson seeks to clarify what ten years ago were 'three great imponderables': a single European currency, intended to bolster investment and productivity across (Western) Europe; Germany's reemergence, following reunification, as one of the two most powerful countries in Europe; and eastward expansion of the EU. The results, according to Anderson, are at best decidedly mixed, and certainly do not merit the talk of a European 'renaissance' that has been much publicized.

Tracking Europe's evolution over the last two decades, Anderson separates European myth--a Union of 'peace, prosperity, and democracy' (in the words of Mark Leonard)--from European reality--plain old free-market liberalism and privitisation of everything under the sun. The myth, which rests on a vague, always negative conception of Europe as “not America,” is betrayed, Anderson shows, by the EU’s betrayal of social democratic principles (not to mention Eastern Europe), as well as the Union’s increasingly slavish relationship to the US and its imperial misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan--and possibly, in the coming months, Iran. Furthermore, the EU has yet to strike out a path independent of the United States regarding their mutual client state, Israel, and its ongoing illegal occupation of historic Palestine. Anderson points in particular to how the Union's expansion eastward has been predicated on an unwillingness to grant Eastern European countries any sort of autonomy from the British/French/German triumvirate--this Eastern inclusion, furthermore, must go through a vetting process headed up by the UN and the United States, who are in charge of deeming several countries either fit (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic) or unfit (Turkey, thus far) for entry into the EU.

Anderson calls this an "asymmetrical symbiosis" between the EU and the US, which is ultimately in contradiction to any anticipated European hegemony in the 21st century. We don't wish to overburden our readers with a step-by-step analysis of Anderson's argument; we can only encourage you to take the time to read his supremely important article.