PAKISTAN Special

BY: MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY

Various military exercises have been conducted, starting in early 2005. In turn, the Iranian Armed Forces have also conducted large scale military maneuvers in the Persian Gulf in December in anticipation of a US sponsored attack.

Since early 2005, there has been intense shuttle diplomacy between Washington, Tel Aviv, Ankara and NATO headquarters in Brussels .

In recent developments, CIA Director Porter Goss on a mission to Ankara , requested Turkish Prime Minister  Recep Tayyip Erdogan "to provide political and logistic support for air strikes against Iranian nuclear and military targets."  Goss reportedly asked " for special cooperation from Turkish intelligence to help prepare and monitor the operation."  In turn, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has given the green light to the Israeli Armed Forces to launch the attacks by the end of March:

All top Israeli officials have pronounced the end of March, 2006, as the deadline for launching a military assault on Iran .... The end of March date also coincides with the IAEA report to the UN on Iran 's nuclear energy program. Israeli policymakers believe that their threats may influence the report, or at least force the kind of ambiguities, which can be exploited by its overseas supporters to promote Security Council sanctions or justify Israeli military action.

The US sponsored military plan has been endorsed by NATO, although it is unclear, at this stage, as to the nature of NATO's involvement in the planned aerial attacks.

"Shock and Awe" : The various components of the military operation are firmly under US Command, coordinated by the Pentagon and US Strategic Command Headquarters (USSTRATCOM) at the Offutt Air Force base in Nebraska . The actions announced by Israel would be carried out in close coordination with the Pentagon. The command structure of the operation is centralized and ultimately Washington will decide when to launch the military operation.

US military sources have confirmed that an aerial attack on Iran would involve a large scale deployment comparable to the US "shock and awe" bombing raids on Iraq in March 2003. American air strikes on Iran would vastly exceed the scope of the 1981 Israeli attack on the Osiraq nuclear center in Iraq, and would more resemble the opening days of the 2003 air campaign against Iraq . Using the full force of operational B-2 stealth bombers, staging from Diego Garcia or flying direct from the United States, possibly supplemented by F-117 stealth fighters staging from al Udeid in Qatar or some other location in theater, the two-dozen suspect nuclear sites would be targeted.

Military planners could tailor their target list to reflect the preferences of the Administration by having limited air strikes that would target only the most crucial facilities ... or the United States could opt for a far more comprehensive set of strikes against a comprehensive range of WMD related targets, as well as conventional and unconventional forces that might be used to counterattack against US forces in Iraq 

In November, US Strategic Command conducted a major exercise of a "global strike plan" entitled "Global Lightening". The latter involved a simulated attack using both conventional and nuclear weapons against a "fictitious enemy". Following the "Global Lightening" exercise, US Strategic Command declared an advanced state of readiness.

Consensus for Nuclear War: No dissenting political voices have emerged from within the European Union. There are ongoing consultations between Washington, Paris and Berlin . Contrary to the invasion of Iraq, which was opposed at the diplomatic level by France and Germany, Washington has been building "a consensus" both within the Atlantic Alliance and  the UN Security Council. This consensus pertains to the conduct of a nuclear war, which could potentially affect a large part of the Middle East Central Asian region. 

Moreover, a number of frontline Arab states are now tacit partners in the US / Israeli military project.  A year ago in November 2004, Israel's top military brass met at NATO headquarters in Brussels with their counterparts from six members of the Mediterranean basin nations, including Egypt,  Jordan,  Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and Mauritania . A NATO-Israel protocol  was signed. Following these meetings, joint military exercises were held off the coast of Syria  involving the US, Israel and Turkey . and in February 2005, Israel participated in military exercises and "anti-terror maneuvers" together with several Arab countries.

The media in chorus has unequivocally pointed to Iran as a "threat to World Peace".  The antiwar movement has swallowed the media lies. The fact that the US and Israel are planning a Middle East nuclear holocaust is not part of the antiwar/ anti- globalization agenda.  The "surgical strikes" are presented to world public opinion as a means to preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. We are told that this is not a war but a military peace-keeping operation, in the form of aerial attacks directed against Iran 's nuclear facilities.

Mini-nukes: "Safe for Civilians": The press reports, while revealing certain features of the military agenda, largely serve to distort the broader nature of the military operation, which contemplates the preemptive use of tactical nuclear weapons. The war agenda is based on the Bush administration's doctrine of "preemptive" nuclear war under the 2002  Nuclear Posture Review. Media disinformation has been used extensively to conceal the devastating consequences of military action involving nuclear warheads against Iran . The fact that these surgical strikes would be carried out using both conventional and nuclear weapons is not an object of debate.

According to a 2003 Senate decision, the new generation of tactical nuclear weapons or "low yield" "mini-nukes", with an explosive capacity of up to 6 times a Hiroshima bomb, are now considered "safe for civilians" because the explosion is underground.

Through a propaganda campaign which has enlisted the support of "authoritative" nuclear scientists, the mini-nukes are being presented as an instrument of peace rather than war.  The low-yield nukes have now been cleared for "battlefield use", they are slated to be used in the next stage of America 's "war on Terrorism" alongside conventional weapons. Administration officials argue that low-yield nuclear weapons are needed as a credible deterrent against rogue states.[Iran, North Korea ]  Their logic is that existing nuclear weapons are too destructive to be used except in a full-scale nuclear war. Potential enemies realize this, thus they do not consider the threat of nuclear retaliation to be credible. However, low-yield nuclear weapons are less destructive, thus might conceivably be used. That would make them more effective as a deterrent. ( Opponents Surprised By Elimination of Nuke Research Funds Defense News November 29, 2004)

In an utterly twisted logic, nuclear weapons are presented as a means to building peace and preventing "collateral damage". The Pentagon has intimated, in this regard, that the ‘mini-nukes’ (with a yield of less than 5000 tons) are harmless to civilians because the explosions ‘take place under ground’. Each of these ‘mini-nukes’, nonetheless, constitutes – in terms of explosion and potential radioactive fallout – a significant fraction of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.  Estimates of yield for Nagasaki and Hiroshima indicate that they were respectively of  21000  and 15000 tons

The new definition of a nuclear warhead has blurred the distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons:  'It's a package (of nuclear and conventional weapons). The implication of this obviously is that nuclear weapons are being brought down from a special category of being a last resort, or sort of the ultimate weapon, to being just another tool in the toolbox,' said Kristensen.

We are at a dangerous crossroads: military planners believe their own propaganda.  The military manuals state that this new generation of nuclear weapons are "safe" for use in the battlefield. They are no longer a weapon of last resort. There are no impediments or political obstacles to their use. In this context, Senator Edward Kennedy has accused the Bush Administration for having developed "a generation of more useable nuclear weapons." 

The international community has endorsed nuclear war in the name of World Peace. "Making the World safer" is the justification for launching a military operation which could potentially result in a nuclear holocaust.

But nuclear holocausts are not front page news!  In the words of Mordechai Vanunu "The Israeli government is preparing to use nuclear weapons in its next war with the Islamic world. Here where I live, people often talk of the Holocaust. But each and every nuclear bomb is a Holocaust in itself. It can kill, devastate cities, destroy entire peoples."

Space and Earth Attack Command Unit: A preemptive nuclear attack using tactical nuclear weapons would be coordinated out of US Strategic Command Headquarters at the Offutt Air Force base in Nebraska, in liaison with US and coalition command units in the Persian Gulf, the Diego Garcia military base, Israel and Turkey.

Under its new mandate, USSTRATCOM has a responsibility for "overseeing a global strike plan" consisting of both conventional and nuclear weapons. In military jargon, it is slated to play the role of  "a global integrator charged with the missions of Space Operations; Information Operations; Integrated Missile Defense; Global Command & Control; Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance; Global Strike; and Strategic Deterrence.... " 

In January 2005, at the outset of the military build-up directed against Iran , USSTRATCOM was identified as "the lead Combatant Command for integration and synchronization of DoD-wide efforts in combating weapons of mass destruction."  To implement this mandate, a brand new command unit entitled  Joint Functional Component Command Space and Global Strike, or JFCCSGS was created.

JFCCSGS has the mandate to oversee the launching of a nuclear attack in accordance with the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, approved by the US Congress in 2002. The NPR underscores the pre-emptive use of nuclear warheads not only against "rogue states" but also against China and Russia .

Since November,  JFCCSGS is said to be in "an advance state of readiness" following the conduct of relevant military exercises. The  announcement was made in early December by  U.S. Strategic Command to the effect that the command unit had achieved "an operational capability for rapidly striking targets around the globe using nuclear or conventional weapons." The exercises conducted in November used "a fictional country believed to represent North Korea " (see David Ruppe, 2 December 2005): 

"The new unit [JFCCSGS] has 'met requirements necessary to declare an initial operational capability' as of Nov. 18. A week before this announcement, the unit finished a command-post exercise, dubbed Global Lightening, which was linked with another exercise, called Vigilant Shield, conducted by the North American Aerospace Defend Command, or NORAD, in charge of missile defense for North America.

'After assuming several new missions in 2002, U.S. Strategic Command was reorganized to create better cooperation and cross-functional awareness,' said Navy Capt. James Graybeal, a chief spokesperson for STRATCOM. 'By May of this year, the JFCCSGS has published a concept of operations and began to develop its day-to-day operational requirements and integrated planning process.'

'The command's performance during Global Lightning demonstrated its preparedness to execute its mission of proving integrated space and global strike capabilities to deter and dissuade aggressors and when directed, defeat adversaries through decisive joint global effects in support of STRATCOM,' he added without elaborating about 'new missions' of the new command unit that has around 250 personnel. Nuclear specialists and governmental sources pointed out that one of its main missions would be to implement the 2001 nuclear strategy that includes an option of preemptive nuclear attacks on 'rogue states' with WMDs. (Japanese Economic Newswire, 30 December 2005)

CONCEPT PLAN (CONPLAN) 8022: JFCCSGS is in an advanced state of readiness to trigger nuclear attacks directed against Iran or North Korea .

The operational implementation of the Global Strike is called CONCEPT PLAN (CONPLAN) 8022. The latter is described as "an actual plan that the Navy and the Air Force translate into strike package for their submarines and bombers,' (Ibid). CONPLAN 8022 is 'the overall umbrella plan for sort of the pre-planned strategic scenarios involving nuclear weapons.'

'It's specifically focused on these new types of threats -- Iran, North Korea -- proliferators and potentially terrorists too,' he said. 'There's nothing that says that they can't use CONPLAN 8022 in limited scenarios against Russian and Chinese targets.'(According to Hans Kristensen, of the Nuclear Information Project, quoted in Japanese economic News Wire, op cit)

The mission of JFCCSGS is to implement CONPLAN 8022, in other words to trigger a nuclear war with Iran .

The Commander in Chief, namely George W. Bush would instruct the Secretary of Defense, who would then instruct the Joint Chiefs of staff to activate CONPLAN 8022.

CONPLAN is distinct from other  military operations. it does not contemplate the deployment of ground troops. 

CONPLAN 8022 is different from other war plans in that it posits a small-scale operation and no "boots on the ground." The typical war plan encompasses an amalgam of forces -- air, ground, sea -- and takes into account the logistics and political dimensions needed to sustain those forces in protracted operations.... The global strike plan is offensive, triggered by the perception of an imminent threat and carried out by presidential order.) (William Arkin, Washington Post, May 2005)

The Role of Israel:  Since late 2004, Israel has been stockpiling US made conventional and nuclear weapons systems in anticipation of an attack on Iran . This stockpiling which is financed by US military aid was largely completed in June 2005. Israel has taken delivery from the US of several thousand "smart air launched weapons" including some 500 'bunker-buster bombs, which can also be used to deliver tactical nuclear bombs. 

The B61-11 is the "nuclear version" of the "conventional" BLU 113, can be delivered in much same way as the conventional bunker buster bomb. Moreover, reported in late 2003, Israeli Dolphin-class submarines equipped with US Harpoon missiles armed with nuclear warheads are now aimed at Iran .

Extension of the War: Tehran has confirmed that it will retaliate if attacked, in the form of ballistic missile strikes directed against Israel (CNN, 8 Feb 2005). These attacks, could also target US military facilities in Iraq and Persian Gulf, which would immediately lead us into a scenario of military escalation and all out war.

At present there are three distinct  war theaters: Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine . The air strikes against Iran could contribute to unleashing a war in the broader Middle East Central Asian region.

Moreover, the planned attack on Iran should also be understood in relation to the timely withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon , which has opened up a new space, for the deployment of Israeli forces. The participation of Turkey in the US-Israeli military operation is also a factor, following last year's agreement reached between Ankara and Tel Aviv.

More recently,  Tehran has beefed up its air defenses through the acquisition of  Russian 29 Tor M-1 anti-missile systems. In October, with Moscow`s collaboration, "a Russian rocket lifted an Iranian spy satellite, the Sinah-1, into orbit." (see Chris Floyd)

The Sinah-1 is just the first of several Iranian satellites set for Russian launches in the coming months.Thus the Iranians will soon have a satellite network in place to give them early warning of an Israeli attack, although it will still be a pale echo of the far more powerful Israeli and American space spies that can track the slightest movement of a Tehran mullah’s beard. What’s more, late last month Russia signed a $1 billion contract to sell Iran an advanced defense system that can destroy guided missiles and laser-guided bombs, the Sunday Times reports. This too will be ready in the next few months. (op.cit.)

Ground War: While a ground war is not envisaged under CONPLAN, the aerial bombings could lead through the process of escalation into a ground war.  Iranian troops could cross the Iran-Iraq border  and confront coalition forces inside Iraq . Israeli troops and/or Special Forces could enter into Lebanon and Syria .

In recent developments, Israel plans to conduct military exercises as well as deploy Special Forces  in the mountainous areas of Turkey bordering Iran and Syria with the collaboration of the Ankara government. Ankara and Tel Aviv have come to an agreement on allowing the Israeli army to carry out military exercises in the mountainous areas [in Turkey] that border Iran .

[According to]  ... a UAE newspaper ..., according to the agreement reached by the Joint Chief of Staff of the Israeli army, Dan Halutz, and Turkish officials, Israel is to carry out various military manoeuvres in the areas that border Iran and Syria . [Punctuation as published here and throughout.] [Dan Halutz] had gone to Turkey a few days earlier.

Citing certain sources without naming them, the UAE daily goes on to stress: The Israeli side made the request to carry out the manoeuvres because of the difficulty of passage in the mountain terrains close to Iran 's borders in winter. The two Hakari [phonetic; not traced] and Bulo [phonetic; not traced] units are to take part in the manoeuvres that have not been scheduled yet. The units are the most important of Israel 's special military units and are charged with fighting terrorism and carrying out guerrilla warfare.

Earlier Turkey had agreed to Israeli pilots being trained in the area bordering Iran . The news [of the agreement] is released at a time when Turkish officials are trying to evade the accusation of cooperating with America in espionage operations against its neighbouring countries Syria and Iran . Since last week the Arab press has been publishing various reports about Ankara's readiness or, at least, agreement in principle to carry out negotiations about its soil and air space being used for action against Iran .

Concluding Remarks:

• The implications are overwhelming.
• The so-called international community has accepted the eventuality of a nuclear holocaust. 
• Those who decide have swallowed their own war propaganda.
• A political consensus has developed in Western Europe and North America regarding the aerial attacks using tactical nuclear weapons, without considering their devastating implications.
• This profit driven military adventure ultimately threatens the future of humanity.
• What is needed in the months ahead is a major thrust, nationally and internationally which breaks the conspiracy of silence, which acknowledges the dangers, which brings this war project to the forefront of political debate and media attentiion, at all levels, which confronts and requires political and military leaders to take a firm stance against the US sponsored nuclear war.
• Ultimately what is required are extensive international sanctions directed against the United States of America and Israel . 

Mini-Nukes 

The earth-penetrating capability of the [nuclear] B61-11 is fairly limited, however. Tests show it penetrates only 20 feet or so into dry earth when dropped from an altitude of 40,000 feet. Even so, by burying itself into the ground before detonation, a much higher proportion of the explosion energy is transferred to ground shock compared to a surface bursts. Any attempt to use it in an urban environment, however, would result in massive civilian casualties. Even at the low end of its 0.3-300 kiloton yield range, the nuclear blast will simply blow out a huge crater of radioactive material, creating a lethal gamma-radiation field over a large area.

BY: M. SHAHID ALAM

In Pakistan today we encounter a paradox crying for an explanation; it is a paradox, moreover, whose exploration can bring some clarity to the predicament of the Islamicate today.

In January 2002, when President George Bush defined his near-term agenda for waging wars, he fixed his sights on Iraq, Iran and North Korea : the “axis of evil,” marked for regime change. These countries were targeted, we were told, because they were developing “weapons of mass destruction.” In the case of Iraq and Iran , this was only a cover. More likely, the two countries were targeted because they opposed Israeli hegemony. Perhaps, too, the US wanted their oil.

Oddly, Pakistan was not targeted for regime change. Yes, Pakistan has no oil. But the US-Israel axis could find her culpable on several other counts, each quite damnable. Pakistan is the only Islamicate country to possess nuclear weapons; she was guilty of nuclear proliferation; she was the chief patron of the Taliban regime; she has been accused by India of supporting cross-border terrorism in Kashmir; and, on the first two counts, Israel could tag Pakistan as the most serious threat to her security.

Why was Pakistan not being targeted?

This question has gathered even greater force over the past two years; and for two reasons. After being stalled for a while by the ferocity of the Iraqi resistance, US plans for war against Iran are once again gathering steam. In the past few weeks, Israelis, Neocons, Christian Zionists and assorted hawks have again been baying for Iranian blood. Now, the US Senate too has joined the chorus. On September 26, with an overwhelming vote, it virtually handed President Bush the license to wage war against Iran .

At the same time, there is little doubt now that Pakistan is “hosting” both al-Qaida and the Taliban. Now rejuvenated, both organizations are operating from “liberated” territories in Pakistan’s Waziristan . More ominously, last July, Pakistani allies of the Taliban dared to challenge the authority of the state in Pakistan ’s capital. And since their rout there, they have continued to mount deadly attacks on the Pakistan army. Yet, even today there is no talk of adding Pakistan to the “axis of evil.” Why is there no clamor in the United States or Israel to invade Waziristan, to attack Pakistan’s nuclear facilities, to punish her for nuclear proliferation, or to launch covert operations to seize Pakistan ’s nuclear assets before they fall into the hands of Pakistani nationalists, the Taliban or al-Qaida? This is the Pakistani paradox.

This paradox has a simple explanation: simple but also indicative of the malaise that afflicts nearly all the Islamicate world. In Pakistan, the US effected regime change without a change of regime. There was no need for an invasion, no need to fire a shot, no need for covert operations. At the first American touch, almost overnight, a terrible beauty was born. Instantly, the US had drafted the Pakistani military, nay the Pakistani state, to wage war against Islamic “extremists.” The US had gained an army: and Pakistan ’s military dictators had gained longevity.

The ease with which Pakistan’s sovereignty was terminated, the speed of this transaction, and no less the completeness of the foreign take-over, speaks volumes about Pakistan’s history, the nature of her ruling elites, the timbre of her “national” institutions, and the alienation, degradation and dereliction of Pakistan’s middle classes. Within a few years of her birth, the state was privatized by landlords, generals and bureaucrats: three factions created, nurtured and guided into positions of leadership by the British.

Instead of mobilizing the people, instead of educating them in the values of citizenship, instead of enriching Islamic traditions, instead of building a national economy, instead of developing indigenous technologies, Pakistan’s ruling elites built bridges to the United States, to the US military, to foreign corporations, and to US-dominated multilateral institutions to create a technologically weak, a debt-ridden, and financially dependent economy controlled from outside through local elites.

For sixty years, Pakistan has been managed by different factions of its ruling elites — the military, bureaucracy, landlords — taking turns to plunder the people, competing against each other to serve foreign masters, at first covertly, but of late more openly, more blatantly, more treasonously. So complete now is the alienation of the domestic elites from their own society that their bidding against each other, the domestic competition to sell the institutions of the “state” is now conducted in open view.

In order to stifle resistance, this dependent state methodically creates a weak, alienated, demoralized, and corrupt society. By failing to provide education, skills, and jobs, the state forces people to look outward, to turn to foreign shores for education, for jobs, and cultural inspiration. For every person who leaves for foreign shores, there are ten who are forced to stay at home, and whose education, careers, and very lives are organized around the chance of leaving the country. Pakistani society increasingly consists of would-be migrants waiting for their chance to dash out of the country’s airports, ports and border-crossings.

It is the middle classes now who ape the elites, who in turn have been aping their foreign masters for more than a century. As English increasingly becomes the passport to success, they are forsaking their native languages. In the colonial era, the elites sent their children to the grammar schools, the missionary schools, and then they were packed off to Cambridge and Oxford . On succeeding their white masters, these “whitened” natives brandished their command of English as the visible symbol of their new elevation to power. It marked them off from the “natives” over whom they now ruled. A new caste had emerged, the native “whites” segregated from their “backward” cousins by their alien language, their affluence, their Western loyalties and dress, their moral turpitude, and their Western vacations and honeymoons.

The most damaging product of this alienation has been a deepening intellectual sterility. Despite the proliferation of degrees, every new generation of Pakistanis is intellectually more sterile than its predecessor. Each new generation has eagerly surrendered the traditional virtues of its predecessor without acquiring the virtues of its masters, their scholarship, their energy, and the humanity which they practice among their own kind. The aping and mimicking of the diseases of foreign masters is far easier than the cultivation of the virtues that distinguish them, that are the sources of their power over their dark subjects.

Yet, resistance revives in some troubled hearts. At some point, this wholesale degradation of a society, this prostitution of national institutions, this miscegenation of foreign and native elites, produces revulsion in a few sensitive hearts. It gives birth to anger, art, struggle, new theories, and hopes for regenerating society. But this regeneration is arduous. The mongrel elites have raised many barriers, they have strung barbed-wire fences with watch-towers across the country’s landscape. They have trained a mercenary military and perfidious police, led by officers schooled in the arts of repressing dissent. However, it is not these overt forces of repression alone that weaken and deflect the resistance.

The resistance can stand up to repression if it resonates with the people, if it can engage, stir, and mobilize them behind the cause of justice. But the alienation in society is so deep, the demoralization and apathy so complete that the few sensitive souls who choose to resist are left to twist in the wind, unsupported, unshielded, to be singled out and decapitated by the mercenary military and police.

In Pakistan now, as in much of the Islamic world, the alienation of the institutions of the state has reached its climax. In Iraq, the United States could not have restored colonialism without planting her boots on the ground. In Iran too, they dare not dream of capturing the state without boots on the ground. In Pakistan , however, the task of regime change has been truly a cake walk: it was achieved with Pakistani boots on the ground.

A US weekly, Newsweek, has written that the Pentagon “wants [Musharraf] to turn much of Pakistan ’s military into a counterinsurgency force, trained and equipped to combat Al-Qaeda and its extremist supporters along the Afghan border.” There, you have it, dear Pakistanis, in clear, bold print. What is this if not a plan for plunging your country into civil war, into a carnage far worse than what the Algerians have gone through?

How is it that the Pentagon dares to make such outlandish demands on the Pakistani army? The answer is simple. They do it because they know for a certainty that Pakistan’s elites are eager to deliver; they know that Pakistan’s mercenary-generals compete for American patronage; and Pakistan’s scavenger-politicians crawl to Washington begging not to be left out of the deals to sell the Pakistani state. Worse, until recently, Pakistanis have watched from the sidelines, or turned away, and let it happen.

For the first time now, a tiny segment of Pakistan ’s middle classes, the lawyers — though still outfitted in the ridiculous black attire given them by their erstwhile English masters — have stuck out their necks against the mercenary-generals, against the mercenary military, against the commodification of their state. It is an auspicious turning point for Pakistan .

It is a sign that the Iqbalian spirit stirs a few Pakistanis. And observe what it has already accomplished. A few hundred Iqbalians have put the mercenary-generals on notice. The mercenary-generals postured, they scowled, they threatened, in desperation they turned to their masters for advice, they called up the scavenger-politicians to provide civilian cover. In short, for a brief moment, there was panic in the top ranks of the mercenary military.

For a brief moment only. The mercenary generals will not surrender so soon, or so easily. Indeed, it does not matter if one batch of mercenary-generals departs the scene: many more wait in the wings to take their place. If Pakistanis wish to avert civil war — and a bloody civil war it will be — then they must steel their hearts, they must gather courage, they must plan, they must organize, they must mobilize to take back their country, their state, and their military: to take it back definitively and with a clear understanding of how to make this nationalist appropriation irrevocable.

The lawyers alone cannot do it for them; when they become too troublesome, the mercenary state will start disappearing the lawyers. Nevertheless, change will come to Pakistan : for those who can read the signs, the writing is on the wall. Pakistan’s mercenary elites have hitched their wagon to the US “global war on terror.” The United States will direct this war, and it will be a dirty war. As in Iraq, American experts in counterinsurgency will not hesitate to turn Pakistan into a Guatemala or worse.

Will Pakistanis dare to exert to make a stand for the change they want? If they choose to stay unconcerned, unthinking, disengaged, impassive, change will be imposed on them by the mercenary state. They will find themselves being dragged through a dirty war: many will loose their lives. Disappearances, executions, arbitrary arrests, in short, state terror will become common: the order of the day.

If Pakistanis dare to change themselves, they can choose the change they want: to make the state work for them not against them, to reclaim history, to become the historical force that produces change. However, this change demands a price, a price in will, values and sacrifice. Pakistanis must search their hearts to revive the fire they have smothered for too long: the will to struggle, to resist, to live in dignity, connected to their history, drawing on their best traditions to forge a future that they will control. If they fail now, the game is lost. It may be lost forever.

Pakistanis can learn from Latin America , whose oppressed peoples — in particular, their indigenous people — after five centuries of oppression are raising their heads everywhere. Together, they are throwing off the shackles of the predatory state, the mercenary state that collaborated with a succession of Empires to destroy their lives, their hopes, their struggles. Today, they are reclaiming the state in Venezuela, in Bolivia, in Ecuador, in Nicaragua , and they are getting ever closer to victory across the entire continent.

The United States today is powerless to roll back these revolutions. It is powerless because the struggles of oppressed peoples are interconnected, interwoven. When the dispossessed resist in Palestine, when Iraqis battle behemoths in their country, when underdogs make a stand in Lebanon, when Afghan peasants run circles around armies of occupation: in short, when the wretched of the earth tie down the Empire in West Asia, they raise hopes of liberation in every quarter of the world, even amongst the oppressed classes in the very centers of power.

The struggles of the past six years in West Asia have quickened the pace of history: they have opened a window for the liberation of the oppressed peoples everywhere. Just when the Empire was hatching its Project for the New American Century, history decided otherwise. It will be a new century alright, but there is scarce a doubt six years later that it will not be an American century, a reality that Americans should have the courage to accept graciously. Instead, it will be multi polar century, with many centers of power, scattered across all the continents of the world. Once again, power is being decentralized, and we can hope that this new round of decentralization will produce more enduring results than the last one. The men and women leading the new decentralization are a new breed: they have not been chosen by their erstwhile masters.

It is for Pakistanis now to seize this historical moment, to join the forward march of history. The historic changes underway in Latin America, and the new forms of resistance being forged in Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Palestine are delivering new hope, new ideas, and new inspiration to oppressed peoples everywhere. Global empires are too costly to be sustained anymore: that is the singular message that Iraqis and Afghans are delivering to the world.

Will Pakistanis dare to join this universal struggle, harness its power, and seize the scales of justice? Will they follow the lead of the brave lawyers so that the streets of every city, every town, every village in Pakistan reverberate with their cries for honor and justice? Or will they choose to lengthen their vegetative seance, embrace ignominious death, and become the litter in the graveyard of history, their epitaph written by the foreign masters they have served for so long and so well?

These questions are historical: they are also urgent. The choices before Pakistanis are clear: it is life or death. If they fail to act now, they will concede the stage to the Taliban and the mercenary elites. May the Pakistanis ponder deeply for an answer: may they choose to walk in the paths of justice: and may their difficult journey be victorious.

M. Shahid Alam is professor of economics at Northeastern University . He is author of Challenging the New Orientalism.

BY: COL(RETD) DANIEL SMITH

A prominent politician of a “third world” country is killed by “unknown foreign parties.”

The dead politician either was at odds with the ruling party or power center or had recently offended an ethnic or sectarian minority.

The assassination threatens to or actually paralyzes the country’s political life.

At least titular control of the political party of the deceased former leader passes to the next of kin, with results very uncertain for weeks or months.

International pressure forces the country’s head of state to accept international “technical” assistance in the investigation. 

In the end, nothing is proven, nothing is resolved.

Indira Gandhi: In October 1984, when India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was killed by two of her Sikh bodyguards in retaliation for ordering the Indian army’s assault on the Sikh’s Golden Temple in Amritsar , more than 1,000 rioters were dead within hours. Indira’s son Rajiv succeeded his mother. (Rajiv was later killed by a bomb while campaigning in 1991 in Tamil Nadu by suspected agents of Sri Lanka ’s rebel Tamil Tigers who resented Rajiv’s dispatch of troops when he was prime minister to intervene as “peace-makers” in the island’s civil war. Sonia, Rajiv’s widow, was instrumental in rebuilding Rajiv’s Congress Party and led them to victory in 2004. But as she was foreign-born, she was unable to become prime minister.)

Kabila, Hariri:In January 2001, just days after finally dislodging armed opposition from Kinshasa , The Democratic Republic of Congo’s new leader, Laurent Kabila, was shot in the presidential palace. His son, Joseph, inherited a war-torn country that, seven years on and with a 17,000-strong United Nations peacekeeping force in the country, is still verging on state failure.

Musharraf and Blame: And that brings us back to December 27, 2007 in Pakistan, the day Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Rawalpindi – less than two weeks before the January 8 parliamentary elections.

It could hardly do otherwise. The alternatives, which range from “mere” incompetence to active collusion with or even direction of extremists, aren’t just bad. They’re disastrous.

And More Blame: Spokespersons for the Musharraf government, thrown on the defensive by accusations that government-provided security for Bhutto was not only lax but totally non-existent, gave conflicting accounts of the cause of death. Then they were entirely discredited by video footage of the attack obtained from a number of private citizens who had come to see and hear the former prime minister. Moreover, in a CBS “60 Minutes” interview aired January 6, Musharraf blamed Bhutto for ignoring threats to her life and taking unnecessary and provocative risks.

Yet, days later, Musharraf announced that Britain’s New Scotland Yard would provide technical assistance to Pakistani investigators as the latter tried to piece together what happened and why the 100 security personnel present at the campaign stop (as asserted by Musharraf in a meeting with Western correspondents) did not thwart the assassination.

Pakistani Peacekeepers: Another possible effect could be felt at the United Nations. The question is whether Islamabad will continue to be willing and able to supply large numbers of troops for the 20 current operations run by the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations. With 10,623 troops, observers, and police detailed to UN peacekeeping, Pakistan is the largest source (just under 13% of the total deployed “blue helmets”) of manpower for these efforts. It may come down to whom would Pakistan want to offend least – the United States in Afghanistan or the UN around the globe – should Islamabad decide to move more forces into internal security.

Nine Months Later: But these were thoughts enunciated nine months before Musharraf took off his general’s uniform, nine months before Bhutto’s assassination, nine months before Musharraf’s world turned upside down.

BY: NIALL FERGUSON

Future historians will look back on the current decade as a turning point comparable with that of the Seventies. No, not the 1970s. This is not going to be another piece pointing out the coincidence of an unpopular Republican president, soaring oil prices, a sagging dollar and an unwinnable faraway war. I am talking about the 1870s.

At first sight, the resemblances across 130 years may not seem obvious. The 1870s were a time when conservative leaders such as Benjamin Disraeli, British prime minister, were powerful and popular. It was a time of falling commodity prices, after the financial crash of 1873 and the opening up of the American plains to agriculture. And it was an era of currency stability, as one country after another followed the British lead by pegging to gold. Yet, on closer inspection, we are indeed living through a global shift in the balance of power very similar to that which occurred in the 1870s.

This is the story of how an over-extended empire sought to cope with an external debt crisis by selling off revenue streams to foreign investors. The empire that suffered these setbacks in the 1870s was the Ottoman empire . Today it is the US . In the aftermath of the Crimean war, both the sultan in Constantinople and his Egyptian vassal, the khedive, had begun to accumulate huge domestic and foreign debts. Between 1855 and 1875, the Ottoman debt increased by a factor of 28. As a percentage of expenditure, interest payments and amortization rose from 15 percent in 1860 to 50 per cent in 1875. The Egyptian case was similar: between 1862and 1876, the total public debt rose from EPounds 3.3m to EPounds 76m. The 1876 budget showed debt charges accounting for more than half of all expenditure.

The loans had been made for both military and economic reasons: to support the Ottoman military position during and after the Crimean war and to finance railway and canal construction, including the building of the Suez canal , which had opened in 1869. But a dangerously high proportion of the proceeds had been squandered on conspicuous consumption, symbolized by Sultan Abdul Mejid's luxurious Dolmabahce palace and the spectacular world premiere of Aida at the Cairo Opera House in 1871. In the wake of the financial crisis that struck the European and American stock markets in 1873, a Middle Eastern debt crisis was inevitable. In October 1875 the Ottoman government declared bankruptcy.

The crisis had two distinct financial consequences: the sale of the khedive's shares in the Suez canal to the British government (for Pounds 4m, famously advanced to Disraeli by the Rothschilds) and the hypothecation of certain Ottoman tax revenues for debt service under the auspices of an international Administration of the Ottoman Public Debt, on which European bondholders were represented. The critical point is that the debt crisis necessitated the sale or transfer of Middle Eastern revenue streams to Europeans.

The US debt crisis has taken a different form, to be sure. External liabilities have been run up by a combination of government and household dissaving. It is not the public sector that is defaulting but sub prime mortgage borrowers. As in the 1870s, though, the upshot of this debt crisis is the sale of assets and revenue streams to foreign creditors. This time, however, creditors are buying bank shares not canal shares. And the resulting shift of power is from west to east.

Since September, Middle Eastern and east Asian sovereign wealth funds have made a succession of investments in four US banks: Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch. Most commentators have been inclined to welcome this global bail-out: better to bring in foreign capital than to shrink balance sheets by reducing lending. Yet we need to recognize that these "capital injections" represent a transfer of the revenues from the US financial services industry into the hands of foreign governments. This is happening at a time when the gap between eastern and western incomes is narrowing at an unprecedented pace.

In other words, as in the 1870s the balance of financial power is shifting. Then, the move was from the ancient oriental empires (not only the Ottoman but also the Persian and Chinese) to western Europe. Today the shift is from the US-and other western financial centres - to the autocracies of the Middle East and east Asia.

In Disraeli's day, the debt crisis turned out to have political as well as financial implications, presaging a reduction not just in income but also in sovereignty.

In the case of Egypt , what began with asset sales continued with the creation of a foreign commission to manage the public debt, the installation of an "international" government and finally, in 1882, to British military intervention and the country's transformation into a de facto colony. In the case of Turkey , the debt crisis was followed by the sultan's abdication and Russian military intervention, which dealt a lethal blow to the Ottoman position in the Balkans.

It remains to be seen how quickly today's financial shift will be followed by a comparable geopolitical shift in favour of the new export and energy empires of the east. Suffice to say that the historical analogy does not bode well for America's quasi-imperial network of bases and allies across the Middle East and Asia . Debtor empires sooner or later have to do more than just sell shares to satisfy their creditors.

The writer is a professor at Harvard University and Harvard Business School and a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford.

BY: SHIREEN M MAZARI

While much is being made of Pakistan's nuclear assets, facts on the ground reveal the US to be the most dangerous nuclear state in the world with a track record of failed command structures and failed safety systems for its reactors. Without making any value judgements, I want to simply present the data available from public international sources regarding the nuclear track record of the US.

First, and most recent, was the horrifying revelation that a US B52 bomber flew across the US carrying six nuclear-armed cruise missiles which led to a "Bent Spear" alert -- a code for an incident involving live nuclear weapons. Each of these W80 nuclear warheads had the destructive power of 10 Hiroshima bombs. According to the published data, the nukes were "lost" for 36 hours after the plane took off on August 29, 2007, from a base in North Dakota. So while western, including the US, analysts raise the bogey of the possibility of "loose nukes" in Pakistan in an almost hysterical fashion, we already have the reality of loose nukes in the US.

What is even more disturbing about these loose US nukes is the lack of security that seems to surround US nuclear weapons. Apparently, according to reports, the US airmen had replaced official procedures for handling these missiles with an "informally devised plan of their own". Given the extremist and psychologically disturbed personnel within the US military -- remember Abu Ghraib -- and the tendency of the US to bring in the private sector into the management of security, the international community should have some contingency plan to prevent the loose nukes incident being repeated again in the US. The danger is even more acute because religious extremists in the form of born-again Christians actually hold office in that country.

Nor is the nuclear safety problem in the US only related to loose nukes though that is certainly at the top of the threat spectrum. The other serious issue relating to US nuclear safety is of missing fissile and other nuclear-related material -- especially since unlike in Pakistan, in the US the private sector is a major part of the nuclear industry. Even a cursory look at the disappearance of nuclear-related material from US facilities should be enough to show the threat of nuclear terrorism from the US.

For instance, between 1957 and 1965, 100 kilograms of uranium 235 disappeared from a nuclear recycling plant in Apollo, Pennsylvania. This was weapons grade material and enough to produce more than one bomb. The president of the firm was reported to have close ties with Israel, but the mystery of the disappearance of this fissile material was never solved. In fact, US officials showed little reaction to Euratom's report of the missing uranium on the grounds that the material would have to undergo complicated reprocessing to be turned into a weapon. According to a report in Time magazine (April 12, 1976), Israel had operationalized a reprocessing facility in 1969, and had used it to produce a limited number of nuclear weapons.

Nor was this a one-off incident. Again, in 1979, nine kilograms of weapons grade uranium was found missing from a nuclear fuel plant in Erwin, Tennessee. More recently, in July 2004, an inventory of US classified weapons data revealed that four hard disk drives were missing. While two of the drives were subsequently found to have been improperly moved to a different building, the two others' remained unaccounted for.

Then, in October 2006, the BBC reported that the FBI is investigating whether information from a US nuclear weapons laboratory was found in a police drugs search of a New Mexico trailer park. According to police officials, the material and classified information recovered during the search appeared to have come from the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Earlier, in August 2006, it had been revealed that the lab had released sensitive nuclear research data by email. Interestingly, in an ABC News report in October 2005, Christopher Steele, the senior safety officer of the US government's nuclear weapons laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, had stated that he could not vouch for the safety of this facility. According to Steele, the equivalent of 5,000 pounds of plutonium in barrels of radioactive waste was being stored outside the laboratory under a tent. Also, March to April 2005, in New Jersey, a package containing 3.3g of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) was inadvertently disposed of.

Finally, the US has also led the field in nuclear proliferation -- and not simply in the form of US citizens but the state itself, and the beneficiary was primarily Israel. The father of the US atomic bomb was eventually stripped of his security clearance by the US Atomic Energy Commission once his views on the hydrogen bomb production became suspect and his loyalty was suspected because of his alleged links to communist parties and groups.

According to Sir Timothy Garden, a fellow at Indiana University, Israel signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with the US in 1954. Between 1955 and 1966, more than 50 Israeli nuclear specialists completed a probationary period in the largest US scientific institutions. Israel received 6-10 kilograms of uranium a year starting in 1955. The total grew to 40 kilograms by 1966. The US provided Israel with a small nuclear reactor in 1955, which became operational in 1960. In 1958, US spy planes photographed the Dimona complex, but the US Atomic Energy Commission's (AEC) inspections of the Dimona facilities in the late 60s were hampered because of non-cooperation on the part of the Israeli government. In addition to controlling the extent of the inspections as well as the timing, according to Rohan Pearce, Israel constructed false control panels and bricked up corridors to fool AEC teams. As Pearce puts it, "an October 1969 US government memo, reporting on discussions between State Department officials and a representative from the AEC, implied that the US government had no problem with Israel possessing the facilities for building nuclear weapons." The memo made it clear that the US was not prepared to support a real inspections effort.

Despite all these public facts, the US continued to aid and abet Israel's nuclear and military capability. In October 1998, Israel and the US reached an agreement that committed the US to enhancing Israel's "defensive and deterrent capabilities." An agreement reported by the BBC in February 2000 between the two related to cooperation in nuclear and other energy technologies and this agreement allowed Israeli scientists to once again gain access to US nuclear technology. So it is hardly surprising to find that by October 2003 Israeli and US officials admitted that they had collaborated to deploy US-supplied Harpoon cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads in Israel's fleet of Dolphin-class submarines.

Nor is this all. The British and Americans, who have tried to make themselves out as champions against WMD and staked so much on this issue, are themselves in cahoots on WMD build-up and proliferation -- the latter from the US to Britain. And all this is under the legal cover of their 1958 Mutual Defence Agreement which the US Congress has renewed every ten years. The US supplies of WMD to Britain are crucial to Britain's support for US policy and WMD exports to the UK include Trident D5 missiles and nuclear weapons components and technology. For years, Britain has also exploded its nuclear weapons at the Nevada test site in the US.

In September 1994, Greenpeace had released a report documenting the US government's violations of domestic law and international treaty obligations by transferring "sensitive nuclear technology" to Japan. The report, entitled, "The Unlawful Plutonium Alliance", revealed that the US Department of Energy had negotiated an agreement in 1987 which allowed for the transfer of advanced plutonium separation or "reprocessing" technology to Japan.

In the face of this evidence, which is merely a tip of the iceberg, and by its own judgemental standards, the US is clearly the most dangerous nuclear state in the globe.

The writer is director general of the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad.