PAKISTAN Special

P.Symonds has been just to the point while exposing US' designs and stretegy. You see how it all fits in. You see what's behind all the hu ha about terrorism. You unleash terror so you get away with terror. Age old imperial game but this time Washington’s moves will not go unopposed...

BY: Peter Symonds

Comments by China’s ambassador in Islamabad last Thursday highlight the reckless character of the Obama administration’s escalating intervention in Pakistan. By pressuring Islamabad to wage an all-out military offensive against Islamic insurgents in the Swat Valley and neighbouring districts, Washington is not only destabilising Pakistan but raising tensions in a highly volatile area.

Speaking to Pakistani business leaders, Chinese ambassador Luo Zhaohui pointedly voiced concern about the growth of “outside influence” in the region. He singled out the US in particular, saying that China was worried about US policies and the presence of a large number of foreign troops in neighbouring Afghanistan. While reiterating China’s support for “the fight against terror,” Luo declared that US strategies needed some “corrective measures”. He added, “These are issues of serious concern for China.”

Luo’s unusually blunt remarks came just one day after US President Obama spoke to his Chinese counterpart, President Hu Jintao. While a number of issues were discussed, the escalating war in Pakistan was clearly high on the agenda. This first publicised phone call between the two men came as Obama met with the Afghan and Pakistani presidents over US strategy in the two countries. While Hu reportedly offered his cooperation, Luo’s comments express China’s underlying fears over growing US influence in South Asia.

Last week’s tripartite summit in Washington signalled a major upsurge in military violence in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Under intense pressure from the US, the Pakistani army has launched a large-scale offensive against militants in the Swat Valley in which hundreds have already died and hundreds of thousands of civilians have been forced to flee. The summit, however, involved more than discussions on military cooperation, outlining comprehensive plans for the closer economic and strategic integration of the two countries into an American sphere of influence.

China, which has longstanding ties with Pakistan, is obviously disturbed by these developments. As Ambassador Luo told his business audience, more than 60 Chinese companies are involved in 122 projects in Pakistan. He noted the “close liaison” with Pakistan over the security of over 10,000 Chinese engineers and technical experts in the country. In fact, Beijing has previously insisted on reprisals over the abduction and killing of Chinese citizens by Pakistani militants as well as military action against Islamic Uighur separatists from western China taking refuge in Pakistan.

More fundamentally, Beijing regards Islamabad as a crucial partner in its own regional strategy. China devoted considerable resources to building up Pakistan as a counterweight to India after the 1962 Sino-Indian border war. Pakistan is the largest purchaser of Chinese arms and, according to the Pentagon, accounted for 36 percent of China’s military exports between 2003 and 2007. Chinese technical assistance was critical to Pakistan’s nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs.

In return, China received the green light to build a major naval/commercial port facility at Gwadar, a coastal town in Baluchistan. The port is the linchpin of Beijing’s “string of pearls” strategy to establish access for its expanding navy to a series of ports along key sea routes across the Indian Ocean—above all, to protect oil and gas supplies from the Middle East and Africa. For its part, the US, which regards China as a rising economic and strategic rival, is determined to maintain its military, including naval, predominance.

US-China tensions over Pakistan only highlight the deeply destabilising role of Washington’s aggressive intervention, firstly in subjugating Afghanistan, and now in seeking to bring Pakistan more directly under its sway. The escalating conflict in Pakistan is a direct product of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, which the Bush administration forced Pakistan to support under the threat of becoming a military target itself. Widespread opposition inside Pakistan and Afghanistan to US actions has fuelled a growing insurgency that threatens not only the US occupation of Afghanistan, but a full-scale civil war in Pakistan.

US imperialism, under the Obama administration, is determined to exploit the very disasters it has created in order to advance its strategic interests throughout the broader region, especially in energy-rich Central Asia. By doing so, Washington is fundamentally altering the precarious strategic balance and threatening to draw the other major powers into the vortex.

China is not alone in its fear of US designs in Central Asia and the presence of large numbers of foreign troops in Afghanistan. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US has been seeking to establish military alliances and economic ties with the newly established Central Asian Republics. Washington exploited its invasion of Afghanistan to establish military bases in Central Asia for the first time. Afghanistan and Pakistan also provided a potential alternate pipeline route to extract energy riches from the region. In response, China and Russia, which both regard the region as their backyard, came together in the Shanghai Cooperation Group to counter expanding American influence.

Neighbouring India is also watching events in Pakistan with trepidation. While quietly applauding Washington’s pressure on Islamabad to wage war against “terrorism”, New Delhi is concerned that Pakistan’s closer incorporation under the American umbrella may lead to the downgrading of the US-Indian strategic partnership, which only developed in the late 1990s. The weakening of rival Pakistan, against which India has fought three wars, is no doubt welcomed in New Delhi. But its replacement by a US client state, or worse its collapse into chaos, would only confront the Indian establishment with new uncertainties.

The entire region remains a potential powder keg. The Cold War certainties that divided the world between the Soviet and Western blocs have been replaced by new tensions and rivalries. Tentative steps by India and Pakistan to resolve their longstanding disputes, especially over Kashmir, have all but stalled. Efforts by China and India to improve relations have moved slowly. Each continues to eye the other with suspicion and to intrigue at each other’s expense in Nepal, Sri Lanka and Burma.

The most explosive ingredient in this volatile mixture is the attempt by US imperialism to use its military superiority to offset its long-term economic decline. Far from easing tensions, the installation of the Obama administration marked an aggressive new turn in the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan aimed at advancing US ambitions. Last week’s comments by China’s ambassador are another sign that Washington’s moves will not go unopposed.

BY: SHIREEN M MAZARI
The big picture for Pakistan should be more visible now in terms of what the US agenda is for this country. But that agenda has been carefully operationalized since the opportunity presented itself to the US in the form of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 – in which, by the way, no Pakistani was involved. Some of us have been highlighting that agenda for some years since, and also pointing out how complicity of our leadership was a requirement for that agenda to continue moving ahead. And what is that agenda?

Clearly, it involves the US creating space within the tribal areas to move in militarily and eventually restructure the whole Muslim nuclear entity of Pakistan. Attacking civilians and thereby creating chaos and panic which would inevitably lead to a mass displacement and add to the pressure on the central government in Islamabad. Also, knowing full well – after all if we can conclude that such killings will create more space for extremists and terrorists, one can assume the US analysts and advisers must have done the same – that by unleashing a war against our tribals and abusing our sovereignty they will create more space for the terrorists; and thereby more reasons to further destabilise us from outside while we face increasing attacks from our home-grown terrorists. Let us not fool ourselves – the US is no friend but a powerful enemy and its ultimate aim is to defang us in terms of our nuclear assets. Already the statements have become more honed in terms of our nuclear assets – both directly, in terms of a bizarre fear that our nukes will fall into "terrorist" hands even though it is the US that seems to have a problem of loose nukes (remember the US planes flying with such weapons only last year?); and, indirectly, by having their politicians and some international agencies build up a crescendo of Pakistan being the most dangerous country in the world and a new "war zone".

That was the first phase of the plan for Pakistan. As the US war on terror has unfolded in our part of the world, we have suddenly seen the emergence of a Tehrik-i-Taliban, Pakistan and countless other militant groups – some of whom were raised and funded by the CIA in earlier years and may well have sustained that linkage. The most aggressively loyal Pakistanis of the tribal belt have now been turned into challengers of the writ of the Pakistani state. Is it not worth understanding why and how? We are being forced into accepting the US war now as "our war" although in reality while we are facing a severe threat from extremists and home grown terrorists, our fight against these forces has to be different from the US war on terror. That is still not our war but is in fact fuelling and aggravating our terrorist problems.

Now the US has moved to phase two where it is actually seeking direct intervention on the ground before it finally puts international pressure on us to hand over our nuclear assets – showing the world how Pakistan has indeed become a "war zone" in which the international community must intervene to take charge of the nuclear assets. Of course, the US would then offer to head such a mission. Seems far fetched? Then recheck what has been happening in terms of US policy vis a vis Pakistan since 9/11 and the statements emanating from the US at the official and media levels.

As for us Pakistanis, we are being confronted with a two-front war: against a qualitatively new terrorist threat in terms of suicide bombings and the growth of a violent extremism; and, against an indirect war being conducted by the US against our long term survival as an independent nuclear state. But, as I stated at the beginning, none of the US agenda would be feasible without the support of the Pakistani rulers. Unfortunately this support has been there from the start but now it has reached new proportions.

During the Musharraf government we were given many briefings to the effect that the US and NATO/ISAF could only intrude aerially into our space with our permission. As a perturbed pilot informed me the other day, he was shocked to learnt that apart from the UAVs flying into Pakistani air space, NATO and ISAF aircraft are flying round the clock tactical missions in Pakistan. Apparently, they have been cleared by our controllers' to fly tactical in FATA, "Pukhtunkhwa" and Balochistan. The Musharraf government had also given unprecedented access to the US in terms of bases and intelligence. But our democratic leadership has gone even further in affecting unilateral compromises, including it now appears permission to hit and kill our own people, which impact our very survival as an independent nuclear entity.

Regardless of how our own Goebbels tries to explain away the Zardari interview to the Wall Street Journal, the quotes speak for themselves and nor has a correction been sought or offered on either side. First there is the absurd style of reference President Zardari uses when talking of Pakistan and its institutions as his personal fiefdom, "my F-16s", "my security personnel" (that is the military) "my war" and so on. And of course he wants the world to "give me" $ 100 billion!

More damaging though is his declaration that not only is he "an American friend" but that the US is carrying out Predator missile strikes on Pakistani soil with his government's consent. His logic for insisting the US support his government also undermines Pakistan because he seeks to show that if he falls our nukes will fall into terrorist hands. Is this how he protects our national interests? Now if his wish of accessing our strategic institutions with his cronies and the like is fulfilled, we may as well hand over all our assets to the US – and now, by default, given the Indo-US strategic partnership, to India.

But then, they say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and it seems our president has no understanding of our history since he declares grandly, "India has never been a threat to Pakistan". Please, Ms Rehman, at least teach him some basic history and you do not have to use Pakistani sources either! As for his comment on the Indo-US nuclear deal – which even more rational US analysts have decried as a factor in upping the nuclear arms' levels in South Asia, our ignorant President sees it merely as the "largest democracy" in the world "getting friendly" with the "oldest democracy" in the world!

In fact, he sees his own country simply as a backyard to serve Indian development. As for the poor Kashmiris, they have been labelled "terrorists" for seeking liberation from Indian occupation! To our shame, a Pakistani ruler's effigy was burnt for the first time since 1979, in Baramulla town in Occupied Kashmir with 400 Kashmiris defying curfew to express their anger at the Zardari labelling of the Kashmiri freedom fighters as "terrorists". So far, Zardari has certainly been good news only for the US and India!

If Musharraf was forced to compromise with the US – although now his compromises appear miniscule when compared to what the present government is giving to the US – to ostensibly sustain himself in power then what is our present leadership so worried about in terms of the US? Are there still some dangerous skeletons despite the NRO that the US can utilise to keep the democratic dispensation in line with its eventual goal of ending the nuclear Pakistani state as we know it?

If the present trends continue we may well eventually confront a civil war across the country. This is exactly the situation the US is seeking to come in fully and set up its own quisling set up. As we and the US know, there have always been many in our leadership only too willing to play that role. As for the present leaders, their embarking on the road to power may well have been prepared in Washington, but it is Pakistan's realities that will ensure their stay in or removal from power. Can they manage to get out of the US embrace to see their own realities?

BY: MUHAMMAD DAUD MIRAKI, Director Afghan DU & Recovery Fund
It is interesting that people describe different periods in history with existing adjectives in use in each respective period. To judge an era as either beneficial or harmful, people in different periods in time used their respective linguistic terms such as good, comfortable, bad and evil describing the ambiance created by a regime, ruler or empire. Rarely, have people resorted to events as descriptive indicators of their experience in a particular period in time; instead, they used linguistic means, namely, adjectives in describing some period in history as either good or bad. The reason for this is that each period in history has established terminology in use denoting the events, phenomena and social reality around them. For example, the Stalin era could easily be described by words such as evil, or Stalin and his crimes could easily be viewed as manifestation of evil. Although American academics of the Jewish faith have used 'holocaust' describing the mass murders of Stalin's era as a type of descriptive synonym equivalent to the Jewish experience under the Nazis. To my knowledge, no one has used one current event or social phenomenon in place of existing adjective as a type of antonym trying to describe another current event, until now. The reason that compels me to do so in this paper stems from the ineffectiveness of adjectives in describing our current state of affairs.

The boundless murders committed by the government of the United States under variously false pretexts make the government of the United States and its armed forces 'Killers without Borders'. The group that I chose to use as an antonym in describing the heinousness of the United States crimes worldwide is 'Doctors without Borders'. The reason I chose this group to serve as an antonym in this essay is rather straightforward. That is, 'Doctors without Borders' engage in benevolence with the sole purpose of saving lives irrespective of national borders, while, the US policy makers and armed forces serve as 'Killers without Borders' ready to murder innocent people without the slightest regard to basic human decency, national sovereignty or official borders.

The group 'Doctors without Borders' as its name connotes are doctors who do not value political and geographic borders in bringing life saving treatments and medicines to the needy whenever violence and disease have taken their toll on the poor and the disenfranchised. There are no material gains for these selfless doctors except the intangibles, feeling that they have done something good and decent amidst vast indecency in the world today. This group does not care about peoples' political affiliations, religious beliefs, national origin or ethnic descent. After all decency does not recognize the world in such clear terms as the evil portrayed and perpetrated by the United States of America. The government of the United States with the blessing of majority of its people 52% voting for Bush---have chosen the role of a gigantic mass killer aimed at satisfying its lust for material gains and imposing sheer pain on other people, who choose to be different.

Similar to 'Doctors without Borders', the United States does not recognize borders, however, contrary to the 'Doctors without Borders', the US does not aim at helping the poor and the needy, instead, it targets the weak militarily, depriving people of lives worldwide under the false banner of democracy and liberation.

Strategies of the Killers Without Borders

The Uniquely effective Use of the Word 'Democracy' : The significance of language as the crucial tool in human existence can not be looked at as a mere tool of communication. Language does not only serve as a tool of communication, but it also plays a crucial role as a major component of social structure. What I mean by social structure is any relatively stable pattern of social behavior. Hence, the function of language is much broader than is apparent at the outset. It is essential to realize that language is the tool of socialization and an effective tool of dissemination and diffusion of culture. Since culture does not remain still, the agents of socialization along with tools of socialization adjust accordingly. Agents of socialization are families, schools, peer groups, and media; they change with the passage of time as is evident for every adult in his/her middle age. What used to be 'cool' at their youth is no longer cool at adulthood. The use and meaning of some words are appropriate at certain point in one's life, but they lose their meaning from the intended with passage of years and decades. This is especially true for various descriptive jargons and phrases used by colonial powers describing their political and economic intent of subjugation of the conquered people in different parts of the world. For example, when Napoleon entered Egypt, he portrayed himself as someone who had come to civilize the Egyptian or for that matter any other people. Hence, Napoleon saw himself as a liberator than an occupier. The pertinent phrases of the early European powers were christianization and civilization. These words were appropriate from the perspective of the colonial powers in that time, after all, 'what was good for the Europeans had to be good for everybody else in the world'. Thus, the imposition of values and denigration of other cultures and religions are nothing unique to the current global hegemon, the United States, but rather inherited from its European predecessors.

With the advent of the British Empire, the above-mentioned phrases were still in use but were used selectively in different parts of the world. For example, in regions where Islam was the dominant religion the phrase christianization would be dropped and instead, they would use the phrase civilization and modernization, respectively. Slowly, civilization as the choice jargon would be almost entirely replaced by modernization and modernity and technology. Incidentally, every colonial power's aim was to obtain raw materials from the conquered regions, and then the resultant manufactured goods would be transported back to the conquered regions and sold to the populations there. What could be more profitable than this, especially, when raw natural resources are secured for free? It is worth mentioning that the British would also employ the corrupt elite in the conquered lands and use these influential locals as front in dealing with the population. Today, we see the same thing with a different form.

The United States copied some of the methods of the British; however, the US is much more efficient in portraying falsehood under the guise of phrases that are valued every where. As I mentioned that different deceptive phrases were used by colonial powers in different times and places, the phrases the US chose are democracy, liberty and freedom. These phrases are significant worldwide and transcend national borders and different regions. After all, these phrases envisage fundamental human necessities and god granted rights. However, these phrases would not find meaning unless presented in tangible manner to the conquered people and people worldwide. This is when local puppets from the region that have sold out and chose to exchange their dignity for some dirty dollars and authority, become tools of dissemination and diffusion of falsehood. This is similar to the British practice, but much more sophisticated. The sophistication of the mechanism the US uses is not really the invention of the United States but rather it is the consequence of globalization, which made travel from different parts of the world easy and facilitated opportunities for foreign nationals to receive education or seek employment. These foreign nationals became ideal instruments of manipulation. Although they chose to sell themselves out for prospects of power and money, they also serve as an effective smoke screen for the conquered region. For example, in Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, who was an asset of the US intelligence agencies, the CIA especially, served as a tool of the US hegemony; thus, he provided the tangibility needed behind the phrases democracy, liberty, and freedom.

How this works is rather effective. The effectiveness is two folds and has two groups of consumers, local and global.

1) The use of the word democracy manifests legitimacy in the eyes of subjugated local people and portrays a glimpse of hope for the future of local people. This is especially true when the subjected population has suffered either from induced civil wars, such as in Afghanistan orchestrated by the CIA after 1992 or from US installed and supported dictators, such as Saddam Hussein of Iraq.

2) The US attempts to use democracy as a vehicle of legitimacy to audience worldwide as if though people worldwide were ignorant had narrow sources of information as do Americans by being glued to their television sets.

The appointment of Karzai in Afghanistan and Alawi in Iraq are portrayed to the world as fruits of US foreign policy success. Now let's explore what these fruits of democracy have brought to their respective regions.

In Afghanistan, there are thousands more widows today than there were before the US invasion. There are more than 32,000 Afghan civilians - a conservative number - who have lost their lives to the US bombing. This number reflects only those victims who lost their lives from October 7, 2001 to the first three months of 2002. Moreover, there are thousands more orphans today than before the US invasion. These orphans are roaming Afghan streets and alleys, sleeping in cemeteries and bombed buildings, only to die from cold weather and disease. The other dreadful consequence for these orphans is the high rate of kidnapping. These orphans are kidnapped and then sold into slavery and prostitution or they serve as candidates for harvesting human organs to be sold to the highest bidder. Orphans are not the only ones that are kidnapped, but rather, due to the insecurity in different parts of the country, criminals target children of various backgrounds for these heinous purposes. Another tragedy that dwarfs all others is the heavy contamination of Afghanistan with uranium isotopes after the US used bunker-buster bombs and cannons using uranium projectiles. This incidentally is the "gift" that keeps on giving since uranium has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, a perpetual death sentence has been imposed on the entire nation.

Words to Convey Action: Besides being a tool of communications, language also serves as the most effective tool in conveying action. After all had it not been for language how would one distinguish an evil deed from a good one? Incidentally, it brings fort the argument of chicken and egg, whether language existed first or actions and circumstances contributed to the evolution of language. This essay is certainly not the place to argue the anthropological and philosophical aspects of this issue. However, some individuals argue that action itself is a tool of communication. If this assertion were true, could one imagine what would one person do in order to show another person to distinguish a good deed from an evil one? Perhaps, the first person would have to kill another person to convey evil, while feed another to envisage what he/she means by good. But thankfully, we have been blessed with languages as effective tools of communications.

In addition to the primary function of language, language also serves as a vehicle for the conveyance of action through the use of common as well as technical words. These words could convey action either explicitly or implicitly. We use and interpret action from spoken words on daily basis. For example, if I said that I will drive to nearby town, I have explicitly expressed my intentions, however, if I said, the nearby town is a good place to work, the listeners could deduce that I might be looking for work in the nearby town. Moreover, one needs not to use long sentences to illustrate a particular action; instead, an effective use of key words is ample to establish an intended action. This is evident in the rhetoric of this administration trying to envisage righteousness. When GW Bush used the word tyranny in his speech, he wanted to imply to the public that his actions are those of a liberator not of an oppressor. Bush and his flock of cowards used the biblical words of good and evil in his first term, again trying to distinguish himself as a god-fearing man going after evil individuals.

The continuous use of these words has conditioned the American public in an effective manner. Since Americans are glued to their television sets and their entire worldview comes from television, they become truly the ideal mass sheep to be conditioned and used in ways that they would not acknowledge being part of.

Shameless Media Pundits: The most complicit in this global murder is the US corporate media and the shameless so-called journalists and experts. Sometimes one can not help but to ask how degrading a human being becomes in order to earn a living. Perhaps, earning a living is not the issue, but rather being part of a mass deception is a complex game of flawed semblance and semantics. But amidst this tragedy of murder and deception, one discovers how low a massive industry and individuals stoop for material gains. This fact becomes apparent when reporters from large media outlets and newspapers talk on shows or express themselves in writing.

Incidentally, I was watching the Charlie Rose Show when Thomas Freedman of the New York Times appeared on his show to discuss the Iraqi election. When he was talking about the United States occupation of Iraq, he would use his index fingers in the air to present occupation in a quotation mark, illustrating as if this "occupation" is not really "occupation" but rather liberation, yes liberation. Furthermore, the same cowards of the US and Western media would not dare to report facts, in fact, they are the vehicles whereupon the conditioning mechanism succeeds in this country. This, off course, does not exonerate the American consumers; after all, they have alternative media Internet, library, but more than anything else they have their brain to rely on.

When the CIA dog, Johnny Spann lost his life in the prison uprising in Northern Afghanistan, the media was talking about this character continuously. In fact, his widow was invited to the State of the Union. When confronted by reporters, the family of this CIA agent wished the other American, John Walker Lindh - 'the American Taliban' - to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. These people fail to realize what was their son the CIA agent - doing in Afghanistan in the first place? Perhaps, one of the readers would say that the reason US invaded Afghanistan was because Bin Laden attacked the US, and the Taliban gave him sanctuary. There is no need for me to debate that point here. Those that are curious should know that it is amply established that the attacks of September 11, 2001 were part of an inside job aimed at facilitating global hegemony. But the US media could care less that more than 1200 young men were slaughtered by the US B-52 bombing in the prison uprising and another 3500 lost their lives by being sealed into transport containers in northern Afghanistan. The containers were shot when the prisoners screamed for air and water, and their bodies were dumped in Dasht-e-Lailia desert in Northern Afghanistan.

Another example of media's cowardliness is the reporting of conflict in Palestine. When Israelis entered the Jenin Refugee Camp, where they killed civilians, destroyed their houses and deprived them of food and water, the coward media outlets were exhibiting sorrow for the loss of 13 Israeli soldiers, not the poor Palestinian refugees. This discussion went on until the Palestinian spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi was shocked and questioned the decency of the television reporter and other American analysts on that show. This dirty game wherein Muslim men and women lose their lives in the hands of few mass murderers in Washington and London is a well calculated scheme concocted by morally corrupt academics at US academic institutions in order to justify what amounts to world domination.

Corruption As An Effective Tool: Moreover, another ironic tool that these Killers without Borders, use is that of corruption. It is a sociological fact that in order to control a family, one has to introduce corruption into the family and expose the family members to corrupt and degenerative behavior. Once that occurs, the family disintegrates by itself. Hence, corruption and collapse of moral values serve instruments of family disintegration. Family disintegration brings about what the 19th century French Sociologist Emile Durkheim would refer to as anomie. This is especially true in Kabul. The use of money and consumerism and opportunities for prostitution, drinking, gambling and other degenerate activities have brought about textbook sociological situations that have facilitated the disintegration of the basic institution of society, namely family.

This method is very effective among the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara minority communities. The reason for the failure of the material enticement among the Pashtuns Afghans Afghanistan’s major ethnic group is the strong traditional family values and the rigid enforcement of those values among Pashtun households. For example, if a Pashtun woman compromised her dignity, the only outcome she would certainly encounter would be death because indignity is one among a handful things Pashtuns can not tolerate in their lives, and that is why, they are very protective of the female members of their family.

The classic mechanism the Americans and their coward allies use is the mechanism of luring females into training and job creation. Most of the time these women would end up in a US military base where they supposedly would get training, instead, they encounter funsex, drinking and partying. Tajiks are extremely susceptible to the aforementioned degenerate activities, but they also include Uzbek, Qazel Bash, and a few Hazara women.

There are 5 to 6 porn cable television channels free of charge available from 11 PM until 6 AM. The youngsters watch these movies and become immune to the whole notion of immorality associated with such behaviors. In addition, prostitute houses from India, Turkey, China and Thailand among others opened outlets in Kabul. These prostitute houses facilitate opportunities for young men who watch porn on television, to try to rob or engage in some other deviant behavior to come up with the needed money for attending these brothels.

The magnitude of deviation and corruption is so acute that no where in the world has the sex pill Viagra been so much in demand as in Kabul. Furthermore, condom manufacturers have sponsored radio station in order to increase its sale margin. The best democracy one could fuck, as one individual said.

Divide & Conquer - Another Tool: The instrument of divide and conquer is also employed in Afghanistan that is evident in the rhetoric of Karzai and his American handlers in naming some Taliban as moderate while others as extremists. It is also important to keep in mind that the Americans used the principle of divide and conquer effectively in using one ethnic group against another whereby they put in motion the electoral processes. In order to understand how these processes were put in motion some concise background is in order. Since Afghanistan is a multiethnic society, the fear of domination of one ethnic group over the other serves as an effective tool in luring ethnic groups to engage in actions that would impede the other ethnic groups from undermining their rights.

After the fall of the Soviet installed puppet regime in 1992, the subsequent infighting was fought along ethnic lines, although for strategic purposes alliances between opposing ethnic groups did take place. However, for the most part, the minority groups Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara dominated the post-1992 government in Kabul, and they resorted to targeting the Pashtun population in Kabul and in the north; thus, undermining them as a majority. Although Pashtuns also took to revenge and retaliatory measures during this era, which was followed by the emergence of Taliban as a reaction to the blatant violations committed by the minority groups. This period struck a severe blow to the Pashtuns' ego and their pride. The situation became worse when the Taliban regime collapsed. This was yet another blow to the Pashtuns' identity, especially that the Northern Alliance--composed of the same minority ethnic groups that dominated the post-1992 regime--played a key role in the US anti-Taliban campaign. The Bush administration took advantage of the dynamics at hand and played the majority against the minorities and vice versa. In light of the lengthy hostilities, Pashtuns had to 'sell their soul to the devil' and participate in the mock election and vote for the puppet Hamid Karzai even though he is America's stooge. The difficult decision Pashtuns in Afghanistan took was based on keeping the minorities at bay; otherwise, the minorities would have occupied the position of authority. This was indeed the proverbial double edge sword.

Therefore, inter-group conflicts along the mocked symbols of legitimacy, namely, election/democracy and the blunt use of force are some of the tricks of these 'Killers without Borders'.

However, the US officials are quite amateurish in their view of Afghanistan; they fail to comprehend Afghan history. For a foreign power to fail and bog down in Afghanistan, there need not be large armies of resistance, instead, effective groups of resistance break foreign enemies incrementally through attrition until they are too frail to get up.

The situation in Iraq is equally dim. According to a study by the British Journal of Medicine, the Lancet, more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians lost their lives subsequent to the US-British invasion of Iraq. In addition, thousands of widows and orphans are the byproduct of this cowardly invasion. Though the uranium contamination was prevalent after the first Gulf War, it has become much worse after this second invasion and occupation. Iraqi women are forced into prostitution either by hunger and homelessness brought on by the US. Criminal elements roam around the country eager to make money even if they sell women's dignity. Oh, I almost forgot, this should not matter to the US since this is considered freedom for women and women rights. Another uncharacteristic situation in Iraq has been the widespread sale and use of illicit drugs. There were never any trade or consumption of illicit drugs in Iraq. On the same token, opium and heroin were wiped out by religious decree under the Taliban regime, but now, drug production in Afghanistan has gone up exponentially alarming the United Nations to the extent to forecast a dim future for Afghanistan since it had edged upon becoming a narco-state. The drugs produced in Afghanistan, are transported by the US intelligence and military agencies to different parts of the world including Iraq, where a drugs market has emerged that serves not only Iraqi addicts but also transported to the Gulf States including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other oil rich nations.

Why Killers Without Borders?  The reason I chose to call this article 'Killers without Borders' stems from the methods of killings. These methods are as follows:

1. The invasion of another sovereign nation is the blatant violation of international law, which the US government has no regards for. Since the fall of the former Soviet Union, the US has become the sole superpower. This status entails military, economic and consequently political weights. As usual, the US abuses its economic and military power for political gains in the United Nations as it was apparent in the wake of the Iraq war. At that time, the Bush administration was blatantly intimidating and bribing smaller nations and fail to even acknowledge the existence of its European allies. In the European arena, Bush's poodle, Tony Blair did the necessary barking. It is important to keep in mind that it is no surprise that the US is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court; had it been a signatory to the court, the US government would have been one of the most visible defendants tried for war crimes.

2. The second aspect is dependent upon the first one for the most part. Due to the economic and military might of the United States, other nations are eager to accommodate their airspace for the US fighter jets and rockets. Some nation-states such as Pakistan--which is nothing but an overused and undervalued prostitute pleasing the US government--would not even require the US armed forces to ask for permission. Therefore, the US jet fighters and tomahawk missiles crisscross national borders as if they did not exist. After all, 'everyone' wants to be on the good side of the global killer.

3. In this process to please the US's imperialist ventures, smaller nations target their own citizens suspected to be against the American aggression. This was especially evident in the case of Pakistan. As I mentioned, Pakistan as a country and its establishment constitute the omnipresent prostitute to please the US government. Thus, it was no surprise when a US State Department official stated publicly that a Pakistani would sell his mother for a few dollars.

4. The fourth characteristic of the 'Killers without Borders' is the facilitation of opportunities for other corrupt regimes to oppress domestic opposition and murder many under the rubric of some concocted legitimacy. For example, in light of the so-called 'war on terror', regimes worldwide have found easy ways to get rid of individuals deemed political troublemakers. The government of Uzbekistan, China, Russia and Algiers have used the label of the war on terror, to suppress and prosecute oppositions.

5. The fifth aspect of the 'Killers without Borders' is the use of the weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Specifically, the use of uranium munitions--bunker-buster bombs, canon rounds and projectiles--not only contaminate the land where they are used but also contaminate neighboring countries. Since uranium alloy used in these weapons pulverizes upon impact, it becomes aerosol. This way the dust becomes susceptible to wind pattern and water flow. Since wind and water are not confined to a geographic area bound by political borders, people across borders become ill and die.

6. The US's indiscriminate bombings force people to abandon their homelands and become refugees in a neighboring countries. In the process of displacement, refugees die on all sides of borders, as it was evident in the case of Afghanistan when the US started bombing. Furthermore, for the thousands forced to flee their homes, survival becomes the only issue. Hence, to survive, people resort to disparate actions, which sometimes result in the loss of lives in the host country. So, death is brought upon the victim population in different forms.

Killers share certain universal characteristics--by no means exhaustive--that include disregard for the victim, considering the victim less human, rationalizing their crimes among many other characteristics. A killer could have many motives for perpetrating his/her inhumane and gruesome action. The motives could initially not be murder but rather another degenerate undertaking such as robbery, sexual attack, or simply an argument had gone sour and the individual enraged and reacted in an miscalculated manner, killing the other individual. When there are actual motives for murder, they could range from revenge to utter hatred of the targeted person. In some instances, an individual might be a psychotic, and some schizophrenic urges might have resulted in heinous actions. The above-mentioned scenarios would happen in a defined geographic location, wherein the offender(s) might reside. The crime committed by individuals in their own respective enclaves, confine them within the bounds of legal infrastructure of that enclave. When murder is committed in a defined geographic location, the offender could be held accountable for committing murder under defined local laws. The guilt of the person is defined by the action of murder alone. In the case of the United States, the mechanism of murder is obviously different but is also heinous, complex and boundless, and is not subject to any legal imperatives since it does not value any rule of law including its own.

Hence, the US forces and supporters as 'Killers without Borders' are different from common murderers in certain specific ways. It is worth mentioning that this list is no means exhaustive.

First, the perpetration of murder by the United States is indiscriminate, brutal, and recognizes no geographic boundaries. For example, the US mercenary murderers commit their murders by targeting large number of people in a locality, followed by targeting those civilian rescuers that would attempt to help the victims of the first wave of attacks.

This practice was witnessed and reported by the UN officials and condemned when the US armed forces targeted Afghan civilians.

During the month of December, 2001, another liberation attempt was carried out by the 'brave' men of the US armed forces when they killed 52 civilians, mostly women and children in the village of Niazi Qala in Paktia province. The British newspaper, The Time published the following account of the tragedy:

"non-combatant women and children were chased and killed by U.S. helicopters during an attack on an Afghan village that left 52 dead."

According to the newspaper, in the initial strike in this village 10 women and 25 children were reported killed but later, a UN spokesperson, Stephanie Bunker said:

"After the women and children were killed in the village, a second group of civilians fled the attack and were gunned down by U.S. helicopters. All fifteen of the fleeing villagers were killed. A third group of civilians, who were trying to rescue survivors, was also killed by the U.S. military according to Ms. Bunker."

Similarly, in Jalal Abad, when the US jets bombed a mosque where people were praying, many civilians were killed at the entrance of the mosque. The survivors ran to help the wounded, however, it was not long before they were also targeted and became added numbers of collateral damage. The US forces use this practice of mass murder also in Iraq.

Second, the murders are not perpetrated in a defined time and space, but rather the use of the weapons in the murders leaves a legacy of perpetual death--killing for generations to come. This aspect of the crime of these 'Killers without Borders' is the most dreadful and heinous of all. The US armed forces rely heavily on uranium munitions. They use bunker buster bombs made of uranium alloy dropped by fighters jets and bombers, and uranium projectiles fired from the A-10 warthogs and AC-130 gunships. The heinous nature of murder through these weapons of mass destruction becomes evident in all sphere of the targeted population. In Afghanistan, the US use of bunker buster bombs has made the mountainous regions of east, southeast and southwestern parts of the country uninhabitable.

Third, the murders are committed in a very uneven plain field, wherein the victim is absolutely devoid of any means of self defense, while the US killers do not look at the nameless faces of their victims because these murderers are too much of cowards to fight face to face. Instead, they kill from 35,000 feet using B-52s.

Fourth, despite the heinousness of their crimes, the US killers are shameless to even admit their wrongdoing; on the contrary, they label their murders with descriptive terms such as liberation, freedom and democracy. In fact, after murdering thousands of innocent people, the United States wants and expects the targeted nation to acknowledge gratitude for bringing them democracy. This dirty public relation job is left to the puppets they put in place such as Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan and Allawi in Iraq.

Fifth, the US killers - Killers without Borders - unlike individual murderers in society refer to their victims as objects, namely collateral damage. Contrary to individual murderers when caught by law enforcement apologize in the sentencing phase, the US murderous government does not show any remorse. Instead, it usually releases statements barely touching the issue. For example, a White House spokesperson would say, "the United States regrets any loss of innocent life." Incidentally, when the surviving family members approach US officials asking for compensation, they are literally pushed away. For example, when widows and children approached the US embassy in Kabul expecting to be compensated for the loss of their homes---not family members---the US military personnel pushed them away.

Sixth, in countries such as Afghanistan where dignity dictates daily life, a murderer intent on taking revenge would not go after some body,s female family members because it is considered an indignity. The US mercenary murderers, who kill for money, and do not know anything about dignity, had taken Iraqi women hostage in order to force male family members to surrender. For example, in Fallujah, Iraq, the US coward armed forces went to arrest a young man who led local insurgents, however, he was not home. This prompted the US armed forces to drag the Iraqi man's sister, a young woman named Fatimah. The reason for Fatimah's arrest was to force her brother to put down arms and surrender. In the process, Fatimah along with other women in Abu Ghraib prison was raped many times. Until she wrote a letter and secretly passed it to the resistance through a third party. In that letter, she said the following:

"My brother Mujahideen in the path of God! What can I say to you? I say to you: our wombs have been filled with the children of fornication by those sons of apes and pigs who raped us. Or I could tell you that they have defaced our bodies, spit in our faces, and tore up the little copies of the Qur'an that hung around our necks? God is greatest! Can you not comprehend our situation? Is it true that you do not know what is happening to us? We are your sisters. God will be calling you to account about this tomorrow."

She continued,

"By God, we have not passed one night since we have been in prison without one of the apes and pigs jumping down upon us to rip our bodies apart with his overweening lust. And we are the ones who had guarded our virginity out of fear of God. Fear God! Kill us along with them! Destroy us along with them! Don't leave us here to let them get pleasure from raping us! It will be an act to ennoble the Throne of Almighty God. Fear God regarding us! Leave their tanks and aircraft outside. Come at us here in the prison of Abu Ghurayb."

The poor soul concludes with the following plea:

"I am your sister in God (Fatimah). They raped me on one day more than nine times. Can you comprehend? Imagine one of your sisters being raped. Why can't you all imagine it, as I am your sister. With me are 13 girls, all unmarried. All have been raped before the eyes and ears of everyone.

They won't let us pray. They took our clothes and won't let us get dressed. As I write this letter one of the girls has committed suicide. She was savagely raped. A soldier hit her on her chest and thigh after raping her. He subjected her to unbelievable torture. She beat her head against the wall of the cell until she died, for she couldn't take any more, even though suicide is forbidden in Islam. But I excuse that girl. I have hope that God will forgive her, because He is the Most Merciful of all.

Brothers, I tell you again, fear God! Kill us with them so that we might be at peace. Help! Help! Help! WaMu'tasimah!"

As a result of the emotional letter from Fatimah, her brother targeted the Abu Graib prison with rockets killing 68 American soldiers including Fatimah and other prisoners. At last, Fatimah's wish of welcoming death over the indignity that was brought upon her and other females by these Killers without Borders, the Americans.

In light of the crimes of these killers and the scope of their exploitation worldwide, the question to ask is what could be done. In the case of common murderers, law enforcement officials and police look for culprits and eventually bring them to face the consequences of their crimes. In this case, who is going to bring the US armed mercenary cowards to justice, and who is going to bring the people of this country at the least the 52% of them to justice and hold them accountable. The answer is simple, no one can because the victim nations do not have a comparable military force to take revenge; the United Nations-- and its coward Secretary General is instrument of the US's legitimacy. In fact, the misuse of international law and the United Nations as a rubber stamp are some of the ways the United States want to fool the world. Furthermore, the US refuses to become a signatory to the Court in Hague because the US government realizes that its soldiers and officials would be summoned to face their victims.

Thus, the alternative is to resort to improvisation, a poor man's weapon since the dawn of time. This improvisation is referred to as terrorism and the US and her allies saw to it to use the UN equally effective to tackle the issue of "terrorism."

Again, my question is what is the alternative? Let, me guess, write letters of complain, Right!! No, the only way a beast could be stopped in its tracks to force it to stop after all a beast does not listen to reason, if it cared about reason, would it commit such heinous crimes? Off course, not. Professor Ward Churchill provided the answer to this question, when he said that "the US needs more 911s."

Well, I have news to the United States and her government, you have dug a nasty deep hole for other people simply for being different, but be assured that you will end up in that hole and remain there until disintegrate. No one needs to do that; you as country are doing it to yourself. Everyone in the world is a spectator standing on the sideline, watching the last crawl of the United States until it crumbles.

Now let me touch upon the noble and selfless deeds of the Doctors without Borders and see how it stands against the actions of the Killers without Borders, the answer is simple. The actions of Doctors without Borders signify the best of humanity whereas those of the Killers without Borders are the lowest humanity could stoop to.

The language loved by Bush and Musharraf has translated into a global disaster bringing death and misery to millions

BY: SIMON JENKINS
Nothing and nobody can stop bombs going off. No citizen, no police force, no army, no government and no global military alliance can prevent a determined suicide bomber from blowing himself up. It will happen and innocent people will die as a result, horribly, as they do on the roads, from drugs and alcohol, or from natural disasters - again without responsible authority being able to stop it.

What is recent is the admission of this truism into the mainstream of government under the rubric of "terrorism". This week two outgoing presidents, America's George Bush and Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf, defined their terms of office in relation to terror. Bush did so in his final state of the union message on Monday and Musharraf that same day in London during a charm offensive prior to next month's elections.

To Bush, the "war on terror" is the ruling mantra of his politics of fear. Since 9/11 gave a prop to his weakening presidency, his language has scaled new heights of alarmist rhetoric. It has validated every internal repression and every external war. "He who is not with us is against us," he cries. Terrorists everywhere are "opposing the advance of liberty ... evil men who despise freedom, despise America and aim to subject millions to their violent rule".

As the sociologist Ulrich Beck has written, "properly exploited, a novel risk is always an elixir to an ailing leader". By declaring a threat so awful as to be intolerable, a politician can limit the liberties of a free society in the name of risk-aversion. Musharraf utters hardly a sentence that does not contain the word terror. Pivotally close to the base from which 9/11 was apparently launched, his dictatorship has been indulged by London and Washington for a full seven years. This week Gordon Brown hailed him as a "key ally on terrorism", enabling him to take comfort in sacking his judiciary and curbing his media. Had the war on terror been used only as a metaphor for better policing, like rhetorical "wars" on drugs, poverty and street crime, it might have passed muster. Bush and Musharraf have found the military metaphor too potent to resist and duly carried it into literal effect. The result has been a disaster for their countries, and incidentally for themselves.

The west's Afghan adventure is now devoid of coherent strategy. Soldiers are dying, the opium trade is booming and aid lies undistributed. Command and control of the war against the Taliban is slipping from the most bizarre western occupying force since the fourth Crusade to a tight cabal around the Afghan ruler, Hamid Karzai, who is fighting to retain a remnant of authority in his own capital. 

Karzai's exasperation with the west has led him to refuse the services as "coordinator" of the former Liberal Democrat leader, Paddy Ashdown. The latter may have cut a dash in the subsidy swamp of Sarajevo, but in Afghanistan he would have been a boy on a man's errand. Karzai knows well that his fate lies not with the patronising platitudes of western proconsuls but in the hard graft of provincial warlords, drug gangsters and Taliban go-betweens.

These go-betweens have had their status massively boosted by the war on terror. Bush's demand in 2001 that Musharraf "join the war" sent Pakistani forces into the border territories, breaking old treaties and driving the Pashtun tribes into the eager arms of Taliban leaders. This undoubtedly saved Osama bin Laden's skin from the fury of the northern Tajiks, committed to avenge his murder of their leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud.

Musharraf, at America's bidding and with $10bn of American money, has done what even his craziest predecessors avoided, and recklessly set the Pashtun on the warpath - increasingly in thrall to a revived al-Qaida. The result is a plague of suicide bombings and killings in the heartland of his benighted state. From the law courts of America to the mosques of west London and the mountains of the Hindu Kush, the war on terror has been lethally and predictably counter-productive. It embodies the new stupidity in international affairs.

Nobody disputes that there are killer cells at large in the world, most of them proclaiming various Islamist creeds. It is the job of intelligence agencies and the police to catch as many as they can. After a hesitant start, they appear to be quite good at it. Some bombs will get through but they will not be deterred by draconian laws, any more than by machine gun-toting policemen in Downing Street and Heathrow. Robust societies can handle this admittedly intermittent threat. Only weak ones will capitulate to it.

The menace of these killers lies not in their firepower but in their capacity to distort the judgment and commitment to freedom of politicians too cowardly to bear on their shoulders the burden of risk. In two weeks' time, the fragile democracy of Pakistan will defy the bombers and hold an election prior, it is hoped, to some version of democratic rule. Such communities will defy a probable burst of terror bombs only if their leaders stop setting "terrorists" on a pedestal and using language that exaggerates their capacity, as Bush puts it, "to oppose the advance of freedom".

It is leaders, not bombers, who have the power to balk the advance of freedom. Already those leaders have used the war on terror to introduce the Patriot Act, Guantánamo Bay and a $1.5 trillion war in Iraq. In Pakistan they have used it as an excuse for emergency rule, the imprisonment of senior judges, and the provocation of unprecedented insurgency in the north-west frontier territories. In Britain leaders have used the war as an excuse for 42-day detention without trial, the world's most intrusive surveillance state, and not one but two contested military occupations of foreign soil.

This so-called war on terror has filled the pockets of those profiting from it. It has killed thousands, immiserated millions and infringed the liberty of hundreds of millions. The only rough justice it has delivered is to ruin the careers of those who propagated it. Tony Blair was driven to early resignation. Bush has been humiliated and Musharraf's wretched rule brought close to an overdue end. It may be an ill wind that blows no good, but it is hardly enough.

BY: SHAMSHAD AHMAD

Whether or not Richard Armitage said it, we have already gone back to the 'stone age'. The US did not have to bomb us to make Tora Bora out of Pakistan. We have done it ourselves.

Like the ape-men of the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods of the 'stone age', we are also fighting among ourselves as enemies of each other, and our sole 'equipment' for solving our problems now is our 'instinct' devoid of any tolerance and rationality. Like the early primates, we are no longer living in an organised or civilised state, and have no taste for the 'rule of law' or good governance.

We have really gone back to the 'preliterate' culture. We are good only at the 'use of fire, rocks, batons, clubs, tear gas and all sorts of other weapons' in running our day-to-day affairs, and our talent for learning is limited only to trial-and-error 'monkeying' or fumbling with dangerous situations which in modern vocabulary would be called 'crises'.

A country without constitution or the rule of law and where there is no independent judiciary and no fundamental freedoms and rights is no better than the 'stone age' cultures, and has no place in the contemporary comity of civilised nations. Government and politics, as the world knows them, are alien to Pakistan. Our scene pathetically bears resemblance to Thomas Hobbes's concept of primitive anarchy marked by a 'war of one against all' and to Rousseau's idealisation of the 'noble savage'.

Perhaps, Hegel spoke for us when he said that man can never learn anything from history. We have never been prone to learning any lessons from history. For us, history is nothing more than a 'tableau of crimes, follies and misfortunes of our ancestors'. Woefully, our history as a nation is replete with a series of crises and tragedies which has left us politically and economically unstable, socially fragmented and physically disintegrated. And yet, we are bent upon living through our history without any remorse or respite.

With Quaid-e-Azam's early demise, Pakistan was orphaned in its very infancy and lost the promise of a healthy youth with acute systemic deficiencies and normative perversities restricting its orderly natural growth. After the Quaid, its political bankruptcy and moral aridity left it without any sense of direction. There was no one there who could stabilise its 'adolescence' and take it out of its 'identity' crisis, and like a neglected spoilt child, Pakistan became a nuisance for its neighbours as well as for itself.

It started cutting itself into pieces, losing within less than quarter of a century not only its own half but also its very rationale that had inspired its founding fathers to struggle for a separate homeland for the Muslims of the subcontinent. The real Pakistan disappeared with its tragic dismemberment, and whatever was left has been the pillage ground with 'spoils of power' for its military-controlled feudal custodians.

World's history is replete with tales of 'self-centred' rulers who forgot that power never endures and considered their reign as a mere extension of their egos and idiosyncrasies. The seventeenth century French monarch, Louis XIV, was one classic example of this mentality. His famous dictum: "L'etat, c'est moi" ("I am the state") was an expression of arrogance and an affront to democratic norms, including the principle of 'separation of powers' and independence of judiciary.

The finality of those words enunciated with a note of casual self-assurance did speak of the king's determination to have his way but also showed his contempt for the sovereign will of the people. It is the same contempt that is being shown today to the sovereign will of the people of Pakistan. We are now learning what a 'dual-office' ruler in Pakistan considers to be the limits of his power - nothing. He owns the country and runs it with the law of 'tooth and claw'.

For any state in the contemporary world, its constitution is its solemn and inviolable 'social contract' which guarantees fundamental freedoms and basic rights of its citizens, including their inalienable right to choose or change their government through freely cast ballot, and which establishes the power and duties of the government and provides the legal basis for its institutional structure.

But in Pakistan, gross abuse of power, frequent assaults on constitutional supremacy and independence of judiciary, protracted spells of military rule and poor and corrupt governance have not only cost us our entire independent statehood, but also left us without any 'social contract'. Ours is a dismal record of constitutional and political delinquency and unrelenting 'omissions and commissions' with total insensitivity to what the contemporary world thinks of us.

We don't care if the Commonwealth has again expelled us for violating its fundamental values. Like an 'enfant terrible' we feel proud in being censured in global forums. We don't care for any value system. We have no convictions. Even our sins lack conviction. We don't take any thing to heart. Look, how gracefully we digested the tragedy of 1971, the worst that could happen to any country or a nation. We did not make it an 'issue of our core' for we had other 'core issues'.

We are not afraid of repeating the same blunders, and are ready for more of similar tragedies and debacles. Unsure of our future, we are still struggling through an identity crisis and personality 'schizophrenia' tearing the nation apart with no common sense of purpose or unity. We take pride in topping the lists of world's most corrupt, most autocratic, most violent, most unsafe and most dangerous countries on earth. We are beholden to Machiavelli who believed in what men do, and not what they ought to do. We deviated from our ideals. Machiavelli's political philosophy based on his infamous 'doctrine of necessity' became an integral part of our body politic. In fact, we allowed this doctrine to circumscribe the supremacy of our constitution, the rule of law and independence of judiciary, and have again opted for pre-historic 'one-man rule'.

Pakistan has seen a constant struggle between power and polity since the very beginning of its independence. Might always and everywhere considered wrong has never been claimed so 'right' as in Pakistan. The tragedy of our nation is that democracy was never allowed to flourish in our country. We have lost half the country and also our 'raison d'etre'. We have been living with extra-constitutional measures and systemic aberrations with no parallel in political philosophy or contemporary history.

The closest we could trace something alike is perhaps the Cromwellian era of the seventeenth century known for its assorted political experiments. These included the establishment and dissolution of several parliaments, military rule, rule of the saints, establishment and collapse of the 'lord protectorate' and finally an unsuccessful attempt by Cromwell in the form of 'humble petition and advice' to legalise his power through parliamentary authority.

Cromwell was however conscientious enough to realise that the source of his authority was force, not law. And he died a frustrated man within seven months after he dissolved the last parliament in disgust, having utterly failed in securing any popular basis for his power.

In Pakistan, as in England of the Cromwellian era, fundamental values of freedom, democracy and human dignity have been breached with impunity. Constitutions have been violated in letter and spirit with 'custom-made' judiciary always available to sanctify military coups. Institutional paralysis has kept the whole nation disenfranchised. Our feudal power structure has been exploited by successive military regimes to unleash a culture of political opportunism, corruption and ineptitude.

Unfortunately, our recognition in the comity of nations today is only as a 'breeding ground' for religious extremism and militancy and as a country afflicted with a culture of violence and sectarianism. Every act of violence anywhere in the world is traced back to our country in one way or the other. The US, in particular, sees Pakistan as the 'ground zero' and a pivotal lynchpin in its fight against terrorism, and for all purposes, now brackets Pakistan with already 'stone-aged' Afghanistan.

We have brought the anti-Taliban war into Pakistan which puts our armed forces on the wrong side of the people. Ours is the only country in the world today with an ongoing military operation against its own people. Our sovereignty is being violated with impunity. Our freedom of action in our own interest is being questioned and undermined. We are accepting the responsibility for crimes we have not committed.

As if this was not enough, according to latest reports, plans modelled on the American strategy in Anbar Province of Iraq are afoot to pour more money and arms (and perhaps more American soldiers too) into our tribal areas, thus making Pakistan another Iraq. This is an alarming signal.

It is time we woke up to the ominous reality. Pakistan is being weakened methodically by keeping it engaged on multiple external as well as domestic fronts. We are being ingeniously torn apart brick by brick with the ultimate goal of taking out, in a worst case scenario, our nuclear capability.

Our foremost challenge in this situation is not what we are required to do for others' interests; it is what we can do to serve our own national interests and to safeguard our national assets, including our sovereign independence and national dignity. This we can do under a new genuinely elected civilian government rooted in the will of the people and based on constitutional supremacy, rule of law and independence of judiciary.

Mr. Shamshad Ahmed is a former Foreign Secretary of Pakistan