Shaukat
Aziz with US Ambassador Nancy Powell in Islamabad
Is Aziz
the Continuity Factor For Washington After Musharraf
By
Wajid Shamsul Hasan
LONDON,
July 29: Not that it is entirely frivolous - what makes one cast
a shadow of doubt on the wisdom of the our people - is the fact
that it is being more talked about than issues that are matters
of life and death for the country.
It
seems to have become a non-issue as to how General Pervez Musharraf
did not even tolerate an anorchous prime minister that Mir Zafarullah
Khan to him was, always on his toes, to oblige the "big boss"
who wielded the baton.
Not many want to discuss the joke that he has rendered prime ministerial
office into. And the irony is that more time is being wasted not
in stopping the next joker to be inducted into Musharraf's circus
but a great deal of energy is going down the drain to prove that
Shaukat Aziz is an Ahmedi (a non-Muslim), an American passport
holder and that his wife is a Jew.
According to some reports his spouse, Mrs. Gloria Cohen Aziz is
a wealthy, well-connected socialite with an interest in many private
firms of consultants as well as security contractors for the US
government. Besides, a lone voice here and there is also heard
alleging him to be the Finance Minister who authorized the writing
off of his own loans.
The
man who has been selected by Musharraf to help him so that his
show goes on can only answer how true all these insinuations are.
He has already denied he is an Ahmedi or has a Jewish wife but
has kept his citizenship issue vague.
To
any one who understands power politics in Pakistan, all that is
immaterial, as long as Musharraf wields the whip with his own
leash in the hand of Bush. Shaukat Aziz might become important
in case Musharraf is not there on the scene.
Washington
would like to have its other "man" on the spot so that
the continuity of command is continued and the agenda that Musharraf
has been handed over is not left half finished.
For
all purposes, good or bad, months from now to December 31, 2004
seems to be pregnant with seeds that are likely to sprout in seminal
changes of far-reaching consequences. On November 2 Americans
will elect their new President. So far chances of John Kerry seem
to be on the ascendancy but then George W. Bush Jr knows the trick
how to win an election without
winning it. It might not be of that enormous significance for
Musharraf whether Bush wins or loses, what would matter most for
him would be whether he can keep on his uniform beyond December
or not.
While
his external strength hinges on Bush's fate, his domestic hold
is slipping fast from under his feet. War on his own people in
South Waziristan is proving to be his Waterloo. Not only he is
being hated by the civilian population in the rest of the country
but there is reported mounting resentment and anger in the Khaki
rank and file. And it is being said that the two assassination
attempts on his life in December most probably were not the last.
And that he is aware of the fact that he is surviving on borrowed
time.
While
Musharraf is Public Friend No. 1 of President Bush and he has
to stick glued to his phone since US Secretary of State Colin
Powell rings him so often, what is making his nights sleepless
are some of the recent obvious developments that do not augur
well for him. July deadline being almost through, it seems Washington
has become desperate and is tightening the screws on him to deliver
Osama, Al-Ayman Al-Zawahiri or Mulla Omar.
In
this context experts in Pakistan find certain recent developments
extremely ominous. And these seems to be part of a subtle exercise
to convey to Musharraf that if he would not act fast, he would
find himself being gunned down from various quarters soon.
The
findings of the 9/11 Commission Report regarding Pakistan's involvement
with Osama Bin Laden, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's disclosure
(India Today--July 26) how his army chief
stabbed him in the back by his Kargil invasion that brought Pakistan
and India on the brink of nuclear war, saved in the nick of the
time by President Clinton and an exhaustive investigative report
by UPI's Editor at Large, Arnaud de Borchgrave, that Pakistan
intelligence knew in advance of the September 2001 terrorist attacks,
all are evidence good enough to indict
Musharraf as the most deceptive player on the global scene and
the most dubious ally that the west has.
The
9/11 Report has found that Pakistan held the key to Osama bin
Laden's ability to use Afghanistan as a base from which to revive
his ambitious enterprise for war against the United States.
The
report says that after the 1977 coup, Pakistan military leaders
turned to Islamic groups for support, and fundamentalists became
more prominent. Pakistan military rulers, the report said, found
"ardent young Afghans" educated at privately madrassahs"a
source of potential trouble at home but potentially useful abroad."
They were to be used as instruments to establish
Pakistan's strategic depth inside Afghanistan.
The Report also charged: "It is unlikely that Osama could
have returned to Afghanistan had Pakistan disapproved. The Pakistan
military intelligence service probably had advance knowledge of
his coming, and its officers may have facilitated his travel."
It claims: "Pakistani intelligence officers reportedly introduced
Osama to Taliban leaders in Kandahar, their main base
of power, to aid his reassertion of control over camps near Khost.
In doing so, Pakistani generals hoped that Osama would expand
the camps and make them available for training Kashmiri militants."
Arnaud
de Borchgrave has claimed in his investigative report, that on
the eve of the publication of its report, the 9/11 Commission
was given a stunning document from Pakistan, claiming that Pakistani
intelligence officers knew in advance of the 9/11 attacks. The
document also claimed that Osama bin Laden had been receiving
periodic treatment for dialysis in a military hospital in Peshawar.
The
anonymous report informed the 9/11 Commission: "The core
issue of instability and violence in South Asia is the character,
activities and persistence of the militarized Islamist fundamentalist
state in Pakistan. No cure for this canker can be arrived at through
any strategy of negotiations, support and financial aid to the
military regime, or by a 'regulated' transition to 'democracy'.
The
confidential report continued: "The imprints of every major
act of international Islamist terrorism invariably passes through
Pakistan, right from 9/11 -- where virtually all the participants
had trained, resided or met in, coordinated with, or received
funding from or through Pakistan -- to major acts of terrorism
across South Asia and Southeast Asia, as well as major networks
of terror that have been discovered in Europe.
Following
portion of the anonymous report quoted by Borchgrave exposes Pakistan's
global vulnerability: "Pakistan has harvested an enormous
price, for its apparent 'cooperation' with the US, and in this
it has combined deception and blackmail -- including nuclear blackmail
- to secure a continuous stream of concessions. Its conduct is
little different from that of North Korea, which has in the past
chosen the nuclear path to secure incremental aid from Western
donors. A pattern of sustained nuclear blackmail has consistently
been at the heart of Pakistan's case for concessions, aid and
a heightened threshold of international tolerance for
its sponsorship and support of Islamist terrorism.
"To
understand how this works, it is useful to conceive of Pakistan's
ISI as a state acting as terrorist traffickers, complaining that,
if it does not receive the extraordinary dispensations and indulgences
that it seeks, it will, in effect, 'implode,' and in the process
do extraordinary
harm.
"Part
of the threat of this 'explosion' is also the specter of the transfer
of its nuclear arsenal and capabilities to more intransigent and
irrational elements of the Islamist far right in Pakistan, who
would not be amenable to the logic that its present rulers --
whose interests in terrorism are strategic, and consequently,
subject to considerations of strategic advantage -- are willing
to listen to...
"...It
is crucial to note that if the Islamist terrorist groups gain
access to nuclear devices, ISI will almost certainly be the source...At
least six Pakistani scientists connected with the country's nuclear
program were in contact with Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden with
the thorough instructions of ISI."
The
report also throws light how Musharraf engineered MMA electoral
triumph through grossly rigged and flawed elections to tell to
the West that the military is the only 'barrier' against the country
passing into the hands of the extremists. It even accused Musharraf
regime as having stage managed anti-US 'mass demonstrations' around
the country.
The
report has ridiculed Pakistan's role in the arrest of some of
the Al-Qaeda leaders. It claimed that "each such arrest only
took place after the FBI and US investigators had effectively
gathered evidence to force Pakistani collaboration, but little
of this evidence had come from Pakistani intelligence agencies.
Indeed, ISI has consistently sought to deny the presence of Al-Qaeda
elements in Pakistan, and to mislead US investigators...This deception
has been at the very highest level, and Musharraf himself, for
instance, initially insisted he was 'certain' bin
Laden was dead.
"...ISI
has been actively facilitating the relocation of the Al-Qaeda
from Afghanistan to Pakistan, and the conspiracy of substantial
segments of serving Army and intelligence officers is visible.
"...The
Pakistan Army consistently denies giving the militants anything
more than moral, diplomatic and political support. The reality
is quite different. ISI issues money and directions to militant
groups, specially the Arab hijackers of 9/11 from Al-Qaeda ISI
was fully involved in devising and helping the entire affair.
And that is why people like Hamid Gul and others very quickly
started the propaganda that CIA and Mossad did it.
"...The
dilemma for Musharraf is that many of his army officers are still
deeply sympathetic to Al-Qaeda, Taliban militants and the Kashmir
cause. The radical sympathies of many ISI operatives are all too
apparent. Many retired and present ISI officers retain close links
to
Al-Qaeda militants hiding in various state sponsored places in
Pakistan and Kashmir as well as leaders from the defeated Taliban
regime. They regard the fight against Americans and Jews and Indians
in different parts of the world as legitimate jihad."
In
London's prestigious The Guardian (July 22, 2004), Michael
Meacher, a Labor MP writing a piece on "The Pakistan
Connection" has made sensational disclosure that a British
Pakistani Islamist Omar Saeed Sheikh, waiting to be hanged in
Pakistan for the alleged murder of the Wall
Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002--held by both
the US government and Pearl's wife not responsible for the murder
while Islamabad refuses to try other suspects newly implicated
in Pearl's kidnap and murder for fear the evidence they produce
in court might acquit Sheikh. Sheikh is the man who knows too
much and Pakistani authorities fear that if he gets out of
their hands, he might spill their secret beans since he had been
involved in their key operations."
According
to Meacher Sheikh had been the conduit for transferring US$100,000
by Gen Mahmud Ahmed, the then head of Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) to Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker".
Meacher wants General Mahmud to be questioned and put on trial.
Besides,
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed now in American custody --one of Bin Laden's
most trusted lieutenants--was active in recruiting people to travel
outside Afghanistan, including to the US, on behalf of Bin Laden.
Meacher claims that this was put on record in a report by CIA
to FBI, but neither agency
apparently recognized the significance of a Bin Laden lieutenant
sending terrorists to the US and asking them to establish contacts
with colleagues already there. Meacher believes that KSB is not
likely to be brought on trial.
Another
witness -- Sibel Edmonds -- a Turkish-American former FBI translator
of intelligence, has been put under gagging orders ever since
she tried to blow the whistle on the cover-up of intelligence
that names some of the culprits who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks.
"My translations of the 9/11 intercepts included [terrorist]
money laundering, detailed and date-specific information ... if
they were to do real investigations, we would see several significant
high-level criminal prosecutions in this country [the US] ...
and believe me, they will do everything to cover this up,"
Sibel had claimed.
Meacher
has also revealed that the FBI, illegally, continues to refuse
the to release of their agent Robert Wright's 500-page manuscript
Fatal Betrayals of the Intelligence Mission, and has
even refused to turn the manuscript over to Senator Shelby, vice-chairman
of the joint intelligence committee charged with investigating
America's 9/11 intelligence failures. And the US government still
refuses to declassify 28 secret pages of a recent report on 9/11.
It
has been rumored that Pearl was especially interested in any role
played by the US in training or backing the ISI. Daniel Ellsberg,
the former US defence department whistle blower who had accompanied
Edmonds in court, had stated: "It seems to me quite plausible
that Pakistan was quite involved in this ... To say Pakistan is,
to me, to say CIA because ... it's hard to say that the ISI knew
something that the CIA had no knowledge of."
Ahmed's
close relations with the CIA would seem to confirm this. For years
the CIA used the ISI as a conduit to pump billions of dollars
into militant Islamist groups in Afghanistan, both before and
after the Soviet invasion of 1979.
According
to Meacher, with CIA backing, the ISI has developed, since the
early 1980s, into a parallel structure, a state within a state,
with staff and informers estimated by some at 150,000. It wields
enormous power over all aspects of government. The case of Ahmed
confirms that parts of the ISI directly supported and financed
Al-Qaeda, and it has long been established that the ISI has acted
as go-between in intelligence operations on behalf of the CIA.
Senator
Bob Graham, chairman of the Senate select committee on intelligence,
has said: "I think there is very compelling evidence that
at least some of the terrorists were assisted, not just in financing
... by a sovereign foreign government." In that context,
Horst Ehmke, former coordinator of the West German secret services,
observed: "Terrorists could not have carried
out such an operation with four hijacked planes without the support
of a secret service."
That
might give meaning to the reaction on 9/11 of Richard Clarke,
the White House counter-terrorism chief, when he saw the passenger
lists later on the day itself: "I was stunned ... that there
were Al-Qaeda operatives on board using names that the FBI knew
were Al-Qaeda" It was just that, as Dale Watson, head of
counter-terrorism at the FBI told him, the "CIA forgot to
tell us about them".
In
his first ever interview to "India Today" (July
26, 2004) Pakistan's former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif living
in exile in Saudi Arabia, has dispelled the impression that General
Musharraf had taken him into confidence before starting his Kargil
invasion. Nawaz Sharif claims that
Musharraf had stabbed him in the back while he was in the midst
of negotiating peace with Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
And when faced with nuclear war, Musharraf panicked and begged
Nawaz to seek President Clinton's help in stopping India from
broadening the armed conflict across the international borders.
President Clinton intervened on the condition that Pakistani troops
would withdraw from the captured Kargil heights at once. Musharraf's
Kargil adventure cost Pakistan 2700 lives of its brave soldiers
and junior officers," Nawaz disclosed.
According
to Nawaz Musharraf is the man who cannot be trusted. He uses everybody
for his own ends. In the present situation he is doing just enough
to keep the Americans hanging on to him while he has his own designs
of aggrandizement.
While
President Musharraf seems to be getting under the squeeze internationally,
a latest book by a former Pakistani police officer whose father
had served in a key position in Pakistan's ISI, now doing research
at Harvard, has also brought on record how Nawaz was lured into
Kargil fiasco by Musharraf and the three other generals.
Hassan
Abbas, a cadered police service officer in his book "Pakistan's
Drift into Extremism" reveals how the then Corp Commander
Mangla Lt .General Mahmud Ahmed and Chief of General Staff Lt.
Gen. Aziz got their chief General Musharraf around to agreeing
to invade Kargil -- an adventure badly led by the then Major General
Javed Hassan. The book also exposes how the gang of four generals
took Nawaz Sharif for a ride.
Since
Hassan Abbas has good contacts because of his government jobs
and I am sure his book at this time and hour, exposing Musharraf's
Kargil misadventure, is something more than meets the eye, especially
when Labor MP Meacher has claimed in his article that CIA and
ISI are inseparable collaborators.
No
doubt much time has
been lost and it is beyond the capacity of General Musharraf to
pull Pakistan out of the quagmire of problems that he has created
by his obduracy, short sightedness and self-centered policies,
one single right decision by him can put the country back on the
track to recovery.
He
should give up his obstinacy and be a patriot to bow out to make
room for the genuine political leadership living in exile so that
the masses could be mobilized to highest pitch of their commitment
to do and die for the country. Nothing less can save Pakistan.
The
writer is a former Pakistan High Commissioner to UK
