Saturday, April 24, 2010

ABOUT KARY LOOGAR BILL

1.5 billion a year does not measure up well against the per capita assistance that Uncle Sam has provided for countries like Jordan, Georgia, Egypt and Israel. Nevertheless, America's friendship with Pakistan is entering a new and exciting phase. The Kerry-Lugar Bill signals a dramatic shift in how American power seeks to engage with Pakistanis. While even moderate Democrats in Washington DC are alarmed by how many Cold War bunnies President Obama has in his diplomatic arsenal, it is also true that the Obama people have a fundamentally different worldview than the one that motivated the actions of the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal of the Christian Taliban. Rest assured, the era in which that gang of neocon torturers and war-profiteers was allowed to sleep serenely in beds that Gen Musharraf and his enablers made for them is over.




Reading the Kerry-Lugar Bill exposes several pleasant realities. Its analysis of Pakistan's development challenges is succinct, to the point and reasonably comprehensive. The depth of analysis in the bill indicates genuine American interest in serious Pakistani issues. Moreover, given the lamentable efforts of Pakistani governments to document its own development priorities (who can forget the PRSP fiascos?), the bill represents a very good summary of the country's development challenges. Finally, to the abiding credit of American democratic institutions, the Kerry-Lugar Bill is a well-crafted document that makes no secrets of its motivations.



Section 3 of the bill is titled Findings, and is a list of the issues that motivate the bill. There are a total of 12 findings. Findings 1 and 2 are platitudinous expressions of the US-Pakistan friendship, and the $15 billion that the US government invested in the Gen Musharraf regime. Finding 3 recognises the importance of the February 18, 2008, election. Findings 4 through 9 focus on Al Qaeda, the Taliban and FATA. Findings 10 and 11 contain statistics about poverty and the economy in Pakistan. Finally, Finding 12 recognises the IDPs crisis caused by the May 8 Swat offensive. Nine of the twelve findings specifically refer to the Taliban, Al Qaeda, security, terrorism and/or FATA. Only one finding mentions the word poverty. This is not an accident. The Kerry-Lugar Bill is an American legislative measure designed to pursue American interests.



The bill's three main sections further clarify the purpose and method that will define the engagement of American power with Pakistan. The first is focused on Pakistan's traditional development challenges, titled, "Democratic, Economic and Development Assistance for Pakistan" and has up to $1.5 billion associated with it. The second is titled "Security Assistance for Pakistan" and does not specify how much money is available, but does define a new era in US-Pakistan military relations. Most importantly this section delinks American support for Pakistani national security from the military, and places the control of any support provided with democratically elected civilian governments. This is a marked departure from the laissez faire rental agreements made by American governments and the Pakistani military under Musharraf with the Bushies, and under Zia, with the Bushies' ancestors in the Reagan White House.



The final section, and the one of most interest from a purely development perspective, is titled "Strategy, Accountability, Monitoring and Other Provisions". This section details a complex set of planning, reporting, auditing and accounting documents that are designed to ensure that Pakistan uses the money it is given in accordance with the wishes of the US Congress -- a fine and noble cause given that it is their money. The Kerry-Lugar Bill's rather detailed set of accountability instruments will, however, if American bureaucrats are not careful, paralyse the mobility of almost all of the $1.5 billion a year.



The Kerry-Lugar Bill calls for the production of at least three major, macro-level strategic documents that will double as budgeted work-plans, to be presented to relevant committees of the US parliament. The secretary of state must produce a Pakistan Assistance Strategy Report within 45 days of the bill's passage, and a Security-Related Assistance Plan Report within 180 days of the bill's passage. The US president must produce a Comprehensive Regional Strategy Report for submission to the relevant committees within 180 days of the passage of the bill. This last document, the regional strategy, seems to have been inspired by the president's book titled "The Audacity of Hope", seeking as it does, ways by which not only Pakistan, but Afghanistan and India too can be made more secure, through the Kerry-Lugar Bill assistance money.



Six months after the secretary of state's Pakistan Assistance Strategy, Madam Secretary, or her predecessor, in concert with the secretary of defence, will be required to submit the first Semi-Annual Monitoring Report. Every six months thereafter, they will be required to produce one of these reports. If they ever make it to the public domain, these will be chart toppers at Amazon and on the New York Times' best sellers' lists.



The semi-annual reports will not only detail expenditure and achievements, but will also include an evaluation of efforts by the government of Pakistan to "disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al Qaeda, the Taliban", "eliminate safe havens", close "Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist camps", "cease all support for terrorist groups", "prevent attacks into neighbouring countries", and "close madressahs linked to the Taliban".



It gets better. In addition to evaluating Pakistan's performance along these lines, the report will also describe Pakistan's anti-proliferation efforts, assess whether US assistance is enabling Pakistan to spend more on nukes, and finally, assess the extent of civilian government control over the military, including "oversight and approval of military budgets, the chain of command, the process of promotion for senior military leaders".



It may be an understatement to suggest that these requisite documents will exact a heavy toll on an already-stretched US bureaucracy in Pakistan. What is more worrying is that each new diplomat will require several individuals to help protect his or her life. Those 'protectors' will not be from among the Islamabad Traffic Police. They will be drawn from a pool of private contractors, hired through the State Department's Worldwide Personal Protective Services (WPPS) contracting vehicle.



The WPPS, as anyone who has read Jeremy Scahill's exceptional book about Blackwater will know, is a bit of a problem. The hullabaloo over Blackwater's presence in Pakistan is not a conspiracy theory. It is a very legitimate concern about the use of mercenaries that are immune from the law. Blackwater may or may not be present in Pakistan -- but its ilk, most definitely are. Among these, DynCorp's presence here has already been verified, thanks to the now infamous Pakistani sub-contractor named Inter-Risk.



Other mercenary companies, such as Triple Canopy, Xe, and Richard Armitage's CACI will eventually be deployed in Pakistan because protecting an army of bureaucrats will require several armies of mercenaries.



Of course, a lot of this is a reflection of the Pakistani state's failure to protect guests when they visit this country. Over the last eight years American diplomats have been bombed (Karachi and Islamabad), ambassadors have been killed (Czech Republic at the Marriott), and journalists and engineers beheaded on camera (Danny Pearl and Piotr Stanczak).



The Kerry-Lugar Bill is a bitter pill that Pakistan's strong and resilient people must swallow because they have repeatedly been failed by both their military dictators and their civilian megalomaniacs. True proof of the very different planet that the Pakistani elite inhabit drips from Farahnaz Ispahani's pen in a lionisation of her government published in the Huffington Post on Saturday, and this paper, just yesterday. Says Ms Ispahani, "Pakistan stands perhaps in the strongest diplomatic position in its sixty-two year history". How's that for a punch-line?

WE ARE NOT TERRORIST



What Pentagon theorists describe as a "Revolution in Military Affairs" (RMA) leverages information technology to facilitate (so they allege) command decision-making processes and mission effectiveness, i.e. the waging of aggressive wars of conquest. It is assumed that U.S. technological preeminence, referred to euphemistically by Airforce Magazine as "compressing the kill chain," will assure American military hegemony well into the 21st century.



Indeed a 2001 study, Understanding Information Age Warfare, brought together analysts from a host of Pentagon agencies as well as defense contractors Boeing, Booz Allen Hamilton and the MITRE Corporation and consultants from ThoughtLink, Toffler Associates and the RAND Corporation who proposed to do just.



As a result of this and other Pentagon-sponsored research, military operations from Afghanistan to Iraq and beyond aim for "defined effects" through "kinetic" and "non-kinetic" means: leadership decapitation through preemptive strikes combined with psychological operations designed to pacify (terrorize) insurgent populations. This deadly combination of high- and low tech tactics is the dark heart of the Pentagon's Unconventional Warfare doctrine.



In this respect, "network-centric warfare" advocates believe U.S. forces can now dominate entire societies through ubiquitous surveillance, an always-on "situational awareness" maintained by cutting edge sensor arrays as well as by devastating aerial attacks by armed drones, warplanes and Special Forces robosoldiers.



Meanwhile on the home front, urbanized RMA in the form of ubiquitous CCTV systems deployed on city streets, driftnet electronic surveillance of private communications and radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips embedded in commodities are all aspects of a control system within securitized societies such as ours.



As Antifascist Calling has written on more than one occasion, contemporary U.S. military operations are conceived as a branch of capitalist management theory, one that shares more than a passing resemblance to the organization of corporate entities such as Wal-Mart.



Similar to RMA, commodity flows are mediated by an ubiquitous surveillance of products--and consumers--electronically. Indeed, Pentagon theorists conceive of "postmodern" warfare as just another manageable network enterprise.





SEE WITH MY EYES GREAT PAKHTOON CITY

                                                        KHAN PUR DAM
                                                       KAGHAN NARAN
                                                       TEARS LAKE
                                                        KAGHAN
                              Kohat Tunnel. "Friendship Tunnel" written on the sign placed above the tunnel (Photo: JBIC)



                                                       KOHAT TUNAL

SEE LAHORE MY LIVE HEART PEOPLE

                                                                     SHALIMAR GARDEN
Lahore is a city on the river Ravi, the capital of the Punjab region, and the second largest city in Pakistan, second only to Karachi. It is also the 23rd largest city in the world. It has a population of approximately 10 million people. The three common languages within Lahore are Urdu, Punjabi, and English. Lahore is known as "the City of Gardens", and as the "Heart of Pakistan" for its important historical lineage.





The Minar-e-Pakistan is a tall concrete unique Tower in Iqbal Park. It's height is about 198.5 feet. This is the site where in 1940, seven years before the formation of Pakistan, the Muslim League passed the Lahore Resolution now the Pakistan Resolution in which the need for a separate homeland for the Muslims from the Empire of India under foreign rule was originally recognised. The Minar-e-Pakistan was designed by Murad Khan, a Turkish architect. The base of the tower is raised approximately four metres from the ground. It rises up to approximately 13 metres, forming a sculpted, flower-like base. From this point it tapers as it rises. The base platform is shaped like a five-pointed star and it encloses crescent shaped pools. The overall height of the monument is approximately sixty metres. It is constructed of reinforced concrete, with the floors and walls rendered in stone and marble. Now it is officially recognized as the National Monument of Pakistan.
                                                                                               food street