Diario Co Latino, El Salvador

The Battle for Pakistan

By Txente Rekondo

Translated By Carolyn French

January 2, 2007

El Salvador - Diario Co Latino - Original Article (Spanish)

The death of Benazir Bhutto has affected a good part of this Asian country’s political foundations, but beyond the personal and Pakistan’s political tragedy, her violent end seemed to follow the title “Chronicle of a Death Foretold.” Washington’s interests and Bhutto’s own wishes forged a virtual stage.

And that script has bumped straight into the harsh reality of that complex and turbulent state and has been blown to pieces after the attack on the famous Pakistani politician Bhutto. As if from a Greek tragedy, the Bhutto family has been marked by violent deaths: Benazir’s father and two of her brothers also died violently, and because of corruption scandals, her own husband is known on the streets of Pakistan as “the 10% man.”

Pakistan is a country on the edge of the precipice, a delicate situation if you have in mind the capacity of a radicalization of Pakistani society to destabilize this region of the Asian continent, without forgetting the nuclear capacity that Islamabad has. Confrontations and violence occur throughout all provinces and the levels increase daily.

A quick look allows us to observe how until recently the Pakistan Taliban movement had formed with control of the Swat and Shangla districts in the Frontier Provinces of the Northeast, recently recovered by the army after tough battles and with significant losses from both sides. Additionally, this army intervention has provoked a high number of civilian deaths that at the same time bring a greater rejection of Islamabad’s forces in the zone and a greater radicalization of its inhabitants.

The sectarian violence is also periodic, as much between different tribes as between Shiite and Sunni community members in the country. Other zones, such as Baluchistan, assist in the resurgence of the armed movement that aims for the creation of its own state and rejects the authority of the central government, which they accuse of plundering riches from them and marginalizing their citizens.

Also we are seeing a notable increase in suicide attacks against the military personnel, high government officers, and political leaders, Musharraf himself has been the object of more than one attack. And all this is seasoned by the presence of a divided and unstructured opposition that looks to toy with one of the means to power, although it means to carry out unnatural alliances. The different positions surrounding the participation in the upcoming elections on January 8 or in a boycott of the elections continues to divide them even more so.

The president Musharraf appears at the moment to feel secure, at least in the strict political sense, since as we have seen, another attack on his life could happen at any time. Support from Washington is key to this feeling of security - support that is humorously called in the street “Busharraf,”  - as is support from the Pakistani military, which permits him to remain in his place at the head of the country.  The physical disappearance of Bhutto’s political presence is going to give way to endless speculations and interpretations of how the actual attack in Rawalpindi will play out. Certainly the attack against Bhutto after coming to the country following years of exile had all the signs of being a meticulously planned action – which makes one think that nearby we will find a member of the all powerful secret service, the ISI. That information was curiously passed over, unnoticed, by most of the West. On this occasion, it will be difficult to find the planner of the attempt, since he may answer to a wide range of interests that benefit from Bhutto’s disappearance - nor can we forget the large number of enemies that the Pakistani politician had.   

One of the keys to understanding this complex puzzle into which the current Pakistan has been transformed, is the role that the armed forces have played since the founding of the country. Currently, the Pakistani military is an important financial business that has constructed financial webs and fountains to be able to develop its military machinery, including the costly nuclear program, and control Pakistan politically and economically at the same time.

The Pakistani generals are not interested in the defense or coordination of a democratic model because they are conscious that it could mean the end of their privileges and of their comfortable and powerful situation, and in this respect they also are in agreement with the other key player, the United States government.

Washington’s actions in Pakistan, as in other parts of the world, have been disguised by the discourse of “promoting democracy in all corners of the planet,” but much the same as in the past with Pinochet, Marcos and many other dictators, or even with the General Zia or Musharraf in Pakistan, what they really seek is the extreme defense of their own economic, political, and military interests throughout the world. From there to defend democracy with the aforementioned dictators would provoke laughter - if not for the tremendous suffering that they have inflicted in these places that they say they “want to help.”

A look at the Pakistani press written in Urdu [Editor’s note: Read translations here on WatchingAmerica.com] allows us to discover how the population feels, tremendously angry with the government’s attitudes to the White House pretentions. We find an example of this in the recent visit to Pakistan made by the Subsecretary of the North American state John Negroponte, whom they labeled “part of the same effort to protect their own [American] interests.” And, between the lines, you can read that “the real agenda of the visit is not to end the state of emergency and establish a true democracy in Pakistan, but to ensure the protection of the United States’ interests in the political future of the country.”

We are seeing the fruits of this labor in recent days with more clarity than in the past. Washington’s pressure has brought along with it an important increase in anti-American sentiment throughout Pakistan, in addition to having contributed to the peaking of the National Islamic Court. This point is particularly important when we recall that the Islamic reality of the country is far from the self-interested alarmist discourse that the Unites States, and in particular its Neoconservative sectors, freely generates.

The religious parties are not a homogenous force: to the traditional divisions surrounding the Shiites and Sunnis you have to add the differences between groups based in rural zones or more urban movements. In addition, until recently, the Pakistani Taliban represented a marginal and sparse movement. One piece of quite clarifying information is the support received by the largest Islamic alliance in the country, the Mutahida Majilis-e-Amal (MMA), which in the 2002 elections achieved more than 12% of the vote (and in some zones it received the most votes).

The process of conversion to Islam in Pakistan has been strictly tied to the US support of determined leaders of the country. In this way, General Zia’s military regime received the support of Reagan’s Republican administration, since they considered it an important component of driving out the Soviet forces from Afghanistan. The promotion of Islamic schools and the ideological radicalization of the Islamic forces depended on the [blessing] of Islamabad and Washington and economic support from Saudi Arabia. And now, under Musharraf’s command, and again with North American support, we are seeing the ideological and material advances of the forces of militant Islam, united to increase suicide attacks and install Sharia, or Islamic religious law, in some areas.

Recent maneuvers of the United States have brought with it a rupture in the channels of communication between militant Taliban Pakistanis and the army and the situation is dangerously approaching a point of no return.

In Pakistan, we are seeing a fight with no holds barred. On one side are the armed forces with both local and foreign political and economic support, and on the other side we find the Islamic militants, minority parties, a part of civil society, and even Al Qaeda. And they maintain a fight of everyone against everyone. And we must not forget the United States, one of whose politicians has signaled that the “security of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal is Washington’s principal strategic interest.” And for this reason, they do not waiver in supporting the local military in order to maintain “control of the center of the country” (Islamabad and Punjab).

Pakistani society faces ethnic, political, sectarian, and cultural divisions, and now an additional radical Islamic movement which is at its peak. We have probably not yet reached the conclusion of this battle for Pakistan, but we can predict that most likely we will not see a happy ending any time soon.

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