July 13, 2007 (the date of publication in Russian)
Alexander Rublev
THE MOOR CAN DIE?
Washington prefers to destroy Pakistan than to yield it to China
The current confrontation between the Government of Pakistan and the Islamic fundamentalist opposition, culminating in the July 11 overtake of the Lal Masjid ("Red Mosque") religious school by government troops, are interpreted by experts mainly in the light of Pakistan's domestic policies. A few authors associate the fundamentalist upsurge in the country with the revival of the Taliban Movement in Afghanistan and the related rise of a radical religious sentiment in the Pashtun-dominated North-Western Province of Pakistan.
Meanwhile, a thorough analysis of the whole chain of events, preceding the bloody clash in Pakistan's capital city, raises suspicions of involvement of outside forces, acting primarily in the geopolitical interests of the United States.
MILITANT LADIES AND SACRIFICED CHILDREN
The network of religious militants, developing broad activity across Pakistan, ostensibly combats "immorality" and tries to introduce a parallel system of law, built on the pattern of Taliban. The so-called "fundamentalist militants", based in Lal Masjid and the associated Jamia Hafsa female madrasah, have launched public campaigns of criticism and disobedience to state authorities, blaming secular powers for patronizing lechery and prostitution. Though the denounced secular "mass culture" is a result of Western and especially US influence, Lal Masjid-taught militants have chosen citizens of China as an object of propagandist and physical attacks.
The immediate pretext for the armed clash was provided by the capture of seven Chinese women, who worked in a medical centre in Islamabad. The militants accused them of disseminating prostitution by means of practicing massage. Government authorities managed to release the hostages, but immediately thereafter, religious extremists launched a number of assaults on the police and army units.
A day before the armed confrontation in Lal Masjid, on July 9, Chinese nationals repeatedly encountered fundamentalist violence. In Peshavar, North-Western Province, religious rebels assassinated three Chinese workers. China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued an official protest over the incident.
The masterminds of the new terrorist upsurge are definitely inclined to stir up tensions between Islamabad and Beijing. Meanwhile, the pattern of unrest, and especially its media coverage, reminds of classical methods of US-run "overseas operations".
The playground for the current destabilization had obviously been prepared for years. Pakistan’s Joint Intelligence Service (ISI), excessively used by CIA both for mobilizing anti-Soviet Army resistance in Afghanistan in 1980s and subsequently for large-scale smuggle operations, is known to have patronized the founder of Lal Masjid school, Maulana Abdullah, whose son, Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi, emerged as the spiritual leader of the unrest in Islamabad and was eventually killed by government troops during the siege of the seminary on July 11.
After the armed confrontation between the Government's forces and the insurgents, oppositionist media gave floor to radical Islamic activists who declared that the number of casualties of the July 11 police operation greatly exceeded the officially admitted figure of 90 persons. At a number of subsequent public rallies, followed with ritual incineration of Musharraf's effigy, the police and army were also blamed for killing wives and children of the rebels. Thus, Musharraf's political opponents have acquired a visible propagandist advantage.
Meanwhile, Pakistani police authorities report that women and children were used by the rebels as a live shield. This tactic has nothing to do with the Islamic tradition. However, it perfectly fits into the recipe of "non-violent revolutions", provided by handbooks of Harvard's "theoretician" Gene Sharp, the mentor of all kinds of rebellious movements in countries selected by the White House as "target nations".
It is noteworthy that responsibility for the "bloody oppression of the independent political forces" is laid not only upon the government of Pervez Musharraf but also upon the leadership of the Chinese People's Republic which presumably "pressured upon Islamabad" to crack upon the offenders of Chinese nationals.
A FRIEND IN DISGRACE
The current political unrest in Pakistan is developing on the background of deterioration of official relations between Washington and Islamabad. Lately, George W. Bush's Administration has repeatedly emphasized that its geopolitical hopes in South-Eastern Asia are associated with a strategic alliance with India, now regarded as a major tool for deterrence of China.
During decades, the United States had been providing excessive military support for Pakistan, regarding the country as one of the key strategic alliance in the region. However, the events of September 11, 2001 served as a pretext for an abrupt shift of US foreign policy in the region. Pakistan, which managed to develop a nuclear potential without US permission, was suspected of backing Al Qaeda and the Taliban Movement in Afghanistan. This change of policy became a trouble for US partners in military cooperation with Islamabad – particularly Ukraine (after a number of Ukraine-produced tanks, delivered to Islamabad, appeared to have been resold to Taliban).
Losing the status of a privileged partner of Washington, and being now treated as a "disloyal state", Pakistan turned its face to China as the only possible strategic ally. Islamabad and Beijing actually have a longtime experience of economic and military cooperation, dating back to 1970s. In 2005, Pakistan assisted China in its crackdown on the Uighur separatists, thus undermining US operative potential also in the post-Soviet republics of Central Asia. In July 2005, Pakistan's Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz expressed the intention of his country to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). During the two following years, Pakistan was represented at a number of SCO events with an observer status, and in June 2006, President Pervez Musharraf delivered a speech at the jubilee SCO summit in Shanghai. The spectacular pro-Chinese shift of Pakistani policy was driving Washington furious.
Today, Pakistan is treated by the United States as the Moor from Schiller's Fiesco ("Die Verschwörung des Fiesco zu Genua") – a once useful serf who "has done his work" and is not useful any longer – and therefore, "can go", that is be sacrificed for "higher interests". On the maps of "a new Middle and Central East", distributed by US strategic institutions, Pakistan does not exist any longer. These maps include an artificial state of Baluchistan carved out both from Iran and Pakistan, and destined to serve as a US-loyal marionette state, while the Pashtun-populated North-Western Province is supposed to become a part of Afghanistan. US strategists believe that disruption of connections between Sindh and Punjab is a similarly easy task.
A NEW TASK FOR AL QAEDA
The major obstacle for the planned disintegration of Pakistan is its possession of nuclear weapons which makes experiments with its statehood a rather risky venture.
Immanuel Wallerstein, one of the most renowned US political experts, indicates that US geopolitical experiments in Pakistan may result in a development quite unfavorable for Washington. "President Musharraf is being treated as a political loser. However, if case Musharraf's regime is shaken, the United States may acquire a really hostile Islamic regime in Pakistan – which is dangerous, regarding the military nuclear potential and a safely sheltered bin Laden", Wallerstein reminds.
However, US strategists are seemingly inclined to prevent any viable re-emergence of Pakistani statehood, preferring typical tactics of "managed chaos" and apparently trying to make use of those very radical forces which are described as arch-enemies of America and the whole Western civilization. Indicatively, Ayman al Zawahiri, the second largest figure in Al Qaeda, has already sworn to avenge Pervez Musharraf for the "massacre in the Red Mosque", urging the population of Pakistan to wage a "sacred war" against their Government, and to support Taliban.
The scenario of artificial chaos in Pakistan, possibly even suggesting a temporary overtake of power by Al Qaeda in the country, is supposed to serve as a convenient pretext for a large-scale "peacekeeping" operation, initiated rather for overtake of crucial nuclear objects than for direct occupation of the country.
In order to ruin a nation which – unlike Yugoslavia or Iraq – is a regional heavyweight, US strategies need to instigate instability across the whole region of Central Asia, fueling up ethnic ferment and religious hate for efficient isolation of Pakistan’s regime. In this scenario, long-trained test-tube fundamentalists are designed as a tool for mounting tensions between Islamabad and Beijing, while the major role of "cannon meat" is definitely reserved for the Hindu.
The success of such an operation (staged as a "humanitarian effort" and therefore ideologically acceptable not only for the US Republicans but also for the alternative Democratic administration) would enable Washington to re-establish a strategic stronghold in the very heart of Central Asia, providing a much more efficient capability for deterring both China and Russia. Demonstration of Washington's military might, particularly in overtake of nuclear facilities, would provide a significant advantage in the global-scale psychological warfare.
However, historical experience indicates that such kinds of deterrence strategies may bring about effects much more different from what their masterminds may envisage. For instance, the US nuclear assault on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, serving predominantly for psychological pressure upon the USSR, only instigated the buildup of the Soviet "nuclear shield". What geopolitical response is going to follow today? This question is addressed not only the military potential of the Chinese People's Republic and the Russian Federation but also to the strategic thinking of Russian and Chinese elites.
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