And so General Musharraf has imposed Emergency in Pakistan. So what'snew? He claims that terrorism has reached a very high level and extremists are challenging the writ of the government. He has blamed everybody under the sun including the judiciary. But he forgot to name the one party which has been responsible for all that has happened in this failed state: The United States. Who encouraged the Taliban, in the first place? The United States. Who first supported Al Qaeda? The United States again. Who looked the other way as Pakistan stole nuclear secrets, sold them and profited from such activities? Who else but the United States?
And now the chicken are coming home to roost. One can have no sympathy either for Musharraf or the US. The Pakistan Army, too, has been paying for their leader'sfolly. When Nawaz Sharief was having peace talks with India'sPrime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Musharraf was planning the Kargil War. The ISI was doing the dirty work. This duplicitous organisation even thought it could destroy India with a thousand cuts. And where did it get its cash from? Where else than the US which should have known that Islamabad was funding the ISI from economic aid given to it over the years? Don'twe know that the Musharraf Government was given aid to the extent of $ 10 billion since 2001, quite a percentage of the money being diverted to ISI to harm India? What did Washington do about it? Don'twe know that George Bush cancelled a billion dollar debt of Pakistan and additionally donated and 3 billion to it in the questionable hope that it will fight terrorism? Has it? Is that what we see now? Who is fooling whom? In 2001 proof was available that Osama bin Laden had received in person two retired Pakistani nuclear scientists at his secret HQ. Soon after, according to reports, a secret army audit discovered evidence that 40 canisters of highly enriched uranium, the feedstuff for a nuclear bomb, were missing from the Kahuta enrichment laborarory outside Islamabad. What did the US do about it? Nothing! Many of these thefts were apparently known to the then Pakistani dictator, Gen. Zia.
According to knowledgeable sources, Gen. Vernon Walters, a former CIA Deputy Director had all the evidence. Apparently he even went to Islamabad to confront Gen. Zia with it. But it would seem that on his return to Washington he was told that far from demanding of Pakistan a roll-back in nuclear trading, Islamabad must be told ?to do it discreetly?. Today the US and European countries are pretending to be aghast at the emergency imposed on the people of Pakistan by a ruthless military dictator. They know that Pakistan is a failed state. They know that the Pakistan is chockfull of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs). They know that the Pakistani people are revolting, that Islamabad'swrit does not run in Baluchistan or Waziristan or large parts of the North West Frontier Province. Pathan soldiers who form part of the Pakistan Army are reluctant to kill their own people and many have allowed themselves to be captured by the Taliban.
Any day the terrorist organisations can capture weapons of mass destruction built under the very eye of Washington, and then God save us. All these years, the US turned a blind eye to the nuclear exchanges between Pakistan and China. But no action was taken by the US. Indeed the US suppressed information, if recent reports made public are true. One understands that key US agencies were misdirected and countermanded in order to disguise how Pakistan had sold nuclear secrets to countries like North Korea, Iran and Libya. Reportedly intelligence gathering in the US was blunted while the Departments of State and Defence were corralled into backing the White House agenda and forced to side-step the Congress. We now know that the US was quite aware of Pakistan having ?cold tested? a nuclear bomb in laboratory conditions in 1983 and ?hot-tested? i.e. exploded one in 1984 with the help of China. There was not a squeal from the US. Its newly discovered enemy was Saddam Hussain who was supposed to have amassed weapons of mass destruction. International teams were sent to Iraq to search for such weapons. None were found. But Bush went after him and finally Saddam Hussain was captured and hanged after a fake trial.
In his book The Assault on Reason, Al Gore, who was US Vice President for eight long years since 1993 ( and recently won a Nobel prize) damns Bush with hard facts. Writes Gore: ?President Bush repeatedly gave the clear impression that Iraq was an ally and partner to the terrorist group Al Qaeda?Indeed President Bush'sconsistent and careful artifice is itself evidence that he knew full well he was telling an artful and important lie, visibly circumnavigating the truth over and over again?.The President and Vice President ignored clear warnings well before the war began from the Pentagon'sDefence Intelligence Agency and from the CIA in classified reports given directly to the White House that the claim was false?. But Pakistan'srelations with Al Qaeda is open knowledge. Both Pakistan and Al Qaeda have created trouble for us in Jammu and Kashmir and the United States couldn't care less. For years India has suffered from Washington'scallousness, its excuse being that Musharraf is wanted to control the so-called terrorists once supported by the US itself. What is now happening is a huge and cruel joke.
According to a recent poll of 100 US foreign policy experts by the Centre for American Progress and the Carnegie Endowment, both situated in Washington, Pakistan poses the greatest nuclear threat to the world. American perfidy is no longer a secret. It has been exposed by two well-known writers, Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark in their book Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the Global Nuclear Weapons Conspiracy. Aware of what has happened in the past and conscious of what the situation presently is, what is the United States going to do to its favourite poodle? Saddam Hussain was no threat to anybody. He was hanged. Today, thanks largely to US support of terrorists in the past, Pakistan is on the verge of break-up. How long is Musharraf going to extend the emergency? How many more innocent people is he going to get arrested and jailed? Importantly, will that solve the problem which he himself created at the instigation of the United States? India, of course, will do well to keep its distance though it has every reason to be concerned. Pakistan is paying for its folly in subordinating itself to the US foreign policy all these years. Its wound is self-inflicted. One suspects that Musharraf'sdays are numbered and he may go the way his military predecessors have gone. It should be a lesson to future leaders of Pakistan. Its best friend is neither the United States nor China, but its next door neighbour, India.
