The US Support for Violence in Chechenya

http://www.oilprice.com/article-europes-latest-tinder-box-and-global-mega-trends-the-us-support-for-violence-in-chechenya-part-2-265.html

By 1999, the US had given up on reconciling Azerbaijan and Armenia in order to construct pipelines to Turkey, and instead Washington started focusing on building pipelines via Georgia.

For such a project to be economically viable, the Russian pipelines would have to be shut down. Hence, in early October 1999, senior officials of US oil companies and US officials offered representatives of Russian “oligarchs” in Europe huge dividends from the proposed Baku-Ceyhan pipeline if the “oligarchs” convinced Moscow to withdraw from the Caucasus, permit the establishment of an Islamic state, and close down the Baku-Novorossiysk oil pipeline. Consequently, there would be no competition to the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline. The “oligarchs” were convinced that the highest levels of the Clinton White House endorsed this initiative. The meeting failed because the Russians would hear nothing of the US proposal. http://en.trend.az/news/society/religion/1676914.html

Consequently, the US determined to deprive Russia of an alternate pipeline route by supporting a spiraling violence and terrorism in Chechnya, as well as the political fallout of media accusations of Russian war crimes. The Clinton White House sought to actively involve the US in yet another anti-Russian jihad as if reliving the “good ol’ days” of Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, seeking to support and empower the most virulent anti-Western Islamist forces in yet another strategic region.

In mid-December 1999, US officials participated in a formal meeting in Azerbaijan in which specific programs for the training and equipping of mujahedin from the Caucasus, Central and South Asia, and the Arab world were discussed and agreed upon. This meeting led to Washington’s tacit encouragement of both Muslim allies (mainly the intelligence services of Turkey, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia) and US “private security companies” (of the type that did Washington’s dirty job in the Balkans while skirting and violating the international embargo the US formally supported) to assist the Chechens and their Islamist allies to surge in spring 2000. [Here we have it from the most knowledgeable expert on Osama bin Laden on the planet, that the United States was actively supporting " al Qaida and al Qaida-linked" groups at the time of the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the attack upon the USS Cole, and the beginning stages of the 911 terror attacks. Clinton is the father (or the Godfather) of "al Qaida."] Citing security concerns vis-à-vis Armenia and Russia, Azerbaijan adamantly refused to permit training camps on its soil.
Meanwhile, back in 1995 the Clinton White House started threatening Serbian leader Slobodan Milošovic that the US would adopt the “cause” of the Kosovo Albanians in order to coerce Belgrade to support the US-mediated Dayton Accords.

To add pressure on Belgrade,

US and NATO intelligence services began sponsoring Kosovo Albanian terrorist and insurgency networks even though they were intimately connected to jihadist terrorist forces from the Middle East,

Afghanistan-Pakistan and Bosnia-Herzegovina under the command of Muhammad al-Zawahiri (Ayman’s brother), as well as drug dealing and human smuggling networks. By early 1999, the situation was getting out of hand, and

in March NATO found itself going to war in support of organized crime gangs and Osama bin Laden’s declared allies. (read HERE)

Read the other articles in this series:

Europe’s Latest Tinder Box and Global Mega Trends – The EU’s Failure (Part 1)

Europe’s Latest Tinder Box and Global Mega Trends – Russia’s pre-eminence in the EU Energy Market (Part 3)

Was Israel ever legitimate?

Was Israel ever legitimate? By Jeff Gates http://www.rense.com/general44/maf.htm Apr 9, 2010,

The history of Israel as a geopolitical fraud will fill entire libraries as those defrauded marvel at how so few deceived so many for so long. Those duped include many naive Jews who -- even now -- identify their interests with this extremist enclave.

Israeli leaders are wrong to worry about “de-legitimization.” They are right to fear that a long-deceived public is fast realizing that Israel’s founding was key to an ongoing deception.

The Invention of the Jewish People did not begin with Shlomo Sand’s 2009 bestseller by that title. There was no Exile says this Jewish scholar. Nor was there an Exodus. So how could there be a Return, the core premise of Israeli statehood?

If this patch of Palestinian land never rightly belonged to a mythical Jewish People, what then for the legitimacy of the “Jewish homeland”? And for that depiction by British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour in his November 1917 letter to Lord Rothschild?

Were Christians likewise seduced by Sunday school teachings reliant on the phony findings of Biblical archeologist William Albright? Shlomo Sand chronicles how in the 1920s Albright interpreted every excavation in Palestine to “reaffirm the Old Testament and thereby the New.”

In 1948, President Harry Truman, a Christian Zionist, was advised by Secretary of State George Marshall not to recognize this enclave as a state. This WWII general assured Truman that he would vote against him -- and did.

That military tradition resurfaced in January 2010 when General David Petraeus dispatched a team to brief Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the perils that Israel still poses to U.S. national security. Mullen was reportedly shocked. See: The Petraeus Briefing.

He should not have been surprised. Such insights are hardly new. More than six decades ago the Joint Chiefs of Staff cautioned Truman about the “fanatical concepts of the Jewish leaders” and their plans for “Jewish military and economic hegemony over the entire Middle East.”

In December 1948, Albert Einstein and 27 prominent Jews urged us “not to support this latest manifestation of fascism.” They warned that a “Leader State” was the goal of the “terrorist party” that has governed Israel over all but a handful of the past 62 years.

The Joint Chiefs foresaw the “Zionist strategy will seek to involve [the U.S.] in a continuously widening and deepening series of operations intended to secure maximum Jewish objectives.”

Soon after Truman recognized Israel, his presidential campaign train was “refueled” by Zionist Jews with $400,000 in contributions ($3.6 million in 2010 dollars). Soon thereafter, Israel betrayed the U.S. by allying with the British and the French to invade Egypt.

Though London and Paris soon abandoned the operation, months more were required to dissuade Tel Aviv from pursuing their expansionist agenda then -- as now -- for Greater Israel.

Outraged by Israeli duplicity, Eisenhower sought help to rein them in. He soon found that even then (as now) the Israel lobby dominated Congress. Thus the former Supreme Allied Commander appeared on television with an appeal directly to the American people. Then -- unlike now -- a U.S. Commander in Chief threatened to reduce assistance to Israel.

To revamp Israel’s tattered image, New York public relations expert Edward Gottlieb retained novelist Leon Uris to write Exodus. Jewish Zionists have routinely proven themselves skilled storytellers and masterful mythmakers.

This 1958 bestseller was translated into dozens of languages and quickly made into a movie for the 1960 Christmas season starring Paul Newman and featuring Peter Lawford, brother-in-law of the just-elected President John F. Kennedy. See: Time for an American Intifada?

The myth of a loyal ally

Phil Tourney survived the June 8, 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty that left 34 Americans dead and 175 wounded. The region-wide dynamics accompanying that provocative Six-Day land grab guaranteed the conflicts that remain so perilous to U.S. national security.

It was during this Israeli operation that Tourney gave a one-fingered salute to armed Israeli troops as they hovered in helicopters over the USS Liberty while preparing to rappel to the deck and, he surmises, kill the survivors and sink the ship.

Just then the captain aboard a nearby U.S. carrier scrambled jets to assist a vessel under attack by an “ally.” When Israeli intelligence intercepted the transmission, the helicopters fled only to have President Lyndon Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara recall our fighters.

Soon thereafter, Israeli torpedo boats pulled alongside the USS Liberty to inquire if those aboard needed assistance. Those same boats had just blown a hole in the hull, killing 25 Americans. Israeli machine-gunners had then strafed stretcher-bearers, firemen, life rafts and even the fire hoses -- all clear war crimes. Only then did this ally display the chutzpah to ask if our servicemen required assistance.

Had that notorious land grab failed to advance the narrative of Israel as the victim, what might be the condition of U.S. national security today? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently conceded the duplicity that continues to typify this “special relationship.”

As he confessed: “Our policy on Jerusalem is the same policy followed by all Israeli governments for 42 years, and it has not changed. As far as we are concerned, building in Jerusalem is the same as building in Tel Aviv.”

In other words, the 1967 war was neither defensive nor preemptive but an outright taking of land that, one year later, Tel Aviv acknowledged as precisely what concerned the Pentagon 62 years ago.

In effect, Netanyahu confirmed that this relationship reflects multi-decade premeditation. The U.S. has since discredited itself by protecting this “ally” from the rule of law for its taking and brutal occupation of land that rightly belongs to others.

Even now, few know that Mathilde Krim, a former Irgun operative, was “servicing” our Commander-in-Chief in the White House the night the 1967 war began. Her husband, Arthur, then chaired the finance committee for the Democratic National Committee.

Even now, few Americans know the role in that cover-up played by Admiral John McCain, Jr. Or the role still played in this sordid history by his son, Republican Senator John McCain III. See: McCain Family Secret.

Are those who champion this “state” the same belief-makers responsible for the myth of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction? Iraqi meetings in Prague? Iraqi mobile biological weapons laboratories? High-level Iraqi contacts with Al Qaeda? Iraqi yellowcake uranium from Niger?

Was any of that intelligence legitimate? Whose interests were served by deceiving the U.S. to wage war in the Middle East? By the Suez Crisis? By the Six-Day War? By covering up the attack on the USS Liberty?

Adhering to an Enemy?

How are U.S. interests served by treating Israel as a legitimate state? When was Israeli behavior anything other than duplicitous? At what point do we concede the common source of the storylines foisted on an imperiled global public?

Who created the narrative that saw us segue seamlessly from a global Cold War to a global War on Terrorism? Remember the promise of a post-Cold War “peace dividend”? Who induced the U.S. to wage a war whose costs could total $3 trillion, including $700 billion in interest?

Why is debt always the prize? At the end of WWII, the U.S. was home to 50% of the world’s productive power. Were we induced to hollow out our economy by the same consensus-shapers that induced us to wage war in the Middle East?

Do these devastating dynamics trace to a common source?

Who benefits from the “Islamo” fascist narrative? Whose storyline -- really -- is The Clash of Civilizations? Who has long spied on the U.S. and routinely transferred to other nations our most sensitive defense technologies?

Who had the means, motive, opportunity and, importantly, the stable nation state intelligence required to perpetrate such a debilitating fraud from inside the U.S. government? And from inside other governments that joined the “coalition of the willing”?

If not Israel and its supporters -- who? In effect, are those now advocating an “unbreakable bond” with Israel giving aid and comfort to an enemy within?

Israel is right to worry. It was never legitimate. As both an enabler and a target of this fraud, the U.S. has an obligation to concede its source -- and to secure the weapons of mass destruction now under the control of this enclave.

Jeff Gates is a US attorney and author of Guilt By Association, Democracy at Risk and The Ownership Solution. See www.criminalstate.com.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article30112.html

http://www.voltairenet.org/article30022.html

[The following, by a former RAW chieftain, is a daring assessment of America's foreign policy of fomenting democratic-revolution, or outright terrorism by the NED, Reagan's privatized CIA. It is brutally honest about the repercussions for India for supporting such a policy in Asia, without condemning the criminal American policies that are discussed. This position of the author is predicated on the prevailing wisdom in India that the American side will be victorious in its grand game. My own assessment is in RED, embedded within Mr. Raman's work.--.]

National Endowment for Democracy of US

By B.Raman The post-Watergate enquiries into the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the US exposed details of its covert political activities in other countries in order to promote US foreign policy objectives. Amongst such activities were the secret funding of individuals, political parties and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) favourable to US interests and funneling of money to counter the activities of those considered anti-US.After taking over as the President in January, 1977, Mr.Jimmy Carter banned such activities and imposed strict limits on the CIA’s covert operations in foreign countries. During the election campaign of 1980, Mr.Ronald Reagan used effectively against Mr.Carter the argument that the post-Vietnam and post-Watergate decline of the US under Mr.Carter was due to the emasculation of its military and intelligence apparatus. [The real reason for the American decline was the period of national shame we had entered into, for what we had sent our sons to Vietnam to do, and what we, as a people, had become in the process. The falsehoods at the base of every Reagan Doctrine, both economic and military, created the national delusion that we had not become monsters in our lust to kill and dominate the world. The national Republican delusion must be brought to an end, by clarifying the moral focus of what monsters we have become, by highlighting our monstrous crimes against humanity that take place everyday, all over the world.] After his election in November, 1980, and before his taking-over as the President in January, 1981, Mr.Reagan appointed a transition group headed by the late William Casey, an attorney and one of his campaign managers, who was to later take over as the CIA Director, to recommend measures for strengthening the USA’s intelligence capability abroad. [Mr. Raman tends to hide the worst truths about the lone superpower, in this case, covering-up Casey's purloining of Jimmie Carter's debate preparation book, as well as his helping George Bush pull-off the October Surprise and the deal to hold the Iranian hostages until after Carter left office. Wm. Casey was an amoral monster who created the menace of international "Islamic" terrorism and set it loose upon the world, in a concerted plan to gain total American world dominion. That plan (later dubbed by others, the New American Century) included future false flag "Pearl Harbor type attacks to shock the American people into accepting the final steps into a militarized garrison state as the ultimate price tag for totally dominating the world by seizing control over limited energy reserves. The United States has been on the course to total world war set by Mr. Casey and all his collaborators in the greatest crime wave that the world has ever seen.] One of its recommendations was to revive covert political activities. Since there might have been opposition from the Congress and public opinion to this task being re-entrusted to the CIA, it suggested that this be given to an NGO with no ostensible links with the CIA. [Right here is the point in the narrative of an insane Republican foreign policy, where the Constitution was subverted, international law was thrown out the window, and the American anti-Communist right wing created a private CIA, beyond the control and oversight of the American people. With the help of America's foreign partners in previous CIA crimes (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, France, Israel and others), an international organization was begun, that worked through the subversive NED, dedicated to helping Reagan's CIA bypass the American Congress and Constitution. The new multinational entity, called the "Safari Club" was a secret funding and recruitment effort for illegal foreign wars. The international "Islamic" army organized by it, was known as bin Laden's "International Islamic Front," Arabic elements of this group later became known as "al Qaida."] The matter was further examined in 1981-82 by the American Political Foundation’s Democracy Programme Study and Research Group and, finally, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was born under a Congressional enactment of 1983 as a “non-profit, non-governmental, bipartisan, grant-making organisation to help strengthen democratic institutions around the world.” Though it is projected as an NGO, it is actually a quasi-governmental organisation because till 1994 it was run exclusively from funds voted by the Congress (average of about US $ 16 million per annum in the 1980s and now about US $ 30 million) as part of the budget of the US Information Agency (USIA). Since 1994, it has been accepting contributions from the private sector too to supplement the congressional appropriations. Thirty per cent of the budgetary allocations constitute the discretionary fund of the NED to be distributed directly by it to overseas organisations and the balance is distributed through what are called four “core organisations”—the International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), the Centre for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) and the Free Trade Union Institute (FTUI). In 1994, the NED set up two other organisations called the International Forum for Democratic Studies (IFDS) and the Democracy Resource Centre (DRC), both largely funded by the private sector. Since its inception, the NED and its affiliates have been mired in controversy in the US itself as well as abroad. Amongst its strongest supporters in the US is the Heritage Foundation of Washington DC, a conservative think tank, which played an active role in influencing the policies of the Reagan and Bush Administrations. [The Heritage Foundation is at the center of the American brainwashing campaign/arms venture described in the Iran/Contra reports' "Lost Chapter," entitled “Launching the Private Network.”] It brought out two papers on the justification for the NED, when questions were raised in the US on the continued need for it after the collapse of the communist regimes of East Europe. In the first paper of July 8,1993, (Executive Memorandum No. 360) it described the NED as “an important weapon in the war of ideas” and said:” The NED has played a vital role in providing aid to democratic movements in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Nicaragua, Vietnam and elsewhere….. Communist dictatorships still control China, Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam. Moreover, ex-communists masquerading as nationalists continue to dominate several of the Soviet successor states. The NED can play an important role in assisting those countries in making the turbulent transition to democracy….. Local political activists often prefer receiving assistance from a non-governmental source, as aid from a US government agency may undermine their credibility in the eyes of their countrymen.” In the second paper of September 13, 1996, (Executive Memorandum No.461), it said:”The NED advances American national interests by promoting the development of stable democracies friendly to the US in strategically important parts of the world. The US cannot afford to discard such an effective instrument of foreign policy at a time when American interests and values are under sustained ideological attack from a wide variety of anti-democratic forces around the world…The NED has aided Lech Walesa’s Solidarity movement in Poland, Harry Wu’s human rights efforts in China and independent media outlets in former Yugoslavia. Russian political activists affiliated with the NED also played a major role in President Boris Yeltsin’s re-election campaign against the reinvigorated Communist Party earlier this year…. The NED is a cost-effective way to encourage captive nations to liberate themselves without committing the US to a prohibitively risky and costly military crusade to free them from communism.” Testifying before the Sub-committee on International Operations and Human Rights of the Committee on International Relations of the House of Representatives on March 13,1997, Mr.Carl Gershman, President of the NED, said: ” I just want to say that the Endowment’s work is based upon a very, very simple proposition. And that is, where there are people who share our values, where there are people who might be called the natural friends of America, then it is our obligation to help those people in some way.” Amongst the critics of the NED are Ms. Barbara Conry, a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute of Washington D.C. and Mr. Ralph McGehee, stated to be a former CIA official. In a paper of November 8,1993(Foreign Policy Briefing No.27), Ms.Conry said: “NED is resented (abroad) as American interference; it is often further resented because it attempts to deceive foreigners into viewing its programmes as private assistance…. On a number of occasions, NED has taken advantage of its alleged private status to influence foreign elections, an activity that is beyond the scope of AID (Agency For International Development) or USIA and would otherwise be possible only through a CIA covert operation….. What finally drew public attention to NED’s meddling in foreign elections was an aborted attempt to provide opposition candidate Violeta Chamorro with $ 3 million in funding for her 1989 election campaign against Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. The plan was abandoned after it was determined that NED’s charter, which expressly forbids campaign contributions, would be violated. In the end, the money was channeled to programmes that aided Chamorro indirectly rather than through direct campaign contributions.” In a statement of January 19,1996, Mr.McGehee described the post-1991 activities of the NED as “political action operations targeting China and Cuba.” Another NGO of the US has said: ” NED engages in much of the same kinds of interference in the internal affairs of foreign countries, which were the hallmark of the CIA. The NED has financed, advised and supported in many ways selected political parties, election campaigns, unions, student groups, book publishers, newspapers, other media, even guerillas in Afghanistan and, in general, organisations and individuals which mesh well with the gears of the globalised-economy machine…. Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, and also founded the Centre for Democracy, one of NED’s funding middlemen, was quite candid when he said in 1991: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” The NED, like the CIA before it, calls what it does supporting democracy. The governments and movements whom the NED targets call it destabilisation.” Initially, the NED’s activities were directed mainly against the communist regimes of East Europe, but, subsequently, it started combating the communist parties in multi-party democracies of West Europe too. In the 1980s, when the late Francois Mitterrand was the French President, an NED report showed an expenditure of US $ 1.5 million “to promote democracy in France.” There was an uproar in France when the French press discovered that part of this amount had been given by the NED, through the FTUI, to the National Inter-University Union of France, allegedly a right-extremist and xenophobic organisation, in an attempt to use it to defeat communist candidates in the elections to the National Assembly. Embarrassed by the controversy, the Reagan Administration dissociated itself from the NED activities in France. After the collapse of the communist regimes of East Europe, the NED has been focussing its activities against the communist regimes of Cuba, Vietnam, China and North Korea and the Myanmarese military regime and against the resurgence of the communist parties in East Europe due to the economic difficulties there. Its activities relating to China are of two kinds: Those, which are legitimate in the Chinese perception such as training of local village officials in the holding of elections, training of local business executives in better management practices, advice on the drafting of economic reform legislation etc and those, which are legitimate in the US perception, but interference in internal affairs in the Chinese view, such as support to political dissidents, human rights activists and Tibetan exiles and projection of Taiwan as a democratic model worthy of emulation. The first type of activities is carried out by workers of organisations affiliated to the NED, either based in China or visiting the country and the second by off-shore offices of the NED, which were located in Hong Kong before its reversion to China in June, 1997, and which were thereafter reportedly shifted to Australia since the ASEAN countries would not host them. Finding Australia not a convenient place, the NED has reportedly been eyeing India as a possible base for its activities directed against China. Beijing has reasons to be concerned over what it considers as the illegitimate activities of the NED. Of the 28 NGOs of Asia funded by the NED, 14 focus on China, four of them of Tibetan exiles, five on Myanmar, two on Cambodia, and one each on Vietnam and North Korea and the remaining five on the Asia-Pacific region as a whole. In his testimony of March 13,1997, before the House Sub-committee on International Operations and Human Rights, Mr.Gershman said:” There has been a doubling of resources spent in Asia (primarily China, Burma and Cambodia) and a tripling of resources for the Middle East. There were also dramatic increases in Central Asia and the former Yugoslavia…While the discretionary programmes and those of our affiliated labour institute support the activities of various pro-democracy networks, among them Human Rights in China, the China Strategic Institute, the Laogai Research Foundation, and the Hong Kong based activities of labour activist Han Dongfang, IRI and CIPE have targeted opportunities created by the official reform policy in the areas of local elections and economic modernisation.Additional grants support the democracy movements in Hong Kong and Tibet and,through the International Forum, we have highlighted the role of Taiwan as an Asian model of successful democratisation.” The trans-border activities of the NED against the Myanmarese military regime seem to be directed mainly from Thailand and India. This is evident from a testimony given by Ms.Louisa Coan, NED’s Programme Officer for Asia, before the House Sub-committee on Asia and the Pacific on September 17,1997. She said: “NED has been able through its direct grants programme to support the dissidents, to support the democracy movement of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, particularly through assistance to the groups along the borders in Thailand and in India, including twice daily radio programming through the Democratic Voice of Burma (author’s comment: based in Scandinavia), newsletters, underground newspaper, underground labour organising, particular programmes to foster inter-ethnic co-operation and unity among the opposition forces in support of Aung San Suu Kyi’s call for tripartite dialogue and national reconciliation.” It is not known whether New Delhi was aware of the India-based activities of the NED against the Yangon regime. Before the recent visit of the US President, Mr.Bill Clinton, to India, the NED headquarters in Washington issued the following press release: “Secretary of State Madeleine Albright announced on Tuesday March 14 that the US and India will launch a joint non-governmental initiative called the Asian Centre for Democratic Governance during President Clinton’s upcoming trip to South Asia. “Jointly organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the NED, the Centre will be based at CII’s offices in New Delhi, The Bureau of Parliamentary Studies and Training, an affiliate of the Indian Parliament, will partner with the CII in implementing the activities of the Centre.” The press release said the expenditure on the initiative would be shared by the CII and the NED. It is an interesting case of an important member of the Clinton Cabinet, announcing on behalf of a self-proclaimed NGO of the US funded by the Congress, a non-governmental initiative in collaboration with a non-governmental Indian business organisation with which an office of the Indian Parliament would also be associated. This launching was duly done at New Delhi. There are three likely implications of this unusual venture: Possibility of misunderstanding with China which might interpret it as directed against it and its presence in Tibet. Impropriety in co-operating with an American organisation working against the present Government at Yangon, which has normal diplomatic relations with New Delhi and has been co-operating in counter-insurgency measures in the North-East. The presence in Indian territory, with official blessing, of an organisation, which aims to wipe out communism as a political and ideological movement all over the world and which might utilise its presence to undermine the Indian communist movement. NED has never criticised the Indian Communist parties, but a reading of the past statements of those in the US supporting the NED would indicate that they hold communism and democracy as incompatible. [Mr. Raman's honesty in appraising the dangers to India from cooperating with the American destabilization program, without describing it as criminal actions in the extreme, is an act of well-intentioned cowardice. Terrorism and overthrowing foreign governments who have no disagreements with the United States other than resistance to domination are war crimes, considering that the intended purpose of all these intrigues is world war III, the military's "generational war," which we engineered.] The US has also announced the association of India as co-sponsor with a forthcoming conference of “communities of democracies ” in Poland being funded by the Stefan Batory Foundation of Poland, set up by George Soros in 1998, to counter the resurgence of communism in East Europe, and the Freedom House of the US. The Freedom House was founded in the 1940s “to strengthen free institutions at home and abroad”. It played an active role in carrying on a psychological warfare (psywar) against the troops of the USSR and the late President Najibullah in Afghanistan during the 1980s through the Afghanistan Information Centre set up by it, allegedly with CIA funds. The offices of this centre at Peshawar in Pakistan trained the Afghan Mujahideen groups and Pakistani organisations such as the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (formerly known as the Harkat-ul-Ansar) and the Lashkar-e-Taiba, presently active in Kashmir, in techniques of media management and psywar. [Freedom House is the instrument for all the colored revolutions in Central Asia. The MAK office in Peshawar was bin Laden's supply and recruitment headquarters. The following was the address for bin Laden's MAK office: MAKHTAB AL-KHIDAMAT/AL KIFAH, House no. 125, Street 54, Phase II, Hayatabad, Peshawar, Pakistan] Since 1983, part of the funds voted by the Congress to the NED are funneled to the Freedom House, which also gets contributions from the private sector. The Freedom House focuses its activities on media and communications and, according to a 1990 study by the Interhemispherique Resource Centre of the US, more than 400 journalists in 55 countries were collaborating with the Freedom House in its activities against communist parties and regimes. Before going ahead with these projects, there is an urgent need for an examination of the implications of our collaboration with such organisations from the point of view of our national security and political stability.

Reuters Photographer and children gunned-down by Apache gunship

A rare voice of courage: journalist Gideon Levy

A rare voice of courage: journalist Gideon Levy


Gideon Levy (Haim Taragan/Haaretz)

Gideon Levy is a rare voice of courage in an Israeli media generally
supine towards the political establishment. Since 1988, he has written
the "Twilight Zone" column for the Israeli daily Haaretz, documenting
unflinchingly the myriad cruelties inflicted on the Palestinian people
under occupation. In his new book Gaza, a collection of articles which
has just been published in French, Levy utters phrases that, by his
own admission, are considered "insane" by most of his compatriots. The
Electronic Intifada contributor David Cronin spoke with Gideon Levy
about his background and journalism.

David Cronin: You were born in Tel Aviv in the 1950s. Were your
parents survivors of the Holocaust?

Gideon Levy: They were not Holocaust survivors, they just left Europe
in 1939. My father was from Germany, my mother Czech. Both were really
typical refugees because my father came on an illegal ship, which was
stopped for half a year in Beirut by the British and only after half a
year on the ocean could it make it to Palestine. My mother came on a
project with Save the Children. She came without her parents directly
to a kibbutz.

My father always said he never found his place in Israel. He lived
there for 60 years but his life was ruined. He had a PhD in law but
never practiced it in Israel. He never really spoke proper Hebrew. I
think he was really traumatized all his life.

At the same time, he never wanted to go back [to Europe] even for a
visit. He came from Sudetenland, which became Czechoslovakia. All the
Germans were expelled.

DC: How did your parents' history affect you when you were growing up?

GL: I was a typical first-generation immigrant. When my mother used to
talk to me in German, I was so ashamed that she spoke to me in a
foreign language. Her name was Thea; I always said it was Lea. Thea is
a Greek name from mythology. It is a beautiful name but as a child I
always said Lea just to cover up the fact they were immigrants.

My father's family name was Loewy and for so many years I was called
Loewy. But then I changed it to Levy and now I regret it so much.

DC: Tell me about your military service in the Israeli army.

GL: I did my military service in the [army's] radio station. I was
always a good Tel Aviv boy; I had mainstream views; I was not brought
up in a political home.

I was at the radio station for four years instead of three [the
standard length of military service] but for the fourth year as a
civilian. It's a very popular radio station; the army finances it but
it is totally civilian.

I was totally blind to the occupation. It was a word I didn't dare to
pronounce. I was a typical product of the Israeli brainwash system,
without any doubts or questions. I had a lot of national pride; we are
the best.

I remember my first trip to the occupied territories [the West Bank
and Gaza Strip]. There were a lot of national emotions visiting
Rachel's Tomb and the mosque in Hebron. I didn't see any Palestinians
then; I just remember the white sheets on the terraces. I was even
convinced that they were happy we had conquered them, that they were
so grateful we released the Palestinians from the Jordanian regime.

DC: What was the turning point that caused you to criticize the
occupation?

GL: There was no turning point. It was a gradual process. It started
when I started to travel to the occupied territories as a journalist
for Haaretz. It is not as if I decided one day, "I have to cover the
occupation." Not at all. I was attracted gradually like a butterfly to
a fire or to a light.

My political views were shaped throughout the years; it's not that
there was one day that I changed. It was really a gradual process in
which I realized this is the biggest drama: Zionism, the occupation.
And at the same time I realized there was no one to tell it to the
Israelis. I always brought exclusive stories because almost nobody was
there. In the first [Palestinian] intifada, there was more interest in
the Israeli media. But between the first intifada and the second
intifada, I really found myself almost alone in covering the
Palestinian side.

DC: Have you completely rejected Zionism?

GL: Zionism has many meanings. For sure, the common concept of Zionism
includes the occupation, includes the perception that Jews have more
rights in Palestine than anyone else, that the Jewish people are the
chosen people, that there can't be equality between Jews and Arabs,
Jews and Palestinians. All those beliefs which are very basic in
current Zionism, I can't share them. In this sense, I can define
myself as an anti-Zionist.

On the other hand, the belief about the Jewish people having the right
to live in Palestine side by side with the Palestinians, doing
anything possible to compensate the Palestinians for the terrible
tragedy that they went through in 1948, this can also be called the
Zionist belief. In this case, I share those views.

DC: If somebody was to call you a moderate Zionist would you have any
objections?

GL: The moderate Zionists are like the Zionist left in Israel, which I
can't stand. Meretz and Peace Now, who are not ready, for example, to
open the "1948 file" and to understand that until we solve this,
nothing will be solved. Those are the moderate Zionists. In this case,
I prefer the right-wingers.

DC: The right-wingers are more honest?

GL: Exactly.

DC: As an Israeli Jew, have you encountered hostility from
Palestinians during your work in the Occupied Palestinian Territories?

GL: Never. And this is unbelievable. I've been traveling there for 25
years now. I've been to [the scene of] most of the biggest tragedies
one day after they happened. There were people who lost five children,
seven children in one case.

I was always there the morning after and I would have appreciated if
they told me, "Listen we don't want to talk to an Israeli, go away."
Or if they would tell me: "You are as guilty as much as any other
Israeli." No, there was always an openness to tell the story. There
was this naive belief or hope that if they tell it to the Israelis
through me, the Israelis will change, that one story in the Israeli
media might also help them.

They don't know who I am. The grassroots have never heard about me;
it's not like I have a name there. The only time we were shot in our
car was by Israeli soldiers. That was in the summer 2003. We were
traveling with a yellow-plate taxi, an Israeli taxi: bullet-proof,
otherwise I wouldn't be here now. It was very clear it was an Israeli
taxi. We were following a curfew instruction. An officer told us: "You
can go through this road." And when we went onto this road, they shot
us. I don't think they knew who we were. They were shooting us as they
would shoot anyone else. They were trigger-happy, as they always are.
It was like having a cigarette. They didn't shoot just one bullet. The
whole car was full of bullets.

DC: Have you been in Gaza recently?

GL: I have been prevented from going there. The last time I was there
was in November 2006. As I mention in the foreword of my book, I was
visiting the Indira Gandhi kindergarten in Gaza the day after a nurse
[Najwa Khalif], the teacher in the kindergarten, was killed in front
of all her children [by an Israeli missile]. When I came in, they were
drawing dead bodies, with airplanes in the sky and a tank on the
ground. I just went to the funeral of the nurse. It was called the
Indira Gandhi kindergarten not because [assassinated Indian prime
minister] Indira Gandhi was involved but because the owner of this
kindergarten was named Indira Gandhi as an appreciation of Indira
Gandhi.

DC: You have often talked about how you enjoy complete freedom to
write anything you wish. But do you get the impression that life is
getting more difficult for people with critical voices in Israel and
that the government is actively trying to stifle dissent?

GL: Me personally, writing for Haaretz, appearing on TV, practically I
have never gained such freedom. I'm appearing every week on Israeli TV
on a discussion program. There were years in which I had to be more
cautious, there were years in which the words "crimes of war" were
illegal, even in Haaretz. Today, those words are over and I'm totally,
totally free. No pressure from government or army -- nothing.

But for sure, in the last year there have been real cracks in the
democratic system of Israel. [The authorities have been] trying to
stop demonstrators from getting to Bilin [a West Bank village, scene
of frequent protests against Israel's wall]. But there's also a
process of delegitimizing all kinds of groups and [nongovernmental
organizations] and really to silence many voices. It's systematic --
it's not here and there. Things are becoming much harder. They did it
to "Breaking the Silence" [a group of soldiers critical of the
occupation] in a very ugly but very effective way. Breaking the
Silence can hardly raise its voice any more. And they did it also to
many other organizations, including the International Solidarity
Movement, which are described in Israel as enemies.

DC: Did you ever meet Rachel Corrie, the American peace activist
killed by an Israeli bulldozer seven years ago?

GL: I never met her, unfortunately. I just watched the film about her
last week. Rachel, James Miller and Tom Hurndall were all killed
within six or seven weeks, one after the other, in the same place in
Gaza, more or less. It was very clear this was a message.

DC: What do you think of her parents' decision to sue the State of
Israel over her killing?

GL: Wonderful. I saw them both when they were in Israel. They are
really so noble. They speak about the tragedy of the soldier who
killed their daughter, that he is also a victim. And they are so low-
key. I admire the way they are handling it and I hope they will win.
They deserve compensation, apologies, anything. Their daughter was
murdered.

I participated in a film about James Miller, a documentary by the BBC.
James Miller's story is even more heart-breaking. There was a real
murder. They knew he was a journalist, he was a photographer, he had
his vest saying "Press." It was very clear he was a journalist. And
they just shot him.

DC: How do you feel about Israel's so-called insult toward the US,
when it announced the construction of new settlements in East
Jerusalem during a visit to the Middle East by US Vice President Joe
Biden?

GL: I really think it is too early to judge. Something is happening.
For sure, there is a change in the atmosphere. For sure, [Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is sweating. And the question is:
do the Americans have a clear program?

One thing must be clear: Israel has never depended so much on the
United States like it does today. Until now [Barack] Obama has made
all the possible mistakes. His first year was wasted. But still we
have to give them [the Americans] a chance because for sure there is a
change in the tone. But I'm afraid their main goal now is to get rid
of Netanyahu. And if this is the case, it will not lead anywhere.
Anyone who will replace him will be more of the same, just nicer. It
will be again this masquerade of peace process, of photo
opportunities, of niceties which don't lead anywhere. From this point
of view, I prefer a right-wing government. At least, what you see is
what you get.

DC: Spain, the current holder of the European Union's (EU) rotating
presidency, appears keen to strengthen the EU's relationship with
Israel. What signal would deeper integration of Israel into the EU's
political and economic programs send?

GL: I think it would be shameful to reward Israel now. To reward it
for what? For building more settlements? But I think also that Europe
will follow changes in Washington like it follows almost blindly
anything the Americans do.

DC: There was a minor controversy recently about the fact that Ethan
Bronner, The New York Times' correspondent in Jerusalem, has a son in
the Israeli army. Do you have any children in the army and do you
think that Bronner was compromised by this matter?

GL: My son is serving in the army. My son doesn't serve in the
territories but I have always disconnected myself from my sons. They
have their own lives and I haven't tried to influence them.

About Ethan Bronner, it's really a very delicate question. The fact
there are so many Jewish reporters, Zionist reporters who report for
their national media from the Middle East, for sure is a problem. On
the other hand, I know from my own experience, you can have a son
serving in the army and be very critical yourself. I wouldn't make
this a reason for not letting him cover the Middle East for The New
York Times, even though I must tell you that I don't see the
possibility where The New York Times' correspondent in Jerusalem is
someone whose son is serving in the [Palestinian resistance
organization] al-Aqsa Brigades, for example.

DC: What role can journalists play in trying to achieve a just and
lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

GL: There is an enormous historic role that the Israeli media is
playing. The Israeli media, which is a free media, free of censorship,
free of governmental pressure, has been dehumanizing the Palestinians,
demonizing them. Without the cooperation of the Israeli media, the
occupation would not have lasted so long. It is destructive in ways I
cannot even describe. It's not Romania, it's not Soviet Russia. It's a
free democracy, the media could play any role but it has chosen to
play this role. The main thing is about the flow of information. It is
so one-sided, so much propaganda and lies and ignorance.

The French-language edition of Gideon Levy's book Gaza: Articles pour
Haaretz, 2006-2009, is published by La Fabrique. An English edition
will be available soon.

David Cronin's book Europe's Alliance with Israel: Aiding the
Occupation will be published later this year by Pluto Press.

PETRAEUS' CRY...TOO LITTLE TOO LATE

Will it be long before Petraeus’ cry rings across the majority of the citizenry fed up with America’s wars in the Middle East? And will this not put a sharper edge on the limp calls for Israel to think twice about continuing its apartheid policy, its relentless ethnic cleansing of Palestine? Does this not begin to pose the question of "Us or Them" for the American populace?

This writer has long contended that Israel has been risking a serious backlash in the U.S. When it erupts, it may not be pretty. And it may be especially dangerous given the long policy of crying "wolf" over anti-Semitism. It would seem very wise for American Jewry to boot out the neocons and Israel-Firsters from their midst and hasten back to the morality of the secular, humanist Judaism which was dominant in the U.S. not so long ago. It may not be simply a matter of morality but of self-interest.

America’s “Islamists” Go Where Oilmen Fear to Tread

By: Peter Chamberlin

By following the trail of militant terrorists US forces and American interests have gained access deep in Central Asia, where oil companies have had little luck gaining a foothold on their own.

To students of American foreign policy in Afghanistan and throughout the world, it is common knowledge that the United States military and Central Intelligence often act in a manner that is contradictory to the words of American leaders. To those who care to look behind the curtain of American duplicity, which casts a veneer of benevolence over our actions, it becomes readily apparent that “Islamic militants” tend to show-up wherever American oil companies have expressed an interest. America’s historical usage of the same militant groups in the past casts suspicion on their reappearance today, all along the pathway of the projected pipelines.

It is much more than mere serendipity that militant actions usually target American adversaries, such as China, Russia and Iran. In addition, “Islamists” seem to also target disobedient American allies, such as Pakistan, who have fallen out-of-line, or otherwise failed to meet American expectations. Given our use of Islamist militants in Afghanistan to attack Russian forces, as well as in Bosnia, to attack Russia’s allies, the Serbians, it takes a very small leap of the imagination to see that the US is logically supporting the very militants our forces are fighting in the field.

The key to understanding American foreign policy is the Hegelian dialectic—the policy of taking certain actions that will cause reactions that are the polar opposite of what you really claim to wanted in the first place:

“The Hegelian Dialectic is, in short, the critical process by which the ruling elite create a problem, anticipating in advance the reaction that the population will have to the given crisis, and thus conditioning the people that a change is needed. When the population is properly conditioned, the desired agenda of the ruling elite is presented as the solution. The solution isn’t intended to solve the problem, but rather to serve as the basis for a new problem or exacerbate the existing one.”

To study the Afghan Islamists is to conduct a forensic dissection of a psyop. From the very beginning, before the Soviets even invaded, the Afghan revolution was manufactured by a coalition of foreign powers led by the CIA. Even the political form of Wahabi “Islam” which was taught to combatants in local madrassas, using American-created “Islamic” textbooks from the University of Nebraska, was really a deviation from true Islam that incorporated behavioral modification techniques. “Suicide bombers” are a CIA mind-control phenomenon.

All the militant Islamists dance to the Wahabi tune, or that of its closest cousin, the equally bankrupt Deobandi movement. Saudi Arabia spreads this false religion wherever oil and gas fields beckon American corporations. Pakistan merges Wahabbism with the Deobandi faith in its Islamists who receive training in the tribal region. The radicalism that arises thereafter from either branch is the desired bi-product that is sought by American military and intelligence planners. The radicalism and the terrorism which it brings, all in the name of Allah, provide excuses for American military trainers to penetrate targeted nations.

In central Asia, Hizb ut-Tahrir radicalizes young minds and prepares the path for the more radical Wahabi imports. Saudi-built mosques in the former Soviet republics that were previously cleansed of all formal religion by the communist overlords provide very fertile ground where young minds can fill their hunger for both knowledge and religion.

Former government translator Sibel Edmonds recently gave testimony in the court case of Turkish Islamic leader Fetullah Gulen, who was seeking a green card, which confirmed US/Saudi sponsorship of radical mosques and Islamists in central Asia. She described American government documents which she had transcribed during her government service

“Now we come full circle to the current operations in Central Asia which are at the core of the gagging of Sibel Edmonds. As outlined in my recent article, “Court Documents Shed Light on CIA Illegal Operations in Central Asia Using Islam & Madrassas,” the CIA has been funding an illegal covert operation to ‘Islamicize’ the Central Asian region in order to wrest control away from Russia and secure the vast energy resources of the region. The US has been using Turkey as a proxy to carry out this operation, for reasons that Sibelexplained:

Given the history, and the distrust of the West, the US realized that it couldn’t get direct control, and therefore would need to use a proxy to gain control quickly and effectively. Turkey was the perfect proxy; a NATO ally and a puppet regime. Turkey shares the same heritage/race as the entire population of Central Asia, the same language (Turkic), the same religion (Sunni Islam), and of course, the strategic location and proximity.

This started more than a decade-long illegal, covert operation in Central Asia by a small group in the US intent on furthering the oil industry and the Military Industrial Complex, using Turkish operatives, Saudi partners and Pakistani allies, furthering this objective in the name of Islam.

This is why I have been saying repeatedly that these illegal covert operations by the Turks and certain US persons dates back to 1996, and involves terrorist activities, narcotics, weapons smuggling and money laundering, converging around the same operations and involving the same actors.

And I want to emphasize that this is “illegal” because most, if not all, of the funding for these operations is not congressionally approved funding, but it comes from illegal activities.

And one last thing, take a look at the people in the State Secrets Privilege Gallery on my website and you will see how these individuals can be traced to the following; Turkey, Central Asia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia – and the activities involving these countries.

As part of this operation, Turkish organizations such as the Gulen ‘movement,’ a $25 billion economic powerhouse, reportedly financed by the CIA, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, has been establishing madrassas and mosques across Central Asia – including Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan – for the past decade.

The construction and operation of these madrassas and mosques appear to serve a number of purposes:
1. Indoctrination and radicalization of students
2. Providing a front for CIA and State Department-sanctioned ‘teachers’ to operate with the protection of Diplomatic passports.
3. Laundering money for a variety of purposes.”

Thanks to these successful psyops, terrorist drug-runners from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) find more willing recruits than they can employ to sow terror, crime and drug addiction throughout all of the fertile, though uranium rich, Ferghana Valley, which connects to all of the “Stans.”

“The IMU is best understood as an amalgam of personal vendetta, Islamism, drugs, geopolitics, and terrorism…Only the IMU had a network of contacts on all sides of the Afghan conflict, which enabled it to freely move across Afghanistan and Tajikistan unlike any other known organization.”—The Drugs-Crime-Radical Islamist Nexus.

There is every reason to believe that the IMU itself, is a CIA creation. According to the definitive history on this topic, given by author Steve Coll in Ghost Wars,:

“CIA Director William Casey, in a move exceeding his authority, decided to extend destabilizing propaganda measures inside the borders of the Soviet Union. To this end, the CIA promoted the Muslim religion in Uzbekistan, by CIA commissioning a translation of the Qu’ran into Uzbek by an Uzbek exile living in Germany, and then commissioning Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence to deliver 5,000 copies.”

If the CIA did, in fact, supply the corrupted Islamic jihadi textbooks to the madrassas where IMU foot soldiers were indoctrinated in Uzbekistan, then it follows that whatever arose from them is also a product of the CIA. At this point, it is necessary to quote from official US military doctrine—from US Air Force doctrine paper Irregular Warfare, under “Support to Insurgencies”–

“Various US government organizations are postured to recruit, organize, train, and advise indigenous guerrilla or partisan forces. These operations usually consist of supplying equipment, training, and advisory assistance to non-state actors. They may also involve US direct-action operations supporting specific campaign goals.”

American military and drug-interdiction missions in hot pursuit of IMU terrorists and drug-dealers provide cover for Special Forces operatives, who scout-out local leadership for further development, or termination. The “Irregular Warfare” document deals with leadership becoming targeted by both drone and PSYOP, as well. The Partnership for Peace programs open the door for an influx of thousands of American and NATO trainers, giving them bases for operations for “direct-action” missions, while it transfers tons of surplus military equipment to oil rich customers and sets the stage for joint military war games.

The new anti-terror training center at Batken, Kyrgyzstan will train the “Scorpion” Special Forces units for drug-interdiction and anti-terrorist operations. Batken is the axis point for American operations, the point where dominion over former Soviet states formally transfers out of Russian hands, into greedy American hands. The Russians passed-up the chance to build a military facility at Batken. IMU terror convinced the Kyrgyz government that the center was needed to deal with IMU terror operations, after 800 IMU agents penetrated the Ferghana Valley:

“The incursions by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) in the Batken Oblast of Kyrgyzstan in August 1999 exposed fundamental weaknesses in the Kyrgyz armed forces. Coordinated activities by the groups of armed insurgents confirmed that the state security bodies were unable to cope adequately with the tactics of guerrilla war…Despite the official claims made by the MoD, neither Kyrgyz security nor military units conducted successful combat engagements with the insurgents. This lack of success underscored a number of critical Kyrgyz military shortfalls that hampered their ability to effectively find, fix, and engage the hostile groups”

The recent sudden realignment of Taliban and Pakistani interests (represented in the string of Taliban “arrests”) is intended to provide the US and NATO with an excuse to open this new front in their terror war, by shifting the emphasis to protecting the new Northern Distribution Network (NDN) that parallels anticipated pipeline routes to the irresistable underground wealth that waits to be pumped from underneath the fertile Caspian basin soil. This attempted realignment on interior Asia was only made possible because American and Pakistani leaders decided to take advantage of Pakistan’s continued friendly relations with the Taliban, instead of working at cross-purposes with each other.

Now it is possible to plan for an American “exit from Afghanistan,” which will firmly place total control of Afghanistan back into Pakistan’s hands (if only India and Russia can be persuaded to go along). The sad part of the story is that now, when America needs Indian cooperation more than ever, the David Headley case is threatening to blow Indo-American relations asunder. If possible, America is attempting to allow India limited access to Headley, if it can be done without exposing the American hand behind the Mumbai attack. (SEE: Mumbai Mystery: American Designs on Pakistan and India )

The new Afghan paradigm will free American forces for the central Asian expedition, so that American oil companies can get the oil that everybody will want piped to the outside world. India has a vested interest in making all of this happen.

If all the players really wanted to ensure that the oil and gas flowed out of Asia, then they would now support turning back the clock in Afghanistan, to the former arrangements that prevailed before 2001. Friend of Pakistan (and formerly the US) Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has led the way by taking the first steps to introduce the new Afghan paradigm—a rapid American pull-out, based on Pakistan reeling-in the Taliban and Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami effectively challenging the Taliban and renegade Uzbeks around Kunduz.

A Pakistani-engineered peace deal between the Karzai government and Hekmatyar, for northern Afghanistan only, is clearly in the cards, but that also depends upon whether or not the Indian/Russian-allied Northern Alliance wants to play the role of spoiler. A return to pre-2001 conditions could turn the clock all the way back to 1996 and the civil war in Afghanistan between Taliban and Northern Alliance. If that happens, then look for India to increase support to resistance (terrorist) groups in Balochistan. If that path is chosen, then we should also expect a surge in Taliban-related violence in Balochistan, as Gen. Musharraf’s MMA militant/mullah alliance is revived, and Taliban are once again imported to take on the BLA and other foreign-supported resistance groups.

Either way, by handing Afghanistan off to Pakistan, in short order, US forces will be freed-up to move northward, to secure territory around the new Northern Distribution Network (NDN) and the clearing of the way for the planned pipelines. Pakistan will be given a free hand to pacify its own territory, including Balochistan, with American air power available if needed. Pakistan will clear Balochistan to the port at Gwadar, if everything works out as anticipated. It will be expected to anchor this end of the supply chain, a position it has gotten used to in its service to America in the past.

But there is a very large credibility hurdle that both Pakistan and America must get past—the ease with which Pakistan has been able to round-up so many of the “Quetta Shura” gives rise to multiple questions about what other lies have been issued from Islamabad.

If Pakistan can effortlessly sweep-up half of the Taliban leadership, after giving American Predator pilots guidance to so many key militant leaders in a very small timeframe, then it proves that they have known where all the militants were all along. It disproves the lie that the link between mullahs and military had been broken, but does it likewise disprove the American contention that its use of Islamists is also a thing of the past? The recent capture of IMU-trained Jundullah terrorist leader Abdolmalek Rigi, and the possible resultant upsetting of US plans to merge IMU terrorists into Jundullah’s ranks (as recently revealed by researcher Wayne Madsen), are strong circumstantial evidence that there is a deep connection still active between the CIA and their militant spawn.

From The color of money in Afghanistan has a chemical signature–

“Holbrooke has apparently not learned from his experience with Jundallah and Karzai’s drug trafficking family. WMR has learned that the Rigi-Holbrooke meeting at the Manas airbase was also to include a pre-arranged meeting between Rigi and captured members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), who have been converted from adherents of Osama Bin Laden’s “Al Qaeda” to pipeline saboteurs, Holbrooke wanted to see an alliance between Jundallah and the reformed IMU guerrillas to plan operations targeting the Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan-China (TUKC) gas pipeline that recently began operations. The United States used Jundallah to attack the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline in Baluchistan and Holbrooke was hoping that Rigi’s experience would benefit the turned IMU terrorists who operate in the Fergana Valley of Tajikistan.”

The American use of Islamic militants as elements of its covert foreign policy is a fact, known to governments and their spy agencies all over the world. The only people who do not suspect that the American government is creating the very militants it claims to be at war against, are the American people and Western audiences. It is common knowledge to everyone in the Middle East region. In fact, nearly every government with its hands in the Afghan/Pakistan chaos uses “Islamists,” warlords and criminal types to advance their agendas in the conflict; it is the only way to be effective.

The greatest part of the multitude of problems that American planners must overcome is the enormous multi-faceted balancing act between armies and militants, between partners in the war coalition, between thresholds and breaking points, between militarizing the citizens of the United States without provoking them into violent revolution. Of these multiple balancing acts, the trickiest task of all for the Obama Administration will involve that of maintaining Russian and Indian assistance in the Afghan fight against militants and opium, without overplaying their hand or revelations about Islamist destabilization operations against their interests being revealed.

It is my hope in writing this, that it will help a little to reveal the awful knowledge that is being covered-up. No amount of oil or gas is worth the price that is being extracted from thousands of innocent human beings to pay for the war crimes that are being committed in this aggression.

If American diplomats can maintain this precarious balancing act long enough, and if they work quickly enough to get some kind of peace/exit agreement in place, American forces might become able to openly move the pipeline plans forward, while they covertly militarize central Asia under the cover of fighting drugs and militancy. The former Soviet republics have very little, if any, independent news sources to let us know what crimes are being committed once the action slips into Krygzstan. Whatever happens next will be far beyond the eyes and ears of the world community.

Pakistan Army unloading goods in Balochistan: Below Left: Arms seized on Feb 28

The Stunning Investigative Story on the Birth of Balochistan Liberation Army

By Tariq Saeedi in Ashgabat, Sergi Pyatakov in Moscow, Ali Nasimzadeh in Zahidan, Qasim Jan in Kandahar and SM Kasi in Quetta

MARCH 1: Deception and treachery. Live and let die. The ultimate zero sum game. Repetition of bloody history: Call it what you may, something is happening in the Pakistani province of Balochistan that defies comprehension on any conventional scale.

Four correspondents and dozens of associates who collectively logged more than 5000 kilometers during the past seven weeks in pursuit of a single question – What is happening in Balochistan? – have only been able to uncover small parts of the entire picture.

However, if the parts have any proportional resemblance to the whole, it is a frightening and mind-boggling picture. Every story must start somewhere. This story should conveniently have started on the night of 7 January 2005 when gas installations at Sui were rocketed and much of Pakistan came to almost grinding halt for about a week. Or, we should have taken the night of 2 January 2005 as the starting point when an unfortunate female doctor was reportedly gang-raped in Sui. However, the appropriate point to peg this story is January 2002 and we shall return to it in a minute.

Actually, the elements for the start of insurgency in Balochistan had been put in place already and the planners were waiting for a convenient catalyst to set things in motion. The gang-rape of 2 Jan, around which this sticky situation has been built, was just the missing ingredient the planners needed.

Two former KGB officers explained that the whole phenomenon has been assembled on skilful manipulation of circumstances. We shall keep returning to their comments throughout this report.

As Pakistan and India continue to mend fences, as Iran, Pakistan and India try to pool efforts to put a shared gas pipeline, as Pakistan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan join hands to lay a natural gas pipeline of great economic and strategic importance, as the United States continues to laud the role of Pakistan as a frontline nation in war against terrorism, as Chinese contractors forge ahead with construction work in Gwadar port and on trans-Balochistan highway, as the Pakistan government makes efforts to bring Balochistan under the rule of law and eliminate safe havens for terrorists and drug barons, as the whole region tries to develop new long-term models to curb terrorism and bring prosperity to far flung areas, there is a deadly game going on in the barren and hostile hills of Balochistan. Liens are muddy; there are no clear-cut sectors to distinguish friends from foes.

Right in the beginning we would like to clarify that when we say Indians, we mean some Indians and not the Indian government because we don’t have any way of ascertaining whether the activities of some Indian nationals in Pakistan represent the official policy of their government or is it merely the adventurism of some individuals or organizations. When we say Iranians or Afghans, we mean just that: Some Iranians or Afghans. We don’t even know whether the Iranian and Afghan players in Balochistan are trying to serve the interests of their countries or whether their loyalties lie elsewhere.

But – and it is a BUT with capital letters – when we say Americans or Russians, we have reasons to suspect that the American and Russian involvement in Balochistan is sanctioned, at least in part, by Pentagon (if not White House) and Kremlin.

We would also like to acknowledge that the picture we have gathered is far from complete and except for the explanatory comments of two former KGB officials, we have no way of connecting the dots in any meaningful sequence. For the sake of honesty, this story should better remain abrupt and incomplete. The story we are going to tell may sound a lot like cheap whodunit but that is what we found out there.

Before zooming in to January 2002, let’s set the background. We consulted Sasha and Misha, two former KGB officers who are Afghanists – the veterans of Russo-Afghan war – and they seem to know Balochistan better than most Pakistanis. Obviously, Sasha and Misha are not their real names. They live on the same street in one of the quieter suburbs of Moscow. Two bonds tie them together in their retirement: While on active duty in KGB, they were both frequent travelers to Balochistan during the Russo-Afghan war where they were tasked to foment trouble in Pakistan; and they are both wary of Vodka, the mandatory nectar of Russian cloak and dagger community. They visit each other almost every day and that is why it was easy to catch them together for long chats over quantities of green tea and occasional bowls of Borsch.

We made more than a dozen visits to the single-bedroom flat of Misha, where Sasha was also found more often than not, and we picked their brains on Balochistan situation. As and when we unearthed new information on Balochistan, we returned to Sasha and Misha for comments.

As they told us, during the Russo-Afghan war, the Soviet Union was surprised by the ability and resourcefulness of Pakistan to generate a quick and effective resistance movement in Afghanistan. To punish Pakistan and to answer back in the same currency, Kremlin decided to create some organizations that would specialize in sabotage activities in Pakistan.

One such organization was BLA (Balochistan Liberation Army), the brainchild of KGB that was built around the core of BSO (Baloch Students Organization). BSO was a group of assorted left-wing students in Quetta and some other cities of Balochistan. Misha and Sasha can be considered among the architects of the original BLA.

The BLA they created remained active during the Russo-Afghan war and then it disappeared from the surface, mostly because its main source of funding – the Soviet Union – disappeared from the scene. In the wake of 9-11, when the United States came rushing to Afghanistan with little preparation and less insight, the need was felt immediately to create sources of information and action that should be independent of the Government of Pakistan.

As Bush peered into the soul of Putin and found him a good guy, Rumsfeld also did his own peering into the soul of his Russian counterpart and found him a good game. The result was extensive and generous consultation by Russian veterans who knew more about Afghanistan and Balochistan than the Americans could hope to find.

It was presumably agreed that as long as their interests did not clash with each other directly, the United States (or at least Pentagon) and Kremlin would cooperate with each other in Balochistan. That brings us to January 2002. “Actually, most of the elements were in place, though dormant, and it was not difficult for anyone with sufficient resources to reactivate the whole thing,” said Misha about the present-day BLA that is blamed for most of the sabotage activities in Balochistan.

In January 2002, the first batch of ‘instructors’ crossed over from Afghanistan into Pakistan to set-up the first training camp. That was the seed from which the present insurgency has sprouted. It seemed like a modest effort back then.

Only two Indians, two Americans, and their Afghan driver-guide were in a faded brown Toyota Hilux double cabin SUV that crossed the border near Rashid Qila in Afghanistan and came to Muslim Bagh in Pakistani province of Balochistan on 17 January 2002. For this part of the journey, they used irregular trails. From Muslim Bagh to Kohlu they followed the regular but less-frequented roads.

In Kohlu they met with some Baloch youth and one American stayed in Kohlu while two Indians and one American went to Dera Bugti and returned after a few days. They spent the next couple of weeks in intense consultations with some Baloch activists and their mentors and then the work started for setting up a camp.

“Balach was one of our good boys and even though I don’t know who the present operators are, it can be said safely that Kohlu must have been picked as the first base because of Balach,” said Misha.

Balach Marri is the son of Nawab Khair Baksh Marri and he qualified as an electronic engineer from Moscow. As was customary during those times, any Baloch students in Russia were cultivated actively and lavishly by the KGB. Balach was one of their success stories.

Because of intimate connections with India and Russia, it was no surprise that Balach Marri was picked as the new head of the revived BLA. The mountains between Kohlu and Kahan belong to the Marris.

The first camp had some 30 youth and initial classes comprised mainly of indoctrination lectures. The main subjects were: 1. Baloch’s right of independence, 2. The Concept of Greater Balochistan, 3. Sabotage as a tool for political struggle, 4. Tyranny of Punjab and plight of oppressed nations, and 5. Media-friendly methods of mass protest.

“Manuals, guidelines and even lecture plans were available in the Kometit [KGB] archives. Except for media interaction, they virtually followed the old plans,” told Sasha.

As was logical, the small arms and sabotage training soon entered the syllabus. First shipment of arms and ammunition was received from Afghanistan but as the number of camps grew, new supply routes were opened from India.

Kishangarh is a small Indian town, barely five kilometers from Pakistan border where the provinces of Punjab and Sindh meet. There is a supply depot and a training center there that maintains contacts with militant training camps in Pakistan, including Balochistan.

There is also a logistics support depot near Shahgarh, about 90 kilometers from Kishangarh, that serves as launching pad for the Indian supplies and experts.

These were unimportant stations in the past but they have gained increasing importance since January 2002 when Balochistan became the hub of a new wave of foreign activity.

The method of transfer from India to Balochistan is simple. Arms and equipment such as Kalashnikov, heavy machine guns, small AA guns, RPGs, mortars, land mines, ammunition and communication equipment are transferred from Kishangarh and Shahgarh to Pakistani side on camel back and then they are shifted to goods trucks, with some legitimate cargo on top and the whole load is covered by tarpaulin sheets. Arms and equipment are, as a rule, boxed in CKD or SKD form.

The trucks have to travel only 140 or 180 kilometers to reach Sui and a little more to reach Kohlu, a distance that can be covered in a few hours only. This is most convenient route because transferring anything from Afghanistan to these areas demands much sturdy vehicles that must cover longer distance over difficult terrain.

The small arms and light equipment are mostly of Russian origin because they are easily available, cheap, and difficult to trace back to any single source.

This route is also handy for sabotaging the Pakistani gas pipelines because the two main arteries of Sui pipe – Sui-Kashmore-Uch-Multan and Sui-Sukkur – are passing, at some points, less than 45 kilometers from the Indian border. Whoever planned these camps and the subsequent insurgency, had to obtain initial help in recruitment and infrastructure from Indian RAW. “When we first started the BLA thing, it was logical to ask for RAW assistance because they have several thousands of ground contacts in Pakistan, many of them in Balochistan,” said Sasha.

“Anyone wanting to set shop in Pakistan needs to lean on RAW,” added Misha. The number of camps increased with time and now there is a big triangle of instability in Balochistan that has some 45 to 55 training camps, with each camp accommodating from 300 to 550 militants.

A massive amount of cash is flowing into these camps. American defence contractors – a generic term applicable to Pentagon operatives in civvies, CIA foot soldiers, instigators in double-disguise, fortune hunters, rehired ex-soldiers and free lancers – are reportedly playing a big part in shifting loads of money from Afghanistan to Balochistan. The Americans are invariably accompanied by their Afghan guides and interpreters.

Pay structure of militants is fairly defined by now. The ordinary recruits and basic insurgents get around US $200 per month, a small fortune for anyone who never has a hope of landing any decent government job in their home towns. The section leaders get upward of US $300 and there are special bonuses for executing a task successfully.

Although no exact amount of reward could be ascertained for specific tasks, one can assume that it must be substantial because some BLA activists have lately built new houses in Dalbandin, Naushki, Kohlu, Sibi, Khuzdar and Dera Bugti. Also, quite a few young Baloch activists have recently acquired new, flashy SUVs.

Oddly enough, there is also an unusual indicator for measuring the newfound wealth of some Baloch activists. In the marriage ceremonies the dancing troupes of eunuchs and cross-dressers are raking in much heavier shower of currency notes than before.

Based on the geographic spread of training camps, one can say that there is a triangle of extreme instability in Balochistan. This triangle can be drawn on the map by taking Barkhan, Bibi Nani (Sibi) and Kashmore as three cardinal points.

There is another, larger, triangle that affords a kind of cushion for the first triangle. It is formed by Naushki, Wana (in NWFP) and Kashmore. Actually, landscape of Balochistan is such that it offers scores of safe havens, inaccessible to outsiders.

Starting from the coastline, there are Makran Coastal Range, Siahan Range, Ras Koh, Sultan Koh and Chagai Hills that are cutting the land in east-west direction. In the north-south direction, we find Suleman Range, Kithara Range, Palma Range and Central Ravi Range to complete the task of forming deep and inaccessible pockets. Few direct routes are possible between the coastline and upper Balochistan. Only two roads connect Balochistan with the rest of the country.

Apart from the triangles of instability that we have mentioned there is an arc – a wide, slowly curving corridor – of extensive activity. It is difficult to make out as to who is doing what in that corridor.

Here is how to draw this arc-corridor on the map: Mark the little Afghan towns of Shah Ismail and Ziarat Sultan Vais Qarni on the map. Then mark the towns of Jalq and Kuhak in Iran. Now, draw a slowly arching curve to connect Shah Ismail with Kuhak and another curve to connect Ziarat Sultan Vais Qarni with Jalq. The corridor formed by these two curves is the scene of a lot of diverse activities and we have been able to gather only some superficial knowledge about it. The towns of Dalbandin and Naushki where foreign presence has become a matter of routine are located within this corridor.

Different entities are making different uses of this corridor. Despite employing some local help, we could find very little about the kind of activity that is bubbling in this corridor.

We found that the Indian consulate in Zahidan, Iran, has hired a house off Khayaban Danishgah, near Hotel Amin in Zahidan. This house is used for accommodating some people who cross over from Afghanistan to Pakistan and from Pakistan to Iran through the arched corridor we have described. But who are those people and what are they doing, we could not find.

We also found that although Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guards), the trusted force directly under the control of Khamnei, are monitoring Zahidan-Taftan road, there is no regular check post of Pasdaran on the road between Khash and Jalq, making it easy for all kinds of elements to cross here and there easily.

We also found that the border between Afghanistan and Iran is mostly under the control of Pasdaran who come down hard on any illegal border movement and that is why the arched corridor passing through Pakistan is the favorite route for any individuals and groups including American ‘defence contractors’ and their Afghan collaborators who may have the need to go across or near the border of Iran. Not surprisingly, part of this corridor is used by Iranians themselves when they feel the need to stir some excitement in Pakistan. Iranians also use the regular road of Zahidan-Quetta when they can find someone with legal documents as was the case with an Iranian who has business interests both in Pakistan and Iran and who came to Quetta just before the start of 7 Jan trouble. He has not been heard of since then.

There is a coastal connection that also provides free access for elements in Dubai and Oman to connect with militants in Balochistan. This is a loosely defined route but there are three main landing points in Balochistan: Eastern lip of Gwater Bay that lies in the Iranian territory but affords easy crossover to Pakistan through unguarded land border; 2. Open space between Bomra and Khor Kalmat; and 3. Easternmost shoulder of Gwadar East Bay.

Some Indians, a curious mix of businessmen and crime mafia, came in fishing boats from either Dubai or Oman and landed on the Gwater Bay in the Iranian territory before the start of 7 Jan eruptions. From there they traveled to Khuzdar and then Quetta where they met with some Baloch militants. It is rumored in those areas that the Indians came with heavy amounts of cash but there was no way of verifying it. They were escorted both ways by some Sarawani Balochs who run their own fishing vessels.

Simultaneously, there were reports from our Washington correspondent that some ‘sources’ in Pentagon had been trying to ‘leak’ the story to the media that Americans and Israelis were carrying joint reccee operations inside Iran and for that purpose they were using Pakistani soil as launching point. The lead was finally picked and disseminated by Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker.

However, from our own observations in the area we could not confirm this report although there is a possibility that the curving corridor that we have identified may have been used by the Americans and Israelis to travel from Afghanistan into Pakistan and then into Iran and back for this purpose although this is mere speculation, based on the movement of foreigners in this area, and we can neither confirm nor deny the substance of this report.

Also, there was some buzz, as reported by our correspondent in New Delhi, that some high circles were questioning the wisdom of two-faced policy of engaging Islamabad in peace dialogue while at the same time supporting insurgent activity in Balochistan. It was also not clear as to why Iran would be interested in stirring trouble in Balochistan when it was faced by an imminent war from the American side and it needed all the allies it could muster on its side and one of those allies could possibly be Pakistan.

It was also difficult to reconcile Iranian involvement in Balochistan with the fact that Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline, that is a crucial project for Iran, was in the final stages of negotiation and there seemed no logical point in sending mixed signals by creating difficulties in Balochistan.

These were some of the questions that we took to Misha and Sasha and here is the explanation they gave. Their answers came in bits and pieces but we have reconstructed their replies in the form of one coherent interview:

Question: What was the purpose of Russian invasion of Afghanistan?

Misha: The Soviet Union was not in love with Afghanistan itself and by now everyone must have understood it. We, or at least our leaders, wanted a convenient corridor to the warm waters of the Indian Ocean — the idea was to first establish full control in Kabul and from there to raise the double-bogey of Pakhtunistan and Greater Balochistan and try to detach at least a part of Balochistan from Pakistan and to either merge it as a new province of Afghanistan or to create a new country that should be under the firm control of Moscow. That would have solved most of the problems facing Kremlin.

Question: When you helped create BLA back in the 1980’s, what objectives did you have in mind?

Sasha and Misha: It was simply an instrument to create problems in Pakistan. There were no ideological reasons – it was merely a pragmatic solution for a strategic problem.

Question: Who could have revived BLA after so many years of inactivity?

Misha: Most likely, Pentagon. With good lot of support from Kremlin. You should keep in mind that reviving such an organization is a tricky task and it needs active support from a number of players. Pentagon and Kremlin would not be able to do much without some help from RAW that has hundreds of active contacts all over Balochistan. Russia could have helped negotiate the involvement of Balach Marri in the project.

Sasha: RAW must have jumped at the chance because last July the ‘discretionary grants’ budget [a euphemism for espionage fund] was increased by 700% in the Indian consulates in Kandahar, Jalalabad and Zahidan.

Misha: Yes, discretionary grants are not subject to central audit and the station chief can do what he wants with it.

Sasha: Balach possibly came to head the revived BLA through Russian facilitation but you cannot say the same for Sardar Ataullah Mengal. He returned from his self imposed exile in London and established his headquarters in Kohlu. Was it a mere coincidence? I don’t think so. In all probability, he is the American man to keep a check on Balach because Americans can never fully trust Russians.

Question: From your comments it appears that Balach and Mengal are heading the resurrected BLA and the BLA has been revived by the Americans and Russians to create trouble in Balochistan but could you give us any coherent reasons for going to such great lengths for disturbing Pakistan that is supposed to be a frontline ally of the United States on its war against terrorism?

Misha and Sasha: [Misha laughed so hard that tears came to his eyes while Sasha merely kept smiling in an absentminded way] – Frontline ally? Are you kidding? Americans are using Pakistan and Pakistanis would soon find it out if they have not already. Americans don’t need that kind of allies and they have made it abundantly clear for anyone who can read their policy goals correctly. Let them deal with Iran and you would see. If there can be any desirable American ally in that region, that is Iran – Iran under a different regime, and they are working to that end. Except for Balochistan, the rest of Pakistan is useless for them.

Question: It is still not clear from your answer as to what do the Pentagon and Kremlin hope to achieve by stirring trouble in Balochistan?

Sasha: Americans have two long-term policy objectives in that region: First, create a safe and reliable route to take all the energy resources of Central Asia to the continental United States, and second, to contain China.

Misha: Balochistan offers the shortest distance between the Indian ocean and the Central Asia, that is to say, shortest distance outside of the Gulf. The moment the conditions are ripe, Americans would like to take all the oil and gas of Central Asia to Gwadar or Pasni and from there to the United States.

Question: If the Americans are interested in creating safe channel for shipping energy resources through Balochistan, why would they encourage trouble there?

Misha: That is for now. By inciting trouble, they would effectively discourage Trans-Afghan Pipeline or any other project that is intended for sending Central Asian resources to South Asia. They are not interested in strengthening the South Asian economies by allowing them to obtain sensibly priced oil and gas. They would be more interested in taking all they can to their own country and let everyone else starve if that is the choice.

Sasha: The Americans would also like to discourage China from entering into more development projects in Balochistan than it already has. By developing the port and roads in Balochistan, China is ultimately helping itself by creating a convenient conduit for commerce that would connect China concurrently with Central Asia, South Asia, and all-weather Balochistan ports. The space is limited – where China gains, America loses, and where America gains, China loses.

Questions: OK. This sounds plausible. But what interest could Russia have in helping Pentagon in this trouble-Balochistan project?

Sasha: Russia has its own policy goals and as far as the present phase of creating trouble in Balochistan is concerned, American and Russian goals are not in conflict with each other. Russia wants to maintain its monopoly over all the energy resources of Central Asia. At present, the Central Asian countries are dependent entirely on Russia for export of their gas project succeeds, it would open the floodgates of exodus. Central Asian countries would understandably rush to the market that pays 100% in cash and pays better price than Russia. It is therefore very clear that by keeping Balochistan red hot, Russia can hope to discourage Trans-Afghan pipeline or any other similar projects. Russian economy in its present form is based on the monopoly of Gazprom and if Gazprom goes under, so will the Russian economy at some stage.

Question: So far, there is some in sense what you have said but how would explain Indian involvement in the Balochistan revolt?

Sasha: India has its own perceived or real objectives. For instance, India would go to great lengths to prevent Pakistan from developing a direct trade and transportation route with Central Asia because it would undermine the North-South corridor that goes through Iran. Also, while the acute shortage of energy may have compelled India to extend limited cooperation to Pakistan, the preferable project from Indian point of view still remains the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline.

Misha: Moreover, you cannot ignore the fact that India is preparing to use Afghanistan as its main artery system to connect with Central Asia and it would not allow Pakistan to share this sphere if it can.

Question: What about Iran? Why should Iran be a party to it?

Misha: Iran has incurred great expenses to develop Chah Bahar, the port that is supposed to be the Iranian answer to Pakistani ports of Gwadar and Pasni. Iran has also done lot of work to create excellent road link between Herat and Chah Bahar. All this would go to waste if Pakistani route comes on line because it is shorter and offers quick commuting possibilities between Central Asia and Indian Ocean.

Sasha: At the same time you need to allow certain margin of unreliability when dealing with Iran. You cannot be sure whether they mean what they are saying and you cannot be sure whether they would keep their promises. They do what suits them best and to hell with any commitments. I am sorry but that is how I judge Iran.

Question: While both of you have given some explanation of American, Russian, Iranian and Indian involvement in Balochistan, what is the role of Afghanistan?

Sasha: There are many influential circles in Afghanistan that are deadly opposed to Pakistan for one reason or the other. While Afghanistan as a country may not be harboring any ill will against Pakistan, it is difficult to rule out the possibility that some power circles would not be inclined to damage Pakistan wherever they can. It is clear from the recent developments that as India, Iran and Afghanistan have made great strides to form some kind of economic, trade and transportation alliance, all efforts have been made to exclude Pakistan from any such deal.

Question: While BLA is being used by a number of power players for their own objectives, does it have any potential, even as a byproduct, to serve the cause of Baloch people?

Misha and Sasha: BLA is not the only fish in the pond. There is Baloch Ittehad and there is PONAM and there is lots of small fry out there. But none of them can be expected to do any good to the Balochi people because the command this time is mostly in the hands of Baloch Sardars and they have no past record of bringing any benefit to their own people. If anything, they are known to sell their own people down the river.

[Misha thumbed through a dog-eared file and read]

Sardar Mehrulla Marri sold all mineral and petroleum rights of Khatan region to the British government in 1885 for a paltry sum of Rs. 200 per month. There was no time limit to this agreement – it was, as they say, in perpetuity.

In 1861, Jam of Bela allowed the British government to put a telegraph line through his territory, thus helping substantially the British government in consolidating its control over large areas of Balochistan. He received less than Rs. 900 per month for this disservice to his own people and took the responsibility to safeguard the telegraph line. In 1883, the Khan of Kalat sold the Quetta district and adjoining territories to the British government. This was an outright sale. The agreement that was signed in Dasht, included the provision that the heirs and successors of Khan of Kalat would also be bound by the same agreement. He received annual grant of Rs. 25000 for selling the most attractive part of Balochistan to the British government.

In the same year, the British government paid Rs. 5500 to the Bugti Sardar for his cooperation although it was not specified as to what kind of cooperation he extended to the British government.

While the Baloch Sardars were enthusiastically selling Balochistan to the British government, there was no support to the idea of Pakistan whereas the ordinary Balochs gave full approval for Pakistan. Any positive development in Balochistan would go against the interests of Sardars and only a fool would expect them to do anything for the good of their people. Bear in mind that Marri and Mengal Sardars first stood up against the Pakistan government when the law was passed to abolish Sardari system in Balochistan to free the ordinary Balochs from the clutches of their tribal leaders.

Question: The way the things are progressing in Balochistan, what could be the likely outcome?

Misha: If no strong action is taken for another few months, the result could be bifurcation of Pakistan.

Question: Is that the only likely outcome?

Misha: No. In fact, that is the farthest possible scenario but that could eventually happen if Pakistan fails to assess, analyze and address the situation quickly. For example, I have yet to see any Pakistani effort to contact the ordinary Balochs. They are still trying to woo the same Sardars who are living on the blackmail money since the creation of Pakistan.

Sasha: I am surprised at the way Pakistan goes about tackling this problem. During my few years in Afghanistan when I was engaged with Balochistan, I found that while Baloch Sardars would sell their loyalties and anything else at the drop of a hat, ordinary Balochs are stupidly patriotic. They are hard to buy and harder to manipulate. If I were a Pakistan government functionary, I would gather enough ordinary, educated Balochs to counter the Sardar influence and deflate this whole insurgency balloon.

Question: Both of you were, let’s say, among the developers of the original BLA. Do you find any differences between the original and the present BLA?

Misha and Sasha: Plenty. Original BLA was mostly led by the young people and Baloch Sardars had very little to do with it but the present BLA is concentrated in the hands of Sardars.

The present movement in Balochistan, led by BLA, PONAM and Baloch Ittehad is a mismatched concoction of ancient and modern.

They are trying to run a modern media campaign but there are crucial gaps in that effort. Ours were different times and we could do without media support. They have created a list of Pakistani journalists who are supposed to be sympathetic to any move against the government and they are feeding them daily a mixture of truth and lies, a practice that has been perfected by the Pentagon.

They managed to bring some Baloch women in Dera Bugti but the results would be little if they cannot repeat the performance in most other areas of Balochistan.

They have built their campaign around a single incident – the Sui gang-rape – and if the Government is smart enough, it would hang the real culprits and ask the victim of the rape to announce publicly that she was satisfied with the justice meted out to the criminals and that would take all the wind out of the sails of the BLA campaign. A real hard campaign needs to be built around much broader and hard to solve issues.

Question: Hypothetically speaking, if the Pakistan government asked your advice, what would you suggest?

Sasha: The options are few. They should abolish Sardari system immediately and crack down powerfully on the private armies. As far as I know, the constitution of Pakistan does not allow Sardari system and private armies and there would be no legal questions if those laws are implemented with the full help of state power.

Misha: They should involve broadest possible range of ordinary Balochs in the dialogue. The can find enough educated youth in Marri and Mengal tribes to match the influence of tribal leaders. They should also allow the fragments of Bugti tribe to return to their ancestral lands and that would be enough to calm down the ageing and eccentric Bugti who pretends to be the leader of that tribe.

Sasha: Pakistan government should hasten the development process in the province because it would open job opportunities and that would allow the escape hatch to ordinary Balochs to distance themselves from their leaders.

Misha: They should try to cut down the sources and channels of supply of arms and cash to insurgents.