Pakistan in Pieces, Part 1: Imperial Eye on Pakistan by Andrew Gavin Marshall

by Andrew Gavin Marshall
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
May 28, 2011

Map of Pakistan

Image by Omer Wazir via Flickr

Introduction

As the purported assassination of Osama bin Laden has placed the focus on Pakistan, it is vital to assess the changing role of Pakistan in broad geostrategic terms, and in particular, of the changing American strategy toward Pakistan. The recently reported assassination was a propaganda ploy aimed at targeting Pakistan. To understand this, it is necessary to examine how America has, in recent years, altered its strategy in Pakistan in the direction of destabilization. In short, Pakistan is an American target. The reason: Pakistan’s growing military and strategic ties to China, America’s primary global strategic rival. In the ‘Great Game’ for global hegemony, any country that impedes America’s world primacy – even one as historically significant to America as Pakistan – may be sacrificed upon the altar of war.

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US and NATO imperialism in South Asia: The developing Pakistan quagmire by Fazal Rahman, Ph.D

by Fazal Rahman, Ph.D.
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
Written on June 15, 2009
Nov. 18, 2010

Pakistan map (1990 version)

Image via Wikipedia

After some nationalist and anti-imperialist elements succeeded in defeating the elaborate US and British plans to install two of their puppets- Parvez Musharraf and the late Benazir Bhutto-in the highest government offices in Pakistan, another puppet, Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir’s husband-also known as Mr. Ten Percent, because of his corruption and demanding and taking systematic bribes on contracts with national and international companies- during Benazir’s premiership, in which he was one of the members of her cabinet, managed to substitute both of them and has proven that he is a bigger puppet than both of them combined. Both he and his wife were methodically groomed for their roles by various organs and representatives of US imperialism. During their government, they had stolen an estimated one and a half billion dollars from the poor people of Pakistan and had deposited those in foreign bank accounts. Continue reading

Another ‘Viable’ Candidate Bites the Dust… by Sibel Edmonds

by Sibel Edmonds
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
originally published by Boiling Frogs Post
July 18, 2010

Maksim Bakiyev: A Groomed Puppet Who Never Came to Be King

Kyrgyzstan’s Wanted Fugitive: Maksim Bakiyev. The story is more or less the same – the one that has been repeating itself for many decades.  The one based on a script written by the very same conductors who wrote the ones before, and who will probably be writing the ones to come (yes, they’re blessed with longevity; a curse for the rest of us). The location – always a resource rich country or one strategically crucial to resource rich countries. A viable candidate (sometimes candidates) chosen based on the exact same set of criteria – such as degree of corruptibility, and degree of atrocity or criminal tendencies. Continue reading

Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive? by David Ray Griffin

Dandelion Salad

by David Ray Griffin
www.globalresearch.ca/
October 9, 2009

Is Osama bin Laden still alive? I have dealt with this question in a recent little book entitled Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive? The present essay summarizes the main points of this book.

Since the transference of power from the Bush administration to that of Barack Obama administration, the question of whether bin Laden is dead or alive has become more important.

Although George W. Bush famously said that he wanted Osama bin Laden “dead or alive,” he made clear that he was not serious about this. Besides stating that he was not concerned about bin Laden, he demonstrated this by diverting most of America’s military resources to Iraq. Bush could, of course, be unconcerned about bin Laden because he knew that, besides the fact that bin Laden had nothing to do with 9/11, he was probably dead anyway.

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CIA linked to Bhutto’s murder? + The U.S. Assassinates People All The Time!

Dandelion Salad

RussiaToday
July 14, 2009

Washington is caught up in a political scandal centering on former Vice President Dick Cheney. It follows a move by the new CIA director Leon Panetta to cancel a secret plan to find and kill Al-Qaeda leaders.

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Hersh did not say Cheney ordered Bhutto assassination

Dandelion Salad

By Stephen C. Webster
Raw Story
May 18, 2009
Updated 1 day ago

UPDATE below: Wall Street Journal removes links

Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator linked phony reports

In a telephone conversation with RAW STORY, Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh refuted reports that he told an Arab television network that former Vice President Dick Cheney ordered the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Numerous Internet and mainstream publications picked up the story on Monday. Even The Wall Street Journal linked to unverified sources carrying the story. (Screenshot.) U.S. conservative magazine The American Spectator also published a blog with the false information. (Screenshot.)

Hersh told RAW STORY Investigative News Editor Larisa Alexandrovna that he made no such statements.

Following RAW STORY’s Monday evening report, the Journal removed the links from its Web site. (Screenshot.)

“We’ve tried to reach out to people in the media that we know and correct this,” confirmed Alexa Cassanos, director of public relations at The New Yorker, speaking to this reporter. “We’re not even sure where this came from.”

[…]

via Raw Story » Hersh did not say Cheney ordered Bhutto assassination.

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I did not say ’special death squad’ made by Cheney killed Benazir: Hersh

http://www.thaindian.com
May 19th, 2009 – 12:39 pm ICT by ANI

Dick Cheney Lahore, May 19 ANI: US journalist Seymour Hersh has contradicted news reports being published in South Asia that quote him as saying a “special death squad” created by former US vice president Dick Cheney had killed Benazir Bhutto.

The award-winning journalist described as “complete madness” the reports that the squad headed by General Stanley McChrystal, the new commander of US Army in Afghanistan, had also killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafique Al Hariri and a Lebanese Army Chief.

[…]

via I did not say ’special death squad’ made by Cheney killed Benazir: Hersh.

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US journo claims Bhutto was killed on Cheney’s orders

‘You can’t authorise murder’: Dick Cheney headed a secret assassination wing that targeted America’s enemies (Hersh interview)

Did newly announced top Afghan general run Cheney’s assassination wing?

Seymour Hersh: Secret US Forces Carried Out Assassinations

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US journo claims Bhutto was killed on Cheney’s orders (Note: false story)

Dandelion Salad

Updated: May 20, 2009; Apparently this report is a false story.  Please see this post: Hersh did not say Cheney ordered Bhutto assassination

http://www.thaindian.com
May 18th, 2009 – 1:22 pm ICT by ANI

New York, May 18 ANI: A special death squad assassinated Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on the orders of former US Vice-President Dick Cheney, an Arab TV channel has reported.

“Cheney was the chief of the Joint Special Operation Command and he cleared the way for the US by exterminating opponents through the unit and the CIA. General Stanley was the in-charge of the unit,” The Nation quoted US columnist Seymour Hersh, as saying.

[…]

via US journo claims Bhutto was killed on Cheney’s orders

h/t: CLG

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

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Escobar: Obama and Osama – McChrystal clear

McChrystal Choice Suggests Special Ops Strikes Will Continue By Gareth Porter

Did newly announced top Afghan general run Cheney’s assassination wing?

‘You can’t authorise murder’: Dick Cheney headed a secret assassination wing that targeted America’s enemies (Hersh interview)

From the archives:

Bhutto didn’t mean to say “Osama bin Laden”

Frost over the World: Benazir Bhutto 02 Nov 07 (video; bin Laden)

BBC Censors Benazir Bhutto in Frost Interview (video)

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Osama bin Laden was US operator: President Asif Ali Zardari

Dandelion Salad

bekaskhan

Gregory asks Zardari Where is bin Laden, answer; ” In Lahor Under the Paki ISI Watch”

All of the high rank so called Al Qaeda members were operating & found in Punjab Pakistan, who were handled by the Paki ISI to the US, therefore, the answer is clear!!

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Osama bin Laden was US operator destabilising Benazir: Zardari

By Arun Kumar
ICH
May 11, 2009 “New Karala”

Washington, May 11: Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has alleged that elusive Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was a US operator who had tried to destabilise his late wife Benazir Bhutto’s government back in 1989.

In fact, as premier Bhutto had “warned America about Osama bin Laden in 1989 with a call to then US president George H. Bush”, Zardari said on NBC’s Meet the Press programme Sunday.

“She rang senior Bush and asked of him: ‘Are you destabilizing my government?’ because he apparently referring to bin Laden paid the then opposition $10 million to overthrow the first woman elected prime minister in an Islamic country,” Zardari added.

“So, we knew that he was your operator,” said Zardari responding to a question about bin Laden’s whereabouts.

“You’ll have been there in Afghanistan for eight years. So you tell me. You lost him in Tora Bora, I didn’t, I was in prison,” he countered when asked where bin Laden was before hurling the allegation at Washington.

Asked if Pakistan was actively looking for bin Laden, Zardari replied: “The world is looking for him and we are part of the world look-out brigade.”

Zardari also reiterated his belief that bin Laden is dead. “I have a strong feeling and I have reason to believe that because I’ve asked my counterparts in the American intelligence agencies and they have not heard of him since seven years.”

— IANS

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

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Becoming What We Seek to Destroy by Chris Hedges

Desperate Pakistanis flee violence in Swat

US-NATO Military Agenda: The Destabilization of Pakistan by Michel Chossudovsky

Dandelion Salad

by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, April 17, 2009

Author’s note:

In an article published in December 2007, following the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, I suggested that the US-NATO course for Pakistan consisted “in  fomenting social, ethnic and factional divisions and political fragmentation, including the territorial breakup of Pakistan.”

Recent developments (including the aerial bombardments of Pakistani villages under the auspices of the “war on terrorism”) indelibly point to a broadening of the Afghan war theater, which now encompasses parts of Pakistan. The underlying tendency is towards an Afghan-Pakistani war.

Michel Chossudovsky, April 17, 2009

Excerpts of the December 2007 Article

Already in 2005, a report by the US National Intelligence Council and the CIA forecast a “Yugoslav-like fate” for Pakistan “in a decade with the country riven by civil war, bloodshed and inter-provincial rivalries, as seen recently in Balochistan.” (Energy Compass, 2 March 2005). According to the NIC-CIA,  Pakistan is slated to become a “failed state” by 2015, “as it would be affected by civil war, complete Talibanisation and struggle for control of its nuclear weapons”. (Quoted by former Pakistan High Commissioner to UK, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Times of India, 13 February 2005):

“Nascent democratic reforms will produce little change in the face of opposition from an entrenched political elite and radical Islamic parties. In a climate of continuing domestic turmoil, the Central government’s control probably will be reduced to the Punjabi heartland and the economic hub of Karachi,” the former diplomat quoted the NIC-CIA report as saying.

Expressing apprehension, Hasan asked, “are our military rulers working on a similar agenda or something that has been laid out for them in the various assessment reports over the years by the National Intelligence Council in joint collaboration with CIA?” (Ibid)

Continuity, characterized by the dominant role of the Pakistani military and intelligence has been scrapped in favor of political breakup and balkanization. According to the NIC-CIA scenario, which Washington intends to carry out: “Pakistan will not recover easily from decades of political and economic mismanagement, divisive policies, lawlessness, corruption and ethnic friction,” (Ibid) .

This US agenda for Pakistan is similar to that applied throughout the broader Middle East Central Asian region. US strategy, supported by covert intelligence operations, consists in triggering ethnic and religious strife, abetting and financing secessionist movements while also weakening the institutions of the central government.

The broader objective is to fracture the Nation State and redraw the borders of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

To read the complete December 2007 article, click here:

The Destabilization of Pakistan by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

© Copyright Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2009

The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13228

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Organized Crime, Intelligence and Terror: The D-Company’s Role in the Mumbai Attacks by Tom Burghardt

Dandelion Salad

by Tom Burghardt
Global Research, December 13, 2008
Antifascist Calling…

What do you call a “devout Muslim” who exerts considerable control over South Asia’s heroin, gambling, prostitution and smuggling rackets? Why an intelligence asset, of course!

When Lashkar-e-Taiba (“Army of the Pure”–LET) militants slaughtered nearly 200 people in Mumbai during the November 26 siege in India’s financial capital, one name stood out among a list of 20 fugitives the Indian government has demanded Pakistan extradite as a key suspect responsible for providing funds and logistical support to the Kashmir-based terrorist outfit.

Enter Dawood Ibrahim, the enigmatic Mafia don of Mumbai’s D-Company whose far-flung organized crime empire stretches from Dubai through Pakistan to India and beyond. If anyone knows where the proverbial “bodies are buried,” that man may very well be Ibrahim. Wanted by Interpol and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Ibrahim commutes between palatial homes in Dubai and Karachi where he enjoys the protection afforded by “friends in high places.”

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Bhutto didn’t mean to say “Osama bin Laden”

Dandelion Salad

Updated: Dec. 7, 2008 added another video

representativepress

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.

Bhutto didn’t mean to say “Osama bin Laden” Please pass this link on to others:
http://tinyurl.com/BhuttoBinLaden

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Democracy Now: Tariq Ali on Pakistan & Boliva

Dandelion Salad

Tariq Ali on “The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power”

IWantDemocracyNow

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Tomgram: Tariq Ali, Has the U.S. Invasion of Pakistan Begun? + video

Pakistan army ordered to hit back at U.S. forces

Gareth Porter: Pakistani Air Strikes + Leaked US-Iraqi Draft Agreement

Kucinich: Bush-Ordered Attacks in Pakistan Further Destabilizing World Security

Bolivia: Fascist right launches ‘civic coup’ by Federico Fuentes & Stuart Munckton

PPP leader to be sworn in as new Pakistani president

Dandelion Salad

By K. Ratnayake

http://www.wsws.org

9 September 2008

Asif Al Zardari, Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) co-chairman and widower of former PPP leader Benazir Bhutto, will be sworn in today as Pakistani president after being elected to the post on Saturday. He comes to office amid deepening political turmoil, fuelled by escalating US attacks on Islamic militants in Pakistan’s border areas with Afghanistan and a deteriorating economy.

Zardari’s election, which was not by popular vote but in a joint sitting of the two houses of federal parliament and the four provincial assemblies, was a forgone conclusion. He received 481, or more than two thirds, of the 702 votes as compared to 151 for his closest rival, Saeeduz Zaman Siddiqui, nominated by the Pakistan Muslim League-Narwaz (PML-N) and 43 for Mushahid Hussain of the Pakistani Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q).

[…]

In the latest incident yesterday, the US fired as many as five missiles into a compound in North Waziristan, killing at least 14 people and injuring many others. The Dawn reported that the dead included three Taliban militants and a number of civilians, including two children. The target appears to have been a house and religious school founded by Jalaluddin Haqqani. His son Sirajuddin Haqqani is blamed by the US for attacks inside Afghanistan, including an attempt on the life of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

[…]

PPP leader to be sworn in as new Pakistani president.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

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Afghan president blames “the West” for Islamic extremism

US attack inside Pakistan threatens dangerous new war

Pakistan: Toward Democracy and Stability

Dandelion Salad

NewAmericaFoundation

Ambassador Husain Haqqani will discuss the current situation in Pakistan.

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Are You Ready For Nuclear War? By Paul Craig Roberts + Musharraf resigns (vid)

Pakistan President Musharraf Resigns! + Pakistan after Musharraf

Inside Story: Musharraf’s impeachment