November 30, 2024
Pakistan is the world’s most important Muslim nation. It has 251 million people, nuclear weapons, the world’s sixth largest armed forces, intelligent, capable people, vast lands and major sources of water.
Yet Pakistan is a giant mess. Its current politics are a form of tribal warfare. Corruption engulfs almost everything. Disease, particularly diabetes, afflicts its long-suffering people. Polio is making return.
In recent years, Pakistan has suffered vast floods that have ravaged this nation. Equally menacing, next-door India remains an ever-present danger. Far-right Hindu extremists who are heavily represented in the current Modi government, keep talking about ‘reabsorbing’ Pakistan into ‘Mother India.’ This would have happened long ago except for Pakistan’s important nuclear arsenal and delivery systems.
India has also built an extensive nuclear arsenal, including three new submarines armed with intermediate-ranged nuclear missiles. This while people in India and Pakistan starve in the streets. And 60% of homes in India lack indoor plumbing.
The only institution in Pakistan that really works well is the armed forces. I have met many of its generals: most of them are intelligent, combat-ready officers. I knew Gen. Akhtar Abdur Rahman Khan, the ferocious chief of ISI intelligence service who led the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan. He was murdered with the tough tank general Zia ul Haq who ruled Pakistan until his aircraft was sabotaged in 1988. Zia was a great Islamic warrior and man of steel. Many Pakistanis still believe he was assassinated by the US though there is no direct evidence.
I was friends with the late Benazir Bhutto, a fascinating and alluring woman who was murdered in 2007. I interviewed Gen. Pervez Musharraf in 1999, a man who seemed insignificant compared to Gen. Zia.
Benazir Bhutto, whose father Zulfikar was ordered hanged by Zia, used to tease me, ‘oh Eric, you love your Pakistani generals.’ I did. Most were fierce Pashtuns from the NW Frontier, born warriors. They first defeated the Soviet Union, then the mighty USA.
I also took to some of the Indian generals that I met. They and their Pakistani counterparts had none of the slipperiness and deceit of most politicians.
This brings me to the jailed, 51-year-old former cricket star, Imran Khan, Pakistan’s most popular political figure. Khan was jailed on fake charges over receiving gifts, when the ruling oligarchy feared Khan would win a landslide in elections. His wife was also thrown into prison.
Imran Khan’s chief enemies were the Sharif brothers, Shebhaz and Nawaz. Both were rich Punjabi industrialists often accused of egregious corruption. I came out of war-torn Afghanistan to interview Nawaz. He left me unimpressed, particularly after the time I spent with the fiery General Zia.
The United States and Britain, vocal champions of democracy, had nothing to say about the illegal imprisonment of Pakistan’s most popular democratic politician. It was clear they were supporting the Sharif brothers who were more amenable to America’s wishes and anti-Islamic policies. Pakistan’s influential army appears to be backing the Sharif regime.
This is interesting. Washington, which makes so much noise about democracy, is now supporting undemocratic regimes in Morocco, Tunisia, totalitarian Egypt, Jordan, Oman, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the Gulf, not to mention Africa and Latin America. The CIA installed the current Ukrainian regimes. Efforts are again afoot to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria and, of course, to crush the life out of Palestinians.
What Washington really wants around the globe is total obedience, not real democracy. Pakistan is a sad example. President Pervez Musharraf told me that a senior State Department official warned him that if Pakistan did not allow US troops to use his nation to attack Taliban-ruled Afghanistan ‘we will bomb you back to the Stone Age.’
Great powers want to have their way. Democracy and common sense too often do not stand in the way. At least the new Trump administration in Washington is being brutally frank about its wants and needs unlike the honey-tongued hypocrites of the Biden years.
Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2024
This post is in: Pakistan
Pakistani problem started wit its birth straightaway. It has always been the army generals behind all the activities. Let me not to go into the details of each incidence but enlist all on one page.
– Governor General MA Jinnah failed to get his orders obeyed by the generals and he died under very suspicious circumstances. Military junta let him rot in military ambulance in hot weather without any aid for many hours.
His sister Miss F Jinnah was not allowed to contest elections fairly and freely and again died under very suspicious conditions.
Prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan was murdered and shooter was killed as well. But shooters family had been provided support.
21 people signed Pakistan declaration in 1940. Four of them died before 1947. Six decide to remain in India and 7 were declared traitors after 1947 in Pakistan. 2 of them became a part of Government and both died unnaturally ( MA Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan).
East Pakistan was planned and separated by the same Junta.
Military junta always manipulated elections with US support and ruled the country more than politicians.
Judicial murder of Bhutto also is in their pocket.
Daughter of Bhutto was also murdered under junta rule.
Now military Generals are out front and naked committing all crimes.
Invading houses, raping women, abducting and killing innocent people.
Hundreds of innocent people have been murdered by the army in Islamabad massacre after switching off the electricity of the city at night.
Most hated army by the public is our army.
This army is an enterprise and owner of multibillion dollar corporate business.
Interesting exposition on a troubled Pakistan. First, an aside about the stupidity of would be imperialism. Any Hindu chauvinists who yearn for the conquest of Pakistan to create a “Greater India” are consequence blind to the mess that would follow- millions of resentful subjects who would make national security a perpetual nightmare. It’s just like the the thinking of the knuckleheaded Russian chauvinists of the Kremlin who lust for the return of a neo-Czarist Russian Empire. Their wish fulfilled will be their curse.
One thing that was not mentioned in this article, and which deserves a mention, is the toxic effects of religious fundamentalism to Pakistani politics. Some complain about the “religious Right” in American politics, yet ignore the infinitely more dangerous spectre of religious fanaticism in Pakistan. Moderate Moslems need to be heard.