Pakistan's "Own Human Rights"
"Are we some jungle people that you can do anything with? This is the feeling of the people of Pakistan. Are we some animal that they are treating us like this? We are a sovereign country and we have our own human rights."Too bad Pervez Musharraf, in that interview, did not set out what the Pakistan version of human rights might look like. It might have been an interesting exercise in evasive tactics. But then he was and continues to be a master at that game. Persuading the United States that in exchange for billions of U.S. Treasury, the Americans could count on Pakistan to be their trusted ally.
All the while the Inter Services Agency and the Pakistan military were merrily going their own way, fomenting problems for India, and conspiring within Afghanistan to ensure that no one in the region might become too complacent, feeling that perhaps an accommodation of co-operation could be attained. Pakistan remains fully committed to chaos in the region.
Pakistan's incendiary hatred for India ensured on the one hand it would always arm its terrorist groups to attack Indian Kashmir. And not just stop at Kashmir, as Mumbai and other attacks amply demonstrated. And because Pakistan was jealous of its hegemony in Afghanistan, mistrustful of India's assistance to Afghanistan, there was yet another reason to protect the Taliban.
Musharraf himself on a number of occasions saw fit to sue for peace between his government and the hill tribes that threatened government stability. Those tribes that sheltered the country's own version of the Taliban, attacking police and army installations to demonstrate they were under no government's thumb.
"If I was in government", Musharraf said, fully intending to return to Pakistan from his exile in London, "I would certainly be thinking how best to defend Pakistan's interests", which is code for continuing to have good relations with the powerful Islamist hill tribes whose loathing for the U.S. and support for al-Qaeda Pervez Musharraf himself, as president, surreptitiously supported.
"Certainly if Afghanistan is being used by India to create an anti-Pakistan Afghanistan, we would like to prevent that." This is Pakistan's tradition, its perennial fall-back position, its paranoia, clinging to their national pathogenic distrust and hatred of India.
He brought the outraged wrath of the Islamists down upon himself only when he finally decided to attack the fanatics of the Red Mosque who had gone about Islamabad threatening the insipid faith loyalties to Islam of the general population in the capital.
I'm a straight talker and I accept straight talk", he said, when nothing could be further from the truth; he always spoke with a forked tongue and always will. Claiming to be the great good friend of the United States while ensuring that the Pakistan military and the ISI continued to give cover to the Taliban which swept into Afghanistan to attack, then withdrew back into Pakistan.
"The United States doesn't understand the sensitivities of Pakistan - that the United States is in league with India, that Indians are allowed to do whatever they are doing in Afghanistan", he insisted. The man is delusional, and obsessed like all of Pakistan, on attacking India at every opportunity. Many of the continuing attacks in Afghanistan itself are directed at the Indian presence.
"As time passed I realized that President Hamid Karzai is playing more in the hands of Indians who were trying to create an anti-Pakistan Afghanistan. These were irritants that kept developing over the years and got converted into almost open hostility", he added. Almost?
Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani reporter, sets out in detail in his book Descent Into Chaos just how sinisterly-hypocritical the entire state apparatus was and continues to be in dealing with the United States. The current situation where the Americans have finally come straight out and charged Pakistan with double-dealing has been long in the making.
Pakistan smarts under the charges that they've been faux allies, avidly taking American funding and using it to help arm the militant groups that prey on Afghanistan and India, and who make occasional forays to attack ISAF troops and American forces in particular.
Labels: Pakistan, Political Realities, Terrorism, Traditions
posted by Pieface @ Friday, September 30, 2011
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