'Hair-raising Developments
in Pakistan Being Ignored'
Arnaud
de Borchgrave
THE
Bush administration appears to be astigmatically challenged when
scanning the geopolitical landscape beyond Iraq. Inspector Blix
Clouseau and his merry band of Keystone Kops in the land of the
Arab world's Torquemada have produced all-Iraq news-all-the-time
networks that are ignoring hair-raising developments in nearby
Pakistan.
Last Nov. 16, Fazlur Rehman, a close friend of both Osama bin
Laden and Taliban supremo Mullah Mohammed Omar, as well as being
the head of a coalition of six extremist politico-fundamentalist
groups and a member of Pakistan's newly elected National Assembly,
demanded that his parliamentary colleagues offer prayers for the
man the United States executed Nov. 14 for killing two CIA agents
in Virginia.
The
speaker of the National Assembly, with foreign ambassadors looking
on from the visitors' gallery, acquiesced. Rehman's pro-Taliban
team was just warming up. The prayers were quickly followed by
a blistering attack on the United States by other members of the
Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal coalition. "God, destroy those who
handed (Mir Amal) Kasi over to America. May his murderers, whether
in America or Pakistan, meet the same fate," said another
MMA leader.
Kasi's execution in Virginia turned him into an overnight cult
figure in Pakistan -- and opened up the sluice gates of anti-US
vitriol. When the plane carrying his dead body touched down in
Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan, tens of thousands
of people broke through police cordons shouting, "Allah is
great."
With
his coffin draped in a cloak inscribed with verses of the Koran,
Kasi was carried through Quetta in the biggest funeral procession
Baluchistan has ever witnessed. "America Go Home," "Bush
the Butcher of Afghanistan," and other anti-US epithets
were either banners waved or slogans warbled.
Next
day, Nov. 19, another huge crowd gathered at the funeral venue.
In a rare display of altruism, motorized rickshaws and buses ferried
people free of charge. Even official Pakistan thought it would
be appropriate to pay obeisance to Kasi. Baluchistan Corps Cmdr.
Gen. Abdul Qadir Baloch, Baluchistan Chief Minister Amirul Mulk
Mengal, and the Pakistani ambassador to the United States led
the official delegation.
For
the past three weeks, thousands throng to Kasi's gravesite daily
and carry earth back as if holy ground. Says Kasi's brother Hamidullah,
"Every morning when we go to his grave, we find the soil
covering his tomb reduced a few more inches and we have to build
up the bulge afresh." Pashto and Baluchi poets are writing
odes to the fallen hero, hailing him as second only to bin Laden
in the popular pantheon of larger-than-life Muslims.
The
foreign office was at a loss to explain the presence of senior
officials at Kasi's funeral. The official spokesman explained
the ambassador happened to be in Quetta to visit his ailing mother.
A former federal Cabinet minister said the response to Kasi's
funeral persuaded the intelligence community to free Dr. Amer
Aziz, the physician the FBI had been interrogating about his links
to bin Laden.
Now that he enjoys parliamentary immunity, Rehman grows bolder
by the day. All good Muslims should now "follow Kasi's example,"
he said Dec. 10, which clearly was a leaf out of bin Laden's fatwa
-- "kill Americans."
Officially,
Washington says President Pervez Musharraf is a loyal ally of
the United States in the war on terror. But with new pro-Taliban,
pro-al Qaida provincial governments in the Northwest Frontier
Province and in Baluchistan, it has become increasingly clear
that the transnational terrorists hunted by the United States
have recovered some of the privileged sanctuaries they enjoyed
prior to Sept. 11, 2001.
Pakistan
is a country where local police are reluctant to antagonize a
religious group, however extreme. Many of the extremists detained
following Musharraf's pledge to the United States last January
to quench terrorism are now free men in a country where a Kalashnikov
(AK-47) can be rented for $2.50 a day and any kind of a weapon
obtained at one hour's notice.
In
the tribal belt adjacent to Afghanistan, automobile salesmen push
the envelope with stickers that say, "Buy one vehicle and
get a rocket launcher free." The problem, said one former
police chief now in the United States, is that "law enforcement
in a lawless society where human rights are unknown and guilt
is beaten out of those arrested."
A
cop on the beat makes $1 a day; an inspector general of police
for an entire province, $400 a month. A "fundamentalist"
in Pakistani police parlance is a police chief who pays his personal
bills out of police funds.
One
of India's most influential officials, National Security Adviser
Brajesh Mishra, was in Washington this week for talks with senior
Bush administration officials. His lunch with national security
adviser Condoleezza Rice lasted over three hours. Trying to shift
attention from the clear and future danger of Iraq to the clear
and present danger of Pakistan was a thankless task.
Mishra's
other message was harmonious to Secretary of State Colin Powell
and gratingly dissonant to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
A US invasion of Iraq without UN approval would play into the
hands of "crazies everywhere." American lives would
be at risk in many parts of the world. Al Qaida would have a new
recruiting poster and volunteers would flock to bin Laden's bloody
banner.
The
logic of war in early 2003 now seems implacable. If Saddam Hussein
were to concede a number of weapons of mass destruction, either
chemical or biological or both, he's toast. If his 11,807 pages
of documents and 60,000 pages on CDs demonstrate he has indeed
destroyed all weapons of mass destruction, he's dismissed as an
incurable liar -- and still toast.
And
if President Bush doesn't toast him, Mr. Bush himself is toast
-- at least for a second term.
US strategic assets, including four carrier task forces, are still
converging on staging areas around Iraq and it is highly unlikely
they will be recalled before the Iraqi dictator has been unhorsed.
Between now and then, the burden of proof will shift from President
Saddam to President Bush. It has to be incontrovertible. Therefore,
top-secret intelligence on Saddam's clear and present danger will
have to be credible -- and made public. But the CIA remains unconvinced.
The
writer is Editor at Large of UPI and Washington Times and a well
known analyst on South Asian affairs
