- US friendly fire knows no bounds. The deaths of Pakistan
soldiers and civilians is just the tip of the iceberg, which will only
disappear in the heat of a national uprising, says Eric Walberg
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- It's hard to imagine a greater provocation than your
bosom buddy killing 28 of your own soldiers. NATO helicopters violated
the airspace of Pakistan from Afghanistan on Friday and opened unprovoked
fire on a check post in Mohmand, northwest Pakistan at midnight. Presumably
the pilots got the wrong coordinates from MacDill Air Force Central Command
in Florida or took too many army-prescribed uppers. The attack continued
even after Pakistani commanders pleaded with coalition forces to stop.
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- As a show of anger, Pakistan ordered the CIA to vacate
drone operations at Shamsi Air Base in southwestern Baluchistan and closed
both the Khyber and Baluchistan supply routes into Afghanistan, cutting
off 70 per cent of NATO's supplies. It was the worst such incident since
9/11.
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- This is not the first time NATO helicopters attack Pakistani
soldiers or that Pakistan closed the Khyber Pass. A US airstrike in 2008
killed 11 soldiers and last year two, prompting Pakistan to shut the Khyber
Pass for 10 days in protest against the almost daily, illegal and unsanctioned
US air strikes that since 2004 have killed 2,780 people, 83 per cent civilians,
among them 72 soldiers.
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- However, this time the rhetoric is full blast. Prime
Minister Yousuf Gilani announced Pakistan would boycott the crucial Bonn
II conference on Afghanistan this week, fatally undermining it. Army Chief
General Ashfaq Kayani call the attack a "blatant and unacceptable
act", and Interior Minister Rehman Malik insisted on Sunday that the
"NATO supply line had not been suspended but permanently stopped."
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- That is highly unlikely, but this could be the trigger
for a political earthquake against a despised national government. MP Ahmed
Khan Bahadur from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial Awami National Party
told CNN, "This is the time to be united as a nation and to punch
NATO with a fist. NATO could never dare if we were united." Politically
ambitious media star Imran Khan, who heads the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf
Party, said it was time for Pakistan to pull out of the US-led "war
on terror". Hundreds of thousands have rallied in Peshawar, Islamabad,
Lahore and Karachi to protest government corruption and the alliance with
the US.
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- To even begin to explain the mad "logic" of
US world military strategy which resulted in this "blatant and unacceptable
act", we must look at the other recent NATO undertakings in the Middle
East; namely, the invasion of Libya, the approaching invasion of Syria
and the ongoing attempts to subvert Iran. The US-Israeli strategy of carving
up the current regimes in order to leave Israel as the undisputed regional
hegemon is well known. The plan is for the latest version of the Middle
East to be unapologetically sectarian, based on conservative Islam and
Judaism. No room for any real democracy, which could lead to socialism,
or worse, nationalism, and the inevitable jihad against Israel.
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- The Muslim world could easily bury the Zionist state
if the spark to light it were to spontaneously appear. So, just as forest
rangers light strategic fires to clear brush and prevent uncontrolled fires
from erupting, the US must light fires around Israel which burn themselves
out. The tribes and conservative Islamists in Libya, and the Christians,
Alawis and Sunnis in Syria will soon be tearing each other up, "part
of the Turkish sphere of influence, aligned with NATO and non-hostile to
Israel. In other words, another Pakistan," quips analyst Come Carpentier.
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- The Arab Spring is the logical conclusion of the carving
up of the Middle East following WWI&II, creating regimes which from
the start were subservient, or, in the case of say Egypt under Nasser,
brought into line after a brief rebellion. As for Pakistan, from the start,
it too was very much an imperial-controlled forest fire. Britain's most
pressing problem following WWII was trying to control the march to independence
in India, to prevent it from aligning with the Soviet Union. Sectarian
India and Pakistan were created thanks to British intrigue, and the latter
has been a faithful ally of empire ever since.
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- The 1947 founding of this unapologetically sectarian
Muslim nation (just months before the founding of the sectarian Jewish
nation of Israel) set the pattern that has unfolded in the region ever
since: divide and rule, igniting civil wars where necessary to prevent
any of these geopolitically vital nations exiting the US orbit or from
threatening Israel. That millions died in the creation of these states,
and in the neocon jihad against Communism from 1979 on, is not of the least
importance. After all, few casualties are white Americans, and they are
useful Heroes who protected Americans from Reds and Towelheads.
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- Thus, the cool reaction by the US to the Pakistani fury,
which just barely hides the implicit racism of imperial fiat. That Pakistan
is a failed state, its elite totally dependent on US handouts, means that
the occasional closing of the Khyber Pass or even the attack on the US
embassy in Kabul by a certain Pakistan-based (Haqqani) resistance group
can be tolerated. US officials sometimes chide their Pakistani colleagues
with "playing a double game", a warning not to push the boundaries
too far, but the planners on all sides know that all the players are playing
at least several roles in the geopolitical play-off now underway, the winner
being the one who sees that extra move ahead and is able to plan for it.
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- In a sense, the game has become incredibly complex, with
supposed allies of empire -- from Mubarak and Gaddafi to mujahideen and,
increasingly, Pakistan soldiers -- moving from ally to enemy in the twinkling
of an eye. The Arab Spring is even now being subtlely and not-so-subtlely
manipulated from Washington, with daily briefings and financial aid to
Egypt's ruling generals ("more democracy but not if it harms Israel"),
daily bombings for others (Libya, Syria, Iran, Pakistan), or a blind eye
to cruel autocracies which are able to crush their opposition and continue
to faithfully serve the cause (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain). This apparent complexity
and chaos is not complex or chaotic at all, but the realisation of contingent
strategies in pursuit of clear goals. Egyptian analyst Mohamed Heikal calls
it the new "Sykes-Picot agreement".
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- The goals and rules of the game are in fact age-old.
In the first place, the US dollar and profit, followed by military might
and its transformation into political soft power, used to buttress the
dollar and ensure the flow of profit from the colonial (now neocolonial)
periphery to the imperial centre.
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- So the huffing and puffing of even generals in the periphery
can be tolerated, since they must inevitably bite the imperial bullet so
it doesn't explode in their faces. Similarly, the tens of thousands of
deaths resulting from "collateral damage" or the inevitable uprisings
against the vicious reality of neocolonialism, now dubbed the Arab Spring.
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- Also very simple for the sports fan to understand is
how the game will end. History shows conclusively that empires inevitably
fall, the victims of overreach. Just as the US lost in Vietnam, leaving
it bloodied and destroyed, so it will lose in Afghanistan and will eventually
leave Pakistan, both devastated, but in the long run, beholden to empire.
The Vietnamese communists supposedly triumphed -- a rare win against empire
-- but three short decades later are now allying unashamedly with the empire
against holdout China. The logic in AfPak is presumably to pack up and
leave AfPak a series of sectarian, feuding entities (states?), whose new
elites similarly will be reaching out to the empire in the face of holdout
Iran.
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- But these holdouts -- China the heir to the communist
foe of yesteryear, Iran the Muslim heir to the anti-communists of yesteryear
-- are now key players in the game, the only ones who play to beat the
imperialists, not just to a draw or stalemate. As the prospect of losing
the game in Iraq and Afghanistan looms, Iran gains greater regional importance,
without having to do much except survive the intense efforts by the empire
to subvert it. From a distance, China similarly must only be patient, continuing
to expand its economic might. Both these countries, unlike AfPak, Libya,
Iraq and Syria, are much more united around a strong sense of historic
destiny and national self-awareness -- in the end, impossible for the empire
to successfully subvert.
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- America's increasingly unwilling Pakistan ally is increasingly
turning to both. In the wake of the collapse of US-Pakistani relations,
Pakistan confirmed its gas pipeline project with Iran would be online by
2013, flouting US pressures to nix the deal and instead wait for the trans-Afghanistan
pipe dream (excuse me, pipeline). Iran need not drop bombs or invade its
neighbours (it ended any imperial pretensions in the 17th century), but
like China, seduce them economically. The pipeline will also export gas
to Turkey, Armenia and even Iraq. Iran has excellent relations with nearby
India, Russia and, of course, China. But of course, Pakistan's main lifeline
is still the US.
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- Whether the Western intervention in Libya and Syria will
turn them into willing (if conservative Islamic) allies of imperialism
a la Saudi Arabia, Morocco or, yes, Pakistan, is yet to be seen. But this
is the game plan, and the seemingly bizarre friendly fire on its lapdog
ally, as happened last week, is from Washington's point of view merely
a blip in the old-fashion regional radar it inherited from Britain. Unless
of course Pakistan has its 25 January moment.
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- Eric Walberg writes for Al-Ahram Weekly http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/
You can reach him at http://ericwalberg.com/ His Postmodern Imperialism:
Geopolitics and the Great Games is available at http://claritypress.com/Walberg.html
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- Ghandi campaigning in 1946 for a united nonsectarian
India
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