- WASHINGTON - What is happening
in today's Middle East is not just about Iraq; it is about all countries
that have the power and means to oppose US/Israeli imperial hegemonic control
of the region. With the help of Turkey and India as well as Israel, regional
countries clearly wanting to play ball with the Americans in pursuing this
'new world order', what is happenig today is nothing other than a grand
new design for the entire region, a la what was done to the area with the
Paris Peace Conference of 1918 -- the infamous 'Peace to end all Peace'
whose results are still erupting today.
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- After Afghanistan and Iraq are 'taken' -- both having
extensive natural resources and Iraq having the second largest oil reserves
in the world -- next on the list for either being co-opted or 'taken' (i.e.,
dearmament and 'regime change') are Iran, Syria, and Pakistan.
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- Pakistan is a very special case first because it already
has a growing arsenal of nuclear weapons, second because it is aligned
with Saudi Arabia, as well as with China, the main country the U.S. is
trying frighten -- to 'deter' from attempting to build up military forces
that could stand up to those of the American Empire.
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- When the timing is propitious, and when either regional
war or national anarchy in Pakistan provides the excuse, the U.S./Israeli/Indian
plot to disarm and possibly dismember Pakistan is aready proceeding behind-the-scenes
through the powerful intelligence agencies and clandestine means.
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- The startling Pakistani-election results this week --
with a growing demand to force US military, CIA, and FBI personnel from
the cuontry -- will no doubt increase US anxieties about what to do about
Pakistan and when.
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- Israel, India Linked To Pakistan Plot
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- By Syed Saleem Shahzad 10-15-2
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- KARACHI - For the past 23 years, Afghanistan has served
as a proxy military playing field for different countries, including the
former Soviet Union, the United States and Pakistan. Now, after a year
of the US-led war on terrorism, a new proxy war has begun in Afghanistan,
this time aimed at Pakistan and involving the intelligence networks of
India and Israel.
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- It has been learned from highly placed intelligence sources
that India's Reasearch and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Israel's Mossad are
collaborating to train several hundred militants to be used in an attempt
to destabilize the administration of President General Pervez Musharraf.
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- The sources say that training camps have been established
near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, and the eastern city of Jalalabad,
which lies close to Pakistan's western tribal areas. It is said that RAW
has arranged most of the "human resources", while training is
the responsibility of the Special Operations Division (Metsada) of Mossad.
Metsada generally conducts highly sensitive assassination, sabotage, paramilitary
and psychological warfare projects.
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- Once trained, the recruits will infiltrate the border
areas of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan
Province, where they will attempt to forge links with local tribespeople
and militants in an effort to rally support for an uprising against Musharraf,
who is widely discredited in these regions for abandoning the Taliban and
siding with the US in its war on terror. These provinces have a strong
pro-Taliban history.
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- Musharraf's decision to throw in his lot with the US
resulted in pressure from Washington to clamp down on militant organizations
and to stem the flow of jihadis from Pakistani soil into Indian-administered
Kashmir. And since Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had strong
(albeit covert) links with the militant organizations, it was able to bring
pressure to bear on the leaders for them to back off for the interim.
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- However, while most of the leaders of these groups have
been ready to cooperate with the military government, some of the rank
and file have been less accommodating. Although their numbers are not great
- a matter of hundreds - they are still a source of concern to Musharraf
as they are fully equipped and trained. Nevertheless, the chaos that had
been predicted by many for Pakistan, with disgruntled militant groups causing
mayhem, never materialized, largely because of the understanding between
the militant groups and the ISI.
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- The move by RAW and Mossad, as indicated by the intelligence
sources, will tap into a large section of the population in NWFP and Balochistan
that feels betrayed by Musharraf over his ditching of the Taliban. For
India's part, it hopes to stoke the fires of unrest by using those militants
who refuse to muzzle their guns despite the entreaties of their leaders.
It has long been India's desire to portray Pakistan as an unstable country
that supports cross-border terrorism into Kashmir in order to gain international
support for Delhi's position on Kashmir - that of staging elections.
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- In recent times, little-known organizations such as the
al-Iqwan and the al-Faran have been the brainchild of RAW, the sources
said. These groups have carried out a number of relatively minor incidents
in Indian-administered Kashmir, such as kidnapping foreign tourists, which
New Delhi has used to back its claim that Kashmiri fighters are international
terrorists. These organizations have not been heard of since.
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- RAW has not been capable of setting up groups to carry
out larger incidents without its hand being shown, hence its collaboration
with Mossad, which is undoubtedly thoroughly professonal and which is thought
to have carried out a number of high-profile incidents without leaving
a trail.
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- Within Pakistan, a few small groups are known to be beyond
the control of the Pakistani government. Two of them, the al-Saiqa and
the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen al-Alami, have revealed themselves through fax
messages to newspaper offices in which they have claimed responsibility
for incidents.
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- Al-Saiqa comprises only a handful of men and is based
in NWFP. It has claimed responsibility for various attacks on members of
different security agencies early this year. More recently, it owned up
to an attack on foreign tourists visiting a Buddhist site in NWFP in which
a German citizen was killed.
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- The Harkat-ul-Mujahideen al-Alami is based in the Pakistani
port city of Karachi and also comprises only a handful of youths. It is
thought to be behind plots to assassinate Musharraf and interior minister
Moinuddin Haider.
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- Similar small groups in Pakistan share the vision of
once again turning Pakistan into a paradise for militant groups, and they
all operate beyond the apparatus of the Pakistani intelligence network,
as well as beyond the control of the mainstream militant groups. All have
a footing of some sort in the tribal areas and remote rural regions.
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- It is into these groups that the new alliance between
RAW and Mossad will feed their trained men in the hope of keeping the wheels
of unrest moving sufficiently until popular unrest is strong enough to
create anarchy in the country.
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- RELIGIOUS LEADER IN PAKISTAN SETS MODERATE TONE AFTER
VOTE By DAVID ROHDE
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- ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - NYTimes, 15 Oct - Qazi Hussain
Ahmed, a Pakistani religious leader whose sudden popularity here is making
generals in Islamabad and Washington nervous, says he has a message for
the American people. We do not dislike you, he says, we dislike what your
president is doing.
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- "This is not against America," Mr. Ahmed said.
"This is against the wrong policies of America."
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- Mr. Ahmed, 63, is a former professor who is the leading
moderate voice in an unwieldy coalition of six Islamic religious parties
that unexpectedly won broad support in elections last week. He has become
one of the most closely watched men in Pakistan. A campaign demand from
the formerly obscure coalition that American soldiers and F.B.I. agents
be expelled from Pakistan has turned into a potential threat to the American-led
campaign against terrorism.
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- In the elections, the first since the military coup in
1999 that brought Gen. Pervez Musharraf to power, members of the conservative
religious coalition won control of the governments of two strategic provinces
bordering Afghanistan, of the largely ceremonial upper house of the Parliament
and roughly 20 percent of the seats in the powerful lower house.
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- The coalition has never before won control of a province,
and with no party winning a majority, the coalition is in a position to
play a major role in government for the first time.
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- Today, in a news conference and an interview, Mr. Ahmed
maintained the relatively moderate tone toward the United States that his
coalition has adopted since election night. The soft-spoken academic and
religious leader, who has spent much of his life in a seemingly futile
effort to build his party, Jamaat-e-Islami, into a dominant political force,
backed away from the demand to expel American troops and Federal Bureau
of Investigation agents.
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- "We will discuss it with him," he said, referring
to General Musharraf. "We will show flexibility."
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- But he openly challenged the general, a major American
ally in the campaign against terrorism. Mr. Ahmad announced that he and
his coalition would only swear allegiance in Parliament to a Constitution
stripped of the 19 amendments General Musharraf unilaterally enacted this
summer, largely seen as cementing his hold on power. Mr. Ahmed's comments
came at the outset of an anticipated two weeks of political negotiations
to form a government.
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- The party tacitly backed by General Musharraf won at
least 76 seats of the 272 filled directly by election. The party of former
Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto won at least 62. An official from Mr. Ahmed's
coalition, which is known as the United Action Council, said it expects
to hold at least 51 seats. Its best previous showing was 9 seats.
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- General Musharraf still wields near-dictatorial powers,
though. He commands the military, will remain president for five years
and has given himself the power to dismiss the new Parliament, which he
has promised will sit by Nov. 1.
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- Officials in Mr. Ahmed's party privately expressed fears
today that the general will quickly dismiss the Parliament or not allow
it to sit, creating the potential for a volatile civilian-military confrontation.
They said they worried that the general might try to use the threat of
Islamic militancy to gain American support if he takes such an action.
Today, Mr. Ahmed distanced himself from hard-line Islamic views, painting
his party in terms reminiscent of the reformist Iranian president, Mohammad
Khatami. He said he opposed violence and believed in the establishment
of Islamic law, or Shariah, through democracy. His version would include
equal education and employment for women.
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- But Mr. Ahmed's unwieldy coalition includes two factions
of the more militant Party of the Islamic People, headed by Maulana Fazal-ur-Rahman.
Religious schools run by that group produced much of the Taliban leadership.
Both Mr. Ahmed and Mr. Rahman were jailed by General Musharraf after leading
protests against American bombing in Afghanistan last fall.
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- The group also includes a pro-Saudi orthodox Islamist
party, a pro-Iran Shiite Muslim party and a small moderate party. The militant
parties won more seats than the comparatively moderate parties, weakening
Mr. Ahmed's position within the coalition.
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- But his group remains one of the best organized and most
politically savvy parties in the country. Winning seats for the first time
in Islamabad and major cities, it fielded moderate and charismatic candidates
who ran on promises of curbing corruption and poverty.
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- Mr. Ahmed smoothly articulates the sophisticated, politicized
version of Islam that has become widespread here. Cobbling together tenets
of Islam, Marxism and current events, it paints the United States as bent
on subjugating the world.
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- "We are against the hegemonic attitude of the U.S.
administration," he said.
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