Daily Times

A couple of weeks ago, a ‘joint venture’ between former chief of ISI and former chief of RAW, the book Spy Chronical; RAW, ISI and the Illusion of Peace, was released. It has been a burning subject in Pakistan and India. Both spies claim in the book that Pakistan’s military and ISI knew what was coming ahead of the 2011 US raid to capture and kill Osama Bin Laden. Apparently, he was handed over to the USA according to a mutually agreed process.

The story being put forward by the two spies is not new. On June 17, 2015, Jane Corbin of BBC wrote, “A recent controversial account of the death of Osama Bin Laden claims there was a conspiracy at the highest levels of the US and Pakistani government to assassinate him”.

Seymore Hersh, a veteran US investigative and highly respected journalist, claimed in his article, published in the London Review of Books, that the ISI was holding Bin Laden prisoner for nearly six years in the garrison town of Abbottabad and just handed him over to the Americans in a staged raid. According to Hersh, top army and intelligence in Pakistan knew where Bin Laden was. The CIA rejected this view, saying that Pakistan’s top brass had no knowledge of his whereabouts.

Michael Morell, the deputy director of the CIA, who led the intelligence gathering and was in the CIA operations centre on the night of the raid in 2011, told Jane Corbin that Hersh’s theory was rubbish. But Morell also conceded that there are parts of the US account the world may never be told.

“A hundred percent of the story that is out there is true- but not a hundred percent of the story is out there,” he admitted. So, the truth about the death of Bin Laden was never told and the story of Osama did not end with his death.

Osama’s life story is fairly blurry. His friendship and relationship with the Bush family and US oil-arms cartels, his assigned US operations against USSR, 9/11 and his death (if he was really killed) are not out there, and will continue to pop up now and then, again and again, whenever it is required by the players of the game.

Following the book, a few weeks ago, Nawaz Sharif also sparked a firestorm at home and in India by suggesting that Pakistani terrorists were behind the 2008 attack in Mumbai. Whereas the former Indian Home Ministry officer and investigator of the case Satish Varma had already affirmed that both December 2001 and November 2008 incidents were orchestrated and pre-planned by the incumbent Indian Government to pressurise Pakistan, as stated in the Times of India issue of 14 July 2013.

History has demonstrated that the US has been destroying rather than building nations, and currently is the greatest threat to world peace. The imperialist agenda of corporate capitalism is no longer being tolerated. Several strong US allies have already changed sides, with both NATO and the GCC in crises

So, either the “joint venture” of the two spies and the statement by Nawaz Sharifis just a coincidence, a move to pressurise Pakistani institutions at a time when Nawaz Sharif is in trouble. Perhaps it is a continuation of the first tweet of the year by Donald J Trump, who attacked and abruptly cut off about two billion dollars in aid to Pakistan, and declared the country a terrorist state worthy of sanctions.

Trump has unveiled his new strategy for South Asia, which encompasses Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, the Central Asian nations and extends into South East Asia — to build India as a world power with a hegemonic role in South Asia. He has also said, “Pakistan has worked with the US in the past, but the nation’s politics must change”.

Here are a few thoughts:

The geo-politics of the region is shifting. After the destruction of Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and the defeat of the US and its allies in Syria, the theatre is shifting to South Asia and South East Asia, where new alliances are emerging.

China, Russia and Iran have stopped US’ imperialistic designs for globalisation and a New World Order through wars in the Middle East. James N Mattis, the US defence secretary, has already declared that the US defence strategy puts China and Russia at the top of its priorities for years to come.

The US has openly declared its intention and support to make India rise a major world power. The US has also designated India as a ‘major defence partner’, a category created specifically for India to expedite defence technology transfer.

The Pentagon has also created ‘India Rapid Reaction Cell’ to streamline projects for co-development and co-production of hi-tech military equipment in India. India is the only country to have a specific cell of its kind inside the Pentagon. This reflects that Washington is investing in a long-term strategic partnership with India to support its ability to serve as its economic and political anchor in the region.

India lining up with US, receiving tangible military and economic benefits from this partnership has its own agenda in the changing of political dynamics in the region, mainly against Pakistan and China.

US concerns have long been that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) represents Beijing’s takeover of all of Central Asia. The $46 million CPEC project will link Northwest China to the Pakistani port of Gwadar. Beijing has also pledged tens of billions of dollars in investments for new roads, pipelines, power stations, rail lines, and ports to create a network of trade routes that link China to South and Central Asia, and then on to Europe. CPEC is a challenge and threat to America’s status as a power in the region.

Pakistan has paramount national security interests and concerns in the region. China, Russia and Iran also have serious concerns about the recent developments in Afghanistan, where India is disturbing the peace process. Trump wants to deploy more troops and ISIS shifting from the Middle East to Afghan borders.

Trump has blasted Pakistan, as I mentioned before, in the following words: “The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies and deceit, thinking of our leadership as fools. They gave safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more.”

Of course, the US leadership was a fool to impose illegal wars, immoral wars, unwinnable wars to capture rich resources and geopolitical locations in the name of globalisation, by imposing its corporate imperialist agenda of the “New World Order”, which has been defeated in Syria.

The fraudulent ‘war on terror’, which began in Afghanistan, later became the ‘Global War on Terror’, was claimed to be a ‘good war’ by Barack Obama. Interestingly none of the terrorists, hijackers and attackers on 9/11 were from Afghanistan but the war was imposed on Afghanistan. Most of the hijackers and attackers on the twin towers were Saudi nationals, trained in Germany and United States. If 9/11 was the reason to invade Afghanistan then the war should have started from Saudi Arabia and thereafter, by killing of Osama, US should have gone back home after declaring its victory.

The fact remains that the Afghan war was not against terrorism. It was and still is, for the control of former Soviet Central Asia, a region rich in oil and minerals and of great importance to competing powers, Russia and China. The design was also to secure a prime trans-shipment route for export of Central Asia’s oil, gas and other natural resources by building the pipeline from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The people of Pakistan are still suffering and facing the consequences of this ‘War on Terror’. After such a long war in which Pakistan was involved as frontline state of the US, it is yet impossible to predict the course of the chaos that follows by conflict of interests of global powers and corporate empire in the region.

With these ‘War on terror’, ‘War for human rights’, ‘War for imposing democracies’, one fact has been exposed to the civilised world. The US first creates its own terrorists, implants them in strategically important countries of its choice, then, on the excuse to ‘hunt them’, invades those countries with the help of UN, NATO and the armed forces of its allied nations. They then change regimes, kill millions of innocent people and capture the areas and resources.

This is also a fact that the US has always been a fickle friend of Pakistan. Military cooperation and financial assistance to Pakistan from the US was supplied only when it needed something but cutoff with sanctions imposed when it did not. Henry Kissinger once wrote that it’s often more dangerous being an ally of the US than its enemy.

The situation in Afghanistan is becoming complicated. After the defeat of the US and its allied forces in Syria, ISIS and its affiliated groups sponsored and created by the US, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Qatar and Turkey are being shifted to Afghanistan from Iraq, Syria and other parts of the world with the regular supply of modern arms and latest equipment for insurgency.  The aim is to establish ISIS in Central Asia to help implement the ‘New Strategy’ of Trump for South Asia. Pakistan, Iran, China and Russia have their genuine concerns about ISIS shifting its neighbourhood. Although ISIS, at the moment, does not hold any significant stretches of territory in the region, leadership of the war-torn state of Afghanistan should think twice before providing them a safe haven.

Before it was a ‘War on Terror’ against Al-Qaeda and Taliban to deploy more than one hundred thousand troops in Afghanistan and now it will be the ‘War against ISIS’ that will serve as an excuse to continue the US’s eighteen years of military presence, intervention and occupation of Afghanistan. All to safeguard Trump’s vision for the region.

China has already pointed out in the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore that extremists are increasingly flowing from the Middle East into South East Asia, making the region “the hub of world terrorism activities”. China’s predominantly Muslim northwest Xinjiang region has also become a security problem for Beijing because of the attacks carried out by Uighur, jihadi terrorists, reportedly operating from Afghanistan’s border. A separatist movement in the same region is also being supported by the US, India and Afghanistan for the independent state of East Turkestan.

It is also clear that US has not given up its ambitions to neutralise or destroy Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. India and Israel have long been pressing the US to attack Pakistan’s nuclear infrastructure.

While the new ‘indispensable partners’, the US and India are trying to overcome the legacy of ‘trust deficit’, questions are being raised, here in West, about the capacity of India to counter China growing clout and Putin’s emerging Russia. This is especially true because India is dealing with serious issues within the country, and hostilities with its neighbours, ie Pakistan, Nepal, China, Bangladesh, Myanmar (Burma) and Sri Lanka. Opinions are forming that for the Indo-American alliance in South Asia India might be part of the problem for the US instead of a solution.

It is very obvious that an Indian hegemony, or its new role of economic and political anchor for the US will not be acceptable, therefore any US moves against Pakistan will inevitably push Pakistan closer to China and expand Chinese influence in the region.

It is also being propagated at home in Pakistan and abroad that there is a divide in Pakistan on the question of peace with India. There is no divide on the question of peace with India. Everyone wants peace with India. The divide is over the question of accepting the hegemony of India and being subservient to India according to the US new strategy for the region.

Despite all efforts by the US to destabilise and weaken nations like Pakistan such as; cutting off aid, funding media houses, Mullahs, Madaris and NGOs, creating religious extremists, buying elite’s enthusiasm for Indo-US greatness, the people of Pakistan and South Asia will not accept the hegemonic role of India that is being forced on them.

History has demonstrated that the US has been destroying rather than building nations and currently is the greatest threat to world peace. The imperialist agenda of corporate capitalism is no longer being tolerated. Several US strong allies have already changed sides, with both NATO and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in crises.

So, the ‘joint venture’, the book of two spies, statements and politics of Nawaz Sharif and his allies to accept the hegemony of India, was a burning subject, however, the US strategies to dominate and micromanage the world are not working and will not work in South Asia. If America is for Americans, Pakistan is for Pakistanis.

The writer is an author, journalist, analyst, and political activist. He contested elections for UK Parliament as a socialist anti-war candidate

Published in Daily Times, June 29^th 2018.