USA Ends Freedom of Speech &Expression Rights

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US citizens of all political persuasions are still reeling from images of unparallelled police brutality in a coordinated crackdown against peaceful OWS protesters in cities across the nation this past week. An elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in the face; the scene of unresisting, supine students at UC Davis being pepper-sprayed by phalanxes of riot police went viral online; images proliferated of young women - targeted seemingly for their gender - screaming, dragged by the hair by police in riot gear; and the pictures of a young man, stunned and bleeding profusely from the head, emerged in the record of the middle-of-the-night clearing of Zuccotti Park.

But just when Americans thought we had the picture - was this crazy police and mayoral overkill, on a municipal level, in many different cities? - the picture darkened. The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with law enforcement practices that appeared to target journalists. The New York Times reported that "New York cops have arrested, punched, whacked, shoved to the ground and tossed a barrier at reporters and photographers" covering protests. Reporters were asked by NYPD to raise their hands to prove they had credentials: when many dutifully did so, they were taken, upon threat of arrest, away from the story they were covering, and penned far from the site in which the news was unfolding. Other reporters wearing press passes were arrested and roughed up by cops, after being - falsely - informed by police that "It is illegal to take pictures on the sidewalk."

In New York, a state supreme court justice and a New York City council member were beaten up; in Berkeley, California, one of our greatest national poets, Robert Hass, was beaten with batons. The picture darkened still further when Wonkette and Washingtonsblog.com reported that the Mayor of Oakland acknowledged that the Department of Homeland Security had participated in an 18-city mayor conference call advising mayors on "how to suppress" Occupy protests.

To Europeans, the enormity of this breach may not be obvious at first. Our system of government prohibits the creation of a federalised police force, and forbids federal or militarised involvement in municipal peacekeeping.

I noticed that rightwing pundits and politicians on the TV shows on which I was appearing were all on-message against OWS. Journalist Chris Hayes reported on a leaked memo that revealed lobbyists vying for an $850,000 contract to smear Occupy. Message coordination of this kind is impossible without a full-court press at the top. This was clearly not simply a case of a freaked-out mayors', city-by-city municipal overreaction against mess in the parks and cranky campers. As the puzzle pieces fit together, they began to show coordination against OWS at the highest national levels.

Why this massive mobilisation against these not-yet-fully-articulated, unarmed, inchoate people? After all, protesters against the war in Iraq, Tea Party rallies and others have all proceeded without this coordinated crackdown. Is it really the camping? As I write, two hundred young people, with sleeping bags, suitcases and even folding chairs, are still camping out all night and day outside of NBC on public sidewalks - under the benevolent eye of an NYPD cop - awaiting Saturday Night Live tickets, so surely the camping is not the issue. I was still deeply puzzled as to why OWS, this hapless, hopeful band, would call out a violent federal response.

That is, until I found out what it was that OWS actually wanted.

The mainstream media was declaring continually "OWS has no message". Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online "What is it you want?" answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.

The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act - the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.

No 3 was the most clarifying: draft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.

When I saw this list - and especially the last agenda item - the scales fell from my eyes. Of course, these unarmed people would be having the shit kicked out of them.

For the terrible insight to take away from news that the Department of Homeland Security coordinated a violent crackdown is that the DHS does not freelance. The DHS cannot say, on its own initiative, "we are going after these scruffy hippies". Rather, DHS is answerable up a chain of command: first, to New York Representative Peter King, head of the House homeland security subcommittee, who naturally is influenced by his fellow congressmen and women's wishes and interests. And the DHS answers directly, above King, to the president (who was conveniently in Australia at the time).

In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces - pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS - to make war on peaceful citizens.

But wait: why on earth would Congress advise violent militarised reactions against its own peaceful constituents? The answer is straightforward: in recent years, members of Congress have started entering the system as members of the middle class (or upper middle class) - but they are leaving DC privy to vast personal wealth, as we see from the "scandal" of presidential contender Newt Gingrich's having been paid $1.8m for a few hours' "consulting" to special interests. The inflated fees to lawmakers who turn lobbyists are common knowledge, but the notion that congressmen and women are legislating their own companies' profitsis less widely known - and if the books were to be opened, they would surely reveal corruption on a Wall Street spectrum. Indeed, we do already know that congresspeople are massively profiting from trading on non-public information they have on companies about which they are legislating - a form of insider trading that sent Martha Stewart to jail.

Since Occupy is heavily surveilled and infiltrated, it is likely that the DHS and police informers are aware, before Occupy itself is, what its emerging agenda is going to look like. If legislating away lobbyists' privileges to earn boundless fees once they are close to the legislative process, reforming the banks so they can't suck money out of fake derivatives products, and, most critically, opening the books on a system that allowed members of Congress to profit personally - and immensely - from their own legislation, are two beats away from the grasp of an electorally organised Occupy movement … well, you will call out the troops on stopping that advance.

So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organised suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.

Sadly, Americans this week have come one step closer to being true brothers and sisters of the protesters in Tahrir Square. Like them, our own national leaders, who likely see their own personal wealth under threat from transparency and reform, are now making war upon us.

Enough is Enough - Pakistan tells the "Allies"

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Readers of Dawn newspaper, commenting online, were in no doubt how the Pakistani government should respond to Saturday's killing by US forces of 24 soldiers on Pakistan's side of the Afghan border. "Pakistan should acquire anti-aircraft defence systems ... so that in the future Pakistan can give Nato forces a proper reply," said Ali. "This is outrageous," wrote another reader, Zia Khan. "We should cut off all ties with the US. As long as we are getting US [anti-terror] aid ... Pakistan will be attacked in such a manner. They can never be trusted." Another, Obaid, turned his wrath on the Pakistani authorities: "Our self-centred establishment with their fickle loyalties can't even demand that the killers be tried in a neutral court ... What is the ability of our armed forces? If they can't repel or intercept an attack of this intensity, then what's their purpose? This is not a time to get mad. It's time to get even."

The fury of these respondents comes as no surprise, but Washington should treat it with deadly seriousness all the same, for this latest outrage is another fateful signpost on the road to a potential security and geostrategic disaster that may ultimately make Afghanistan look like a sideshow.

The 10-year-old Afghan war, neither wholly won nor lost, is slowly drawing to a close - or so Washington postulates. But what has not stopped is the linked, escalating destabilisation of the infinitely more important, more populous, and nuclear-armed Pakistan. If Washington does not quickly learn to tread more carefully, it may find the first US-Pakistan war is beginning just as the fourth Afghan war supposedly ends.

Anti-American feeling in Pakistan is becoming institutionalised at the higher levels of government, while opposition figures such as Imran Khan see their popularity rise on the back of diatribes aimed at Washington. Pakistan's western-educated, secular political elite is under brutal attack from Islamist militants who revile them as Washington's stooges. The knock-kneed government is mocked and despised for failing to stand up to its infidel paymasters even as Pakistan's own "war on terror" death toll rises into the tens of thousands.

Since 2001, when the Bush administration bluntly told Islamabad it must take sides, be either "for us or agin us" in the newly declared "war on terror", Pakistan has struggled under a plethora of imperious American demands, démarches and impositions that are at once politically indefensible and contrary to the perceived national interest.

The last year has been another humiliating one at the hands of the country's principal ally. Pakistanis have looked on impotently as US special forces flouted its sovereignty and killed Osama bin Laden under the army's nose; as the US stepped up drone terror attacks in Pakistani territory despite repeated protests; and as people-pleasing US senators and Republican presidential candidates have taken to picking on Pakistan and its aid bill in uninformed foreign policy rants.

Hillary Clinton and the Pentagon top brass have responded to Saturday's killing with the usual expressions of regret and of determination to "investigate", without formally admitting responsibility. Their pronouncements are worthless, transparently so.

The belief that weak, impoverished, divided Pakistan has no alternative but to slavishly obey its master's voice could turn out to be one of the seminal strategic miscalculations of the 21st century. Alternative alliances with China or Russia aside, Muslim Pakistan, if bullied and scorned for long enough by its western mentors, could yet morph through external trauma and internal collapse into quite a different animal. The future paradigm here is not another well-trained Indonesia or Malaysia. It is the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The Memogate Scandal: Lost in speculation

By: Sarah Eleazar

Unsigned, unauthenticated and unofficial; Mansur Ijaz's infamous memo circulated amongst the top echelons of the US Government wreaked havoc of such magnitude in Pakistan that we have started comparing the crank document to Nixon's Watergate travesty. This unsolicited manuscript led to urgent closed door meetings between the President and COAS, an urgent summon of Pakistan's Ambassador to the US Hussain Haqqani to Pakistan and his resulting resignation; hue and cry from the media and indignant righteousness on the behalf of MNA Farahnaz Isphahani who has threatened Ijaz with a law suit. Of course ISI Chief Ahmed Shuja Pasha was quickest to act and allegedly walked out of Park Lane Intercontinental Hotel London, with concrete evidence from Mansur Ijaz for forensic testing. And yet this elusive document, which has been circulated around media, is shrouded in mystery as regards to its source, author and intentions.

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Raped in America

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The PBS show Frontline, documenting harsh conditions in Department of Homeland Security (DHS) detention facilities, recently told the story of an immigrant whom it called "Mary." During a routine traffic stop in Florida, police discovered that Mary's visa had expired. They sent her to the Willacy Detention Center in southern Texas; there, over the course of three months, she was repeatedly raped by one of her guards. Finally, unable to endure further abuse and told by other detainees that she would face retaliation if she complained, she stopped fighting deportation and asked to be sent home to Canada, leaving behind four young children who were born in the US. It has now been two years since she has seen them.

Perhaps the worst part of this immensely distressing story is how unexceptional it is. There is abundant evidence that rape is a systemic problem in our immigration detention facilities-for women, for men, and, as the Women's Refugee Commission has documented, for children. In 2010, Human Rights Watch released a report based on over fifty known incidents and allegations of sexual abuse of immigration detainees. The American Civil Liberties Union has discovered 185 government reports of such allegations since 2007, and a senior ACLU staff attorney says this is only "the tip of the iceberg." Based on studies by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the US government estimates that over 216,600 people are sexually abused in its prisons, jails, and juvenile detention facilities every year. Such comprehensive data do not exist for DHS facilities, and many fewer people are held in immigration detention than in prisons and jails. However, there is good reason to believe that, proportionally, the rates of abuse may be even higher for immigrants in government custody than for prisoners.

In 2003, Congress tried to address this problem by passing the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA). As is unmistakably clear from the bill's language and its history, Congress intended it to apply to immigration detention, as well as to other kinds. Now, more than eight years later, Attorney General Eric Holder is set to establish new national standards on sexual abuse in detention, as PREA mandated. But if he sticks to the Justice Department's most recent draft version of the standards, they will not apply to immigration detention.

In the days after the Frontline program aired, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano was asked by members of the US Senate and House whether she thought the proposed national standards should also apply to immigrants in DHS custody. Napolitano never answered the question clearly. Instead she mentioned her department's policy of zero tolerance for sexual abuse and its own internal standards, seeming to suggest that she considered them sufficient. Indeed, it is widely understood in Washington that Napolitano does not want her agency subjected to Justice Department regulations. But exempting Homeland Security from the new standards would be disastrous. Detained immigrants are in a uniquely vulnerable position, and the Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly failed to protect them on its own.

Immigration detention, which is run primarily through DHS's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division (ICE), is the fastest-growing system of incarceration in the United States. In 2006, approximately 250,000 people passed through it. This October the Obama administration, evidently determined to prove itself a strict enforcer of immigration law, announced it had deported nearly 400,000 people through the DHS system in fiscal year 2011. Immigration detention is considered civil or administrative confinement, rather than criminal or punitive, but in practice this is a thin distinction. Almost all immigration detention facilities were originally built as prisons and jails, and the atmosphere inside them is very much what is euphemistically called "correctional."

Immigrants in civil detention actually have fewer legal rights than their criminal counterparts. Unlike people charged with crimes, detained immigrants do not have a right to a government-appointed attorney, and because few can pay for one, only about sixteen percent have legal representation. And DHS not only oversees the detention of immigrants, it decides their legal status and whether or not they are to be deported. If this were taking place within the criminal justice system, it would be as if the jailors of a man awaiting trial were then to serve as his judge and jury.

Terrified of deportation and separation from their families, immigrants in detention are often extremely reluctant to file grievances against facilities run by the very people who can expel them from the country; and there is little question that deportation is sometimes used as retribution against immigration detainees who complain, and sometimes as a way of forestalling investigations into abuses. And it's clear that facilities holding people who do not feel able to complain are particularly fertile grounds for abuse, as are institutions that can easily deport witnesses against them.

In 2006, our organization, Just Detention International, arranged for Esmeralda Mayra Soto to testify at a hearing of the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission. A transgender woman, Esmeralda fled to the US in 2002 after being raped many times in Mexico. More than a year later, she was taken into custody at her place of employment for not having a work permit and detained at a California immigration facility. During her first days there, while she was waiting to see a lawyer, an officer twice forced her to perform oral sex on him. She is now in this country legally, having obtained a form of asylum, but except in the most technical sense the US has hardly given her refuge. It would be hard to imagine a greater betrayal of the ideals and origins of a nation of immigrants than systemic abuse of this kind, perpetrated as it usually is by agents of the government.

Even Holder's Department of Justice has written that "protection from sexual abuse should not depend on where an individual is incarcerated: It must be universal." Why then did it draft standards that do not apply to immigration detention?


The answer has to do with an accident of timing. After the 2003 PREA legislation was written (but before it had been voted on), Congress, reacting to the September 11 attacks, disbanded the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which had been a division of the Justice Department, and created a new independent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, to replace it. If immigration detention facilities were still managed by the Justice Department, any standards it issued would automatically cover them. However, Holder is apparently reluctant to impose regulations on another executive agency. This is a lawyer's quibble, and a poor one at that. The Department of Justice has imposed regulations on other departments before. No matter how uncomfortable he finds the situation, Holder must meet his statutory responsibilities.

He cannot accept DHS arguments that its internal standards are enough to address the problem. Prison systems have never been able to address sexual abuse adequately on their own: this is why Congress passed PREA in the first place. Indeed, DHS's continuing failures to prevent sexual abuse perfectly illustrate the shortcomings of such self-policing-a disappointment all the more striking because, as advocates on behalf of immigration detainees generally acknowledge, divisions of the Department have made sincere attempts to improve.

No matter how good their intentions, institutions answerable only to themselves are rarely able to create meaningful systems of external oversight or accountability. The overarching problem with DHS's internal standards, as the National Immigration Law Center put it, is that "there are no real penalties for facilities' noncompliance with even the most fundamental portions of the detention standards or for repeated, serious violations of the standards." ICE is now proposing to adopt a new set of internal standards, but there is little reason to believe that these will be much better than its previous efforts. The new standards were supposed to be released in 2010. However, apparently because of union resistance, no one now thinks they will be enacted before 2012.

The national PREA standards will have to include robust measures for external oversight, enforcement, and accountability. They have been subjected to extensive scrutiny and revision through several public comment periods, and will not only be stronger but much more durable than DHS's internal regulations. Holder must insist that the national standards apply to immigration detention facilities, as Congress intended. And Napolitano should stop fighting the true reform her agency so desperately needs.

Pak - India Peace Without America

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The leaders of both Pakistan and India must be prepared to turn away from the American bait and switch operation at play in Afghanistan, if they want to survive without suffering through violent repercussions for their partnerships with the devil.

The Indian analyst who authored the following piece (SEE: India, Pakistan, and God's geostrategic will) is probably giving an accurate assessment of his government's opinion of the current status of the Pakistani military, even though both his opinion and the projected government position are probably miscalculations or misinterpretations of Pakistani gestures. He interprets recent moves and counter-moves by the Pak. Army and its "Islamist" paramilitary forces as signs of weakness, thereby justifying taking advantage of the new "peace process" as an opening for India to seize-upon, in order to exploit those perceived weaknesses.

Like all Indian analysts, Praveen Swami makes a lot of assumptions, based on the understanding that Pakistan is "besieged on all sides," without ever acknowledging either India's hand in that siege or America's primary role (or for that matter, the British or Israeli hand). You will never hear or read an Indian writer discussing outside sponsorship of the violence which plagues parts of Pakistan, even though many Western and Pakistani writers have examined Indian/American support for anti-Pakistan terrorists in depth (SEE: The Stunning Investigative Story on the Birth of Balochistan Liberation Army-Mar 1, 2005). The truth is, Pakistan the Nation probably is on the ropes, even though the Army is as robust as ever. Through a clever combination of economic incentives and state-sponsored terrorism (compounded by successive, near-fatal blows from Mother Nature) Pakistan has been economically crippled and branded as an international pariah state.

The "peace process" has been sold to Pakistani leaders as a doorway out of this hellish existence, into the arms of the "community of nations," even though entry will only be possible if Pakistan kneels before the Imperial dictates of the United States and its Indian proxies. Pakistan's biggest problem is its history with the CIA. For more than thirty years, Pakistan has served as the CIA's terrorist/jihadi laboratory, the place where the spymasters have perfected their art of "Islamist" destabilization. This is the behavioral science of motivating indigenous Muslim populations to overthrow their own governments. From the many years of practical experience that has been gained in Pakistan, the CIA mind-benders have established a working formula of "Islamist" agitation of highly religious, though under-educated Muslim populations, that takes advantage of the weaknesses in human nature itself, to cause the populations to rise-up against their own governments, demanding that those legitimate governments enforce a system of corrupt "Shariah Law" upon them. This "peace process," much like the failed Israeli/Palestinian peace process, is a delusional process, used to sell the participants a false "bill of goods" as the only "road map" to peace, even though it only leads to war.

Pakistan has many times seen the Islamist armies that it has trained turn against its trainers, usually for failure to live up to the Jihadi standards that they were taught. These disaffected Jihadis then become active enemies of the state, such as the TTP in Waziristan and Swat. These reversals have happened under the watchful eye and protection of that same State. It is a moot question, at this point, whether the Army and ISI were willing players in all of this, or whether they too have fallen victim to American psywar games. It is a process that has played-out in too many countries to be written-off to the workings of fate-the CIA mind games could never succeed without willing participants among the homeland populations. Pakistani leaders have sold Pakistanis out, just as American leaders have continually sold Americans out. It is the way of the Evil Empire. You must invite the vampire into your house before he can drink your blood.

Now that this northern army has become fully activated as true enemies of the State, they work toward the same goals as the Baloch Liberation Army in the south, the destruction of the legitimate, democratically elected government of Pakistan. Both puppet (proxy) armies dance to the same puppeteer's tunes, but they believe that they are fighting for either Allah, or for country. This is the glaring hypocrisy of the American Hegelian dialectic-the American government is continually building things up, to later knock them down. Pakistan is suffering from a traditional pincer movement, but since they appear to be completely opposite in nature, with completely different goals, we tend to ignore the connection. The Af-Pak region, more specifically, the Pashtun belt of that region, is being squeezed into a fluid, homogeneous mass, which can easily be pushed back and forth, to erase the invisible border which impedes American actions.

But you will hear about none of this from an Indian analyst.

American analysts are different, in that we analyze the Imperial plans from an American nationalist perspective. Taking a patriotic angle, we look for weaknesses that will help us slay the Imperial Beast that has taken over our government and has been set loose upon the world. We have become a fascist power in our effort to reshape the world, and realistic American analysts understand this. Any useful analysis of world events must be based upon that premise.

The fascist power operates through a traditional "bait and switch" strategy. They promote "Democracy" throughout the world as the primary weapon of destabilization, with the intent of crushing the results of any democratic movement in the end. We use it as bait, to tempt the targeted audience with unimagined political freedoms which will never materialize, holding them up as promised rewards for them risking their own lives in mass-movements to reform their own governments. The switch comes after the regime is forced to change, whenever the democratic-revolution is exposed as an exercise in American Imperialism, giving the Empire veto power over any "democratic" decisions made by that government or the people they claim to represent. After the dust of "regime change" has settled, the next American puppet government rules for as long as it can continue to repress the people. Any elected government that doesn't adhere to this rigid fascist formula becomes itself the next subject for regime change.

A realistic analysis of the India/Pakistani peace process would have to proceed on the assumption that the primary beneficiary will prove to be American. If a deal between them is brokered by the US State Dept., by the Dept. of Commerce, or by the Pentagon, everyone should understand by now exactly where the big pay-off will go. Mr. Singh is proving himself to be even more of a dupe than Zardari. Nobody really expected anything less from Mr. Ten Percent, but the world put high hopes on Manmohan Singh.

Obama wants India and Pakistan to play nice, so that he can pretend to withdraw from Afghanistan, while leaving both of them (and the rest of the regional players) holding the bag after 2014. Obama wants you to build and protect TAPI, which is to be the first of many pipelines on the strategic corridor to Central Asia, otherwise referred to as the "Silk Roads." Obama wants India to fill the great void of the former Soviet space with warm Indian bodies, some tending shiny new American-made jet fighters, others slaving in the elements on Indian road crews.

Obama wants Indian telecommunication companies as well as construction companies to help energize the CIS space, especially to build the currently non-existent road and rail networks needed to assimilate the resource bonanza. India does stand to reap enormous financial rewards from this, if it will consent to transferring its developing industry into Central Asia, away from the Indian homeland, where it is needed even more urgently. In Central Asia there are not enough roads because there have never been enough people, as opposed to India, where perhaps half a billion people suffer from economic deprivation that is exacerbated by a lack of development and the great investments which come with it.

Obama wants all of Afghanistan's neighbors to lend full support to the hidden American plans, without ever revealing what they are, always with the promise of rewards beyond measure for unquestioned collaboration in that unrevealed plan. He sells them a message of Hope, resting upon an appeal to Blind Faith in Americans and their inescapable commitment to do the Right Thing. This is the formula for the fascist "snake oil" that Obama is peddling to get his way in the world.

The leaders of both Pakistan and India must be prepared to turn away from the American bait and switch operation at play in Afghanistan, if they want to survive without suffering through violent repercussions for their partnerships with the devil. All Nations with peoples yearning to be free must be prepared to turn away from the fraudulent con-games which pass for world government these days, before the devil can ever be brought to his knees and humanity can finally learn what it means to be truly Free.

Pakistan's civil-military trust deficit

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A growing storm over a confidential memo is laying bare the profound division between Pakistan's powerful army and its civilian government, and the nation's relationship with the United States is again at the center of the gulf.

At issue are allegations that the government of President Asif Ali Zardari asked for U.S. help to prevent a military coup after the Navy SEAL raid in May that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. The claim is thought to have enraged Pakistan's army, and the resulting controversy prompted Pakistan's ambassador to Washington, Husain Haqqani, to offer his resignation this week.

Zardari's government has nominally been leading Pakistan since 2008. But real power remains in the hands of the military, which has ruled the South Asian nation for half its 64-year existence and was livid after the U.S. operation against bin Laden. Though both the army and the civilian government receive billions of dollars in American assistance, the military views the United States, and its support for Zardari's unpopular administration, with deep distrust.

That attitude is widespread in Pakistan, where patriotism is equated with support for the military and the United States is often seen more as bully than friend.

Against that backdrop, a column published last month in the Financial Times has proved explosive. In it, Pakistani American businessman Mansoor Ijaz asserted that a senior Pakistani diplomat - whom he identified Thursday as Haqqani - asked him to help relay a request to the then-chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, to stop the military from staging a coup.

The memo, a copy of which was provided by Ijaz to The Washington Post, warns that a military takeover would result in "potentially the platform for far more rapid spread of al Qaeda's brand of fanaticism and terror." The upheaval in the wake of the bin Laden killing, it said, provided "a unique window of opportunity" for "civilians to gain the upper hand over army and intelligence directorates."

It said that in exchange for U.S. "direct intervention" to convey a strong no-coup message to Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, leader of Pakistan's military, a newly appointed civilian national security team would shepherd an independent investigation of the bin Laden matter and terminate any "active service officers" found to have been complicit in concealing the al-Qaeda leader.

Pakistan, it said, would also move to hand over all remaining al-Qaeda leaders on its soil, as well as Taliban leader Mohammad Omar and Sirajuddin Haqqani of the Haqqani insurgent network. Alternatively, it could give "U.S. military forces a 'green light' to conduct the necessary operations to capture or kill them on Pakistani soil," the memo said.

It said the civilian government would eliminate "Section S" of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, a unit that handles relations with insurgent groups; bring to justice the perpetrators of the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai; and implement new measures to secure Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.

The memo was unsigned but said it was being submitted by "the members of the new national security team who will be inducted by the President of Pakistan with your support in this undertaking." Ijaz said the names included Husain Haqqani and his two predecessors as ambassador, both retired military officers. Ijaz said the names were given orally to Mullen by the emissary who delivered the memo. Ijaz did not name the emissary.

In an e-mail with the attached document sent to the intermediary May 11, the day of the delivery to Mullen, Ijaz wrote that it "has the support of the President of Pakistan."

Nearly two weeks after the Ijaz column was published, the Pakistani government dismissed the account as "fictitious," even as Pakistani media speculated that Haqqani was the diplomat in question and Zardari summoned Haqqani home for consultations. But this week, a Mullen spokesman confirmed to Foreign Policy magazine that he had received the memo, although the spokesman said it was not acted on or taken seriously.

Haqqani subsequently acknowledged speaking regularly to Ijaz but said the e-mail and text messages Ijaz has released were misleading and did not indicate that the diplomat helped draft the memo or authorized its delivery.

"I fail to understand why Mr. Ijaz claims on the one hand to have helped the civilian government by delivering his memo and on the other insists on trying to destroy democracy by driving a wedge between elected civilians and the military in Pakistan with his persistent claims," Haqqani said in a statement Thursday.

A Pakistani military intelligence official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said Kayani had demanded that Zardari summon Haqqani.

Analysts say the military is especially skeptical of Haqqani, who is viewed in Washington as a shrewd and effective envoy and is known in Pakistan for his "principled opposition to military dominance over civilian affairs," according to an editorial in the Express-Tribune, an English-language daily. Pakistani intelligence is widely thought to have circulated negative reports about Haqqani in the past.

As the saga escalated Thursday, many in Pakistan's media began predicting that Zardari would sacrifice Haqqani. Even commentators sympathetic to him and the government said that asking for U.S. assistance in forestalling a coup would be an unpardonable offense. The Express-Tribune editorial treated Haqqani's role as a disappointing fact, referring to it as "galling" and saying that the controversy will only "strengthen the military's hand in castigating the civilian government as sell-outs to the Americans."

U.S. and Russia Join East Asia Summit

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Immediately after this week's APEC and ASEAN meetings, 18 nations gather for the sixth East Asia Summit. The EAS provides a unique opportunity to advance regional cooperation at a meeting which Indonesia will host for the first time and which will be the first to include the United States and Russia as formal participants.

NBR spoke with National Asia Research Fellow and Southeast Asia expert Ann Marie Murphy, who describes the dynamics of the East Asia Summit and what might change with the addition of two larger partners. She provides insight into the role of the EAS among the various regional institutions. Dr. Murphy is an Associate Professor at Seton Hall University.

The East Asia Summit has proved to be a forum for addressing controversial issues in the region. What major topics are likely to be discussed this year?

ASEAN is the "driver" or agenda-setter of the East Asia Summit (EAS). Its traditional focus has been on education, finance, and nontraditional security issues such as energy, disaster management, infectious diseases, and food security. This emphasis was driven in part by unfolding events and in part by a desire of some members to avoid more controversial issues that might raise tensions. In April 2011, however, ASEAN decided to place traditional security issues on the agenda, and so this year maritime security and nonproliferation are slated to be major topics of discussion. Disaster relief efforts will continue to receive prominent attention given the Japanese tsunami and subsequent nuclear crisis, as well as the current floods that are inundating Thailand and Cambodia.

Though not on the formal agenda, Burma's bid to chair ASEAN in 2014, making it the host of the EAS that year, is likely to be the subject of much debate. In 2005, Burma passed on its turn as chair, a position that rotates annually, in response to pressure from other ASEAN members who feared Western countries would boycott Burmese-led ASEAN meetings. Burma has embarked on a chairmanship campaign, arguing that its 2010 elections, installation of a new civilian government, and release of Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, among other political changes, give the country the right to the chairmanship.

However, Burma's bid has been opposed by those who argue the elections were neither free nor fair, the "civilian government" is led by former generals who simply exchanged uniforms for suits, and there has been little progress toward national reconciliation. In his role as ASEAN chair, Indonesian foreign minister Marty Natalegawa expressed conditional support for Burma's bid, arguing the country's progress must be acknowledged and the ASEAN chairmanship is an incentive for further reform. Awarding the ASEAN chair to Burma carries risks: a backsliding of nascent political reforms, an upsurge in violent conflict, or a further deterioration of the country's deplorable human rights situation could lead some countries to consider boycotting the EAS.

Indonesia is hosting the EAS for the first time. How does this responsibility fit into the country's foreign policy goals?

Indonesia has made a concerted effort to raise its international profile and hosting the EAS buttresses that goal, particularly as the United States and Russia formally join this year. Indonesia is also pushing ASEAN to play a larger global role, in part by creating more extensive linkages between ASEAN and other international organizations. As Indonesia is Southeast Asia's largest state and the de facto leader of ASEAN, enhancing ASEAN's role in global affairs also enhances Indonesia's international influence. As part of this strategy, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon will attend the EAS where he will endorse a Comprehensive Partnership Agreement between the UN and ASEAN. The challenge facing Indonesia is that for ASEAN to play a larger global role it must overcome internal differences to hammer out common positions on issues, something that has proven extremely difficult in the past.

Chairing the EAS also helps Indonesia achieve important national and regional interests. As an archipelagic state of 17,000 islands that lacks the naval capacity to defend itself, Indonesia has a vital interest in ensuring major naval powers abide by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Indonesia, therefore, will use its influence to call for adherence to international maritime law. Regionally, a key Indonesian goal is to ensure that Southeast Asia remains free from hegemony of any outside power. Indonesia views the EAS as a mechanism to promote what it calls a "dynamic equilibrium" in the broader Asia-Pacific, which would accommodate rising powers such as China and India, recognize the geopolitical interests of the United States, and define a role for middle powers in the pursuit of peace and security.

The United States will officially participate in the summit for the first time this year. Why did Washington decide to join the EAS after being skeptical of the organization for a number of years? What are its goals for this meeting?

While Secretary of State Hillary Clinton participated in the 2010 EAS as the Vietnamese government's guest, this year will mark the first time a U.S. president attends the summit. The decision to join the EAS is part of a broader strategy to pivot American foreign policy away from the Middle East toward the dynamic Asia-Pacific region. The United States wants to help build the regional architecture through which future challenges will be addressed.

When the EAS was formed in 2005, the United States had a skeptical attitude toward the organization because its goals were unclear, as were how it might evolve and whether it would complement or compete with the existent "alphabet soup" of Asian regional organizations such as APEC and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). Furthermore, the American experience in other ASEAN-led organizations that operate on consensus raised concerns that the EAS would be a talk shop, long on symbolism but short on substance. As allies such as Australia and Japan advanced proposals for competing organizations, the United States adopted a wait-and-see attitude toward the EAS. However, it ultimately sought membership after the rejection of rival plans coupled with increased efforts by ASEAN to tackle difficult issues and become more results-oriented.

The broad American goal is to support the EAS as the primary venue for dialogue on regional political and security issues and to strengthen its capacity for problem solving. The United States also hopes that the EAS will provide guidance and leadership to other institutions such as the ARF, which implies that Washington would like some role for non-ASEAN members in agenda-setting.

In Bali, the United States hopes to promote its maritime security and nonproliferation agenda. With respect to maritime security, the United States is seeking commitments by regional states to the principles of freedom of navigation, the right to unimpeded legitimate commerce and collaborative efforts to avoid accidental conflict or miscalculations that could raise tensions. The United States also wants to address its nonproliferation agenda, since many of its efforts to secure nuclear material require the cooperation of Asian countries, particularly with regard to the Korean Peninsula.

Russia is also joining the EAS as a new official participant. How might the presence of the United States and Russia affect potential EAS outcomes?

The inclusion of Russia and the United States in the EAS means that the summit now provides a platform for all the region's major powers-China, Japan, India, Russia, and the United States-to engage both with one another and with middle and smaller powers such as South Korea, Australia, and Indonesia on matters of regional importance. Importantly, the presence of Russia and the United States expands the range of issues that the EAS can address comprehensively.

EAS outcomes are tied to its agenda. ASEAN's decision to add security issues to the summit's formal agenda was done in part at the urging of the United States, a choice that China opposed. If the United States continues to push to expand the scope of the EAS agenda and to achieve concrete deliverables, it may help to progress the summit from dialogue and confidence-building toward conflict resolution and more tangible outcomes.

Some observers have expressed concern that the United States and China might dominate the agenda. Is this concern well-founded? What interests do the ASEAN states have in relation to the two largest participants?

While the possibility that the United States and China might dominate the EAS agenda exists, focusing too closely on the Sino-American dyad obscures how many of the smaller Asian countries use occasions such as the EAS and ARF to harness the influence of larger powers behind their own policy objectives. At the July 2010 ARF meeting in Hanoi, Sino-American tensions over the South China Sea dominated headlines. At that meeting, Secretary Clinton stated that the United States had a "national interest in freedom of navigation, open access to Asia's maritime commons, and respect for international law in the South China Sea" and that the disputes should be resolved in accordance with international law. Clinton's statement challenged China's longstanding position that the South China Sea disputes should be resolved bilaterally, leading Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi to respond angrily to the "internationalization" of the issue.

Concentrating only on Sino-American dynamics blinds analysts to the extensive consultations between key ASEAN members and the United States before meetings. Vietnam, the target of assertive Chinese actions in contested waters, used its position as ASEAN chair to place the South China Sea issue on the agenda and lobbied the United States to take a strong stand. Too narrow a focus on the larger states misses the role played by smaller states.

There is no single ASEAN interest or set of interests with respect to the United States and China. All ASEAN countries want to benefit from China's economic growth, but how much they also worry about the strategic impact of China's rise varies tremendously. Most ASEAN countries value the role the United States plays as an offshore balancer, but the extent to which they are willing to support and facilitate that role varies widely. In essence, ASEAN members do not want tension between the United States and China to increase to the point at which it threatens regional stability and creates pressure to choose sides.

How can outside observers measure the success of the EAS?

It is difficult to measure the success of the EAS because the organization lacks a well-defined mission. Like other ASEAN-centric summits, the EAS tends not to produce groundbreaking agreements. Instead, it provides a forum to discuss and link issues, defuse tensions, and provide participants incentives to cooperate rather than engage in conflict. Evaluating the success of the EAS requires analysts to grapple with the counterfactual question: In the absence of the EAS would there be more regional conflict and less effective responses to emerging challenges?

Measuring the success of the EAS is also complicated by the lack of a clear-cut division of labor between the EAS and other regional institutions, such as the ARF. These organizations' scopes overlap and discussions of key issues move between them. At a July 2011 senior officials meeting ahead of the ARF, China and ASEAN agreed on a set of guidelines to implement their nonbinding 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea. Discussions at the 2010 ARF meeting clearly motivated this agreement, but does this mean it should be considered a "success" of the ARF? Since the guidelines failed to include mechanisms to reduce the potential for clashes at sea, this topic will be discussed in Bali. With discussion of maritime security moving between these regional venues-as well as global ones such as the UN-assigning credit for any breakthrough on the issue can be problematic.

Alan Burns is a Bridge Award Fellow working with the National Asia Research Program at the National Bureau of Asian Research.

Satirical Song, a YouTube Hit, Challenges Extremism in Pakistan

By SALMAN MASOOD

The members of Beygairat Brigade, or A Brigade Without Honor, openly mock the military and religious conservatives.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A satirical song that takes a tongue-in-cheek swipe at religious extremism, militancy and contradictions in Pakistani society has become an instant hit here, drawing widespread attention as a rare voice of the country's embattled liberals.

The song, "Aalu Anday," which means "Potatoes and Eggs," comes from a group of three young men who call themselves Beygairat Brigade, or A Brigade Without Honor, openly mocking the military, religious conservatives, nationalist politicians and conspiracy theorists.

Their YouTube video has been viewed more than 350,000 times since it was uploaded in mid-October. The song is getting glowing reviews in the news media here and is widely talked about - and shared - on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.

The name of the band is itself a satire of Pakistan's nationalists and conservatives, who are often described in the local news media as the Ghairat Brigade, or Honor Brigade.

Local musicians have produced work in the past vilifying the West, especially the United States, but rarely do they ridicule the military or religious extremists, and none have had Beygairat Brigade's kind of success.

Sung in Punjabi, the language of the most populous and prosperous province, the song delivers biting commentary on the current socio-political milieu of the country, in which religious radicalism and militancy have steadily risen over the years and tolerance for religious minorities is waning.

Just this year, a governor who opposed Pakistan's contentious blasphemy law was killed by one of his guards. The assassin was then celebrated by many in the country, including lawyers who greeted him with rose petals and garlands.

The song rues the fact that killers and religious extremists are hailed as heroes in Pakistan, while someone like Abdus Salam, the nation's only Nobel Prize-winning scientist, is often ignored because he belonged to the minority Ahmadi sect.

"Qadri is treated like a royal," wonders the goofy-looking lead vocalist in the song, referring to Malik Mumtaz Qadri, the elite police guard who killed the governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, in January after he challenged the blasphemy law.

Another line in the song, "where Ajmal Kasab is a hero," makes a reference to the only surviving Pakistani gunman involved in the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India. Still another line, "cleric tried to escape in a veil," alludes to the head cleric of Islamabad's Red Mosque - which was the target of a siege in 2007 by the Pakistani government against Islamic militants - who tried unsuccessfully to break the security cordon by wearing a veil.

The song even makes fun of the powerful army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, for extending his role for another three years.

Potatoes and eggs "never tasted so good," wrote Fahd Husain in a commentary on Tuesday in The Daily Times, a newspaper based in Lahore. "They will always be credited for being politically incorrect when most needed, and giving voice to all those Pakistanis who live in fear."

The popularity of the song on the Internet has made it a sensation across the border in India as well, surprising the band members, who have been incessantly asked whether they feel they have put their lives in danger by ridiculing the mighty.

There are certainly enough provocations to rile nationalists and conservatives. At one point in the music video, the lead singer holds a placard that reads, in English: "This video is sponsored by Zionists."

The band members chose to upload the song on YouTube instead of handing it to television networks because they said the work was too offbeat and might be censored. Not surprisingly, some have criticized the song and its taunts as pedestrian and in bad taste.

"We were not expecting such a huge response," said Ali Aftab Saeed, 27, the lead vocalist, who lives in Lahore, a city that is often considered the country's cultural capital.

He said the assassination of Mr. Taseer was the inspiration for the song and its lyrics.

Resistance poetry and literature are not new to Pakistan, and they raised spirits during the somber years of military dictatorships.

During the protest rallies of the seminal lawyers movement in 2007, when they led the campaign to oust the president, Pervez Musharraf, the lawyers would sing and dance to a poem written by Faiz Ahmad Faiz, considered a giant of Urdu literature. Habib Jalib, another famous Pakistani poet, wrote several poems against Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, the military dictator in the 1980s.

But "Jalib is irrelevant to the generation of urban, young, middle-class kids that Beygairat Brigade is addressing," said Nadeem Farooq Paracha, a culture critic based in Karachi.

"This band is offering an alternative narrative to the one this generation has grown up on, and provides a counternarrative to establishmentarian and conservative notions of politics, history and society advocated by televangelists, conspiracy theorists and, of course, the right-wing electronic media," Mr. Paracha added. "And what better and more effective way to do this than by using satire and pop music."

The band members, on the other hand, have no pretensions of being revolutionaries, activists or intellectuals, though they do feel that the song represents those who do not believe in extremism and want to live peacefully.

"At the end of the day," said Mr. Saeed, the lead vocalist, "we are just musicians who raised some questions."

Clinton’s visit and our policy options

Spearhead Research

Hillary Clinton's visit did not achieve much. Apart from the usual warnings and threats, US Secretary of State Clinton appears to have had little to offer. When challenged, she turned from intimidation to conciliation. It is not clear if there was any real agreement on anything significant, and if so on what. What was clear was that neither side thought much of the other's policies. Unfortunately, both are correct in this regard. Each has followed dysfunctional policies: the US towards Afghanistan, the surrounding region and the Muslim world in general; and Pakistan with regard to governing itself and implementing policies based on the priorities of its people instead of the interests of its elite.

The simple truth is that no government in Pakistan can find legitimacy in supporting the destabilising and violent policies of the US war on terror in Afghanistan and the western border regions of Pakistan. The US invasion of Afghanistan was as much a violation of international law as its invasion of Iraq. Neither had the prior support of a specifically authorising resolution of the UN Security Council. Moreover, US security policies stem from doctrines that are themselves violations of the UN Charter. They do not provide a basis for international peace and stability.

In Afghanistan alone the US has killed, injured, displaced, traumatised, humiliated and destroyed the homes and livelihoods of countless numbers of people. Much as it had in Iraq and threatens to do elsewhere. The spillover of US policy in Afghanistan has seriously destabilised Pakistan. The US is now proclaiming its determination to relentlessly continue its policies in Afghanistan well beyond 2014. Its "refusal to abandon Afghanistan" could well seal the fate of that hapless country. The human and economic costs of this hi-tech barbarity are already incalculable and unforgiveable. In the name of combating terror it has spawned terror on a much larger scale even if it has protected its homeland. The irony is that Americans are individually such fine and generous people.

How can we even pretend to share broad agreement with US policy on Afghanistan? US policy in Afghanistan is part of its regional strategy which is aimed at isolating Iran in order to eventually undermine its regime, the containment of an emerging China which is the only country with which Pakistan has a genuine strategic relationship, and control over access routes to the resources of Central Asia. Hence its determination to sign a long-term security arrangement with Afghanistan which would provide it "access to facilities," a euphemism for enduring military bases. How will this ever promote reconciliation and stability in Afghanistan and the region? It requires a compliant regime in Kabul since no free and independent Afghan government would ever agree to it.

The US has just failed to persuade Iraq to conclude such a deal because it insisted on immunity for US military personnel from any prosecution under Iraqi law. Does the US expect a "stable, peaceful, and friendly" Afghanistan to be less independent and sovereign than Iraq? American policies are now placing this same question before the people of Pakistan.

Pakistan, of course, has to undertake the massive task of putting its own house in order for it to be taken seriously by the international community. But it cannot achieve any of this as a so-called ally in the US war on terror. That would undermine the legitimacy of the whole effort. The US war on terror in Afghanistan has helped to bring about the current situation in Fata, in Quetta, in Karachi, and through the inflammation of national and religious sentiment, increasingly in the rest of the country. If Pakistan's standing in the international community is at its lowest ever today its ruling elites are primarily responsible for this state of affairs. But US policies have been a major contributing factor and remain a significant impediment to stemming the rot, and reversing course. The essential condition for emerging from the national impasse we find ourselves in is to prioritise the needs of our people over any domestic elite or foreign strategic interests. Our US-dependent elite classes, by definition, will refuse to do any of this.

This is not to deny that we have a vital interest in developing a decent, mutually satisfactory and predictable relationship with a country as important as the US is for Pakistan. But we need to forego the vain pursuit of a strategic relationship with it which is neither feasible nor desirable. We do not share strategic objectives in Afghanistan or the region. The US cannot have strategic relations with both India and Pakistan while the two neighbours remain locked in a largely zero-sum relationship. The US will always choose India as a strategic partner over Pakistan. Once these realities and their implications are acknowledged we can begin to build a healthy and significant non-strategic relationship with the US. The obstacles here are the current strategic policies of both countries. They need to be rationalised.

With regard to Afghanistan, we cannot presume to be the protector of one Afghan community against other Afghan communities no matter how many links we share with it. We must earn the trust and confidence of all Afghan communities if we are to contribute towards a stable Afghanistan that sees its national interests in developing wide-ranging cooperation with Pakistan. US support for an Indian role in an Afghanistan settlement should not bother us as long as we play our cards sensibly and do not try to punch above our weight. That would only alienate Afghan, including Pashtun, goodwill and minimise our role in promoting Afghan peace and stability. Our natural geopolitical levers should enable us to neutralise any hostile Indian policies in Afghanistan towards us provided our own policies make good sense to the Afghans. Trying to limit Afghan options would be just another form of the ridiculous "strategic depth" policy that reflects our "India-centric" focus.

So where do we go from here? There are six fundamental parties to an Afghan settlement. Three internal and three external. The Karzai-led government in Kabul, the Taliban-led resistance, and Afghan civil society are the three internal Afghan parties. Pakistan, the US and Iran are the primary external parties. It is for the Afghan parties to set the parameters of a settlement process and to determine a settlement outcome. It is for the external parties to support the collective efforts of the Afghan parties without interfering or backing specific Afghan parties. US "redlines" are as irrelevant and unacceptable, as those of any other external party.

The Afghan parties (question: who will represent Afghan civil society and can they find common ground among themselves?) must make compatible and credible commitments including statements in favour of a negotiated peace settlement, an overall ceasefire, a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops, steps to avoid a civil war including efforts - without use of force - to settle internal differences, acceptance of international humanitarian and human rights laws within a Shariah context, a mechanism (a revamped High Peace Council?) and a location (preferably within Afghanistan) for extended but time-bound discussions on the above issues. This effort must commence immediately. Back channelling between the Afghan parties should start straight away to set the process in motion. The UN appears too discredited to play a facilitating role. But there may be no better alternative available. Pakistan should have been able to do it.

Pakistan, Iran and the US need to coordinate their support of such an Afghan process. US policies towards Iran are a hindrance. But if the US truly seeks peace and stability in Afghanistan it cannot veto an Iranian role. The forthcoming Istanbul and Bonn conferences will not achieve anything if there is no internal Afghan process underway. Conflating the internal and external parties at this stage while excluding the Taliban and Afghan civil society can only create confusion. It will just continue the criminal search for military solutions posing as preparations for an Afghan peace process. Pakistan should not be part of it.

Progressively the international community including the European Union, India, etc should join in supporting the settlement process especially with regard to reconstruction, rehabilitation, refugee return, capacity building and DDR (disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration) programmes. A peace process will be many sided and extended. It will require conceptual consensus and clarity, and its first steps can and must be taken without delay.

The writer is director general of the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad. He was formerly Pakistan's envoy to the US and India. This article comprises his personal views and does not represent the views of the ISS.

Guilty Cricketers beg For Mercy

Area 14/8

Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir all offered closing submissions via their lawyers on the 21st day of the spot-fixing trial in London on Wednesday, as all three hope and pray that the judge will spare them a jail sentence.

It was perhaps the most explosive day yet in the trial that has spanned almost five weeks, as the agent at the centre of the fixing scandal Mazhar Majeed and Amir appeared in the dock for the first time, having pleaded guilty at an earlier pre-trial.

After Majeed said Butt had initially introduced him to the subject of arranging spot-fixing and having also heard that Majeed apparently paid £77,000 to the three players for the fix, the lawyers of the three players looked to gain sympathy from the judge Justice Cooke.

Amir's statement, read out to the court by his lawyer Henry Blaxland QC, was the most heartfelt and remorseful. Amir spoke of how proud he was the first time he was handed his Pakistan shirt and that he wanted to sleep in it.

"First I want to apologise to Pakistan and to everyone that cricket is important to," Amir said, via his lawyer who read from a prepared statement. "I do know how much damage this has done to the game, a game which I love more than anything else in the world.

"I did decide many months ago that I wanted to admit that I deliberately threw two no-balls at the Lord's Test last summer. But I know this was very late and I want to apologise for not saying it before. I didn't find the courage to do it at the beginning, and I know very well that made everything much more difficult.

"Last year was the most amazing year of my life but also it was the worst year. I got myself into a situation that I didn't understand. I panicked and did the wrong thing. I don't want to blame anyone else. I didn't want money at all, I didn't bowl the no-balls because of money. I got trapped and in the end it was because of my own stupidity.

"My dream was to be the best cricketer in the world. I'm a competitive sportsman and those two no-balls were the only moments in my cricketing life where I have not performed to the very best of my ability. And they were not moments I felt happy to be part of."

Butt's lawyer Ali Bajwa QC spoke of how his client had been very different in his behaviour over the last 24 hours since his guilty verdict was handed down and had not eaten or slept in that time. Butt has been immaculately dressed and groomed over the trial but did actually look slightly dishevelled by his own standards, unshaven and drawn. Butt's wife gave birth to their second son an hour before his verdict was read.

"He's lost the captaincy of the Pakistan cricket team and this was a job he had for five weeks, they won two Tests, and this was the greatest honour of his life," Bajwa said, adding that he has since been banned by the ICC for five years and is now "close to unemployable".

"He has gone from a national hero to a figure of contempt and his ignominy is complete," Bajwa said. "He does not want to be the cause of his family's suffering. He now has only his liberty and his family left to lose." Bajwa asked, apart from the obvious deterrent aspect, what would a prison sentence achieve? "Please do not make my family suffer any more."

Asif's plea was similar. His lawyer Alexander Milne spoke of how Asif had gone into debt by travelling to England four times at his own expense, since his arrest, to consult with lawyers. Milne spoke of how he was without his wife and baby daughter and that since his ICC ban, he was basically finished as a cricketer and he should be allowed to return to Pakistan to attempt to somehow rebuild his reputation in his country.

"Mr Asif has been punished, punished and punished again," Milne told the judge. He also alluded to the fact that Asif "had thrown away everything", was almost washed up as a player having been handed a five-year ICC ban and didn't need to be punished further with a custodial sentence.

"He will be 29 in a month and after five years out of the game, a comeback then would seem out of the question," adding, "he leaves here a broken man."

When political slogans are not enough

ZoneAsia-Pk

PAKISTAN'S politics has received a shot in the arm over the past few days. Two public rallies in Lahore, where all the decisive political battles have been fought, and the one in Karachi marked the resumption of political parties' attempts to woo the public, their realisation that the road to power lies through the hearts of the people.

The significance of this development cannot be exaggerated. Pakistan has paid a heavy price for its politicians' frequent reliance on non-political elements for their ascent to power. It is impossible to say that no one is now looking up to praetorian guards always present in the wings or that experts in extra-constitutional interruptions have abandoned their profession, but if the citizens, especially the younger generation, continue their engagement with political parties and their participation in politics becomes more and more meaningful Pakistan may still be able to realise its dream of a representative government that is also responsible.

Before that objective can be realised the level and tone of the political debate in the country will have to be broadened and, in some respects, restructured. What the politicians have so far said to the people can be summed up in a few words. The dominant theme has been that 'others' are incompetent and corrupt and that 'we' have the ability to set everything right.


Much has been said about 'our' resolve to throw the wrongdoers into the dustbin of history and bring back the country's wealth that the looters have stacked abroad.

While running down their rivals and advancing their own claims to elective offices, the political leaders are referring to what they think the people's priorities are. Corruption is denounced, an end to the energy crisis is promised, the idea of fighting foreign patrons' wars is repudiated, Balochistan is offered reconciliation and paeans are offered to 'change'.

What has been said may not be unimportant but perhaps what has been left unsaid is no less important. Has due attention been paid to the plight of the people, a majority of the population, that are trapped in a vicious circle of feudal oppression and peasants' brutal exploitation?

Is it possible to lay the foundations of people's prosperity without mitigating the rural masses' hunger for land and opportunities for development? Has anybody taken note of the problems faced by the working class, especially the erosion of their rights over the past four decades? What precisely is to be done to allow women their due or to do justice to the various minorities? Even the issues taken note of have been partially addressed. Only certain politicians are condemned for exporting national wealth. What about businessmen who have developed trade or real estate abroad?

The will to look outside the system is not in evidence. It is possible that the political parties and the people are putting different interpretations on the need for change. While the former are interested only in a change of faces it will be impossible to bring about the kind of change that will meet the people's aspirations without overhauling the entire system of governance.

This gap between perceptions is highlighted by the disproportionate emphasis on corruption by individuals and near total indifference to the corruption of the system. While a great deal of noise is being made about punishing the abuse of authority no heed is paid to systemic shortcomings that make corruption possible and enable the corrupt to get away.

Why is no one challenging the highly objectionable system of paying cash grants to legislators? It is time to bring into public debate the reasons for ignoring the administrative reform proposals made over the past 50 years by commissions headed by eminent persons, from Cornelius to Ishrat Husain.

The people do want the wrongdoers to be called to account but the present rhetoric on this issue could amount to giving the decrepit system a clean bill of health and that will be a fatal mistake. Will the recovery of ill-gotten wealth from politicians be enough to overcome the basic flaws in economic management? Certainly not. Thus like any sane businessman who does not rely solely on recovering bad debts the politicians must continue their search for the efficient husbanding of national resources.

Further, there is a need to move beyond slogans and mottos and start tackling the causes of the state's derailment. For instance, it is not enough to say that justice will be secured for the people of Balochistan. They do not want any outsider to do justice to them, they only need self-government to be able to do justice by themselves. In other words, Balochistan deserves to regain its full status as an equal unit of the federation that is still in the making.

Since the need to structure the state of Pakistan as a democratic federation was ignored for six decades and the 18th Amendment only marks the beginning of an arduous journey, the people's demands and expectations have ballooned to unmanageable proportions and the task of determining priorities has become difficult. Still there is an urgent need for a breakthrough in some areas as discussed below.

- Since political parties are the only legitimate agents of change they should concentrate on organising themselves into knowledge-based outfits and allowing two-way communication between patriarchs and working cadres. They must desist from treating one another as their worst enemies for that only alienates the people from politics and clears the way for usurpers of the people's sovereign rights.

- The national economy cannot be set right so long as the state's security needs, as defined by the beneficiaries of outmoded defence theories and myths, are considered immutable and used to justify denial of the citizens' basic needs and rights.

- The political system needs three basic changes: one, the movement towards establishing a genuine federation of willing coordinates must continue without reservations and resort to crude attempts to circumvent devolution. Secondly, the days of majoritarian democracy are gone and Pakistan will harm its own cause by resisting progress towards participatory democracy. And, thirdly, a way will have to be found to stop political abuse of belief because this curse can negate all progress Pakistan may make in any field.

- Drone attacks or Pentagon-ISI squabbles are not the only issues that should determine Pakistan's foreign policy. Times demand a fresh look at Pakistan's long-term interests in the region. Instead of competing with the neighbours in Afghanistan and elsewhere the path of cooperation and collaboration with them, especially India, needs to be adopted.

There is plenty of time for the pretenders to the throne to have a serious discourse with the people so that the latter are clear about the change Pakistan needs and they are not again cheated out of the fruits of the change they might bring about.

Clinton tells Congressional Panel: Peace process must include Quetta Shura & Mullah Omar

Tacstrat

US secretary of state Hillary Clinton's post-AfPak visit statements indicate that the new US approach had evolved further and much of the credit goes to Pakistan's Gen Kayani-led security establishment. The US focus has so far remained to garner success through hostility but Pakistan's argument had centered on engaging the Taliban with the reconciliation process involving the regional stakeholders, including Pakistan. The observers have termed it a real victory on part of Pakistan as they believe that Pakistan has rightly and timely played with patience its cards when there was huge pressure to go for an all-encompassing operation in North Waziristan, with a salt of allegations that it is harboring terrorists especially the Haqqani network.

This is the success on Pakistan government's side that Ms Clinton told a congressional panel on October 27 that any Afghan-led peace process would have to include the Quetta Shura and its leader Mullah Omar. "There is no solution in the region without Pakistan and no stable future in the region without a partnership." The US needs to negotiate with the Haqqani network while continuing to work with Pakistan to destroy the safe havens it has inside FATA. The recent diatribe against the ISI by the top US military official General Michael Mullen and Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta, and in the series the BBC Hub's October 26 report, alleging that the Pakistan army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) supplied and protected the Afghan Taliban has severely undermined the prospects of rapprochement in already strained Pak-US relations, though the confusion remained whether or not the high-powered Hillary-led US delegation could help push forward the process towards peace.

Pakistan has also expressed reservations over the proposed draft of the declaration of the upcoming Istanbul Conference on Afghanistan, which may complicate international efforts for evolving a consensus on the document. The conference slated for November 2 is expected to discuss transition in Afghanistan, reconciliation with Afghan insurgent groups and regional economic cooperation. Major General Athar Abbas, director-general ISPR said in an interview with BBC that Pakistan has not been taken into confidence on the initiation of the reconciliation process in Afghanistan, nor the Pakistan government had been informed about the objectives of the reconciliation process or who is taking part in it. He said the Afghan issue was heading towards a settlement and there was a need to determine the role of every stakeholder in the conflict and how the reconciliation process would be pushed forward and what would be role of Pakistan in this situation, only in that case Pakistan would be able to decide whether it could persuade one group or the other to take part in the process.

The allegations of attack on the US embassy and military base in Afghanistan by the Haqqani network supported by the ISI clearly shows the distrust two countries carry in their so-called strategic partnership. Even more disturbing is the unprecedented gamut of threats emanating from Washington against Pakistan that warrant careful examination and needed to be explicitly answered. Pakistan's political and military leadership has severely criticized US blame-game and projected it as the outcome of US failure in Afghanistan. The ISPR Director-General considered the Oct 26 BBC report as highly biased, one-sided and factually incorrect. The head of ISI has already said that not even a single bullet in terms of financial support has been given to groups named in the BBC report. About 300 ISI officials have been killed in Pakistani Taliban attacks and it is a proof that the ISI did not support militants. Such reports and propaganda, in conflict with what Hillary Clinton is saying in public, there is possibility of severing the ties further. This renewed phase of tension in Pakistan-US relations needed to be seen in a larger regional context. This development has coincided with a recently published report by a joint study of Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) US and the Aspen Institute of India. The first ever study of its kind gives a shared Indo-U.S. strategic vision with particular reference to Pakistan, Afghanistan and China. The US endorses India as key regional player strengthening U.S. interests in the regional especially after the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan. Therefore, the change in U.S. tone against Pakistan coupled with augmented Indo-US convergence on major strategic issues vehemently support changing course in South Asian region.

Past couples of years have remained extremely hard for the ISAF forces in Afghanistan. The so-called COIN strategy of General Patreaus proved to be unsuccessful against the fierce Taliban fighters and the American version to end the WOT on its own terms in Afghanistan don't seem to be materializing. At present the war in Afghanistan has apparently turned into an Afghan liberation movement heart of which is antiforeigner as the ISAF forces have virtually lost control of all the Afghan provinces. Therefore, amid growing domestic public pressure to bring the US troops back to the country, the US on one hand is shifting it own failures by making Pakistan scapegoat and on the other marginalize Pakistan's role and bringing in India as key player in Afghan affairs in post-US Afghanistan. In fact U.S. has decided to replace Pakistan with India as major influence in Afghan affairs. Along with other options Indian Influence in Afghanistan could be materialized by initiating the training of Afghan forces by Indian military in Afghanistan or in India as shared by Indo-US joint study.

In this scenario India is more than ready to play active role in Afghan affairs but not unconditionally. India could never fill the vacuum of US and NATO forces rather would avoid bringing in active troops in the war ravaged Afghanistan. Only what could bring in India to Afghanistan is instable or weaker Pakistan that has no say in Afghan affairs. Thus India has most likely put two conditions to jump in the afghan imbroglio. Firstly, before withdrawing the U.S. has to curtail Pakistan influence in Afghanistan by forcing Pakistan to act against Haqqani Group or unilaterally takes military measures against Haqqani's in Pakistan's tribal area. According to the CFR-Aspin report "the United States should heavily condition all military aid to Pakistan on sustained concrete antiterrorist measures by the Pakistan military against groups targeting India and the United States, including in Afghanistan". Giving support to this theme the U.S. antiterrorism experts are exploring similarities between the 2008 Mumbai attack and that on U.S. embassy in Afghanistan. Such theme shows obliviousness to Pakistan staunch opposition to terrorism and decade long ISI-CIA active collaboration against the Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Secondly, Pakistan's nuclear program has always remained a sour in Indian eyes and a real stymie in dictating Pakistan as a secondary neighbour. This perception is largely supported by the joint Indo-U.S. study that states, "the United States and India should begin classified exchanges on multiple Pakistan contingencies, including the collapse of the Pakistan state and the specter of the Pakistan military losing control of its nuclear arsenal." India is actively endeavoring to exploit the tattering Pak-U.S. relations to its advantage by developing correlation between the failing of Pakistan as a state and nuclear weapon eventually slipping into the hands of militants. Quite astonishing and rankling is how keen both India and U.S. are in anticipating Pakistan as a failed state.

In this emerging scenario the prospects of peace in Afghanistan could face a severe blow whereas, U.S. confrontation with Pakistan would bring unimaginable anarchy in the region. Now has U.S. calculated the implications of such scenario and could U.S. achieve peace in the Afghanistan by marginalizing Pakistan from the peace process? Have the Americans concluded the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable, therefore Pakistan and ISI is to be blame for the U.S. failures and permanently replace Pakistan with India as strategic partner in the region.