SASF – Blogs

Ramtanu Maitra

29 Sep 2008

In recent weeks, particularly following the removal of Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s former President and Chief of Army Staff, on 18 August, Washington has begun to train its guns on Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), which is on the border with Afghanistan.

On 3 September, US troops raided a known habitat of Taliban leaders in South Waziristan, without seeking permission from Islamabad. The USA’s unilateral violation of Pakistani territory created a furore in Islamabad, but it is evident that Washington has come to the dangerous conclusion that the Durand Line – the international border that separates Pakistan from Afghanistan, and was drawn on sand more than century ago by a British clerk – does not hold any longer. In order to secure Afghanistan, and tame the insurgents there, Washington has decided that US troops have no choice but to take the bull by the horns and move into the FATA physically, to eliminate the Taliban leaders.

Beside the furore that the raid has caused, it is evident that the Americans do not really understand what they are taking on. It is not that the US troops are not militarily competent to deal with the enemy, no matter what the strength of that enemy could be; the real issue here is that Washington refuses to acknowledge who its actual enemies are.

On the ground, the FATA is controlled by the tribal groups, who have remained non-integrated as a result of the British policy of divide and rule, and by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), a section of which works hand-in-glove with MI6.

In other words, the enemy is the British controllers, not the local tribesmen. In a recent article, the senior Indian journalist Bhaskar Menon pointed out that relations between the ISI and the British intelligence community have been close for decades, and have extended into a variety of areas.

Britain’s post-World War II role as the patron of the Muslim Brotherhood (inherited from Nazi Germany), developed into a low-profile alliance with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, to guide the most effective anti-communist movement in the Islamic world.

“The Brotherhood has provided the leadership of every major ‘Islamic’ terrorist organization, including the Taliban and al- Qaeda,” Menon noted (17 September 2008, www.vijayvaani.com).

Following the US incursion into the FATA, Pakistan’s newly appointed President Asif Ali Zardari travelled to London to seek the British Prime Minister’s support against the US-led border violation. While it is true that the FATA is basically controlled from London, with the help of the MI6 and the ISI, it is nonetheless strange, but at the same time revealing, that Zardari, who “got” his job by ousting Musharraf with the help of the United States, ran to London, and not to Washington, to seek help.  continue reading…

Ramtanu Maitra

12/30/07

The gruesome killing of Benazir Bhutto in the evening hours of Dec. 27 in Pakistan’s garrison town of Rawalpindi is yet another step in the process of weakening, and eventual break-up, of Pakistan.

Despite the crocodile tears shed in Washington and London over Bhutto’s assassination, it was a disaster waiting to happen and therefore, was altogether expected. Those who believed, naively, that Bhutto’s mission was to reinstate democracy in Pakistan and put its usurpers, the Pakistani military, in the background, do not realize why she was inserted into the scene, which was already rife with violence. The truth is that the British imperial circles, with their stooges in Washington, set up Bhutto’s execution, to advance their scheme to break up Pakistan, and create chaos throughout this strategic region.

Bhutto, no doubt, was a mass-based political leader, but she was a woman (an excuse used by the puppet Islamic jihadists to commit violence against a person), and she was goaded into the scene by the United States-perhaps now the most hated nation among Muslims in general-to serve Washington’s purpose, which was to put the Pakistani military on the defensive and force it to share power with a democratic politician. According to the master strategists in Washington, that is the best of both worlds-the Pakistani military stays friendly, while the United States shakes off its guilt of backing a military dictator.

It is not known what transpired in the telephone call between U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Benazir Bhutto that led to Bhutto’s decision to return. What promises were made will not be known unless Rice can shake off the national security garb and tell the truth. The one who knew, and could tell others, is gone.

The 9/11 event had enticed a weak-in-the-head Bush Administration to embark on a journey, the path of which was paved by the British colonialists. The vestiges of British colonial aspirations exist not only at Buckingham Palace, but even more so in the power of the intrigue and secrecy-ridden City of London.

Britain and the Muslims

The partition of India, and the formation of Pakistan, a Muslim nation, by the British Raj, was not done because the British liked Muslims. They had slaughtered them by the thousands in 1856, when the Hindus and Muslims joined hands under the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, to drive out the firenghee (white-skinned foreigners). Those who remember that untold part of the history of the Indian independence movement, talk of the piles of bodies lying in the streets of Delhi slaughtered by British soldiers. Most of them, like Benazir Bhutto and her colleagues who died on Dec. 27, were Muslims.

The Muslims were “traitors” aspiring to reinstate the “despicable” and “corrupt” Mughal dynasty, London screamed.

The key to the British Empire’s financial success was its ability to manipulate Islam. The British Empire-builders eliminated the Islamic Caliphate, created nations out of deserts, eliminated some nations, and partitioned others to create Islamic nations. Britain was aware that the oil fields of Arabia would be a source of great power in the post-World War II decades. The western part of British India bordered Muslim Central Asia, another major source of oil and gas, bordering Russia and Muslim Afghanistan. British India also bordered Islamic Iran and the Persian Gulf-the doorway to the oil fields of Arabia. In order to keep its future options open, Balochistan, bordering northeastern Iran, and the tribal Pushtun-dominated areas bordering Afghanistan, remained as British protectorates. continue reading…

Ramtanu Maitra and Susan Maitra

Sunday, January 29, 2006

Continuing terrorist actions and violent demonstrations over the last five decades have turned India’s Northeast into a dangerous place. Large-scale introduction of narcotics and arms from neighboring Myanmar (Burma) and China has made this strategically crucial area a potential theater of violent secessionist movements.

Imbued with the British ideology of encouraging ethnic, sub-ethnic, religious, and linguistic identities—as opposed to the identity of a citizen of a sovereign nation-state—both New Delhi and the residents of Northeast India are marching recklessly along the very path prescribed by the British Raj in 1862, when he laid down the law of apartheid to isolate “the tribals.” While it is not clear how long this fateful road is, there is little doubt what awaits them at the end.

British mindset at work

Since India’s independence in 1947, Northeast India has been split up into smaller and smaller states and autonomous regions. The divisions were made to accommodate the wishes of tribes and ethnic groups which want to assert their sub-national identity and obtain an area where the diktat of their little coterie is recognized. New Delhi has yet to comprehend that its policy of accepting and institutionalizing the superficial identities of these ethnic, linguistic, and tribal groups has ensured more irrational demands for even smaller states. It has also virtually eliminated any plan to make these areas economically powerful, and the people scientifically and technologically advanced.

A situation has now arisen in which New Delhi’s promised carrot of economic development evokes little enthusiasm in the Northeast. Money from New Delhi for “development” serves to appease the “greed” of a handful and to maintain the status quo. On the other hand, fresh separatist movements bring the area closer to the precipice.

Assam has been cut up into many states since Britain’s exit. The autonomous regions of Karbi Anglong, Bodo Autonomous Region, and Meghalaya were all part of pre-independence Assam. Citing the influx of Bengali Muslims since the 1947 formation of East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh in 1971, the locals demand the ouster of these “foreigners” from their soil. Two violent movements in Assam, the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and the Bodo Security Force (BdSF), are now practically demanding “ethnic cleansing” in their respective areas.

To fund their movements, both the ULFA and the BdSF have been trafficking heroin and other narcotics, and indulging in killing sprees against other ethnic groups and against Delhi’s law-and-order machinery. Both these groups have also developed close links with other major guerrilla-terrorist groups operating in the area, including the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Muivah) and the People’s Liberation Army in Manipur. continue reading…