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Showing posts with label Freedom Movement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Freedom Movement. Show all posts

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Any attack on Pakistan would be construed as an attack on China

Media Desk: The message was delivered during Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani's recent four-day visit to Beijing, which celebrated no less than six decades of strategic relations --involving, among other issues, nuclear collaboration and support over the ultra-sensitive Kashmir question, reports Tehran times.

The Times of India reconstructed the message as a stark warning that: “any attack on Pakistan would be construed as an attack on China.”

Chinese diplomacy dwells on too much sophistication for such a crude outburst; but even enveloped in red velvet, the message -- in view of the non-stop U.S. drone war over Pakistan's tribal areas, not to mention the “get Osama” raid in Abbottabad -- was indeed a bombshell.

Whatever the merit of charges that Islamabad helps some Taliban factions -- such as the Haqqani network in North Waziristan -- the Pakistani politico-security-military establishment has had enough of being treated by Washington as a mere satrapy, or worse, a bunch of punks.

Pakistani popular opinion, from urban centers to tribal areas, roundly abhors Washington's drone war. And even before the Navy SEALS raid to get Osama bin Laden the sordid Raymond Davis case was configured as the ultimate humiliation.

Davis, a CIA asset, shot two Pakistanis dead in broad daylight in Lahore; an American “extraction team” killed another one who was trying to save Davis from arrest; and then the CIA paid blood money to finally extract Davis out of the country. Sovereignty? What sovereignty?

There's frantic spin in the U.S. especially among the right that Pakistan must be taught a lesson because it “harbors terrorists”. The mighty conceptual leap would be for these righteous, misinformed, armchair warriors to advocate teaching China a lesson.

Gwadar is an ultra-strategic deepwater port in the Arabian Sea, in Pakistani Balochistan, not far from the Iranian border and only 520 km away from the hyper-strategic Strait of Hormuz. Beijing financed close to 80 percent of the construction of the port via the China Harbor Engineering Company Group. The port is currently managed by Singapore. The lease will end soon -- and it will go to China.

Islamabad now wants the Chinese to build a naval base at Gwadar. That will be a monster geopolitical earthquake in a crucial node of “Pipelineistan” as well as the New Great Game in Eurasia.

Sleepy (for now) Gwadar has been building up for years as the key node of the IP (Iran-Pakistan) pipeline, which used to be the IPI (Iran-Pakistan-India) or “peace” pipeline, before New Delhi got cold feet. For Washington, the prospect of a steel umbilical cord linking Iran and Pakistan has always been anathema.

What Washington wants -- and has wanted badly since the Bill Clinton years -- is the TAP (Trans-Afghan) pipeline, which then became TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India). Even millennial rocks in the Hindu Kush know TAP or TAPI will only be built when the war is over in Afghanistan, with the Taliban an inevitable part of the government.

In this ongoing, epic IP (or IPI) versus TAP (or TAPI) battle, what is never mentioned is that the winner after all may be... China.

New Delhi knows a pipeline crossing Afghanistan is, well, a pipe dream. But still it has not committed itself to IPI -- in part because of relentless Washington pressure, in part because it does not trust Pakistan.

China, on the other hand, has already proposed itself for an IP expansion. This means that starting at Gwadar, another pipeline would be built, by the Chinese of course, crossing Balochistan and then following the Karakoram highway northwards all the way to Xinjiang, China's Far West.

Those who have already traveled the spectacular, 1,400 km-long Karakoram highway from Kashgar in Xinjiang, Western China, via the Khunjerab pass to, of all places, Abbottabad in Pakistan, know it for what it is -- a graphic example of strategic Sino-Pak collaboration. Further on down the road, Beijing engineering will connect the Karakoram highway with a railway across Balochistan towards Gwadar.

Pakistanis involved with the development of Gwadar love to bill it as the new Dubai. Well, it might as well become Western Hong Kong.

No wonder Beijing's strategic analysts are tasting what could be the geopolitical equivalent of the finest shark-fin soup; the Chinese Navy positioned at the heart of the Arabian Sea, a stone's throw from the Persian Gulf; a great deal of its Middle East oil imports shipped to nearby Gwadar -- and then by pipeline or railway all the way to Kashgar; and the Chinese economy profiting from extra gas supplied by Iran and, in a near future, Qatar.

It's not only China possibly winning a crucial “Pipelineistan” chapter plus an Arabian Sea base to add to its “string of pearls” network. In terms of its AfPak vulnerability, Washington may be contemplating a triple X defeat.

For obvious reasons the Pentagon cannot use Chinese or Iranian seaports to supply no less than 100,000 U.S. troops, 50,000 NATO troops and over 100,000 private contractors in Afghanistan -- legions of mercenaries included -- which dabble in over 400 military bases all across the country. Nearly 80 percent of this monstrous quantity of supplies transit through Pakistan. And that means, essentially, Karachi.

So one cannot imagine the “kinetic military action” (White House copyright) in AfPak without a non-stop serpent of trucks leaving Karachi and entering Pakistan via Torkham or Chaman every single day.

All the stuff Kabul -- and the immense Bagram Air Base close by -- needs goes through Torkham, at the end of the fabled Khyber Pass. All the stuff Kandahar needs goes through Chaman, in Pakistani Balochistan, not far from Quetta, where Mullah Omar theoretically lives when he's not being pronounced dead by the Pentagon.

The Pentagon of course could rely on alternative routes such as the interminable Northern Distribution Network (NDN) from Riga in Latvia to Termez in Uzbekistan, which connects via a bridge over the Oxus to Afghanistan. But NDN is not only long but also impractical; it does not allow too much cargo; and the Uzbeks forbid the transport of lethal weapons.

As for the Manas base in Kyrgyzstan, that's only for troops coming in and out, and for storage of jet fuel. The bottom line is that Islamabad knows the Pentagon simply cannot conduct the AfPak war without the Karachi-Torkham (300 trucks/tankers a day) and Karachi-Chaman (200 trucks/tankers a day) routes delivering like clockwork.

So if you break the balls of the Islamabad establishment to a tipping point and Taliban networks will have a free hand at attacking U.S./NATO convoys to Kingdom Come. Compare it with Beijing acknowledging Pakistan's “contribution and sacrifices in the war against terrorism”.

Beijing actively helped Islamabad's nuclear weapons program. Next August, China will launch a satellite into orbit for Pakistan. Roughly 75 percent of Pakistan's weapons are made in China. Soon 260 Chinese fighter jets will become the core of the Pakistani Air Force.

Even before Beijing delivered the message that Pakistan's sovereignty shouldn't be messed about, the Pakistani military had already delivered their own message.

It concerned that most photographed rotor of the stealth Black Hawk helicopter that crashed beside Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad. The Pakistanis threatened they would let the Chinese tinker with it -- and that would certainly yield some ace reverse engineering.

It didn't happen. But still they didn't get the message in a Washington whose leeway over Islamabad is a strategic rent that goes basically to Pakistan's military. If the U.S. congress would cut it -- threats abound -- there's no question Beijing would be delighted to make up the difference.

Washington may still have a sterling opportunity to get the message next month, when the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meets in Astana, Kazakhstan. There's a strong possibility that Pakistan may be enthroned as a full member, upgraded from its current status of observer.

This means, in practice, Pakistan as a member of the still embryonic Asian answer to NATO. An attack on any NATO member is an attack on them all, according to its charter. The same would apply to the SCO. Ladies and gentlemen, draw your conclusions -- and start dancing to the sound of the Sino-Pak shuffle.

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times . His latest book is Obama Does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Indian troops subject processions to force in Srinagar India trampling Kashmiris’ political, religious rights

Srinagar, December 15: In disputed state of  Jammu and Kashmir, scores of mourners were injured, some of them critically, when Indian troops used brute force on Muharram processions in Srinagar, today.

The local authorities under the instructions of India , had imposed curfew and restrictions in the city to that the Muharram processions. Defying curfew, people took out processions in Jehangir Chowk, Regal Chowk and Habba Kadal areas. However, Indian troops and police personnel swung into action and resorted to heavy baton charge and excessive teargas shelling injuring dozens of people.

The All Parties Hurriyet Conference Chairman, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Syed Ali Gilani, Shabbir Ahmed Shah, Mukhtar Ahmad Waza, Rais Ahamad, Sheikh Gulzaar, Nasir Khan, Mushtaq ahmad Lone, Hilal Ahmad War, Yaseen Malik, Javid ahmad Mir, and Nayeem Ahmed Khan in their separate statements strongly denounced the use of force against the mourners. They said that the international community should take cognisance of the fact that the Kashmiri people were not being allowed to perform their religious obligations.

Senior leader of the All Parties Hurriyet Conference (APHC) and President of Anjuman-e-Sharie Shian, Agha Syed Hassan Al-Moosvi has strongly condemned the imposition of curfew and other restrictions in Srinagar by the occupation authorities to prevent Muharram processions.

Agha Syed Hassan Al-Moosvi, while addressing the Muharram processions in Budgam and Magam, said that India, on one side, was claiming to be the largest democracy of the world, while, on the other, was massively violating human rights in the  territory.

He said that the occupation authorities besides committing the worst kind of state terrorism were trampling the religious rights of the people in the occupied territory and imposition of restrictions on Muharram processions was its ample proof.

The APHC leader said that through such tactics India could not suppress the voice of Kashmiri people struggling for securing their right to self-determination. He reiterated the Kashmiris’ resolve to continue the Kashmiris’ just struggle till its compete success.

He said that on Muharram 10, the Ashur procession would be brought out from Abiguzar in Srinagar at all costs.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

e-Media is Reviving The Kashmir Freedom Moment

By: Sheikh GULZAAR
Srinagar, August 04: These days a term “New Media” is used almost everywhere. But only a few people actually know its meaning. “New Media” means to encompass the emergence of digital, computerized, or networked information and communication technologies in the later part of the 20th century. Most technologies described as “new media” are digital, often having characteristics of being manipulatable, networkable, dense, compressible, and impartial.

People around the world are taking advantage of new media. It is the most effective, fastest and easiest way to communicate with other people around the world. Social networking sites like Facebook, video streaming sites like Youtube and blogs all fall into the horizon of new media.

The traditional media have been covering and reporting about the events occurring in Kashmir for years now. But for last two years, the people have started reporting events on their own, utilizing the new media. Young men using camera mobile phones are recording events all around Kashmir and sharing captured videos and pictures on sites like Youtube.

According to these men, by doing this they are gathering evidences against the Indian Army about their inhumane treatment with the innocent people. And so far they are quite successful. One of the most famous videos shared was shot by Adnan, a 15 years old boy in which aftermath events are shown of the killing of a Sheikh Abdul Aziz & others by a bullet in year 2008. The video was viewed more than 3, 50,000 times in just a few day after its upload.

By the way, this type of reporting is termed as Citizen Journalism. People of Kashmir are communicating their messages with the rest of the world utilizing digital publishing. A group of youngsters which is highly involved in these reporting term it as ‘Cyber Protest’.(Writer-South Asia)