[Peace-discuss] Fw: [laborsmilitantvoice] Obama's Gift to Pakistan

[unionyes]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Richard Mellor 
To: laborsmilitantvoice at yahoogroups.com 
Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2009 2:55 PM
Subject: [laborsmilitantvoice] Obama's Gift to Pakistan





I thought this was an interesting article about the situation in 
Pakistan I wondered what Farooq thinks about it.

Richard

June 17, 2009
A Civil War
Obama's Gift to Pakistan

By LIAQUAT ALI KHAN

A civil war is brewing in Pakistan. Thanks to President Barack Obama, 
who is shifting the American war from Iraq to "the real enemies" 
operating from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Cash-strapped Pakistan could 
not defy Obama persuasion and decided to wage a war against its own 
people, the Pashtuns inhabiting the Northern Province and the tribal 
areas of Waziristan. Decades ago, Pakistan waged a similar war 
against its own people, the Bengalis in East Pakistan. In 1971, the 
Pakistani military charged to wipe out Mukti Bahini, a Bengali 
resistance force, paved the way for the nation's dismemberment. In 
2009, the military is charged to eliminate the Taliban, a Pashtun 
resistance force. History is repeating itself in Pakistan-as it 
frequently does for nations that do not learn from past mistakes.

With a willful caricature of the Pashtuns, who are successfully 
resisting the occupation of Afghanistan, Obama advisers are forcing 
Pakistan, a subservient ally, to help win the war in Afghanistan. 
This help is suicidal for Pakistan. The civil war will unleash 
intractable sectarian, ethnic, and secessionist forces. As the 
warfare intensifies in coming months, Pakistan will face economic 
meltdown. If the civil war spins out of control, Pakistan's nuclear 
assets would pose a security threat to the world, in which case 
Pakistan might forcibly be denuclearized.

Pashtun Caricature

A failing war in Afghanistan has persuaded American policymakers to 
generate a make-believe caricature of the Pashtuns, the dominant 
ethnic group in Afghanistan. For all practical purposes, the Pashtuns 
are now subsumed under the title of the Taliban. The caricature is 
simple and compelling: It highlights the Taliban as the paramount 
enemy without ever mentioning the Pashtun resistance to the 
eight-year old occupation of Afghanistan. The Taliban fighters are 
presented as religious brutes addicted to oppression and violence, 
who wish to impose a barbaric version of Islam under which there is 
no concept of individual freedom, particularly for Muslim women.

To further distort the Pashtun resistance in Afghanistan, the Taliban 
are co-equated with the Al-Qaeda, an undefined terrorist group 
allegedly scheming to detonate weapons of mass destruction, 
particularly against the United States. Burqas, floggings, and 
beheadings are accentuated to paint a repulsive caricature of the 
Taliban. In this caricature, no mention is made that the American 
bombings of villages, extra-judicial killings, torture, and secret 
prisons have failed to subdue the Pashtuns in one of the poorest 
countries of the world.

Pashtun Code

Credit goes to President Obama for rightfully diagnosing the fact 
that the Pashtuns of Afghanistan cannot be separated from the 
Pashtuns of Pakistan across the Durand Line- a more than 1600 miles 
long border that ineffectively separates Afghanistan from Pakistan. 
Nearly 41 million Pashtuns live on both sides of the border; around 
13 million in Afghanistan and twice as many (28 millions) in 
Pakistan. Concentrated in geographically contiguous regions of 
Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Pashtuns live in big cities, small 
towns, and remote villages. Kabul, Kandahar, Peshawar, Swat, and 
Quetta are their big cities. Going back thousands of years, the 
Pashtuns are united through culture, dialects, and traditions. Most 
have embraced the Sunni sect of Islam. Like other cultural groups, 
however, the Pashtuns have fused Islamic laws with their pre-Islamic 
honor code, known as the Pashtunwali.

Pashtunwali is the unwritten Pashtun Code that regulates social 
behavior and interactions with foreigners. This Code belongs to the 
Pashtuns, not just to the Taliban. Hospitable and gracious, the 
Pashtuns go out of their way to respect and protect guests and 
strangers. Invaders, however, are killed without mercy. Nang (honor) 
is the founding principle of the Pashtun Code. Khushal Khan Khattak 
(1613-1689), a Pashtun warrior and a poet, summed up the nang 
principle in decisive words: "Death is better than life when life 
cannot be lived with honor." Badal (revenge) is the integral part of 
honor. Badal requires that insult be avenged with insult, death with 
death, and no price is too high to seek revenge. Until the revenge is 
taken, the Pashtuns are restless, anxious, and uncomfortable with 
themselves. Forgiveness is available if the injury were 
unintentional. No forgiveness is rendered to invaders and occupiers. 
No enemy is too strong to deserve any exception to the Pashtun Code. 
Brits, Sikhs, Moguls, Russians, and Americans, whoever violates the 
Pashtun Code faces an unremitting resistance until badal has been 
consummated. Mighty armies have perished in the land of Pashtuns.

Revenge and Civil War

Since 2001, Pakistan has been resisting the pressure to join the 
American war against the Pashtuns. A war against the Pashtuns of 
Afghanistan is also a war against the Pashtuns of Pakistan, and vice 
versa. No concept of the nation-state or territorial integrity could 
separate the Pashtuns across the border-certainly not when the 
Pashtun lands have been invaded and occupied. No vilification of the 
Taliban could similarly separate them from their Pashtun tribes, even 
if the Taliban subscribe to a strong religious ideology. For the 
Pashtuns, the Taliban behavior is deeply rooted in nang and badal of 
the Pashtun Code. The divide and rule policy practiced in Iraq, which 
pit Sunnis against Shias and Kurds against Arabs, cannot work against 
the Pashtuns. Discounting the Pashtun Code, Americans continue to 
ignore this writing on the wall.

Betting on changing the lessons of history, the Obama White House has 
coerced Pakistan to close the doors of negotiation and begin to kill 
the so-called Taliban. Pakistani leadership knows that the Pashtun 
tribes cannot abandon their sons and brothers whether the invading 
armies label them Taliban, miscreants, or terrorists. The suicide 
attacks in Lahore, Islamabad, and Karachi reflect nang and badla of 
the Pashtun Code. The foremost Pashtun loyalties are to their own 
people and to their own Code. The Pashtun Code, long before the 
advent of Islam, has been their way. In order to receive billions of 
dollars from the United States, the Pakistani leadership has 
succumbed to the caricature of the Taliban and plunged the nation 
into a civil war with the Pashtuns, the nation's second largest 
ethnic group.

Liaquat Ali Khan is professor of law at Washburn University in 
Topeka, Kansas, and the author of the book A Theory of International 
Terrorism (2006).
-- 
"Capitalism teaches the people the moral conceptions of cannibalism 
are the strong devouring the weak; its theory of the world of men and 
women is that of a glorified pig-trough where the biggest swine gets 
the most swill." -James Connolly 1910.

Richard Mellor
AFSCME Local 444 retired
Oakland CA
http://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/
http://www.myspace.com/unionguy510
http://www.clnews.org



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