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July 01, 2008

Pakistan Military Offensive in Khyber Region Enters Fourth Day

In Pakistan, paramilitary forces have begun a fourth day of assaults on suspected Taliban sites in the northwest region of the country. Troops from the Frontier Corps bolstered by tanks, armored personnel carriers, and helicopters battled militants from the mountainous Khyber tribal area just outside Peshawar. It marks the first major Pakistani offensive against Taliban fighters in the Khyber region and the first major military operation since Pakistan’s new government came to power in March.

The offensive comes as US assistant secretary of State for South and Central Asian affairs, Richard Boucher, arrived in Pakistan for talks with the government.

David Barsamian is the founder and host of Alternative Radio, an independent award-winning weekly broadcast based in Boulder. He has spent extensive time reporting from abroad, traveling to India, Pakistan and Iran in the past year. His latest books include “Targeting Iran” and “What We says Goes.” He joins me here in Denver.

David Barsamian, Broadcaster and writer. He is founder and director of the weekly, internationally-syndicated broadcast Alternative Radio, based in Boulder, Colorado. He has co-authored more than a dozen books, including several collections of interviews with Noam Chomsky. His latest are “What We says Goes” and “Targeting Iran.”

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! Democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. We are on the road in Denver, Colorado. We turn now to Pakistan. Paramilitary forces have begun a fourth day of assaults on suspected Taliban sites in the northwest region of the country. Troops from the frontier bolstered by tanks, armored personnel carriers, and helicopters, battled militants in the tribal area just outside Peshawar. It marks the first major offensive against Taliban fighters in the region, the first major military operation since Pakistan’s new government came to power in March. The offense comes as Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asia Richard Boucher arrived in Pakistan for talks with the government. David Barsamian’s latest books include “What We Says Goes” and “Targeting Iran”.

DAVID BARSAMIAN: Welcome to Colorado.

AMY GOODMAN: It is good to be here, David. Tell us what is happening in Pakistan.

DAVID BARSAMIAN: Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher is essentially giving orders to the Pakistani government: we pay, you obey. The U.S. has been pouring billions of dollars into Pakistan over the last six, seven years. Most of that money has been going to the Pakistani military. This current operation, I believe, is going to set off a tremendous internal conflict inside of Pakistan, already a deeply conflicted society, because many Pakistanis believe that the so-called War on Terror is a war on Muslims. It’s a war on Islam and why should Pakistanis be killing other Pakistanis to carry out a U.S. agenda? I think one thing that is important for the listeners and viewers to understand is that there is a tremendous sense of humiliation in Pakistan over how they are being treated, in a very condescending way. It is almost like the godfather giving orders—you know, you do this, we pay the bills. You march to our command. That has created a lot of backlash inside the country.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you give us a brief thumbnail history of Pakistan?

DAVID BARSAMIAN: A brief thumbnail history? Very brief. Since its inception in 1947, it has been essentially a U.S. dependency.

AMY GOODMAN: How was Pakistan born as an independent nation?

DAVID BARSAMIAN: Pakistan was created out of the division of British India in 1947, into two states, a largely Hindu-dominated India, and a largely Muslim-dominated state of Pakistan. It was drawn into the network of U.S. power, including part of the Baghdad Pact. Pakistani military officers were brought to the United States. It was the classic Latin American model, now applied to South Asia. Historically, the U.S. has always aligned itself with the military in Latin America, Central America, and the Caribbean, and now this was being expanded globally, and specifically, to Pakistan. What this has meant to Pakistan as a country is that the military has been highly privileged—it has been foreground because of U.S. attention and intention. It has been lavishly supplied with money and with arms, and at the same time this has created real fissures in civil society, which has not developed along so-called normal lines, whatever that might be.

AMY GOODMAN: We are talking to David Barsamian, who is a broadcaster, author, journalist. The border between Pakistan and Afghanistan—what is happening today?

DAVID BARSAMIAN: First of all, it is a 2500 kilometer-long border. Americans have some sense of how difficult it is to control the border along Mexico. There are various Taliban movements. The Taliban students were actually created by the Pakistani ISI, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, probably the most powerful and secretive organization operating inside of Pakistan. This is all an outgrowth, incidentally–again the context and background, which is so sorely missing in most reporting–of the great jihad of the 1980s, when the U.S. brought militants from all over the Islamic world. I remember one Pakistani telling me once that he saw planeloads and planeloads of these jihadis being brought in from Yemen, from Egypt, from Saudi Arabia, from Algeria, to fight against the Soviet Union. Actions have consequences. Many of the Taliban today, and Al-Qaeda as well, are not just the actual members from that period, but their sons and grandsons are now fighting.

AMY GOODMAN: And the U.S. approach right now to Iran—how does it affect that whole region? How does it affect Pakistan?

DAVID BARSAMIAN: Pakistan has a long border with Iran in Baluchistan. When I was in Iran last year, formations across the border from Pakistan blew up a bus, killing more than 20 Iranians. There has been in Pakistani Baluchistan a longstanding resistance to control in Islamabad. There has been an independence movement there. Many have reported, and I think with credibility, that the U.S. has been funding groups inside of Baluchistan to cross over into Iran, to create incidents and destabilize the regime in Tehran. Pakistanis have a very close affinity with Iran, and any U.S. military action on Iran, I think, will again produce an enormous amount of resentment and already fuel what is called anti-American hatred. It is a little more subtle and complicated than that.

AMY GOODMAN: The food riots that we have been seeing around the world, and the escalating cost of food, how are they playing out in Pakistan now?

DAVID BARSAMIAN: There is an acute shortage of atta, which is flour, which is the staple of the Pakistani diet. There are acute shortages of electricity, drinking water, water for irrigation—there is an enormous amount of dislocation and dysfunctioning inside of the Pakistani economic system. This economic system cannot be understood unless we talk about the role of the army inside of the economy. It’s quite astonishing to learn and to know that the penetration of the Pakistani army as an economic institution into all facets of life in that country is truly breathtaking, from banks, from strip malls, from housing estates. There are 22 feudal families that have a great deal of land in the country and I make this quip, quoting the great American philosopher Yogi Berra, that if you want to understand Pakistan, 50% of the country is controlled by these 22 feudal families, and the other 90% is controlled by the military.

AMY GOODMAN: And how has Pervez Musharraf remained in power as long as he has, as unpopular as he is?

DAVID BARSAMIAN: He is intensely disliked. Nevertheless, he commands the respect and friendship of George W. Bush. The U.S. has backed Musharraf consistently since he overthrew Nawaz Sharif in a military coup d’état in 1999. Billions of dollars have gone into Pakistan, but the Pakistani people have not seen any of that money. It has all gone into the military sector. And so, again, this has created enormous imbalances inside the country and a huge amount of resentment toward the United States. Most Pakistanis feel the country’s being manipulated, that they don’t exist, that American policymakers do not see Pakistanis as a people. They just see them as an instrument to further the U.S. agenda in the region.

AMY GOODMAN: Pervez Musharraf and the United States, Benazir Bhutto, the investigation of her death and how she came back to Pakistan—put that all together for us as Richard Boucher is in Pakistan today.

DAVID BARSAMIAN: Benazir Bhutto was the Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1988 to 1991 and then a second term from 1993 to 1996. Both of her terms were marked by an enormous amount of corruption, particularly involving her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who is now the titular head of the Pakistan Peoples Party. One of the internal problems in Pakistan is that the political parties have basically been family-run businesses. They have not really existed as part of a much larger organization, and this is exemplified by Benazir Bhutto, who declared herself chairperson for life. When she was assassinated on the 27th of December in 2007, in her will, she bequeathed the party to her son. Until her son matures–he is now 20 years old–the party will be run by Asif Ali Zardari. So Pakistan has had a deeply problematic political system, again, from its very origins. The military has had primacy within the political system. It has been very influential.

AMY GOODMAN: How has the relationship between the U.S. and Musharraf affected the hunt for Osama bin Laden?

DAVID BARSAMIAN: Well, I think one of the reasons that there has been so much pressure from Washington right now on the Pakistani military is time is running out on Bush. I think one of the things that he and Cheney may be thinking, to save their presidency, is to somehow, you know, find and kill Zawahiri and or bin Laden. This would somehow recuperate, or recover, the enormous, ignominious record that they’ve managed to compile over the last seven or eight years. One of the things that Benazir Bhutto agreed to in a deal brokered by the Americans for her to return to Pakistan—you will recall she was in exile for eight or nine years—one of the components of that was Benazir Bhutto was going to allow U.S. troops to openly operate inside of Pakistan. They had been doing so clandestinely for a number of years, particularly in the contested so-called tribal areas along the Afghan-Pakistan frontier. Now the war is coming closer to Peshawar, which is a city of 3 million. It’s the capital of the northwest frontier province. There’s a garrison of some 50,000-60,000 Pakistani troops there. But the Pakistani military, large segments of it, have no stomach for this fight. They are highly demoralized. They have historically been more concerned about India and the threat posed from India in terms of Pakistan’s viability.

AMY GOODMAN: Senator Obama’s comments about the bombing of Pakistan unilaterally if Pakistan was not dealing with high level targets that the U.S. knew were there?

DAVID BARSAMIAN: Widely commented upon and widely deplored throughout Pakistan. Again, the kind of infringement of Pakistani sovereignty that so rankles average people in the country.

AMY GOODMAN: David Barsamian, I want to thank you very much for being with us. Author, journalist, founder, and director of the weekly internationally syndicated broadcast Alternative Radio, which is based right next door to us in Denver. It’s in Boulder, Colorado. He has co-authored more than a dozen books, including several collections of interviews with Noam Chomsky. His latest: “What We Says Goes” and “Targeting Iran”. This is Democracy Now! Democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. Back in a minute.

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