Deception

The U.S. is preparing a savage air attack on Iran – not excluding the use of tactical nuclear weapons – to prevent it from acquiring an atom bomb. Never mind that Iran and the UN atomic energy agency on August 21 agreed on a timetable for Tehran to clarify outstanding concerns about its nuclear program. If the ghost of the atom bomb is insufficient to justify war, the U.S. will engineer an incident “proving” that Iran is responsible for the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq. “The Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days,” The Times writes. (“Pentagon ‘three-day blitz’ plan for Iran”) Not “pinprick strikes”, but “taking out the entire Iranian military”.

But in the same edition The Times (“How the West summoned up a nuclear nightmare in Pakistan”) published an extract from a forthcoming book, written by Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark, showing how the U.S. covered up Pakistan's quest for the bomb. So here we have the U.S. of A. turning a blind eye to Islamic Pakistan getting the bomb and preparing to strike at Islamic Iran to prevent it from getting the bomb. So what's the bottom line? It's not about nuclear non-proliferation. If you are a U.S. ally, you may have all the forbidden toys you want, but if you are not, you're gonna be bombed back to the Stone Age if the U.S. president only presumes that perhaps you would be tempted to acquire forbidden toys.

Bush accused Iran of “putting the Middle East under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust”. Iran doesn't even have a bomb. But Pakistan does have several. Moreover, president's Musharraf's grip on the country is slipping and it could fall into the hands of Islamic militants, the very same who have trained and supported the Taliban. The authors of “Deception” describe Pakistan as a “desperately unstable country” [...] “on the failed states index at position 12, just below Haiti, in worse shape than North Korea and Burma”. Finally, Iran's Ahmadinejad was democratically elected (he was not even the candidate of the conservative clergy), while Musharraf took power in a coup.

To Bush that doesn't matter, you're with us or against us.

The book “Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons” will be published in Britain in September (Amazon.co.uk) and in the U.S. in October (Amazon.com).

The Red Mosque

Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf has ordered an assault on the Lal Masjid, the Red Mosque, in the center of Islamabad. The Red Mosque became a nuisance because students kidnapped seven Chinese from an acupuncture clinic (or perhaps a massage parlor). They were freed soon enough, but this led to calls by the Chinese government for better protection of its citizens. There are about 3,000 Chinese working and living in Pakistan. In their view, they are helping an ally and Third World country in its development, helping to build harbors, hospitals and oil fields. But some Pakistanis see them (correctly) as allies of the government. If those people are opposed to the government, the Chinese become easy targets to embarrass it.

That is what happened at the Red Mosque. Now look at it from another angle. We certainly may not like the Deobandi or Wahhabi variety of Islam with its medieval injunctions of no alcohol consumption, no images of living beings, no music or movies and the subservient position of women, forced to be covered from top to toe. But how did the fundamentalist islamist movement in Pakistan came to become so important? First of all it was supported by the state (the army and part of the government). The Taliban in Afghanistan were supported and nurtured by Pakistan's secret service. Many poor people did not have any alternative but to turn to the madrassas for an education, which unfortunately solely focused on the Koran. If the Pakistani government would have done a better job of helping the poor and fight corruption, the madrassas would have had no fertile soil to grow.

Musharraf is wrong to launch an attack on the Red Mosque. It will further aggravate tensions and could possibly lead to the overthrow of the government by parts of the army and the Islamic clergy. It would turn Pakistan into a nuclear armed Taliban-style country. Pervez Musharraf is playing with fire. (South China Morning Post: Chinese targeted to harm ties with Islamabad: analysts)