Baloch leader meets James Dobbins--President Obama's Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan

Baloch leader meets James Dobbins--President Obama's Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan-- to draw his attention to the Balochistan's situation.
July 16, 2013


 
 WASHINGTON, D.C:  Dr. Wahid Baloch, President of Baloch Society of North America (BSO-NA), met with James Dobbins --President Obama's Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan-- to draw his attention to the ongoing military operation, human right violations and enforced involuntary disappearances in Pakistani and Iranian occupied Balochistan.

He met with the special envoy on the sideline of an event "Rethinking Civilian Stabilization and Reconstruction", organized by the premier US think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), in Washington, D.C. The event was attended by many distinguished U.S. experts and scholars.

Dr. Baloch gave him a letter on behalf of Baloch Society of North America, highlighting the grim situation in Balochistan and asked for help.

 "On both sides of the border, the foreign occupying forces are engaged, with full impunity, in genocide and systemic elimination of Baloch leaders, students, teachers, intellectuals and political activists", he wrote in the letter.

"Thousands of Baloch have lost their lives in this non-ending unresolved conflict. Many hundreds of other Baloch have been kidnapped by Pakistan ISI and Iranian security forces remain missing and are lingering in military torture cells and unknown military camps", he continued.

He said, "Balochistan, the land of 16 millions worldwide Balochs, despite being rich in natural resources has been kept by the Pakistani and Iranian occupying forces poor and extremely backward. There are no roads or any other infrastructures of modern conveniences and the Baloch people live below the poverty line".

He asked the special envoy to be a voice of the voiceless people of Balochistan.

"Balochistan is bleeding and calls for international intervention. International Intervention is long overdue and it must be carried out by the UN and international Community, without any further delay, to save the lives of Baloch people", he said.

"We believe that a free independent democratic Balochistan is in the best interest of the larger cause of liberty, human rights, and democracy. It, will, not only help defeat the Taliban and Al-Qaida terrorists, but will also weaken Pakistan’s and Iran’s ability to export terror and keep China off of Gwadar and Persian Gulf", he explained in his letter.

Dr. Baloch, in the past, also met US Vice President Joe Biden and several other top US lawmakers and drew their attention towards Balochistan's situation.

A LETTER TO HONOARBALE JAMES  F.  DOBBINS,  PRESIDENT OBAMA'S SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE FOR AFGAHNISTAN AND PAKISTAN.

July 16, 2013

To:

The Honorable James F. Dobbins,

President Obama's Special Representative 

for Afghanistan and Pakistan,

Washington, DC 20301

Dear James Dobbins,

My name is Dr. Wahid Baloch and I’m a U.S citizen, originally from Balochistan and I’m the President of Baloch Society of North America, a Washington D.C based Political organization dedicated to highlight the plights of Baloch people in Pakistani and Iranian occupied Balochistan. It is an honor to meet with you.

Sir, I would like to bring some of the facts about Balochistan to your kind attention.

* 1839: The British army invaded and occupied Balochistan.

* British Chief Commissioner Maj. General Gold-smith divided Balochistan into Two parts: The Western Part was given to Iran. The Eastern Part was kept as, “The British Balochistan”.

* 1872: The Western Part was further divided between Iran and Afghanistan.

* In 1947: When British rule ended in indo-Pak subcontinent Balochistan emerged as an independent State.

* On August 11, 1947: The Khan of Kalat (Ruler of Balochistan) declared the independence of Balochistan and Mr. Jinnah (Creator and founder of Pakistan) signed the proclamation of Balochistan's sovereignty under the Khan of Kalat on August 12, 1947, which reads, “The Government of Pakistan recognizes Kalat as an independent and autonomous state.  It has enjoyed bilateral relations with the British Government and its status has been different than the other Indian states.” However, Pakistan leader persuades Khan and insists that he join Pakistan.

* Khan Kalat called the grand Jirga and the Upper and lower house meeting to discuss the idea of merger with Pakistan.

* Both the upper and lower houses and Jirga strongly opposed and unanimously rejected the Idea of merger with Pakistan and stated to remain independence. The House, after long debate, adopted the following resolution unanimously on December 14, 1947."Relations with Pakistan should be established as between two sovereign states through a treaty based upon friendship and not accession."

* On January 14, 1948, the meeting of House of Lords adopted the following resolution. "This House does not recognize a merger with Pakistan because this would endanger the separate identity of the Baloch Nation."

* The leader of house Ghous Baksh Bezenjo in his famous speech said, “We can not sign on the death warrant of millions of Baloch by signing the merger document with Pakistan.”

* March 1948, Pakistan army invaded Balochistan, and forced Khan Kalat to sign the document of accession under duress against the Baloch people’s will and mandate.

The rest of the history of Balochistan, under the illegal occupation, is of blood and tears. On both sides of the border, the foreign occupying forces are engaged, with full impunity, in genocide and systemic elimination of Baloch leaders, students, teachers, intellectuals and political activists. There passes not a single day when a Baloch mother, father, brother or sister does not collect the bullet riddle tortured and mutilated body of their loved one, killed by ISI death squads or Iranian terrorist revolutionary guards. Thousands of Baloch have lost their lives in this non-ending unresolved conflict. Many hundreds of other Baloch have been kidnapped by Pakistan ISI and Iranian security forces remain missing and are lingering in military torture cells and unknown military camps.

Balochistan, the land of 16 millions worldwide Balochs, despite being rich in natural resources has been kept by the occupying forces poor and extremely backward. There are no roads or any other infrastructures of modern conveniences and the Baloch people live below the poverty line.

The Baloch people, who are secular, moderate and pro-democratic, share nothing with extremists of Pakistan and Iran. Our language, culture and secular traditions are completely different from that of the terrorist and extremist states of Pakistan and Iran. Both of these countries are in violation of International law by occupying Balochistan illegally against the Baloch will and consent.

Sir, Balochistan is bleeding and calls for international intervention. International Intervention is long overdue and it must be carried out by the UN and international Community, without any further delay, to save the lives of Baloch people. We ask your help to put pressure on Pakistan and Iran to end their illegal and unjust occupation of Balochistan.

All occupying foreign forces must leave Balochistan and Balochistan’s status as an independent sovereign state must be restored according to the international laws. Balochs must exercise their inalienable right to life, liberty and pursue of happiness freely and independently without any fear, intimidation or persecution.  It is unjust to force Baloch people to live with terrorists and extremists against their will.

Sir, We believe that a free independent democratic Balochistan is in the best interest of the larger cause of liberty, human rights, and democracy. It, will, not only help defeat the Taliban and Al-Qaida terrorists, but, will also weaken Pakistan’s and Iran’s ability to export terror and keep China off of Gwadar and Persian Gulf.

The United States has an obligation to protect the weak and oppressed defenseless nations around the world and Balochistan should not be excluded or exempt from this obligation.  The US should not be selective when it comes to the human right violations and the violations of the UN charters and international laws. The pro-US Baloch people should not be left to stand-alone against the terrorist and extremist Jihadist armies of Pakistan and Iran.

If US can intervene in Bosnia, Libya, Sudan and Syria, why not in Balochistan?

Thank you sir,

Sincerely,

Dr. Wahid Baloch, President                              

Baloch Society of North America                                     

1629 K Street NW, Suit 300                                                      

Washington D.C., 20036

Tel: (202) 349-1682                                               

Fax: (202) 331-3759                                            

E-Mail: Contact@bso-na.org

Website: http://www.bso-na.org/

Why Jail Shakil Afridi?

http://tribune.com.pk/story/578284/why-jail-shakil-afridi/

By Ayesha Siddiqa, Published: July 17, 2013

Reading through the leaked draft of the Abbottabad Commission report, one wonders why Pakistan is keeping Dr Shakil Afridi in jail when he could also be given the benefit of doubt of a non-performing system. Allegedly, one of the many drafts prepared by one of the four members of the Commission, the draft is rich in testimonies of various important people possibly involved with the May 2 American raid on the Abbottabad house where Osama bin Laden lived. There are two key issues that the commission sought to investigate: a) how did Osama bin Laden live in Pakistan and b) how did the US violate Pakistan’s airspace and conduct its mission.

There are certainly no clear answers as to who was responsible for both the above mentioned acts but we now know that Osama was indeed living in Pakistan. The report will certainly answer the speculation and rumours that Bin Laden was already dead and that the US operation was undertaken just to malign Pakistan. There is a lot of heartburn visible in many of the testimonies regarding the US not taking Pakistan into confidence. But in hindsight, who would confide in the Pakistani authorities if the system is so dysfunctional that each one of the civil or military bureaucrat testifying before the commission complains about it? The director general of Military Intelligence warns the commission that things could go really bad if the system were to continue to remain this dysfunctional. To cut a long story short, the dysfunctionality is there mainly because at the end of the day, no one is doing their work since those who are more powerful, use their authority and create a pool of inefficiency that is visible to the general public’s naked eye.

In fact, the inefficiency also seems to have crept into the Commission, which despite all the access, could not hold anyone responsible for what happened on May 2 and before. We are now all supposed to clap to the fact that it could pinpoint the inefficiency of the decision-making system, particularly pertaining to national security. But then, it doesn’t take 160 testimonies and hundreds of hours at state expense to figure that out. The national security decision-making structure that was in place in around 1976 collapsed the minute General Ziaul Haq took over in 1977. The first institution to suffer was the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, which was supposed to represent the three services and do joint planning, but was made ineffective because the army chief was also the president with little interest in sharing power. The organisation was further stabbed to death during the Musharraf years when it was even debated whether to scrap it since the army found little or no use for it.
But referring to the commission’s report, perhaps, it might have been able to conclude something if it could have access to the army chief, the president and the prime minister. These three main characters of the May 2 drama never testified before the commission. At least, greater light might have been thrown on the kind of arrangements we have with the US that forced the armed forces in general to look the other way as the American SEALs did their operation in Abbottabad.

This brings me back to the initial question that why jail Shakil Afridi just because he confessed to being paid by the CIA through USAID. Reading the report, it does not appear that he was instrumental in finding Bin Laden. He was, however, one of the many people hired by the CIA to comb the area. Has anyone even assessed after May 2 as to how many government functionaries are directly or indirectly (through family members and friends) on the CIA/USAID payroll? Probably, Afridi was not betraying his country but making a few bucks in a place where he saw everyone on the take. It is certainly irresponsible to hold him responsible for the errors of omission or commission done deliberately or inadvertently. Afridi’s sin is certainly much less than that of the other more senior state functionaries, especially those tasked with protecting and monitoring Pakistan’s airspace in that they were not able to detect at all at least four US helicopters flying inside Pakistani territory for almost three hours. The only excuse that the air chief could offer was that he was so focused on the Indian threat that he didn’t think of the western border. This is despite the fact that there were at least a couple of violations of Pakistan’s airspace by US aircraft in 2008. Is it not just plain inefficiency that it took the PAF over an hour and thirty minutes to know that there had been intrusion inside Pakistan’s airspace?

Notwithstanding the not-entirely-accurate claim made by the air chief regarding defence policy being made by the Ministry of Defence, the fact is that the responsibility of not providing security at that critical time lay with him as it did with a number of senior officers who sat silently while the US carried out its operation. Although the focus of the debate after the leaked report is to put the burden on civilian leaders, it makes sense to ask the men in uniform about their inefficiencies. Is it just because civilian leaders are too lazy and do not read books, etc. that we had a situation where the PAF higher command did not take note of the presence of a superpower in the neighbourhood? Although the air chief claims they didn’t detect the incursion, he is strongly contradicted by Air Marshal (retired) Shahid Latif who talks about the PAF hearing signs of some activity on the AfPak border. Or is it that the PAF was told to shut up as had happened in Kargil when they heard some noises in the north?
Not to forget the mother of all questions: was Shakil Afridi the only one playing ball with the US?

It is said that the government wants to now set up a commission to investigate the leak. I think it is time they investigated why the commission did not affix responsibility on people for not doing their duty. It is important to observe the decision-making trail and name those who put the country at risk by accommodating Bin Laden and allowing Americans to intrude. Without those details, the report is not worth the paper it is written on.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 18^th, 2013.

Pervez Musharraf's Terrorist Mindset & Commando Complex

http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-9-189142-Commando-complex

Brig (r) A R Siddiqi
Thursday, July 11, 2013


Sardar Sherbaz Khan Mazari, one of Pakistan's most respected and seasoned statesmen, once asked me: "What sort of president do we have? Last evening at a reception he came up to me and said, 'look Sardar Sahib I am a commando and I shall fight'..."

What can one say about such impulsive behaviour by a head of state and chief of the county's armed forces?

Commandos are good soldiers – known more for raw courage and less for mature and sober judgement. Musharraf, too, was noted more for his blunt attitude than for a calm and calculated response to a given situation. Furthermore, his unfortunate penchant for depending too much on his handpicked cronies – yes-men all – proved to be his undoing.

In April 1999, about six months before his coup, he addressed a meeting of the English Speaking Union at the Beach Luxury Hotel, Karachi. There he spoke at length about the efficiency of the army's command-and-control systems and the unfailing alacrity by which a command is carried out by various field formations and establishments around the country.

"It would take no more than a few minutes to alert my units deployed at the farthest post and get them cracking at once..." The general went on – lauding the role of the army down to the battalion level as an unfailingly quick responsive force.

Responding to a question about the army's nexus with the Afghan Taliban, he was overly eloquent about their role as a standby volunteer body for the army when required. "The Taliban are a success story", he said and, "we should soon bring them around to our way of thinking and action when necessary".

The same evening, Musharraf and I happened to be sitting next to each other at small private dinner. His observation about the Taliban fresh in my mind, I asked him, "Do you, Sir, really believe in what you said about the Taliban during your talk?" "Don't you?", he countered.

"Not quite after the damage they did to Afghanistan. Having made a mess of their country, far worse than what it had been under the Soviet invasion and subsequent occupation for nearly a whole decade".

He smiled and with an unmistakable touch of irony said, "Sir the Taliban are my strategic reserve and I can unleash them in tens of thousands against India when I want..."

After such a definitive statement I chose to hold my horses. After all he was the army chief and I just a retired brigadier out of touch and unaware of the army's operational planning.

Musharraf's commando complex and deep contempt for civilian authority led him up the garden path to stray into the tangled woods of reckless adventurism.

Much like the mock guerrilla Operation Gibraltar launched in August 1965 and manned by our hastily-trained young regulars – officers and jawans – Musharraf used the jawans of the NLI (Northern Light Infantry) in Kargil for over three months (March-June 1999). The NLI – essentially a regular infantry outfit – fell back helter-skelter from the commanding heights it had occupied in the initial thrust, catching the enemy sleeping at his post.

Kargil was to prove a double disaster, both politically and militarily. It sabotaged the budding peace process between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz.

Prime Minister Vajpayee's bus yatra to Lahore on the invitation of Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif was a diplomatic tour de' force. Vajpayee's pilgrimage to the Minar-e-Pakistan reaffirmed yet again India's recognition of Pakistan as a living, dynamic entity that was there to stay.

Here too Musharraf's commando mindset led him astray from the only way he should have responded to the prime minster's directive to receive Vajpayee at the Wahgah border. Not only did he not join the welcome ceremony at Wahgah himself he also went on to advise the naval and air chiefs to follow suit and boycott the ceremony. The trio joined the Lahore show the next day at the Lahore Fort for lunch.

Almost simultaneously, Musharraf launched his 'top secret' Operation Badar – which ended in a sorry stalemate after some initial successes.

His alter ego, the commando in him, was at its aggressive worst when he got the 111 Brigade to surround the PM's House and scale the walls of the PTV to occupy its studios and offices on October 12, 1999.TV clips of the jawans doing this were hardly befitting the stature of the commandos, who are known for their role behind enemy lines.

The writer is a former head of ISPR

I Was Never Accepted As A Pakistani Because I Happen To Be A Muhajir - AQ Khan

Inter-ethnic tensions in Pakistan are not a secret though Pakistanis often try to brush it under carpet and try to build that ever-elusive Muslim identity. It looks like even the most celebrated nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan could not escape from Punjabi-NonPunjabi ethnic tensions. Watch this video where he bares his heart.

"If I talk openly it would seem harsh. I am a Muhajir. I was not an Athesian or Ravian or Jat or this one or that. People never accepted me as I am (Muhajir). The only reason they accepted me and loved me is because of what I did (in atomic tests). There is no one in Pakistan who doubts whether I did this (nuclear bomb) or not, whether foreigners or locals. Everybody knows that. Government knows that too. 

Had I not enriched (Uranium) and built the weapon no one would have been able to build this until Qayamat (End of the World). They would have been riding on bullock-carts. Kashmir would have gone. May be even Lahore. So, all these things (campaign) does not bother me. Only thing that bothers me is if I were a Son of the Soil, this would not have happened. I was not near to them. I am a straightforward man. I didn't reach this position through flattering. When I was in West, I was in good position and had a bright future. When the nation needed me I did this and I never displayed selfishness. I never thought that I would stay here (West) and do some help or send some (stolen) papers or if they could do it they will or else they will go to hell. No.

I was not related to them. I don't belong to the family. I don't speak the language (Punjabi). I speak the same Urdu since the times we migrated here. What else can be the reason? I gave my country what I could. Nobody else gave." - A Q Khan.