More likely the beginning of the end...
Musharraf Helps U.S. Ensure
Survival of Pakistan
Arnaud de Borchgrave,
NewsMax.com Wires
Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2001
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan - President Pervez
Musharraf was warned at a meeting of
political party leaders Sunday night
that if he cooperates with the Bush
administration "we will fight against
the U.S.A.," United Press International
learned Monday.
Reading from his own handwritten
transcript, one of those present quoted
Fazlur Rehman, chief of
Jamiat-e-ulama-e-Islam (party of the
holy men of Islam) as telling Musharraf:
"We will fight against the U.S.A. The
army will be against you. We shall go to
the mountains and come back at night to
launch hit and run attacks."
Ajmal Khattak, president of the National
Alliance Party, read his notes
exclusively to UPI on Monday.
The 76-year-old Khattak, sitting under a
lazy overhead fan in a ramshackle house
in a back alley of Rawalpindi, the
capital's twin city, showed this
reporter his sheafs of notes in Pushto.
UPI consultant Ammar Turabi translated.
Khattak said the exchanges at a six-hour
meeting that lasted until 12:30 a.m.
Monday had grown "very heated."
In addition to Reman, he quoted from
altercations between Musharraf and Sami
ul-Haq, co-president of the same Islamic
party, and Qazi Hussain Ahmed, chief of
Jamat-e-Islami (an Islamic alliance of
six religious parties). Rehman continued
his intervention by shouting: "The
United States with all its military
might could not cope in Vietnam. It was
defeated. The Soviet Union could not
cope with Afghanistan, and it was also
defeated. It was that defeat that led to
the disintegration of the Soviet empire.
Pakistan must not surrender to the
United States. If Saudi Arabia, a close
American ally, is not cooperating, why
should Pakistan say yes?"
Khattak said Musharraf told Ahmed, "If
the Taliban does not surrender, we will
have to use force."
The NAP leader was convinced Musharraf
was referring to the Pakistani military
in addition to U.S. military might.
"The United States is coming in to
cleanse the whole area of Taliban and
its foreign allies working with Osama
bin Laden," Khattak quoted Musharraf as
saying. "That way they will finish what
they walked away from after the Soviet
withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989."
Billions for Pakistan?
Former Pakistani President Farooq
Leghari, head of the center-left Millap
party, was one of the 30 political
leaders present. He told UPI: "I hope
this time the United States won't leave
Afghanistan in the lurch. After whatever
takes place in the days and weeks ahead,
Washington must underwrite a
Marshall-type plan for the region that
must include debt forgiveness for
Pakistan. This $37 billion burden is
crushing us and has stopped all real
growth. Ten years ago, 17 percent of our
population was living below the U.N.
poverty line. Today it's 50 million
people out of 140 million. And most of
the other two-thirds are barely above
the line." Pakistan has a $37 billion
debt with the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund.
Musharraf, according to Khattak's notes,
defended his total cooperation
commitment to Bush by explaining: "If I
had not committed, Russia, India and
Israel would do us great harm. Our
nuclear facilities would have been in
jeopardy, and the economy would be
completely down the drain.
"They would say they had to stop an
'Islamic bomb' from traveling. The
entire world is scared of an Islamic
bomb. United States, India, Israel and
Russia would pre-empt if we do not
cooperate fully in the war against
transnational terrorism. Even if we take
America's side, our nuclear facilities
are still at risk. The Kahuta [nuclear
weapons facility] is in danger.
"To safeguard our nuclear program we
must back the United States without
reservations. If we don't support the
United States, we ourselves won't
survive. Nor will Islam. It is my
responsibility to safeguard our national
security. I did not compromise with the
United States. It was a matter of
Pakistan's survival."
The tall, gaunt Khattak continued to
read from his notes. He quoted Qazi
Hussain Ahmed telling Musharraf: "If you
get into this, the army will split.
America's pride is shaken. She is a
wounded giant and is under heavy public
opinion pressure and telling us that
America will be destroyed if we don't
take this action. The United States is
even saying the whole world economy is
in danger of collapsing.
"Well, I say we shouldn't be afraid of
America. We should not assist them. Even
Europe and Asia won't support Pakistan.
You are committing a grave mistake. The
Army will go against you. Why are you
fighting your own people? You're not
able to think straight. You're being
selfish. That is not courage. It is
emotional, excited thinking."
Another dissenter present was Sami
ul-Haq, Osama bin Laden's closest friend
in Pakistan, who runs the "University
for the Education of Truth," a
fundamentalist institution that educated
and trained nine out of the Taliban's
top 10 leaders. He told Musharraf:
"America is not the power of God. God
himself is. We don't need anyone else's
help."
Musharraf interrupted, "if we are not
prepared to help, India is. So if you
want to commit suicide, I do not."
Rehman added, "We fundamentalists should
bring in China and Iran to help us
against Bush's coalition."
Musharaf replied: "Don't fool yourself
about China and Iran. The won't be on
your side. They are more tired of
Taliban than I am. Even if we don't
cooperate, Washington will go ahead with
force anyway."
Earlier Sunday, the political leaders
were in Lahore for an All-Party
Conference when Musharraf called them to
an emergency meeting in Islamabad. They
raced for the airport and caught the
afternoon flight to the capital. They
convened at the Presidential Palace at
6:30 p.m. Sunday and argued for six
hours.
"Why was the president consulting them
after he had already made the commitment
to Bush?" one delegate demanded to know.
"Time was of the essence and President
Bush was on the phone," Musharraf
replied.
Leghari told UPI that Bush now accepts
Musharraf's position on Kashmir, on the
urgent need for debt relief, and on the
pre-nuclear status quo ante in the
U.S.-Pakistan relationship.
Bush to 'Cleanse the Whole Region'
"I asked Bush about broken promises in
the past," Musharraf confided to the
politicians. "Bush replied that the
administration had turned a new page in
our relationship and that I could count
on his solemn word. He said the United
States is going to use every means to
finally cleanse the whole region with
precision technology.
"How can I say no to this after what
happened in New York and Washington?
Pakistan did not contribute troops to
president Bush's Gulf War coalition 10
years ago. And look at the results since
then."
Khattak said Musharraf told the
gathering that Bush, "asked Pakistan for
immediate assistance on logistics,
military intelligence and anything the
United States decides to do."
Gradually, the radical Islamic hotheads
seemed to back off. Rehman said to
Musharraf, "do everything to safeguard
our national security and find a way
out."
Khattak himself said, "While I do not
agree with the new policy, we are
willing to give him the benefit of the
doubt."
A high-level Pakistani delegation, led
by the chief of Inter Service
Intelligence, Gen. Mahmood Ahmed, was in
Kandahar, Afghanistan's religious
capital, Monday to confer with Taliban
"Supreme Leader" Mullah Mohammad Omar.
The ISI chief was in Washington last
week to hear what the United States
expects from him.
Stories that Ahmed was delivering an
ultimatum to Omar to surrender Osama bin
Laden within three days or face massive
U.S. retaliation were treated with
skepticism by Pakistani politicians. One
general told UPI that ISI "is against
any attack on Taliban."
It is generally assumed among ranking
Pakistanis that U.S. B-2 bombers, each
capable of delivering 16
precision-guided bombs to different
targets simultaneously, will soon
destroy the Taliban's critical
infrastructure: telephone exchanges,
power grids, both installed by Pakistan;
helicopters and a handful of aircraft on
the ground; and airports.
This, in turn, goes the assumption, will
be followed by U.S. airborne troops,
dropped where Pakistani intelligence has
spotted Taliban leaders and bin Ladin's
followers. U.S. paratroopers would then
be withdrawn via Pakistan and flown to
Diego Garcia, a U.S. base in the Indian
Ocean.
But no one really knows what will happen
in the days and weeks ahead. More
worrisome than the uncertainty is what
the mullahs are telling the faithful at
prayer time in Pakistan's tens of
thousands of mosques from Karachi to
Chitral in the Northwest Frontier
Province. The UPI driver, a devout
Moslem, heard one mullah say, "Just one
American soldier on Pakistani soil and
we will send American diplomats packing,
some without heads."
Copyright 2001 by United Press
International. |
