my on-line course..but Asia Times has some interesting stuff:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page.htmland here's some more:
Pakistan: Princess Ferragamo at the Barricades
It’s all about “regime change”
by Mike Whitney
Global Research, November 16, 2007
informationClearingHouse.info - 2007-11-15
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why the crooked Princess Ferragamo--Benazir Bhutto—has returned to Pakistan. Bhutto’s been traipsing all over Washington trying to garner support from think-tank heavies and establishment powerbrokers to help her stage a political come-back in Islamabad. She even hired a high-powered public relations firm to polish her image so the media wouldn’t focus too much attention on her past transgressions. Allegations of money laundering and corruption have haunted Bhutto ever since she was driven from office in 1996. Last month, General Musharraf cut a deal with Bhutto which freed her from the prospect of criminal prosecution and allowed her to return home. The arrangement ignored the judicial system entirely. The $1.5 billion that she and her husband allegedly “received in a variety of criminal enterprises” has simply disappeared down the memory hole.
Another tidbit the media seems to breezily disregard is Bhutto’s role in supporting Islamic extremism; the very dragon she is now expected to slay. According to Wikipedia: “It was during Bhutto’s rule that the Taliban took power in Kabul and gained prominence in Afghanistan. She viewed the Taliban as a group that could stabilize Afghanistan and enable trade across the Central Asia republics. Her government provided military and financial support for the Taliban, even sending a small unit of the Pakistani army into Afghanistan.”
But, then, anyone can make a mistake and Bhutto has since offered her sincere regrets and promised to rid Pakistan of the ‘scourge of terrorism’. This must be music to the ears of her new patrons in Washington.
It’s astonishing how quickly one can "see the light" when their career depends on changing their point-of-view.
US historian, Arthur Herman, in a letter published in the Wall Street Journal, described Bhutto as “One of the most incompetent leaders in the history of South Asia;” adding that she and other Pakistani elites hated Musarraf because he is “muhajir”, born of Indian Muslims. Herman claims, “Although it was muhajirs who agitated for the creation of Pakistan in the first place, many native Pakistanis view them with contempt and treat them as third-class citizens.”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7337From The Sunday Times
September 2, 2007
How the West summoned up a nuclear nightmare in Pakistan
Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark reveal how misguided deals with Pakistan have created a terrifying threat of nuclear terrorism
America’s reason for sustaining Musharraf in power is that the alternative is even less appealing. The upper reaches of the army, and the retired military elite, are rife with Islamists – a legacy of General Zia ul-Haq, the zealot who both ramped up the nuclear programme and gave the military a religious mission when he was president from 1978-88.
The tragedy is that America’s gamble on Musharraf has not paid off. Washington’s nightmare is a nuclear Pakistan controlled by fundamentalists. Yet Musharraf presides over a country that is not only still a nuclear proliferator but the real source of the Islamist terrorism menacing the West.
Al-Qaeda has merged with Pakistan’s home-grown terrorists, spawning new camps, new graduates and new missions abroad – including the July attacks in London in 2005.
At least 17 of the worst Sunni terror groups banned by the US and the UN have been allowed to operate openly and launch recruitment drives, using flimsy cover-names, most of them operating within sight of the Pakistan military.
The Taliban reformed after Musharraf signed a secret pact with its supporters in Waziristan – the tribal region of northwest Pakistan – in 2004, and again in 2006, leading to what Nato commanders in Afghanistan complained of as a 300% increase in attacks on UK and Afghan forces.
US intelligence sources have accused elements of Pakistan’s intelligence establishment and army – including General Mo-hammad Aziz Khan, who until October 2004 was Musharraf’s chairman of the joint chiefs of staff – of coaching and sheltering the neo-Taliban.
Pakistan today stands on the failed states index at position 12, just below Haiti, in worse shape than North Korea and Burma. Yet Musharraf’s government has been rewarded with a 45,000% increase in US aid since 2001, taking assistance levels to more than $10 billion, five times more than received by any other country (including Israel).
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2368174.eceUS blamed for Pakistan insecurity
Hekmatyar opposes the presence of foreign
troops in the region
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of a powerful armed group in Afghanistan, has accused the United States of trying to destabilise Pakistan.
In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera, Hekmatyar said: "Washington wanted Pakistan to face the same destiny as Iraq and Afghanistan."
Hekmatyar, who heads the Hezb-e-Islami group, is opposed to the government of Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president. He also fought against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.
Hekmatyar was briefly Afghanistan's prime minister after the Soviets withdrew. He fled Kabul after the Taliban took over.
Hekmatyar, who is now on the run, said the deterioration of security in Pakistan was a natural outcome of Islamabad's policies and its very close relations with Washington.
"As long as the US military presence continues in the region, the situation will remain the same," he said.
'US design'
"The United States wants Pakistan to face a similar fate to that of Afghanistan and Iraq. The United States believed that lighting the flames of war in Pakistan would ease the intensity of war in Afghanistan, and that is why they bombed mosques, schools and villages in Pakistani tribal areas.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/239CCFD5-4A63-4A5E-9DBB-E01F3024C184.htm