U.S. sics death-squad diplomat on Pakistan

John Negroponte is at it again. This time he is conducting coercive diplomacy in Pakistan, a possible weak link in U.S. imperialism’s expansionist strategy for the Middle East and Asia.

The man who ran the contras in Nicaragua, built death squads in Central America, and hid the torture, rape and murder of U.S. missionaries in Honduras in the 1980s has been very busy since the Bush administration began.

Three days after 9/11, the Senate confirmed Negroponte as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. In Senate hearings on his nomination, Negroponte claimed to have forgotten what he did in Central America. He forgot that more than 300,000 Central Americans were murdered under his watch.

In 2004 George W. Bush appointed Negroponte to be U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Under his watch, the death squads emerged.

PBS NewsHour of Feb. 2, 2005, confirmed that it was Negroponte who, as U.S. ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s, had “helped carry out the Reagan administration’s covert strategy to crush the Sandinista government in neighboring Nicaragua.”

In February 2005, Negroponte was made the first director of national intelligence, a sort of CIA/FBI/NSA/Homeland Security czar. He set up “mission managers” to plan strategy against Venezuela, Cuba, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Iran.

By this January he was back in the State Department as deputy secretary of state, troubleshooting for U.S. imperialism in South Asia. Negroponte had been pulled out of his position as security czar in the U.S. to deal with another crisis. Pakistanis had begun to come out into the streets to demand freedom from their dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Washington was worried Musharraf could not keep the lid on popular protest.

Pakistan is a key country for U.S. imperialism in Asia. Bordering Afghanistan, Iran, China and India, this nation of 160 million people has the fifth-largest army in the world. Its population is seething with anger against U.S. imperialism for its brutal war against the Iraqi people. They are especially angry because longtime U.S. support for military dictatorships in Pakistan has left 40 percent of the people living on less than one dollar a day and another 40 percent on less than two dollars a day. Pakistanis lack public health, education and decent housing; they get low wages and face massive joblessness.

In January, the U.S. killed many civilians when it bombed a region in Pakistan that was allegedly a Taliban stronghold. President Musharraf did nothing to stop the bombing.

Back in the early years of the Afghan war, the Pakistani army balked at attacking its own people in northern Pakistan. Washington is worried that the huge army will not follow its orders, and this concerns Negroponte, too. Pakistan is near the oil fields of Eurasia, not just in Iran but in neighboring Tajikistan, one of the former Soviet republics rich in oil and natural gas.

The U.S. war on Iraq and the threat of war against Iran is, as former Federal Reserve Bank head Alan Greenspan just admitted, about oil. And key to the imperial game the U.S. is playing for oil is its control over Pakistan.

The foreign policy establishment is working to destroy the historical connections between Pakistan and China, because imperialism has its sights set on China, too. “The U.S. needs Pakistan to acquiesce to a U.S. encirclement of China,” said one Pakistani militant, “but the Pakistani people see the Chinese as their brothers and sisters.”

Washington desperately needs all its pawns in line for Project Checkmate, a highly confidential strategic planning group at the Pentagon tasked with “fighting the next war,” with its focus on Iran. (London Sunday Times, Sept. 23) Project Checkmate is a successor to the group that planned the 1991 Gulf War air campaign. It was quietly reestablished in June.

Negroponte is “Johnny on the spot” for Project Checkmate. His object is to facilitate the next war against Muslim people and, if Musharraf proves too unstable, to bring in a government in Pakistan that will submit completely to U.S. demands.

Pakistanis are weary of their government and their poverty. They oppose U.S. wars against Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran. They are no longer silent and are not under control. They are awakening and nothing John Negroponte can do will change that.