Pentagon moves torture general to back bench

The Bush administration and the Pentagon are leaning heavily on Pakistan to “pacify” regions along its border with Afghanistan and to allow even more aggressive U.S. military operations there.

It is all done in the name of the fraudulent “war on terror”—a cover story to excuse the imperialist atrocities that are being committed daily against the people of the region in order to extend the geostrategic dominance of U.S. big business over this resource-rich area.

However, the people of Pakistan are resisting being dragged further into the role of U.S. surrogates in Washington’s war to control Afghanistan. As much as the U.S. pushes, they continue to push back.

A recent example of this came when the Pentagon had to quietly withdraw the appointment of Maj. Gen. Jay Hood to be its top military envoy to Pakistan. Hood was previously commander of the notorious U.S. prison camp at Guantánamo. Some 60 Pakistanis have been through that hellhole and returned to tell of the tortures and insults they received there. For Hood to become the Pentagon’s top dog in Pakistan was more than just a symbolic threat. So when word of his pending appointment got out, a firestorm of protest swept Pakistan, causing the Pentagon to switch gears.

This was followed, however, by a blustering speech by Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte in Washington saying the U.S. would “not be satisfied” until Pakistan had asserted its control over the border areas. Negroponte, notorious for his murderous role in Central America in the 1980s, has personally taken charge of U.S. policy towards Pakistan. When Pakistani dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf was under strong pressure to resign last fall, it was Negroponte who called him “indispensable,” indicating Washington’s determination to keep the dictator in power.

To illustrate Negroponte’s threat, the CIA on May 14 launched two Predator missiles to strike a house in the village of Damadola in the tribal region of Bajaur, killing at least 15 people, according to Pakistani officials. It was at least the fourth time this year that the CIA had used aerial drones to launch missile strikes on Pakistani villages. No warning was given to the Pakistani government. (Wall Street Journal, May 20) As usual in their attacks throughout the Middle East, the imperialists claimed their target was “terrorists.”

The government in Washington has no respect for international law or the sovereignty of other nations. It acts as though it has a free hand to rain down death and destruction anywhere in the world. And so it is using brute force to try to undo the gains made last year by the people of Pakistan in their struggle against Musharraf. He is the latest in a long line of Pakistani military dictators supported by Washington, which has handed over $10 billion in military aid to his regime since 2000.

For months last year, the people of Pakistan had put their bodies on the line, calling for Musharraf to go. There were thousands of demonstrations and strikes for democracy and against martial law. Scores of people were killed by the military and police; many thousands were arrested, among them thousands of lawyers and judges who demanded the reinstatement of the chief justice of the Supreme Court. He had been removed by Musharraf for challenging the legality of the general’s plan to get himself “re-elected” president while still head of the armed forces—a violation of Pakistan’s Constitution. The whole judicial system was in an uproar.

Parliamentary elections came next. Huge crowds attended the opposition rallies, despite threats of violence. Right after one of them, the leader of the Pakistan People’s Party, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated. Musharraf’s party was routed in the polls, but he still remains president based on an illegal election last fall that was boycotted by the opposition. And the struggle over the Supreme Court goes on, even though the opposition parties now control the government and are trying to cut down the powers of the president.

The new government has been negotiating a peace deal with the local leaders of the semiautonomous areas known as the tribal regions. The U.S. is virulently opposed to such a peace. However, its political influence in the area is waning fast. As a paper in the United Arab Emirates wrote recently, “[M]ost Pakistani politicians are desperate to distance themselves from Washington as any whiff of U.S. association is toxic.” (The National, May 17)