U.S.Pakistan Shipwreck:China Cleans Up-Again

The killing of 24 Pakistan troops by NATO forces is just the latest disastrous chapter in U.S. Pakistan relations. As affairs go from bad to catastrophic, it’s not just the Taliban who will benefit, but also China.

For several years now the Pakistanis have found China a very willing and increasingly powerful counterweight to the Americans and their often strident—you could call it arrogant--political demands.   

Toeing Washington’s line, in other words, is no longer the only game in town. And the pragmatic Chinese, as always, seem willing to work with whomever holds power.

Take for instance, the outrage in both the U.S. and Pakistan after American troops secretly entered Pakistan last May 2, to kill Osama Bin Laden. The day after the killing, as Americans officials in Washington intimated that top duplicitous Pakistani military had been harboring the Al Qaeda leader, and fulminating U.S. congressmen were demanding immediate cuts in aid, a foreign ministry spokesperson in Beijing lept to Pakistan’s defense.  He declared that "The Pakistani government is firm in resolve and strong in action when it comes to counterterrorism -- and has made important contributions to the international counterterrorism efforts."  America should respect Pakistan’s sovereignty the Chinese said.

 

As U.S.-Pakistani relations continued to curdle, the Chinese and Pakistanis only tightened their embrace. .Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, on an official visit to China told Chinese state radio, "We appreciate that in all difficult circumstances China stood with Pakistan -- therefore we call China a true friend and a time-tested and all-weather friend."

During that trip China’s Premier proved that friendship by announcing that China would supply Pakistan with 50 JF-17 fighter jets equipped with sophisticated avionics, the planes to be paid for by China.

Pakistan’s nuclear program provoked a similar flurry. The U.S. very upset by Pakistan’s clandestine development of nuclear weapons, had been looking at Pakistan’s program with a baleful eye. Not the Chinese, who raised hackles in Washington when they sold the Pakistanis two new nuclear reactors, supposedly to be used only for civilian purposes. The deal, the Chinese insisted, was peaceful. [The Pakistanis are quick to point out that the U.S. has been much more willing to forgive India—America’s ally--for also developing clandestine nukes.]

In fact, for years now, China has been the major supplier of military hardware to Pakistan. The two countries also have arms manufacturing co production deals, and  carryout joint military exercises.

But military links are just for starters. While the U.S. has spent billions on military bases in the Persian Gulf, the Chinese have been funding a sophisticated deepwater commercial port in Gwadar, Pakistan near the Persian Gulf. Just as important, they’re also rehabilitating a 1300 kilometer long highway to connect that Gwadar to China through Pakistan. You may never have heard of Gwadar, but you will in the future. “Come back in a decade and this place will look like Dubai,” a developer recently said.”

Trade between China and Pakistan has soared from $2 billion in 2002 to $7 billion in 2009.  After a flurry of new agreements, they are hoping to hit $18 billion by 2015. Those agreements target everything from agriculture to heavy machinery, to space and upper atmosphere research, alternative energy projects, power plants, and urban security.

The Chinese are also aiming to increase investment in Pakistan from the present $2 billion a year, to more than $3bn a year by 2012. That’s double the annual $1.5bn in economic assistance from the United States that supposedly has kept the Pakistani military in line all these years.

Indeed, since 9/11 2001, the United States has provided Pakistan with some $20 billion in aid, mostly military--in effect pay-offs for Pakistan’s cooperation in fighting terrorism. But that aid —more like mercenary payments—has done little to prevent the disastrous decline in relationship between the two countries.

The basic reason is simple:  China and Pakistan have more interests in common than do America and Pakistan. Looking to the future, powerful elements in Pakistan’s military have long viewed America’s enemies in Afghanistan, the Taliban, as valuable allies against India when America inevitably pulls out of Afghanistan. China, like Pakistan, also regards India as a regional rival to be harassed and thwarted.

By working together China and Pakistan will be able to challenge not just India, but also the United States and with its claims to hegemony in the area—particularly since President Obama’s recent announcement that 2500 U.S. marines would be stationed in Australia as part of America’s determination to increase its presence in the Pacific. 

China’s swollen coffers now also enable it to use foreign aid in the way that America did in Washington’s plusher days. After the disastrous floods in Pakistan last summer, for instance, China announced its biggest-ever humanitarian aid program including $250 million in donations. It also included a $400 million loan to help Pakistan tackle the financial impact of the flooding, and a cash grant of $10m towards a fund to compensate people rendered homeless.

--As part of this new “hearts-and-minds” policy the Chinese offered 500 university scholarships over the next three years for Pakistani students, with programs focusing on technological areas of expertise not taught in Pakistan. The two countries will also exchange high-school students, young entrepreneurs, and voluntary social workers.  Meanwhile, Chinese surgeons are being dispatched to Pakistan to perform cataract operations on 1,000 blind patients.

Such efforts are obviously paying off. It turns out the Pakistanis are now also proselytizing for the Chinese.

According to the New York Times earlier this year, “At a key meeting on April 16 in the Afghan capital, Kabul, top Pakistani officials suggested to Afghan leaders that they, too, needed to look to China, a power on the rise, rather than tie themselves closely with the United States, according to Afghan officials. 

“You couldn’t tell exactly what they meant, whether China could possibly be an alternative to the United States, but they were saying it could help both countries,” an Afghan official said afterward.”

 And all that was before this last catastrophic weekend.

China and the Gulf: Learning from a Lab Rat: Part Two

In my previous blog, I cited the old chestnut: What’s the difference between a laboratory rat and a human being? Answer: The lab rat finally ceases scurrying through a maze when he realizes there is no cheese at the end. Human beings, on the other hand, never stop trying.

Confronted with the maze that is the Arabian Gulf, the Chinese are the lab rats. To make that point, in the previous blog, I discussed how China, while resisting calls for sanctions against Iran for its alleged nuclear weapons program, has actually benefited from those sanctions: Iranian oil becoming more important to China than Saudi’s oil is to the United States.

China’s activities in the Gulf, however, are not restricted to Iran. Just as American troops and bases have spread along the Gulf, so have China’s businessmen, eager to exploit the vital resources that the U.S. military is thoughtfully protecting.

The surprising twist is that the Gulf is far more vital to China than to the United States. China gets 58% of its oil from the region. Estimates are that by 2015, that dependence will soar to 70% .  [By comparison, the U.S. gets only18.2% from the Gulf. ]

Another irony: while China has developed close ties with America’s prime enemy in the region, Iran, Beijing has been even more successful in wooing Washington’s major Arab ally in the Gulf , the Saudis.

Mao’s revolutionary China decried the Saudis and the feudal sheikdoms of the Gulf. But that’s then and now’s now. The Saudis currently provide China with 20% of its crude oil imports—and Saudi leaders have assured Beijing they will furnish all the crude China will need over the coming decades.

China has also offered to sell the Saudis intercontinental ballistic missiles. But in deference to Washington, the Saudis have so far turned down such proposals. Meanwhile, business is booming: China’s annual trade with Saudi Arabia totals $60 billion, the Saudis selling not just petroleum but chemicals for China’s surging manufacturing sector.

The Saudi’s new found ties with China, also enable Riyadh to pay less heed to  annoying calls out of Washington for democratic reforms—an issue that never bothers the Chinese.

Iraq’s relations with China represent another bitter paradox: You’d think that America’s huge sacrifice of treasure and blood in Iraq would have brought the U.S. some benefit--the inside track, for instance on the development of Iraq’s massive petroleum reserves. That’s what Dick Cheney and his friends were supposedly after. But in Iraq, as in Iran, the Chinese have been willing to take risks few American firms were willing or able to take.

As a result, China winds up as one of the largest oil beneficiaries of the Iraq War.

In fact, the first major deal for oil exploration signed by the new Iraqi government with foreigners  was with a couple of Chinese companies: a 23 year agreement for $3 billion in 2008 to pump oil from the Al Adhab field.  In 2009 PetroChina teamed up with Britain’s BP to win a 20 year contract to boost output from Iraq’s largest oil field, Rumaila—the only contract awarded in Iraq’s first post Saddam auction of oil licenses.

Earlier this year, Iraq President Maliki journeyed to China hoping to convince  more Chinese companies to invest in Iraq—in everything from energy, oil, transport, housing, telecommunication and agriculture.  He even welcomed Chinese military aid.

With China’s commercial successes in mind, it might be instructive to compare the size of China’s Embassy in Baghdad with the sprawling American compound, the largest U.S. Embassy in the world, staffed by 16,000 employees,  protected in turn by an army of  5,000 “independent contractors”. 

Beijing however, would probably favor a continued U.S. combat presence in Iraq. Many of the Chinese companies now operating there are afraid to expand further because of the on-going danger of terrorist attacks.

Not that the Chinese are uninterested in strategic facilities of their own.

China has contributed $200 million to construct a deep-sea port in the Baluchistan Province of Pakistan, only 250 miles from the key Strait of Hormuz.  Nearby is the port of Salalah in Oman, where Chinese navy escort force now dock to resupply; not to mention the Chinese warships that have docked in Abu Dhabi.                                            

But there’s no way the Chinese military presence will ever challenge the U.S. in the Gulf. Nor is there any evidence they want to. The hulking American bases have their own obvious downside: Remember, it was the huge inflow of American “infidel” troops into Saudi Arabia in 1990 following Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, that provoked Osama Bin Laden’s outrage and provided him with thousands of similarly inflamed recruits.

Concern about continued opposition to U.S. troops in Saudi lay behind the decision to move the American centre of operations to nearby Qatar. As a result, since the drawdown in Iraq, the vast new air base of Al Udeid in Qatar has become a lynchpin for the U.S. buildup in the Gulf. 

But Qatar also boasts the third-largest reserves of gas in the world, and the Chinese are thus very present. 

In May 2010, CNPC  (the China National Petroleum Corporation) signed a 30-year deal for gas exploration and production in Qatar. That was just for starters. CNPC, Shell and Qatar have also put together a joint venture to build a 10 billion dollar petrochemical complex in Eastern China.

Nearby Abu Dhabi also has huge oil reserves, and in 2009 a Chinese firm for the first time won a service contract to supply oil rigs for onshore drilling. The deal came after a visit to China by Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi. The goal: to foster strategic co-operation with Beijing. The Crown Prince was also Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces.

Oil-rich Kuwait, of course, was the country that the U.S. went to war to “save” in 1991 after Saddam’s troops invaded. In 2009, a Chinese state-controlled oil company, Sinopec, won a $140m contract to supply drilling rigs to the Kuwait Oil Company after Kuwait promised to export 500,000 barrels per day of oil to China by 2015. Kuwait Oil and Sinopec have also agreed to build a $9 billion oil refinery in China.

But it’s not just oil. Trade between China and the Gulf is a two-way affair. In 2009, the same year that China became the largest importer of oil from the Gulf, it also passed the United as the largest single importer to the region.

Remarkably, there are now more Middle Eastern visitors to Yiwu, a city in China that houses tens of thousands of retailers, than there are to the entire United States. Cross-border investment from the Middle East in Chinese financial institutions also represents a new mode of exchange. By 2020 annual trade between China and the Gulf will top $350 billion,

And perhaps that’s how things will continue to go: a strange symbiosis: American bases and Chinese markets.

Or maybe not. As  Jon B. Alterman at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies observes  “there is something inherently unstable about a region that relies on the West for security and the East for prosperity.”

Pakistan's Incredible Duplicity-Chapter Two

After the allegations that top-level Pakistani officials have secretly aided Al Qaeda and the Taliban, sheltering Osama Bin Laden himself, now comes a startling new charge: “Pakistan’s Military Plotted to Tilt U.S. Policy, FBI says.”

Now we wait for the predictable stream of American outrage. Pure hypocrisy: the Pakistanis have done nothing more than take a page from the CIA playbook.

According to the New York Times, the FBI investigation, involved at least (count them) eight FBI field offices, They conclude that Pakistan’s military and the ISI, its powerful spy agency, have used front groups to funnel campaign donations over the past two decades to members of the U.S. Congress and presidential candidates. This in blatant disregard of the law prohibiting foreign governments from making donations to American political candidates.

The dastardly aim of that operation? To counter the Indian lobby in Washington and persuade the United States government to push India to allow a vote in Kashmir that would let Kashmiris decide on their own future. I mean—can you imagine!!

The total amount involved: $4 million over two decades—which works out to $200,000 per year. That included $250.00 donations to the 2000 and 2008 presidential campaigns of al Gore and Barack Obama. The congressmen involved claimed they had no knowledge that the money actually originated with the Pakistani government.  

Of course, the Pakistani effort is pocket money compared to what the United States has been up to clandestinely for more than half a century, spending billions not just to “tilt” policy of other countries, but to literally buy elections, legislators, intelligence chiefs, generals, cabinet ministers, and entire governments around the globe—starting with Italy and Greece and Iran post World War II and continuing across every continent since.

Take for instance, last year’s revelations that several of Afghan President Karzai’s top officials—including some of the most corrupt---are on the U.S. intelligence payroll. 

As for Pakistan itself, its military have been on the receiving end of billions of dollars in “military aid” , both parties realizing that horde is little more than a bribe to keep the military at least officially on side.    

Such pay-offs are just for starters. Why bother “tilting” a government—when you can work to overthrow it or knock off its leader?  i.e. Mossadegh in Iran, (1953) Arbenz in Guatemala (1954), the Congo (1960, Iraq (1963), Cuba (1959 to this day) Chile (1964-73), Brazil (1962-64), Indonesia 1965, Angola (1975), Nicaragua (1981 to 90) Grenada (1983), Saddam Hussein 2003. And so on—more than fifty instances over the past fifty years.

Who are the headline writers kidding? You don’t need to be an investigative reporter or a congressman privy to secret intelligence briefings. It’s all out there on Google.  

The Pakistanis have been tightly linked to (if not allied with) the CIA for decades. It would have been amazing if they had not been up to such games.

God help us if they, the Russians, Chinese or anyone else ever decide to really follow the American lead—like liquidating anyone they consider a mortal enemy with their own global-roaming Predators.

Whose War on Terror?

At a time when the White House is spending hundreds of billions and has dispatched killer teams to liquidate Osama Bin Laden and lesser targets, imagine what the leaders of other countries might do if they were to declare their own War on Terror. Cuba, for instance. That question is provoked by a disturbing new documentary chronicling the past half century of Cuban-American relations and titled, “Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand up.”

Written and Directed by radical, Emmy-award-winning filmmaker Saul Landau, the report shies away from revolutionary cant and vague rhetoric. Instead, Landau backs up his case with research and interviews that, taken together, represent a damning indictment of U.S. policy. Most of the facts he cites are not news to those who have closely followed relations between Cuba and the U.S. since February, 1959 when Castro came to power. But the great majority of Americans have not paid attention. And most of what they have been told has been filtered through a Cold War prism that continues to warp U.S. -Cuban relations to this day.  

Washington’s war against Castro began long before May 1961 when he declared himself a Marxist-Leninist. Indeed, almost from the time that Castro marched into Havana and made it clear his revolution was the real thing, American Presidents—Republican and Democrat--have attempted to combat and then overthrow his regime by every possible means, from an embargo that strangled the country’s economy, to allowing Cuban exiles operating from Florida to attack Cuba’s refineries, infrastructure, sugar cane fields, and assassinate government officials.  Of course, there were also notorious attempts by the CIA to kill Fidel himself. And then came the disastrous Bay of Pig’s Invasion in 1961.   

Incredibly, after Cuba charged—accurately—that the U.S. was behind the invasion, U.N. Ambassador, Adlai Stevenson, had the gall to “categorically” deny the allegation:  “The United States has committed no offense against Cuba and no offensive action has been launched from Florida or any part of the United States”

As part of the agreement ending the Missile Crisis in the Fall of 1962, President Kennedy pledged that the U.S. would not invade Cuba, but the White House and the CIA continued to support the radical exile groups based in the U.S. intent on using terror and violence to topple Fidel.

According to Landau’s report, for instance, in October 1976, the CIA had information that one of the Cuban exiles linked to them was planning to plant a bomb on a Cuban airliner—but the U.S. never informed the Cuban government. All seventy-three passengers were killed. Altogether, the Cubans estimate that more than three thousand of their people have been died in such terrorist acts.

All this, of course, would have been immediately denounced and  massively  countered by the United States --if such a campaign had been waged against the U.S. or its allies by the likes of Iran, North Korea, Hamas--or Cuba.

On several occasions, Castro attempted to negotiate with the U.S. government. And there were Americans who argued for a change in policy. As John Burton, the former President of the California Senate put it,  “We do business with all sorts of bad quote undemocratic countries without free elections, but we pick on Cuba because we can, because they're small because they're political benefit to doing it in Florida.”

Even after the end of the Cold War, millions of voters in Florida still view the struggle to bring down Castro as a holy crusade, which is the reason no American President—including Obama--has had the guts to change course. In effect, Florida is the only state with its own foreign policy. One of the best comparisons is the lock that the powerful pro-Israel lobby in the U.S. has had on  America’s Mideast policy.

In the face of unrelenting attacks from U.S. territory, Castro’s government did what any government would have done: it dispatched intelligence agents to the U.S. to infiltrate radical exile Cuban groups and thwart their plans.

One of the groups they targeted was “Brothers to the Rescue”, flying small planes out of Florida to buzz Cuban cities, dropping anti-Castro leaflets and propaganda.  According to Landau’s report, the group was also experimenting with weapons that could be fired from the air.

In 1996, Fidel Castro told visiting Bill Richardson, the former governor of New Mexico:  “You’ve got to tell your government to get control of these people.” As Fidel declared, “What would the U.S. do to if the Cubans flew over Washington?  How long would that plane last?” Richardson relayed the message to Morton Halperin point man for Cuba on Clinton’s National Security Council staff. Halperin said he would raise the issue with the FAA. The flights continued.   

Again, a top Cuban official asked Saul Landau to alert Halperin that there would be drastic consequences if the U.S. didn’t stop the flights. According to Landau, Halperin indicated he would have the FAA cancel the licenses of the exile Cuban pilots. But the FAA didn’t. And on February 24,1996 Cuban Migs shot down two of three small Cessnas over international waters, killing their passengers. Clinton, who reportedly had been hoping to loosen American policy towards Cuba, instead was forced by political pressure to further tighten the embargo.

Radical Cuban exile groups also targeted Cuba’s vital tourist industry, warning potential visitors they would turn the island into a free-fire zone. They bombed several Havana hotels, injuring and killing the innocent.

According to Landau, in 1998 Fidel Castro gave a letter to Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez to transmit to President Clinton: to stop the violent exile groups, Cuba would be willing to cooperate with the FBI. An FBI team was dispatched to Havana and the Cubans supplied them with substantial information about exile terrorist activities.

Instead of dismantling those exile groups, the FBI used the information to discover the identities of the undercover agents in Florida working for the Cuban government. On September 12, 1998, five Cuban intelligence officers were arrested in Miami and charged with, among other things, conspiracy to commit espionage and murder. Among the allegations--they had giving the Cuban government the information needed to shoot down the “Brothers” illegal flights.

The Cubans denied that charge, but spent more than a year in solitary confinement and—most important—were denied a motion to move the trial from Dade County, an area seething with anti-Castro sentiment. They were found guilty and received maximum sentences; in the case of one of them, two life sentences without possibility of parole. Last October, the U.S. Supreme Court turned down their appeal to have the trial remanded for change of venue.

A couple of months later, on the other side of the world, a CIA contract operative, Raymond Davis, was arrested by Pakistani authorities after killing two men in Lahore, presumably part of America’s War on Terror. After a barrage of calls to Pakistani officials from the highest levels in the U.S. government and the payment of “blood money” to the murdered men’s relatives, Davis was quietly released to American authorities and spirited out of Pakistan.

 Meanwhile, in Florida the most prominent of the radical Cuban exiles—those proudly linked to the campaign of terrorism against Castro’s Cuba--remain free and the toast of many inside and outside the exile community. 

Tunisia: Democratic Triumph or Prelude to U.S. Disaster?

Officially, the Obama administration greeted the “Jasmine” revolution in Tunisia with open arms, calling for free and fair elections as the U.S. scrambled to get aboard the democratic bandwagon. 

Celebration is restrained, however in Washington. Instead, there’s serious concern about who will take the place of the corrupt, 74 year-old Tunisian dictator, who, until the end, was considered an important American ally in the War against Terror.

Assuming the Tunisian military actually agrees to hold free elections [not at all a sure thing] will the generals really throw open the doors to all political groups? Nationalists? Islamists? Marxists? Anti-militarists? What forces will roil to the surface after decades of political repression? Will they throw in their lot with America’s War against Terror, or join the ranks of those in the Middle East who increasingly see what’s going on as the U.S.’s war against Islam?

Washington’s ambivalent view was evident even before the revolution was victorious. In Doha on Thursday, Hillary Clinton lectured Arab autocrats and others meeting there on the urgent need for reform and an end to rampant corruption if they wanted to save their regimes.

But just a couple of days earlier, as young demonstrators were being gunned down in the cities and towns of Tunisia, when Hillary was asked which side the U.S. was on, she replied that the U.S. was “not taking sides"”

U.S. officials have reason to hesitate. Jasmine uprisings across the Middle East and Central Asia could spell disaster for American policy.

--There is no way, for instance, that Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt for 30 years, will permit a democratic opening. Thanks to his ironclad dictatorship, the only group who has been able to organize politically are the Islamic radicals. More secular-minded opponents have been either co-opted or imprisoned or totally cowed. The influence of the religious extremists has grown throughout the country--anti-American and anti-Israel. It’s only the military that stand between Mubarak and chaos.   

But, like a deer frozen in on-coming headlights, Washington seems immobilized. On the one hand, there’s the corrupt, despotic, and failing Mubarak. But he’s a friend. On the other hand, truly free and fair elections would almost certainly bring leaders to power much more virulently anti-Israel and opposed to U.S. policies. Perhaps they’re hoping for the Egyptian the military to step in again to save itself and its privileges--and the U.S.

-Indeed elsewhere throughout the region, from Saudi Arabia to Jordan to Yemen to Ethiopia to Afghanistan and Pakistan, the picture seems markedly similar: U.S. allies are invariably corrupt dictators, maintained in power by lavish patronage and the military.

-Ironically, in Lebanon, where the public has had a growing voice in national politics, it’s the anti-American and anti-Israel Hezbollah who have ridden popular acclaim to become the decisive voice in the country.

-Similarly in Iraq, popular participation has also benefited America’s most outspoken enemy there: Moqtada al-Sadr., whose followers fought bloody battles against the U.S. after the invasion.  Seemingly vanquished, he has returned from three years in Iran to wield a decisive political voice in Iraq. He demands the withdrawal of all U.S. troops and bases from his country.

Ironically, because of the elections in Iraq, the country that will almost certainly be calling the shots there in the future will not be the United Statues—but Iran.

-Meanwhile moderates pushing for something akin to democracy and secular rule are losing ground. In Pakistan, the soldier who killed the governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, who had been outspoken in his fight against religious fundamentalism, that soldier was showered with rose petals while many of the country’s lawyers—who had once gone to the streets demanding democratic reform—celebrated the murderer as a national hero.

-And democracy in Israel? A true democracy with a vote for every person—Jews and all the Arabs under Israeli control—including those living on The West Bank? Forget it. It would be the end of the Zionist dream of a Jewish State.  We don’t hear Hillary or Obama talking much about that these days.

-Indeed, at the end of her lecture to the Arab leaders in Doha, one of  Hillary’s Arab audience asked why the U.S. wasn’t doing it’s share to fight the war against Islamic fundamentalism by putting more pressure on Israel to deal with the Palestinians.  Her answer –pointing out that the U.S. paid more to finance the Palestinian Authority than did most of the Arab countries—simply dodged the issue.

-Of course, it would be unfair to point out that, after her civics lesson in Doha,  Hillary returned to Washington where, even after the lurid shootings in Arizona, U.S. legislators are unable to even to discuss  clamping down on firearms, because of the all-powerful gun lobby.  It’s also Washington where American officials, from Obama on down, are terrified of taking on the pro-Israel lobby - not because the lobby represents the views of the majority of Americans—or even a great majority of American Jews, but because it wields a very undemocratic power far beyond its  numbers.