Taking Uncle Sam for a Ride: How Pakistan Makes Washington Pay for the Afghan War

[marmar]

from TomDispatch:



Taking Uncle Sam for a Ride
How Pakistan Makes Washington Pay for the Afghan War

By Dilip Hiro


The following ingredients should go a long way to produce a political thriller. Mr. M, a jihadist in an Asian state, has emerged as the mastermind of a terrorist attack in a neighboring country, which killed six Americans. After sifting through a vast cache of intelligence and obtaining a legal clearance, the State Department announces a $10 million bounty for information leading to his arrest and conviction. Mr. M promptly appears at a press conference and says, “I am here. America should give that reward money to me.”

A State Department spokesperson explains lamely that the reward is meant for incriminating evidence against Mr. M that would stand up in court. The prime minister of M’s home state condemns foreign interference in his country’s internal affairs. In the midst of this imbroglio, the United States decides to release $1.18 billion in aid to the cash-strapped government of the defiant prime minister to persuade him to reopen supply lines for U.S. and NATO forces bogged down in the hapless neighboring Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

Alarmingly, this is anything but fiction or a plot for an upcoming international sitcom. It is a brief summary of the latest development in the fraught relations between the United States and Pakistan, two countries locked into an uneasy embrace since September 12, 2001.

Mr. M. is Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, a 62-year-old former academic with a tapering, hennaed beard, and the founder of the Lashkar-e Taiba (the Army of the Pure, or LeT), widely linked to several outrageously audacious terrorist attacks in India. The LeT was formed in 1987 as the military wing of the Jammat-ud Dawa religious organization (Society of the Islamic Call, or JuD) at the instigation of the Pakistani army’s formidable intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The JuD owes its existence to the efforts of Saeed, who founded it in 1985 following his return to his native Lahore after two years of advanced Islamic studies in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, under the guidance of that country’s Grand Mufti, Shaikh Abdul Aziz bin Baz. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175530/tomgram%3A_dilip_hiro%2C_how_to_trump_a_superpower/#more

[saras]

1. They're just following their part of the script - it's a good business.

An EXCELLENT book on how to make it pay...

The white flag principle: how to lose a war and why - Shimon Tzabar

http://www.deuceofclubs.com/books/158_white_flag.htm

http://www.shimontzabar.com/books/white-flag-principle.html

http://www.shimontzabar.com/about/shimons-own-words-books/the-white-flag-principle-writing-the-book-1968.html

[benld74]

2. WTF is the matter with the foreign policy in THIS country

IF we are leaving Afgahanistan LEAVE, why PAY to keep strategic?(ha good one) areas open?(ha another good one) for good old USA!??? We are getting played for patsies and it is costing us dearly.

FER Kee-ri-sake somebody grow a pair, quit playing spy vs spy, quit messing in religious nutjobs, and just stop it all!!!!