When the U.S. says jump, it wants Pakistan to jump

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Pakistan's military ruler, President Pervez Musharraf, was granted the honour last week of an audience at Camp David with the Great White Father. U.S. President George Bush, who three years ago couldn't even name Pakistan's leader, hailed Musharraf as a "statesman" and "friend of freedom."

Gen. Musharraf was offered a conditional $3 billion US aid package, provided: a) Congress, which hates Pakistan, approves; b) Musharraf continues to arrest Islamic militants and support the U.S. military occupation of Afghanistan; c) makes no trouble with India over Kashmir; d) doesn't supply nuclear technology to North Korea.

On the last item, the same Washington "experts" who assured us Iraq was bristling with deadly weapons that could annihilate the U.S. and U.K. "in 45 minutes" now claim Pakistan aided North Korea. Pakistan denies this questionable allegation.

In a startling public insult to a "friend and ally," Bush refused Musharraf's request to release F-16 fighters bought by Pakistan in 1989. Pro-Israel members of Congress blocked delivery of the aircraft to punish Pakistan for its nuclear program. Ironically, Pakistan's inability to acquire modern warplanes to counter India's state-of-the-art French Mirage 2000s and Russian MiG-29s and SU-30s compelled Islamabad to rely ever more heavily on its nuclear forces to deter hostile India, whose powerful military seriously outnumbers and outguns Pakistan.

I've felt a certain sympathy for Gen. Musharraf, who overthrew Pakistan's inept prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, in a 1999 coup. When I interviewed Musharraf in 2000, he was truly struggling to reform Pakistan's squalid, corrupt politics. Then came 9/11. The Bush administration put a gun to Musharraf's head, ordering him to ditch Pakistan's Afghan ally, the Taliban, open Pak bases to U.S. forces, arrest anti-American militants and fire the capable nationalist officers - and close friends - who put him into power, Generals Aziz and Mahmoud.

Obey, Washington warned Islamabad, or we will foreclose your loans, impose trade sanctions, cut off spare parts, and give India a green light to go after you. Tough Zia ul-Haq, Pakistan's last military ruler, would have stood up to American bullying. Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto would have cleverly managed to somehow finesse Washington's threats. But Musharraf, with a near-bankrupt nation, and faced with what he viewed as a Hobson's choice between obedience and ruin, caved in to Washington's demands and became, overnight, its compliant servitor.

One couldn't fail to notice the contrast last week between the leaders of Pakistan and India. While Musharraf was at Camp David playing the loyal sepoy to the American Raj, India's Prime Minister Atal Vajpayee was concluding an historic strategic agreement with rival China. India finally agreed to fully recognize Chinese rule over Tibet in exchange for China's acceptance of India's rule over the Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim, which Delhi annexed in 1975. No mention, however, was made of Aksai Chin, the northernmost portion of divided Kashmir annexed by China.

The Indo-Chinese pact will help reduce tensions between the world's two most populous nations - both nuclear powers - over their poorly demarcated Himalayan border, which led them to war in 1962. But it will not allay Beijing's fears the U.S. is using India to threaten China, and secretly encouraging Israel to help India build its nuclear forces. Nor will it lessen the worrying nuclear arms race between the two Asian superpowers. Still, it was a major advance and an act of effective statesmanship by the old rivals.

Those who call for Tibet's freedom will be dismayed. Without Indian support and bases, no armed Tibetan independence movement can operate. Last week's agreement marks the end of any faint hope Tibet might retain its national identity and avoid being totally absorbed, as have China's other minorities, by a flood of Han Chinese immigration.

Tibet is now destined to become a theme park for foreign tourists and its former Buddhist leadership a curio from the past. I say this with heavy heart, since His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, gave me some spiritual guidance and helped inspire my book, War at the Top of the World, which deals, in part, with Tibet and the Indo-Chinese strategic rivalry.

Tibet's last chance for independence is now gone. I understand China's historic claims to Tibet, but my heart aches for its people and their gentle, gracious leader.

Before leaving the U.S., President Musharraf rightly warned Americans that terrorist attacks were largely due to smoldering political grievances around the world, and that "state terror" against Muslim peoples was being ignored or abetted by America - an obvious reference to Palestine, Chechnya and Kashmir. Unfortunately, Bush was too busy trying to organize an international campaign against Hamas and Israel's other Palestinian opponents to heed Musharraf's sensible warning.

This administration has obviously learned nothing since 9/11 and still refuses to accept the painful truth that misguided U.S. foreign policies led to that attack. Or that Bush is personally stoking anti-Americanism around the globe.

Musharraf's pleas to Bush to help resolve the Kashmir dispute - the world's most dangerous crisis that risks nuclear war between India and Pakistan - were ignored.

"Take your money, go home, arrest more militants, and don't cause trouble," was Washington's sendoff message to the general.

Source: The Toronto Sun