The Fascist Army

Amin sahib nice documentation, very helpful..

Kaptain, if you read my piece on the Misadventures of the Pakistan Army, I talk about restructuring the entire institution, there is no other solution, remove a few generals and the institution which works with regularity will throw up similar generals and get rid of the non conformists. We need a total restructuring of the officer staff from dismantling the PMA to their military training and removal of any outside influence, a total expulsion from non military affairs and an institution that has ZERO percent share of non military institutions, and stays either in their barracks or borders (BB), that is it...

Kaptain sahib,

It is not just about removing the generals. It is about removing the institution called the Pak Army from Pak statecraft and moving them back to the barracks.

Regards

From you writings; only a bunch of generals need to be removed..and punished..
rest is fine..

Masadi sahib,

Will check out the site in lesiure. Btw, Mr Najam whom you have quoted in FP writes prolifically in Pakistaniat website.

In 1973, four Pakistan army divisions assaulted Baluch tribal communities in the province of Baluchistan, wiping out "mountain villages and nomad caravans."

I hope you realise that this was under ZAB's watch and personal instructions!!!

But yes, equal responsibility goes to Pak Army as an institution which never allowed an alternative civil dispute resolution mechanism to develop in Pakistan.

Regards

masadi: that is a really good article that you posted. It seems that the stage is being set for the army to emerge as our "only saviours" against the taliban threat too.

Mr Masadi ,

This site is not banned.You can go there by just typing :--

www.fascistarmy.org/04_aor/04_aor.htm

i know this site they have my article also on the site :--

Abuse of Resources
High Court Presented With Massive Charge Sheet Against Pakistan Army



A.H. Amin

ISLAMABAD: The Lahore High Court in Pakistan is facing a legal and a practical dilemma: What to do with the petition which charge sheets the Pakistan Armed forces and lists details of massive kickbacks and corruption done by Generals, Air Marshals and Admirals.

The petition has been filed by a lawyer in public interest but its contents are so explosive, the High Court Judges cannot touch it. The LHC, under tremendous pressure of the Army regime, is almost helpless in even admitting or hearing the petition, let alone give a verdict against the Army.

The main charges mentioned in the petition include:

- Air Chief Marshal Abbas Khattak (retired) had received Rs180 million as kickbacks in the purchase of 40 old Mirage fighters

- Air Chief Marshal, Farooq Feroz Khan was suspected of receiving a five per cent commission on the purchase of 40 F-7 planes worth $271 million

- In 1996, the Army bought 1,047 GS-90s jeeps, at a cost of $20,889 per unit. The market value of a jeep then was only $13,000. According to the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), Pakistan’s main accountability organization, some senior Army officers made Rs. 510 million in the deal.

- One hundred and eleven Army men got 400 plots in Bahawalpur and Rahimyar Khan districts at throwaway prices, paying Rs. 47.50 per kanal (1/8th of a acre) as against the actual price of Rs15,000 to Rs20,000 (1US$=Rs. 56). Another 35,000 kanals were distributed among them.

- Six respondents got 400 kanals in the Punjab while former NAB chairman Lt. Gen Mohammad Amjad was allotted a two-kanal plot on the Sarwar Road in Lahore for just Rs. 800,000 - payable in installments over 20 years. The market value of this plot was Rs. 20 million.

- General Pervez Musharraf acquired a commercial plot worth Rs 20 million at DHA in Lahore for just Rs. 100,000, payable in 20 years. "As mentioned in the report of defense services director-general, a loss of Rs 5 billion was incurred due to such allotments."

- The Army awarded a contract for the purchase of 1,000 Hino trucks at $40,000 per unit while the local Gandhara Industries had offered trucks of the same specification for $25,000 a piece. In the purchase of 3,000 Land Rover jeeps in 1995, Army officials allegedly received around Rs. 2 billion as kickbacks.

- The Army management at WAPDA raised the power tariff 13 times during the last three years besides purchasing electric meters at Rs. 1,050 a piece against the open market price of Rs. 456, causing a loss of Rs 1.65 billion to the national exchequer.

- A former military regime sold the Pak-Saudi Fertilizers for Rs. 7 billion and earned a Rs 2 billion commission on the deal.

- In 1996, the Pakistan Navy spent Rs. 13 million on installing air-conditioners at the Islamabad Golf Club without any justification.

Apart from this petition some other major scams involving serving or ex members of the military junta are as follows:

- Ex Army chief General Jahangir Karamat took kickbacks of more than US$ 20 Million from Ukrainian tank company for purchase of 300 Ukrainian tanks for Pakistan Army through a middleman named as Colonel Mahmood , a brother tank corps officer of Karamat . Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif sent the present chief of the WAPDA Major General Zulfiqar, then serving in ISI, to Ukraine and Azerbaijan to investigate the scam.

- General Zulfiqar compiled a complete report of the transaction and the bribes given. But the Army tried to buy him out by rewarding him with the post of WAPDA Chairman and promoting him to the rank of a three star General. The then Army Chief, General Jahangir Karamat was forced to resign, based on the threat that if he did not, he would be charged for corruption.

- Many road contracts were given to a firm Hasnain Construction company without any public tenders by the recently removed Railways and Communication minister General Qazi. The company, owned by a relative of General Pervez Musharraf’s son, was also awarded the lease of a lucrative real estate in Lahore for construction of a Golf Course under frontmanship of Palm Country Golf Club, Singapore. The relative of General Musharraf admitted publicly that he was working for a commission to use his contacts and influence for the company.

- Prime commercial land developed in Defence Housing Authority Karachi was leased at dirt heap rates to McDonalds operated by Amin Lakhani by the then Corps Commander, Karachi Lt. General Afzal Janjua.

- The Army’s coercive organ NAB struck various under the table deals with various individuals accused of high profile economic crimes in addition to arm twisting NAB defaulters, into joining the present government. These include the present Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali and at least one fourth of all elected legislators.

Where does the military virtue of a defense outfit stand in these circumstances? Is 2003 not a year fit to publish its obituary? Our military virtue died, trampled below the treacherous wheels of overpriced military trucks and overpriced Chinese aircraft and defective Atlantique planes that crash in our waters because of dubious maintenance.

Yes all this has served one important development purpose. Sons of ex-subedars, ex-clerks and ex-assistant political agents have done well, climbing from relatively simple life styles to grand luxuries propelled by phenomenal assets. All came to clean the Augean stables and all departed richer. The only exception was General Yahya Khan who whatever his drawbacks at least did not have the mind of a petty shop keeper.

Clausewitz, the great philosopher of war described “Military Virtue” of an Army as the corporate spirit which forms the bond between bravery, enthusiasm and espirit de corps. Clausewitz further defined military virtue as a quality which drives an Army in a similar way as genius makes a military commander illustrious.

Military virtue in words of Clausewitz could be generated in two ways, i.e. by a succession of military campaigns and victories or by military training activity carried to the highest pitch. The more a general demanded of his troops in terms of dedicated military activity in peace, the surer he would be that his demands in war would be properly answered. In short military virtue is the fuel that is supposed to drive an Army in war.

With the above premise in mind and keeping in view our present history it can be safely concluded that military virtue of the Pakistan Army as an institution witnessed erosion from 1958 once the party started that made sons of Risaldar majors and Assistant Political Agents progress into industrial tycoons. It was a joy ride. Men who had one green suit to wear, in the words of General Tajammul, became the tycoons of Pakistan. It was the beginning of prosperity for few and the beginning of the end of military virtue of a previously Spartan and clean military machine.

The second military junta of Pakistan was led by the only Army chief not from humble background and this ensured that the Pakistan Army was kept away from cheap consumerism and avaricious lust for real estate.

The second great dinner party started in 1979 when thanks to Soviet invasion of Afghanistan a heaven-sent opportunity arrived in shape of US military aid for the third military junta of Pakistan. Stingers were flown in by the big daddy for the obedient son and these were sold in the open market by silent soldiers. Thus new business empires were created. The Zia junta as a whole did roaring business and the result is that at least four major tycoons of Pakistan today including present commerce minister have direct links with the Zia junta.

Where does building 90 acres of a welfare colony known as Creek City with the cheapest shack for Rs. 6 million fit in? Did the military junta begin the occupation for such sublime purposes in 1958 or 1999? Where does developing 62 acres of land in prime commercial real estate in Islamabad fit in? Is this the business of a Navy that was miserably shut up in a mouse hole in Karachi Port in 1971 War? True that kickback may have been taken, but at least Admiral Mansur bought a good submarine for the Navy. But for whose welfare is the Navy undertaking a project 1500 kilometers from the nearest sea?

What began as an idealistic journey ends with the shady deals around creeks in Karachi which the Navy failed to defend in 1971 and a military junta which wants to rule this country for eternity.

And in this messy situation, the subservient Lahore High Court has been asked to sit on judgment with the sprawling mountains of charges, some even admitted publicly by the Army. God help the poor Mr. Justices of the superior court.

The writer is a retired Pakistan Army Officer and a Defence Analyst who has written a number of books on defence and security matters.

One of the articles from that site:

Pakistan A US-Financed Military Dictatorship
Pakistan has Long, Bloody History as Terrorist Arm of U.S.

Asad Ismi

The United States' choice of Pakistan as an ally in its "war on terrorism" provides the spectacle of the two leading terrorist states on Earth "fighting terrorism." The U.S. has killed more than eight million people in the Third World since 1945, while Pakistan slaughtered almost three million Bengalis in the Eastern wing of the country in 1971. This caused the break-up of the state, with East Pakistan separating and becoming Bangladesh.

Since 1951, Pakistan's main purpose has been to act as the U.S. government's South Asian terrorist arm, serving to destabilize the former Soviet Union, India and Afghanistan, and crushing all attempts at domestic democracy. Washington's instrument has been the Pakistan army, which U.S. officials have called "the greatest single stabilizing force in the country." Its major "military" campaigns have been launched against its own unarmed people.

Soon after Pakistan's independence in 1947, the U.S. provided $411 million to establish its armed forces. When the country's first democratic elections scheduled for 1958 threatened to reduce the army's power, General Mohammed Ayub Khan, the commander-in-chief, cancelled them and took over the government in a coup. This created a military dictatorship that continues to this day.

Pakistan became a U.S.-financed garrison state, spending 80% of its budget on the military, which massacred thousands of people and ensured that most of those not killed continued to be mired in poverty and illiteracy.

Ayub was an actual employee of the U.S. State Department, which paid him an annual salary of U.S.$16,000. There is little doubt that the U.S. government was "fully aware" that the Pakistan army was planning a coup. A few years after the 1958 coup, Sardar Bahadur, Ayub's brother, alleged that the CIA had "been fully involved" in the coup. Ayub declared Pakistan to be Washington's "most allied ally," and explained his takeover by claiming that "Democracy cannot work in a hot climate." Ayub allowed the U.S. to use Pakistani air bases for the CIA's U-2 spy flights over the Soviet Union. The U.S. also controlled a signals intelligence facility near Peshawar which monitored Soviet military activity.

Such servility prompted John Foster Dulles, the U.S. Secretary of State (during the 1950s), to call Pakistan "a bulwark of freedom in Asia." As Milton Bearden, a former CIA station chief in Pakistan, recently put it, "[Pakistan is] the only country in South Asia that always did what we asked."

The Pakistan government's terrorism has mainly been perpetrated against its own people, with the U.S.-armed and trained military unleashing genocidal wars on all those who dared oppose its dictatorship. With U.S. arms, training, military aid, and encouragement, the Pakistan army butchered half a million to three million Bengalis in 1971 when their popular, elected, left-wing leadership had the temerity to demand provincial autonomy.

U.S. officials reacted to this slaughter by thanking General Yahya Khan, the Pakistani military dictator, for his "delicacy and tact." As one eye witness described it, the army in East Pakistan was "like a pack of wild dogs," killing "on a scale not seen since the Third Reich." One thousand intellectuals were murdered in a single day at Dhaka University alone. "Women were raped or had their breasts torn out with specially fashioned knives," one journalist (who fled) reported.

"Children did not escape the horror: the lucky ones were killed with their parents; but many thousands of others must go through what life remains for them with eyes gouged out and limbs roughly amputated."

Losing East Pakistan (which constituted half the country) did not prevent the army from attacking another province only two years later. In 1973, four Pakistan army divisions assaulted Baluch tribal communities in the province of Baluchistan, wiping out "mountain villages and nomad caravans." Like the Bengalis, the Baluchi political leadership was elected, popular, leftwing, and also wanted autonomy.

Mirage fighter-bombers and U.S. Cobra helicopter gunships pummeled unarmed Baluch civilians for five years. Of the 5,000 Baluch men, women and children captured by the army in 1977, 95% were "brutally tortured." As one account put it: "Apart from the standard practice of severe beatings, limbs are broken or cut off; eyes gouged out; electric shocks are applied, especially to the genitals; beards and hair are torn out; fingernails ripped; water and food are withheld."

The Pakistan army has provided Washington with an instrument for crushing or hindering progressive social movements, not just inside Pakistan, but also in South Asia. India's nonalignment and the good relations of both India and Afghanistan with the Soviet Union were anathema to Washington, which deployed Pakistan against both countries.

When a left-wing government came to power in Afghanistan in 1978, the U.S. decided to overthrow it, using Pakistan as a conduit. The New York Times described the main objectives of this government as being the implementation of land reform and the expansion of education for women. Afghan Islamic fundamentalist groups (known as Mujahideen) in exile in Pakistan were covertly armed by the CIA and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and sent into Afghanistan.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Adviser in the Carter administration, knew that this policy would, as he put it, "induce a Soviet intervention in Afghanistan." Brzezinski stated in a recent interview: "That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap." Once the Soviets invaded in December 1979, the U.S. poured $6 billion in military aid to the Mujahideen through Pakistan. The ensuing war destroyed Afghanistan, ending all hope of progressive reforms.

With the withdrawal of the Soviets in 1989, Afghanistan became a centre for U.S. and Pakistani backed international terrorism. Islamist fighters trained there poured into Central Asia and India, aiming to create a pan-Islamic state stretching from Kashmir to Kazakhstan. The Taliban was a CIA-ISI creation as well, and its relations with Washington only soured when the two failed to reach an accord on sharing the oil riches of Central Asia.

According to Prof. Michel Chossudovsky at the University of Ottawa, "Since the Soviet-Afghan war, recruiting Mujahedin to fight covert wars on Washington's behest has become an integral part of U.S. foreign policy. A 1997 document of the U.S. Congress reveals how the Clinton administration had "helped turn Bosnia into a militant Islamic base," leading to the recruitment through the so-called "Militant Islamic Network" of thousands of Mujahedin from the Muslim world. "The 'Bosnian pattern' has since been replicated in Kosovo, Southern Serbia and Macedonia."

India has long been the kind of Third World state that Washington detested. It had close relations with the Soviet Union, followed an independent foreign policy, opposed Western imperialist adventures, and created a significant public sector industrial base and a protected domestic economy which included two communist states (West Bengal and Kerala). The U.S. response has been to "bleed India" through Pak-istan's support for secessionist insurgencies in order to open up the Indian economy to American penetration.

In the 1980s, Pakistan trained and armed Sikh militants who fought for a separate homeland in Indian Punjab. Today, in the disputed state of Indian Kashmir, Pakistan has been "sponsoring terrorism" for more than a decade. Islamic militants trained and armed in Pakistan and Afghanistan have been fighting for Kashmir's integration with Pakistan, leading to about 60,000 deaths.

On October 1, 2001, these groups exploded a car bomb that killed 38 people (most of them civilians) near the state legislature building in Srinagar. On December 13, 2001, two Pakistan based terrorist groups attacked the Indian parliament in New Delhi. Fourteen people were killed, including five of the terrorists. India moved half a million troops to its border with Pakistan and the two armies--both possessing nuclear weapons--still stand on the brink of war.

No doubt heavy-handed Indian policies have alienated Sikhs and Kashmiris, and India is guilty of massive human rights violations in Kashmir; but, as The New York Times put it, "Since 1994, the role of native Kashmiris in the insurgency has diminished as heavily-armed outsiders from Pakistan and Afghanistan have stepped up the violence."

These insurgencies have sapped India's ability to build its economic infrastucture. This, according to one observer, has "slowed the pace of growth and development, and precipitated demands for rapid privatization and reliance on foreign investment."

The rewards for being a U.S. terrorist arm in South Asia have been lucrative for the Pakistan military's officer corps. During the war against the Soviets, Afghanistan supplied 60% of the U.S.'s heroin. Pakistani generals "were deeply involved" in this drug trade, and three of them were counted amongst the twelve richest generals in the world.

The most prominent was General Fazle Haq, known as "Pakistan's Noriega." Haq was appointed governor of the Northwest Frontier Province (bordering Afghanistan) by General Ziaul Haq, Pakistan's military dictator during 1977-1988. As governor, Fazle Haq was in charge of Mujahideen military operations. He also protected the production of 200 heroin labs near the border. In 1982, Interpol identified Haq as "a key player in the Afghan-Pakistani opium trade."

Haq. who had $3 million in his bank account, was protected from drug investigations by Zia and the CIA. In 1993, Raoof Ali Khan, Pakistan's representative to the UN Commission on Narcotics, said that "there is no branch of government where drug corruption does not pervade." The CIA reported to the U.S. Congress in 1994 that heroin had become "the life-blood of the Pakistani economy and political system."

Drug trafficking is just one part of the Pakistani military's parasitism. The armed forces own an airline, sugar mills, chemical plants, a cereal factory, and several hospitals. Officers and their families are supplied with free servants, education, and medical care, and the best real estate in large cities is reserved for them.

The price for their country's being a U.S. terrorist base has been paid by the Pakistani people, who for 55 years have been massacred, tortured, denied education (the illiteracy rate in Pakistan is 90%), medical care, housing, adequate nutrition, and political rights. Pakistan ranks near the bottom of the UN's list of countries by every measure of human development, including infant mortality, life expectancy, the poverty rate, and the population growth rate.

With India and Pakistan almost perpetually on the brink of nuclear war, continued subservience by Pakistan to U.S. dictates exposes its oppressed people to total eradication.


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Asad Ismi is a research associate at the Centre for Social Justice in Toronto. This article was published in The CCPA Monitor, June 2002

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives