ThePoliticalCat

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Wednesday, January 16, 2008

World: Pakistan - The Beginning Of The End


Raw Story reports that "Islamic militants" overran Sararogha Fort in Pakistan, close to the Afghanistan border, killing seven soldiers. The military claims that, of troops in the fort, 20 are missing, while 15 managed to escape to another military outpost some 22 miles away.

Of course, the Pakistani military is famous for its assertions of success in the face of defeat. The veracity of the military and governmental spokesweasels is such that anyone betting money on them will be lucky to come home in a barrel, sans shoes, at that. The "Islamic militants," for example, could be resurgent Taliban. They could equally well be Balochs or Pathans in revolt against the hideous oppression that's been meted out to them for some three or four decades. Oppression that has intensified recently, as witnessed by clashes in Balochistan.

In a poignant quote, the reporter states about the military spokesweasel's announcements:
It was not immediately possible to verify the army's claim that 50 attackers died in the assault; in the past the rebels have given much lower figures for their own casualties.
With the recent expulsion of an American journalist, it appears other writers must be more circumspect than to outright call the various apparatchiki liars, as such.

Now Musharraf's spokesweasels announce that he is leaving soon on a trip:
... Pakistan's Foreign Ministry announced Musharraf will travel next week to Belgium, France, Switzerland and Britain to meet with European leaders and attend the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.
Meanwhile religious extremist and corrupt tinpot Nawaz Sharif waits in the wings. Sharif's primary claim to fame is that he made Pakistan a nuclear power. That should be real reassuring to the idiots in the West who schemed and plotted and pushed Benazir Bhutto into returning to Pakistan so she could be assassinated, even as they propped up their good friend and "gentleman" Pervez Musharraf to the tune of billions of dollars.

A pertinent quote about Sharif's relationship with Musharraf:
There was personal bad blood between General Musharraf and Mr Sharif, added Hussain. The President was angered that Mr Sharif once refused to allow his plane with 200 other passengers on board to land, until it was forced to make an emergency landing with five minutes of fuel left: while Mr Sharif resented General Musharraf for ousting him from power and throwing him into jail.
Will Musharraf suffer the same fate as other unpopular heads of state who have been deposed in absentia?

Pakistan's fractured condition is the definitive pronouncement on Bush's failures in foreign policy.

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