Glad You Weren't Born In Pakistan?

Pick your poison

Forget for a moment that there's an on-going bloodbath in Pakistan's biggest city, Karachi, and that last week alone over 100 people were killed-- not in the tribal badlands but in the biggest city in the country. This weekend the news out of Pakistan began with two big stories: 1- a court ordered the seizure of former President Pervez Musharraf's assets for his involvement with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto; 2- the deaths of at least 2 dozen Pakistani troops in a cross-border raid by Afghan Taliban fighters. Each an immense story... and each nearly buried by a third... the killing of al-Qaida #2 operative, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, a Libyan who has been running al-Qaeda's day to day operations, we're told. Supposedly essential for the functioning of the terrorist operation, Al-Rahman was killed August 22 in the tribal area of Waziristan. Just thought I'd mention-- obviously for no particular reason-- that after Musharraf had Bhutto murdered, he blamed Baitullah Mehsud, the head of the Pakistani Taliban. They usually revel in claiming credit for that kind of think but Mehsud and the Taliban denied any involvement. Almost immediately-- and exactly 2 years ago-- he was killed in a US drone attack, "one of the most high-profile casualties of the covert American campaign targeting al-Qaeda and its allies in Pakistan's lawless tribal belt on the Afghan border."



Back to 2011, an anonymous CIA agent told A.P. that "al-Rahman's death will make it harder for Zawahiri to oversee what is considered an increasingly weakened organization."

"Zawahiri needed Atiyah's experience and connections to help manage al-Qaida," the official said.



Al-Rahman was killed Aug. 22 in the lawless Pakistani tribal region of Waziristan, according to a senior administration who also insisted on anonymity to discuss intelligence issues.



The official would not say how al-Rahman was killed. But his death came on the same day that a CIA drone strike was reported in Waziristan. Such strikes by unmanned aircraft are Washington's weapon of choice for killing terrorists in the mountainous, hard-to-reach area along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.



Rahman has been thought to be dead before. Last year, there were reports that Rahman was killed in a drone strike but neither senior U.S. administration officials nor al-Qaida ever confirmed them.



Al-Rahman, believed to be in his mid-30s, was a close confidant of bin Laden and once served as bin Laden's emissary to Iran.



Al-Rahman was allowed to move freely in and out of Iran as part of that arrangement and has been operating out of Waziristan for some time, officials have said.



Born in Libya, al-Rahman joined bin Laden as a teenager in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union.



After Navy SEALs killed bin Laden, they found evidence of al-Rahman's role as operational chief, U.S. officials have said.

I as many people believe that al-Rahman was killed as believe that Musharraf had Bhutto offed (It's been rep[orted widely in Pakistan that two senior police officers arrested for alleged dereliction of duty apparently told investigators that Musharraf himself had ordered the removal of a security detail on the day of her death.) And no one really knows whether al-Rahman was really killed by an American drone or not... but whether he was or he wasn't, a growing number of Pakistanis are sick and tired of American aid with CIA strings, aid that never seems to dribble down to society at large, but always winds up in the Swiss bank accounts of a small, corrupt elite-- and in the coffers of well-connected U.S. firms. The middle class here was very American-centric before 9/11. It isn't any more.

"Failed States, 2011" -- No, Not Wisconsin, Ohio Or Florida (Yet)... The Ones Surrounding India

In some ways India and its neighborhood is about as different from the U.S. as you can possibly be. I've been writing about that since I first went there in 1969. But viewed from Kathmandu, Nepal-- where the tourist scene these days is almost all Indian and where the English-language TV channels are all Indian-- India is very much like the U.S.

Oh, not that India. The other one, the 21st-century one, the one that watches Glee, How I Met Your Mother, HBO and Indian TV shows that display a culture so disgustingly celebrity-oriented that it even puts our own to shame... well almost. I don't know what they call Madison Avenue in Mumbai, but God, do these guys ever run the show.

I just watched an episode of a popular show, India's Most Desirable. I don't recommend it... but go ahead:



India has (another) problem. It's surrounded by the world's most-failed states. True, Africa's worse. Somalia's No. 1. But Chad, Sudan, Nigeria, Congo, Zimbabwe, Central African Republic, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Niger, Burundi, Kenya, Guinea Bissau, even Ethiopia are right up there among the world's most vulnerable countries. However, none of those places are as much like our country as India is. And India's neighbors... no fewer than seven of them made the Top 50 of the most-failed states index:

#7 -- Afghanistan
#12 -- nuclear-armed Pakistan
#18 -- Myanmar
#25 -- Bangladesh
#27 -- Nepal
#29 -- Sri Lanka
#50 -- Bhutan

India doesn't have any other neighbors-- except Tibet, which isn't considered a country, but a region of China. But the occupation forces there apparently feel there's a problem. They just pulled all foreigners' visas for a month. I know. I was supposed to be there now.

On Pakistan, the report said, "Pakistan has long been dubbed the world's most dangerous country in Washington policy circles" and "yet Pakistan isn't just dangerous for the West-- it's often a danger to its own people."

On Bangladesh: "Two of five Bangladeshis live under the poverty line. Any improvements will also be fighting the environmental clock. If sea levels rise just by 1 metre, scientists warn, 17 per cent of the country could be submerged."

On Nepal: "Nepal is the poorest country in South Asia, according to the United Nations, and that's unlikely to change until the peace process is implemented and security restored. There are signs that the Maoists may be losing patience-- and thinking about going back to the trenches to fight for more."

On Sri Lanka: "The government's final push against the rebels relied on the shelling of civilians and other atrocities, according to a 2010 report by the International Crisis Group. . . . The most recent statistics from last year indicate that some 327,000 are still displaced from the conflict. . . . Despite the pronounced fractures still lingering, the Sinhalese-dominated government in Colombo seems eager to forget the past."