10,000 Chinese troops in Gilgit-Baltistan

NEW YORK: Well known South Asia specialist and writer Selig Harrison, who has a long been a critic of Pak policy, has made a startling disclosure in his latest article in the New York Times, which has almost gone unnoticed in Pakistan. He says Pakistan has decided to hand over Gilgit-Baltistan to China and up to 10,000 troops of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army have moved into the area.The article, published on Aug 26 in the opinion pages of the NYT, says a quiet geopolitical crisis is unfolding in the Himalayan borderlands of northern Pakistan, where Islamabad is handing over de facto control of the strategic Gilgit-Baltistan region in the northwest corner of disputed Kashmir to China.Selig Harrison, who is director of the Asia Programme at the Center for International Policy and a former South Asia bureau chief of The Washington Post, writes under the title China’s Discreet Hold on Pakistan’s Northern Borderlands: “While the world focuses on the flood-ravaged Indus River valley, a quiet geopolitical crisis is unfolding in the Himalayan borderlands of northern Pakistan, where Islamabad is handing over de facto control of the strategic Gilgit-Baltistan region in the northwest corner of disputed Kashmir to China. “The entire Pakistan-occupied western portion of Kashmir stretching from Gilgit in the north to Azad (Free) Kashmir in the south is closed to the world, in contrast to the media access that India permits in the eastern part, where it is combating a Pakistan-backed insurgency. But reports from a variety of foreign intelligence sources, Pakistani journalists and Pakistani human rights workers reveal two important new developments in Gilgit-Baltistan: a simmering rebellion against Pakistani rule and the influx of an estimated 7,000 to 11,000 soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army. “China wants a grip on the region to assure unfettered road and rail access to the Gulf through Pakistan. It takes 16 to 25 days for Chinese oil tankers to reach the Gulf. When high-speed rail and road links through Gilgit and Baltistan are completed, China will be able to transport cargo from Eastern China to the new Chinese-built Pakistani naval bases at Gwadar, Pasni and Ormara, just east of the Gulf, within 48 hours.

“Many of the P.L.A. soldiers entering Gilgit-Baltistan are expected to work on the railroad. Some are extending the Karakoram Highway, built to link China’s Sinkiang Province with Pakistan. Others are working on dams, expressways and other projects. Mystery surrounds the construction of 22 tunnels in secret locations where Pakistanis are barred. Tunnels would be necessary for a projected gas pipeline from Iran to China that would cross the Himalayas through Gilgit. But they could also be used for missile storage sites. “Until recently, the P.L.A. construction crews lived in temporary encampments and went home after completing their assignments. Now they are building big residential enclaves clearly designed for a long-term presence. “What is happening in the region matters to Washington for two reasons. Coupled with its support for the Taliban, Islamabad’s collusion in facilitating China’s access to the Gulf makes clear that Pakistan is not a US ally. Equally important, the nascent revolt in the Gilgit-Baltistan region is a reminder that Kashmiri demands for autonomy on both sides of the ceasefire line would have to be addressed in a settlement. “Media attention has exposed the repression of the insurgency in the Indian-ruled Kashmir Valley. But if reporters could get into the Gilgit-Baltistan region and Azad Kashmir, they would find widespread, brutally suppressed local movements for democratic rights and regional autonomy. “When the British partitioned South Asia in 1947, the Maharajah who ruled Kashmir, including Gilgit and Baltistan, acceded to India. This set off intermittent conflict that ended with Indian control of the Kashmir Valley, the establishment of Pakistan-sponsored Free Kashmir in western Kashmir, and Pakistan’s occupation of Gilgit and Baltistan, where Sunni Jihadi groups allied with the Pakistan Army have systematically terrorized the local Shiite Muslims. “Gilgit and Baltistan are in effect under military rule. Democratic activists there want a legislature and other institutions without restrictions like the ones imposed on Free Kashmir, where the elected legislature controls only 4 out of 56 subjects covered in the state constitution. The rest are under the jurisdiction of Kashmir Council appointed by the president of Pakistan. “India gives more power to the state government in Srinagar; elections there are widely regarded as fair, and open discussion of demands for autonomy is permitted. But the Pakistan-abetted insurgency in the Kashmir Valley has added to tensions between Indian occupation forces and an assertive population seeking greater local autonomy. “The United States is uniquely situated to play a moderating role in Kashmir, given its growing economic and military ties with India and Pakistan’s aid dependence on Washington. Such a role should be limited to quiet diplomacy. Washington should press New Delhi to resume autonomy negotiations with Kashmiri separatists. Success would put pressure on Islamabad for comparable concessions in Free Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. In Pakistan, Washington should focus on getting Islamabad to stop aiding the insurgency in the Kashmir Valley and to give New Delhi a formal commitment that it will not annex Gilgit and Baltistan. “Precisely because the Gilgit-Baltistan region is so important to China, the United States, India and Pakistan should work together to make sure that it is not overwhelmed, like Tibet, by the Chinese behemoth.”

http://www.thenews.com.pk/31-08-2010/Top-Story/267.htm

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mashriq news (if not clear download it 4 zooming)

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Terry Glavin: Telling lies about Aisha

Among the many defining features that unite the left and the right wings of reactionary isolationism in the rich countries of the world, abject moral squalor is perhaps the most noticeable and repulsive. It thrives by a cunning parasitism that requires of its ruling-class host only an acquiescence to its self-flattery as “the anti-war movement.” All it requires of the rest of us is to be complicit in the lie.
In this way, moral leprosy has metastasized, and like so many undead zombies, “anti-war activists” require nothing but their own pathological solipsism to survive, and only a steady feed-supply of lies and deceptions to corrupt every debate about Afghanistan they choose to infect. Nowhere is this degeneracy more painfully evident than in the way the gangrene has spread throughout the public debates about the young Afghan woman Bibi Aisha, whose beautiful, disfigured face ended up on the cover of Time magazine a few days ago.
Remember that it is in the context of the prevailing “troops-out” sentiment now so deeply embedded in the Western establishment, along with the delusion of an “exit strategy” based on negotiations with the Taliban, that the Time controversy erupted. That is why the zombies do not want you to see Aisha’s face. But Aisha knew what she was doing, and why: “They are the people that did this to me,” she says, touching her damaged face. “How can we reconcile with them?”
For her trouble, Aisha has now suffered the further indignity of having the most vicious calumny heaped upon her dignity and her bravery. The”anti-war” line is that she is a dirty liar. Aisha now stands accused of deliberately prostituting herself for war propaganda in exchange for reconstructive surgery, even though her accusers know full well that Aisha’s surgery treatments in America were secured long before her face appeared on Time‘s cover.
The zombies have also slandered Aryn Baker, the respected Time correspondent who wrote the story. They have called Baker a secret propaganda stooge for the U.S. military, they say she wrote the story about Aisha for the purpose of “bolstering the case for war,” and they have even stooped to lying about Baker’s Afghan husband, calling him a war profiteer. And they have sneered at Time magazine’s unequivocal response: “Aryn Baker’s husband has no connection to the U.S. military, has never solicited business from them and has no financial stake in the U.S. presence in Afghanistan whatsoever.”
They have “problematized” the debate with a barrage of postmodernist psychobabble about “the other” and “objectifying” Aisha to “reify” imperialist fanatasies. They have said the whole thing is a CIA plot. They have claimed occult and personal prior knowledge of what Aisha’s story is “really” about, when in fact Aisha’s story appeared on American national television, twice, months before her face even appeared on the cover of Time magazine, here and here.
One lie after another. One filthy slander after another. One deception after another. Why?
This is why the zombies don’t want you to see Aisha’s face: “That is exactly what will happen,” said Manizha Naderi, referring to Aisha and cases like hers. An Afghan-American whose group Women for Afghan Women runs the shelter where Aisha stayed, Ms. Naderi said, “People need to see this and know what the cost will be to abandon this country.”
This why the “anti-war movement” tells such hysterical lies: Their troops-out politics, which have now so deeply poisoned establishment politics in Europe, Canada and the United States, run in precisely the opposite direction to what Afghan women want. Says WAW board member Esther Hyneman, a strong and tireless feminist I recently had the honour of meeting in Kabul: “Every woman who we have talked to in Afghanistan, all the Afghan women in the NGOs, in the government, say the United States and the peacekeeping troops and NATO must stay, they must not leave until the Afghan army is able to take over.”
There is no plot. There is no secret agenda. And there is no moral difference between the “anti-war” lies you hear circulating about Aisha among Western elites and the lies the Kabuli elites tell when they say Afghan women’s shelters are merely whorehouses.
Reactionary scum are reactionary scum, the world round.

Journalist, author and blogger Terry Glavin is an adjunct professor of creative writing at the University of British Columbia and editor of Transmontanus Books. He was awarded the 2009 B.C. Lieutenant-Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence.

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