Pakistan Supreme Court Chief Justice, Ata Bandial was not lagging in his bias. While Shahbaz Sharif and Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari were invited to address the Court, the main party, Imran Khan was not. “Bandial even expressed appreciation for Bilawal’s smile!
The courts bear a blatant bias in favour of Khan’s opponents. For instance, the former Supreme Court Chief Justice Saqib Nisar, dismissing the Rs 8.3 billion fake bank accounts charges against Bilawal on Jan. 7, 2019, had referred to him as “innocent Bilawal” who had come to Pakistan to continue his mother’s (Benazir) legacy. He also questioned, “Was Bilawal’s name added to the list to defame him?”
On Dec. 15, 2021, Justice Athar Minallah absolved Asif Zardari in the reference against his Manhattan property purchased through fake bank account transactions.
Talking of corruption in Pakistan, one can never overlook what Fairfax County (Virginia) Attorney Robert F. Horan Jr., who was prosecuting the capital murder case of Mir Aimal Kansi, told WTTG-TV (Channel 5) on June 23 that the U.S. had offered about $2 million reward for Aimal Kansi’s capture after he fled to Pakistan. Kansi was accused of killing two and wounding three others outside the CIA Langley Headquarters in 1993.
“I am not sure a quarter of a million [dollars] wouldn’t have done the same thing because it is in a very rural, backward area of western Pakistan and southern Afghanistan,” Attorney Horan said during the broadcast. “I am sure there are people over there who would turn in their mother for $20,000, let alone $2 million.”
In the first quarter of 2022, a handful of Pakistani is sold their motherland for a pittance.
The Malleable and Ductile are Worth More
The Russian oligarchs who arose in the aftermath of the firesale of the erstwhile Soviet Union’s assets, were enthusiastically welcomed in the U.S., U.K., and Europe. Their ill-gotten billions were fed into expensive estates, businesses, and assets like oversized luxurious yachts. And what happened in a flash after the Russian-Ukraine war started, they became pariahs and had the assets were frozen.
Pakistani politicians, apart from Imran Khan, have sizeable assets overseas, especially in the U.S. and U.K., besides offshore account holdings. For instance, besides his many reported holdings, Asif Zardari has a 16th century palace in Normandy, France, a multimillion-dollar Manhattan property, and horse farms in Florida. The Sharif families are heavily invested in London real estate and offshore accounts.
The oligarchs’ example in sight, none of them would dare challenge a diktat from countries where their investments lie.
Published accounts indicate both Asif Zardari and Benazir Bhutto were compromised.
The New York Times’ Elisabeth Bumiller wrote Peter W. Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador and her long time friend from her Harvard days, said to dispel any fears in her being unfriendly to Americans. They “… spent a lot of time talking about what messages she needed to convey.” He added, “She was this completely charming, beautiful woman who could flatter the senators, and who could read their political concerns, who could persuade them that she would much better serve American interests in Afghanistan than [Gen.] Zia.”
Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistan ambassador, and adviser to Benazir and a professor of international relations at Boston University, told Bumiller that Benazir’s Washington network helped her become prime minister, particularly in the face of Pakistan’s powerful army and intelligence service. (“How Bhutto Won Washington”, Dec. 30, 2007)
Of course, she continued garnering influence in Washington, D.C. Bumiller reported, “For the first six months of 2007, the firm Burson-Marsteller took in fees of close to $250,000 for work on behalf of Ms. Bhutto.” This is equivalent in purchasing power to about $347,000 today. The U.S. dollar then was Rs 61, which was in Pakistani rupees, Rs.15,250,000.
One can only wonder about the source of this money. Zardari is not reputed as one to part with such money. There could be investors who banked this much on her grabbing power.
David Morrison (www.david-morrison.org.uk), who since 9/11, has produced a plethora of articles and pamphlets on Western interference in the Muslim world, wrote, “… she succeeded in convincing Washington that she would serve U.S. interests just as well as Zia ul-Haq, in particular, that she would do nothing to disturb the existing arrangements for assisting the mujahedeen against the Soviet rule in Afghanistan.”
Morrison concludes, “The history of Benazir Bhutto’s tenure of office is that she never went against US interest – which is presumably why Washington felt able to support her return to office for a third time”(“Benazir Bhutto: A friend of Washington”, Labour & Trade Union Review, 5 January 2008).
PPP delivers to American wishes. Diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks reveal that in a cable sent in August 2008, the then U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, wrote Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani brushed aside [then interior minister] Rehman Malik’s suggestion of slightly delaying the drone attacks, saying, “I don’t care if they do it as long as they get the right people. We’ll protest in the National Assembly and then ignore it.”
At a meeting in Islamabad in June 2009 attended by the then-U.S. National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones, President Asif Zardari “made repeated pleas for drones to be ‘put in Pakistan’s hands’ so that Pakistan would own the issue and drone attacks (including collateral damage) would not provoke anti-Americanism,” one cable says.
Bob Woodward (Obama’s Wars, 2010) writes when Zardari was notified that the CIA would be launching missile strikes from drones over his country’s sovereign territory, replied, “Kill the seniors. Collateral damage worries you Americans. It doesn’t worry me.”
Another Peterson cable quoted that Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman, the leader of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazal (JUI-F) professedly an admirer of the Afghan Taliban, lobbied her in 2007 to help him become prime minister.
In October 2015, Michelle Obama signed a $70 million ‘Let Girls Learn’ pledge with Maryam Nawaz, who had accompanied her parents, Nawaz and Kulsoom Sharif to the White House, to help educate 200,000 adolescent girls in Pakistan. In September 2017, Sindh High Court Justice Munib Akhtar heard civil rights campaigner Bisma Naureen’s petition against alleged misappropriation of this U.S. aid. The petitioner questioned Maryam’s authority to sign the pledge and run government affairs without holding any public office, and questioned where it had been used. Was that $70 million embezzled?
Nothing was heard about it ever after.
But $70 million is small change to buy a nuclear-armed country.
On record, the Sharifs, unlike Zardari, don’t own any American real estate, but they have British interests.
The U.S. and U.K. never differ in enforcing shared interests.
In his briefing, Asad Umar, PTI central secretary general and former federal minister for planning, told a group of journalists that the cipher message describes U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Donald Lu to be speaking on behalf of the U.S. government.
The last word is that it is not the buyer’s but entirely the seller’s fault to seek the price and fail their self and nation.
These facts cited here are not classified but freely available on the internet.
Low-cost Assets
Let us revisit Robert F. Horan’s cheap sales of mothers’ observation.
In practice, no governments run charities, and what appear such are there to subtly serve national interests – after all their taxpayers fund them to serve them.
The U.S. National Endowment for Democracy, known in Latin America as “National Endowment for Destabilization” for being a CIA regime change front organization, has and continues to grant fellowships to Pakistani journalists. The few that instantly come to mind are diehard critics of Imran Khan, such as Nadeem F. Paracha (Dawn), Raza Rumi (Ithaca College, New York State; Naya Daur TV), Marvi Sirmed (made professor of human rights journalism in Connecticut).
Murtaza Solangi (formerly Voice of America Radio/TV online; the prime minister YR Gilani and information minister, Sherry Rehman appointed him director general of Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation).
With the U.S. dollar pegged at over Rs. 200 and the British pound at Rs 269, private and official media like the BBC or Washington Post can easily afford to station their correspondents in Pakistan. However, contracting the work locally is a better buy. For instance, Asma Shirazi is a BBC columnist, while Hamid Mir writes for the Washington Post.
Bilawal, in his first ever job, as foreign minister, met U.S. Secretary of State Blinkin on May 18 to be told, that the U.S. shared desire for a strong and prosperous U.S.-Pakistani bilateral relationship. I look forward to expanding our cooperation on climate, trade and investment, and regional peace and security issues.
Regime change is a colonial Standard Operating Procedure. It happened in Pakistan. shortly after midnight, which was April 10. Someone tweeted, “Congratulations on successfully removing Pakistani Mosaddegh [the nationalist Iranian prime minister ousted by CIA]. We saw what it took. Great job. This will end well.”
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