The coming break up of Pakistan

And there we were anno 2004 or thereabouts, waking up and finding ourselves right in the middle of the "War on Terror". Twenty years down the road from 1984 and now the more perceptive of us know how Winston Smith must have felt. Will we, "the more perceptive of us", members of the "outer party", be sharing his fate?

2+2 is not 5 and it never will be but as the news of thirteen dead in Pakistan because of an American drone provides part of the ticker that moves across the bottom of the television screen that accompanies CNN's 24/7 news, we might still ask, who are the thirteen dead? However, for that a modicum of research might be required or at least a more detailed bottom up approach to a mainstream media where the style and content is dictated by an overdose of reported speech that refers to non-descript American officials; "according to one American official ..... ", "another American official said .......", "a spokesman for the US military contended .....", "U.S. officials rarely discuss the missile strikes but say they have taken out several top al-Qaeda operatives."

It is out in the open, these are not covert operations and the "War on Terror" is being pursued by American forces in Pakistan and what about the more perceptive of us when it comes to asking the right questions? What are those questions? Well, the who is dying is important, of course, but what about the why?

There was a report in the 'Independent' two months ago that might provide part of the answer to that question; Andrew Buncombe and Omar Waraich wrote: "Pakistan's military has angrily insisted that its nuclear weapons arsenal is safely protected and denounced claims that it is secretly negotiating with the United States to allow teams of American specialists to provide added security in the event of a crisis." "In the event of a crisis"? Well, Washington itself is providing the crisis and while seizing Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is in itself no small goal, it might be added that the geopolitical goals of this "made in America" crisis, are more important. Yes, even if Pakistan did not have nuclear weapons, the "good old US of A" would be there.

The weakening or even collapse of Pakistan will provide Washington with a badly needed battlefield and the "War on Terror", like most wars, needs to expand or it collapses. However, just as Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is not the main reason for the war there, so too does the need to expand the war fail to provide the complete "raison d'etre". For that we will have to look further and in doing so we might indeed discover that the break up of Pakistan is being pursued;  a break up that will lead to the northern part of the country being incorporated into Afghanistan and the south west of the country being annexed to a Baluchistan that will provide a buffer to Iran. Moreover, should this happen Washington and its allies would be moving a step closer to achieving those geopolitical goals that will indeed make them masters of the world;  Chinese access to energy resources would be restricted and the region's resources would be channeled towards Israel, the Mediterranean and Europe.