Balochistan on the chopping block

BALOCHISTAN.

Here is Part 4 of the Final Solution Frenzy, via There Are No Sunglasses.

(Parts one through three here.)

There are three main pillars of the ‘Final Solution’: 1. Cut the western half of Balochistan from the rest of Pakistan and declare it ‘international strategic corridor’; 2. Topple the sitting government in Iran; and 3. Create an Ismaili state, joining the Gorno-Badakhshan oblast of Tajikistan, Badakhshan province of Afghanistan, and Gilgit-Baltistan province of Pakistan.

Balochistan, from Balochistan is the ultimate prize, by Pepe Escobar, May 2009

The Times Square bomb suspect has been arrested, a US citizen born in Pakistan. I think this Reuters headline gives it away:

New York bomb puts Pakistan in spotlight (HINT HINT HINT)

Any links between Pakistan's Taliban and a failed bombing in New York's Times Square could put the country under renewed U.S. pressure to open risky new fronts against Islamic militants.

ANY links. The bar is pretty low to apply pressure to open "risky new fronts against Islamic militants."

How convenient is that? I think it might be really exceedingly convenient.
 
According to the Final Solution report, part four, the US would like to create an "international corridor" from the far west coast of Balochistan, near the Iranian border, and running north to the border of Afghanistan, to  Helmand and Kandahar provinces.

The DoD-CIA and their embedded journalists painstakingly spun a tale that Helmand was a stronghold of Taliban. That was their justification for Operation Moshtarak. In fact, half of Helmand was already in the hands of the US forces. The other half, sparingly populated, was not important for the ongoing operations in Afghanistan. As the operation Moshtarak unfolded, we were in touch with our sources in Helmand. We know from first-hand accounts that:

1. The operation was conducted mainly by the US forces although the reporting gave the impression that the NATO was equally in the forefront.
2. One of the main reasons given for the operation was that Taliban were benefiting from poppy crops and they must be denied this source of income. We know for sure that not a single poppy bulb was destroyed during the operation.
3. The village elders that were shown meeting the US force commanders were the middlemen for poppy, and the Americans fully knew it.
4. We are still in touch with our Helmand sources and we know that the Americans don’t dare go far beyond their camps.
5. Roughly five percent of the US forces were busy in keeping an eye on the newly trained Afghan police because the policemen had the tendency to desert and join the enemy whenever they found a chance.

After the mock operation in Helmand, the US forces are now planning a bigger offensive in Kandahar, an area that is billed ad nauseam as the spiritual capital of the Taliban. Based solely on the media hype and DoD-CIA statements, one gets the impression that not even a mosquito can fly in Kandahar without the consent of Taliban. The actual fact is that the Kandahar airport is the busiest single-runway airport in the world. More than 700 American and NATO flights land or take off every day at Kandahar airfield. Had Taliban been in control of the whole of Kandahar, it would not have been possible for so many American and NATO warplanes to land and take off in that province. Also, there are two American bases in Kandahar. Therefore, the impression that Helmand and Kandahar were, or are, out of bounds for Americans and NATO is based on manufactured ‘truth.’

And a bit further on:

“The pincer must have two jaws,” said Simon. He explained, “The US Navy would be in a position after July 2010 to station some landing ships, probably four, near the territorial waters of Pakistan. They would be able to land and support more than 30000 troops, complete with transport units and fighting gear, anywhere at the Pakistan coastline between Pasni and Gawadar. There would be aircraft carriers with more than enough warplanes to overwhelm the Pakistan Airforce. This is the other jaw of the pincer.”

And how would the US justify creating such a corridor from the sovereign nation of Pakistan? Well, they just need some links, ANY links, to justify applying increased pressure to open those risky new fronts.

Simon in Washington added, “An international incident can easily be linked to Pakistan and that would be a good enough reason for invasion. It can be as big as assassination of Obama and as small as bombing of a refinery in the UK. In fact, the latest amendment to the NATO charter seems designed to add this kind of hair trigger in the NATO mechanism. Justification, in any case, is no big deal when you don’t really need to justify it to anyone.”

Look at that Reuters headline again.

If we start to hear that our man from Times Square, Faisal Shahzad, has been in a training camp in Balochistan...

So far all the action seems to be in the northern areas of Pakistan. But that could change at any time.

Meanwhile, in those same northern areas, organization:

ISLAMABAD: Is Turkey the new poppy Helmand of Europe? Is the question worrying many key diplomats in Islamabad who are aware of the ongoing probe into the seizure of a 13-container load of poppy seeds (called Khaskhash in Urdu), which had been cleared by the Customs and had already been loaded onto a waiting cargo ship? What has set the alarm bells ringing is the realisation that only a highly organised network could have collected almost 224,000 kg of the commodity from small and medium traders, then packed it marked as rice, and bribed its way through Customs to ship the entire lot to Turkey, where a region is said to offer excellent soil and environment for growing poppy, which provides opium and which, in turn, is the raw material for producing heroin.

Sources told The News that the Anti Narcotics Force was probing the chain of dealers involved in building the necessary supply chain and arrests were expected in the next few days. The bulk of the poppy seed shipment, sources told, came from Helmand, Afghanistan, and from within Pakistan from areas of the Malakand Division, Bajaur and Momand belt of Fata.

The seized shipment had been gotten cleared from the Customs by a Karachi-based Pakistani export firm, M/s Spark Enterprises, whereas the recipient company in Turkey was identified as M/s European Spice, the Directorate of Customs Intelligence (DCI), Islamabad, confirmed to The News.

An intelligence official said details of this cache came with a lot of other material that indicated how the DCI had lately been pushing for physical checking of consignments at different Customs stations like the Model Collectorate, Karachi, Dry Port, Peshawar, and the Customs Station, Torkham, on the Pak-Afghan border.

UPDATE: Also see Arthur Zbygniew: Quetta: tensions rise after assassinations of Punjabis. More reasons to do something about Balochistan...

Heading to and from work, or nipping to the shops, fear grips professional men and women in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, where a sharp increase in assassinations is being blamed on separatist rebels.

...The surge in violence threatens to torpedo the prospects of political reconciliation, warns Ali Dayan Hasan of Human Rights Watch. Targeted killings and disappearances underscore "political breakdown" in Baluchistan with assassinations an "instrument of political warfare," he said. "It is placing large sections of the non-Baluch population in a state of anxiety and fear and will lead to greater instability and violence in the province," he told AFP.

"It is a rebellion against the Pakistani state but it has regional and international strategic and security implications, and there are many countries that stand to be affected or benefit from development in Baluchistan."

The Chinese have economic investments in the province. Baluchistan shares an extensive border with Iran, which is in turn keen that Pakistan does not become a staging ground for unrest among Iranian Baluch.

Militants crossing to and from Afghanistan also give Kabul and the United States a stake as they wage a nine-year war against the Afghan Taliban. The militia's one-eyed leader, Mullah Omar, is reported to have carved out a haven in Quetta and its leadership council has been dubbed the Quetta Shura.

The Pakistani military fears that intensifying US-led operations against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan this summer will see militants flee across the border into Baluchistan, posing further problems to law and order.