OF all the rogues there is no question that Kim Jong-Il and his odious regime in North Korea are the furthest advanced in threatening the outside world with nuclear weapons.

Yet an honest administration in Washington has to ask itself how much the US has been responsible for bringing about this state of affairs, one that threatens to escalate fast with North Korea announcing in October it was enriching uranium to build a nuclear weapon and now last week in effect abrogating the landmark 1994 agreement.

The 1994 agreement avoided war, one that President Bill Clinton was convinced could lead to a nuclear attack on South Korean cities and American troops based in the South. In the circumstances it was an amazing deal, midwifed by former president, Jimmy Carter. The North agreed to close its plutonium-producing nuclear power plant, and seal up the cooling rods from which weapons-grade plutonium could be extracted.

In return, America with Japan and South Korea agreed to build two modern, non plutonium-producing nuclear power stations to be in production by 2003. Also the US agreed that it would end its economic embargo and help the North with fuel oil, food and electricity.

But the deal has been coming apart almost from the day it was signed. What happened the last two months is but the visible manifestation of a lot of less dangerous things that have been going wrong for years. And all along there have been warnings enough (from this columnist for one) that if these stumbling blocks weren’t put right we’d end up where we were in 1994, with the threat of nuclear war staring us in the face.

For few doubt, even those who are toughest on North Korea, that if it comes to a military conflict and North Korea feels it has everything to lose it will use the two nuclear weapons it already supposedly has.

It was this threat that persuaded the Republican hardliners in Congress during the days of the Clinton Administration to go along with the main elements of the deal, even as they provoked the North with their constant attempts to minimise the commitments the US had made to secure it.

There were a number of times when the fuel oil deliveries or the food supplies were slowed. There was the successful effort in Congress to break the promise of ending sanctions, delaying action on this until 1999 when they were finally but only partially lifted. There was the blockage on talking about ways to help the North with outside electricity supplies from the South to tide it over until the new reactors were built. Not least, there was the slowdown on the building of the new nuclear reactors, with the prospect of them being complete now 5 years behind schedule. It has become clear that they won’t be ready until 2008.

All of these setbacks have been reason enough in the North’s mind for ratcheting up the confrontations. Confrontation, they appeared to decide some time ago, is the only way to get results. Whether it is digging an enormous hole that convinced the Americans that the North was about to test nuclear triggers (wrongly as it turned out, after paying a huge sum for the US to be allowed to inspect it). Or test flying a long range rocket over Japan, which was what persuaded Congress to ease the economic embargo.

Still, the 1994 agreement limped along (and even looked as if it might be enlarged to include a restriction on missile sales) until George Bush came into office and made his “Axis of Evil” speech in which Iraq, Iran and North Korea were singled out. Even though the Bush administration did not move at first to discontinue the aid programme (the largest America has in Asia) or to stop work on the building of the two new reactors it did lean on South Korea to slow down its so-called “Sunshine” policy of political reconciliation.

It also refused to talk about other sources of electricity supplies, prohibited its ally, South Korea, to honour a promise to send electricity North and refused all talk and consideration of a refurbishment of the Norths electricity grid despite the growing delays on the new reactors.

And it gave the impression that it was in such a confrontational mood of its own that it might well give up on further negotiations with the North.

Out of the window would go a new deal that Clinton believed he was close to settling, which would freeze deployment of missiles with a range of more than 500 kilometres (300 miles). And maybe out of the window would go the nuclear freeze deal itself that probably has stopped the North building 30 nuclear bombs a year the last few years.

It has come as no surprise to many Korea watchers that Pyongyang has decided to up the ante in the last two months. Over many years it has discovered that offence is the best defence in dealing with the US. Now it unsubtly says it needs to bring back into use its mothballed plutonium-producing power reactor to make up the shortfall in its energy needs. We are back to square one.— Copyright Jonathan Power

BY now, members of the thinking public in Sindh must have recovered from the initial shock inflicted by the news of the establishment’s latest victory in its scheme of sabotaging the verdict of the voters. The last rites over the fate of the party that obtained the highest number of seats in Sindh and polled the largest number of votes in the country, have been performed. The red, green and black flag is now tilted at a rakish angle. And it is only the will power of a few party stalwarts that is keeping the banner from completely falling down.

The election of Ali Mohammed Mahar as chief minister of the province has demonstrated, loud and clear, the triumph of intrigue over the will of the people. One does not have to be a supporter of the PPP to say so. In fact, there is a number of things about the party that one finds distasteful. But on this issue, one can be hundred per cent behind Nisar Ahmed Khuhro. From the moment this MPA from Larkana tried to find his place in the sun, he had to face a cornucopia of schemers and manipulators, cloistered in wombs of the same sly mould, who, when they had used up all their trumps, eventually turned to the two jokers in the pack.

It was bad enough that the country’s largest party of turncoats did its level best to chip away at the PPP fortress with lucrative offers of ministries and other bribes. The involvement of the administration, with its flair for adding a new dimension to the commonplace, is unforgivable and militates against the norms of decency.

What on earth was the likeable and cultured governor of Sindh trying to prove? That in spite of all the rumours that he had outlived his usefulness, he was still the chief scout in the province? By his unconstitutional act, he has shown that he is no different from the usual lot of intriguers and manipulators who make and unmake governments at will.

In the system operating in Pakistan, which has been variously described as a democracy, a controlled democracy and a ‘genuine’ democracy, the governor does not have the right to overrule the speaker of the house. He had no business to extend the time for receiving nominations for the post of speaker and deputy speaker of the house, beyond the time fixed by former speaker Jalal Shah. By 12 noon on that fateful Friday, as per the announced schedule, only one nomination paper had been received by the assembly secretary — that of Abdul Rahman Rajput of the MMA, who was obviously not the kind of person the establishment wanted to see doing his bit for the King’s party and country. There have already been two references filed in the Sindh High Court against this action of the governor.

Shekhar Gupta, editor of the Indian Express, when addressing a thousand guests who had bivouacked in a local Karachi hotel to hear Arundhati Roy speak on the BJP’s complicity in the Gujrat massacre and India’s nuclear threat, described India as an imperfect democracy and Pakistan as an imperfect dictatorship. One has not heard his views after October 10. But to be sure he would still describe Pakistan as an imperfect dictatorship.

Recent developments suggest that Mahar is going to have a fairly bumpy ride. He has already struck a couple of hidden reefs in the demands of his coalition partners who have been assured of fifty per cent of the ministries. Apparently the wire pullers in Islamabad are not at all happy with the MQM’s nominee governor. They are also very reluctant to part with the home and local government ministries. After all, a chief minister who cannot manipulate the police and magistrates will be ineffective.

The control of the home ministry was always the resolve of Altaf Hussain in the early 1990s, which was the heyday of the MQM. This writer remembers speaking to him shortly after that mammoth meeting in Liaquatabad, attended by Nawaz Sharif and Jam Sadiq Ali. A million-strong audience of devotees was stunned to silence when their leader counted to three on the public address system. The effect was electric. Even the coughers and the wheezers in the second row held their breath.

This somewhat theatrical scene was conducted to demonstrate the incredible discipline that existed in the party at the time and also to psyche both the prime minister and the chief minister of Sindh It certainly worked. Prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who was always generous with the people’s money, immediately sanctioned millions of rupees for the development of the Karachi, which, of course, never materialized. And the lion of Sindh, Jam Sadiq Ali, realized in that brief moment, that eventually the MQM would become his implacable foe.

Altaf Hussain told me in a meeting in Azizabad that he was keen that Sindh should have a police force made up of Sindhis and Mohajirs, and that the federal police force should be sent packing, back to where they came from. But this was something that the government would never agree to. It was around this time that he came under the spell of the sage of Sann, G.M. Syed, who has been referred to by the writer M.S. Korejo, as the godfather of the MQM.

This accounts for the interesting alignment that took place a couple of years ago between the Jeay Sindh movement and the MQM, between “the sons of the soil” and the people Benazir Bhutto referred to as “the settlers from India,” quite a few of whom occupy important positions in her party. If George Orwell could be exhumed and resuscitated, he would have probably said, “All refugees are settlers, but some are more settled than others.”

All this sounds exceedingly remote, as if it never happened. But surely the business about controlling the police was at the back of Mahar’s mind as he flew to Islamabad to consult the prime minister. Under Article 129(3) of the 1973 Constitution, the chief minister has to obtain a vote of confidence within 60 days of taking oath. If Mahar does not placate the MQM, what is there to stop them from once again cutting off the life support system to Prime Minister Jamali? The MQM has a lot to gain and little to lose.

Now a word about the prime minister. After Ayub Khan’s reign came to an end, Karachi could not be described as a peaceful city. But for the last three years the denizens of the city were at least spared the spectacle of traffic being held up to make the passage of a visiting dignitary smooth and safe. Now it seems the same old glass menagerie is going to be repeated.

On the day of the election of the chief minister of Sindh, Karachi police held up traffic for half an hour at two intersections to ensure safe passage to Mr Jamali’s limousine, which was stuck in the middle of twelve police mobiles, with a siren whooping demonically in the bowels of the lead motor-cycle. What a colossal waste of taxpayers’ petrol. Surely, Mr Jamali has heard of Mr Mahmoud Haroon who, when he was the governor of Sindh, drove his own car to the governor’s house, and dispensed with the single police vehicle which dutifully followed him. The people of Karachi would much rather Mr Jamali stayed in Islamabad, where people are used to this sort of thing, and contacted his flock the same way as Benazir Bhutto does — though the telephone. To start with, it is much cheaper and won’t irritate an already irritable public.

So far Mr Jamali does not appear to be unduly perturbed. Under Article 90(3) of the 1973 Constitution, he will have to obtain a vote of confidence from the National Assembly within sixty days of taking his oath. But he has gone on record as saying he does not really have to do this After all, hasn’t a precedent been already set by the former chief executive? The oath taken by members of the armed forces under Article 244 of the Third Schedule, contains the phrase “...that I will not engage myself in any political activity whatsoever...” The president has done precisely that. In not taking off his uniform and not getting constitutionally elected, he is making a mockery of the Articles.

In a few days newspapers will publish a supplement on the birth anniversary of the founder of the nation. And the president will probably address the people and say that the Quaid’s vision has at last been fulfilled. But before his script writer puts pen to paper, let him look up the speech of Mohammed Ali Jinnah when he addressed the officers of the Staff College in Quetta on June 14, 1948. It will give him a few valuable points on what the military is and what it is not supposed to do.

GETTING a private education in New York City is getting tougher. A recent series of e-mails from analyst Jack Grubman, who recommends what stocks to buy and what ones to sell, revealed he got his recommendations mixed up with trying to get his kids into the right preschool.

This may have been done by a lot of desperate Wall Street sharpshooters. I was just given the e-mails of stock market analyst Harry Thumbscrew, of Blarney and Moore Blarney, to Steven Bigpockets, the president of Gotcha National Bank.

To: Steven Bigpockets

From: Harry Thumbscrew

I’m going to put a sell order on Wrong Number Telephone Co.

To: Harry Thumbscrew

From: Steven Bigpockets:

Urgent. Don’t put a sell on Wrong Number. We are trying to get their Christmas savings account. Put a “buy” on it.

To: Steven Bigpockets

From: Harry Thumbscrew

I don’t have time. Have to go for an interview at the Barbie Pre-Nursery School for Upper Class Families.

To: Harry Thumbscrew

From: Bigpockets

I’ll get your kid into the kindergarten if you put a “buy” on Wrong Number and a “sell” on White Teeth Yellow Books. Their president blackballed me from the Cranberry Country Club. If it weren’t for him, I could eat in the members’ dining room.

To: Bigpockets

From: Thumbscrew

Will do what you wish. Any news on the Barbie School?

To: Thumbscrew

From: Bigpockets

I’ve put calls into the members of the board. In exchange for your Sonny being admitted, I promised them one million dollars to build a spa for the children.

From: Thumbscrew

To: Bigpockets

Great idea. They will be the only kindergarten in New York City with a spa.

One week later.

To: Harry Thumbscrew

From: Steven Bigpockets Having difficulty with Sonny’s application. There seems to be a problem with Teddy-bear hugging.

To: Bigpockets

From: Thumbscrew

Tell them Sonny will be taking remedial Teddy-bear hugging and should be able to pass it by opening day. Steve, you don’t know what it means for Sonny to get into the right pre-nursery school. It will affect his life forever. If he doesn’t get in and has to go to the public pre-nursery school, he will have to share his play dough with the lower class kids.

He would have to finger paint without supervision, and in the first grade he’d start stealing. Without private guidance in high school he would join a gang and steal tires after school.

From there, because I failed to get him into Barbie, Sonny would either wind up in crime or on Wall Street.

To: Harry

From: Steve

This is what I want you to do today. Put a buy on WorldCom and Imclone and hold Enron. Recommend our own stock because in two weeks we’re going to come out with a double-digit loss.

To: Bigpockets

From: Thumbscrew

What about Sonny?

To: Harry

From: Steve

He’s on the waiting list. There are only 400 kids ahead of him.—Dawn/Tribune Media Services

ON the frigid night of December 24, 1979, Soviet airborne forces seized Kabul airport. Elite Alpha Group commandos sped to the presidential palace, burst into the bedroom of Afghan President Hafizullah Amin and gunned him down. Columns of Soviet armour crossed the border and raced south towards Kabul.

It took Soviet forces only a few days to occupy Afghanistan. They installed a puppet ruler, Babrak Karmal. Moscow proclaimed it had invaded Afghanistan to “liberate” it from “feudalism and Islamic extremism,” and “nests of terrorists and bandits.”

Soviet propaganda churned out films of Red Army soldiers playing with children, building schools, dispensing medical care. Afghan women were to be liberated from the veil and other backward Islamic customs. The Soviet Union and its local communist allies would bring Afghanistan into the 20th century.

Two years later, Afghans had risen against their Soviet “liberators” and were waging a low-intensity guerilla war. Unable to control the countryside, Moscow poured more troops into Afghanistan. The Soviet-run Afghan army had poor morale and less fighting zeal. The KGB-run Afghan secret police, Khad, jailed and savagely tortured tens of thousands of “Islamic terrorists,” then called “freedom fighters” in the West.

Fast forward to December, 2002, and a disturbing sense of dij‘ vu. A new foreign army has easily occupied Afghanistan, overthrown ‘feudal’ Taliban and installed a puppet regime in Kabul. Western media churns out the same rosy, agitprop stories the Soviets did about liberating Afghanistan, freeing women, educating children. The only real difference is that kids in today’s TV clips are waving American instead of Soviet flags. Invaders have changed; the propaganda remains the same.

America’s invasion of Afghanistan in October, 2001, was billed as an epic military victory and the model of future imperial expeditions to pacify Third World malefactors. Since then, news about this war-ravaged land has grown scarce. America’s limited attention has turned elsewhere.

In fact, America’s Afghan adventure has gotten off to as poor a start as that of the Soviet Union. The US-installed ruler of Kabul, veteran CIA ‘asset’ Hamid Karzai, must be protected from his own people by up to 200 US bodyguards. Much of Afghanistan is in chaos, fought over by feuding warlords and drug barons.

There are almost daily attacks on US occupation forces. My old Mujahideen sources say US casualties and equipment losses in Afghanistan are far higher than Washington is reporting — and rising.

American troops are operating from the old Soviet bases at Bagram and Shindand, retaliating, like the Soviets, against Mujahideen attacks on US forces by heavily bombing nearby villages. CIA is trying to assassinate Afghan nationalist leaders opposed to the Karzai regime in Kabul, in particular my old acquaintance Gulbadin Hekmatyar.

Captured ‘terrorists’ are routinely tortured by Afghan security forces under America supervision. Last fall, US troops presided over the murder by Northern Alliance forces of some 3,000 captured Taliban soldiers, a major war crime at a time when the UN is trying Serb soldiers for similar grave offences.

North of the Hindukush mountains, America’s Afghan ally, the Tajik-Uzbek Northern Alliance, has long been a proxy of the Russians. The chief of the Russian general staff and head of intelligence directed the Alliance in its final attack on Taliban last fall. Russia then supplied Alliance forces with $100 million of arms, and is currently providing $85 million of helicopters, tanks, artillery, spare parts, as well as military advisers and technicians. Russia now dominates much of northern Afghanistan.

Taliban, according to the United Nations drug agency, had almost shut down opium-morphine-heroin production. America’s ally, the Northern Alliance, has revived the illicit trade. Since the US overthrew the Taliban, opium cultivation has soared from 185 tons a year to 2,700. The Northern Alliance, which dominates the Kabul regime, finances its arms buying and operations with drug money. President Bush’s war on drugs collided with his war on terrorism — and lost. The US is now colluding in the heroin trade.

Anti-American Afghan forces — Taliban, Al Qaeda, and others - have regrouped and are mounting ever larger attacks on US troops and, reports the UN, even re-opening training camps. Taliban Mujahideen are using the same sophisticated early alert system they developed to monitor Soviet forces in the 1980s to warn of American search and destroy missions before they leave base. As a result, US troops keep chasing shadows. Canadians fared no better. In the sole major battle since the Taliban’s overthrow, Operation Anaconda, US forces were bested by veteran Afghan Mujahideen, losing dozens of soldiers and two helicopters.

The on-going cost of Afghan operations is a closely guarded secret. Earlier this year, the cost of stationing 8,000 US troops, backed by warplanes and naval units, was estimated at five billion dollars monthly.

CIA spends millions every month to bribe Pakhtoon warlords. Costs will rise as the US expands bases in Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kyrghyzstan and Uzbekistan — all placed along the planned US owned pipeline that will bring Central Asian oil south through Afghanistan.

The UN reports the Taliban and Al Qaeda on the offensive, Afghan women remain veiled, and the country in a dangerous mess. Declaring victory in Afghanistan may have been premature. — Copyright: Eric S. Margolis - 2002