October 14, 2006	Saturday	Ramazan 20, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, Oct 13: Intellectuals, politicians and citizens here on Friday stressed that only a broad-based people’s movement could force the military out of power as it would never relinquish it voluntarily.

People’s Rights Movement (PRM) had organised a special seminar on ‘Jashn-i-Aamriat: Seven Years On’ here at the South Asia Free Media Association (Safma) to condemn seven years of military rule.

“The US does not need the colour of the cat whether it is white or black. It needs a cat which can catch mice and the Pakistani military is just doing the same job in Waziristan,” replied renowned scholar-activist Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy when asked as to why the US backed military dictatorships in Pakistan.

In 1997, he said, a US army colonel presented a paper on the “Project for the New American Century” which determined a new American role in the world after the fall of the USSR.

The paper, which was also available at the US Heritage Foundation, stated that the US culture was supreme and that the time had come to implement it in the rest of the world through military might in order to get richer.

For this, the US army could kill a “fair amount” of people worldwide.

After 9/11, the Bush administration just found a basis for making the American Century a reality. The US foreign policy could be judged from the Pentagon mindset where Col Peter, the head of the Office for Future Wars who presented the project paper, was of the view that the US culture was increasingly becoming powerful and must be implemented in the rest of the world to teach them the style of how to live and make the Americans further richer. For this, they have to kill a good number of people.

Dr Hoodbhoy said the military had persistently supported American geo-strategic interests in the region, not unlike a mercenary army, and it was clearly accountable to the US rather than its own people.

He said Gen Musharraf had reneged on virtually all commitments he made to the Pakistani nation and his foreign policy was still based on jingoistic nationalism rather than a principled independence which was what the Pakistani people demanded.

Security analyst Dr Ayesha Siddiqa said the military had grown into the country’s biggest corporate empire with interests in virtually every sector of the economy.

The empire had been built over the last few decades, starting with Ayub Khan’s rule, and the military required political power to protect its economic interests, she added.

The Fauji Foundation and Army Welfare Trust were of the two biggest business conglomerates in the country while the military was also the country’s biggest landowner.

The practice of allotting land and other assets to military officers could be traced back to the colonial period but it had now reached an astonishing level of institutionalisation.

PPP Information Secretary Sherry Rehman said Gen Musharraf was now institutionalising military dictatorship without even caring for political parties, which in the past military dictators like Zia used for window dressing of democracy.

  Musharraf’s personal animus against the leadership of two of the largest political parties in the country had held the whole country hostage to a parliamentary and political stalemate, yet he continued along this destructive course by using accountability as a political tool and promoted himself abroad as a great champion of democratic reform, she said.

By doing so, Gen Musharraf had destroyed public interest in the democratic process and created a class of politicians who are above the law. His handpicked cabinet was clogged with ministers whose corruption files remained open in the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) as collateral for their ensured loyalty.

The change of three prime ministers in a period of four years had done even less for Musharraf’s reputation as an increasingly arbitrary and personalised military administrator.