[A-List] Zalmay Khalilzad: Shadowy Point Man For Greater Middle East

["tony black" <tal@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: Rick Rozoff
To: Stop NATO
Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2006 11:39 AM
Subject: [stopnato] Zalmay Khalilzad: Shadowy Point Man For Greater Middle
East


http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=4&theme=&usrsess=1&id=104475


The Statesman (India)
January 29, 2006


Khalilzad: The man, his message
Jeremy Seabrook (New Vistas)


-He has spearheaded US policy in the region, not only
to ensure US oil-supplies, but equally importantly, to
control these in a way that will further enhance the
USA at the expense of its other potential rivals in
the world, especially Russia, China and Europe.
-Who knows what role these counsellors of
irresponsible power are now whispering into the ear of
George W Bush about the next adventure – Iran? Syria?
Whatever it is, it will probably also succeed in
bringing chaos out of disorder, hopelessness out of
uncertainty and catastrophe out of conflict.


One of the major players in the imposition by the USA
of the new order upon West Asia is an Afghan-born –
but US-born-again – functionary whose profile is lower
than it perhaps should be.

The ubiquitous but, for many, shadowy figure of Zalmay
Khalilzad played a major role in the establishment of
the Karzai regime in Afghanistan, and is now, as US
ambassador in Iraq, exercising a powerful influence
upon the make-up of the new government there.

Fearing the closeness to Iran of the Shia religious
parties (which have a majority in the new parliament),
he is seeking to keep the home ministry out of their
hands. The will of the Iraqi people is one thing;
adjusting this to the priorities of the stronger will
of the USA quite another.

There is no more hardline representative of the
ideology of US infallibility than Zalmay Khalilzad.

The most senior Muslim in the Bush administration, he
was a protégé of Cheney and Wolfowitz well before
George W Bush was elected in 2000.

He was a founder-member (the only non-US-born
individual) of the Project for the New American
Century, and signatory to the infamous letter to Bill
Clinton in January 1998, which urged the then
President to “enunciate a new strategy that would
secure the interests of the USA and our friends and
allies around the world. That strategy should aim,
above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime
from power…. Our ability to ensure that Saddam is not
producing weapons of mass destruction... has
substantially diminished…. It is difficult if not
impossible to monitor Iraq’s chemical and biological
weapons production”.

In other words, the scenario for the invasion of Iraq
was written well before Bush’s accession to power; and
all that remained was for the actors to carry out the
scenes of a drama posted in the wings of the theatre
of perpetual warfare.

9/11 ought to have directed the attention of those
concerned with the security of America towards the
malevolence and dangerous and subversive labours of
religious extremists, not to secular tyrants no matter
how disagreeable.

Instead, no effort was spared to conflate the two: the
fairly general ignorance of the American people as to
the distinction between fundamentalist dogmatists and
self-serving dictatorships was easily exploited by an
administration whose mind had already been made up
(with all that implies of both fabrication and
cosmetics) before the event, and merely required
creative evidence on which to base a pre-planned
conspiracy against the people of Iraq.

Khalilzad was the bridge across the divide between
dictatorship and religious extremism: more American
than the Americans, his was the authoritative voice of
the native, who refashioned Islam to the taste of his
adoptive country.

In his way, he also exhibited the zealotry of the
convert, since he had long become a fanatic adherent
to a US version of freedom that imprisons two million
of its own citizens, and leaves its poor to the
liberty of fending for themselves during one of the
worst natural calamities the country has seen.

The eagerness with which pampered migrants to the USA
embrace their status as Americans has at least one
severe drawback: it tempts the USA to believe that
everyone in the world secretly harbours a fervent
desire to mimic them.

Khalilzad, a Pashtun, first visited America as an
exchange school student. His father had been an
adviser to the last Afghan king, Zahir Shah. His
bachelor’s and MA degrees were obtained at the
American University in Beirut, and he studied for his
doctorate at the University of Chicago, where he came
into contact with Albert Wohlstetter, a mathematician
and significant mentor of Paul Wolfowitz, former
deputy defence secretary.

In the 1980s, he was a special adviser on the
Iran-Iraq war, and as director of the Friends of
Afghanistan, he provided material and financial
support to the mujahideen in their struggle against
the Soviet invasion.

He served on the National Security Council under both
Ronald Reagan and George Bush (senior). In 1992, he
was one of the first to voice the view that the USA
should prevent the rise of any rival to its power.

He underwent the corporate baptism apparently
indispensable to the high-fliers of US politics – he
had served the oil company Unocal during the Taliban
rule – when he discussed the feasibility of a pipeline
which would have gone from Turkmenistan through
Afghanistan to Pakistan.

He recommended engagement with the Taliban, who, he
said in 1996, did not entertain the same
fundamentalist anti-Americanism as the regime in Iran.


During the Clinton presidency, he worked as a
political scientist for the Rand Corporation, which
produces policy studies for the US military.

In 1998, when the Taliban was involved in the attack
on US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, he
swiftly changed his view on the tractability of the
Taliban, and in 2000, he issued a proposal for the
transformation of Afghanistan, including winning the
support of moderate Afghans by funding those who were
against the Taliban, and raising the profile in the
USA of the iniquities of the regime.

In December 2001, the Bush administration designated
him special envoy in Afghanistan, where his role was
to smooth the path for the installation of Hamid
Karzai as President.

Karzai is a fellow-Pashtun, widely reported to have
had long-standing links with the CIA and Unocal
(although he denies these connections).

In 2003, Khalilzad was appointed US ambassador to
Afghanistan.

A year later, he was accused of trying to influence
the presidential elections: some commentators likened
his role to that of officials of the British Raj,
because of the power he exercised over the government
of Afghanistan.

In April 2005, he was nominated US ambassador to Iraq.
His presence suggests that US-liberated countries, as
it were, are to be delivered securely to vassalage to
America.

Even before the Iraq war, in December 2002, Khalilzad
had been a go-between for the USA and the Iraqi exiles
who, the US hoped, would be the future rulers of the
country.

He has spearheaded US policy in the region, not only
to ensure US oil-supplies, but equally importantly, to
control these in a way that will further enhance the
USA at the expense of its other potential rivals in
the world, especially Russia, China and Europe.

Elections in Afghanistan and Iraq have provided these
countries with a democratic facade.

In reality, there is little evidence that the warlords
and druglords of Afghanistan, and the sectarian
divisions in Iraq have brought governability or
lasting peace to either.

USAID (the US foreign aid agency) in January described
Iraq as a place of lawlessness and social breakdown,
and Baghdad as “divided into zones controlled by
organised criminal groups-clans”.

At the same time, the growing threat of suicide
bombers in Afghanistan ~ where two killed 25 people on
16 January ~ has alarmed Britain’s military, due to
take over Nato’s International Security Assistance
Force in May.

These obscure figures issuing from lands under US
tutelage are the more powerful, since they have
“credibility” in delivering their country to the
fantasies of infantile omnipotence of the Bush
administration.

Who knows what role these counsellors of irresponsible
power are now whispering into the ear of George W Bush
about the next adventure – Iran? Syria? Whatever it
is, it will probably also succeed in bringing chaos
out of disorder, hopelessness out of uncertainty and
catastrophe out of conflict.

(The author lives in Britain. He has written plays for
the stage, TV and radio, made TV documentaries,
published more than 30 books and contributed to
leading journals around the world.)

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


SPONSORED LINKS Military loan Military loan company Military loan personal
loan
North atlantic treaty organization American government and politics



YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS

Visit your group "stopnato" on the web.

To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
stopnato-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.