(That's the infamous Dick Holbrooke, world traveller to the world's sorrow, shown
above.)
Here's a nice item from one of my favorite groups, the Communist Party Of India (Marxist-Leninist):
Holbrooke stalks South AsiaOur CPIML comrades have got this one right, as they often do. Partition! That's the ticket! And dear dapper humanitarian Dick Holbrooke is just the guy to do it -- if anybody can.With mediaeval Sheikhdoms as the US role models for a moderate Muslim states, none gets a prize for guessing the precise nature of the assignment given to Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Whatever else he does on his new beat, ushering liberal democracy in the land of the jirgas, or the greatly discussed objective of sending the girl child to school, is not the priority that the American people and with them the rest of the world are being made to believe to be the purpose of the assignment.
So what is Holbrooke’s mission?
Pakistani analysts, skeptical of US role in the region since decades, say Holbrooke’s mission may not be different from his contributions in Yugoslavia, a country he helped break into several smaller “manageable” pieces along religious and ethnic lines. By that measure Afghanistan and Pakistan offer a rich haul not to speak of India when its turn comes.
The whole story is well worth reading, though the comrades need a Web designer.
But then, so do I.
Comments (7)
"Firefox doesn't understand the protocol 'ttp'"!
Posted by Save the Oocytes | April 23, 2009 12:48 AM
Posted on April 23, 2009 00:48
It's a subcontinental thing. Voiceless laryngeal aspirates get lost in translation. Try:
http://www.cpiml.org/liberation/year_2009/april_09/international_1.html
Posted by MJS | April 23, 2009 1:12 AM
Posted on April 23, 2009 01:12
Michael: Don't fall for that "improved graphic design will increase your readership by 200%" line! Your site is fine as is, better than many. Straining to read the smallish typeface is actually supposed to be good exercise for older eyes.
There's too much in this article to make sense of. Surely they don't send out H. Richard "Hap" Holbrooke without some interventionary plan in mind, involving bombs, bribes and subterfuge, but like all American interventions, its more about means than ends -- a belief in meddling rather than knowing WTF you're doing.
Posted by hce | April 23, 2009 10:33 AM
Posted on April 23, 2009 10:33
Our south asian comrades
Are in a complex and contradictory thought mode here
Nepal would seem to be evidence
That balkinization of the entire sub continent has
Rev potential no ?
Weakest remotest link wise
Of course their master paradigm
Is the rear area red star over hanville gig of the middle third of the last century
To me the bengal
And or
Pujab fragmentation process could
for example
Work nicely in a
Uncle hedge carve up
seeing as
The two halves are now inside different poly-rot state pens
The dia-mat science of Class struggle
Locally aplied
Might dynamically
Involve both unification and
Secularization
In one new democratic national liberation struggle
Bengal unity
Punjab unity
But that's for the
Local comrades to work out eh?
Posted by op | April 23, 2009 11:25 AM
Posted on April 23, 2009 11:25
Partition
Is a volitile option in some settings
Take biden's partition plan for iraq
It would have created two de jure iondependent states that might harbor expansionist ambitions eh?
Greater kurdistan
And a unified arab shia state including most of the serious oil pools ie saud kuwait etc with heavy local shia majorities
Sponsored by iran
Nough to nix such
Balkinizaion
Dreams at foggy b
Btw my source for this insight
Shall remain unidentified
For the interim
Ie
Till he lands a fuckin sinecure
Posted by op | April 23, 2009 11:55 AM
Posted on April 23, 2009 11:55
Democratically-created federations of nations, as opposed to those created at gunpoint, are fine if that's what the people want. The reverse, of course, is true also; no state created at gunpoint (India, United States, Iraq) is democratic. As you observe, the key is self-determination.
Posted by Jay Taber | April 23, 2009 12:48 PM
Posted on April 23, 2009 12:48
I am told that Nepal has our second largest embassy(listening post) in the world, and they can see all the way to Siberia from there. Somehow we are doing this under the eyes of a real Communist government. And I thought the counter-revolutionary D-day was going to be led by his holiness, the dilly Lama!
Posted by hce | April 23, 2009 1:56 PM
Posted on April 23, 2009 13:56