KLB a modern version of Platt Amendment

ISLAMABAD After Cuba fought a successful war of independence against Spain, the US first occupied Cuba
and after several years removed its troops but imposed the Platt Amendment on the Cuban people in 1903,
through which it controlled Cubas foreign policy, its economy and its security policy. Through this it effectively
defined the nature of Cuban political and economic development until the revolution led by Castro. To date, the
US has not recovered from the trauma of this revolution and still maintains a trade embargo against it, which the
UN General Assembly declares as illegal every year.
The Kerry-Lugar Bill is the modern equivalent of the Platt Amendment, and is being thrust upon Pakistan in a
similar fashion. The wording may be slightly more indirect, although there is nothing subtle about the
conditionalities, but the sense is the same. And we also have US troops and bases already in Pakistan. KLB
reeks of a neoimperialist agenda thrust on a compliant political elite that erroneously thinks it can sustain itself in
power, not through the support of the nation, but through the imperial power of the US.
The more one learns about the Kerry-Lugar Bill, the more confirmation one gets that this bill has been designed
by the US at the behest of some Pakistani interlocutors to target Pakistans nuclear programme and its future
development; to target the Pakistan military and its agency the ISI; to provide the US control over Pakistans
internal affairs in a permanent and formal fashion and to bring India into the loop of Pakistans security affairs.
Much has already been said about the now evident linkage between Ambassador Haqqanis book Pakistan:
Between Mosque and Military and the conditionalities written into the KLB. One linkage leads to another and
that is how the role of the lobbyists is also unraveling for the Pakistani public and its political elite.
However, the intrusive role of the US and its meddling in Pakistans internal affairs has already been
operationalised. How else can one explain Ambassador Ann Pattersons declaration on a Pakistani television
that if the Pakistani Parliament was to reject the KLB it would be a slap in the face of the US? If that is not
seeking to blackmail and influence the Pakistani legislators, what is? Nor is that all. Now the architect of this
abominable Bill, Senator John Kerry is coming to Pakistan where the US embassy will host a major press
conference for him and he will tell us Pakistanis how we must appreciate US largesse or it will not come. Of
course we all know that that cannot happen - that is, the largesse, such as it is, has to come because the US
cannot fight its war on terror without us but our leadership is to timid or servile to understand this.
What is unacceptable in Kerrys present trip is clearly his mandate to intervene between the Pakistan military
and the civilian leadership. This is intrusion at its peak because it is really none of Americas business how our
civil military relations are panning out - it is the job of our elected leaders to have the courage to assert their
civilian control over the military. But this control does not imply debilitating the military and its intelligence
agencies to an extent that they cannot perform their professional tasks. In any event, the civilian government
cannot and should not use external crutches to sustain itself politically but should ensure that it works out a
democratic and responsive system where each organ of the state functions in its own sphere effectively.
Coming back to the KLB, it merely formalises what the US has been doing with increasing aggression since
9/11 in Pakistan - meddling in the countrys internal affairs in areas which are of no concern to it and in areas
where it should be denied total access. Scandals about such intrusiveness abound, none more glaring than the
strange incidents of US diplomats involved in inexplicable extra-legal activities of private security concerns, both
Pakistani and foreign. Now it has been learnt that the US embassy is actually impeding justice because it is
sheltering wanted men without whom the investigations into the Inter-Risk issue cannot be completed. How can a
foreign diplomatic mission hide wanted men and impede a police investigation? Worse still, how can a
democratic government sell the country short and put it on a slippery slope to ceding control over crucial national
issues.
The KLB is a slap on the face of the Pakistani nation; so a rejection of it by Parliament would merely be a slap
for a slap