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Viva Obama: Yes we can change the world

Ahmar Mustikhan | 25.11.2008 00:05 | Analysis | Anti-racism | Repression | World

Forgotten and stateless peoples of the world, routinely mistreated by the U.S., like the Baluch and Kurds, are among the happiest on earth their national miseries may soon end.

Authro of the article. He says Viva Obama everyday.
Authro of the article. He says Viva Obama everyday.

Baluch duke and rights activist Noordin Mengal.
Baluch duke and rights activist Noordin Mengal.

Peter Tachell in Moscow.
Peter Tachell in Moscow.


Thank your lucky stars Sarah Palin is not out there talking about war with Russia.

We are eating the same food, so to speak, still it is unbelievable so much joy the duo have brought. Not to kiss any ass, but life feels different on the mere thought a sound government will finally be in place in the U.S. with a black man in the White House—something unthinkable a quarter century ago.

Viva Obama.

This is nothing short of an American revolution. Bye, bye Europe: it may take two centuries for you to catch up with us.

From a war-monger administration to a peace loving one, it is time for healing on Mother Earth. Barack Obama and George Bush, no comparisons; Joe Biden and Dick Cheney, like day and night.

Joe Biden loves democracy and hates military dictators and believes in the creative power of balkanization and redrawing of boundaries for a better, more civilized, and just world and ending the slavery of entire nations. Dick Cheney adores dictators and, for instance, supported coup-leader-turned president Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who had killed thousands in Baluchistan, including former governor and chief minister and former state assembly member Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti and state assembly member Nawabzada Bala'ach Marri.

Bush was a huge embarrassment to the American people when it came to intellect—people are still wondering how he got a Harvard degree—, and became president primarily because of dynastic politics. Obama-- also from Harvard-- came from nowhere and has changed the political fabric of this country for good, already.

Now people of all colors believe the United States America belongs to them and they belong to it, equally.

This new set-up will be the first administration when Americans will really be looking beyond their borders. The national myopia will be ending soon. Goodbye imperialism.

The war in Iraq was one of the most shameful wars in human history but for many Americans was just like just another thriller movie, if not a game of Nintendo. They watched it from the comfort of the couches. That said the war in Iraq was a crime against enemy, no doubt. Totally senseless. Much of the Muslim world justifiably so perceives it as a war between White Christians and Brown Muslims

There are many wars still going on where American troops are not present but U.S. arms are being freely used: F-16 jets, Cobra helicopters, cluster bombs. My ancestral homeland Baluchistan, Texas-sized in southwest Asia, is one such place.

Baluchistan was forcibly annexed and Pakistan rulers have tried their level best to offer us the opium of Islam at gunpoint by killing tens of thousands over the last 60 years, but have failed miserably. The Baluch continue to fight the tyranny let loose by jihadi generals from the dominant Punjab province and people who migrated from India at the time of the Partition Holocaust and call themselves mohajirs.

Dera Bugti in Baluchistan continues to face a brutal military operation. A report from Dera Bugti by a local who used the name Miran Bugti said
Pakistani army and Frontier Corp has started new brutal army attacks in Dasht Goran, Pezbogi, Neelagh and Dilbar-mat area in Sibi, Baluchistan.

The Frontier Corp (FC) attacks on innocent civilian Baluch resumed on started on Nov 20, 2008. During this so-called search and land force operations, FC burned down many Baluch huts and their cattle have been killed or taken away by Pakistani soldiers. The lands where the wheat crops were ready were ravaged by Pakistan army. More than 20 tribesmen were arrested and taken away to torture cells.

Pakistan army has used rape and torture against the Baluch during the military operation. Tribesmen are thrown from U.S. supplied helicopters and burned alive. In some cases, their genitals are cut.

Just on Sunday at least five innocent civilians, belonging to Bugti tribe, were killed in a brutal way.

Ghulam Mohammed Baloch, president of the Baluchistan National Movement said on phone from Mand in Baluchistan as many as 900 people were still missing in Baluchistan, while 600 activists are languishing in different jails.

The De Jure Ruler of Baluchistan, the Khan of Kalat Suleman Daud Ahmedzai, who represents a 400 year old institution, the erstwhile government of Baluchistan called the Khanate of Kalat, has been forced by such injustices to seek exile in London, U.K., and launch an international campaign for securing the right of self-determination for his enslaved people.

At least two notable Baluch activists, Hairbiyar Marri and Faiz Baloch, are still facing politically motivated charges brought against them during the previous military regime of coup leader-turned President Pervez Musharraf in London. International human and gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, who has been crusading for their release is perplexed that the antiquated British judicial system is keen to punish the two.

"This is exactly what everyone is saying," Tatchell said on phone from London, when asked how come the charges are still intact when Islamabad that had brought the charge has had a change of face and now says those charges were politically motivated.

U.K. national Noordin Mengal of the Interfaith International, who is well-known as a human rights activist in Geneva and the Unrepresented nations and Peoples Organization in the Netherlands and is a grandson of two highly revered Baluch politicians, Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri and Sardar Ataullah Mengal, who came on a personal visit to the U.S. on June 23 became a victim of racial profiling most probably because of his beard and Muslim sounding name. He was refused entry, deported and now needs a visa to enter the U.S. for Baluchistan related events—one such event is taking place on Nov. 29 at the new Busboys and Poets in Washington DC. Mengal is invited.

My blood boils on such injustices.

But things are now going to change, a news item in the New York Times Sunday pointed out.

In a memo from Islamabad entitled “Ringed by Foes, Pakistanis Fear the U.S., Too”, NYT correspondent Jane Perlez wrote about the talk of balkanization underway in that nuclear-armed South Asian nation, now the headquarters of Al Qaeda:

 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/world/asia/23pstan.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin


“Yes I know,” a Kurdish man from Iran who goes by the name Bruce was delighted Vice President Joe Biden was a strong advocate of balkanization of nations torn with ethnic conflicts inflicted by artificial borders drawn by the British. The Kurds are divided among Iran, Iraq , Syria and Turkey and the Baluch are divided among Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan.

Obama and Biden have shown they have statesmen-like qualities and great intellectual depth.

Yes we can stop racial profiling at U.S. airports. Yes we can help redraw the borders of countries that are a threat to the human civilization and their own people.

Yes we can smartly balkanize with minimum bloodshed.

[Ahmar Mustikhan is a senior Baluch journalist and founder of the DC-based American Friends of Baluchistan.]



Ahmar Mustikhan
- e-mail: ahmar_reporter@yahoo.com

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