Dear Readers

Pakistan was reported to have expelled the head of an American NGO providing cover to Blackwater operations on Pakistani soil. Now this deported American, Crag Davis, is back in Pakistan. And he is not alone. Close to 2, 000 Hummers have arrived at a Pakistani port that are not destined for Afghanistan. The world’s biggest US embassy is under construction in Islamabad. As if this is not enough, the US embassy has hired a huge number of houses across the Pakistani capital to serve as unofficial local franchises. Welcome to the silent American occupation of Pakistan, with the blessing of the elected Pakistani politicians and a silent Pakistani military.

Before the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was given orders to the contrary, press reports of August 6 show that its spokesman, Mr. Basit, on August 5, at the Karachi Press Club, had already given out the fact of the 1, 000 US Marines coming to Pakistan for the protection of the new, imperial US embassy in islamabad .Now we are seeing houses being barricaded for US personnel all across the capital and we know of the 300 plus ’military trainers’ already ensconced in Tarbela. In addition we have the notorious Blackwater (now hiding under a new label, Xe Worldwide) and the rather obvious CIA front-company, Creative Associates International, Inc. (CAII), operating not only in Peshawar but now in Islamabad also it transpires – and a recent reflection of this was the sealing off of the road in Super Market [a stone throw away from the houses of senior Pakistani officials] last week right in front of a school!

Whatever the US embassy gives out or the terrified Pakistani leadership echoes, the reality is that there is a questionable and increasingly threatening US armed presence in Pakistan and this may be augmented soon by an ISAF/NATO presence. Incidentally, to add to the suspicions of the US presence, reports are coming in of around 3, 000 Hummer vehicles, fully loaded, awaiting transportation from Port Qasim. Will some of these go to the Pentagon’s assassination squads, who may take up residence in some of the barricaded Islamabad houses and with whom the present US commander in Afghanistan was directly associated? Ordinary officials at Pakistani airports have also been muttering their concerns over chartered flights flying in Americans whose entry is not recorded – even the flight crews are not checked for visas and so there is now no record-keeping of exactly how many Americans are coming into or going out of Pakistan. Incidentally the CAII’s Craig Davis who was deported has now returned to Peshawar! And let us not be fooled by the cry that numbers reflect friendship since we know what numbers meant to Soviet satellites.

Now another threat, in the making for some time, is becoming more overt. Pakistan’s precious and fertile agricultural land is up for grabs to the highest foreign bidder. Pakistan is not alone in being targeted thus by rich countries with little or no food resources. The UN has already condemned this purchase of agricultural land as a form of neo-colonialism. Over the past five years in a hardly-noticed wave of investment, rich agricultural land and forests in poor countries are being snapped up by buyers from cash-rich countries. Leading this grab of poor country resources are the rapidly industrializing states and the oil-rich countries who have, between 2006-2009, either directly through governments or through sovereign wealth funds and companies, already grabbed or are in the process of grabbing between 37 to 49 million acres of developing countries’ farmland (a July 2009 report by Robert Schubert of Food and Water Watch).

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