06/21/12 – Jason Ditz – The Scott Horton Show

All right, everybody, it's the show, Antiwar Radio.
I'm the guest host, Zoe Greif, and I am joined by our next guest today, Jason Ditz, news editor at Antiwar.com.
How are you doing today, Jason?
I'm doing good.
How are you?
I'm well.
I'm trying to stay that way, despite all the bad news that you report on.
I want to know about Pakistan's new prime minister faces legal troubles of his own.
What's going on in Pakistan?
Well, on Tuesday, the Pakistani Supreme Court finally came to a conclusion on an ongoing trial for Prime Minister Raza Jilani, and they concluded that he's no longer eligible for office because of contempt of court charges.
He's been refusing for years to follow through on a ruling that the National Reconciliation Ordinance is unconstitutional.
Now, the whole thing sounds very complicated, but basically what it comes down to is that this ordinance said that currently seating members of the ruling party are above the law, that they can't be charged for corruption or any other crimes while they're still in power.
And the Supreme Court said, well, wait a minute, that's unconstitutional.
They can still be charged.
But Jilani refused to follow through with any of the investigations, so he was removed from office.
Now, he was replaced yesterday.
They finalized the candidate to replace him, who was Maktoum Sahabeddin.
And it looks like his prime ministership lasted about a day, because he's gone now.
And he's gone because it turns out that there was already an arrest warrant out for him as well.
He was caught up in a scandal involving his time as a health minister when he signed off on some phony export orders for ephedrine, when a couple of fairly large pharmaceutical companies were basically manufacturing ephedrine and selling it directly to street gangs that were using it for the manufacture of methamphetamines.
Wow, he was breaking bad, like that TV show.
That's amazing.
That's amazing.
You know what else is amazing to me is that in Pakistan, apparently a politician can get arrested, even if it's just because his rival said so.
Wow, that doesn't happen around here much, does it?
Right, and apparently they've had an arrest warrant out against him for quite some time, but they never actually were able to arrest him.
They said it was because the bureaucracy in the interior ministry was slowing down his arrest.
But they're not going to go through apparently with finalizing his appointment as prime minister now, because there have been a couple more arrest warrants issued for him by lesser courts as well.
So now the new reports are that Raja Parvez Ashraf is today their choice, and Raja Parvez Ashraf is the former water and power minister for the current government, but he had to resign in disgrace last year because he was taking bribes.
So he's their next choice.
I mean, I'm not surprised he's taking bribes, but I'm surprised he got caught and exposed for it.
I just really don't understand how things work in Pakistan, but apparently it's not exactly the same as how they work over here.
It's incredible.
Taking bribes as a member of the Pakistani government is pretty much a default position, but some of the ones in the current government are just so open about it that they eventually get caught and shown up in the media and eventually have to resign over it.
It creates these huge scandals.
But the incredible thing is it doesn't seem like the Pakistani People's Party, which is the current ruling party, can come up with anyone who's not either got a warrant out for their arrest to resign for some past crime.
They can't even find anybody who's got a clean record?
It seems like they don't have anybody.
Wow.
I am staggered and amazed.
So what are they going to do?
I mean, really?
I think that they're going to probably have to just keep going down the list until they find somebody that's got a conviction or something that's small enough that people are going to look the other way about it.
I wonder what that would constitute in the eyes of Pakistani society.
I can only hope to guess.
Well, there was another candidate.
The other candidate besides him that was the candidate today was...
His name escaped me, but he was the former information minister quite some time ago, and he was in a scandal involving a dancer, a female dancer.
And presumably it was a sex scandal, although a lot of the details were kept secret before he resigned.
So he might be the next choice.
The least sullied of the bunch kind of thing?
Pretty much.
Wow.
Because there are a lot of arrest warrants existing right now for current members of the Pakistani government.
The defense minister has had warrants for his arrest for quite some time.
He was stopped from taking an official state visit to China a couple of years ago because he was currently under indictment for corruption charges.
The interior minister, he's been under investigation forever, and of course he can't be arrested because he runs the national police force.
Well, do you know if they have impeachment proceedings like is outlined in our constitution, or do they just enjoy what is it called, plenary immunity, or diplomatic immunity, or whatever you have it where you just can't arrest a sitting official?
But you can, though.
I'm confused, Jason.
I am.
Well, to hear them talk, they do enjoy that immunity.
And anyone who says otherwise is an enemy of democracy.
But the reality is that there isn't a very well-defined system of how it happens, and basically it's down to the Supreme Court being petitioned enough to declare someone no longer eligible for office.
And they've been somewhat reluctant to do that, although they finally did step forward with Prime Minister Jilani after months of him openly flouting court orders and declaring that he answers to no one but Parliament, and that the court means nothing.
They finally did remove him, but whether they'll remove anybody else, I'm not sure.
Well, do you have any sense of whether the average Pakistani, whether in Islamabad or out in the tribal areas, gives a hoot with regard to these people in their Game of Thrones, or whatever you want to call it?
Well, it's really hard to say, but my interpretation is that the average Pakistani is just sort of disgusted with politics already.
I mean, it hasn't been that long since the Musharraf regime left, and they actually had their first free election since the last junta, but it's just been such a disaster and so much corruption that I think people are already kind of sick of it.
There's been some talk of going with some other people that maybe are less corrupt in the future, but I'm not sure that that's practical.
It seems like it's much like Afghanistan.
It's a system just awash in corruption, and it's going to taint anybody that's a big enough name to possibly be a candidate.
Sounds to me like if ever an honest guy showed up, he would surely be excluded from the process, one way or another.
Right.
It's such an ugly business.
I mean, government is an ugly business all over the place, particularly in a country like Pakistan, where you've got a president who made his entire fortune taking bribes.
We're talking with Jason Ditz.
It's Antiwar Radio.
Maybe on the other side we could talk some about Nigeria and what's going on there.
Sure.
All right, great.
More on the other side, Antiwar Radio.
Welcome back to the show, everybody.
It's Antiwar Radio.
I'm your guest host, Zoe Greif.
And on the other line, I've got Jason Ditz, news editor at Antiwar.com.
And Jason was just talking and explaining to me about the hand-wringingly hopeless situation, seemingly hopeless in Pakistan.
Oh, goodness gracious, all the government officials are trying to arrest each other.
And we could go on about that, but there's only so many minutes in the day.
Jason, what's going on in Nigeria?
Boko Haram.
I'm smelling that they're not really a threat to you or me or actual interests.
Is that a fair statement, do you think, Jason?
I think it is, although with the U.S. getting more and more involved, they might not have been a threat, but they may be someday.
If you keep poking them in the nose long enough, they're liable to snap back at you.
Well, just like any human being would.
You write in your article at Antiwar.com, despite Nigeria's opposition, you asked to name Boko Haram international terrorists.
Wait a minute, just who or what is Boko Haram?
And is it true that they started off questioning the round nature of planet Earth?
Do you know if Boko Haram believes the Earth is round or not?
And how can people who may or may not question the roundness of planet Earth be a threat to the United States?
Boko Haram has a really interesting history.
In fact, the name Boko Haram was originally used as a term to mock the group, and they sort of took it as their own name after some time.
Boko is the Nigerian word for Western education.
Haram is the Arabic word for religiously forbidden.
So the name literally means education is forbidden.
And they were a very extreme anti-technology, anti-science sect.
Their original founder, who ironically was himself Western educated and had a master's degree from Britain, I believe, from a top university in Britain, was on the BBC one time railing against the idea that the Earth was round.
As heresy, he was talking about how these Western teachers come in and tell our children that rain is the result of condensation, and everyone knows it's a miracle from God.
It was a hilarious but ultimately mostly meaningless group.
It didn't have a lot of followers.
It made some noise in the Nigerian media because they would hold public protests against colleges and the like.
What, they just showed up at a college and said, we protest the fact that you're a college and you're teaching college?
Pretty much.
Wow, how far did that get them?
Not very far.
I'm sorry, that's just hilarious to me.
I didn't know that.
That's funny.
They launched a few attacks against more conservative Muslims.
I guess conservative maybe isn't the right word.
Less insane Muslims, religious leaders, that were seen as excusing the ideas of Western education and the like.
But the group was so anti-technology that they would not use guns.
They thought guns were too modern.
They had sort of an Amish style aversion to modern technology of any type.
They were arming themselves with short bows and arrows.
Some of them had machetes, which I guess they considered swords.
They said any weapons that weren't explicitly mentioned in the Koran were not religiously allowed.
Wow, I really would not want to take on a Kalashnikov with either a bow and arrow or a machete, or both.
Jason, how about you?
It doesn't seem like a good idea, and in fact it wasn't a good idea, because the Nigerian military, after they had a couple of killings that were linked to members of this group, decided that they were just going to wipe them out entirely.
They sent in the troops, massacred Boko Haram members, well over a hundred.
Their leader got captured with a very small wound on his arm.
There was a photograph of him being taken into custody, and then he turned up dead later, shot dozens of times.
People sort of presented that as, well, that was the end of Boko Haram.
It was sort of a weird little history they had.
But, of course, that wasn't the end of them.
The people that survived sort of figured out this bow and arrow thing isn't working, and they got machine guns of their own, and maybe these swords aren't so effective so we're going to start getting bombs instead.
They started adopting the modern sort of terrorist arsenal, and ever since then they've been bombing churches and getting into gunfights with police, just causing a mess in some of the less religiously monolithic provinces of Nigeria.
They've particularly been focusing on Kaduna, which is about half Christian, half Muslim.
Over the weekend they bombed a couple of Christian churches, killed 19 people or so.
Christians, they've been getting bombed virtually every week, so they started rioting.
They killed a bunch of Muslims that had nothing to do with Boko Haram.
So now the Muslims are rioting against the Christians as well, and they're really stirring up religious warfare in the country.
Wow, it would be funny if it wasn't so many people dying is what I think about it.
But I would be remiss in my position as guest host of Antiwar Radio if I didn't say, well, okay, Jason, let's get to the real point here, which is that there's oil up there yonder in the Niger Delta.
Isn't that what this is really ultimately all about?
For the U.S. it definitely is.
And I think they wouldn't be anywhere near so interested in Boko Haram if they didn't see it as a way to give themselves even more military ties with the Nigerian government.
But at the same time, Boko Haram isn't an international terrorist organization.
I guess you could technically call them foreign terrorists because they're foreign and they're terrorists, but they're not.
But they're just an internal Nigerian phenomenon with not even any aspirations to go across some body of water and do terror anywhere else.
Is that what you're saying?
Right.
They haven't even spread across Nigeria.
They've mostly left the Christian parts of the country alone and have just targeted the parts that are half Christian, half Muslim, trying to stir up sectarian fighting there and get the Muslims to chase the Christians out of those areas.
Well, do you think that maybe what's going on is the U.S. government is saying to the Nigerian government, hey, we'll whack your troublemakers if you ensure that the spice flows, that the oil continues to flow, maybe something like that?
Well, that seems to be the U.S. hope, but I think it's short-sighted because even the Nigerian government is saying, we don't want this.
Don't label them foreign terrorists.
We're trying to calm the situation down.
And if they get that label, then the Nigerian government basically can't negotiate with them or they're going to face sanctions by the U.S. government for dealing with terrorists.
And I guess the Nigerians, all they have to do is look north and east a little bit at the horrendous, bloodletting disaster that was Iraq, to think, hmm, what happens when America gets involved militarily in another country?
And they maybe decide, no, thank you, please, we don't want that.
Absolutely.
And Boko Haram has shown no interest in going outside of the Nigerian borders.
There were some unconfirmed reports that they were active in Mali, but it turned out that was Ansar al-Din, which is currently fighting with the Tuareg secessionists over who gets to found that new country in northern Mali because the Tuaregs want it to be a secular country and Ansar al-Din is sort of an al-Qaeda offshoot, wants to turn it into Taliban-style Afghanistan.
Well, we're almost out of time.
Is there anything else, Nigeria or Pakistan, or any other topic that you want to mention in this last minute or two that we have left, Jason?
Well, I would just say that Nigeria in particular, the history of Boko Haram is just fascinating.
And that BBC interview, you can still find BBC reports on it.
In fact, I'm pretty sure I linked to them in my story.
It's just a fascinating read.
There's such a, or what they were was such a non-threat.
It was just fascinating.
And then the Nigerian military went in and massacred them, and that turned them into the threat that they are now.
They evolved.
Right.
It was a non-issue beyond being sort of a Western radio could get them on and joke about them.
And who doesn't love the guy who says rain can't be condensation?
Everyone knows it's a miracle and is willing to go on radio and say that.
But after his death and after all these killings, they smartened up real quick as far as their use of modern terrorist tactics.
And whoever they are and whatever they want, it doesn't matter.
They're just a name, an excuse, a label, a franchise that the American media can say, if they're like al-Qaeda, only they're actually African, and that's why we need to go there and kill everybody and take their oil.
It was the takeaway that I am taking away from this, Jason.
What do you think about that?
Absolutely.
They were the ultimate example of blowback, though, on a nation level, where you have a group that was a non-threat, you go in heavy-handed militarily and turn them into something much, much more dangerous than they ever were in the first place.
Yeah.
Mary Shelley wrote a book about a guy who created a monster that came back and ruined his life.
It was called Frankenstein.
And, man, the analogies just spring forth like a fountain, is what I'm saying.
But we're out of time.
Jason, thank you so much for joining the show.
I really appreciate your contribution to the show and to Antiwar.com.
Jason Ditz, everybody, is news editor at Antiwar.com.
Thanks a lot, man.
Thanks for having me.