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Pakistan, regional peace & terrorism
By: Muzaffar A. Ghaffaar
India has long-standing policy of making Pakistan weak. There is an Indian strategy of encirclement of Pakistan by making Afghanistan into a vocal anti-Pakistan client state, with a busy Indian embassy and four very active Indian consulates there; a military and air base in Tajikistan; a consulate in Zahidan, Iran, where no one lives, but which is on the border with Pakistan; well over two million Indian soldiers in Kashmir and on the Pakistan border; a navy which focuses on the blockade of Pakistani ports; heavily manned bases near the Pakistan border, etc. Then there is funding, training and arms from India’s RAW (along with its Afghan wing, RAAM) into Balochistan and the NWFP, and further into Pakistan.
India has spent immense amounts over the years to make the Northern Alliance into its stooges. It is still doing so, and has intensified efforts and made inroads into Pakhtun militants on both sides of the Durand Line with money, training, weapons and equipment. Today Karzai does India’s bidding and acts as her surrogate mouthpiece. He, and our own US Ambassador Haqqani, acted as Indian agents and give a huge fillip to the prospect of overland transit trade to India.
Where all this directly affects the war on terror, in which the US is so involved, is that intermittent, threatening saber-rattling by India on trumped up, usually fictitious charges, and aggressive army movements and exercises on the Pakistan border, has forced the Pakistan army to move over 30,000 of its elite troops to the eastern front from their positions on the western border, thus undermining its effort on the Pak-Afghan militant-infested border area and against the terrorists who destabilize the tribal regions. This too has drawn no response from the US. India is chuckling because the movement to the eastern front has reduced the military coverage of the Pakistan army on the vast western theatre.
Then India keeps trumpeting (with Afghanistan and often Western leaders in tow) that Pakistan should do more! Indeed one of the strategies of India, and its surrogates, is to so badmouth the Pakistan army and ISI as to present them both into pariahs. It is Indian propaganda, which has a connected strategy of stating, again and again, ad nauseum, that the Pakistan army is not a unified force. That it has rogue elements in it. And ISI is the same.
The bottom line of this insidious propaganda is that the Pakistan army is not in the control of the generals, nor is the ISI. India recognizes that the very strong and disciplined Pakistan army, and the very effective ISI, keep preserving Pakistan’s short- and long-term survival. Badmouthing them is a good way to undermine, at least, their images. India’s clients in Afghanistan (and some purchased in Pakistan and elsewhere) echo these positions.
The objective here is a long-term one - to remove any influence Pakistan has in Afghanistan, so when the Americans leave, India may have a client state hostile to Pakistan. If the ISI acts to protect Pakistan’s long-term interests it is presented as counterproductive to the war on terror. India’s active role in this matter is never mentioned.
Should Pakistan not work on preserving some influence in Afghanistan? What would any other country do in these circumstances? (I may mention here that the image of Americans, the world over, is one of ‘expedient friends’. An anecdote may register this better. The chemicals arm of the world’s largest oil firm, with two interlocking X’s in it, is widely called ‘the double-cross company’ in the Far East, as it treats export markets as ‘opportunistic sales’ and goes in and out of markets, depending on domestic demand. This analogy properly registers the image of Americans - surely something needing redress by the US government, or the rather illogical word on the street that the CIA, meaning the US, is supporting Pakistan with one hand, and, at India’s overt and covert behest, the terrorists on the other, will get deeper roots).
Question: Why did Maulana Fazlullah go ‘on business’ to Kabul when his ragtag bunch was being thrown out of Swat? Who did he meet there? Were the Americans unaware of this high value target within their backyard?
Question: What are the reported 4000 elite Indian troops doing in the Afghan region bordering the tribal areas of Pakistan? Are the US and NATO not aware of their presence? What are they there for? What have they achieved, other than helping the miscreants in the tribal regions?
Question: Is there a role of Russia in Afghanistan, and for punishing Pakistan for its pivotal position in having them thrown out of Afghanistan?
Question: Are India (and the US and Iran) not funding the insurgency in Balochistan? But India is such a darling, such a vast market for US and European products, with such an Israeli-backed extensive US lobby that instead of reining in India’s hugely negative role in the region, the US is seeking ‘concessions’ from Pakistan.
However much the pressure, Pakistan cannot agree to open India’s land route to Afghanistan, and through it to central Asia unless India holds a plebiscite in Kashmir and the international community makes it implement the result. Nothing less. No other half-baked solution will do. India’s stance that the time for a plebiscite is gone is sheer posturing nonsense. Injustice is never undone by slogans. It acts. And reacts. And acts some more. A UN mandated plebiscite, and nothing short of it, is the crying need of the region.
A further strategy to undermine Pakistan is cooked up by the nexus of the huge and much-funded Indian US lobby, backed by the even more pervasive and powerful Israeli lobbies (and the tentacles of these obscenely funded lobbies are fable, even act as puppeteers of some US policymakers), that Pakistan has the ‘Islamic Bomb!’ which must be neutralised. The route to this is an insidious one, now also owned by Americans smarting from 9/11, that the atomic assets of Pakistan could fall into the hands of terrorists! No one talks of the 30-plus domestic insurgencies in India.
Could they not take charge of the ‘Hindu Bomb’ and take over India (and the world)? So-called experts who act as consultants, are in US think tanks, write books, give interviews on BBC, CNN, etc., all appear to have financial links with the Israeli and Indian lobbies. They speak arrogantly, sprout place and people’s names to give their disinformation a patina of sure knowledge of what is happening on the ground. Their cocksure tirades, with media savvy, and pliant interviewers, must be heavily discounted as all lobby-generated information must be as this kind of lobby work is the most insidious propaganda.
Another key strategy of India is to accentuate its hegemony on water which flows from Kashmir into semi-arid Pakistan plains, which is the lifeline of its irrigation-dependent agriculture, which in turn is the dominant sector of Pakistan’s economy. This seems to be the bigger reason for India holding on to Kashmir despite a UN mandate to hold a plebiscite, which India has always dodged, because ‘democratic India’ knows that the majority of Kashmiris do not wish to be a part of India.
Kashmir is the weak link in the democratic credentials of India. India has built 62 dams on rivers in Kashmir, diverting waters to rivers going to India, blocking water to Pakistan (as it did to Chenab waters, in 2008, making barren hundreds of thousands of acres of Chenab-waters-dependent land in Pakistan. Also fishermen on the Chenab lost their livelihoods. This event should silence the western media’s harangues about how (wrongly) obsessed Pakistan is, and Pakistanis are, about India’s enmity for it.
But will it? Or will the blinkered chorus go on shutting eyes to the reality on the ground?. Water blocking by India is done by flouting, with hubris, international agreements. Its bravado in this matter has become more brazen. It has started voicing that these international agreements should be undone! Kashmir has very, very sparsely been ruled by Hindus. Just because a British henchman, bought in to thwart the dominant Sikhs, was a Hindu, does not Hindu-wash the history of Kashmir.
Indeed the American historian Alistair Lamb has said that the accession document of Jammu and Kashmir to India by the then renegade-progeny maharaja has not been found anywhere. It probably does not exist. The British ‘partition formula’ for what went into Pakistan was the democratic approach of Muslim-majority, contiguous areas. Jammu and Kashmir clearly fell, still fall, into this category. Perhaps the US considers India as a countervailing partner, or pawn, against the growing might of China.
India will never, never, be a military match for China. For the US, a much more sagacious strategy here would be to make friends with China. With such massive volumes of Chinese trade with the US (and it is such a huge market for US manufactures, software, etc.), it should respond positively to such an overture.
Mr. Obama has, with courage, and a break from the myopic past, initiated such an approach with Iran. Why not with China? Would the ultimately untenable long-term, very costly approach of supporting Taiwan at the expense of good relations with China too heavy a price to pay? On balance it would not be. China, including Taiwan, as a friend, would be an invaluable asset to the US and save it billions of dollars annually without any loss of influence in the Pacific, except that sought by hegemonic or imperialist aspirations. Or the arms lobby.
Then India, with its 30-plus active domestic insurgencies, has a tradition of expediency, and would not be a reliable long-term pawn or supporter of the US. US, European, and Japanese policymakers know this. India has been speaking from several sides of its mouth in its national character. In addition to India’s massive defence budget (which is no match to China’s, and will never be), its annual growth is presented only in percentage terms, in the mid to high twenties. Through clever manipulations of India’s very effective information mechanisms, it is never mentioned, even in the Pakistan press, that just the annual increase of India’s defence budget, in money terms, is more than the entire defence budget of Pakistan.
And yet, with its six to seven times population and over five times military budget, India has managed to present Pakistan to the world, and even more importantly, to its own people, that Pakistan is the threat that India is arming itself to the teeth for! In addition to a ‘defence budget’, India has a Pakistan-specific ‘offence budget’. This funds projects for destabilising Pakistan; building a road from Afghanistan to Iran to divert NATO supplies away from Pakistan, thus reducing this country’s importance as a supply route; funding tribal insurgencies in Balochistan, NWFP, and within Pakistan; spending huge amounts on its anti-Pakistan diplomacy and surging lobbies in the US and elsewhere, etc.
Sixty-two dams in Kashmir, and more on the way, on rivers flowing into Pakistan, are a part of this action. Why do the US and other international players not ask the very important question: Where do the impoverished militants wreaking terror in Afghanistan and Pakistan get such monies for better pays than the Pakistan and Afghan armies, such sophisticated weaponry, training, intelligence, FM stations, etc., etc.? The trail, without much effort, would lead to India. Where else? I repeat, where else? To mention the drugs trade as the major source of fund is not understanding the psyche of the drugs smuggler. He is in it for self-interest and greed not a cause.
The latest salvo linking Middle-Eastern private sources may be explored and stumped. But the major source of funds for all terrorist action in Pakistan will remain India (unless the US reins it in). In a recent salvo, the apparently mild-tongued prime minister of India, called Pakistan a hub of terror. India is the financer, arms provider, trainer, strategist, intelligence supplier, for terror in the region. Which country then is the hub of terror?
And yet the US government has specifically excluded India from Mr. Richard Holbrooke’s regional mandate. India should absolutely be an integral part of it, unless his mission is to have cosmetic, or piecemeal, or lame success. Kashmir needs a democratic solution, not allegiance to the ‘no third party mediation’ mantra of India. Without this approach the war theatre of the region may shift, but the region cannot see peace.
Peace is dependent on reining in India’s designs, bullying approaches and intransigence. Time to stop being pusillanimous with India, both by the West and specifically by the US, as well as by the Pakistani leadership, which keeps talking about ‘a foreign hand’ in terrorism in Pakistan, only hedgeingly naming India, while India will knee-jerk and blame Pakistan for anything at all. It is still milking the deplorable carnage at Mumbai and is mum about its support for the attack on the Sri Lankan team as revenge.
The world looks on, while Pakistani international cricket has got a body blow, which will not be easy to undo, something that seems to please India. With gloating, indecent haste, India has managed to exclude Pakistan venues from the next cricket world cup in 2011, having won over the ICC and taken all Pakistan venues for the world cup itself. (But India itself may turn out to be an unsafe venue!). The tribal area militants do not have the intelligence sources, the on-the-ground know-how, the detailed planning prowess of the three attacks on police and intelligence establishments in Lahore. RAW’s hand is mentioned but not pursued ‘diplomatically’.
Finally let me address the lure of India, which has made it such a darling of ancient wisdom: The Vedas, particularly the Rig Veda, with its strong avowal of monotheism, was written in proto-Pakistan. Auyurveda, the so-called ‘Indian’ ancient system of medicine, now in great vogue in India, was compiled by Carak, a man from Multan, in proto-Pakistan. Classical Sanskrit was developed in proto-Pakistan. Its grammar was codified in the great Eight Chapters of Panini, a man from Swabi, in NWFP, proto-Pakistan. Kautilya / Canakya / Caankya, who wrote Arth Shaastar, and who is regarded as a huge ‘Indian’ scholar, taught at Takshasila University, in proto-Pakistan. Yoga, the ‘Indian’ system of health and meditation, and the Sankhya philosophy, the cornerstone of Hinduism - a name given by the British, in the eighteenth century, to the diverse cults in proto-India - was codified by Patanjali, a man from Multan, in proto-Pakistan, as the Yog Sutr, 188 AD, testifies.
Gandhara Civilisation is Pakistan-specific. And the Indian Valley Civilisation, with which Indian history books begin, was in proto-Pakistan, with only peripheral outposts in India. The Taj Mahal was built by masterbuilder Ahmad Maemaar Lahori under the guidance of Shah Jahan. It has proto-Pakistani credentials. There is more, but this should suffice. (For more, my book Unity in Diversity, a Vision for Pakistan may be read. It should change the way Pakistanis, its neighbours, particularly India, and the world, think about Pakistan, and its neighbours). This flirtation with ‘Indian culture’ must be put into perspective.
Indeed most of what Bharat-Indians and Hindus pride themselves for, and which, most regrettably, many Pakistani Muslims hold in denial, and the west ignorantly calls ‘Indian’, are the achievements and genius of the ancestors of proto-Pakistanis, and sourced in the Indus basin, in proto-Pakistan. The only major old ‘Indian’ ideas are the tyrannical, vertically-rigid Brahmanic Caste System, which demeans the bulk of humanity as untouchables; idolatry; and gods in human form. These were crafted in the Ganges basin. Please do not read this as a diversion.
It is foundational in putting the two countries, and ‘Indian culture’, into perspective. One big reason for a historical confusion is that the word ‘India’ has had many geographies. Proto-India had numerous ‘Hindu’ and Buddhist rajadoms and principalities before the Muslims unified the Indus and Ganges basins, and beyond, and the British extended this geography. All the geographies throughout history cannot be called ‘India’.
There were Hindu-ruled areas, Buddhist-ruled areas, Muslim-ruled states, a British ruled state, and now Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Bharat-India. By touting the word India for all these, Bharat-Indians, most erroneously, but to their advantage, use the word ‘India’. This must stop, and both the Indian constitutional names of present ‘India’ should be used jointly. (India is the only country in the world with two names in its constitution: Bharat, and India).
Scholars, and the West must insist on Bharat-India as the current country’s name to get rid of the huge geographical and cultural confusions that the all-pervasive name ‘India’ has created. Will Western writers and the public remain congealed and fossilized in continuing to use ‘India’ for all geographies to which it is applied? Or will they wake up? Because of nefarious Bharat-Indian actions, the region, must, include Bharat-India, as it is a key player and must be reined in if the West’s and Pakistan’s terror war is to succeed. The recipe for peace in the region - there is no AfPak region - is Bharat-India inclusive.
It is mandatory to rein in Bharat-India’s Pakistan-weakening activities; and a plebiscite in Kashmir, nothing less, not just any ‘solution’, which the international community must prompt urgently and ensure its complete implementation. Or the region will lumber along as a major trouble-spot in the world. Courtesy: The Frontier Post |
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