The Honourable High Court of Mumbai has confirmed the death sentence awarded by the Special Judge M.L. Tahliani in a lower court to the lone surving terrorist of the 26/11 Mumbai urban warfare carnage. Ajmal Amir Kasab was caught red handed, video footage electronic records show this jihadi rambo shooting from the hip calmly at innocent and unarmed men, women and children, there is his voluntary confession before a magistrate and yet due process of law has been followed so far with enough opportunities given to the accused (now a convict) to defend his case. A remorseless and unrepentant Ajmal Amir Kasab still has at least a couple of opportunities left, the appeal in the Supreme Court followed by a mercy petition to the President of India in case his death sentence is confirmed by the Supreme Court also. Who knows, he may even get a pardon from a President of India, most of whom do not want to hang any convict and have been deciding mercy petitions in favour of the convicts. It would be a shame if it were to happen but India will have to simply grin and bear it if that unfortunately comes to pass.
There are two aspects to the Kasab case. One was his criminal action of waging war against a democratically established Indian State, killing innocent citizens and fighting its Army and Police forces. The second was the conspiracy that was hatched and planned in Pakistan and then executed with Pakistani masterminds directing every step of the terrorists in Mumbai remotely all the time. The Indian investigative agencies and prosecutors have gone through the entire complex web as best as they can (in spite of total non-cooperation from Pakistan where the entire scheme was conceived, planned, funded, and manned). No doubt there have been some loose ends (especially Headley), but they do not materially alter the proceedings against Kasab per se.
The biggest difference is that the Indian court, prosecution and defence have been at it every single day since the court was constituted. Nobody can accuse them of resorting to extra judicial processes, delaying tactics etc., for any adjournments were genuine and warranted. On the other hand, Pakistani investigators have done very minimal work in exposing the crime, have constantly demanded evidence from India for even events that took place on their soil, and even when the players and masterminds live in their own country.
While Kasab, the foot soldier of the Lashkar-e-Tayba (LeT) has been given a death sentence by an Indian court, for anything else would simply be a travesty of justice of the highest order, the masterminds in Pakistan who sent him in on a fidayeen attack, live to plan and excute more such attacks. They have the active support of the Pakistani Army, Government, and the Judiciary. I have another blog on how the Islamic Republic of Pakistan has treated the chief of LeT (let us not kid that he is only the head of the charity organization Jama'at-ud Dawah, JuD, and that there is no organization called LeT any more). It can be seen here under the caption, "Prof. Hafeez Saeed, LeT, and the Support from the State of Pakistan". I would therefore limit myself in giving an overview in this piece and the following, about how farcically the Pakistani judiciary has acted in conducting the 'endless exercise' of the 26/11 case at their end.
The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) registered First Information Report (FIR) vide number 1 on February 12, 2009 (over two years back)under several sections of Pakistan Penal Code (PPC). It implicated seven persons including two in Indian custody, Ajmal Amir Kasab, a Pakistani and Fahim Ansari, an Indian. The remaining five, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, Abdul Wajid alias Zarar Shah of Sheikhupura, Mazhar Iqbal alias Abu Al-Qama of Islamabad, Shahid Jamil Riaz of Nasirabad Behawalpur and Hammad Amin of Rahimyar Khan are in custody at Adiala prison, Rawalpindi. Of these, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, Hamad Amin and Zarar Shah are key founding members of LeT. Lakhvi, also known as 'Rehman chacha', is the Chief Operational Commander of the LeT. Zarar Shah is claimed to be the Communication Chief of the LeT and an urban warfare expert. Zarar Shah was the one of the calm voices (the other being that of Mazhar Iqbal alias Abu Al-Qama) that could be heard in telephone intercepts directing the operation at every step, urging the terrorists to kill their hostage in cold-blood and motivating the terrorists with visions of Paradise. These are very dangerous men who have conducted innumerable terrorist operations against India.
It was on March 4, 2009 that the in-camera trial of the seven accused started in the Anti terrorism Court II (ATC-II) in the Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi. On May 5, the Court distributed chargesheets to the accused. Soon, the judge hearing the case retired and therefore, without framing any charges, the case was postponed until a new judge was appointed. Why was a judge about to retire given this most important case at all except as a Pakistani perfidy to delay the hearing ? Days before the Sharm-el-Sheikh meeting of July 16, 2009, Pakistan handed over a dossier to India in which it claimed that Lakhvi was the mastermind behind the attack and Kasab was indeed a Paksitani. As has been the Pakistani practice, enough ground is conceded just before an important even only to be re-taken after that. For her part, Ms. Hillary Clinton predicted that there would be some movement in the next few days to enable Indian leaders a face-saving excuse to tell their citizens as to why at all India should agree to a talk at Sharm-el-Sheikh. On July 18, chargesheets were framed against the five accused.
(To Be Continued . . . )
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
The Egyptian Turmoil and its Likely Impact on Pakistan
That Egypt is in deep turmoil is an understatement. Just a week before the troubles started there, there was an unprecedented wave of anger in Tunisia which saw the long-running autocracy of Zine el Abidine Ben Ali come to an end with Ben Ali seeking asylum in Saudi Arabia, the ultimate refuge for scoundrels of Islamic countries. The long-exiled religious leader of Tunisia, Rachid Ghannouchi, has returned invoking memories of the triumphant return from Paris of Ayatollah Khomeini thirty years back that has thrown a liberal Iran back to an Islamist state today. No wonder then that the Saudi monarchy, led by the octogenarian King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al Saud, has supported the long running autocracy of Hosni Mubarak as well. Another King Abdullah, a much younger one and this time of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is also deeply worried as protests have surfaced there as well. Apart from other West Asian countries, which seem to be ripe for such a revolution, a la Orange, Rose and Pink Revolutions in Central Asian Republics about five years back, there are other countries in their immediate neighbourhood that may also be worried about the fall out of the on-going Egyptian crisis. One such country must be Pakistan, where the situation is far more critical and explosive than in Egypt or Tunisia or Jordan. While the Arab countries suffer from autocracy or autarchy, the situation in Pakistan is rapidly moving to anarchy. A worried Pakistani Prime Minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, eager to scotch the idea of a ‘Green Revolution’ reacted to say that “the situation in Egypt and Tunisia cannot be compared with that of Pakistan as our institutions are working and democracy is functional”. This is certainly a blatant and unadulterated lie, something which Mr. Gilani seems to have said with a very straight face. Long before Mr. Gilani, a rampaging dictator, Gen. Zia-ul-Haq had justified to his American counterpart that a Muslim was permitted to lie for a good cause.
The Egyptian uprising seems to be well coordinated, with a simple message that the loudspeakers of mosques across the country seem to be carrying: “You have a right to protest”. People have taken this message to heart and have poured out to the city centres and town squares with the Egyptian Army seemingly standing as mute spectators. It will be impossible for the Army to fire upon the protestors or even use strong arm tactics, though it seems to engage in a show of strength to intimidate the protestors, a tactic that has borne no fruits so far. Curfews have had little effect as the Army is unwilling to enforce them for fear of bloodshed, after the police, target of people’s wrath, have simply disappeared. Hosni Mubarak’s replacement of the Prime Minister, appointment of a Vice-President and the reshuffle of the cabinet are merely cosmetic and are not going to materially alter the ground situation. The masses are protesting directly against Hosni Mubarak himself and therefore these changes are not going to cut any ice with them. The fact that foreign governments are evacuating their stranded citizens and even their consular staff and their family, go to show how serious the situation is.
Egypt’s recent history, at least since World War II, has been characterized by instability, violence and espousal of Islamist ideology. Even the relatively calm period of Hosni Mubarak after the assassination of Anwar Sadat has been punctuated by violent Islamist terrorist attacks now and then, court dramas, and ruthless police action. One has to look at recent history to understand the current situation perhaps.
When the Ottoman empire was dissolved in c. 1924, it left a deep sense of loss and listlessness among the Muslims of the world as a nearly 1300 years of Islamic Caliphate came to an end. The overwhelming might of the Western countries, against which the Muslims seemed to be utterly powerless, ignited an urge to seek inwards for solutions to their problem as the Believers imagined that Islam was in danger of being wiped out. Egypt was thus naturally pushed to a central stage in the revivalist movement. For long Al Azhar was the most important sunni theological centre. Islamist thinkers like Afghani, Mohammed Abdu and Rida had already laid the foundation for reform of Islam in consonance with modern and emerging world by arguing the case for ijtihad. In the turbulent times following World War I, the dissolution of the Caliphate and the rise to power of fiercely secular nationalist leader Kemal Ataturk in Turkey, was born a new star in Egypt, Hassan al Banna. He established the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwanul Muslimeen) in c. 1928. He is An important member of the modern day Islamist revivalist movement. He wrote Risalat-al-Jihad that has become fountainhead of indoctrination for modern day Islamists and jihadists. Another important pillar of the Egyptian movement was Syed Qutb. He was often described as ‘First thinker of Islam in our epoch’. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the important leader of the violent Al Gama al Islamiyyah of Egypt and later the second in command of Al Qaeda, has been shaped by Qutb’s thoughts.
The question here is not whether the current uprising is justified or not. Today, one can definitely see the hand of the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan ul Muslimeen) behind this uprising. The exhortation from the mosques, the invisible hand that seems to coordinate the as yet leaderless unrest throughout the country all point in that direction. The sudden, united and synchronous chorus against the regime is otherwise impossible in a large country such as Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood is possibly exploiting the widespread feeling of disenchantment among the Egyptian masses for the unchanging Mubarak regime. However, a significant number of protestors also are against the entire gamut of politicians, both in the ruling National Democratic Party and the Opposition. This is certainly playing into the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood. The people’s anger is also directed against the ‘ugly’ Americans who are seen as having bought out this regime through aid packages etc. Recent Wikileaks revelations have come handy in this respect. The already simmering hatred for the Americans because of their steadfast support for the Israelis will only erupt more forcefully now. The Hosni Mubarak regime is thus finding that the American support is turning out to be an albatross around its neck.
The distance from Alexandria to Cairo (apprx. 220 Kms) is eerily similar to the distance from Lahore to Rawalpindi/Islamabad on the Grand Trunk Road (250 Kms). The 2009 Long March by lawyers, Nawaz Sharif and the masses forced an adamant Zardari to reinstate the deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. The Army intervened as the situation threatened to go out of control and the Americans began to put pressure on all stakeholders in the drama. President Zardari was forced to eat the humble pie very quickly. The probable Long March in 2011 as part of a Green Revolution can be violent and far more threatening than the earlier one as the deprived masses shepherded by the Islamist parties such as Jama’at-e-Islami (JI), both factions of Jama’at-Ulema-e-Islami (JUI), Jama’at-Ulema-e-Pakistan (JUP), Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N and the sectarian jihadi outfits of Punjab such as the resurrected Sipah-Sahaba-e-Pakistan (SSP) and other outfits, take on a much harassed government teetering on collapse. The assassination of Salman Taseer has united the Islamist parties of various sects, both Sunni and Shi’a as their Karachi meeting of January 13, 2011 showed. Even the pro-military Jama’at-ud-Dawah (JuD) joined the protests. If any uprising were to take place, JuD cannot be expected to remain non-participative as that would quickly lead to its own decimation. JuD is already under pressure as its cadres are finding it attractive to join the other Punjabi Taliban group such as Brigade 313 who are more aggressive.
One can reasonably expect that the over three dozen terrorist tanzeems would perforce join such an uprising especially if the reasons for such a revolt are carefully crafted to appeal to Muslim sensibilities. These along with the Islamist political parties are capable of amassing a few million people if they join for a common cause. The trick therefore lies in finding a common ground for protests. As Muslims are more prone to emotions, especially in a Pakistan which prides itself to be guarding the ideological frontiers of Islam and as the only Muslim Nuclear Weapon country, the fire can spread easily. The silent majority will remain silent as usual or a significant section may even support the revolution because of the dire economic and security situation. The sectarian jihadi tanzeems will be emboldened in the coming weeks to think of such a window of opportunity in months ahead. Such a revolution would also be a Godsend opportunity for the beleaguered Haqqani group in North Waziristan whose leaders have accepted that the intense and prolonged US drone attacks are taking a heavy toll of them. They, along with the Al Qaeda and the Taliban, will also be correct in thinking that a change of regime in Pakistan would inevitably suck the oxygen out of the US fire as a new regime, which could be more Islamist in nature, may take tougher stance vis-à-vis the US in transit routes, military engagement and political dialogue to find an Afghan solution. The Pakistani Army, might decide to remain neutral in the revolution as the Egyptian Army appears to be currently doing, for fear of the situation going out of control and leading to a lot of bloodshed or even a mutiny within its own rank and file. Unlike Egypt, where ruthless and high-handed government action for over three decades have almost decimated terrorist groups, the all-pervasive terror tanzeems in Pakistan would certainly exploit the situation especially as they have a large number of supporters in the Police, Army and the Establishment.
(To be Continued). . . .
The Egyptian uprising seems to be well coordinated, with a simple message that the loudspeakers of mosques across the country seem to be carrying: “You have a right to protest”. People have taken this message to heart and have poured out to the city centres and town squares with the Egyptian Army seemingly standing as mute spectators. It will be impossible for the Army to fire upon the protestors or even use strong arm tactics, though it seems to engage in a show of strength to intimidate the protestors, a tactic that has borne no fruits so far. Curfews have had little effect as the Army is unwilling to enforce them for fear of bloodshed, after the police, target of people’s wrath, have simply disappeared. Hosni Mubarak’s replacement of the Prime Minister, appointment of a Vice-President and the reshuffle of the cabinet are merely cosmetic and are not going to materially alter the ground situation. The masses are protesting directly against Hosni Mubarak himself and therefore these changes are not going to cut any ice with them. The fact that foreign governments are evacuating their stranded citizens and even their consular staff and their family, go to show how serious the situation is.
Egypt’s recent history, at least since World War II, has been characterized by instability, violence and espousal of Islamist ideology. Even the relatively calm period of Hosni Mubarak after the assassination of Anwar Sadat has been punctuated by violent Islamist terrorist attacks now and then, court dramas, and ruthless police action. One has to look at recent history to understand the current situation perhaps.
When the Ottoman empire was dissolved in c. 1924, it left a deep sense of loss and listlessness among the Muslims of the world as a nearly 1300 years of Islamic Caliphate came to an end. The overwhelming might of the Western countries, against which the Muslims seemed to be utterly powerless, ignited an urge to seek inwards for solutions to their problem as the Believers imagined that Islam was in danger of being wiped out. Egypt was thus naturally pushed to a central stage in the revivalist movement. For long Al Azhar was the most important sunni theological centre. Islamist thinkers like Afghani, Mohammed Abdu and Rida had already laid the foundation for reform of Islam in consonance with modern and emerging world by arguing the case for ijtihad. In the turbulent times following World War I, the dissolution of the Caliphate and the rise to power of fiercely secular nationalist leader Kemal Ataturk in Turkey, was born a new star in Egypt, Hassan al Banna. He established the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwanul Muslimeen) in c. 1928. He is An important member of the modern day Islamist revivalist movement. He wrote Risalat-al-Jihad that has become fountainhead of indoctrination for modern day Islamists and jihadists. Another important pillar of the Egyptian movement was Syed Qutb. He was often described as ‘First thinker of Islam in our epoch’. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the important leader of the violent Al Gama al Islamiyyah of Egypt and later the second in command of Al Qaeda, has been shaped by Qutb’s thoughts.
The question here is not whether the current uprising is justified or not. Today, one can definitely see the hand of the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan ul Muslimeen) behind this uprising. The exhortation from the mosques, the invisible hand that seems to coordinate the as yet leaderless unrest throughout the country all point in that direction. The sudden, united and synchronous chorus against the regime is otherwise impossible in a large country such as Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood is possibly exploiting the widespread feeling of disenchantment among the Egyptian masses for the unchanging Mubarak regime. However, a significant number of protestors also are against the entire gamut of politicians, both in the ruling National Democratic Party and the Opposition. This is certainly playing into the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood. The people’s anger is also directed against the ‘ugly’ Americans who are seen as having bought out this regime through aid packages etc. Recent Wikileaks revelations have come handy in this respect. The already simmering hatred for the Americans because of their steadfast support for the Israelis will only erupt more forcefully now. The Hosni Mubarak regime is thus finding that the American support is turning out to be an albatross around its neck.
The distance from Alexandria to Cairo (apprx. 220 Kms) is eerily similar to the distance from Lahore to Rawalpindi/Islamabad on the Grand Trunk Road (250 Kms). The 2009 Long March by lawyers, Nawaz Sharif and the masses forced an adamant Zardari to reinstate the deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. The Army intervened as the situation threatened to go out of control and the Americans began to put pressure on all stakeholders in the drama. President Zardari was forced to eat the humble pie very quickly. The probable Long March in 2011 as part of a Green Revolution can be violent and far more threatening than the earlier one as the deprived masses shepherded by the Islamist parties such as Jama’at-e-Islami (JI), both factions of Jama’at-Ulema-e-Islami (JUI), Jama’at-Ulema-e-Pakistan (JUP), Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N and the sectarian jihadi outfits of Punjab such as the resurrected Sipah-Sahaba-e-Pakistan (SSP) and other outfits, take on a much harassed government teetering on collapse. The assassination of Salman Taseer has united the Islamist parties of various sects, both Sunni and Shi’a as their Karachi meeting of January 13, 2011 showed. Even the pro-military Jama’at-ud-Dawah (JuD) joined the protests. If any uprising were to take place, JuD cannot be expected to remain non-participative as that would quickly lead to its own decimation. JuD is already under pressure as its cadres are finding it attractive to join the other Punjabi Taliban group such as Brigade 313 who are more aggressive.
One can reasonably expect that the over three dozen terrorist tanzeems would perforce join such an uprising especially if the reasons for such a revolt are carefully crafted to appeal to Muslim sensibilities. These along with the Islamist political parties are capable of amassing a few million people if they join for a common cause. The trick therefore lies in finding a common ground for protests. As Muslims are more prone to emotions, especially in a Pakistan which prides itself to be guarding the ideological frontiers of Islam and as the only Muslim Nuclear Weapon country, the fire can spread easily. The silent majority will remain silent as usual or a significant section may even support the revolution because of the dire economic and security situation. The sectarian jihadi tanzeems will be emboldened in the coming weeks to think of such a window of opportunity in months ahead. Such a revolution would also be a Godsend opportunity for the beleaguered Haqqani group in North Waziristan whose leaders have accepted that the intense and prolonged US drone attacks are taking a heavy toll of them. They, along with the Al Qaeda and the Taliban, will also be correct in thinking that a change of regime in Pakistan would inevitably suck the oxygen out of the US fire as a new regime, which could be more Islamist in nature, may take tougher stance vis-à-vis the US in transit routes, military engagement and political dialogue to find an Afghan solution. The Pakistani Army, might decide to remain neutral in the revolution as the Egyptian Army appears to be currently doing, for fear of the situation going out of control and leading to a lot of bloodshed or even a mutiny within its own rank and file. Unlike Egypt, where ruthless and high-handed government action for over three decades have almost decimated terrorist groups, the all-pervasive terror tanzeems in Pakistan would certainly exploit the situation especially as they have a large number of supporters in the Police, Army and the Establishment.
(To be Continued). . . .
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Perfidious Musharraf and his Recent TV Interview - Part IV
Gen. (r) Musharraf referred to other things as well, for example, on actions taken against Prof. Hafeez Saeed saheb and Maulana Masood Azhar saheb. The interviewer referred to the 'arrest' of the learned Maulana, only to be 'corrected' by the General(r) that "no, he was never arrested because we could not arrest him". Again, the answer was a double entendre as has been the various utterances of Pakistani leaders. We will come to the Maulana episode a little later.
We need to understand a little bit about these two great jihadi leaders, Prof. Hafeez Saeed saheb and Maulana Masood Azhar saheb before we proceed with the General's usual perfidy.
Lashkar-e-Tayba(LeT, Army of the Pure) is a Sunni Ahl-e-Hadith terrorist organization that was started in the Kunar province of eastern Afghanistan. Prof. Hafeez Saeed (who taught Islam at the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore and hence the oxymoronic Professor tag) was the co-founder, along with Abdullah Azzam, of Maktab-al-Khidmat (Office of Service) in Peshawar in circa 1979 to help the Arab jihadis. Abdullah Azzam was the mentor of Osama bin Laden, both at the King Abdul Aziz University (KAAU) in Jeddah and later in the Afghan jihad. After Azzam's assassination on Nov. 24, 1989, variously attributed to Israeli Mossad or even the mujahideen faction, the Maktab became Jama'at-ud-Dawah W'al Irshad and LeT was founded soon thereafter as its military wing.
Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM, Army of Muhammad, PBUH), a Sunni Hanafi Deobandi terrorist organization, was created by the ISI on 31 January 2000, exactly one month after Maulana Masood Azhar was released from the Indian prison in exchange for release of passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines plane IC-814. The creation of JeM is attributed to Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Ahmed, who was the chief of ISI (between circa 1999 – 2001). Maulana Masood Azhar is a close friend of Osama bin Laden from the days of his exile in Sudan after the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia expelled him for anti-State (anti-monarchy, in fact) activities. Predictably, his organization is a member of IIF (Islamic International Front for Jihad against the Crusaders and the Jewish people). Apart from various terrorist attacks in India, especially J&K, JeM has also been involved in terrorist attacks within Pakistan. Some important attacks were the assassination attempts on Gen. Pervez Musharraf in 2003; US Consulate attack in Karachi on May 26, 2004; attack on Karachi Corps Commander on June 9, 2004 etc. Earlier, when Pakistan deployed its troops in Somalia under UN supervision, an enraged Masood Azhar carried out operations that killed 24 Pakistani Army soldiers there. He also wrote a booklet against Pakistani troops in Somalia and even distributed that in Pakistan. His jihadi commitment to the ideological frontiers of Islam thus truly transcends mere geographical boundaries of a nation, well in line with the 'Jihad fi Sabilillah' (Jihad in the way of Allah) motto of the regular Pakistani Army itself.
Now, let us come to the various ways by which the Islamic republic of Pakistan has handled these two great warriors. See my earlier blog, "Prof. Hafeez Saeed, LeT, and the Support from the State of Pakistan" on how the 'Deep State' benevolently handled this 'non-state actor' after 9/11. Let us therefore limit ourselves to a discussion on Maulana saheb alone here.
After his release at Kandahar into ISI hands, a fact accepted by the then Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Mutawakil and confirmed by Indian signal intercepts[2], Maulana Masood Azhar was driven to Pakistan in vehicles provided by the Taliban and was received with great joy and pride all over the country. His first stop was the Binori mosque at Karachi (Jamia Darul Uloom Islamia Allama Binori) and it was not surprising because that was his alma mater (where Mullah Omar, Osama bin Laden and HuJI chief Qari Saifullah Akhtar also studied at one time or another), having passed with distinction from there. Its Chief Nazeemuddin Shamzai (since assassinated) was the patron saint of JeM. He was constantly surrounded by dozens of heavily armed militia even as there was a ban on display of arms by any person or group in Karachi because of the security situation there. Just nobody dared to challenge Azhar saheb and his heavily armed guards could be seen in vehicles and open meetings, the first of which he addressed at Al-Rasheediya mosque in central Karachi within a week, proclaiming his resolve to defeat India and calling for funds and volunteers. Now, did Gen. (r) Musharraf say that Pakistan could never arrest Masood Azhar ? He was indeed arrested in December, 2001 after the attack on the Indian Parliament but was ordered released by a review board of the Lahore High Court on Dec. 14, 2002. His arrest was confirmed by none other than the Spokesperson of Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) Major General Rashid Qureshi, that Master Spinner. The usual ploy, as we found later in the case of Prof. Hafeez Saeed saheb, of arresting under 'Maintenance of Public Order' was employed in Azhar's case too. We know how Islamist the Lahore High Court has been, from the way it has released scores of hardcore jihadi terrorists over the years and so his subsequent release is not surprising.
In c. 2003, Gen. Musharraf met all top jihadi leaders[1], including Maulana Masood Azhar, to re-assure them of the continued support of his government for their jihadi activities in spite of US pressure to do otherwise. This was the 'running with the hares and hunting with the hounds' policy of Musharraf, as accepted now by President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani. The Deep State therefore encouraged LeT to organize a large gathering at Muridke in c. 2003 which was addressed, among others, by Masood Azhar as well. Azhar saheb was again placed under house arrest after the twin suicide attacks on Gen. Musharraf in 2003. He conveniently disappeared from house arrest in Bahawalpur sometime later. However, there have been many authentic reports of his frequent visits since then to his house in Bahawalpur where heavy security support is provided by the Deep State. He also held an open function to launch his new book Fatah-ul-Jawad: Quranic Verses on Jihad, on April 28, 2008, in Bahawalpur when Gen. (r) Musharraf was still very much in power. In the meanwhile, his Balakot terror training facility has been running without let or hindrance. In December, 2008, Pakistan claimed that it had placed Azhar under house arrest in Bahawalpur (confirmed by defense minister Chaudhary Ahmad Mukhtar in a TV interview where he also said that Azhar would not be handed over to India however). The DAWN News Channel also confirmed this quoting interior ministry sources. However, it was denied within a few days by the Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi claiming that his whereabouts were unknown though they were certain that he was not in Pakistan. Does it not sound all too familiar considering that a similar response comes from Pakistan whenever Dawood Ibrahim's name is mentioned when the whole world knows where he lives in Pakistan, except of course the Government of Pakistan ? So much for the Deep State's inability to arrest or prosecute the Maulana saheb.
(To be continued. . . )
REFERENCES
[1] "Pakistan, India: Same Game, New Rules", Syed Saleem Shahzad, Asia Times,Nov. 27, 2003
[2] "The Kandahar Plot", Praveen Swami, Frontline,Vol 20-Issue 24, Nov. 22 - Dec. 05, 2003
We need to understand a little bit about these two great jihadi leaders, Prof. Hafeez Saeed saheb and Maulana Masood Azhar saheb before we proceed with the General's usual perfidy.
Lashkar-e-Tayba(LeT, Army of the Pure) is a Sunni Ahl-e-Hadith terrorist organization that was started in the Kunar province of eastern Afghanistan. Prof. Hafeez Saeed (who taught Islam at the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore and hence the oxymoronic Professor tag) was the co-founder, along with Abdullah Azzam, of Maktab-al-Khidmat (Office of Service) in Peshawar in circa 1979 to help the Arab jihadis. Abdullah Azzam was the mentor of Osama bin Laden, both at the King Abdul Aziz University (KAAU) in Jeddah and later in the Afghan jihad. After Azzam's assassination on Nov. 24, 1989, variously attributed to Israeli Mossad or even the mujahideen faction, the Maktab became Jama'at-ud-Dawah W'al Irshad and LeT was founded soon thereafter as its military wing.
Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM, Army of Muhammad, PBUH), a Sunni Hanafi Deobandi terrorist organization, was created by the ISI on 31 January 2000, exactly one month after Maulana Masood Azhar was released from the Indian prison in exchange for release of passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines plane IC-814. The creation of JeM is attributed to Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Ahmed, who was the chief of ISI (between circa 1999 – 2001). Maulana Masood Azhar is a close friend of Osama bin Laden from the days of his exile in Sudan after the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia expelled him for anti-State (anti-monarchy, in fact) activities. Predictably, his organization is a member of IIF (Islamic International Front for Jihad against the Crusaders and the Jewish people). Apart from various terrorist attacks in India, especially J&K, JeM has also been involved in terrorist attacks within Pakistan. Some important attacks were the assassination attempts on Gen. Pervez Musharraf in 2003; US Consulate attack in Karachi on May 26, 2004; attack on Karachi Corps Commander on June 9, 2004 etc. Earlier, when Pakistan deployed its troops in Somalia under UN supervision, an enraged Masood Azhar carried out operations that killed 24 Pakistani Army soldiers there. He also wrote a booklet against Pakistani troops in Somalia and even distributed that in Pakistan. His jihadi commitment to the ideological frontiers of Islam thus truly transcends mere geographical boundaries of a nation, well in line with the 'Jihad fi Sabilillah' (Jihad in the way of Allah) motto of the regular Pakistani Army itself.
Now, let us come to the various ways by which the Islamic republic of Pakistan has handled these two great warriors. See my earlier blog, "Prof. Hafeez Saeed, LeT, and the Support from the State of Pakistan" on how the 'Deep State' benevolently handled this 'non-state actor' after 9/11. Let us therefore limit ourselves to a discussion on Maulana saheb alone here.
After his release at Kandahar into ISI hands, a fact accepted by the then Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Mutawakil and confirmed by Indian signal intercepts[2], Maulana Masood Azhar was driven to Pakistan in vehicles provided by the Taliban and was received with great joy and pride all over the country. His first stop was the Binori mosque at Karachi (Jamia Darul Uloom Islamia Allama Binori) and it was not surprising because that was his alma mater (where Mullah Omar, Osama bin Laden and HuJI chief Qari Saifullah Akhtar also studied at one time or another), having passed with distinction from there. Its Chief Nazeemuddin Shamzai (since assassinated) was the patron saint of JeM. He was constantly surrounded by dozens of heavily armed militia even as there was a ban on display of arms by any person or group in Karachi because of the security situation there. Just nobody dared to challenge Azhar saheb and his heavily armed guards could be seen in vehicles and open meetings, the first of which he addressed at Al-Rasheediya mosque in central Karachi within a week, proclaiming his resolve to defeat India and calling for funds and volunteers. Now, did Gen. (r) Musharraf say that Pakistan could never arrest Masood Azhar ? He was indeed arrested in December, 2001 after the attack on the Indian Parliament but was ordered released by a review board of the Lahore High Court on Dec. 14, 2002. His arrest was confirmed by none other than the Spokesperson of Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) Major General Rashid Qureshi, that Master Spinner. The usual ploy, as we found later in the case of Prof. Hafeez Saeed saheb, of arresting under 'Maintenance of Public Order' was employed in Azhar's case too. We know how Islamist the Lahore High Court has been, from the way it has released scores of hardcore jihadi terrorists over the years and so his subsequent release is not surprising.
In c. 2003, Gen. Musharraf met all top jihadi leaders[1], including Maulana Masood Azhar, to re-assure them of the continued support of his government for their jihadi activities in spite of US pressure to do otherwise. This was the 'running with the hares and hunting with the hounds' policy of Musharraf, as accepted now by President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani. The Deep State therefore encouraged LeT to organize a large gathering at Muridke in c. 2003 which was addressed, among others, by Masood Azhar as well. Azhar saheb was again placed under house arrest after the twin suicide attacks on Gen. Musharraf in 2003. He conveniently disappeared from house arrest in Bahawalpur sometime later. However, there have been many authentic reports of his frequent visits since then to his house in Bahawalpur where heavy security support is provided by the Deep State. He also held an open function to launch his new book Fatah-ul-Jawad: Quranic Verses on Jihad, on April 28, 2008, in Bahawalpur when Gen. (r) Musharraf was still very much in power. In the meanwhile, his Balakot terror training facility has been running without let or hindrance. In December, 2008, Pakistan claimed that it had placed Azhar under house arrest in Bahawalpur (confirmed by defense minister Chaudhary Ahmad Mukhtar in a TV interview where he also said that Azhar would not be handed over to India however). The DAWN News Channel also confirmed this quoting interior ministry sources. However, it was denied within a few days by the Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi claiming that his whereabouts were unknown though they were certain that he was not in Pakistan. Does it not sound all too familiar considering that a similar response comes from Pakistan whenever Dawood Ibrahim's name is mentioned when the whole world knows where he lives in Pakistan, except of course the Government of Pakistan ? So much for the Deep State's inability to arrest or prosecute the Maulana saheb.
(To be continued. . . )
REFERENCES
[1] "Pakistan, India: Same Game, New Rules", Syed Saleem Shahzad, Asia Times,Nov. 27, 2003
[2] "The Kandahar Plot", Praveen Swami, Frontline,Vol 20-Issue 24, Nov. 22 - Dec. 05, 2003
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Perfidious Musharraf and his Recent TV Interview - Part III
During the course of the interview, there was a reference to the speech given by Gen. Musharraf to his fellow Pakistanis (and the rest of the world, especially India) in Jan, 2002, a month after the Dec. 13, 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament by LeT and JeM. At the time he gave this speech, the situation was spiralling out of control and he was under tremendous pressure to act to contain it.
The speech under question is the January 12, 2002 speech of Gen. Musharraf over the national television in Pakistan. The US President, George Bush had exhorted Gen. Musharraf in the first week of January, to make his position clear on terrorism. As usual, in order to pull the wool over the eyes of India and Western benefactor countries, Musharraf made several promises. It is worth recalling some of them:
Let's remember that Gen. Musharraf condemned, banned, vowed, promised, said and ordered so many things. And now, to the perfidious part of the speech. We will later see the perfidious action part as none of the above promises was kept. In the same speech, the following were interspersed as well:
A few days after the January 12, 2002 speech, an open and defiant meeting was held in Holiday Inn, Islamabad where representatives of LeT, JeM, Tehrik-e-Jaffria, Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) met with other similar luminaries as Lt. Gen. (r) Hamid Gul, Gen. (r) Aslam Beg, Maj. Gen. (r) Zaheerul Islam Abbassi (who in September 1995 tried a military coup along with terrorist outfits to seize power from Ms. Benazir Bhutto to establish a Caliphate) and Jama'at-e-Islami (S) chief Maulana Sami-ul-Haq (who is popularly known also as Maulana Sandwich for some strange reason) and discussed the 'appalling betrayal of the Kashmiri cause' by Gen. (r) Musharraf. Pakistan did nothing to prevent this meeting or arrest these people who support jihad openly. Since then, all the Pakistani actions have been farcical on the front of containment of terrorism even while claiming to take action all the time. So much so, President Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani have said that Musharraf followed a policy of running with the hares and hunting with the hounds.
Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, who held such portfolios as Information and Railways in Gen. Musharraf's Presidency, openly admitted that he was a jihadi in Kashmir. His colleagues in the jihad business ascertained that he set up a camp at Fateh Jung near Rawalpindi, where around 3,500 jihadis were trained in guerrilla warfare. Gen. (r) Mirza Aslam Beg, an ex Chief of Army Staff (COAS), confirmed the claim and went on to say that even the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif could confirm that ! Gen. (r) Mirza Aslam Beg also said that the camp, Freedom House, still existed. Another ISI officer, since deceased, confirmed this.
Ms. Benazir Bhutto - no paragon of virtue herself when it comes to terrorism - admitted that some of her Army Generals planned to attack the US in collaboration with Osama bin Laden.[1] Writing in the Washington Post on March 12, 2007[2], this is what Ms. Bhutto had to say: Why is it that all terrorist plots – from the Sept. 11 attacks, to Madrid, to London, to Mumbai – seem to have roots in Islamabad?Pakistan’s military and intelligence services have, for decades, used religious parties for recruits.
Mr. Shamshad Ahmed, a former Foreign Secretary of Pakistan summed it up all nicely, in an article dated November 24, 2007, by saying, "Every act of violence anywhere in the world is traced back to our country in one way or the other."[3]
Another former Foreign Secretary of Pakistan, Najmuddin A Shaikh, wrote thus in Daily Times on August, 29, 2008 [4], while discussing Pakistani tactics in Afghanistan: It is now no secret that, Afghanistan apart, the assistance required by the spontaneous uprising in Indian-occupied Kashmir also made it necessary to maintain and enhance rather than dismantle the anti-Soviet jihad machinery.
This implicit reliance on jihad, terror, and violence to achieve political goals was amply demonstrated in the National Assembly of Pakistan by no other than the Secretary of Defence Maj. Tanveer Syed on Aug. 7, 2007 when he demanded the Pakistani government to wage jihad against India to get Kashmir. He assured the nation that if full-fledged jihad was waged, Pakistan would get Kashmir within six months. He said, "“India will not give freedom to the Kashmiris through dialogue so we have to wage a Jihad and our Mujahideen will secure the freedom of Kashmir within six months”[5] It is noteworthy that the Secretary of Defence, who justified jihad, was a retired Army major.
One of Gen. (r) Musharraf's protege, Madam Shireen Mazari, whom he appointed as the Chairperson of the Pakistani Institute of Strategic Studies (aptly named PISS) as soon as he took over power, had this to write about the tactics to be adopted by the terrorists operating in Kashmir, in an article she penned in circa 1999 in The News: “But perhaps the Kashmiri freedom fighters need to be reminded of history: That freedom struggles like the Algerian only succeeded when the freedom fighters took the war to the French homeland. And the British only compromised with the Irish once the IRA took the war to the British Isles and London. These are the cruel realities of military struggles and so the Kashmir war must be taken to the Indian mainland, especially South India to make the ordinary Indian realise the costs of his government's occupation policy in Kashmir. If freedom is to be won through the barrel of a gun then niceties cannot prevail and efficiency and effectiveness should be the primary considerations”
Why does, therefore, Gen. (r) Musharraf want people to believe all the nonsense that he peddles now ? In the Times Now TV interview, Gen. (r) Musharraf blamed the US also for what he termed as 'religious militancy' in his country. No doubt the US, which is as tactically brilliant as its tight buddy Pakistan, failed to see or did not care or both, the long-term fall out of stoking Islamist, jihadi, sectarian mindset in the Af-Pak region. But, it was Pakistan and Pakistan alone that has preserved, nurtured and grown that mindset after circa 1989 to be used against its only enemy, India. Indeed, one can easily surmise that Pakistan participated in the Afghan jihad with the sole intent of turning it on against India later.
The irony is that Gen. (r) Musharraf claims that the policy of encouraging terrorism was practised by Pakistani regimes prior to his own. By their accusations against each other, the Pakistani leaders have all made it clear that every Pakistani government has used terrorism as a tool of the State.
(To be continued. . . )
REFERENCES
[1]"I Vetoed Plan by Pak to Attack America: Bhutto", Indian Express
[1]A False Choice for Pakistan, Washington Post
[3]Back to Stone Age, The Nation
[4]Looking back at our role in Afghanistan
[5]Parliamentary Secretary Calls for Jihad
The speech under question is the January 12, 2002 speech of Gen. Musharraf over the national television in Pakistan. The US President, George Bush had exhorted Gen. Musharraf in the first week of January, to make his position clear on terrorism. As usual, in order to pull the wool over the eyes of India and Western benefactor countries, Musharraf made several promises. It is worth recalling some of them:
- He condemned the terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament and said terrorism tarnished the image of Pakistan
- He banned Lashkar-e-Tayba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM)
- He vowed to finish off religious extremism
- He promised that no organisations will be able to carry out terrorism on the pretext of Kashmir. Whoever is involved with such acts in the future will be dealt with strongly
- He said that Pakistan will not allow its territory to be used for any terrorist activity anywhere in the world.
- He ordered all madrasseh to register with the government within two months
Let's remember that Gen. Musharraf condemned, banned, vowed, promised, said and ordered so many things. And now, to the perfidious part of the speech. We will later see the perfidious action part as none of the above promises was kept. In the same speech, the following were interspersed as well:
- If Kashmir dispute was not resolved peacefully, the region will not see peace
- "Kashmir runs in our blood. No Pakistani can afford to sever links with Kashmir. We will continue to extend our moral, political and diplomatic support to Kashmiris."
A few days after the January 12, 2002 speech, an open and defiant meeting was held in Holiday Inn, Islamabad where representatives of LeT, JeM, Tehrik-e-Jaffria, Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) met with other similar luminaries as Lt. Gen. (r) Hamid Gul, Gen. (r) Aslam Beg, Maj. Gen. (r) Zaheerul Islam Abbassi (who in September 1995 tried a military coup along with terrorist outfits to seize power from Ms. Benazir Bhutto to establish a Caliphate) and Jama'at-e-Islami (S) chief Maulana Sami-ul-Haq (who is popularly known also as Maulana Sandwich for some strange reason) and discussed the 'appalling betrayal of the Kashmiri cause' by Gen. (r) Musharraf. Pakistan did nothing to prevent this meeting or arrest these people who support jihad openly. Since then, all the Pakistani actions have been farcical on the front of containment of terrorism even while claiming to take action all the time. So much so, President Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani have said that Musharraf followed a policy of running with the hares and hunting with the hounds.
Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, who held such portfolios as Information and Railways in Gen. Musharraf's Presidency, openly admitted that he was a jihadi in Kashmir. His colleagues in the jihad business ascertained that he set up a camp at Fateh Jung near Rawalpindi, where around 3,500 jihadis were trained in guerrilla warfare. Gen. (r) Mirza Aslam Beg, an ex Chief of Army Staff (COAS), confirmed the claim and went on to say that even the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif could confirm that ! Gen. (r) Mirza Aslam Beg also said that the camp, Freedom House, still existed. Another ISI officer, since deceased, confirmed this.
Ms. Benazir Bhutto - no paragon of virtue herself when it comes to terrorism - admitted that some of her Army Generals planned to attack the US in collaboration with Osama bin Laden.[1] Writing in the Washington Post on March 12, 2007[2], this is what Ms. Bhutto had to say: Why is it that all terrorist plots – from the Sept. 11 attacks, to Madrid, to London, to Mumbai – seem to have roots in Islamabad?Pakistan’s military and intelligence services have, for decades, used religious parties for recruits.
Mr. Shamshad Ahmed, a former Foreign Secretary of Pakistan summed it up all nicely, in an article dated November 24, 2007, by saying, "Every act of violence anywhere in the world is traced back to our country in one way or the other."[3]
Another former Foreign Secretary of Pakistan, Najmuddin A Shaikh, wrote thus in Daily Times on August, 29, 2008 [4], while discussing Pakistani tactics in Afghanistan: It is now no secret that, Afghanistan apart, the assistance required by the spontaneous uprising in Indian-occupied Kashmir also made it necessary to maintain and enhance rather than dismantle the anti-Soviet jihad machinery.
This implicit reliance on jihad, terror, and violence to achieve political goals was amply demonstrated in the National Assembly of Pakistan by no other than the Secretary of Defence Maj. Tanveer Syed on Aug. 7, 2007 when he demanded the Pakistani government to wage jihad against India to get Kashmir. He assured the nation that if full-fledged jihad was waged, Pakistan would get Kashmir within six months. He said, "“India will not give freedom to the Kashmiris through dialogue so we have to wage a Jihad and our Mujahideen will secure the freedom of Kashmir within six months”[5] It is noteworthy that the Secretary of Defence, who justified jihad, was a retired Army major.
One of Gen. (r) Musharraf's protege, Madam Shireen Mazari, whom he appointed as the Chairperson of the Pakistani Institute of Strategic Studies (aptly named PISS) as soon as he took over power, had this to write about the tactics to be adopted by the terrorists operating in Kashmir, in an article she penned in circa 1999 in The News: “But perhaps the Kashmiri freedom fighters need to be reminded of history: That freedom struggles like the Algerian only succeeded when the freedom fighters took the war to the French homeland. And the British only compromised with the Irish once the IRA took the war to the British Isles and London. These are the cruel realities of military struggles and so the Kashmir war must be taken to the Indian mainland, especially South India to make the ordinary Indian realise the costs of his government's occupation policy in Kashmir. If freedom is to be won through the barrel of a gun then niceties cannot prevail and efficiency and effectiveness should be the primary considerations”
Why does, therefore, Gen. (r) Musharraf want people to believe all the nonsense that he peddles now ? In the Times Now TV interview, Gen. (r) Musharraf blamed the US also for what he termed as 'religious militancy' in his country. No doubt the US, which is as tactically brilliant as its tight buddy Pakistan, failed to see or did not care or both, the long-term fall out of stoking Islamist, jihadi, sectarian mindset in the Af-Pak region. But, it was Pakistan and Pakistan alone that has preserved, nurtured and grown that mindset after circa 1989 to be used against its only enemy, India. Indeed, one can easily surmise that Pakistan participated in the Afghan jihad with the sole intent of turning it on against India later.
The irony is that Gen. (r) Musharraf claims that the policy of encouraging terrorism was practised by Pakistani regimes prior to his own. By their accusations against each other, the Pakistani leaders have all made it clear that every Pakistani government has used terrorism as a tool of the State.
(To be continued. . . )
REFERENCES
[1]"I Vetoed Plan by Pak to Attack America: Bhutto", Indian Express
[1]A False Choice for Pakistan, Washington Post
[3]Back to Stone Age, The Nation
[4]Looking back at our role in Afghanistan
[5]Parliamentary Secretary Calls for Jihad
Friday, December 31, 2010
Perfidious Musharraf and his Recent TV Interview - Part II
A friend who follows this blog sent me mail pointing out to the website of former Pakistani Air Force (PAF) officer who had in great detail described the involvement of the Pakistani Army (PA) in Kargil, something the venerable Gen. (r) Musharraf continues to deny vehemently. We have several sources today, very authentic, who have categorically stated the involvement of the PA in Kargil. The more Gen. (r) Musharraf adamantly sticks to his stand, the more he becomes the laughing stock thus confirming his well-known status as a liar of the very first order. In my opinion therefore, there is no need to even discuss this issue further.
The rest of the interview with Gen. (r) Musharraf on the Times Now channel was also very interesting. The interview dealt with such issues as Gen. (r) Musharraf's speech on Jan. 12, 2002 wherein he promised to take strong action to root out terrorism from Pakistan, Musharraf's own admission of guilt to the Der Spiegel magazine etc. When cornered, he would say that everybody was bothererd only about Pakistan while India went scot free in spite of its mischief in East Pakistan and Siachen. There can be no comparison between Kargil and the two events that Gen. (r) Musharraf has the habit of mentioning (this interview was not the first time he mentioned such linkages) everytime he runs out of points. These are selective narratives of rubbish history that the Pakistani Army and its supporters have made the gullible people of Pakistan gulp. Like helpless people tossed about in a raging sea from a wrecked ship, the Pakistanis try to clutch at these virtual straws and live in a world of denial, ignorant and therefore blissful.
The discontent in East Pakistan dates back to even Jinnah's euphoric days after Independence. The trampling of proud Bengali sensibilities of their language, culture and history by the supercilious West Pakistanis especially Punjabis, the haughty stance of 'Defence of East Pakistan lies in the security of West Pakistan', the economic swindling of East Pakistan to meet the insatiable demands and spendthrift ways of West Pakistan, the contempt with which East Pakistanis were looked down upon as rather cowardly, poor, short, dark and rice-eating cousins of the tall, fair and wheat-and-meat eating martial races of West Pakistan, their suspect loyalty to the very 'Idea of Pakistan', in the eyes of the West Pakistanis, because of a high percentage of Hindus among them and the resultant impurity of the entire East Pakistanis etc. had already created enough dissension within East Pakistan. The rejection of the 1970 election mandate by the Pakistani Army Generals and Z.A. Bhutto because that would have allowed an East Pakistani Sheikh Mujibur Rehman to become the Prime Minister of the nation, followed by the brutal genocide by state and non-state actors of West Pakistan only added fuel to the fire and culminated in the inevitable seccesion and this history is well known to the entire world, including Pakistanis themselves.
Thus, the landslide victory in the first elections of universal suffrage, considered by many to be the only free elections in the history of Pakistan, by Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, a popular leader of East Pakistan, led immediately to the breakup of more than half the country. Sheikh Mujibur Rehman's Awami party swept the polls scoring twice the number of seats than his nearest rival, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of PPP. Since Mujib won all his seats in East Pakistan and Z.A.Bhutto similarly in West Pakistan, the Pakistani Army feared that Mujib as the Prime Minister would reduce the power of the Army which consisted mostly of Punjabis and Pashtuns, all from West Pakistan. The Army decided to put its faith in Z.A.Bhutto especially since it had close linkages with him ever since he was a Foreign Minister in the Ayub Government. In fact, he along with Army Generals, is reputed to have planned the 1965 war and cajoled a reluctant Field Marshal Ayub Khan to accept the plans. In any case, Z.A.Bhutto’s intransigence in accepting Mujib as the Prime Minister had the tacit backing of the Army and the deteriorating political situation led to the genocide in East Pakistan. The rest is history. Of course, in the final stages of their struggle, India was forced to help the East Pakistanis in their war with West Pakistan as millions of refugees poured into India straining her economy and destabilizing the region even as most of the rest of the world remained as a mute spectator. India never instigated these events in East Pakistan unlike what Pakistan has been doing in Jammu & Kashmir (and increasingly in other parts of India as well) since Independence.
Kargil was probably an attempt by the PA to execute what they could not do in Siachen. This suspicion is lent credence by the repeated linkages that Musharraf has expressed whenever Kargil was discussed. The occupation by India of the Siachen glaciers was prompted by Pakistan's insidious attempt to surreptitiously grab it. As in the 1947 and 1965 wars and later in Kargil, and so in Siachen, Pakistan was smugly assuming that India would not enlarge the envelope once the conflict broke out or if Pakistan seized the initiative. But, it paid a heavy price and yet never learned any lessons.
Now, a brief note on the geography of the region. The Siachen Glaciers are located on the Karakoram range, which is one of those five mountain ranges to join the Pamir Knot, the others being, from west to east, the Hindu Kush, Pir Panjal, Himalayan and Kun Lun which is to the east of Karakoram. The Karakoram Range has two important passes, one in the west known as the Khunjerab and the other in the east in Ladakh known as the Karakoram Pass. The Karakoram Highway that connects Pakistan to Xinjiang through the Pakistan occupied Balawaristan region of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) goes through this pass. On the other hand, the eastern Karakoram Pass was the traditional trade route for the Ladakhis from Leh to Xinjiang. Two limbs of the Karakoram are the Saltoro and the Sasser ranges and the Siachen Glacier is located between these two limbs. At the northern end of the Saltoro Range is the Sia La pass (almost at the Shaksgam Valley ceded by Pakistan to China in circa 1962)and about the middle is the Bilafond La pass, both of which help cross into the Karakoram. The Nubra River drains south from the Siachen Glacier into Ladakh and the Saltoro River drains west, both of which join the Shyok River (the River of Death) which in turn joins the great Indus River at Skardu (in Baltistan) where the Indus takes a deep bend to get to the plains of Pakistan. The Siachen glacier is on the eastern side of Soltoro while the Boltoro glacier is on the western side.
So, with the help of the American Defence Mapping Agency which in its 1974 edition wilfully and deliberately drew the border by itself favouring Pakistan in the Siachen area, the Pakistanis began to lay claim to the un-demarcated areas to the north and east of point NJ9842 in Ladakh up to the Karakoram Pass. Various Atlas producers in the US and the UK (part of the 3½ Friends Group of Pakistan) began to follow suit and wrongfully depict the glacier as belonging to Pakistan. (The map reference point NJ9842, or as it is also referred to as NJ980420 sometimes, was the closest point to military presence of Cease Fire Line, CFL, which was agreed to in Karachi when war ended in c. 1948. This reference point was also used in the Simla Accord in 1972 as the starting point of Line of Control, LoC, leaving once again border beyond that undemarcated by simply saying "thence north to the glaciers". The area further north was left undemarcated because of its remote, uninhabited wilderness) With this support from the US as a fait accompli, Pakistan began to issue 'permits' and allow mountaineering expeditions by the Japanese and others to climb the Saltoro Range. We can clearly see the help from Pakistan's 3½ Friends (or Masters, as some call them) in sustaining and nurturing hostility towards India. Then, in the 1980s, Pakistan began to issue maps that showed the LoC extending straight from NJ9842 to the Karakoram Pass instead of 'thence North to the glaciers' just as the US Defence Mapping Agency did in c. 1974. It has been pointed out by many that in a mountainous region, there can be no straight line boundaries without taking into consideration crests, rivers, watersheds etc.
In 1983, Pakistan tried to set up military posts in these areas, an effort that failed because of poor logistics. Therefore, they went in for massive purchase of winter gear and eqipment to overcome the earlier issues. On August 21, 1983, Pakistan demanded Indian troops to be withdrawn south of "line joining point NJ9842 and Karakoram Pass NE7410", a demand that India rejected. A second demand note was issued by Pakistan on August 29, 1983, betraying Pakistan's likely approach to Siachen in the upcoming summer of 1984. In the meanwhile, Pakistan had raised a special force codenamed Burzil Force in an operation codenamed Op. Ababeel to be launched in May/June, 1984. Thus, when India came to know of Pakistani plans to occupy the Siachen heights, they wasted no time in asserting their rightful claim on April 13,1984, through a daring operation, codenamed Op. Meghdoot. They occupied initially the two passes (Sia La and Bilafond La) on the Saltoro Range which acted as the gateway to Siachen and then further east to the Karakoram, and slowly extended the occupation to the other heights and passes on the ridges. The Actual Ground Position Line (AGPL) today follows (from east to west) the NJ9842 - Gyong La Pass (the eastern most pass on the Saltoro Range) - K12 Peak - Bilafond La Pass - Saltoro Kangri 1 Peak - Sia La Pass and then up to Indira Col which is the western end of the Siachen Glacier. The LoC here has been termed as AGPL.
One can understand the bitterness in Gen. (r) Musharraf when he speaks about East Pakistan and Siachen.
In East Pakistan, he was starting as a novice officer and though he did not surrender to the Indian Army, having been withdrawn from being sent to East Pakistan at all, the surrender itself must have been very depressing. After having been brought up on a staple diet of cowardly kafir Hindu soldiers and the ratio of one Pakistani soldier for every ten Hindu Indian soldiers, 93000 of his comrades-in-arms surrendering at Dhaka on that fateful day of Dec. 16, 1971, beaten thoroughly and shaken badly, must have been painful indeed.
As for Siachen, it must have an even greater impact on Gen. (r) Musharraf than the events of Bangladesh. He was directly responsible for the loss of the important Quaid post (later renamed as Bana Post after Captain Bana Singh, PVC and his intrepid companions captured it in 1987) and later the decimation at Bilafond La pass in c. 1987. He planned the operations that failed miserably. His Pakistani Army does not fight India in Siachen, as it is generally believed, because PA cannot even access it through the Saltoro Ranges. It was no wonder that he wanted to avenge the defeat which landed him in greater despair and shame in 1999.
(To be continued. . . )
REFERENCES
1. SIACHEN: Conflict Without End, Lt. Gen. V.R.Raghavan, Viking, 2002
The rest of the interview with Gen. (r) Musharraf on the Times Now channel was also very interesting. The interview dealt with such issues as Gen. (r) Musharraf's speech on Jan. 12, 2002 wherein he promised to take strong action to root out terrorism from Pakistan, Musharraf's own admission of guilt to the Der Spiegel magazine etc. When cornered, he would say that everybody was bothererd only about Pakistan while India went scot free in spite of its mischief in East Pakistan and Siachen. There can be no comparison between Kargil and the two events that Gen. (r) Musharraf has the habit of mentioning (this interview was not the first time he mentioned such linkages) everytime he runs out of points. These are selective narratives of rubbish history that the Pakistani Army and its supporters have made the gullible people of Pakistan gulp. Like helpless people tossed about in a raging sea from a wrecked ship, the Pakistanis try to clutch at these virtual straws and live in a world of denial, ignorant and therefore blissful.
The discontent in East Pakistan dates back to even Jinnah's euphoric days after Independence. The trampling of proud Bengali sensibilities of their language, culture and history by the supercilious West Pakistanis especially Punjabis, the haughty stance of 'Defence of East Pakistan lies in the security of West Pakistan', the economic swindling of East Pakistan to meet the insatiable demands and spendthrift ways of West Pakistan, the contempt with which East Pakistanis were looked down upon as rather cowardly, poor, short, dark and rice-eating cousins of the tall, fair and wheat-and-meat eating martial races of West Pakistan, their suspect loyalty to the very 'Idea of Pakistan', in the eyes of the West Pakistanis, because of a high percentage of Hindus among them and the resultant impurity of the entire East Pakistanis etc. had already created enough dissension within East Pakistan. The rejection of the 1970 election mandate by the Pakistani Army Generals and Z.A. Bhutto because that would have allowed an East Pakistani Sheikh Mujibur Rehman to become the Prime Minister of the nation, followed by the brutal genocide by state and non-state actors of West Pakistan only added fuel to the fire and culminated in the inevitable seccesion and this history is well known to the entire world, including Pakistanis themselves.
Thus, the landslide victory in the first elections of universal suffrage, considered by many to be the only free elections in the history of Pakistan, by Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, a popular leader of East Pakistan, led immediately to the breakup of more than half the country. Sheikh Mujibur Rehman's Awami party swept the polls scoring twice the number of seats than his nearest rival, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of PPP. Since Mujib won all his seats in East Pakistan and Z.A.Bhutto similarly in West Pakistan, the Pakistani Army feared that Mujib as the Prime Minister would reduce the power of the Army which consisted mostly of Punjabis and Pashtuns, all from West Pakistan. The Army decided to put its faith in Z.A.Bhutto especially since it had close linkages with him ever since he was a Foreign Minister in the Ayub Government. In fact, he along with Army Generals, is reputed to have planned the 1965 war and cajoled a reluctant Field Marshal Ayub Khan to accept the plans. In any case, Z.A.Bhutto’s intransigence in accepting Mujib as the Prime Minister had the tacit backing of the Army and the deteriorating political situation led to the genocide in East Pakistan. The rest is history. Of course, in the final stages of their struggle, India was forced to help the East Pakistanis in their war with West Pakistan as millions of refugees poured into India straining her economy and destabilizing the region even as most of the rest of the world remained as a mute spectator. India never instigated these events in East Pakistan unlike what Pakistan has been doing in Jammu & Kashmir (and increasingly in other parts of India as well) since Independence.
Kargil was probably an attempt by the PA to execute what they could not do in Siachen. This suspicion is lent credence by the repeated linkages that Musharraf has expressed whenever Kargil was discussed. The occupation by India of the Siachen glaciers was prompted by Pakistan's insidious attempt to surreptitiously grab it. As in the 1947 and 1965 wars and later in Kargil, and so in Siachen, Pakistan was smugly assuming that India would not enlarge the envelope once the conflict broke out or if Pakistan seized the initiative. But, it paid a heavy price and yet never learned any lessons.
Now, a brief note on the geography of the region. The Siachen Glaciers are located on the Karakoram range, which is one of those five mountain ranges to join the Pamir Knot, the others being, from west to east, the Hindu Kush, Pir Panjal, Himalayan and Kun Lun which is to the east of Karakoram. The Karakoram Range has two important passes, one in the west known as the Khunjerab and the other in the east in Ladakh known as the Karakoram Pass. The Karakoram Highway that connects Pakistan to Xinjiang through the Pakistan occupied Balawaristan region of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) goes through this pass. On the other hand, the eastern Karakoram Pass was the traditional trade route for the Ladakhis from Leh to Xinjiang. Two limbs of the Karakoram are the Saltoro and the Sasser ranges and the Siachen Glacier is located between these two limbs. At the northern end of the Saltoro Range is the Sia La pass (almost at the Shaksgam Valley ceded by Pakistan to China in circa 1962)and about the middle is the Bilafond La pass, both of which help cross into the Karakoram. The Nubra River drains south from the Siachen Glacier into Ladakh and the Saltoro River drains west, both of which join the Shyok River (the River of Death) which in turn joins the great Indus River at Skardu (in Baltistan) where the Indus takes a deep bend to get to the plains of Pakistan. The Siachen glacier is on the eastern side of Soltoro while the Boltoro glacier is on the western side.
So, with the help of the American Defence Mapping Agency which in its 1974 edition wilfully and deliberately drew the border by itself favouring Pakistan in the Siachen area, the Pakistanis began to lay claim to the un-demarcated areas to the north and east of point NJ9842 in Ladakh up to the Karakoram Pass. Various Atlas producers in the US and the UK (part of the 3½ Friends Group of Pakistan) began to follow suit and wrongfully depict the glacier as belonging to Pakistan. (The map reference point NJ9842, or as it is also referred to as NJ980420 sometimes, was the closest point to military presence of Cease Fire Line, CFL, which was agreed to in Karachi when war ended in c. 1948. This reference point was also used in the Simla Accord in 1972 as the starting point of Line of Control, LoC, leaving once again border beyond that undemarcated by simply saying "thence north to the glaciers". The area further north was left undemarcated because of its remote, uninhabited wilderness) With this support from the US as a fait accompli, Pakistan began to issue 'permits' and allow mountaineering expeditions by the Japanese and others to climb the Saltoro Range. We can clearly see the help from Pakistan's 3½ Friends (or Masters, as some call them) in sustaining and nurturing hostility towards India. Then, in the 1980s, Pakistan began to issue maps that showed the LoC extending straight from NJ9842 to the Karakoram Pass instead of 'thence North to the glaciers' just as the US Defence Mapping Agency did in c. 1974. It has been pointed out by many that in a mountainous region, there can be no straight line boundaries without taking into consideration crests, rivers, watersheds etc.
In 1983, Pakistan tried to set up military posts in these areas, an effort that failed because of poor logistics. Therefore, they went in for massive purchase of winter gear and eqipment to overcome the earlier issues. On August 21, 1983, Pakistan demanded Indian troops to be withdrawn south of "line joining point NJ9842 and Karakoram Pass NE7410", a demand that India rejected. A second demand note was issued by Pakistan on August 29, 1983, betraying Pakistan's likely approach to Siachen in the upcoming summer of 1984. In the meanwhile, Pakistan had raised a special force codenamed Burzil Force in an operation codenamed Op. Ababeel to be launched in May/June, 1984. Thus, when India came to know of Pakistani plans to occupy the Siachen heights, they wasted no time in asserting their rightful claim on April 13,1984, through a daring operation, codenamed Op. Meghdoot. They occupied initially the two passes (Sia La and Bilafond La) on the Saltoro Range which acted as the gateway to Siachen and then further east to the Karakoram, and slowly extended the occupation to the other heights and passes on the ridges. The Actual Ground Position Line (AGPL) today follows (from east to west) the NJ9842 - Gyong La Pass (the eastern most pass on the Saltoro Range) - K12 Peak - Bilafond La Pass - Saltoro Kangri 1 Peak - Sia La Pass and then up to Indira Col which is the western end of the Siachen Glacier. The LoC here has been termed as AGPL.
One can understand the bitterness in Gen. (r) Musharraf when he speaks about East Pakistan and Siachen.
In East Pakistan, he was starting as a novice officer and though he did not surrender to the Indian Army, having been withdrawn from being sent to East Pakistan at all, the surrender itself must have been very depressing. After having been brought up on a staple diet of cowardly kafir Hindu soldiers and the ratio of one Pakistani soldier for every ten Hindu Indian soldiers, 93000 of his comrades-in-arms surrendering at Dhaka on that fateful day of Dec. 16, 1971, beaten thoroughly and shaken badly, must have been painful indeed.
As for Siachen, it must have an even greater impact on Gen. (r) Musharraf than the events of Bangladesh. He was directly responsible for the loss of the important Quaid post (later renamed as Bana Post after Captain Bana Singh, PVC and his intrepid companions captured it in 1987) and later the decimation at Bilafond La pass in c. 1987. He planned the operations that failed miserably. His Pakistani Army does not fight India in Siachen, as it is generally believed, because PA cannot even access it through the Saltoro Ranges. It was no wonder that he wanted to avenge the defeat which landed him in greater despair and shame in 1999.
(To be continued. . . )
REFERENCES
1. SIACHEN: Conflict Without End, Lt. Gen. V.R.Raghavan, Viking, 2002
Monday, December 20, 2010
Perfidious Musharraf and his Recent TV Interview - Part I
A few days back, Mr. Arnab Goswami of the Times Now TV channel conducted an interview with Gen. (r) Musharraf. He asked him a set of fifteen questions to which Gen. Musharraf, the once proud member of the SSG (Special Services Group) of the Pakistani Army (a position that he seems to value more than all the other illustrious positions that he held in the Pakistani Army) gave replies in his usual I-am-always-right-and-blunt demeanour.
Any lay audience would have easily found out the perfidy he paraded and the evasiveness he displayed. Mr. Arnab Goswami, in my opinion, had done his home work. He led Gen. (r) Musharraf step-by-step like a lamb being led to the slaughterhouse and Mr. Musharraf fell for it. Of course, as they say, once you lie you have to lie a thousand times more to cover up that original lie. Having built-up his recent career, at least from the time of his coup in circa 1999, entirely on lies and duplicity, Gen (r) Musharraf has but no option other than to keep lying even as the façade gets blown off rather quickly. I felt therefore that Mr. Goswami stopped short of embarrassing Gen (r) Musharraf completely though he could have done so easily. However, the interview left no one in doubt about the the liar that Gen (r) Musharraf is.
I thought therefore that I would dwell on some aspects of the interview that caught Gen (r) Musharraf like an emperor with no clothes.
The interview started off with the denial of visa recently by the Government of India (GoI) to Gen (r) Musharraf. On this trip, he wanted to visit several Indian cities and address meetings, like he has been doing recently in the US. The GoI was quite correctly wary of such a proposal coming from a General who as the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) of the Pakistani Army (PA) refused to show the simple courtesy of saluting the Indian Prime Minister Mr. Vajpayee when he visited that country, who plotted secretively the Kargil war even as the Indian Prime Minister was engaged in ground-breaking peace dialogue, who thundered in Muzzafarabad after usurping power from Mr. Nawaz Sharif that jihad had shifted decisively to Kashmir from Afghanistan, who on his very first Indian visit berated India in an editors’ meeting in New Delhi just before the Agra talks etc. etc.
In the aftermath of visa denial, Gen (r) Musharraf who felt slighted, had vowed never to visit India thereafter. When queried on this visa denial issue, a chastened (that was how I felt since he spoke in a conciliatory tone) Gen (r) Musharraf claimed that he had visited India thrice and he could not therefore understand what the fuss was all about. While it is true that he visited India thrice after his Kargil misadventure and the subsequent assumption of power in the coup, two of them were undertaken in his official capacity as the President of Pakistan (Indo-Pak Summit in July 2001 and April 2005) and the third was a private visit for attending a specific international conference organized by India Today. His current visit was meant to bolster his image back in Pakistan since he is now head of a political party, All Pakistan Muslim League (APML), a proposition GoI would not like. Let us remember that it was India’s invitation to the then CEO of Pakistan, Gen. Musharraf, that legitimized him among the world community. He hurriedly relieved the then President Rafique Ahmed Tarar and assumed Presidency so that he could fly into India as the President of Pakistan. India did not want to allow its soil to be used for his rehabilitation once again. No amount of doing seminar circuits in the US would bring him the kind of publicity among the Pakistani masses that a single meeting in India can do
A digression at this point. President Tarar’s easing out from the Presidency itself was a hilarious drama. As soon as India foolishly called for the Agra Peace Summit, CEO Gen. Musharraf appointed himself as President through an Amendment to the Provisional Constitution Order (PCO), called "President's Succession Order, 2001". It reads, inter alia: "Upon the office of the President becoming vacant for any reason whatsoever, the Chief Executive of Islamic Republic of Pakistan shall be the President... and shall perform all functions assigned to the President... The Chief Executive shall hold office as President until his successor enters upon his office." It was later clarified that the Presidential Office will be held by Gen. Musharraf for a period of 5 years. But, Gen. Musharraf had to find a reason for throwing out the Nawaz Sharif nominee Justice Rafique Ahmed Tarar and here is where the Pakistani ingenuity came out in flying colours. A strange reason was adduced to the "easing out" of Pres. Tarar namely that since the National Assembly and Provincial Assemblies had been dissolved, the President elected by such bodies ceased to exist !! Thus Gen. Musharraf who called himself a ‘reluctant coup leader’ began to assume all powers, President, CEO and COAS, all rolled into one. Later he even justified this ‘multiple hats’ as ‘unity of command’, another innovative phrase just like ‘enlightened moderation’. So, how did he justify this ‘unity of command’ ? When urgent repairs had to be done in the Tarbela dam, he asked the Pakistani Army engineers to carry them out and boasted that he could take such a decision because of ‘unity of command’ !
So, it becomes quite clear that it is generally difficult to engage with Gen (r) Musharraf, as it is with most Pakistanis for that matter, in a meaningful dialogue or a debate because he is far too righteous to be questioned by ordinary mortals, especially a kaffir. He will easily make a fool of the other party by himself talking foolishly. So, when Gen (r) Musharraf wondered why India should be harking back on events that happened more than ten years back, one cannot make him understand why. Anyway, he agreed that he was hasty in declaring his intentions of never visiting India because he was emotional at that point. One can understand that because he has never been denied a visa before. Is this probably a harbinger of things to come for Gen (r) Musharraf who has much to answer not only to the citizens of his own country but also several other countries ?
Anyway, the interview then moved on to more substantive issues from the minor visa issue. But, the visa issue set the stage for the next few questions because Mr. Goswami had suggested that it was perhaps because of his ‘misrepresentation of facts regarding Kargil’ that the GoI probably denied him a visa, an accusation that made Gen (r) Musharraf bristle. He emphatically denied that the PA was at all involved in the Kargil misadventure. He said that the Kargil operation was carried out by ‘the mujahideen and second-line forces’. Though this was interesting, he was not more closely questioned on this either because Mr. Goswami overlooked this formulation of Gen (r) Musharraf or he had to complete his prepared set of questions within the allotted time. Had he been questioned as to how thousands of these mujahideen and second-line forces came to posses heavy weapons that normally only the Armies of a nation could and how they could have reached those commanding heights without the PA ever knowing about them since the preparations must have gone on a large scale and for months together, or why the PA did not apprehend these 'mujahideen and second-line forces' upon their retreat after the pasting they received from the Indian Army, his standard reply would have been that the borders were porous and not every inch could be guarded which was why even the Indian Army with its 700,000 soldiers could not stop the infiltrators. What about the conversation between COAS Gen. Musharraf and Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Mohammed Aziz that was taped by India's Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) that revealed the Kargil intrusion as entirely planned by the PA ? Oh, that would be dismissed as concocted, as such things can be easily done. See, it is difficult to argue with him reasonably.
But, Gen (r) Musharraf was squarely and truly cornered when Mr. Goswami quoted from Musharraf’s own book, ‘In the Line of Fire’ wherein he had stated that Kargil was indeed a turning point in PA’s history. Of course, the PA itself has recently released the list of PA officers and soldiers killed (453 in all) in the Kargil operation in the ‘Shuhada Corner’ (Martyr’s Corner) of their website along with such information as their rank, location, how they were killed etc. Why, the PA’s Shuhada Corner even glorified a Pakistan Army suicide attacker, a certain Naik (Corporal) Zulfiqar Ahmed, who died in a New Delhi hospital due to severe ‘nephrotic syndrome’ and when this was picked up in India, the PA website was taken down hurriedly, poor Zulfiqar’s name was quietly removed and a weak explanation offered of it being a data entry error in the first place. It puzzles one, then, as to why his operation was classified as ‘Suicide Attack’. Similarly, when cornered by a quote from his own book, Gen (r) Musharraf gave a completely elliptical and asinine answer when he said whatever he had to say at that time he had said and they were realities in which he believed !!
Anyhow, the reference to the ‘second-line forces’ was interesting and confirmed what everybody knew for a very long time. In circa 1971, Pakistan used Al-Shams and Al-Badr to massacre the East Pakistanis, especially the Hindus there. Let us understand what these outfits are and why they worked in close alliance with the PA.
These second-line forces are whom Pakistan euphemistically refers nowadays as ‘good Taliban’ because they identify themselves completely with the PA and by extension 'Nazriya-e-Pakistan' which has two basic principles. The first is to implement Nizam-e-Mustafa (Order of the Prophet or Government according to Shariah) and the second is to destroy India. Nowadays, there is a third addition as well which is to establish the new Grand Caliphate in Pakistan. Among the second-line forces that are helping PA enforce this 'Nazriya-e-Pakistan' are the Lashkar-e-Tayba (LeT) followed by Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM). We have discussed these outfits in other places. However, the Islamist political party founded by Maulana Abu ala al Mawdudi spawned two terrorist organizations Al-Shams and Al-Badr. Now, Al-Badr is named after the historic Battle of Badr (near Mecca) fought and won by Prophet Mohammed. Immediately after the 9/11 incidents, India shared with the US the locations of 120 terror training camps along with video footage in many instances. Many of those camps seemed to be run by Al Badr based on the insignias, slogans etc seen there. Now, Al Badr was the creation of ISI and very close to it too. The Al Badr cadres along with the PA took part in the genocide in the then East Pakistan. Al-Shams was the comrade-in-arms in that massacre. They were disbanded after that but Al-Badr was resurrected in 1979 and fought in Afghanistan under Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hizb-e-Islami, another notorious ISI protegé. Later, they were let loose on India in J&K.
Since the PA has confirmed its involvement in Kargil and since we have no reason to disbelieve Gen (r) Musharraf either, who as the COAS was the chief architect of Kargil, we can easily come to conclusions. It was therefore awesome to hear the former President of Pakistan casually accept that these terrorist outfits are indeed part of the PA and make a passing reference as though such behaviour is totally acceptable.
Such are the vicissitudes of life and Pakistan.
(To be continued. . . )
Any lay audience would have easily found out the perfidy he paraded and the evasiveness he displayed. Mr. Arnab Goswami, in my opinion, had done his home work. He led Gen. (r) Musharraf step-by-step like a lamb being led to the slaughterhouse and Mr. Musharraf fell for it. Of course, as they say, once you lie you have to lie a thousand times more to cover up that original lie. Having built-up his recent career, at least from the time of his coup in circa 1999, entirely on lies and duplicity, Gen (r) Musharraf has but no option other than to keep lying even as the façade gets blown off rather quickly. I felt therefore that Mr. Goswami stopped short of embarrassing Gen (r) Musharraf completely though he could have done so easily. However, the interview left no one in doubt about the the liar that Gen (r) Musharraf is.
I thought therefore that I would dwell on some aspects of the interview that caught Gen (r) Musharraf like an emperor with no clothes.
The interview started off with the denial of visa recently by the Government of India (GoI) to Gen (r) Musharraf. On this trip, he wanted to visit several Indian cities and address meetings, like he has been doing recently in the US. The GoI was quite correctly wary of such a proposal coming from a General who as the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) of the Pakistani Army (PA) refused to show the simple courtesy of saluting the Indian Prime Minister Mr. Vajpayee when he visited that country, who plotted secretively the Kargil war even as the Indian Prime Minister was engaged in ground-breaking peace dialogue, who thundered in Muzzafarabad after usurping power from Mr. Nawaz Sharif that jihad had shifted decisively to Kashmir from Afghanistan, who on his very first Indian visit berated India in an editors’ meeting in New Delhi just before the Agra talks etc. etc.
In the aftermath of visa denial, Gen (r) Musharraf who felt slighted, had vowed never to visit India thereafter. When queried on this visa denial issue, a chastened (that was how I felt since he spoke in a conciliatory tone) Gen (r) Musharraf claimed that he had visited India thrice and he could not therefore understand what the fuss was all about. While it is true that he visited India thrice after his Kargil misadventure and the subsequent assumption of power in the coup, two of them were undertaken in his official capacity as the President of Pakistan (Indo-Pak Summit in July 2001 and April 2005) and the third was a private visit for attending a specific international conference organized by India Today. His current visit was meant to bolster his image back in Pakistan since he is now head of a political party, All Pakistan Muslim League (APML), a proposition GoI would not like. Let us remember that it was India’s invitation to the then CEO of Pakistan, Gen. Musharraf, that legitimized him among the world community. He hurriedly relieved the then President Rafique Ahmed Tarar and assumed Presidency so that he could fly into India as the President of Pakistan. India did not want to allow its soil to be used for his rehabilitation once again. No amount of doing seminar circuits in the US would bring him the kind of publicity among the Pakistani masses that a single meeting in India can do
A digression at this point. President Tarar’s easing out from the Presidency itself was a hilarious drama. As soon as India foolishly called for the Agra Peace Summit, CEO Gen. Musharraf appointed himself as President through an Amendment to the Provisional Constitution Order (PCO), called "President's Succession Order, 2001". It reads, inter alia: "Upon the office of the President becoming vacant for any reason whatsoever, the Chief Executive of Islamic Republic of Pakistan shall be the President... and shall perform all functions assigned to the President... The Chief Executive shall hold office as President until his successor enters upon his office." It was later clarified that the Presidential Office will be held by Gen. Musharraf for a period of 5 years. But, Gen. Musharraf had to find a reason for throwing out the Nawaz Sharif nominee Justice Rafique Ahmed Tarar and here is where the Pakistani ingenuity came out in flying colours. A strange reason was adduced to the "easing out" of Pres. Tarar namely that since the National Assembly and Provincial Assemblies had been dissolved, the President elected by such bodies ceased to exist !! Thus Gen. Musharraf who called himself a ‘reluctant coup leader’ began to assume all powers, President, CEO and COAS, all rolled into one. Later he even justified this ‘multiple hats’ as ‘unity of command’, another innovative phrase just like ‘enlightened moderation’. So, how did he justify this ‘unity of command’ ? When urgent repairs had to be done in the Tarbela dam, he asked the Pakistani Army engineers to carry them out and boasted that he could take such a decision because of ‘unity of command’ !
So, it becomes quite clear that it is generally difficult to engage with Gen (r) Musharraf, as it is with most Pakistanis for that matter, in a meaningful dialogue or a debate because he is far too righteous to be questioned by ordinary mortals, especially a kaffir. He will easily make a fool of the other party by himself talking foolishly. So, when Gen (r) Musharraf wondered why India should be harking back on events that happened more than ten years back, one cannot make him understand why. Anyway, he agreed that he was hasty in declaring his intentions of never visiting India because he was emotional at that point. One can understand that because he has never been denied a visa before. Is this probably a harbinger of things to come for Gen (r) Musharraf who has much to answer not only to the citizens of his own country but also several other countries ?
Anyway, the interview then moved on to more substantive issues from the minor visa issue. But, the visa issue set the stage for the next few questions because Mr. Goswami had suggested that it was perhaps because of his ‘misrepresentation of facts regarding Kargil’ that the GoI probably denied him a visa, an accusation that made Gen (r) Musharraf bristle. He emphatically denied that the PA was at all involved in the Kargil misadventure. He said that the Kargil operation was carried out by ‘the mujahideen and second-line forces’. Though this was interesting, he was not more closely questioned on this either because Mr. Goswami overlooked this formulation of Gen (r) Musharraf or he had to complete his prepared set of questions within the allotted time. Had he been questioned as to how thousands of these mujahideen and second-line forces came to posses heavy weapons that normally only the Armies of a nation could and how they could have reached those commanding heights without the PA ever knowing about them since the preparations must have gone on a large scale and for months together, or why the PA did not apprehend these 'mujahideen and second-line forces' upon their retreat after the pasting they received from the Indian Army, his standard reply would have been that the borders were porous and not every inch could be guarded which was why even the Indian Army with its 700,000 soldiers could not stop the infiltrators. What about the conversation between COAS Gen. Musharraf and Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Mohammed Aziz that was taped by India's Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) that revealed the Kargil intrusion as entirely planned by the PA ? Oh, that would be dismissed as concocted, as such things can be easily done. See, it is difficult to argue with him reasonably.
But, Gen (r) Musharraf was squarely and truly cornered when Mr. Goswami quoted from Musharraf’s own book, ‘In the Line of Fire’ wherein he had stated that Kargil was indeed a turning point in PA’s history. Of course, the PA itself has recently released the list of PA officers and soldiers killed (453 in all) in the Kargil operation in the ‘Shuhada Corner’ (Martyr’s Corner) of their website along with such information as their rank, location, how they were killed etc. Why, the PA’s Shuhada Corner even glorified a Pakistan Army suicide attacker, a certain Naik (Corporal) Zulfiqar Ahmed, who died in a New Delhi hospital due to severe ‘nephrotic syndrome’ and when this was picked up in India, the PA website was taken down hurriedly, poor Zulfiqar’s name was quietly removed and a weak explanation offered of it being a data entry error in the first place. It puzzles one, then, as to why his operation was classified as ‘Suicide Attack’. Similarly, when cornered by a quote from his own book, Gen (r) Musharraf gave a completely elliptical and asinine answer when he said whatever he had to say at that time he had said and they were realities in which he believed !!
Anyhow, the reference to the ‘second-line forces’ was interesting and confirmed what everybody knew for a very long time. In circa 1971, Pakistan used Al-Shams and Al-Badr to massacre the East Pakistanis, especially the Hindus there. Let us understand what these outfits are and why they worked in close alliance with the PA.
These second-line forces are whom Pakistan euphemistically refers nowadays as ‘good Taliban’ because they identify themselves completely with the PA and by extension 'Nazriya-e-Pakistan' which has two basic principles. The first is to implement Nizam-e-Mustafa (Order of the Prophet or Government according to Shariah) and the second is to destroy India. Nowadays, there is a third addition as well which is to establish the new Grand Caliphate in Pakistan. Among the second-line forces that are helping PA enforce this 'Nazriya-e-Pakistan' are the Lashkar-e-Tayba (LeT) followed by Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM). We have discussed these outfits in other places. However, the Islamist political party founded by Maulana Abu ala al Mawdudi spawned two terrorist organizations Al-Shams and Al-Badr. Now, Al-Badr is named after the historic Battle of Badr (near Mecca) fought and won by Prophet Mohammed. Immediately after the 9/11 incidents, India shared with the US the locations of 120 terror training camps along with video footage in many instances. Many of those camps seemed to be run by Al Badr based on the insignias, slogans etc seen there. Now, Al Badr was the creation of ISI and very close to it too. The Al Badr cadres along with the PA took part in the genocide in the then East Pakistan. Al-Shams was the comrade-in-arms in that massacre. They were disbanded after that but Al-Badr was resurrected in 1979 and fought in Afghanistan under Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hizb-e-Islami, another notorious ISI protegé. Later, they were let loose on India in J&K.
Since the PA has confirmed its involvement in Kargil and since we have no reason to disbelieve Gen (r) Musharraf either, who as the COAS was the chief architect of Kargil, we can easily come to conclusions. It was therefore awesome to hear the former President of Pakistan casually accept that these terrorist outfits are indeed part of the PA and make a passing reference as though such behaviour is totally acceptable.
Such are the vicissitudes of life and Pakistan.
(To be continued. . . )
Monday, October 11, 2010
Musharraf's Recent Admission of Guilt
Gen. (r) Musharraf is on a roll. His interviews in Der Spiegel, NDTV and Times Now (with Maroof Raza) have rivetted attention once again to the perfidious state of Pakistan. While he also talked about his political ambitions and the state of affairs within Pakistan, it was his references to terrorism that caught Indian attention. I will take up in another post the nonsense that Gen (r) Musharraf trotted about Pakistan Army's role in governance etc. For the time being, I will confine myself to terror emanating from Pakistan. Anyhow, Gen. (r) Musharraf 's outpourings are nothing 'revealing' to the Indians who have been watching Pakistan, even cursorily. Like a true, blue Pakistani, Gen. (r) Musharraf has audaciously admitted to Pakistan's use of terrorism as a policy of the State and justified it on the grounds that "The West was ignoring the resolution of the Kashmir issue, which is the core issue of Pakistan". .
Pakistan's Foreign Office spokesperson Abdul Basit, when confronted with the ex-General's revelations, denied them as 'baseless'. He further said, "I do not know really what prompted him (Musharraf) to say this because he is not in Pakistan and I would not really know as to the purpose of saying this". This hollow and comical denial that had Musharraf been in Pakistan he would not have made these comments only goes to add to the perfidious and fraudulent nature of Pakistani state's policies on terrorism directed against India.
Gen. (r) Musharraf's admissions, especially about the public sympathy within Pakistan for jihad against India, take us directly to the era of Nazi Germany and its comparison to present day Pakistan. Both regimes employed extensive, sometimes subtle but many times blatant, social engineering to condition the minds of their peoples. The Nazi Germans believed that all their obnoxious actions were morally correct, helped in this pursuit by the intelligentsia and the academic who justified Nazi actions through innovative theories. Same has been the case in Pakistan where the mullahs incite people and justify jihad, which is then touted by people like Gen. (r) Musharrf as 'great public sympathy' little realizing that irrespective of all the spin, such cross-border jihad is nothing but pure and unalloyed terrorism.
On similar line, can one assume that it was a similar 'great public sympathy' that led to genocide and massacre in the then East Pakistan in circa 1971 ? Some of the atrocities committed in the then East Pakistan, like eliminating academics and intelligentsia, closely parallel techniques widely employed by the Third Reich. Let us remember that it was the Pakistani Army under Gen. Tikka Khan, nicknamed 'Butcher of Bengal' and later to become the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) of Pakistan, that indulged in this massive genocide along with jihadi fanatics of Al Badr and Islami-Jamia't-e-Tulaba (IJT). Nothing exemplifies the brutality of the Pakistani Army more than what its top most commander in East Pakistan, Gen. A.A.K. 'Tiger' Niazi said of the rapes there insensitively: “You cannot expect a man to live, fight, and die in East Pakistan and go to Jhelum for sex, can you?”. Both Nazi Germany and Pakistan employed terror as a tactics by the State organs to make their own people submit to the will of the State. The hundreds of missing Pakistanis are proof enough of this practice. The fact that the people of the rump Pakistan have not only kept silent for nearly forty years now on the biggest genocide since Nazi Germany but even been 'running to the {Pakistani Army's} general headquarters' whenever there is crisis within Pakistan because the Pakistani Army is the only 'disciplined, oraganised, stable, institution which integrates Pakistan', as per Gen. (r) Musharraf in the NDTV interview, confirms that the Pakistani Army and the people have the same agenda and the same terrorist outlook. Now, if the Pakistani Army is so people-friendly and people-centric and if it is great sympathy that leads to the support for jihad by Pakistanis against India, shouldn't we conclude that the genocidal Pakistani Army supports such a jihad ?
Gen. (r) Musharraf then went ahead and described the Lashkar-e-Tayba (LeT)as a group that fights Indian occupation in Kashmir. Let us recall what the chief of Lashkar-e-Tayeba, Prof. Hafeez Saeed, said as early as in November 1999, ‘The Jihad is not about Kashmir only. It encompasses all of India. Today I announce the break-up of India, Inshallah. We will not rest until the whole of India is dissolved into Pakistan’. It is the same Prof. Hafeez Saeed who now heads the Jamaa't-ud-Dawah (JuD), an outfit banned by the UNSC as a terrorist organization, but which Gen. (r) Musharraf now praises in that NDTV interview as "one of the best performers in the relief during the earthquake and even now in flood". This best performance does not absolve LeT and its reincarnation, JuD, of terrorism and the Government of Pakistan is supposed to eliminate this group rather than praising it. When Gen. (r) Musharraf speaks eloquently about the Kashmir dispute, the UN resolutions and Indian obligations under that (though if anyone is to implement UN resolutions first, it is Pakistan by withdrawing its forces, handing over PoK including Balawaristan to India along with CoK and enabling a peaceful environment conducive for a plebiscite etc.), he should be reminded of the UNSC resolution banning LeT and JuD and requiring all nations to stop supporting these organizations.
And then, he goes on to blame India for creating a war hysteria after minor {emphasis is mine though intent is Musharraf's from the NDTV interview} incidents such as the parliament attack or the 26/11 Mumbai attack and unnecessarily blaming the ISI. Now, the involvement of the ISI, the Pakistani Army and the Pakistani Navy are proven facts in the 26/11 attack and Gen. (r) Musharraf is either unaware of them or pretends to be so. It is strange that a man who admitted that the Pakistani Army trained the militants in Kashmir while the Pakistani government turned its head the other way, finds it difficult to believe that the ISI could be at all involved in the 26/11 attack. Lt. Gen. Shuja Ahmed Pasha, the ISI Chief, admitted to the Americans that only rogue elements from the ISI were involved in the attack as though that is condonable. Not only the captured LeT jihadi, Ajmal Kasab, but also the American CIA/DEA double agent of Pakistani descent, David Coleman Headley, has categorically explained the involvement of serving Army officers also in the planning and execution of the 26/11 attack. Pakistani bluff has repeatedly been called from the days the Father of the Pakistani nation, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, lied to the world that it was the tribals who were attacking Jammu & Kashmir in October 1947 after having sponsored them under the guise of 'plausible deniability', a ruse that this liar nation has unwaveringly followed ever since. Whether it was the 1965 war, or the hijackings of several Indian Airlines flights including the IC-814 to Kandahar in circa 1999, or the sponsoring of the Punjab terrorists in the 80s followed by terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir, or the terrorism all over the country since c. 1993, or the Kargil intrusion and war, or the terrorist attacks in Kabul or the cold-blooded killing of Indian project workers in Afghanistan, or nuclear and missile proliferation, this ruse has been followed even when it was repeatedly blown to smithereens every time. The shameless Pakistanis remain un-embarrassed by the exposures.
Pakistan's Foreign Office spokesperson Abdul Basit, when confronted with the ex-General's revelations, denied them as 'baseless'. He further said, "I do not know really what prompted him (Musharraf) to say this because he is not in Pakistan and I would not really know as to the purpose of saying this". This hollow and comical denial that had Musharraf been in Pakistan he would not have made these comments only goes to add to the perfidious and fraudulent nature of Pakistani state's policies on terrorism directed against India.
Gen. (r) Musharraf's admissions, especially about the public sympathy within Pakistan for jihad against India, take us directly to the era of Nazi Germany and its comparison to present day Pakistan. Both regimes employed extensive, sometimes subtle but many times blatant, social engineering to condition the minds of their peoples. The Nazi Germans believed that all their obnoxious actions were morally correct, helped in this pursuit by the intelligentsia and the academic who justified Nazi actions through innovative theories. Same has been the case in Pakistan where the mullahs incite people and justify jihad, which is then touted by people like Gen. (r) Musharrf as 'great public sympathy' little realizing that irrespective of all the spin, such cross-border jihad is nothing but pure and unalloyed terrorism.
On similar line, can one assume that it was a similar 'great public sympathy' that led to genocide and massacre in the then East Pakistan in circa 1971 ? Some of the atrocities committed in the then East Pakistan, like eliminating academics and intelligentsia, closely parallel techniques widely employed by the Third Reich. Let us remember that it was the Pakistani Army under Gen. Tikka Khan, nicknamed 'Butcher of Bengal' and later to become the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) of Pakistan, that indulged in this massive genocide along with jihadi fanatics of Al Badr and Islami-Jamia't-e-Tulaba (IJT). Nothing exemplifies the brutality of the Pakistani Army more than what its top most commander in East Pakistan, Gen. A.A.K. 'Tiger' Niazi said of the rapes there insensitively: “You cannot expect a man to live, fight, and die in East Pakistan and go to Jhelum for sex, can you?”. Both Nazi Germany and Pakistan employed terror as a tactics by the State organs to make their own people submit to the will of the State. The hundreds of missing Pakistanis are proof enough of this practice. The fact that the people of the rump Pakistan have not only kept silent for nearly forty years now on the biggest genocide since Nazi Germany but even been 'running to the {Pakistani Army's} general headquarters' whenever there is crisis within Pakistan because the Pakistani Army is the only 'disciplined, oraganised, stable, institution which integrates Pakistan', as per Gen. (r) Musharraf in the NDTV interview, confirms that the Pakistani Army and the people have the same agenda and the same terrorist outlook. Now, if the Pakistani Army is so people-friendly and people-centric and if it is great sympathy that leads to the support for jihad by Pakistanis against India, shouldn't we conclude that the genocidal Pakistani Army supports such a jihad ?
Gen. (r) Musharraf then went ahead and described the Lashkar-e-Tayba (LeT)as a group that fights Indian occupation in Kashmir. Let us recall what the chief of Lashkar-e-Tayeba, Prof. Hafeez Saeed, said as early as in November 1999, ‘The Jihad is not about Kashmir only. It encompasses all of India. Today I announce the break-up of India, Inshallah. We will not rest until the whole of India is dissolved into Pakistan’. It is the same Prof. Hafeez Saeed who now heads the Jamaa't-ud-Dawah (JuD), an outfit banned by the UNSC as a terrorist organization, but which Gen. (r) Musharraf now praises in that NDTV interview as "one of the best performers in the relief during the earthquake and even now in flood". This best performance does not absolve LeT and its reincarnation, JuD, of terrorism and the Government of Pakistan is supposed to eliminate this group rather than praising it. When Gen. (r) Musharraf speaks eloquently about the Kashmir dispute, the UN resolutions and Indian obligations under that (though if anyone is to implement UN resolutions first, it is Pakistan by withdrawing its forces, handing over PoK including Balawaristan to India along with CoK and enabling a peaceful environment conducive for a plebiscite etc.), he should be reminded of the UNSC resolution banning LeT and JuD and requiring all nations to stop supporting these organizations.
And then, he goes on to blame India for creating a war hysteria after minor {emphasis is mine though intent is Musharraf's from the NDTV interview} incidents such as the parliament attack or the 26/11 Mumbai attack and unnecessarily blaming the ISI. Now, the involvement of the ISI, the Pakistani Army and the Pakistani Navy are proven facts in the 26/11 attack and Gen. (r) Musharraf is either unaware of them or pretends to be so. It is strange that a man who admitted that the Pakistani Army trained the militants in Kashmir while the Pakistani government turned its head the other way, finds it difficult to believe that the ISI could be at all involved in the 26/11 attack. Lt. Gen. Shuja Ahmed Pasha, the ISI Chief, admitted to the Americans that only rogue elements from the ISI were involved in the attack as though that is condonable. Not only the captured LeT jihadi, Ajmal Kasab, but also the American CIA/DEA double agent of Pakistani descent, David Coleman Headley, has categorically explained the involvement of serving Army officers also in the planning and execution of the 26/11 attack. Pakistani bluff has repeatedly been called from the days the Father of the Pakistani nation, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, lied to the world that it was the tribals who were attacking Jammu & Kashmir in October 1947 after having sponsored them under the guise of 'plausible deniability', a ruse that this liar nation has unwaveringly followed ever since. Whether it was the 1965 war, or the hijackings of several Indian Airlines flights including the IC-814 to Kandahar in circa 1999, or the sponsoring of the Punjab terrorists in the 80s followed by terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir, or the terrorism all over the country since c. 1993, or the Kargil intrusion and war, or the terrorist attacks in Kabul or the cold-blooded killing of Indian project workers in Afghanistan, or nuclear and missile proliferation, this ruse has been followed even when it was repeatedly blown to smithereens every time. The shameless Pakistanis remain un-embarrassed by the exposures.
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