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
Thursday, January 20, 2011
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.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Know Your Balawaristan
In an op-ed in the New York Times (NYT) on August 26, 2010, the well-known commentator and analyst, Selig S. Harrison noted that China was, according to estimates by local citizens of Balawaristan, heavily involved in infrastructure activities in those areas. As part of those activities, this area was witnessing presence of large-scale Peoples’ Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers. One estimate put the number of PLA soldiers deployed as between 7000 and 10000. The NYT Op-Ed also alludes to 22 tunnels being built in these places where even Pakistanis are not permitted. Satellite imagery has since confirmed the existence of many of these tunnels with roads going into the tunnels. More permanent Chinese residential enclaves are also coming up in these areas. Satellite imagery has also picked up large army convoys moving on these roads. Various analyses attribute different reasons for the presence of the Chinese Army in these areas, though China itself has vehemently denied the presence of its Army in what it provocatively termed as ‘Northern Areas of Pakistan’. This is for the first time that China has denoted Balawaristan as ‘Northern Areas’, a term which Pakistan itself has changed to ‘Gilgit-Baltistan’ (or, GB) after the 2009 Gilgit-Baltistan Empowerment Act. While the Pakistanis have attributed reasons such as flood relief aid and aid to those trapped on the other side of the landslide-created Attabad lake for the presence of the Chinese, they are flimsy reasons and are not convincing enough for frenzied and very large-scale construction activities. On the other hand, some Chinese analysts have admitted that these indeed are road and railroad construction activities to link the Chinese-constructed Gwadar port on the extreme west of the Makran coast in the Balochistan province and bordering Iran as well as to link other naval facilities such as Pasni and Ormara, also along the Makran coast further to the west of Karachi.
Let us try to understand this remote area of Balawaristan.
1. Balawaristan is an area of approx. 38000 Sq. KMs. with a population of apprximately 1 million (based on the last census of Pakistan with suitable projection).
2. Balawaristan has six districts, Gilgit, Skardu, Ghanche, Ghizar, Diamar, and Astore, two States of Hunza and Nagar and the subagency of Chilas. In c. 1947, the Mir of Hunza, the Mir of Nagar, the Raja of Punial, the chieftains of Koh Ghizar, Yasin and Ashkoman were subordinate to the Governor of the Maharajah of J&K located at Gilgit.
3. The languages spoken in Balawaristan are: Shina, Balti, Wakhi, Khowar, Burushaski, and Domaaki.
4. The Pakistani government has thrown a ‘cordon sanitaire’ to a depth of 50 Kms from the border along the Afghan border (Wakhan Corridor) area and of 16 Kms along the Kashmir-border area.
5. Today Gilgit is 60% Shia (Twelvers), 40% Sunni; Hunza 100% Ismaili; Nagar 100% Shia; Punial 100% Ismaili; Yasin 100% Ismaili; Ishkoman 100% Ismaili; Gupis 100% Ismaili; Chilas 100% Sunni; Darel/Tangir 100% Sunni; Astor 90% Sunni, 10% Shia; Baltistan 96% Shia; 2% Nurbakhti; 2% Sunni. They do not consider themselves as Kashmiris and speak a number of languages.
6. Ethnically, the main groups are Baltis, Yashkuns, Mughals, Kashmiris, Ladakhis, Tajik, Mongol, Turkmen and some population of Greek origin.
7. In c. 1889, the British, worried about the Russian Czarist expansion, created the Gilgit Agency as the suzerain power. Gilgit Agency was taken on a 60-year lease from Maharajah Hari Singh by the British in 1935 due to fear of spreading Russian Communism and the civil war in China, especially in Sinkiang. The Gilgit Scouts (currently part of the enlarged Northern Light Infantry, NLI) was a British India force created to help the British Political Agent. In June, 1947, the lease was cancelled and the Agency was returned to the Maharajah. However, the J&K State had retained the services of Maj. William A Brown and Captain A.S. Mathieson of the Gilgit Scouts, a decision that proved fatal. In the night between October 31 and November 1, Maj. Brown and about 100 men of Gilgit Scouts surrounded the house of the Governor, Brig. Ghansar Singh, who had taken over from the British Political Agent, Lt-Col. Bacon, only on Aug. 1, 1947, and asked him to surrender. It now turns out from records that Lt-Col. Bacon and Major W.A.Brown had worked out ‘contingency plans should the Maharajah take over the state to India’ in June 1947 itself. We must remember that it was exactly what the duo did after the Maharajah had signed accession papers to India on Oct. 26, 1947. After a heavy exchange of fire throughtout the night, the brave Brigadier had to surrender the next morning as Major. Brown threatened to kill all non-Muslims in Gilgit if he did not do so. On November 3, 1947, this British Major, William A Brown, hoisted the Pakistani flag at the garrison and formed an Interim Government and within two weeks, a ‘political agent’ of Pakistan, Maj. Aslam Khan who had taken part in the invasion of Kashmir, took control of Balawaristan as Col. Bacon, now posted at Peshawar acted as the liaison between the British officers and the Pakistani Government, especially Defence Secretary Maj. Gen. Iskander Mirza. Maj. Brown and Col. Mathieson opted to serve in Pakistan after this episode. Maj. W.A. Brown was bestowed with the Order of the British Empire (OBE) within a few months in c. 1948. No citation was announced as to why he was awarded the OBE.
8. Thus the incidents in Gilgit were plainly a mutiny by certain sections of the Scouts, aided by British perfidy, who took the Governor of the province a hostage, and not a rebellion by ordinary citizens and inhabitants of Balawaristan. In fact, the people of Gilgit wholeheartedly welcomed Brig. Ghansar Singh on August 1, at the thought of the demise of the British rule and the return of the Maharajah’s administration. The locals also protested on November 1, 1947, the arrest of the Governor but were suitably pacified by the leaders of the scouts. Pakistan later falsely claimed that ordinary citizens rose in revolt and they sent telegrams to the Government of Pakistan of their desire to unite with Pakistan. A ‘Republic of Gilgit-Astore’ that was setup was forcibly disbanded by Pakistan’s ‘political agent’.
9. The British perfidy in ensuring that Pakistan possessed Balawaristan has been described by C. Dasgupta in his book, ‘War and Diplomacy in Kashmir”, citing records from British archives. The IAF was prevented from attacking the Pakistani Airforce’s supply aircraft that ferried supplies to the Gilgit region, by the combined pressure on the British chief of the IAF, Air Vice Marshal Thomas Elmhirst, by the British Commanders of the Pakistani Air Force, Air Vice Marshal Perry-Keene, and Pakistani Army, Gen. Gracey, and the Commander in Chief of Indian Army, General Bucher. The IAF, which did attack one such PAF Dakota aircraft on November 4, 1947 was stopped from conducting similar operations afterwards by the British. AVM Thomas Elmhirst personally met Nehru and persuaded him from conducting such operations. Thus, Balawaristan was saved from Indian military operations, for its recovery from the mutineers.
10. It has now come to light how the British conspired to keep two territories for Pakistan, Gilgit and North Western frontier Province (NWFP, now called Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa), in order to meet the geo-strategic interests of the British.
11. Since then, Balawaristan has been directly under the control of the federal government through the Ministry of Kashmir and Northern Areas (KANA). Z.A.Bhutto introduced a locally elected ‘council’, Northern Areas Legislative Council (NALC), in 1974 and Musharraf announced a reforms package in 2007 which were all cosmetic in nature.
12. After the annexation, Pakistan started referring to Balawaristan as Northern Areas. It did not want to term the annexation as ‘accession’ of Balawaristan as that would have weakened Pakistan’s claims on the rest of J&K which had acceded to India. Besides, ‘accession’ was a privilege that could be exercised only by the Maharaja and not by ordinary citizens or even governors appointed by the Maharaja for administrative purposes. Also, the Maharaja could only accede his whole state, not parcels of it, to either India or Pakistan. So, the status of Balwaristan was kept in a limbo within Pakistan.
13. Pakistan enacted the Gilgit-Baltistan (Empowerment and Self Governance) Order 2009 in Aug. 29 and changed its name from Northern Areas to Giligit-Baltistan. As per this act, Gilgit-Baltistan was accorded a province-like status with a federally appointed Governor, a Legislative Assembly and a Chief Minister. The Assembly will have 33 members, of whom 24 are to be directly elected; it will have powers to legislate on 61 subjects. The Governor will head a 12-member Council, with half the members from the Assembly and the other half appointed by the Governor. In that respect, it is very similar to the Kashmir Council of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) located in Islamabad, to which is subordinated the POK Legislative Assembly. Thus, the Secretary of Ministry of Kashmir and Northern Areas (KANA) actually rules POK, who, in turn, is controlled by the ISI and the Military Intelligence (MI).
14. Pakistan has explicitly barred the Legislative Assembly from dealing with Gilgit-Baltistan’s natural resources including minerals and water. The federal Pakistani government has awarded the construction of the multi-billion USD hydro-electric and water storage projects at Bunji (south of Gilgit) and Diamar-Basha to Chinese companies. India has vehemently objected to Chinese involvement in projects in areas which China itself accepts as 'disputed territories'.
15. This recent empowerment of Balawaristan is nothing but a farcical attempt as the Governor’s council oversees the powers of the Assembly. With half the ‘Council’ consisting of the Governor’s appointees, the federal government has complete and tight control.
16. The Pakistani intention is to separate the Balawaristan region from the J&K dispute. It feels emboldened because India, since even Nehru’s days, had not paid much attention to the recovery of Balawaristan from Pakistani occupation. Both the Kashmiris and the Balawaristanis consider themselves parties to the J&K issue, however.
17. Large scale migration of Pashtuns and Punjabis has been deliberately engineered by Pakistan over the years changing the demography of the region and imposing the Sunnis over the Shi’a. This has lead to frequent clashes and even rebellion which had been crushed with the Pakistani military ruthlessly.
18. The Balawaristanis first rebelled in c. 1988 which Gen. Zia-ul-Haq suppressed, an action in which a certain Brig. Musharraf played a significant role. The trouble erupted when the Shi’a celebrated Eid-ul-Fitr a day ahead of the Sunnis. The still-fasting Sunnis were angered and invited a lashkar from NWFP (now, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa) who indulged in unfettered and large scale looting, arson and rape for several days. Many say, the lashkar was aided by the Pakistani Army. Thus, the 1947 spectre of tribal lashkar from NWFP invading J&K under the Pakistani Army’s patronage and guidance and indulging in an orgy of violence, massacre, loot and rape was repeated. The final death toll was 700 Shi’as killed.
19. Since 1996, the Balawaristanis have been angered by the Sunni-biased syllabus imposed upon their schools by the federal government.
20. Again, after the 1999 Kargil Conflict in which over 3000 soldiers of the Gilgit Scouts were said to have died, a revolt brewed in these areas which required direct and urgent intervention of the then Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif. The 1999 Kargil invasion also resulted in large scale transplantation of Sunni jihadis into Balawaristan.
21. Pakistan has exported its sectarian conflicts into Balawaristan through the policy of deliberate settlement of Sunnis in Balawaristan. In January, 2005, a Shi’a leader, Agha Ziauddin Rizvi, was killed in Gilgit.
22. In March 2005, the ex-Inspector General of Police in Gilgit, Sakiullah Tareen, was assassinated by the Shi’a who claimed they had suffered a great deal under his tenure. He was a known Sunni sectarian and a pro-Taliban jihadi who was earlier a diplomat of Pakistan accredited to the Taliban regime at Kabul.
23. Since Pakistan does not allow journalists or human rights activists or international relief organizations into Balawaristan, these human rights violations do not get reported at all. In this respect, Balawaristan is handled similar to Balochistan. The remoteness of both these places along with a ruthless clampdown on news from these regions hide the large-scale violations of human rights that take place regularly.
24. The Ismailis, who owe allegiance to the Aga Khan, have been running a large number of welfare projects in this region which have been also targets of the Sunni sectarians though the Ismailis have largely never retaliated. The Ismailis have faced similar oppression in other parts of Pakistan as well and the Aga Khan University has been a frequent target.
25. Pakistan had concluded a Border Agreement with China on December 26, 1962, a day prior to the US-initiated India-Pakistan Peace Talks in Rawalpindi, thus upsetting the talks even before they started. The Agreement itself was signed much later on Mar. 2, 1963 in Beijing. Later, Ayub Khan claimed that the Chinese had tricked him by timing the announcement of the border agreement to wreck the peace talks. Some historians try to project a picture of these border talks having been initiated much before the 1962 Indo-China War and hence no ulterior motives should be attributed to the Pakistanis. But, the Muslim League and the Pakistani perfidy is such that these pious protestations fall simply by the wayside. First of all, no progress had been made with the Chinese in the border talks up until December 1962, by which time the India-China war had concluded with China having decisively dealt a blow to Indian military. The talks which started in Beijing in May, 1962 had stalled immediately because neither side had any legal records to claim their border alignment. Later, when the talks resumed in Pakistan this time on October 12, 1962, Ayub Khan records in his book, Friends not Masters, how the Chinese were ‘very difficult’ by claiming several areas on the Pakistan side including the Khunjerab Valley and the K-2 mountain peak. The Indo-China War was still more than a week away, October 20, 1962. After the India-China war ended abruptly on November 20, 1962, the Pakistanis were able to immediately find an innovative solution to their vexatious border problem with the Chinese based on the principle of using the watershed of the Indus basin rivers and the traditional grazing grounds used by the Hunza shepherds.
26. Thus, Pakistan conceded vast portions to China, including the Shaksgam Valley. The Official Pakistan Map of 1962 in this area included 11000 Sq. Miles of territory (to the north of the ‘Traditional Frontier’)which has been totally lost by Pakistan to China. Pakistan never staked its claim to these areas in c. 1962, choosing rather to go by the 'Traditional Frontier' several hundred Kms. to the South of the Official Frontier. This is the area bordering Xinjiang (Sinkiang) where the British had built a road all the way from Gilgit in Hunza to Kashgar in Sinkiang where they had a Consulate. In addition, Pakistan conceded another about 3200 Sq. Miles to the south of the ‘Traditional Frontier’ to arrive at the new boundary alignment (out of the 3700 Sq. Miles claimed by China, it was ‘gracious’ enough to give 500 Sq. Miles of cattle grazing ground to Pakistan).
REFERENCES
1. Operations in Jammu & Kashmir: 1947-48, Ministry of Defence, Government of India
ISBN 81-8158-053-2
2. The United States and Pakistan 1947-2000: Disenchanted Allies, Dennis Kux, Oxford Press
ISBN 0 19 579656 X
3. War and Diplomacy in Kashmir 1947-48, C.Dasgupta, Sage Publications,2002
ISBN 81-7829-069-3
4. The Shadow of the Great Game, Narendra Singh Sarila, HarperCollins, 2005
5. Facing the Truth, A.G.Noorani, Frontline, Volume 23 - Issue 20 :: Oct. 07-20, 2006
http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2320/stories/20061020001608500.htm
6. The Trouble in Gilgit, Khaled Ahmed, The Friday Times, July 8-14, 2005 - Vol. XVII, No. 20
7. Gilgit-Baltistan Autonomy Package Wins Few Friends, Nirupama Subramanian, The Hindu, Sep. 15, 2009
Let us try to understand this remote area of Balawaristan.
1. Balawaristan is an area of approx. 38000 Sq. KMs. with a population of apprximately 1 million (based on the last census of Pakistan with suitable projection).
2. Balawaristan has six districts, Gilgit, Skardu, Ghanche, Ghizar, Diamar, and Astore, two States of Hunza and Nagar and the subagency of Chilas. In c. 1947, the Mir of Hunza, the Mir of Nagar, the Raja of Punial, the chieftains of Koh Ghizar, Yasin and Ashkoman were subordinate to the Governor of the Maharajah of J&K located at Gilgit.
3. The languages spoken in Balawaristan are: Shina, Balti, Wakhi, Khowar, Burushaski, and Domaaki.
4. The Pakistani government has thrown a ‘cordon sanitaire’ to a depth of 50 Kms from the border along the Afghan border (Wakhan Corridor) area and of 16 Kms along the Kashmir-border area.
5. Today Gilgit is 60% Shia (Twelvers), 40% Sunni; Hunza 100% Ismaili; Nagar 100% Shia; Punial 100% Ismaili; Yasin 100% Ismaili; Ishkoman 100% Ismaili; Gupis 100% Ismaili; Chilas 100% Sunni; Darel/Tangir 100% Sunni; Astor 90% Sunni, 10% Shia; Baltistan 96% Shia; 2% Nurbakhti; 2% Sunni. They do not consider themselves as Kashmiris and speak a number of languages.
6. Ethnically, the main groups are Baltis, Yashkuns, Mughals, Kashmiris, Ladakhis, Tajik, Mongol, Turkmen and some population of Greek origin.
7. In c. 1889, the British, worried about the Russian Czarist expansion, created the Gilgit Agency as the suzerain power. Gilgit Agency was taken on a 60-year lease from Maharajah Hari Singh by the British in 1935 due to fear of spreading Russian Communism and the civil war in China, especially in Sinkiang. The Gilgit Scouts (currently part of the enlarged Northern Light Infantry, NLI) was a British India force created to help the British Political Agent. In June, 1947, the lease was cancelled and the Agency was returned to the Maharajah. However, the J&K State had retained the services of Maj. William A Brown and Captain A.S. Mathieson of the Gilgit Scouts, a decision that proved fatal. In the night between October 31 and November 1, Maj. Brown and about 100 men of Gilgit Scouts surrounded the house of the Governor, Brig. Ghansar Singh, who had taken over from the British Political Agent, Lt-Col. Bacon, only on Aug. 1, 1947, and asked him to surrender. It now turns out from records that Lt-Col. Bacon and Major W.A.Brown had worked out ‘contingency plans should the Maharajah take over the state to India’ in June 1947 itself. We must remember that it was exactly what the duo did after the Maharajah had signed accession papers to India on Oct. 26, 1947. After a heavy exchange of fire throughtout the night, the brave Brigadier had to surrender the next morning as Major. Brown threatened to kill all non-Muslims in Gilgit if he did not do so. On November 3, 1947, this British Major, William A Brown, hoisted the Pakistani flag at the garrison and formed an Interim Government and within two weeks, a ‘political agent’ of Pakistan, Maj. Aslam Khan who had taken part in the invasion of Kashmir, took control of Balawaristan as Col. Bacon, now posted at Peshawar acted as the liaison between the British officers and the Pakistani Government, especially Defence Secretary Maj. Gen. Iskander Mirza. Maj. Brown and Col. Mathieson opted to serve in Pakistan after this episode. Maj. W.A. Brown was bestowed with the Order of the British Empire (OBE) within a few months in c. 1948. No citation was announced as to why he was awarded the OBE.
8. Thus the incidents in Gilgit were plainly a mutiny by certain sections of the Scouts, aided by British perfidy, who took the Governor of the province a hostage, and not a rebellion by ordinary citizens and inhabitants of Balawaristan. In fact, the people of Gilgit wholeheartedly welcomed Brig. Ghansar Singh on August 1, at the thought of the demise of the British rule and the return of the Maharajah’s administration. The locals also protested on November 1, 1947, the arrest of the Governor but were suitably pacified by the leaders of the scouts. Pakistan later falsely claimed that ordinary citizens rose in revolt and they sent telegrams to the Government of Pakistan of their desire to unite with Pakistan. A ‘Republic of Gilgit-Astore’ that was setup was forcibly disbanded by Pakistan’s ‘political agent’.
9. The British perfidy in ensuring that Pakistan possessed Balawaristan has been described by C. Dasgupta in his book, ‘War and Diplomacy in Kashmir”, citing records from British archives. The IAF was prevented from attacking the Pakistani Airforce’s supply aircraft that ferried supplies to the Gilgit region, by the combined pressure on the British chief of the IAF, Air Vice Marshal Thomas Elmhirst, by the British Commanders of the Pakistani Air Force, Air Vice Marshal Perry-Keene, and Pakistani Army, Gen. Gracey, and the Commander in Chief of Indian Army, General Bucher. The IAF, which did attack one such PAF Dakota aircraft on November 4, 1947 was stopped from conducting similar operations afterwards by the British. AVM Thomas Elmhirst personally met Nehru and persuaded him from conducting such operations. Thus, Balawaristan was saved from Indian military operations, for its recovery from the mutineers.
10. It has now come to light how the British conspired to keep two territories for Pakistan, Gilgit and North Western frontier Province (NWFP, now called Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa), in order to meet the geo-strategic interests of the British.
11. Since then, Balawaristan has been directly under the control of the federal government through the Ministry of Kashmir and Northern Areas (KANA). Z.A.Bhutto introduced a locally elected ‘council’, Northern Areas Legislative Council (NALC), in 1974 and Musharraf announced a reforms package in 2007 which were all cosmetic in nature.
12. After the annexation, Pakistan started referring to Balawaristan as Northern Areas. It did not want to term the annexation as ‘accession’ of Balawaristan as that would have weakened Pakistan’s claims on the rest of J&K which had acceded to India. Besides, ‘accession’ was a privilege that could be exercised only by the Maharaja and not by ordinary citizens or even governors appointed by the Maharaja for administrative purposes. Also, the Maharaja could only accede his whole state, not parcels of it, to either India or Pakistan. So, the status of Balwaristan was kept in a limbo within Pakistan.
13. Pakistan enacted the Gilgit-Baltistan (Empowerment and Self Governance) Order 2009 in Aug. 29 and changed its name from Northern Areas to Giligit-Baltistan. As per this act, Gilgit-Baltistan was accorded a province-like status with a federally appointed Governor, a Legislative Assembly and a Chief Minister. The Assembly will have 33 members, of whom 24 are to be directly elected; it will have powers to legislate on 61 subjects. The Governor will head a 12-member Council, with half the members from the Assembly and the other half appointed by the Governor. In that respect, it is very similar to the Kashmir Council of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) located in Islamabad, to which is subordinated the POK Legislative Assembly. Thus, the Secretary of Ministry of Kashmir and Northern Areas (KANA) actually rules POK, who, in turn, is controlled by the ISI and the Military Intelligence (MI).
14. Pakistan has explicitly barred the Legislative Assembly from dealing with Gilgit-Baltistan’s natural resources including minerals and water. The federal Pakistani government has awarded the construction of the multi-billion USD hydro-electric and water storage projects at Bunji (south of Gilgit) and Diamar-Basha to Chinese companies. India has vehemently objected to Chinese involvement in projects in areas which China itself accepts as 'disputed territories'.
15. This recent empowerment of Balawaristan is nothing but a farcical attempt as the Governor’s council oversees the powers of the Assembly. With half the ‘Council’ consisting of the Governor’s appointees, the federal government has complete and tight control.
16. The Pakistani intention is to separate the Balawaristan region from the J&K dispute. It feels emboldened because India, since even Nehru’s days, had not paid much attention to the recovery of Balawaristan from Pakistani occupation. Both the Kashmiris and the Balawaristanis consider themselves parties to the J&K issue, however.
17. Large scale migration of Pashtuns and Punjabis has been deliberately engineered by Pakistan over the years changing the demography of the region and imposing the Sunnis over the Shi’a. This has lead to frequent clashes and even rebellion which had been crushed with the Pakistani military ruthlessly.
18. The Balawaristanis first rebelled in c. 1988 which Gen. Zia-ul-Haq suppressed, an action in which a certain Brig. Musharraf played a significant role. The trouble erupted when the Shi’a celebrated Eid-ul-Fitr a day ahead of the Sunnis. The still-fasting Sunnis were angered and invited a lashkar from NWFP (now, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa) who indulged in unfettered and large scale looting, arson and rape for several days. Many say, the lashkar was aided by the Pakistani Army. Thus, the 1947 spectre of tribal lashkar from NWFP invading J&K under the Pakistani Army’s patronage and guidance and indulging in an orgy of violence, massacre, loot and rape was repeated. The final death toll was 700 Shi’as killed.
19. Since 1996, the Balawaristanis have been angered by the Sunni-biased syllabus imposed upon their schools by the federal government.
20. Again, after the 1999 Kargil Conflict in which over 3000 soldiers of the Gilgit Scouts were said to have died, a revolt brewed in these areas which required direct and urgent intervention of the then Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif. The 1999 Kargil invasion also resulted in large scale transplantation of Sunni jihadis into Balawaristan.
21. Pakistan has exported its sectarian conflicts into Balawaristan through the policy of deliberate settlement of Sunnis in Balawaristan. In January, 2005, a Shi’a leader, Agha Ziauddin Rizvi, was killed in Gilgit.
22. In March 2005, the ex-Inspector General of Police in Gilgit, Sakiullah Tareen, was assassinated by the Shi’a who claimed they had suffered a great deal under his tenure. He was a known Sunni sectarian and a pro-Taliban jihadi who was earlier a diplomat of Pakistan accredited to the Taliban regime at Kabul.
23. Since Pakistan does not allow journalists or human rights activists or international relief organizations into Balawaristan, these human rights violations do not get reported at all. In this respect, Balawaristan is handled similar to Balochistan. The remoteness of both these places along with a ruthless clampdown on news from these regions hide the large-scale violations of human rights that take place regularly.
24. The Ismailis, who owe allegiance to the Aga Khan, have been running a large number of welfare projects in this region which have been also targets of the Sunni sectarians though the Ismailis have largely never retaliated. The Ismailis have faced similar oppression in other parts of Pakistan as well and the Aga Khan University has been a frequent target.
25. Pakistan had concluded a Border Agreement with China on December 26, 1962, a day prior to the US-initiated India-Pakistan Peace Talks in Rawalpindi, thus upsetting the talks even before they started. The Agreement itself was signed much later on Mar. 2, 1963 in Beijing. Later, Ayub Khan claimed that the Chinese had tricked him by timing the announcement of the border agreement to wreck the peace talks. Some historians try to project a picture of these border talks having been initiated much before the 1962 Indo-China War and hence no ulterior motives should be attributed to the Pakistanis. But, the Muslim League and the Pakistani perfidy is such that these pious protestations fall simply by the wayside. First of all, no progress had been made with the Chinese in the border talks up until December 1962, by which time the India-China war had concluded with China having decisively dealt a blow to Indian military. The talks which started in Beijing in May, 1962 had stalled immediately because neither side had any legal records to claim their border alignment. Later, when the talks resumed in Pakistan this time on October 12, 1962, Ayub Khan records in his book, Friends not Masters, how the Chinese were ‘very difficult’ by claiming several areas on the Pakistan side including the Khunjerab Valley and the K-2 mountain peak. The Indo-China War was still more than a week away, October 20, 1962. After the India-China war ended abruptly on November 20, 1962, the Pakistanis were able to immediately find an innovative solution to their vexatious border problem with the Chinese based on the principle of using the watershed of the Indus basin rivers and the traditional grazing grounds used by the Hunza shepherds.
26. Thus, Pakistan conceded vast portions to China, including the Shaksgam Valley. The Official Pakistan Map of 1962 in this area included 11000 Sq. Miles of territory (to the north of the ‘Traditional Frontier’)which has been totally lost by Pakistan to China. Pakistan never staked its claim to these areas in c. 1962, choosing rather to go by the 'Traditional Frontier' several hundred Kms. to the South of the Official Frontier. This is the area bordering Xinjiang (Sinkiang) where the British had built a road all the way from Gilgit in Hunza to Kashgar in Sinkiang where they had a Consulate. In addition, Pakistan conceded another about 3200 Sq. Miles to the south of the ‘Traditional Frontier’ to arrive at the new boundary alignment (out of the 3700 Sq. Miles claimed by China, it was ‘gracious’ enough to give 500 Sq. Miles of cattle grazing ground to Pakistan).
REFERENCES
1. Operations in Jammu & Kashmir: 1947-48, Ministry of Defence, Government of India
ISBN 81-8158-053-2
2. The United States and Pakistan 1947-2000: Disenchanted Allies, Dennis Kux, Oxford Press
ISBN 0 19 579656 X
3. War and Diplomacy in Kashmir 1947-48, C.Dasgupta, Sage Publications,2002
ISBN 81-7829-069-3
4. The Shadow of the Great Game, Narendra Singh Sarila, HarperCollins, 2005
5. Facing the Truth, A.G.Noorani, Frontline, Volume 23 - Issue 20 :: Oct. 07-20, 2006
http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2320/stories/20061020001608500.htm
6. The Trouble in Gilgit, Khaled Ahmed, The Friday Times, July 8-14, 2005 - Vol. XVII, No. 20
7. Gilgit-Baltistan Autonomy Package Wins Few Friends, Nirupama Subramanian, The Hindu, Sep. 15, 2009
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Pakistan Army and its Involvement in and Support for Terrorism - Part III
Recent weeks have witnessed significant events that bring out Pakistan armed forces and their deep connections with the terrorists.
First was the dramatic arrest of the fugitive Pakistani terrorist, Faisal Shahzad on May 3 from aboard a flight at New York, for plotting to bomb the Times Square two days earlier. Though the attempt to bomb looked amateurish, soon the connections began to unravel. For one, he was the son of a Retired Air Vice Marshal of the Pakistani Air Force (PAF). Though this might be incidental, one has to be wary of the fact that too many Pakistani military personnel had been involved in terrorism and that living in that cloistered environment could offer opportunities for somebody to link up easily with terrorist organizations. Faisal Shahzad was himself found to be in touch with a Major of the Pakistani Army's Signal Corps, Maj. Adnan Ahmed, even moments before he parked the bomb-laden SUV at the Times Square. As usual, Pakistan Army is trying to confuse and confound the issue regarding Maj. Adnan Ahmed. At one point, Pakistan claimed that the Major had been dismissed much earlier for insubordination in refusing to fight the Taliban when his unit was tasked with that. Another report said that the Major was dismissed after the Shahzad episode came to light. The Major himself claimed that there was some confusion and everything had been cleard up. In any case, when CIA Chief Leon Panatta and and the NSA General James Jones visited Islamabad requesting access to Maj. Adnan Ahmed, the request was rejected by Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani. The bomb plot prompted Ms. Hillary Clinton to say, "We've made it very clear [to Pakistan] that if, heaven-forbid, an attack like this [Times Square failed car-bomb attack by Pakistani Faisal Shehzad] that we can trace back to Pakistan were to have been successful, there would be very severe consequences. I think that there was a double game going on in the previous years, where we got a lot of lip service but very little produced".
Another development during the past few weeks that nailed the Pakistani Army decisively was the interrogation by Indian investigators of David Coleman Headley with one blue and another brown eye. Though he had revealed much information earlier, the Indian investigation, under the US Plea Bargain programme, assumed significance because of the immense knowledge of the Indian interrogators of the various Pakistani terrorist tanzeems that ensured that Headley spoke the truth. The following are now established as facts:
- Daoud Gilani started off as a US undercover agent who then became a jihadi.
- Prof. Hafeez Saeed was aware of and indeed directing the 26/11 attack.
- The ISI and the LeT are inseparable.
- The Pakistani Army (PA) was directly involved in providing logistical support for the 26/11 terrorists like paying for the boat.
- The Pakistani Navy's (PN's) frogmen were involved in training the 26/11 terrorists on sea-faring skills. (Earlier Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone survivor of the terrorist team, had described to the Mumbai police how the PN had trained them at the Mangla Reservoir in swimming, diving and underwater combat and provided them with navigation charts, GPS etc.)
- Headley was in constant touch with at least three ISI officers who held the rank of a Major who asked him to scout sites for terror attacks in Mumbai, New Delhi and other parts of India. He identified them as Iqbal, Sameer Ali and Abdul Rehman Saeed.
- Serving Pakistani army or ISI officials Major Iqbal, Major Sameer and Colonel Shah were involved in the planning of the 26/11 attacks. Another person who Headley claimed as a 26/11 planner was Major (retd.) Abdul Rehman Saeed who retired from the 6 Baloch Regiment in circa 2002.(In Pakistan Army officers are seconded to the ISI and then conveniently claimed as having retired from the Army. Maj. (retd.) Abdul Rehman Saeed appears to be one such case.)
- Headley has mentioned another serving officer of Pakistan army — Major Haroon Ashique— as having collaborated with the Laskhar terrorists. Major Haroon Ashique is an ex Special Services Group (SSG) officer and worked with LeT’s operational commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi.
- ISI also supplied Indian currency to the 26/11 terrorists.
- ISI had also trained Headley.
- The Director General (DG) of ISID Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha visited LeT’s operations chief Zaki ur Rehman Lakhvi and another LeT fugitive Sajid Mir in jail.
- Ex Pakistani military official Major Abdul Rehman Saeed and Sajid Mir were the chief handlers of Headley. Major (retd.) Abdul Rehman Saeed worked for both LeT and Ilyas Kashmiri's Brigade 313.
Maj. Haroon Rashid Ashique was also involved in kidnapping rich celebrities for ransom to make money for terrorist organizations. One of the famous cases he was involved in was that of the Karachi Hindu businessman Satish Anand, an uncle of a famous Indian actress.
One can be sure that the above is just a beginning and more will come out because as my earlier blogs show, the connection between pure-as-a-lily State Actors and the more pious Non-State Actors goes back to circa 1947 in Pakistan, the Land of the Purest.
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