Unstable Pakistan will have disastrous consequences for India and USA
Asif Haroon Raja
While the US and India are incessantly blaming Pakistan for fomenting terrorism in Afghanistan and in India, Pakistan on the other hand remain on the defensive and never tire of giving lengthy explanations. Our leaders prefer to ignore the vicious propaganda of the two accusers despite the fact that Pakistan is the biggest victim of terrorism and its sacrifices far outweigh the sacrifices rendered by all the 48 states engaged in fighting global war on terror (GWOT). Our leaders at times hesitatingly mention ‘foreign hand’, but hardly pick up courage to name the country involved in terrorism in Pakistan despite possessing concrete proofs. PM Gilani, Interior Minister, chief ministers of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and Sindh and other high officials of law enforcement agencies have often mentioned that foreign hands are involved and they have proof, but the matter was never pursued. Instead of strongly protesting and rejecting the baseless accusations of USA and India, our leaders mildly and apologetically say that Pakistan is not involved. Since the allegations are mostly concocted or based on faulty presumptions, the accusers never provide the evidence, but because of mala fide intentions they do not stop propagating.
Apart from the objective of discrediting and undermining Pakistan and its premier institutions through an orchestrated vilification campaign, other motives are to blame Pakistan for ISAF’s failings in Afghanistan and for the mess in India created by ruling Brahmans. Blame game helps the duo in keeping Pakistan under pressure and on the defensive. It helps the US in justifying as to why it is giving preferential treatment to India which is not even a coalition member of GWOT and raw deal to Pakistan which is taking the major brunt of terrorism as a frontline state.
Whenever any act of terror takes place in Afghanistan or in India, Pakistan’s ISI is promptly blamed without even carrying out preliminary investigations or providing evidence. The US-Western-India media picks up the event and keeps drumming it unabatedly. Mumbai incident taking place in November 2008 is a case in point. 3 ½ years have elapsed, but Indian leaders backed by US leaders have not forgotten it and they continue to play it to grill Pakistan. Lashkar-e-Taiba and head of Jamaat-ud-Dawa Hafiz Saeed, allegedly backed by ISI are projected as the masterminds. Pakistan has been constantly pressured to either punish the culprits or hand them over to India. To keep the issue alive, the US has jumped into Indo-Pak fray and announced $10 million award money for anyone helping to arrest Hafiz Saeed who runs an Islamic educational institute together with charity organizations in Muredke, where anyone can visit. They feel Pakistan’s ISI can be indicted in this case and declared as a rogue outfit.
The duo as well as its western allies looks the other way to many glaring loopholes in the Mumbai story manufactured by RAW, Mossad and CIA to embarrass Pakistan. India has masked murder of anti-terrorist chief Inspector Karkare who had busted the nexus between Hindu terrorist groups and Indian military officers involved in numerous terrorist acts in India all of which were pasted on ISI. The honest and upright officer was murdered during the Mumbai episode on the night of 26 November. The case which was being heard by a court of law has been shelved since it was too damning and embarrassing.
India and its western backers never talk of the infamous nexus between Hindu terrorist groups and Indian military including Military Intelligence deeply involved in terrorizing Indian Muslims so as to pave the way for Hindutva and also to undermine Pakistan. Startling revelations made by Aseemanabad have been obfuscated. India’s publicity wing sours their throats painting India as a model country, but smokescreen its weak areas under the artificial light of India shining. Its anomalies far outweigh the strong points. Beneath the façade of robust economy and outward show of prosperity, great majority of Indians are suffering from pangs of extreme poverty, hunger, mal-nutrition, illiteracy, health problems, injustice and lawlessness. Thousands die of hunger or of weather hazards every month. Out of 28 states, two-thirds are economically depressed. Bihar, Jharkand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh are the worst affected.
It is essentially because of iniquitous development of states and rising gap between the rich and poor together with injustices and insensitivities of the elites that the deprived classes are perforce up in arms against the state. Eleven states are demanding independence. Some of the insurgencies are over six decades old. Other reason is the hideous four-fold caste system by virtue of which the Brahmans consider it their birth right to rule and enjoy all the worldly pleasures and their obligation to keep all others oppressed and subservient. All other classes in India are treated as 2nd rated and impure. In fact, all religious minorities in India have no right to seek their basic human rights or to progress on the basis of their skills and education.
To keep the aggrieved people in their places, hundreds of extremist and terrorist Hindu groups have mushroomed in India. Their intolerance and deep-seated aversion for other religious minorities has taken Hindu extremism to new heights. The extremist Hindus aspiring to convert India into a Hindu state want non-Hindu minorities to get Hinduized or else leave India. Communal rioting is a normal routine apart from organized pogroms against the Muslims such as in Ayodhia and in Gujarat, against the Sikhs during and after the destruction of Golden Temple and assassination of Indira Gandhi and against the Christian community in Orissa and other places. Dalits who fall in the lowest category of Hindus are treated worse than animals.
Of all the insurgencies and separatist movements, Naxalite movement which had triggered in 1967 as a peasant movement is the most dangerous and has become an existential threat to India. Rather than addressing their grievances by correcting the economic imbalances and social injustices, over 700,000 security forces equipped with black laws are vainly trying to quash the movements using draconian measures. In addition, India has saturated a small valley of Kashmir with 700,000 troops since 1989 where extra judicial killings, abductions, illegal detentions, rape and torture are practiced to crush the freedom movement and deny the Kashmiris their right of self determination.
Instead of meting out justice to the oppressed in Indian states and in occupied Kashmir and alleviating their sufferings, Indian leadership is engaged in building up its military might and is spending billions of dollars to acquire latest arms and technology. Its defence budget is shooting up each year and so is the length of its shopping list for armaments. This mad drive to become a world power is at the cost of great majority of Indians who continue to live in abysmal conditions. Instead of allocating funds to the economically weak states, Indian rulers are doling out huge amounts for the uplift of Afghanistan with which it doesn’t even share border. India is more concerned about the plight of Baloch separatists in Balochistan, who are supported by RAW, CIA, MI-6 and RAAM rather than its own seven separatist movements. Indian leaders are eager to fragment Pakistan so that India could become an unchallenged power of South Asia, not realizing that India itself is dangerously close to fragmentation from within. Unstable Pakistan will hasten the process of disintegration of artificially united Indian Union.
USA, where inequities between the rich and poor are as wide as 1:99%, and where the ruling elites have character traits similar to Hindu Brahmans, are helping India in not only making it the dominating power of South Asia but of Asia-Pacific at the cost of Pakistan, which it hypocritically calls as its ally. Under the garb of fighting terrorism, it is bashing Pakistan to please India and to achieve its hidden objectives; not realizing that its duplicity and discriminatory attitude is fuelling radicalism and anti-Americanism in Pakistan. Safe exit of ISAF from the quagmire of Afghanistan to a large extent is dependent upon Pakistan’s willing support. Retreat of ISAF in humiliating conditions will have disastrous social and economic consequences for the US and European nations that have wrought havoc in Afghanistan.
The writer is a retired Brig and a defence and security analyst. Email: asifharoon7751@yahoo.com
