Sajjad Shaukat
On the one hand, Pakistan’s defence forces and people have been showing a strong sense of unity against the Taliban in wake of the ongoing military operations, but on the other, various anti-Pakistan articles have still been appearing in the media. It can be judged from the wishful thinking of an Indian writer, Kapil Komireddi whose article, titled: The Demise of Pakistan is Inevitable, published in the Guardian on June 14, 2009. It has left no stone unturned in maligning our country through self-fabricated stories.
Kapil Komireddi wrote, “Pakistan’s fight against the Taliban is an illusion. The world may view it as a battle for Pakistan’s soul, but the generals in Rawalpindi are not so sure for victory.
While indicating old Indian self-created rhetoric that Pakistan’s army and its intelligence agency, ISI have links with the Taliban, Kapil blamed: “Nothing seems to deter Islamabad from continuing with its policy of patronising Islamic extremists–so long as they are devoted to destroying India…Hafiz Saeed, Jamat-ud-Dawah’s leader who had been detained after last November’s Mumbai attacks, was freed.”
The prejudice of the writer can be assessed from his some other illogical approach. In this connection, while propagating that Pakistan’s nuclear assets are unsafe, he revealed that hatred of India had been essential for Pakistan’s survival. Surprisingly, misinterpreting the two-nation theory as the basis of Pakistan and distorting historical facts about Kashmir and East Pakistan, Kapil elaborated that Pakistan that was created in 1947 ceased to exist in 1971 with the creation of Bangladesh.” He blamed that seven million East Pakistanis were slaughtered by West Pakistani soldiers in 1971. It was secular India, its forces led by non-Hindus, which intervened to liberate Pakistanis from the madness of Pakistan. Indicating division among Pakistan’s provinces from Karachi to Peshawar, Kapil concluded, “Within the next 20 years, Pakistan will probably not exist.”
Let us now analyse the article of Kapil Komireddi in light of the ground realites. In this regard, Pakistan’s successful military operations verify that by sacrificing their own lives, our forces ejected the Taliban militants out of Buner, Dir and Swat—breaking their backbone by eliminating their control and command structure. Our armed forces which are now targeting South Waziristan have allayed west’s misperceptions that the militants can capture Islamabad and can take control over country’s nuclear weapons. Morover, it is owing to the clear succesess in these operations that the US-led western world have been highly praising the performance of our armed forces, giving milllion of dollars to the Internally Displaced Persons(IDPs). The tough military operations have also proved that Pak Army and ISI have no connections with the Taliban.
Public support behind Pak army and rejection of Taliban-style of Sharia all over the country as expressed by the leaders of various political and civil societies—especially religious scholars give ample proof that majority of Pakistanis are moderate, who want to promote liberalism in the country instead of extremism. It was due to the anti-social activities of the Taliban such as beheadings, kidnappings, burning of girl’s schools etc. that even tribal people have come to know that these militants wanted to impose rule of terror under the cover of Sharia. In this context, more than 4 million IDPs refused to accept Talibans’ rule and preferred to live in camps. No doubt, from Lahore to Karachi and Peshawar to Queta, people of Pakistan have more unity backing the ongoing military operations.
It is mentionable that the banned Jamat-ud-Dawah’s leader Hifiz Saeed was set free by the order of Lahore High Court as his involvment was not proved in connection with Novemeber 26 incident of Mumbai. In the recent past, Ajmal kasab, the only gunmen who was arrested during Mumbai mayhem, disclosed in an Indian court that Indian police had forced him to give statement against Pakistan and involvement of ISI. His statement has endorsed Indian senseless accusations against Islamabad.
As regards the partition and the two-nation theory, it is known to every intellectual that political injustices, social discrimination and religious bigotry by the Hindus had compelled the Muslims to struggle for an independent state. Hindus and their subsequent governments which did not recognise the existence of Pakistan wholeheartedly have been making overt and covert efforts in destablising this country since 1945. In this respect, four wars against Pakistan, suspension of rivers’ water to our country in violation of Indus Basin Treaty of 1967, illegitimate annexation of Kashmir, non-implementation of the UN resolutions in relation to the plebiscite in the Valley, continuous denial of the right of self-determination to the Kashmiris and their genocide might be cited as some examples.
Nevertheless, Pakistan has become a perennial target of Indian secret agency RAW. In 1971, Indira Gandhi gave RAW a green signal to mobilise all its resources by exploiting political turmoil of East Pakistan, which RAW had created through its agents who provided Bengalis arms and ammunition for conducting guerrilla acts against the Pakistani defence forces. However, this agency played a key role in the dismemberment of Pakistan
India has been perennially supporting insurgency in Pakistan’s Frontier Province and Balochistan from Afghanistan where RAW has established a number of terrorist training camps from where armed insurgents are being sent to our country in order to create lawlessness. In the past few months, terror-incidents have occurred at rapid succession in Pakistan as noted in Lahore—Rescue 15 building whose actual target was ISI, raid on the Manawa Police Training Center, assault on Sri Lankan cricket team and martyring of top religious scholar, Allama Dr Sarfraz Naeemi Al-Azhari. Besides, suicide attacks at the Pearl Continental Hotel in Peshawar, a new terror-wave continues in various cities of Pakistan. In fact, Indian secret agency is behind all these terror-events.
Last year, solid evidence has been witnessed regarding Hindu terrorism when Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of the Maharashtra arrested a serving Lt. Col. Srikant Purohit who had close ties with fundamentalist leaders of BJP, VHP, RSS and Bajrang Dal. ATS, while revealing the confession of Lt. Col. Purohit for bombing of Samjhota express, which burnt alive 69 Pakistani passengers in 2007, further disclosed that Indian army officials helped train the Hindu terrorists, supplying them explosives, used in the various terrorist attacks of Indian cities including September 29, 2008 bombings of Malegaon.
During Mumbai attack, the death of ATS Chief Hemant Karkare proved that Indian intelligence agencies had themselves planned the scheme to intimidate Pakistan and to take political advantage over the latter especially on Kashmir issue as the US President Obama seemed to resolve this dispute.
In fact, there is a co-relationship of the Hindutva (Hindu nationalism) and Hindu fundamentalism which are genesis of Hindu terrorism. This ideology has been encouraged by the subsequent governments officially, manifesting itself in various forms such as dominance of Hindu culture, religious fervour and violence against Muslims and other religious communities. Some drastic developments like demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992, massacre of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, and recent violence in Assam including intermittent killing of Sikhs and Christians might be noted as instance. Silence of New Delhi over vandalism of Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal and other extremist parties has clearly displayed Hindu terrorism by defeating Indian so-called secularism.
Here, Indian risky proliferation is of particular attention. Recently, Indian famous nuke scientist, Lokanathan Mahalingam whose dead body has been recovered was mysteriously disappeared from the Kaiga Atomic Power Station on June 8, 2009. Reports suggest that he was in possession of highly sensitive information regarding the Indian nukes. Notably, since 1984, 200 cases of uranium-theft and smuggling have been reported by the Indian police. Indian renowned companies were found engaged in illegal import and export of nuclear equipments. On June 12, 2004, Berkeley Nucleonics Corporation (BNC), an American company was fined US $ 300,000 for exporting a nuclear component to the Bhaba Atomic Research Center in India. In December, 2006, a container packed with radioactive material had been stolen from an Indian fortified research atomic facility near Mumbai. Nonetheless, Indian proliferation has no end, making it quite clear that Indian nuclear scientists and nuclear programme are in unsafe hands. Leakage of information and smuggling of these fatal weapons could endanger the security of whole world in the near future.
While weakening Pakistan as part of its unfinished agenda, New Delhi has been acting upon a self-destructive path. Such a negative strategy will badly affect India where more than six states are facing separatist movements, while non-state actors, popularly called militants have connections with each other from Kabul to New Delhi and from the Indian-held Kashmir to Central Asian Republics. So demise of Pakistan as ill-conceived by Kapil Komireddi will, in fact, culminate in demise of the Indian artificial union itself.
Sajjad Shaukat writes on internaional affairs and is author of the book: US vs Islamic Militants, Invisible Balance of Power: Dangerous Shift in Internaional Relations
Posted on 28 Jun 2009 by Webmaster
