B L Saraf
In a horrendous terror attack on humanity, hundreds of innocent school children lost lives in the bloody alleys of APS Peshawar, Pakistan. The carnage shook international community and evoked worldwide condemnation. P M Narendra Modi and people of India mourned the tragedy, no less.
In ironical sequence, a number of scholarly and well researched books, on the conduct and modus operandi of Pakistan elite and its Army, hit the stands this year: for a perceptible reader to conclude what has happened on the black day of 16th December, 2014 in Peshawar, was, indeed, a “tragedy waiting to happen.” Poisonous snakes reared in the backyard for the neighbours have, as prophetically noted by Hillary Clinton, raised the hoods and bitten the keeper, in Peshawar.
T V Paul in his book The Warrior State says that Pakistan Army and the elite are obsessed with military balance with India, He writes “The military elite has attempted continuously to obtain security by striving for strategic parity with its larger neighbour through arms build up…….offering home base for transnational terrorist networks , engaging in terrorism on its own and initiating wars and crisis to extract territorial concessions …………..” p 12 .
Then, he goes on to say “The Pakistan elite has exhibited a tendency to play double games as way to extract financial resources from its key allies, especially the United States. This is because of a conviction that if the security problem is fully solved then the external ally will shun Pakistan .”p 21
Christine Fair in her book Fighting To The End – Pakistan Army’s Way Of War has raised certain questions, “Why does Pakistan Army continue to challenge the status -quo in Kashmir? Why does it support a fleet of jihadi groups despite the fact that some of these have turned against their patrons ? ….” P 2.
She has the answer ” .. ….. because the Army’s concern and preoccupations are ideological as much as military in scope , the Pak Army views its struggle with India in existential terms. For Pakistan’s men on horsebacks , not winning, not even repeatedly, is not the same thing as losing . But simply giving up and accepting status-quo and India’s supremacy is, by definition, defeat. As a former chief of the staff explained to me in 2000, Pakistan’s generals would always prefer to take calculated risks and be defeated than do nothing at all. Pakistan’s Army would insist on action at almost on any cost, even that of presiding over a hollow state. After all, if the Pakistani state are to make such concessions to India it would no longer be a state worth presiding over. By seeing victory as the ability to continue fighting Pakistani Army is able to seize victory even from the jaws of what other observers would deem defeat .” p 7
In a vivid account of what went wrong for US in Afghanistan, Carlotta Gall has, in her book. The Wrong Enemy, brought out the duplicitious role Pak Government and its intelligence agencies played in training and protecting the terrorists. What she has narrated about Pakistan’s faith in ‘Compartmentalization” of Taliban and other terrorists as ‘good’ and ‘ bad ‘ becomes germane, as Nawaz Sharief has realised the havoc this policy has played with Pakistan society. She gives details of a meeting of President Musharaf with the political analysts, after 9/11.
Retired Lieutenant general Talat Massod was one among the invites who told the writer about the meeting , “Musharaf asked them for advice on what the government should do. Massod told the general that he should cease the support for Taliban, and all the militant groups, including the Pakistan ones who operated in Kashmir.”
Masood told the author” My advice was that you should completely stop supporting the Taliban and the jihadi forces in Pakistan , in the sense that the government, the state, must follow the policy, completely stopping suppor. Musharaf agreed that support to Taliban must end but insisted that government would continue its support for the Pakistan groups in Kashmir. The two could be ‘ Compartmentalized’, he said. Massod, says he warned Musharaf that, from experience, it could not be possible to close one operation down and not the other. Still Musharaff insisted he could do it.”
The duplicity in dealing with the ‘ compartmentalized ‘ terrorists still persists, despite PM Sharief’s ‘pious’ declarations to discard the theory and treat all terrorists, equally, as enemies of the humanity. Blood stains of the innocent children mowed down by the cowards are still visible and one of the master minds of Mumbai 26 /11 carnage, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, gets bailed out, even when the lawyers in Lahore were on strike, mourning the death of Peshawar children.
Sharief brothers (Nawaz and Shabaz) pay court to Haffiz Saeed and his co- harts for arranging crowds for their political existence and ensuring their physical safety. Imran Khan, though, did condemn the attack on Peshawar school but refused to name the culprits. Just to look politically correct, for a moment, he did share dais with the PM Nawaz shrief, to mourn the death of the children . But his discomfiture was palpable: he fumbled for words. He didn’t fumble on the weight of the tragedy but to avoid naming the real culprits. Imran Khan has been an outright supporter of the Taliban and other terrorists.
He can’t afford to annoy them because his political existence in P K province and elsewhere in Pakistan is dependent on them. So, denial becomes the rule for all the political forces in Pakistan
We can’t expect much from Pak establishment to curtail militancy in the region.
Soon they will have to employ their ” assets ” who will be rendered jobless in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of NATO forces. What better way to employ them than sending to Kashmir to establish ” Gods own country.” Eradication of militancy is not one country’s job in the region. Having seen what has been going on in their ‘backyard ‘ it is imperative on Pakistan Army and the elite to cooperate, meaningfully, with all the countries in South East Asia to see total elimination of this scourge. Pak Government must, in its own interest, realise the gravity of the situation and pay heed to the warning note sounded by Dawn editorial, in aftermath of the Peshawar tragedy , ” Denial will only lead to worse atrocities.”
(The author is Former Principal District & Sessions Judge )
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