Indian Defence Review

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be visiting the US this month. It is but natural that in his two-day summit with President Obama many issues will be discussed, like: taking the Indo-US strategic partnership to the next level; US investment in India; joint ventures in defence; developments and cooperation in the Indo-Pacific; the cancer of ISIS; Afghanistan, Pakistan, China; situation in Iraq and Syria; the economic and energy scene; Al Qaeda refocusing to South Asia; Xinjiang; Tibet and many more. Issues that will however remain ambiguous or may not evoke response from Obama if asked, will likely be: why the American administration continues to chaperon the Pakistani military despite bulk of US-NATO casualties in Afghanistan through Pakistani proxies; what are the long-term plans of the US with respect to Pakistan, and; what are western plans to thwart the rapidly increasing Chinese influence, particularly in South Asia and the IOR.

Radicalism in Pakistan, as per their own media has been institutionalized not only through some 32,000 madrassas and seminaries but also in schools in urban areas. Nasir Abbas Mirza in his article ‘A Monstrous Experiment’ wrote in the Daily Times of Pakistan on 11 May, 2009,  “There are thousands of madrasas spread all over Pakistan’s urban centres that are producing millions of neo-drones ……Take a little boy and incarcerate him in a remote madrasa. Indoctrinate him with a distorted version of a religion and tell him that he does not belong to this world. Teach him about the fanciful world that awaits him in the heaven, and that in order to attain that he has to destroy everything that stands in his way, including his own body …… At full steam ahead in Pakistan, this is a monstrous experiment in brainwashing and it is on a par with, if not worse than, Nazi Germany’s eugenics. They did it in the name of science; here, it is being done in the name of God and religion. On a very large scale, this is a hugely successful experiment in which nurture triumphs and nature takes a beating.”

Terrorism continues as state policy with sham democracy and military’s total hold on Pakistan. Periodic statements that democracy is getting stronger in Pakistan are misnomer, as democracy is captive by the military. Stephen P Cohen wrote in his book ‘The Future of Pakistan’ published in 2012, “Pakistan is stuck between being an outright military dictatorship and a stable democracy. Neither are likely, and an even less likely future would be a radical transformation and the rise of Islamists or a breakaway movement led by the Baloch or other separatist groups. … the negative aspects of Islamist globalisation have hit Pakistan hard. Some of the weirdest ideas in the Islamic world have found rich soil in Pakistan, and the country is regarded as an epicentre of terrorism. Pakistan, which was once held up as the most moderate of the Islamic states, seems to be embracing extremists and their dysfunctional violent ideas”.

Above is why sections of military-ISI and administration in Pakistan are linked with Taliban, Al Qaeda, Haqqanis and other terrorist organizations. Over the years, the military has become very powerful and Pakistan’s foreign policy especially with reference to India and Afghanistan is on its bidding. The hold of the military over Pakistan is so strong that it has infiltrated every sector of Pakistan – both government and non-government. Ayesha Siddiqa wrote in her book ‘Military Inc’ in 2007 that the then private-corporate complex of the Pakistani Military was pegged at US$ 20.7 billion. This would have multiplied manifold in last seven years. In order to retain this power and money, the military continues with the state policy of terror, particularly against neighbours India and Afghanistan.

The notable issue is that in following this policy, the Pakistani military is buoyed by international intransigence to sponsoring terrorism and China’s strategic footprints in Gilgit-Baltistan. Pakistan eyes an opportunity in Afghanistan post US-NATO withdrawal and hence has trained 20 Mujahid battalions to operate like and in conjunction Taliabn. That Pakistan will facilitate Al Qaeda ingress in India is of little doubt.

The LeT (covert arm of ISI) was created specifically by Pakistan for targeting India. India was subject to terror attacks by Pakistan more than a decade before the US launched its so called GWOT with Pakistan as frontline partner. However, not only was the LeT left untouched, there was an understanding between US and Pakistan that drone attacks inside Pakistan would not target LeT. In the bargain, the LeT became an international terrorist organization as dangerous as Al Qaeda.  Since 2005 when Colonel Bashir Wali, former Director Pakistan’s Intelligence Bureau and active member of Tabligi Jamaat was appointed Pakistan’s High Commissioner in Colombo, LeT has been employed to establish the ‘Osama Brigade’ in North and North-East Sri Lanka with Sri Lankan Muslims to establish bases for attacking South India. LeT arranged IED / explosives training for Indian Maoists by LTTE and now has invested Maldives.

The ISI is known to have links with many radical organizations including Al Qaeda, Haqqanis, Taliban, ETIM, LeT, HuM, HUJI, JeM, LeJ, IM and PFI in India, and in Bangladesh with HUJI BD, AHAB, JMB and JMJB. Yet, Pakistan has a free run and even naming LeT as terrorist organization has not gone beyond theoretical. Not that terrorist organizations do not avoid sanctions through name change like Bangladesh recently discovered that  JMB has raised its hydra head again by reorganizing as Jamaat-ul-Muslemin (JM).

As for the Haqqanis, Pir Zubair Shah and Carlotta Gall had reported in New York Times two years back, “The Haqqani family, which runs the network like a mafia, maintains several town houses, including in Islamabad ….. known to visit military facilities in Rawalpindi  ….. Experts say leaders ….. may be hiding in plain sight in cities rather than in remote tribal areas.” Eyewitness accounts reveal the farce of the so called military offensive Zarb-e-Azb where the TTP and Haqqani leadership was warned in advance to flee, there is little ground action and air attacks are killing more civilians than terrorists. The ISI has had links with Haqqanis (who indeed are Al Qaeda) for over three decades and are using them against Indian interests in Afghanistan. Kayani’s machinations were remarked upon by Michael Hughes by saying, “In a movement that should have floored US policymakers, Kayani was brazen enough to try and inveigle Afghanistan to strike a power-sharing arrangement with the Haqqanis. And Kayani, apparently the spokesperson for the Haqqani group, said they’d be willing to split from and denounce Al Qaeda, which is President Obama’s primary rationale for the war. However, there is a higher probability of General Kayani converting to Hinduism than there is of the Haqqani Network ever being decoupled from Al Qaeda”.

It is because of Al Qaeda-ISI links that Ayman Zawahri has appointed militant Asim Umar as Al Qaeda’s South Asia head. Shaped in radicalized seminaries and madrassas of Pakistan, he is intimately linked with ISI and was instrumental in facilitating Osama bin Laden’s move to a safe-house in the Pakistani city of Abbotabad, where he lived undetected for years before US forces finally detected him. Asim Umar has been tasked to head Al Qaeda activates from Afghanistan to Myanmar capitalizing on HUJI (his mother organization) cells in Kashmir, Bangladesh and Myanmar. Then you have the two Talibans, which the ISI was able to sell as daggers drawn, plus the business of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Taliban. Both the Taliban are inexorably linked and the ISI maintains links with both despite them attacking the military-government. ISI has been instrumental in facilitating move of Mullah Omar and Mullah Fazlullah between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Daniel S Markey, Council on Foreign Relations recently exposed the nexus between the two Taliban, when he wrote, “If we say that the Pakistani government supports Taliban, and we say Pakistani government is target of Taliban, we are telling the truth in both instances….. you could even say that Afghan Taliban is playing a double game on the Pakistani state…. they more or less get safe haven inside the tribal areas along the Afghan border …… on the other hand, Afghan Taliban help Pakistani Taliban; provide inspiration, provide training, access to financing, and sometimes even fighters.” Then is the TTP-ISIS nexus that in turn links the ISI with the ISIS. It had been reported few months back that some 5000 TTP cadres were fighting alongside the ISIS. Now the Jamaat-e-Ahrar has broken up with TTP and announced allegiance to ISIS – some cross sections believe the split was engineered by the ISI. Now you have a number of Wahabi-Salafi groups in Af-Pak region, backed by Saudi Arabia pledging support to ISIS. As significantly, groups like Ahraul Islam (another TTP splinter) and ETIM also think on lines of ISIS. The training of 100 Uighurs with ISIS has reportedly been organized by the ETIM based in Pakistan, which is linked to the ISI, much that China would not like to believe it. Writing about the TTP,  Agha H Amin, defence analyst and former Pakistan Army officer describes them as “Pakistan sponsored Taliban who regard all Shias, Ismailis, non-Pashtuns, moderate Pashtuns as infidels who deserve to be massacred…”.

It is significant to note that the very same ideology is followed by the Afghan Taliban, Al Qaeda and the ISIS even though the latter is barbaric in the extreme.

What intrigues most Indians and Afghans is why has Pakistan been given a free hand in generating and employing terrorism at will? Why no branding it as a Pariah State? Why no international sanctions worth the name? On the contrary funds, grant and donations are liberally pouring in and the largesse of arming Pakistan continues endlessly, despite US reports that these are being used against neighbours, not terrorists. All this despite accounts of Pakistani duplicity by US military officials and scholars like Michael Hughes penning down in 2010, “Nine years, nearly $300 billion dollars and 1900 dead coalition soldiers later, the U.S. has officially verified that the entire war effort has been focused on the wrong side of the mountains.” Why a country like US which supposedly honours the military and their martyrs took no action against the TTP-Haqqani hideouts on the Pakistani side of the Afghan-Pakistan border like Tora Bora was cleared despite call by US-NATO military commanders serving in Afghanistan to do so? Isn’t the lament of Afghanis valid that while their country was war ravaged for past 13 years, no action was taken against the womb of terrorism in Pakistan? US mollycoddling surpassed all limits when blatant nuclear proliferation by Pakistan too was ignored. Compare this to the invasion of Iraq under the façade of a nuclear program.

Even the father of Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation, AQ Khan, was never questioned by the US, leave aside international community. All this despite knowing that China’s nuclear proliferation to Pakistan aimed at targeting the West, loudly brought out by Thomas C Reed and Danny B Stillman (former Secretary USAF) in their book ‘Nuclear Express’ saying, “During regime of Deng Xiaoping: …… use of nuclear weapons against West by radical and rogue countries would be good for China, …. not traced back to China, hence covert nuclearization of Pakistan and North Korea”. And how many people are aware of the number of Indian and Iranian nuclear scientists wiped out over the years through ‘accidents’ and ‘purported suicides’ but none in Pakistan.