Masopher's Mind

When I last heard Pervez Musharraf, he ranted (as many Pakistanis do) about Indian involvement in Afghanistan, hinting strongly at the hidden RAW/ISI war being fought. The Indian intelligence agency and the Pakistani intelligence agency are currently fighting over control and influence of their neighbour.

Several years ago, Kabul Afghanis began reaching out to the large wealthy India asking them for support in military matters. India welcomed and returned this interest because India is looking to increase its strategic depth in the region not only having a rear guard in its Pakistan problem but increase its trade partnerships with Muslim countries. Since then, Indians in New Deli and Kabul have come under attack in what may be related reprisals from Pakistan’s central powers and military.

In October 2009 the Indian embassy came under attack from supposed Taliban forces. At that time is was assumed that it might have been the local Afghan Taliban carrying out regular insurgency strikes. This attack was the second such attack in just over a year.

In the early months of 2010, there have been several attacks in Kabul targeting Indian embassies and personnel. The latest attack in Kabul which killed several Indians and civilians indicates that these attacks are perhaps NOT from the indigenous Afghan Pashtun but from Pakistani Pashtun bent on maintaining their hegemony over their wartorn neighbour. Indeed I was present during a recent talk at a London University  when several Afghani (though many of them were Hazara and Tajik) outright accused Pakistan of not only being the perpetrator of attacks against Indian assets but on American assets as well!

The narrative that we all go by is that Afghanistan Taliban are sheltered by their Pakistani relatives and are hiding in Western Pakistan but more and more we hear that Pakistanis are very much involved in the logistics and organization of the attacks on Western troops and civilians. Even with the recent spate of findings and killings in Pakistan of Afghani Taliban Leaders based in the Pakistani city of Qetta (the Qetta Shurah) this very stage managed set of events could only be a cynical betrayal of some of the big names so that Pakistan can prove itself while continuing its strongly anti-Indian, anti-Western policies. Zardari, a money pilfering politician, went to the west in 2008 demanding money for cooperation and got some (which was converted to military aid) then Musharraf a military man went west early 2010 demanding military assets for turning over some Taliban and he also got some (which the military then proudly tested for their Indian counterparts to see).

It is plain that Pakistan’s government is weak and impotent outside of Islamabad and Lahore if so far and it is equally plain that both Afghanis and Pakistanis civilians are quick to point towards and over the border they share when casting the blame. What is becoming clear is that Pakistan’s military seems hell bent on leveraging as much of Pakistan’s wealth and Afghanistan’s poverty against competing with a quickly rising India which has more on its mind than the chaotic Islamic society to its west. India in my estimation does not load up its western regions with military hardware to threaten Pakistan’s existence, it does so that when nuclear enabled Pakistan finally collapses under the weight of its own ego the large and secular democratic nation will be able to handle the massive humanitarian and military fallout.

The “abandonment” of Pakistan and Afghanistan is a common and painful theme in his mind. So are fates of the militants who are now operating against India. Pakistan will not do to the Lashkar-i-Tayyaba and other groups what the USA did to the 25 thousand Mujahadeen the Afghans and to Pakistan. His country will not ditch them just because the world has become once again interested in the region. He knows first hand that one cannot turn yesterday’s heroes into today’s villains.

Pervez Musharraf is methodical in his summary of the security situation in Pakistan. We are where we are because at the end of the cold war, the funding coming from the United States and Saudi Arabia abruptly ceased and thousands of hardened fighters were all of a sudden left with nothing to do.

I think that the ISI and Pakistan Military also turned their attention and newly learned skills to India and Kashmir, building up its own insurgency for low level conflicts while at the same time obtaining and developing nuclear weapons to protect its existential interests.

Back in Afghanistan, the ethnic Pastun populations fell into conflict, gelling loosely around Mullah Omar’s brutal Taliban group and warring against the ethnic Uzbeks, Hazaras, Tajiks and minority groups which formed a Northern Alliance.

Among the Taliban and warlords, the newly formed Al Qaeda spoiling for trouble began training disaffected youth who may have missed the great jihad against the Soviets.

Once Al Qaeda succeeded on 9/11/2001, Iran and the United States assisted the Northern Alliance to disperse the Taliban Pashtun but failed to sufficiently integrate or recognize the non-Taliban Pashtun.

The disaffected Afghans along with Mullah Omar eventually regrouped from Waziristan in Pakistan. With help from their cousins across the loosely defined border, the Taliban pushed back in 2003 until the present, funding their war with opium.

Musharraf worries about simultaneous rising extremism in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan. A grassroots unity of extremists where politicians have failed. He believes that Pakistan should have done more to placate, infiltrate and influence the Taliban and their fierce example is leading the poor, disaffected youth in the three countries to radicalize and talibanize.

He continues to nurse the old Indian chestnut. Nuclear India means Pakistan will follow suite and every tit of India will be answered by a tat from Pakistan. He seems to want an independent self governing Kashmir and he believes that President Singh and he were about to make important breakthroughs just Musharraf lost power in 2008. India’s continued action in Kashmir and Afghanistan courtesy of India’s RAW agency is heavily resented, as is the 25 division of infantry, 3 armoured and 3 motorized divisions along with the forward air bases on India’s western border. India will always be a threat, even when terrorists are the main threat.

Musharraf is military to the core. He speaks of negotiating from “a position of strength”, that “quitting is not an option”, wants to “saturate the area with strength”, by pursuing an “effect related” strategy, instead of a “time related” strategy, to “defeat the centre of gravity”; he claims to be “a man for peace” but his background as “a man of war” is all too plain.

In February 2010, I see that Musharraf wants to get back into power (though in a legitimate way this time). He commands a room but he would love to command even more. He knows that the Pakistan leadership is weak though he does not say so. He envisions reuniting “in thought and action”, the military, the bureaucracy and political parts of government (though not necessarily in the being of one person). Peace in Asia, the Middle East and perhaps the world needs “leadership decisions”, which are based on sincerity, flexibility and boldness. Musharraf believes he is that leader.

The other day I was teasing one of my Pakistani friends about Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. What did he think Pakistan would do if 3 US warships pulled into Karachi harbour and Aabrams tanks started rolling towards Islamabad? Would they shoot at themselves? Wipe themselves off the map to save themselves?

He was a bit set back; the US is, after all, behind all things in the conspiratorially minded, but despite the ever present notional threat what would his country men do if thier suspicions were ever confirmed?

He then replied that Pakistan would spite the invading US forces by firing thier longest range missiles at Telaviv or Jerusalem. His solution was to bomb the Jews and kill the millions of Jewish and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. This is of course allowing a quick recalibrating of the missiles pointed at new Deli and Mumbai and a trouble free GPS guided flight to it’s maximum projected range over the four intervening states, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Jordan.

The commander in this scenario has now added attemped holocaust to his crimes and done nothing about the forces bearing down on his position. I say attempted because Israel in it’s own paranoia of Persian attack is probably well defended from missile attacks and seeing a missile from the east will almost certainly obliterate Tehran in response. So the commander has also essentially triggered the murder of millions of Iranians and scattered nuclear debris over Jordan and Iraq. The Muslim world east of Pakistan would come to a quick pause. And half the possible reinforcements against the American invader would be now dead or visible in the dark.

My solution would be less messy. My commander would fire at India, guarenteeing a sure retaliation which would obliterate American forces as well as the denizens they would be “liberating”. My friend and I are obviously not strategists because were this our actual policy, we would be first strike-d by American ICBMs or space based weapons long before we got any birds in the air.

I guess the moral of this story is the only reason for any country to have even one nuclear weapon is to turn it’s own region into a wasteland. “Attack us and we’ll make our place more worthless than it already is”. It’s like the story of the guy that goes to prison and eats and bathes in his own shit to deter potential rapists. I don’t think it ever occurs to him that consuming and wearing fecal matter may be more degrading than enjoying the strong rythmic pounding of a man who obviously values his fealty more than the system that put him there.

Maintaining a nuclear deterent is costly, cumbersome and worthless in the long run. Despite having the ability to vaporize the topsoil off the whole planet and darken the world for centuries, America and the UK with it’s me-too (second hand) Trident have not deterred hostile attacks state sponsored or otherwise. Developing nations which follow this dead end path prove only that they are mired in 19th century imperialist thinking and 20th century hand me downs. The only beneficiaries of nuclear proliferation are the people who have no country and no army to lose and everything to gain by the use of weapons of terror.