Pakistan government’s denial mode in the wake of the bloody Mumbai terror attack last month is now being put to a severe test. Pakistan’s National Security Adviser Mahmud Ali Durrani said on Wednesday that Ajmal Kasab, the lone survivor among the Mumbai attackers (who is in the Indian police custody), is a Pakistani national.
This statement has acted like setting a cat among the pigeons and has left the Pakistani establishment red-faced. Until yesterday it had been rejecting a huge pile of evidence from India that the Mumbai attackers were indeed from Pakistan.
A fortnight ago Pakistan’s Interior Ministry Chief Rehman Malik had stated that Pakistan would not act on the request for legal aid by Ajmal Kasab, alias Ajmal Amir Iman, the lone gunman captured after Mumbai attacks, “unless it is proved that he is a Pakistani national.”
So what happens now? Will Pakistan provide legal aid to the Mumbai attacker Ajmal Kasab? Finding itself in a corner, the Pakistani government did another strange thing. It sacked its own National Security Adviser Durrani (for speaking the truth?). But the matter is not going to end there.
According to media reports Pakistan’s federal information minister Sherry Rehman also said that an investigation had revealed that the lone-surviving Mumbai gunman is a Pakistani citizen, as India had alleged. Also, National Security Adviser Durrani had confirmed that interrogation of at least two individuals, Zarar Hussain and Lakhvi had established that they had links with the Mumbai attackers.
This indicates a serious battle within the Pakistani establishment whether to reveal the truth about the Mumbai attackers and their Pakistani origins. It also reconfirms the shadowy role of the US administration in Pakistan’s affairs under different administrations.
The US administration’s doublespeak on India and Pakistan is legendary and has made it virtually impossible to end the so-called “war-on-terror” or to end the hostilities between the two nuclear-armed countries. The Mumbai barbarism last month again exposed this.
Following the UN sanctions against certain militant/terrorist organizations in Pakistan, the US state department officials paid ritual visits to the two countries and mouthed the usual admonitions/concerns. Pakistan took the usual line: “Let India give us proof”, and then released the arrested militants/terrorists.
But this time, after the horrible Mumbai killings in a commando-like operation, Pakistan’s other allies — China and Iran — have for the first time openly warned Pakistan to rein in its militant/terrorist outfits. China refused to listen to Pakistan’s plea that the former should veto the UN sanctions.
Instead of encouraging/forcing India and Pakistan to sit down and plan a strategy to put an end to such barbarism, the US administration is watching from the sidelines. If it wishes the US can bring the two countries to their senses/knees.
Pakistan will collapse without the financial dole/munificence of the USA. Why is the US administration not calling a spade a spade even after security adviser Durrani’s remarks about the surviving Pakistani gunman?
All reports indicate that a majority of terror operations/threats worldwide have links to Pakistan. The US indulgence all these years has emboldened the Pakistan’s establishment (army and civilian) to keep playing their “Kashmir”/”Afghanistan” games endlessly.
Thus Pakistan has turned into a nursery of militants/terrorists. The US administration seems to play a quid pro quo game with the Pakistani establishment, while Pakistan plays a quid pro quo game with the militants/terrorists. In short: “We won’t hurt you, so long you do your dirty thing elsewhere.”
After all the CIA, the ISI and Osama bin Laden, and other militant/terrorist organizations, were buddies and on the same side of the fence for years during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Many players have developed a vested interest in the continuation of the so-called “terrorism” because a lot of accounted/unaccounted money is flowing into Pakistan. How do they gain if peace returns to this part of the world and elsewhere?
Whenever there is a change of President in the USA the reverberations can be felt in Pakistan.
AsPresident George W. Bush packs his bags a section of Pakistani leadership gets a boost, while the other seems to be gasping in the absence of oxygen that they were accustomed to from the White House and Langley, Virginia. It was the same scenario at the end of the Reagan administration.
During the entire Ronald Reagan presidency India faced a major crisis because the Sikh militants indulged in murder and mayhem for almost a decade. The then President Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan openly encouraged this from across the border. As happened during the term of former president Pervez Musharraf’s “war on terror”, the US administration also gave full support to Zia-ul-Haq because of the presence of the Soviet troops in Afghanistan then.
Meanwhile President Zia-ul-Haq, also a military dictator like Musharraf, fanned the fire of Islamic militancy in a fairly secular Pakistan, with the Reagan administration looking the other way and, in a manner of speaking, encouraging it by the usual generous flow of money from the US treasury. The US Congress also looked the other way, thus paving the path towards 9/11 and worse.
President Zia-ul-Haq played a vital role in aggravating the Sikh militant movement in India, a major threat to the country’s integrity, like the present one in Kashmir. However, when Reagan started packing his bags in the White House the oxygen to the Sikh militancy died away, and India could then use an iron hand to snuff out the Sikh militant movement.
In the dying embers of the Reagan presidency, president Zia-ul-Haq also met his nemesis when he was killed in a plane crash, which to date remains a mystery. The US ambassador to Pakistan also died along with him.
The incoming Barack Obama administration would be aware of the challenges ahead. There is a whole lot of mess created by previous US administrations that needs spring-cleaning. For the international community it is a good news that the new CIA incumbent chief in not an old CIA hand.
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