Managing Pakistan's failure

[ShauryaT]

^^It has a few more parallels. FSU had an ideological enemy, so does TSP.

The only missing ingredient is in the case of FSU that ideological enemy put its resources behind to defeat its opponent. If India does the same, then TSP can have a similar result as FSU, where the non core units splinter away. But, until such time - expect no other power to fight on our behalf. TSP is India's problem and no one else shall come in and solve it for us.

[ramana]

And one bis dissimilarity.

US will and has propped up TSP.

[RajeshA]

Solving Pakistan: Solution 8

Close the Paki Factory

X-Posting from TIRP Thread

Both are ugly screwed up in-bred breeds! There is nothing beautiful about them! Mr. Khar looks like a man with makeup and Ms Fatima looks like she had an ill-fitting jaw replacement! These "women" happen to be just two of the many millions of ugly Pakistanis out there! What beautiful!

But, but RajeshA-ji:

A short while ago you were advocating millions of Indian men to marry Paki women. Why this about turn?

Oh I still very much urge Indian men to marry Paki women, and that too in wholesale.

1) Once the Paki women marry Indian men and become Dharmic Indian women, they too would become beautiful. But till then they would remain ugly ducklings!

2) Indian women should be favored by Indian men over Pakistani women. So Indian women are beautiful, Paki women are not! It is the 50 million Indian men, who don't get Indian women, who should close their noses, hold their breath, and marry the stinking Paki woman.

3) Ever thought of haggling over the price of hags!

-------------------------------------------------------
Disclaimer: Bad Taste, but there is a point!

[RajeshA]

Pakistani Racism

X-Posted from TIRP Thread

Pakistanis are racists to the core, and counter-racism is the response! By doting on Pakistani women as being beautiful, we help feed Pakistani ego of racial superiority!

At the same time, some Pakistan solutions offered have to stand the test of counter-arguments and propaganda! Our counter-racism should however not be used to shackle our options!

[RajeshA]

Pakistani Racism

X-Posting from TIRP Thread

Rahul M

call me old fashioned or whatever but continuous discussion on khar's gender is rather tasteless. so are the comments on supposed ugliness of certain paki women. c'mon, there is no need to rate every paki female whose pic appears on BR, it's irrelevant not to mention sexist. give it a break !
it ceased being funny a long time ago, when madam jalebi ruled PISS.

there's a saying in bangla, 'even lemon turns bitter if you squeeze it too much'.

Dilbu

call me old fashioned or whatever but continuous discussion on khar's gender is rather tasteless. so are the comments on supposed ugliness of certain paki women. c'mon, there is no need to rate every paki female whose pic appears on BR, it's irrelevant not to mention sexist. give it a break !
it ceased being funny a long time ago, when madam jalebi ruled PISS.

there's a saying in bangla, 'even lemon turns bitter if you squeeze it too much'.

Yeah sounds more like deaf and dumb than BRF.

A_Gupta

call me old fashioned or whatever but continuous discussion on khar's gender is rather tasteless. so are the comments on supposed ugliness of certain paki women. c'mon, there is no need to rate every paki female whose pic appears on BR, it's irrelevant not to mention sexist. give it a break !
it ceased being funny a long time ago, when madam jalebi ruled PISS.

there's a saying in bangla, 'even lemon turns bitter if you squeeze it too much'.

Agreed. Also it is always possible to use photography to make anyone look ghastly. The photographers of public figures always have plenty of those snaps; when an editor wants to make a visual point, they pull it out. Anyway, "dil ko dekho, chehera na dekho", and by that criteria, none of them bear good intentions for India.

Rahul M

Anyway, "dil ko dekho, chehera na dekho", and by that criteria, none of them bear good intentions for India.

precisely, it's not as if pakistan would become any less evil if all their citizens start looking like top models.

sanjaykumar

call me old fashioned or whatever but continuous discussion on khar's gender is rather tasteless. so are the comments on supposed ugliness of certain paki women. c'mon, there is no need to rate every paki female whose pic appears on BR, it's irrelevant not to mention sexist. give it a break !
it ceased being funny a long time ago, when madam jalebi ruled PISS.

That is what I initially thought.


But perhaps there is another dynamic operating here.

As India has been an open society-one where the white, Christian revels in exposing its unfortunate citizens as evidence of the superiority of their god and justification rather than a direct result of their colonialism; and whereas the Pakistani has identified with this contempt, unmindful of his own ugly, inbred populace, I think we should let it ride.

Perhaps Pakistan needs this mirror held up to them, to reflect the ugliness of not just their women but their culture.

[RajeshA]

Pakistani Racism

X-Posted from TIRP Thread

call me old fashioned or whatever but continuous discussion on khar's gender is rather tasteless. so are the comments on supposed ugliness of certain paki women. c'mon, there is no need to rate every paki female whose pic appears on BR, it's irrelevant not to mention sexist. give it a break !
it ceased being funny a long time ago, when madam jalebi ruled PISS.

there's a saying in bangla, 'even lemon turns bitter if you squeeze it too much'.

Rahul M ji,

just some thoughts on this.

When you say it is tasteless - sexism, racial contempt, etc., I agree with you completely. Every time I write it, I am disgusted with what I write. When I write MR. Khar, I don't see much humor in it, nor I expect anybody to find it too amusing either.

When people say, such comments sound "deaf and dumbish", then they are 100% correct. These comments do lower the standard of BRF, and I am sorry it does so!

The reason why I have written such comments in spite of the tastelessness I myself feel towards them, is that I feel strongly that Pakistani racism needs to be responded to. For me it is not personal but I ideological. Being a Punjabi, people themselves can't really make out whether I am Pakistani or Indian unless I tell them. So when I use derogatory racial language towards Pakistanis, sometimes I feel, I may be using it for me and my kind as well. And still I use it. Why? Because I wish to make one point!

Pakistanis are racists to the core, and they having nothing to show for themselves in all these years, spread their racism around to the rest of the world as well. We see Pakistanis talking to Americans about Indians in this tone. Once I was browsing in Somali fora, and I saw Somalis bitching about Indians and how "ugly and "small" we were! And there Pakis were also puking their own vitriol! I've read how Pakis were telling Turks how "dark" and "ugly-looking" we Indians are! They have developed a whole vocabulary to make racial distinctions, and they try to spread it around. Of course, some others are more than willing to lap it up, cuz it helps them too show themselves as "superior" with regard to Indians even as they themselves don't reach many standards that Indians have been setting in academic, business and tech circles.

Now we Indians tend to look the world in a certain way. We don't speak ill of other religions, because we think it is beneath our dignity to do so and we are a pluralistic society. Others go ahead and diss Dharmic faiths without any hesitation. Same way we consider ourselves as tolerant and being a land with people of many races and looks, we tend not to show racism towards others. Pakis have no such compunctions. They go ahead and define how their race looks like and how Indians look like! They are polluting the world with their own vitriol, and they are working hard on it.

The more "Aman ki Asha" we do, the more they interpret it as the Indian trying to mix with a Paki of a superior breed, because Indians feel "attracted towards Pakistani beauty"!

So this is the situation!

It is time to turn the gaze! It is time we start defining Pakis in a language of our choice. We have to show them as racially inferior as well, and not just spiritually and mentally stunted. They should be aware that we see them as ugly, and if we don't say it then it is because of the kindness of our hearts.

This is psychological warfare. We have to destroy their last bastion of resistance to the Indic - their sense of racial superiority. But we cannot storm the bastion if we stay on the defensive and keep on speaking against racism in general. Nobody used to listen to Indian PoV on Disarmament until we ourselves went nuclear!

We need to develop our own language of racial distinction between Indians and Pakistanis showing the Pakis in less than good light! This is getting our hands dirty and is less than dignified work, but it too needs to be done!

Of course, I can understand that it doesn't look good on BRF!

I'd like to point out one post made by shiv saar, which I find very pertinent here.

There used to be a huge North-South divide in India. It was very clear to my parents generation. Naipaul refers to it in his first India book (area of darkness). Gradually, along with secularism and the empowerment of previously weak communities, the North-South divide in India has been patched up fairly well. The North Indian calling a South Indian "Idli-Vada" or the South Indian calling the North Indian "Oy chapati!" is more of a joke than a derogatory or racist remark. However minor issues still exist on college campuses and other places. People of the North East particularly say they feel less discriminated in some parts of India than others.

It is clear from my interactions with Pakistanis that they retain a degree of color and language racism where darker and shorter people from the South or East of India are considered inferior by Pakistanis. Pakistanis nowadays tend to refer to the similarities they have with North Indians as they get their own Islamic asses buggered by their birathers in their own country.

If Pakistanis are granted free access into India and Pakistani boys and girls start entering Indian universities - what effect could this have on North South relations in India?

[RajeshA]

Pakistani Racism

A_Gupta

^^^ My preferred route here would be to highlight Pakistani racism as the reaction of those with a superiority complex where superiority is not borne out in reality, rather than going down the racist route too.

[RajeshA]

Pakistani Racism

X-Posted from TIRP Thread

^^^ My preferred route here would be to highlight Pakistani racism as the reaction of those with a superiority complex where superiority is not borne out in reality, rather than going down the racist route too.

One could say, that is the defense of the weak, the inferior!

I think we should divide Indians into two vocal groups - one which says Pakistanis are inferior and another which says we should not do racial discrimination. Then we win both ways!

[RajeshA]

Pakistani Racism

KLNMurthy

@RajeshA I really like the expression "turn the gaze". It is very apt. But I feel we would be on losing ground when we make pakis the subject of racism. Our weapons have to be in harmony with our core values even for purely pragmatic reasons. A "racism weapon" employed by Indians against pakis won't last because it will be dissipated by the clamor of our own people who will make pakis an object of sympathy--Unprepossessing SDRE southies like me might feel kinship with pakis as fellow victims! In any case the racism weapon won't have conviction and ferocity due to your own doubts.

I think for Indics it makes more sense to loathe pakis as asuras who use god-given gifts for demonic ends. For me, that is what I see when I turn the gaze. Keep in mind that our first and biggest challenge is to make our own compatriots turn the gaze. What they see should be "true" to truly arouse their divine righteous wrath.

KLNMurthy

^^^ My preferred route here would be to highlight Pakistani racism as the reaction of those with a superiority complex where superiority is not borne out in reality, rather than going down the racist route too.

One could say, that is the defense of the weak, the inferior!

I think we should divide Indians into two vocal groups - one which says Pakistanis are inferior and another which says we should not do racial discrimination. Then we win both ways!

Pakis are scum and can only think in scummy terms. We don't need to engage scum on scummy terms, we just need to focus like a laser on the fact that they are scum.

Carl

I have personally never come across overt Paki racism, though I have observed it in other ways. It does feel silly and disgusting to play the racist game, infra dig for us Indians really. But just like the over-the-top media attention given to Khar's designer handbags got a subtle point across and made RAPEs feel sheepish, highlighting and exaggerating Paki racism will do the same.

Also, when Pak-racism is highlighted more and more, it can ricochet as a self-goal and alienate the 85% of SDRE Pakis from their 15% mongrel rulers. It will highlight and key-in the psychology of deracination that is Pakstaniyat.

Another very, very potent way to make the Paki crumple in angst is when Indians befriend and form partnerships with Middle Easterners on an equal or even superior basis. Their surprise and consternation has to be seen to be believed. Usually one finds Pakis being smarmy or a little 'sticky' when mingling with Iranis, Afghans, Arabs, Turks. They are CLEARLY the subaltern people, and often a visiting ME dignitary will talk condescendingly. But with us Indians it is on a platform of equality, if not a frank admission of India's emerging strengths. To witness such an interaction eviscerates the Paki.

Anyways, some humble attempts at peurile racism:
Paki = medieval equivalent of Anglo-Indians (proclaimed in faux celebratory tone, sincerely emphasizing our appreciation for "diversity" onlee)
Pakis = Mawalis under Arab/Turk/Irani masters
Pakistaniyat = Stockholm syndrome
Paki = Turk aur Pathan ki najaayaz aulaad
Urdu = kothe ki zabaan (language of the brothel and bazar)

<barf>. end.

Prem

The Name Pakistan is so budnaam that Poaks should rename it as Naukarstan or Ghulaamland . Naukras/ Ghulaam of Afghan, Iran, Arabs, Breetish, Massa and above all Chinese. Whenever the interaction happen, second reference to Inbred Terrorists shoulb be on this status of them.

[RajeshA]

Pakistani Racism

@RajeshA I really like the expression "turn the gaze". It is very apt. But I feel we would be on losing ground when we make pakis the subject of racism. Our weapons have to be in harmony with our core values even for purely pragmatic reasons. A "racism weapon" employed by Indians against pakis won't last because it will be dissipated by the clamor of our own people who will make pakis an object of sympathy--Unprepossessing SDRE southies like me might feel kinship with pakis as fellow victims! In any case the racism weapon won't have conviction and ferocity due to your own doubts.

KLNMurthy ji,

The Pakistanis may feel kinship with me as a fellow Punjabi, and they may not use racism against me or other Punjabis. But Pakistanis are vociferous when it comes to South Indians. When Pakistanis use racist remarks, it is often with South and East Indians in mind. So they use the appearance and behavior of South Indians to paint all Indians with that brush, without using any nuances for Indians from different parts of India. I don't mind that. At least they treat Indians as a bloc. But basically their venom is reserved for South Indians.

Now it would indeed be astonishing if Southies would feel sympathy for the Pakistanis.

Perhaps you have not understood what I wish to say! I am saying this as a through and through SDRE.

When I say we have to develop a vocabulary of racial abuse towards Pakistanis and equally a vocabulary of praise for our own, then I mean basically that we should be developing a vocabulary of racial pride for the South and at the same time a vocabulary of contempt for Pakjabis.

The danger of this proposal is that Punjabis like me, may develop kinship with Pakjabis, as some of those choicy words, some would suggest, may be applicable to us as well. Here I would urge my fellow Punjabis to simply ignore that any of the racial vocabulary we use for Pakjabis have any relevance to Indian Punjabis.

But I urge my fellow compatriots from the South to seriously consider developing such a vocabulary which extols Southern beauty while at the same time derides Pakjabi race!

And I don't mean this in some intellectual sarcastic form of a way like "SDRE"! I mean the way Black Pride Movement in USA got going!

I think for Indics it makes more sense to loathe pakis as asuras who use god-given gifts for demonic ends. For me, that is what I see when I turn the gaze. Keep in mind that our first and biggest challenge is to make our own compatriots turn the gaze. What they see should be "true" to truly arouse their divine righteous wrath.

Nobody outside of India really knows what an "asura" is! In Iran actually Asuras were considered Gods, and Devs were considered demons!

When I speak of psychological warfare, then I speak of a rhetoric, which is targeted at the Pakjabis. For example calling them "Rat People" or "chuhas" using the frequent occurrence of the "microcephaly" in Pakistan. Now I know it is not nice to make fun of the deformed people, but this is still a label one can stick to Pakistanis!

The purpose of the rhetoric is to make Pakistanis feel racially inferior to Indians. Right now it sounds like a tall order, but over time this too can be achieved.

We have to understand how Pakjabis really use racism. For them this is their last bastion, their last attempt to feel good about themselves. It is their last attempt to show the world that there is something about them which makes them better than the Hindus, better than the Indians. It is their attempt to keep their people from joining the Indians in our march to glory. It is their attempt to stop their people from jumping on to the Indian train.

And because it is their last attempt, they are going all out in promoting racism directed against Indians by putting a whole vocabulary of anti-Indian racial slurs into the world. Sooner or later one would see other people in the world pick this up. The people from the Ummah would be the first ones to do so, and it would start hurting Indians sooner or later when they travel abroad.

So it is important that we bring down the Pakjabis from their "racially superior" perch, and the way to do it is by counter-attacking them on race.

Pakis are scum and can only think in scummy terms. We don't need to engage scum on scummy terms, we just need to focus like a laser on the fact that they are scum.

This is not about just us feeling better about ourselves!

IMHO, a war should be waged at all levels and not just one level. Otherwise we lose the war, and then we complain the other side used unfair means to win it.

I think there is space for both the warriors and the sanctimonious people. In every war in every field, one would see this dichotomy. And it is okay. It is important for a society to wage war to preserve its interests and at the same to be able take the moral high ground and try to earn some brownie points for the whole society. USA today goes and does shock and awe wars, and on the other hand, many Americans are fiercely critical of such wars. At the tactical level, this duality can confuse the enemy. At the strategic level, it allows one to win both - the war in the ditches as well as the one on the mountain of morality.

That is why I am not so vicious against the WKK, as long as they get too powerful, so powerful that the Indian security forces cannot do their duty. It is okay for our forces to go and occupy Siachen, while the other side speaks of peace and demarcation of the border.

It is okay for one side in the debate to beat the bully black and blue and at the same for the other side in the debate to speak against bullyism.

We have to wage this psychological war as well against the Pakis, even at the racial level. It is also perfectly okay for another cross-section of Indians to be sanctimonious about racism and speak against it, regardless of where it comes from.

At least that way, we could some day push the Pakistanis to tone down their racial slurs if they want us to not abuse them as well. If the anti-racism advocates were to speak of toning down racial slurs, without a corresponding Indian racism against the Pakis, then all their talk would fall on deaf ears. It would be considered the defense of the weak and the inferior. The Pakis would continue to talk disparagingly about Indians, and the sanctimonious people would not have achieved anything.

It is just like nuclear disarmament. One has to negotiate disarmament from a position of strength!

[sanjaykumar]

Pardon me but beauty is not in the eye of the beholder. Beauty is a function of economics.

Oriental women were not considered attractive 40 years ago, in the west, but there are trophy oriental women on the arms of CEOs now.

As I firmly believe that meta cognition is the path to wisdom, I have gained valuable insights into my own thinking.


The beauty ideal used to be at one time light white complexioned, well built. Now it is more an asthenic aesthetic that include ssome Chinese, definitely many Japanese. As also southern belles with their regular more delicate features. Included are some black women as well.

Now it is not likely that these women have changed. What has changed is that I became (cough cough) 'acceptable' potential contributor to various gene pools. And as I gained wealth and status ( such as it is), my potential interests veered perhaps paradoxically from the western or panjabi Brahmin ideals BECAUSE it is patent to all except perhaps hillbillies and Pakis that I have the choice.

Of course it may be that I cultivate a certain contempt for certain groups but that is meta cognition for another post.

[Agnimitra]

Sanjaykumar, well said.

Folks, a team of south Indians conducted experimental surveys on a sample of martial microcephalic Pakrats. They concluded that Pakrats had upto 2% more IQ than horses. They just never sh!t on parade.

[RajeshA]

Pakistani Racism

parsuram

Just a PS on the discussion re racism from the last thread: note that the iranis, instead of arguing endlessly on dark/ light issues, simply flipped good /bad of suras/asuras( asuras equals good). That is the quickest way to address the problem ( light skinned barbarians invading darker civilized people).

Rahul M

Rajesh ji, continuing the issue from last thread, holding a mirror to pakistan's racism is nothing new on BR, it comes up time and again on the TSP thread and BENIS has been doing it in a humorous way for ages.

what I do not agree on is that calling some paki women ugly or butch achieves that in *any* way. most people will see it as plain old prejudice and nothing more.

p.s. don't get drawn into complicated imagery, think of them as orcs.
their history fits the orcs to a t. as saruman says in LOTR "they were elves once. taken by the dark powers, tortured and mutilated. A ruined and terrible form of life"
replace orcs with pakis and elves with Indians/civilized beings and you get the idea.

[RajeshA]

Pakistani Racism

Rajesh ji, continuing the issue from last thread, holding a mirror to pakistan's racism is nothing new on BR, it comes up time and again on the TSP thread and BENIS has been doing it in a humorous way for ages.

Rahul M ji,

It is all a question of audience. As we saw recently how Indian press went to print doting over Khar's shoes and handbags and chunni, there is a real need to counter such a determined effort to show Pakistanis as something beautiful, as something for Indians to look up to and gawk.

The remarks on Khar on BRF were simply an effort to correct the picture.

The more Indian media builds up some Paki image of beauty and superiority, the more some Indians will try to pull down those images.

So the audience for those BRF remarks on Khar (and Fatima) were targeted at DDM and some Pakis who got their sense of superiority confirmed by those articles.

It is a question of audience.

Sure we Indians need to drop our "infatuation" with Pakis, but more than that the target audience should be the same audience which is brainwashed into thinking of Pakistanis as racially superior and Indians as small dirty ugly dark creatures, and that audience is the Pakistani themselves - both RAPE and Mango Paki Abdul.

The propaganda is not directed at Indians, or the Western public or the international community. It has to be directed at the Pakistanis themselves.

The Paki has to feel that the Indian does not see him as his equal! He knows that already! He knows that Indians don't see Pakis as equal in mental faculties. But that doesn't really bother him. He just tells himself that he is still the better genetic specimen, and only those who are "cowards" really base their superiority on brain and not brawn. He prides himself on being some sort of irresistible attraction to world's women!

All that needs to be demolished.

The Pakistani needs to feel that on the race front too, they are inferior to Indians. The Pakistanis are the primary target audience for the propaganda!

what I do not agree on is that calling some paki women ugly or butch achieves that in *any* way. most people will see it as plain old prejudice and nothing more.

The message should be that Paki men lack masculinity and Paki women lack femininity, and both are aesthetically speaking the lowest in the racial "order".

Now if the premise is accepted that the only way to rid Pakistanis of their false sense of racial superiority is to go on the offensive on this front, then yes one would see and hear "plain old prejudice"! But in this context there would be nothing wrong with "plain old prejudice"! It is a legitimate weapon.

If on the other hand, one is of the opinion that some of us should not "fall" to the same level of Pakistanis and speak to them in the same abusive language, then yes, "plain old prejudice" would look inappropriate.

I am of the opinion that Pakis need to attacked at all possible levels of warfare, including at the level they themselves use! No field, no level should be left unmanned, where they can impose their domination, just because somebody thought that that level was below his dignity! Not everybody needs to go down to that level, but some would have to do that dirty work!

p.s. don't get drawn into complicated imagery, think of them as orcs.
their history fits the orcs to a t. as saruman says in LOTR "they were elves once. taken by the dark powers, tortured and mutilated. A ruined and terrible form of life"
replace orcs with pakis and elves with Indians/civilized beings and you get the idea.

I fully agree with that imagery. In fact I have used it a few times myself! This imagery should most definitely be used for the proper audience - Indians, the educated Pakis, the West, etc.!

This imagery however may not really have much an affect on RAPE or the Mango Paki Abdul! It comes from a different cultural setting. He needs to be given a heavy amount of racial abuse, so much that some of it lands home. Only that would make him aware of his own racism and at its inherent folly.

The mirror we show the Pakistanis has to be directed at the ones who need to see it.

Rahul M ji,
I repeat, using "foul" language does not give me any personal satisfaction, but I just wanted to make a point!

I would not use it in the future, if it is not desired!

[RajeshA]

The Soft Victory

X-Posting from TIRP Thread

It is not a question of whether we can do real damage to Pakistan. Of course we can! It is always a question of whether we can take the damage from Pakistan in an all out war! It is also a question of whether people in power in India think there is a better way of dealing with Pakistan.

Some feel that keeping India on a trajectory of higher growth, social stability, cultural vitality, technological advancement, and military buildup would some day help us put so much distance between us and them, that the Pakistanis are forced to accept Indian preeminence and accept the necessity to align themselves with India rather than stand against us.

In the mean time, the thinking is that it should be India's effort to play for time by keeping Indo-Pak relations steady and occasionally giving in to Pakistani concerns, providing Pakistanis a stake in the Indian growth story, and integrating Pakistanis into the Indian cultural space, through bollywood, media, sports, political exchanges, etc..

In this thinking the Dehyphenation of India from Pakistan is of utmost importance. India would continue to provide Pakistan with love and affection, and hope that the discrimination that the world would show towards Indians and Pakistanis would be so damaging to the Pakistani H&D, that they would resign themselves to accepting Indian domination as an unchangeable reality! So Pakistani isolation from the world, accompanied with a parallel embrace from India, would help India make the case to Pakistan!

[sukhish]

Rajesh,
that's exactly what is happening

[RamaY]

RajeshA garu,

If possible can you deliberate the economic costs of integrating Pakistan into India? It has the population < UP (with due apologies to UP people). Pakistan comes with its own Maoist problem in the guise of Talibannis.

[Prem]

Sanjaykumar, well said.

Folks, a team of south Indians conducted experimental surveys on a sample of martial microcephalic Pakrats. They concluded that Pakrats had upto 2% more IQ than horses. They just never sh!t on parade.

They did once but were beaten to blue and learned not to do again .This learning is the proof of 2% additional IQ in Poakakhotas.

[Prem]

Rajesh ji,
Another factor is more the WEST and the rest need India to check China more the irrelevance of Pakistan in global affairs. Chinpak is a short term play for both and soon Paki have to be subsurvient to Indian interests. The last straw will be put on Paki back by ME Abbus themselves. India need to play it right, Slow and steady, Soon within a decade or so, we will be wooed by all players US,China,Japan, ME , Europe and Russia and become the ultimate global balancer , communicating using Kathak methods.

[RajeshA]

RajeshA garu,

If possible can you deliberate the economic costs of integrating Pakistan into India? It has the population < UP (with due apologies to UP people). Pakistan comes with its own Maoist problem in the guise of Talibannis.

RamaY ji,

I am not really an economist! So any such deliberation from my side would leave a lot to be desired.

But I do think, that it would be positive for India if India can bring down the food-related inflation. That really hurts ordinary Indians. And when Government tries to curb it by controlling the money supply, and it pushes up the interest rates of the banks, thus curtailing investment and growth.

I wrote earlier also about allowing Pakistani Zamindars to export their produce to India.

So a much better idea would be to have low prices for food in India, 1) by subsidizing agricultural produce of farmers in India, 2) importing agricultural produce from the big Zamindars in Pakistan. Subsidy is important so that Indian farmers are not hurt from the low pricing of their produce. It should not squeeze them. They should earn enough to finance a higher growth rate in the rural areas of India as well. So GoI should think up of minimizing the cost of agricultural production of the farmer - electricity subsidies, water subsidies, grain storage subsidies, fertilizer subsidies, technical aid, etc. Even this subsidy GoI can make only if there is an all-round across the board higher growth in the economy.

The point is to keep food prices in India down. If that can be achieved, Indian banks can have a more liberal policy on financing investments and pushing up India's growth rate. Inflation would not bite the Indian.

We have been allowing Pakistan to use all that water from the Indus basin. It is only fair that the crops produced from that water be used to feed Indian population.

That was the general point I was trying to make.

---------------------

But I believe your question is a different one! One about the cost of integrating Pakistan into India. To be honest, I have never really given it much thought, simply because I do not favor integrating Pakistan into India. I favor integrating only certain parts of Pakistan into India -

1. Baluchistan - can finance itself due to deposits of natural gas, coal, copper, etc.
2. Lower Sind - can finance itself as Karachi is a big contributor today to the economy of Pakistan. Thar Coal Reserves also happen to be located in Tharparkar District. Also farming can be viable here.
3. Gilgit-Baltistan - hydro-electrical potential, tourism
4. Chitral - tourism, transit-route

Furthermore, the integrating of Baluchistan and Lower Sindh would provide India with an access route to Iran and Central Asia giving India access to energy, thus stimulating a higher growth in India. So the parts of Pakistan that should come to India do not pose necessarily a monetary burden on India.

Then there is that subsidy we provide the Pushtun lands! If certain parts of the economy there can be jump-started like dried fruits, textiles, carpet weaving, mining, tourism, etc. then we can keep the subsidy low. If EU, USA help finance the Afghan National Security Forces then all the better.

As far as Pakjab is concerned, we shouldn't really be bothering about the cost of integrating it into India as there need not be any integration beyond buying the agricultural produce from the big Zamindars there and encouraging those Zamindars to keep their money in India itself. For the moment we need not invest there or subsidize anything there. We are already subsidizing them by providing them with free water.

Karachi, which is a part of South Sindh, may need extra security, etc. so would perhaps need India to spend there some more, but other than that, Pakistani parts in India, should be self-sustaining.

Just some thoughts on it!

[RajeshA]

Prem ji,

that is very much true. However we still need to ensure that Chinpak jugalbandi does not go too far. That means, Uyghur language should flourish very much in FATA along with Saudi Arabic. If some pig-eaters get pigjacked in the bad lands, even more fun! TSPA should also lose the capacity to keep itself together or to finance all the pay and pensions and the hardware for itself. If we can engineer a split in the TSPA, that too would be very satisfying.

[ramana]

We need to be ready to have an Art 370 type formulation for these areas. They cant survive as nation states in the Westphalian sense.

I was talking about this very thing with another member.

Pakjab can retain its nukes if it wants.

[Prem]

Poaks alligning with PRC will hasten their own demise . Cold calculative Han will suck all the resources from the area and create intense internal strife. The CHINPAK Racoon will be the target of caging by every global player.

[RajeshA]

Give Peace a Chance, Break Pakistan

X-Posting from TIRP Thread

I think it is okay if we wish for the Pushtuns to extend their power all the way down to the borders of Pakjab. But if they do it beyond those borders, then that too becomes an anathema to India. Pakjab should serve as a strong buffer between India and the Pushtuns, and it should not fall to the Pushtuns.

The way Pakistan is constructed now, or how it could be if all the Pushtun areas in Afghanistan also come under the sway of Pakistan, it is internally a tug-of-war between Pushtun and Pakjabi with both swearing to Islam, rabid anti-Indianism, some anti-Westernism and tentatively agreeing on the supremacy of the Army and making that as the glue to keep the country together.

That internal tug-of-war however is manifesting outwards and creating some very negative effects on India, and increasingly the West as well.

This makes Pakistan's internal tug-of-war a "global" problem!

If we want to put a stop to this menace, it is very important that we separate the Pushtun from the Pakjabi in a clear-cut Partition. Only that would ensure that there is no need for some umbrella ideology called Pakistaniyat in its more benign avatar and Jihad in its more potent form.

[Pratyush]

We need to be ready to have an Art 370 type formulation for these areas. They cant survive as nation states in the Westphalian sense.

I was talking about this very thing with another member.

Pakjab can retain its nukes if it wants.

Ramana Ji,

Pakjab, must loose its nukes. As long as it retains the nuke weapons it will always have delusions of grandeur. By making it loose its nukes you can make the elites more amenable to assimilation into a greater India over the long run.

Also the retention of Nukes will make it a threat to every one aground it. By encouraging risk taking behaviour.

[RajeshA]

Pratyush ji,

'Pakjab with its nukes' is a necessary intermediate step on the road to Pakistan's "peaceful" disarmament!

[ramana]

Pratyush,
Well thats our offer. What others offer is up to them.

[ramana]

RajeshA, It might be useful to get familiar with four major Jungian personality types(ST:Sensing, Thinking, NT:Intutive, Thinking, NF :Intutuve , Feeling and SF: Sensing, Feeling) and map the TSP leadership present and past to that and see what emerges. If they have a narrow collection of Jungian types then they will eventually collapse.

[RajeshA]

ramana garu,

I will be giving it some thought! I must say though, I've not had a very high regard for psychoanalysis!

[ramana]

US plans to secure TSP nukes

The Pentagon's Secret Plans to Secure Pakistan's Nuclear ArsenalWednesday, Nov. 9, 2011

By Jeffrey Goldberg and Marc Ambinder

National Journal

By hiding its nuclear weapons from Washington, Pakistan has made them much more vulnerable to jihadists. In response, the Pentagon has devised secret plans to secure the Pakistani arsenal -- by force if necessary (see GSN, Nov. .

Shortly after Navy SEALs raided the Pakistani city of Abbottabad in May and killed Osama bin Laden, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, the Pakistani chief of army staff, spoke with Khalid Kidwai, the retired lieutenant general in charge of securing Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Kidwai, who commands a security apparatus called the Strategic Plans Division, had been expecting Kayani’s call.

Kayani, the most powerful man in a country that has only a simulacrum of civilian leadership, had been busy in the tense days that followed the bin Laden raid: He had to assure his American funders (U.S. taxpayers provide more than $2 billion in annual subsidies to the Pakistani military) that the army had no prior knowledge of bin Laden’s hideout, located less than a mile from Pakistan’s preeminent military academy; and at the same time he had to subdue the uproar within his ranks over what was seen as a flagrant violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty by an arrogant Barack Obama. But he was also anxious about the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, and he found time to express this worry to Kidwai.

Much of the world, of course, is anxious about the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, and for good reason: Pakistan is an unstable country located at the epicenter of global jihadism, and it has been the foremost supplier of nuclear technology to such rogue states as Iran and North Korea. “The single biggest threat to U.S. security, both short term, medium term, and long term, would be the possibility of a terrorist organization obtaining a nuclear weapon,” President Obama said last year at an international nuclear-security meeting in Washington. Al‑Qaeda, Obama said, is “trying to secure a nuclear weapon -- a weapon of mass destruction that they have no compunction at using.”

Pakistan would be an obvious place for a jihadist organization to seek a nuclear weapon or fissile material: It is the only Muslim-majority state, out of the 50 or so in the world, to have successfully developed nuclear weapons. Its central government has serious trouble controlling the many corners of its territory. Its security services are infiltrated by an unknown number of jihadist sympathizers; a number of jihadist organizations are headquartered there and have relations with the government. And the weapons are stored on bases and in facilities spread across the country -- possibly including one within several miles of Abbottabad, a city that, in addition to having hosted bin Laden, is home to many partisans of the jihadist group Harakat-ul-Mujahideen.

“There are three threats,” says Graham Allison, an expert on nuclear weapons who directs the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. The first is “a terrorist theft of a nuclear weapon, which they take to Mumbai or New York for a nuclear 9/11. The second is a transfer of a nuclear weapon to a state like Iran. The third is a takeover of nuclear weapons by a militant group during a period of instability or splintering of the state.”

{More likely scenario is fourth, a splinter group of the army breaks away with the nukes for that will give that group bargaining power with US and thus legitimacy. So next intra TSPA coup will see a run for the nukes.}

Pakistani officials adamantly defend the safety of their nuclear program. In times of relative quiet between Pakistan and India (the country that would be the target of a Pakistani nuclear attack), they say that their weapons are “de‑mated” -- meaning that the warheads are kept separate from their fissile cores and their delivery systems. This makes stealing, or launching, a complete nuclear weapon far more difficult. In an interview this summer in Islamabad, a senior official of the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, the Pakistani military’s spy agency, told National Journal that U.S. fears about the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons were entirely unfounded. “Of all the things in the world to worry about, the issue you should worry about the least is the safety of our nuclear program,” the official said. “It is completely secure.” He went on to say, “It is in our interest to keep our bases safe as well. You must trust us that we have maximum and impenetrable security. No one with ill intent can get near our strategic assets.”

{I guess PNS Mehran was raided by djinns!}


Like many statements made by Pakistan’s leaders, this one contained large elements of deceit. Militants have already targeted at least six facilities widely believed to be associated with Pakistan’s nuclear program. To hide weapons from the prying satellite eyes of the United States, Pakistan moves warheads around in unmarked vans with low security profiles down busy roads. In fact, Pakistanis see jihadists as less threatening than Washington, which they believe wants to seize their nuclear weapons. After the Abbottabad mission, Kayani wanted to know what additional steps Kidwai was taking to prevent an American raid on their nuclear arsenal. Kidwai promised to redouble efforts to keep his country’s weapons far from the long arms of the Americans.

What that means, in essence, is this: In a country that is home to Muslim fundamentalist groups -- al‑Qaeda, the Haqqani network, and Lashkar-e-Taiba (which conducted the Mumbai raid that killed nearly 200 civilians in 2008) -- nuclear bombs capable of destroying entire cities are transported in delivery vans on congested and dangerous roads. And Pakistani and U.S. sources say that since the raid on Abbotta­bad, the Pakistanis have increased the pace of these movements. In other words, the Pakistani government is willing to make its nuclear weapons more vulnerable to theft by jihadists simply to hide them from the United States, the country that funds much of its military budget. In response, the Pentagon has devised secret plans to secure Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, amplifying Pakistani fears.

Loose Nukes

It is true that the Strategic Plans Division is considered to be a highly professional organization, at least by Pakistani-government standards of professionalism. Kidwai, its leader, is well regarded by Western nuclear-security experts, and the soldiers and civilians he leads are said by Pakistani spokesmen to be screened rigorously for their probity and competence, and for signs of political or religious immoderation. The SPD, Pakistani officials say, keeps careful watch over behavioral changes in its personnel; employees are investigated thoroughly for ties to extremists or radical mosques, and for changes in their lifestyle and income. The SPD is also believed to maintain “dummy” storage sites to divert attention from active ones.
Pakistani spokesmen say that the SPD is vigilant in its monitoring of the civilian scientists working in the country’s nuclear complexes. There are as many as 9,000 of them, including at least 2,000 who possess “critical knowledge” of weapons manufacture and maintenance, according to two sources in Pakistan. The watchfulness was deemed necessary after disclosures that two retired Pakistani nuclear scientists with pronounced jihadist sympathies had met with bin Laden in the summer of 2001. “I think it’s overstated that the weapons can get into bad hands,” Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s former president, who created the SPD, told National Journal.

But some U.S. intelligence experts aren’t so sure. First, there is the simple matter of competence. When Navy SEALs penetrated Pakistani air defenses, landed in helicopters streets away from a prestigious military academy, killed the most-wanted fugitive in modern history, and then departed, the Pakistani military was oblivious for the duration. Pervasive derision followed. A popular text message in the days after the raid read, “If you honk your horn, do so lightly, because the Pakistani army is asleep.”

Americans also question Pakistan’s nuclear vigilance. Thomas Fingar, a former chairman of the National Intelligence Council under President George W. Bush, said it is logical that any nuclear-weapons state would budget the resources necessary to protect its arsenal -- but that “we do not know that this is the case in Pakistan.” The key concern, Fingar says, is that “we do not know if what the military has done is adequate to protect the weapons from insider threats, or if key military units have been penetrated by extremists. We hope the weapons are safe, but we may be whistling past the graveyard.”

Some near misses have already occurred. In November 2007, a suicide bomber attacked a bus carrying workers to the Sargodha air base, which is believed to house nuclear weapons. The following month, a school bus was attacked outside Kamra air base, which may also serve as a nuclear storage site. In August 2008, Pakistani Taliban suicide bombers attacked what experts believe is the country’s main nuclear-weapons assembly depot in Wah cantonment. Recently, militants invaded a major Pakistani naval base near Karachi, blowing up two P‑3C Orion surveillance planes and killing at least 10 people. Pakistani security forces required 15 hours to regain control of the base. In a series of interviews, several Pakistani officials told National Journal that investigators suspect the militants had help inside the complex. Experts believe that nuclear-weapon components were stored nearby.

Pakistani leaders say their military and security organizations are immune to radical influence. “I have seen no significant radicalization of any of our men in uniform,” said the Inter-Services Intelligence senior official National Journal interviewed in Islamabad. “This is simply a lie.” But the evidence suggests otherwise. Sympathy for jihadist-oriented groups among at least some Pakistani military men has been acknowledged for years, even inside Pakistan; recently a brigadier, Ali Khan, was arrested on charges of maintaining contact with a banned extremist organization. A retired Pakistani general with intelligence experience says, “Different aspects of the military and security services have different levels of sympathy for the extremists. The navy is high in sympathy.”

{I guess this is so as they have to make up for lack of clout by being more jihad than the Army generals!}

If jihadists are looking to raid a nuclear facility, they have a wide selection of targets: Although Pakistan is very secretive about the locations of its nuclear facilities, satellite imagery and other sources suggest that jihadists could find warheads or other nuclear materials at a minimum of 15 sites.

Yet neither the Pakistani army nor the SPD seems to consider jihadism the most immediate threat to the security of its nuclear weapons. Instead, Kayani’s worry, as expressed to Kidwai, was focused on the United States. According to sources in Pakistan, Kayani believes that the U.S. has the technical means to stage simultaneous raids on Pakistan’s nuclear facilities. Kidwai promised that the counterintelligence branch of the SPD remained focused on rooting out American and Indian spies from the Pakistani nuclear-weapons complex, and on foiling other American espionage methods. Pakistan’s air force trains its pilots to intercept U.S. spy planes; its military assumes (correctly) that the U.S. devotes many resources to aerial and satellite surveillance of its nuclear sites.

In his post-Abbottabad talk with Kayani, Kidwai also said that Pakistan’s program was sufficiently hardened, and dispersed, so that the U.S. would have to mount a sizable invasion of the country to neutralize its weapons; a raid on the scale of Abbottabad simply would not suffice. But to keep American
and Indian intelligence agencies guessing, according to multiple sources in Pakistan, Kidwai ordered an increase in the tempo of the dispersal of nuclear-weapons components and other sensitive materials. One method the SPD uses to ensure their safety is to shuffle the materials among the 15 or more facilities that handle them. Nuclear weapons must go to the shop for occasional maintenance, and so they have to be moved to suitably equipped facilities.

Nuclear components are sometimes flown by helicopter or driven over roads. But instead of moving nuclear material in armored, well-defended convoys, the SPD prefers to use civilian-style vans, without noticeable defenses, in the regular flow of traffic. And, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official, the Pakistanis have begun using this low-security method to transfer not merely the “de‑mated” component nuclear parts, but also “mated” nuclear weapons. Western nuclear experts have feared that Pakistan is building small, tactical nuclear weapons for quick deployment on the battlefield. In fact, not only is Islamabad building these devices, it is also now driving them around the streets of Pakistan.

{So the next thing we can expect a RD mian type to hijack a van!}

Experts further worry about the accidental launch of a nuclear warhead during a period of high tension between Pakistan and India, or the possibility that rogue elements inside the Pakistani military might take it upon themselves to launch a nuclear attack. On paper, Pakistan’s nuclear command-and-control body, the National Command Authority, is overseen by the civilian prime minister, working in conjunction with the country’s military leaders. But in reality, the military controls the system of enabling and authenticating codes that would be transmitted to strategic forces in the event of a nuclear alert. Pakistan’s nuclear posture is opaque, however, and the U.S. has many questions about how the authority to use the weapons is delegated.

In 2006, Kidwai told an audience at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., that Pakistan maintained for its nuclear arsenal the functional equivalent of two-person control and permissive action links, or PALs -- coded locks meant to prevent unauthorized arming of a weapon. Asked about Pakistan’s PAL protocols, one former U.S. defense official replied, “It has never been clear to me what Pakistani PALs really entail. The doctrine is ‘two people’ -- but is it two people to unlock the box around the warhead, or is it two people to launch the thing once you’ve mated the warhead to the missile?” (India, in contrast, has been more transparent about its nuclear posture; unlike Pakistan, it has pledged not to use nuclear weapons first -- only in response.)

Still, what really frightens American strategic thinkers is not so much the launch protocols as the long-term stability and coherence of Pakistan itself. Stephen P. Cohen, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, says that if Pakistan were not in possession of nuclear weapons, the problem would be like “Nigeria without oil” -- a much lower foreign-policy priority. But Pakistan is in dire shape. “Its economy has failed, its politics have failed, and its army either fails or looks the other way,” says Cohen. “There are no good options.” For that reason, Washington must keep a tight bond with a nuclear Pakistan.

Few experts believe that Pakistan is in imminent danger of collapse -- but the trends, as Cohen notes, are negative. The government is widely considered to be among the world’s most corrupt (President Asif Ali Zardari is informally known as “Mr. 10 Percent”).Last year, Pakistan’s inflation rate hit 15 percent, and the real unemployment rate was 34 percent. Some 60 percent of Pakistanis survive on less than $2 a day. Nearly a quarter of the government budget goes to the military.

Pakistani Paranoia

In a country that has made only modest gains in the areas of innovation, science, and education (especially in comparison with its rival, India), the Pakistani nuclear program has played an outsized role in the building of national self-esteem. And so critiques like those are deeply wounding. They produce feelings of distrust.

In 2000, one of the authors of this article met A.Q. Khan, the nuclear scientist known as the “father” of Pakistan’s nuclear-bomb program, at a ceremony in Islamabad marking the second anniversary of the detonation of the country’s first atomic bomb. (Khan was also the principal exporter of Pakistani nuclear technology to such countries as Iran, North Korea, and Libya.) The celebration -- complete with a vanilla sheet cake on which the words Youm-e-Takbeer, or “Day of God’s Greatness,” were written in lemon frosting -- was held in the presence of many of the country’s leading nuclear scientists, and of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who had recently taken power in a coup.

After the ceremony, Khan told a small circle of admirers, as well as the visiting American reporter, that Westerners resented Pakistan’s admission into the nuclear club. “The West has been leading a crusade against the Muslims for a thousand years,” he said. He went on to assert that the U.S. would do anything in its power to neutralize Pakistan’s nuclear assets. One of the scientists in the circle agreed, and said, “Why do the Americans want to destroy Islam?” In a recent interview with National Journal, Musharraf echoed the point: “No one ever speaks of the dangers of a Hindu bomb.”

An American visitor to Pakistan can easily see that a particular narrative has been embedded in the country’s collective psyche: The U.S. favors India, punishes Pakistan unjustifiably, and periodically abandons Pakistan when policymakers in Washington feel the country is not useful. “America is a disgrace because it turns on its friends when it has no use for them,” says Gen. Aslam Beg, a retired chief of staff of the Pakistani army, in an efficient summation of the dominant Pakistani narrative.

This sort of paranoia has spread through the Pakistani security elite -- and it went viral after the Abbottabad raid. Fear of pernicious American designs on Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal has combined with people’s anger over their military’s apparent impotence, creating a feeling of almost toxic insecurity across the country. The raid shook the confidence of the army, and its admirers, like no other event since Pakistan’s most recent defeat by the Indian army in 1999. (India and Pakistan have fought multiple wars, all of them won by India.) A Pew poll taken after the Abbottabad raid found that 69 percent of Pakistanis view the U.S. as “more of an enemy”; only 6 percent see the U.S. as “more of a partner.”

A retired Pakistani general, who expressed disgust at the military’s performance (“There should have been a try to shoot down the American helicopters”), says that the raid amplified the traditional paranoia. “You can think of this in terms of drones. The Americans are in the skies, where they are invisible, and yet they can kill anyone they want,” he said. “America is a superpower of technology. It would be easy to make a quick snatch of Pakistani strategic assets.”

Pakistanis tend to believe that the United States seeks to seize their country’s nuclear weapons preemptively, simply because the U.S. doesn’t like their country, or because of an ideological commitment to keep Muslim countries nuclear-free. This paranoia is not completely irrational, of course; it’s wise for the U.S. to try to design a plan for seizing Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in a low-risk manner. “The U.S. tried to prevent Pakistan from becoming a nuclear-weapons state,” said Harvard’s Graham Allison. “It is not delusional for Pakistan to fear that America is interested in de‑nuking them. It is prudent paranoia.”

{Who pays this guy? The Pakis or the US?}

U.S. War Plans

Though the United States has punished Pakistan in the past for its nuclear program (with sanctions that not only failed to stop the program but also helped to aggravate anti-American feeling among Pakistanis), there is no evidence to suggest that the Obama administration is actively considering “de-nuking” Pakistan in its current state. Officials at the White House and elsewhere argue that the Pakistani military and the SPD are the best tools available to keep Pakistan’s weapons secure. In the recent past, Washington has spent as much as $100 million to help the SPD build better facilities and security systems. (However, according to David Sanger’s book The Inheritance, Pakistan has not allowed Americans to conduct an audit to see how the $100 million was spent.) Although Adm. Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, eventually became disillusioned by Pakistan’s double-dealing on terrorism, he always felt his relationship with Kayani had borne fruit on nuclear weapons. “When he would bring up a concern about nuclear weapons in a meeting, the Pakistanis would usually deal with it,” an associate of Mullen’s told us.

{Most likely the money wen to buy Hermes bags for the TSPA generals' wives and themselves to match the bangles they are wearing!}

But Pakistanis are correct to believe that the U.S. government -- because it does not trust Pakistan, because it knows that the civilian leadership is weak, and because it does not have a complete intelligence picture -- is worried that the SPD could fail in its mission, and that fissile material or a nuclear weapon could go missing. Concerned that Pakistan’s ethnic rivalries, corruption, and terrorism could one day tear the country apart, the Pentagon has developed a set of highly detailed plans to grapple with nuclear insecurity in Pakistan. “It’s safe to assume that planning for the worst-case scenario regarding Pakistan nukes has already taken place inside the U.S. government,” Roger Cressey, a former deputy director of counterterrorism under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, told NBC News in August. “This issue remains one of the highest priorities of the U.S. intelligence community … and the White House.”

From time to time, U.S. officials have hinted publicly that concrete plans are in place in the event of a Pakistani nuclear emergency. For instance, during Senate hearings for her confirmation as secretary of State in 2005, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was asked by Sen. John Kerry what would happen to Pakistan’s nukes in the event of an Islamic coup in Islamabad. “We have noted this problem, and we are prepared to try to deal with it,” Rice said.

Those preparations have been extensive. According to military and intelligence sources, any answer to a Pakistani nuclear crisis would involve something along the following lines: If a single weapon or a small amount of nuclear material were to go missing, the response would be contained -- Abbottabad redux, although with a higher potential for U.S. casualties. The United States Joint Special Operations Command maintains rotating deployments of specially trained units in the region, most of them Navy SEALs and Army explosive-ordnance-disposal specialists, who are trained to deal with nuclear weapons that have fallen into the wrong hands. Their area of operation includes the former Soviet states, where there is a large amount of loose fissile material, and, of course, Pakistan. JSOC “has units and aircraft and parachutes on alert in the region for nuclear issues, and regularly inserts units and equipment for prep,” says a military official who was involved in supporting these technicians.

{Explains why the US wont leave Kabul for a long, long time.}

Seizing or remotely disabling a weapon of mass destruction is what’s known in military jargon as a “render-safe mission” -- and JSOC has evidently pulled off such missions before. In his memoir, Hugh Shelton, who chaired the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1997 to 2001, recalls an incident from the 1990s in which the CIA told the Special Operations Command that a ship had left North Korea with what Shelton describes as “an illegal weapon” on board. Where it was headed, the U.S. didn’t know. He wrote: “It was a very time-sensitive mission in which a specific SEAL Team Six component was called into action. While I cannot get into the tactical elements or operational details of this mission, what I can say is that our guys were able to ‘immobilize’ the weapon system in a special way without leaving any trace.”

Much more challenging than capturing and disabling a loose nuke or two, however, would be seizing control of -- or at least disabling -- the entire Pakistani nuclear arsenal in the event of a jihadist coup, civil war, or other catastrophic event. This “disablement campaign,” as one former senior Special Operations planner calls it, would be the most taxing and most dangerous of any special mission that JSOC could find itself tasked with -- orders of magnitude more difficult and expansive than Abbottabad. The scale of such an operation would be too large for U.S. Special Operations components alone, so an across-the-board disablement campaign would be led by U.S. Central Command -- the area command that is responsible for the Middle East and Central Asia, and runs operations in Afghanistan and Iraq -- and U.S. Pacific Command.

JSOC would take the lead, however, accompanied by civilian experts. It has been preparing for such an operation for years. JSOC forces are trained to breach the inner perimeters of nuclear installations and then to find, secure, evacuate -- or, if that’s not possible, to “render safe” -- any live weapons. At the Nevada National Security Site, northwest of Las Vegas, Delta Force and SEAL Team Six squadrons practice “Deep Underground Shelter” penetrations, using extremely sensitive radiological detection devices that can pick up trace amounts of nuclear material and help Special Operations locate the precise spot where the fissile material is stored. JSOC has also built mock Pashtun villages, complete with hidden mock nuclear-storage depots, at a training facility on the East Coast, so SEALs and Delta Force operatives can practice there.

At the same time, U.S. military and intelligence forces have been quietly pre-positioning the necessary equipment in the region. In the event of a coup, U.S. forces would rush into the country, crossing borders, rappelling down from helicopters, and parachuting out of airplanes, so they can secure known or suspected nuclear-storage sites. According to the former senior Special Operations planner, JSOC units’ first tasks might be to disable tactical nuclear weapons -- because those are more easily mated, and easier to move around, than long-range missiles.

In a larger disablement campaign, the U.S. would likely mobilize the Army’s 20th Support Command, whose Nuclear Disablement Teams would accompany Special Operations detachments or Marine companies into the country. These teams are trained to engage in what the military delicately calls “sensitive site exploitation operations on nuclear sites” -- meaning that they can destroy a nuclear weapon without setting it off. Generally, a mated nuclear warhead can be deactivated when its trigger mechanism is disabled. So both the Army teams and JSOC units train extensively on the types of trigger mechanisms that Pakistani weapons are thought to use. According to some scenarios developed by American war planners, after as many weapons as possible were disabled and as much fissile material as possible was secured, U.S. troops would evacuate quickly -- because the final stage of the plan involves precision missile strikes on nuclear bunkers, using special “hard and deeply buried target” munitions.

But nuclear experts issue a cautionary note: It is not clear that U.S. intelligence agencies can identify the locations of all of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, particularly after the Abbottabad raid. “Anyone who tells you that they know where all of Pakistan’s nukes are is lying to you,” Gen. James Jones, President Obama’s first national-security adviser, has said, according to a source who heard him say it. (When asked by the authors of this article about his statement, Jones issued a “no comment.”) Another former official with nuclear expertise says, “We don’t even know, on any given day, exactly how many weapons they have. We can get within plus or minus 10, but that’s about it.”

Back Burner

Pakistan’s military chiefs are aware that the U.S. military has developed plans for an emergency nuclear-disablement operation in their country, and they have periodically threatened to ally themselves with China as a way to undercut U.S. power in South Asia. In a recent statement obviously meant for American ears, Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, described the Pakistani-Chinese relationship as “higher than the mountains, deeper than the oceans, stronger than steel, and sweeter than honey.” But China, too, is worried about Pakistan’s stability, and it has recently alleged that Pakistan has harbored Uighur separatists operating in western China. According to U.S. sources, Beijing has reached an understanding in secret talks with Washington that, should America decide to send forces into Pakistan to secure its nuclear weapons, China would raise no objections. (An Obama administration spokesman had no comment.)

The United States takes great pains to stress to the Pakistanis that any disablement or render-safe plans would be put into effect only in the event that everything else fails -- and furthermore, that these plans have the primary goal of helping to maintain Pakistan’s secure possession of the weapons over the long term. In fact, some Pakistani officials accept these American plans -- they welcome American technical and military assistance in keeping nuclear material out of the wrong hands. Still, the subject comes up at almost every high-level meeting between U.S. and Pakistani officials.

In the end, though, the policy goals of the Obama administration are focused not on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons but rather on the terrorist groups based there. “Our core goal is to disrupt, dismantle, and eventually defeat al‑Qaeda,” one senior administration official says. “This is a very clarifying way to think about what we are doing and why cooperation with Pakistan is important.” In the short term, this issue flummoxes policymakers in Washington even more than nuclear security. Frustration with their dissembling Pakistani counterparts has drawn the countries further apart than at any time since just after Sept. 11.

The United States must, for its own security, keep watch over Pakistan’s nuclear program -- and that’s more easily done if it remains engaged with the Pakistani government. The U.S. must also be able to receive information from the ISI about al‑Qaeda, even if such information is provided sporadically. And Washington will simply not find a way out of Afghanistan if Pakistan becomes an open enemy. Pakistan, for its part, can afford to lose neither America’s direct financial support nor the help that America provides with international lending agencies. Neither can Pakistan’s military lose its access to U.S. weapons systems, and to the trainers attached to them. Economically, Pakistan cannot afford to be isolated by the U.S. in the way the U.S. isolates countries it considers sponsors of terrorism. Its neighbor Iran is an object lesson in this regard. For all these reasons, Pakistan and the United States remain locked in a hostile embrace. There is no escaping this vexed relationship and little evidence to suggest that it will soon improve.

Quick comments:

- US is worried about a jihadi faction staging a coup. Hence these detailed descriptions of US contingency plans
- US is not going to leave kabul any time soon for a long time to come
-Its not AlQ that the US has to worry about but the jihadi faction of the TSPA seizing power in a millenial frenzy.
- Note the mention of India mnay times in the article.

- Its the Pak military that sees things in a zero-sum game. The rise of India is not due to US support for India but despite its opposition. God/khuda/Allah and the scholars know who much the US tried but failed.

The solution is to reduce the primacy of TSPA and get rid of their kabila guards mindset and submit themselves to a more productive role of nation building.

[Prem]

US plans to secure TSP nukes
Quick comments:
- US is worried about a jihadi faction staging a coup. Hence these detailed descriptions of US contingency plans
- US is not going to leave kabul any time soon for a long time to come
-Its not AlQ that the US has to worry about but the jihadi faction of the TSPA seizing power in a millenial frenzy.
- Note the mention of India mnay times in the article.
- Its the Pak military that sees things in a zero-sum game. The rise of India is not due to US support for India but despite its opposition. God/khuda/Allah and the scholars know who much the US tried but failed.
The solution is to reduce the primacy of TSPA and get rid of their kabila guards mindset and submit themselves to a more productive role of nation building.

I have a feeling that failure of Pakistan Project (not the state) as envisiond by YQ and its subsequent passing on to Massa is the real game. Few still left with brain are already asking about the intention of Djinnaha and cant find any convincing argument. Rise of India and the rest in the neighborhood is inevitable thus free ride for Poakers is now over. Pussland in liquid oxxxygen is now in everyone's interest and chances are Chinese will go along with it for its serves their medium and long term interests. Pakistan is about to morph into somthing so ugly it will put Rwanada and Somalia to shame.

[devesh]

I think India will soon have the opportunity to take some of the border districts of Sindh and Pakjab which had non-Muslim majority in '47. we should be prepared. all the "paki" territory 100 km from Indian border is ripe for picking. Lahore this time should be taken. Pubjab without Lahore is incomplete. we need to take it back.

[RajeshA]

If US wants to take down Pakistan, then the right time is now, when China and USA have "excellent" relations! Later on when the animosity increases, Pakistan playing off USA against China may become much more effective!

[rajanb]

The US can't take down Pakistan. They have the penchant for attacking the wrong country. Pakistan is the right country.

[RajeshA]

I think India will soon have the opportunity to take some of the border districts of Sindh and Pakjab which had non-Muslim majority in '47. we should be prepared. all the "paki" territory 100 km from Indian border is ripe for picking. Lahore this time should be taken. Pubjab without Lahore is incomplete. we need to take it back.

devesh ji,

I would concentrate my fire power to South Sindh, Baloch Liberation and PoK Conquest! Pakjab can be better strangulated that way! We want Pakjab to survive as a buffer state between India and our crazy allies in Pushtunistan.

In the first step it would be good if we can bulldoze a way through Pakistan giving us unfettered access to Central Asia, preferably from both North and from South and West. Let TSPA retreat into Pakjab with their nukes and men!

By playing good cop with Pakjab against the bad cop by Pushtuns, over the long run, we can get Pakjabis eating out of our hands and rejoining to Dharmic Continuum!

[sukhish]

RajeshA,
U.S won't take down pakistan or ever. if that happens India will be become very big superpower. the U.S Centcom and military brass knows that. they will keep cajoling pakistan, so that it becomes dependent on them. But lately pakistan is also showing them a middle finger. I think in the end U.S will be out, just like they left iraq.
Interesting developments are happening.

[ramana]

Pioneer

NSA said quite the opposite

Ignore the title and focus on the content. Its another data point of TSP failure.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh may have called his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani a man of peace on Thursday, but just two months back National Security Advisor (NSA) Shiv Shankar Menon made a presentation before top security officials in Delhi in which he said that after the killing of Osama Bin Laden, anti-America feeling was being whipped up in Pakistan besides emergence of multiple power centres there and cited the developments as worrying for India.

“These developments were of discomfort to India, as the growing strength of such power centres in a nuke-powered Pakistan was not in the security interest of our country,” he said at the meeting of State DGPs, heads of paramilitary forces and intelligence agencies in Delhi.

Menon also said under these circumstances, Indian efforts to control terrorism vis-à-vis Pakistan and non-State actors being used by Pakistan as its strategic assets would include a whole gamut of defensive measures, both within the country and outside.

On fear raised on safety of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenals, the NSA said the “real threat to nuclear weapons in Pakistan was not from fundamentalist groups, but from within the (Pakistani) establishment.”


Underlining that there is no clear line of demarcation between internal and external security, the NSA said that Pakistan was sliding into anarchy with multiple power centres developing within that country.

He also underscored that there has been a decline in the position of Pakistan Army and growth of fundamentalist elements within Pakistan as extra-Constitutional power centres.

{In BRF speak he is saying that the three centers of powers in TSP: Army, Politicians and Amrika which are existing in a green mileiu of Allah is changing. The Allah types who used to be Army minions are now creating their own groups. A new star is being born and the Abortabad crystallised it from the green morass that is TSP. IOW the Allah types no longer think they need Army protection in TSP.}

On nuclear weapons, he said, “It was imminent that nuclear proliferation was going to take place. India lives in a highly nuclear proliferated neighbourhood which was only going to get worse. There was also a risk of terrorist organisations laying their hands on nuclear weapons from Paksitan as technology had become accessible.”

{Very clear that the nooks are getting out of control.}

“The real threat to nuclear weapons in Pakistan was not from fundamentalist groups, but from within the establishment. The risk of nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands was very high, he had warned.

He further highlighted that the incidents happening in the rest of Asia and the Gulf too had an impact in Pakistan and also affect India.

{This is about Arab spring blooms in the Middle East. I would add the Euro debt bomb is another one}

[ramana]

Pak thinks Uncle wants to snatch the jewels for a variety of reasons;

- Teach a lesson to Iran
- Teach a lesson to KSA
- Big bad Wolf

However they dont see the prime reason of their descent into failed state.

[shyamd]

Guys, which a/c took part in the OBL raid? Were chinooks involved? Also, how do you disable the maal? I cant see anyone picking up 100's of mijjiles and running. What about the kahuta complex etc - you need to totally demolish the facilities and kill/capture the scientists. Pak has already been caught with its pants down proliferating to Taliban pre 2001 and also in Iran.

Thx

[Muppalla]

The Nuke nooding by USA article above is psy-ops to get something from Pakis. Everytime US needed a new #3 Qeeda, they release such news articles. There may be some high value target that US has zeroed on and Pakis are denying the existance of such in pure lands.

It could be a coup attempt by the bearded ones and Army may be driving it.

It is a Nov 8th report. So watch out before the new year.