Bharat Rakshak

He criticised the manner in which Pakistani leaders thought that India would have a more subdued reaction to the invasion

Vivek K wrote: Great!! If you cannot win by normal means, call in for Geeehaaad against the INC. Folks, avoid this extreme polarization and return to saner dialogue.

jagga wrote:From the horse's mouth.
No mujahideen, only soldiers in Kargil: Pak General

In his latest column, Lt. Col. [retd] Ajai Shukla Sir makes the case for a peace process between India & Pakistan, ultimately leading to peace - a goal as pious & virtuous as global Nuclear disarmament itself.

Its not the stated end result that catches attention. That we share with equal conviction. The rationale put forth & examples cited to support the case, however, cause concerns. Lets look at his contention that there has been a change, towards the positive, in Pakistani outlook. He cites the Tahir-ul-Qadri example - an internal crisis confronting them, civilians had no time/energy to show hostility towards India, it appears. Carrying his argument forward, then, Pakistan's non-hostility towards India hinges on it remaining embroiled in domestic crisis.

The civilian population remains a nominal entity in Pakistan. Any change in policy towards India must be judged by that of their military's. As evidence, he cites their engagement with the Taliban. He, however, overstates the effect it, & the other groups, have on Pakistan. Between showing that it is confronting the "Afghan" Taliban & pursuing hostility towards India, the former may have acquired higher priority, for the time being. No difficult choice, given that it keeps the spigot of American largesse open - critical for their India posture. With U.S. looking to co-opt Taliban into the present Afghan framework, paving way for their ascendancy, & confirming its own pull-back, its only a matter of time when things, for Pakistan, go back to being as they were prior to the time when the situation was "unmanageable".

Its strange to draw in outfits like the Lashkar-e-Toiba [LeT] [a.k.a. Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD)] & Lashkar-e-Jhangvi [LeJ] to argue Pakistan's case for peace with India. LeT [JUD] is Pakistan Army's [PA] pincer in hurting India. An outward-looking organisation, never has it challenged PA's primacy, neither has it undertaken operations on home turf. While one hears of other terrorist organisations breaking up, forming splinters, JUD [LeT] remains immune1 - organisation as cohesive as its Army. With the PA focussed on bringing them legitimacy, restructuring them into a sort of quasi-political front2, its safe to state that PA is confident of its minion's continued loyalty to master. LeJ, on the other hand, is a smaller, narrowly focussed sectarian outfit, solely targeting Shia Muslims, whom Sunnis consider Non-Muslim heretics. Scale of its operation hardly merits it being mentioned in the same breath as the PA. One can only imagine its name being included to make up numbers - show the PA is up against numerous.

Their military has been targeted by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan [TTP]. This, however, is the outcome of improper "bodily functions" [elaborated later]. Given a choice between troubling Pakistan & targeting India, TTP has made their priorities known. Moreover, the PA itself views them, in light contrary to the one suggested by the Colonel. As witnessed after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, when Islamists were re-routed into J&K, similar arrangements likely for the TTP too.

To argue that an ascendant Taliban in Afghanistan would endanger Pakistan goes against the grain of evidence. One has only to compare number of suicide bombings & non-sectarian killings in Pakistan, prior to the Afghan campaign, when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, to the numbers after, to discount such arguments.

The issue of domestic violence3 that Pakistan currently faces has analogy in the human body. The body generates waste which it excretes, failing which its toxicity harms the body. Pakistan raises & nurtures violent Islamists to, either hurt neighbours [India] or maintain influence over neighbours [Afghanistan]. With America arriving in its backyard, not only was the PA unable to excrete the waste [jihadists] in sufficient quantities, it ended up giving refuge to refuse for reuse at a later time. Any drop in infiltration can be

attributed to a combination of Indian Army's own stepped up efforts, aided by modern technology & certain amount of U.S. coercion, resulting from desire to see that its own objectives in the region aren't adversely impacted. Thus, we see the manifestation of this accumulated toxicity in the form of attacks within Pakistan. In fact, it has been suggested that the reason the PA sanctioned the 26/11 hit was because disillusioned LeT operatives began voicing inclination to fight in Afghanistan, a no-go area, currently, for PA's non-Pashtun cannon-fodders.

With Taliban back home, post U.S. withdrawal, the weight lifts off the PA. It goes back to being in a state it was pre-9/11. The big difference this time, however, is that it would be under no punitive sanctions, that America lifted to secure co-operation post-9/11. There are even arguments that a monetary & material windfall await them owing to the withdrawal. The centrifugal forces vexing the PA today which, Lt. Col. Ajai Shukla asserts, has prompted it to make peace overtures to India, would ease up in due course. Thus, present difficulties it faces in maintaining its historical posture towards India are merely temporal.

The Colonel is right - one needs to re-calibrate ones thinking, factoring evolving facts. One, however, can not form opinions in vacuum, & neither can those formed be contrarian to facts available. If views expressed by retired Pakistani military officers, are any indications, their thoughts are just as ossified. A peace process, based on optics clouded by signals emanating from Pakistan, in their present moment of trouble, is fallacious. There exists good reasons why confessions made under duress aren't admissible in the court of law. India has repeatedly borne the brunt of an untrustworthy Pakistan doing a volte-face, when they perceive the situation to favour them. Unencumbered by the sway induced by the feel-good factor of the hospitality showered, pragmatism demands that India adopt a status quoist position, on the diplomatic & political front4, until the time PA remains under pressure of managing its assets, housed within its midst. In due course of time after drawdown of American presence, if, the Pakistan Army gives out conciliatory indications, only then would it hold some significance. For a genuine peace process to take roots, it would only be sensible that India take up Pakistan Army on its offer for peace when it, conforming to its traditional thought-process, actually has no compulsions to entertain it.

Godspeed

Footnotes:

1= The Charade Of A Split

"Khairun Naas and Lashkar-e-Toiba are basically the same, but the LET is banned in Pakistan so we adopted the name Khairun Naas"

2= Trivia: one of the individuals whom the Pakistan Army has hoisted to front this organisation is "Sammy Sandwich" a.k.a "Mullah Sandwich", sometimes referred to as Maulana Sami-ul Haq. He gained this nickname after it became known that this Muslim religious leader engages in Ménage à trois with sex workers in Pakistan.

3= not to be conflated with the Shia-Sunni sectarian violence & gang-wars

4= If one insists on a collaboration to build up confidence, how about the two working in tandem, dismantling terror infrastructure aimed at hurting India, located within Pakistan. CBMs can't get more tangible than this.

1st image courtesy: Sanjeev Yadav

A shout-out to the blogger of the Pak-Watch blog, for pointing to the, then, ISI Chief's statement about the TTP

Cosmo_R wrote:Shinde and Digvijaya have been accusing Hindus, RSS and the BJP of being the terror attacks ranging from 26/11 onwards. The counter response is not going be saner if you are reacting to insane people. Even beta tester Rahul speaks of 'Saffron Terror'.

NEW DELHI: India and Pakistan used track-II diplomacy to defuse tensions along the line of control (LoC) just after the killing of Indian soldiers and mutilation of their bodies earlier this month which had threatened to set the border ablaze and push the dialogue process off rails.

Well-placed sources said that an Indian contact close to Pakistan's ruling Bhutto-Zardari family came in handy as the two sides groped for ways to keep talks on course amid rising fury in India over the killing of two soldiers , one of whom the Pakistani troopers beheaded.

When contacted, the Bhutto-Zardari contact confirmed playing a "small" role, but insisted on maintaining his anonymity.

Sources said that Indian authorities conveyed it to the Pakistani government that while they were keen to carry on the dialogue, the objective would be helped if Islamabad struck a conciliatory note.

Pakistan, which had until then brushed aside India's protests, responded to the suggestion positively, perhaps because of mounting challenges back home.

Anindya wrote:Bhutto-Zardaris’ Indian friend helped break LoC ice

abhijitm wrote:I think beacuse the earlier incident was not publicised the IA could take swift revenge, at least that is what some rumor suggest. But it is very difficult for IA now to react in a similar manner. This latest beheading shouldn't have become public until the revenge has been taken. I think everything went wrong this time.

"I am a government servant so I can't say it publicly, but I really want the drones to increase because they have eliminated all of the bad people," said one man. "There should be more drone strikes."...Some residents of South Waziristan remain wary of their own military, which is sometimes seen as the heavy hand of the nation's dominant Punjab class used against the country's Pashtun population, a large ethnic group from which the Taliban draws most of its fighters.

Fear of the military is palpable. Many Pashtun Pakistanis were afraid to openly criticize the army, even when offered guarantees that their identities wouldn't be publicly revealed. In one case people were willing to discuss, residents told The Wall Street Journal that Pakistani soldiers opened fire on a car driving through South Waziristan last fall that didn't pull over as a military vehicle approached from behind, killing the driver. The military later apologized, they said, and paid the family $3,000.

Military officials would not comment on the specific case. But General Hayat said that the military needs to use tough tactics in the area to ensure that the insurgency doesn't regain an advantage.

Pakistan realistically knew it couldn’t stop the American peace initiative that resulted in several desultory negotiating rounds in the Gulf state of Qatar between the Taliban and a US delegation over the past two years. So it went ahead and issued Pakistani passports to several Taliban leaders in order to facilitate their movement from Pakistan and other countries to Qatar, knowing that the talks would fail.

Senior Taliban operatives who are knowledgeable of the Qatar talks say that it was a hopeless exercise from the beginning. “We sat in Qatar with empty hands and minds,” says Zabihullah, a senior Taliban political leader. “We never had a proper plan. The whole process was imposed on us.” “We were rushed to Qatar without preparations,” Zabihullah adds. “It was a Pakistani agenda and we played the role of the dummy.”

Nandu wrote:

jagga wrote:From the horse's mouth.
No mujahideen, only soldiers in Kargil: Pak General

Original article:
http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news- ... ne-of-fire

jagga wrote:From the horse's mouth.
No mujahideen, only soldiers in Kargil: Pak General

abhishek_sharma wrote:Interview: Pakistan's High Commissioner to India Salman Bashir

What we call the Arab Spring, in a sense we have had our Arab Spring five-six years ago.

Pakistan is still a major destination for radicalised Muslims bent on a life of jihad

New battlegrounds have sprung up in Africa and the Middle East, but the number of foreign recruits smuggled into the northwestern tribal belt is increasing and they come from more diverse countries

There could be around 2,000 to 3,500 foreign fighters in the border areas from around 30 different countries

Mehsud says that foreigners are coming from a more diverse number of countries than in years past

A few months ago, we even welcomed some (two or three) people from Fiji for the first time!”

“There are more nationalities because they face the same problems. They tell us that they feel left aside by capitalism and discriminated by unfair laws, like the Swiss one on minarets or the French one on hijabs”

A Canadian, who uses the name Mohammad Ibrahim, told AFP that he had been in Pakistan for three years but was now preparing to leave to wage jihad at home.

A mechanical engineer by training, he says he works in “technical and logistic affairs” but does not elaborate further. I often met British, Spanish, Italians, Algerians and Germans.

anupmisra wrote:

abhishek_sharma wrote:Interview: Pakistan's High Commissioner to India Salman Bashir

From the article:

What we call the Arab Spring, in a sense we have had our Arab Spring five-six years ago.

Yeah right! Pakis have no idea what a real arab spring can do.

Raja Bose wrote:Which book is this? Amazing how all these Paki COs manage to survive in battles Niazi-style even when their entire regiment is destroyed. Compare them with someone like Colonel Tarapore.

BLACK Ops 2 and Medal of Honor: Warfighter have been banned from sale in Pakistan.
Both games are accused of showing the country in a poor light regarding its links with terrorism, Mashable reports. The games appear to suggest that the country’s intelligence agency supports al-Qaeda, Pakistani shopkeepers have argued.
“The problem is that there are things that are against Pakistan and they have included criticism of our army,” explained Saleem Memon, president of All Pakistan CD, DVD, Audio Cassette Traders and Manufacturers Association.
“They show the country in a very poor light,” he added.
Both games feature levels based in Pakistan, including Warfighter’s Darra Gun Market multiplayer map, which was included as part of the game’s ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ DLC.
The news comes ahead of the release of Black Ops 2’s ‘Revolution’ pack, which will be available first on Xbox Live from January 29.

AbhiJ wrote:Taliban are Munafiqeen: Rehman Malik

Tough-talking Pakistani interior minister Rehman Malik has once again asked the Taliban to "return to the fold of Islam" and end bloodshed in the country.

The minister termed the militants as "munafiqeen" (hypocrites) for misusing religion for violence, the Dawn
reported.

Anujan wrote:

AbhiJ wrote:Taliban are Munafiqeen: Rehman Malik

Tough-talking Pakistani interior minister Rehman Malik has once again asked the Taliban to "return to the fold of Islam" and end bloodshed in the country.

The minister termed the militants as "munafiqeen" (hypocrites) for misusing religion for violence, the Dawn
reported.

From a fellow who could not recite Surah Ikhlas:
http://tribune.com.pk/story/97614/incor ... lik-filed/
Everyone knows who the real Munafiq is.

partha wrote:And didn't Rehman Malik not declare that he would himself kill a blasphemer?

Baikul wrote:[Yeah right! Pakis have no idea what a real arab spring can do.

RoyG wrote:The games are now in full swing. Hafiz wants to extend this Islamic revolution taking place within Pakistan to India which would explain his the question posed to SRK. He's essentially forcing indian muslims to choose between dharmic pluralistic state or islamic theocracy.

I agree with Saeed, he should force Pakistani governement to make aranagement for lawful immigration of Indian Muslims to the land of pure.

Anujan wrote:Apparently there is going to be a candle light vigil all over the world titled "India Pakistan Peace Now!". I mean, who are these buffoons and who is funding them? Based on my long interactions and undeniable upper hand in experience with the journo/amanki asha/literary festival busybody types, I can assure you 100% that these characters dont move a straw from here to there without money and/or guaranteed publicity from some funding sources. (I wanted to write a long post about my experiences with that later)

http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-1 ... obal-Vigil

Given the massacres going on in Syria, bombing in Mali, Egypt going down the pakistan with many dead recently and an Islamist constitution being adopted, Indonesia flood and landslides that have killed dozens, North Korea wanting to test a nuke and missiles, 233 people killed in a fire in Brazil ..... the most important global problem is now .... India?

WTF?

venug wrote:

I agree with Saeed, he should force Pakistani governement to make aranagement for lawful immigration of Indian Muslims to the land of pure.

Jhujar ji,
What will happen if Indian muslims who have Indian nation at heart but for various reasons make up their minds to migrate to TSP, and the hardcore ones who are on the payroll of their masters back in TSP stay back in their respective pockets in say Hyd, Kerala elsewhere, just to make sure breaking India project is complete?