shiv wrote:Sridhar (and others)
Don't get me wrong. I want to know the basis on which the assertion that India will be the first to be attacked is being made. . . . A nuclear bomb is a very precious item. or an Islamist group seeking to create a Calipahte and global domination, survival is the immediate problem. The more risky their behavior, the greater the risk to their survival.
. . . I believe that having nukes will not make it any easier - but will only give others a better excuse to eliminate the Islamists brutally.
So the Islamists have to pick and choose targets judiciously. If they commit soosai by being totally irrational caliphate will be finished.
Shiv, the denouement in Afghanistan today is to somehow enable the Taliban to share power with Karzai & co. The Taliban are being coaxed by the Pakistanis to play
taqiyyah promising to obey the Constitution, and not to violate human rights. Very quickly, they will seize power and there is a real danger that Karzai will end up like Najibullah.
From there, it will be a short step to capturing power in Pakistan through overt and covert means. Unlike the earlier reign of the Taliban in Kabul when they limited their activities to Afghanistan while providing only moral and diplomatic support to Al Qaeda, this time it will be different because the AQ, Taliban and the Pakistani jihadis have all coalesced. Their ultimate vision always overlapped and only circumstances, approach and command differed. All that has been disappearing after 9/11 and especially after March 2004 when PA was sent into South Waziristan. Laal Masjid solidified this coalition even further. The euphoric sense of upcoming victory spurs them even more. AQ & Afghan Taliban have received immeasurable support from their Pakistani counterparts, especially the Punjabi Taliban, that when they resume power in Kabul, either they will oblige the latter as a matter of gratitude or the latter will force the former.
The massively US-backed regime of the Shah of Iran did not take a long time to collapse and the US could do pretty little to restore non-Islamist government there. The ground situation in Pakistan today is far, far more favourable to an Islamist takeover than it possibly obtained in Iran of c. 1979. Let us remember that many DGs of ISID were hard-core Islamists like Javid Nasir, Asad Durrani, Hamid Gul, Mahmoud Ahmed and Nadeem Taj not to mention COASs like Zia-ul-Haq or Aslam Beg. Except for Javid Nasir, who sported a flowing beard and thus betrayed a glint of his partialities, the rest were elegant in their appearance. We therefore cannot make a judgement about Kiyani or Shuja Pasha or their successors, but going by how Islamists are spreading in the armed forces, there is a high probability of the present and future leaders being Islamists in the garb of whisky-swilling, Saville Row wearing
liberal General. Islamists could therefore receive what to laymen & women appear as 'unexpected support' from the military leadership. One does not expect jihadis to overtly takeover Pakistan as they did in Afghanistan. They would possibly be fronted by Islamist leaders like Maulana Sandwich, Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman, Qazi Hussain
saheb et al. But, the real power would vest in the
shura dominated by the jihadi leaders. That way, their survival is assured and the risk of being ex-communicated from the international community is lessened.
The US realizes this possibility and has hedged its bets, among a myriad other ones, in the following three ways:
- By making sure that the Pakistani missile ranges do not assume threatening proportions
- By implementing PAL
- By keeping the top leadership of the PA, especially the Strategic Forces Command, under close watch in order to be prepared and forewarned
All these three do not act as a protection for us. Being a practitioner of hard realpolitik, the US may even acquiesce in an Islamist takeover of Pakistan. Most did not expect the US to even talk to the Taliban let alone discuss a power-sharing deal and yet that is happening today. Even earlier, it was willing to engage the barbarians for the UNOCAL project. There is still a huge trust deficit between us and the Americans though the situation is far better than during the Cold War era. A possibility can therefore arise when the US may deem it all right, if Pakistan needs to be placated or if India needs to be arm-twisted, for an Islamist Pakistan to lob a few nukes at us.
Again, our repeated non-aggressive posture would embolden even a milder revisionist power than Pakistan to attack us relatively unencumbered. So, Pakistani islamists, with the connivance of the PA and a possible blind-eye from the US, have every incentive to thrash us if and when they seize power in Pakistan.
OTOH, they know pretty well that an attack on Israel or the US would certainly invite massive retaliation that will annihilate them. They may therefore be tempted to attack us in the hope that either India will dither or the world community would stop nuclear retaliation for worthless sanctions etc. and still keep a few nukes in store for later attack on the other two.
Their plans for the Jews and Christians would follow later.
, will use this word in future.
wasted so much time in begging where are the $$$. We want to buy Uboats to save TFTA folks from floods.
