Pakistani Terror Repeats History at Pathankot

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Three neutralised terrorists

The attack on the Pathankot Air Force Station was expected. I am sure the Indian Government and its security agencies must have anticipated it. It had to happen as it had always happened after every initiative for talks between India and Pakistan. One wonders whether the perpetrators of these are really so dumb as to believe that their nefarious designs would not be anticipated despite the historical background. It is, of course, sad that five well-trained young men from the Pakistani terror stable and seven young Indian soldiers lost their lives just for the reason of one-upmanship of the Pakistani Army and its Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). Life is cheap across the border as there is an assembly line that produces fidayeens and the military establishment makes use of them whenever the occasion demands. They are the cannon fodder that they raise with the objective of inflicting “1000 cuts” on India. The cream of their youth is being sacrificed for achievement of an objective that is, at best, delusional. Curiously, however, the ISI, which patronises the anti-India terrorist groups, used this time Jaish-e-Mohammed of Maulana Masood Azhar instead of its favourite Hafiz Sayeed-led Lashkar e Taiba. Perhaps the idea was to put the cognoscenti in India off the scent.

It seems the Pakistan military establishment felt that the country’s prime minister was getting to be too big for his boots and that he needed to be cut down to size. How could he agree to a visit by an Indian Prime Minister without their clearance? Regardless of the admiration that Modi’s diplomatic masterstroke evoked across the world, the Pakistan Army had to show to the world, if at all it had to do so, that in so far as relations with India were concerned it was they who took the initiatives and not the democratically elected civil government or the prime minister. Helming the India-Pakistan proceedings for long – in fact since the birth of the country – it could not let go of the authority it had acquired and had been wielding just because an upstart prime minister of the sworn enemy suddenly decides to descend at Lahore. Greeting Nawaz Sharif on his birthday is one thing, parachuting down to Lahore hogging publicity and disturbing the status quo quite another.

That there are two power centres in Pakistan and that the one that is housed in the General Headquarters (Pakistan Army) in Rawalpindi generally gets better of its civilian counterpart in many respects, especially in respect of relations with neighbouring India, is known the world over. This was pointedly brought out in a delightful autobiographical narrative by the ex-RAW (Research & Analysis Wing) chief AS Dulat in his book “Kashmir – the Vajpayee years”. He was probably one top sleuth who talked and talked to all the Kashmiri militants. He recounted how one of them told him that nothing in Kashmir could happen unless it was cleared by the ISI. He was categorically told that in Kashmiri militancy it was the ISI that called the shots. But, it is well known that 26/11 Mumbai attack, far away from Jammu & Kashmir, was planned and executed by none other than the ISI. The Pathankot operations next to its border with India could not also have taken place without precision planning of the spy organization.

Quite clearly, the Pakistani security establishments will never allow peace initiatives with India to fructify. India is their enemy and they seem to be totally against peaceful relations with it. This, as a Pakistani journalist Mehmal Sarfaraz said, is their “world view”. They upstaged the peace initiatives in late 1990s by capturing the Kargil heights and then planned and executed 26/11 Mumbai attacks in 2008 to undo whatever had been achieved towards only commencement of talks. And, now that Modi muscled in and established a personal rapport with the Pakistani Prime Minister the latter’s Army would have none of it. Within 8 days of Modi’s Lahore visit they broke into the Pathankot Air force Station. Although planning for such an attack would take months but, most probably, the script was ready and they thought this was the best moment to put it into operation.

Pakistan has condemned the attack as if some other country had carried it out. So soon after a huge bear-hug with Modi Nawaz Sharif, perhaps, had to say something. But the pity is he did not assure of preventing a repeat attack. He could not have, in any case, as he has no control over his rogue army. It is a very rare kind of situation where the civil authority talks peace and its army wages war. This has happened not once, not twice but a number of times. Pakistani democracy is, therefore, a sham with an army that works in the international arena at cross purposes with the civilian authority. It has become so powerful and has developed such enormous vested interests in keeping Indo-Pak tensions high and the civilian government under its boots that no democratic process perhaps could ever shake it away.

No wonder, what the Afghan President Ghani did first thing after landing in Pakistan was to make a beeline for Rawalpindi. Even the US does business with the Pakistan Army as evidenced by the extended visit by its chief to the country. In matters of its concerns the feeling in the US is that it is not the Prime Minister but the Army Chief who can deliver. The latter has, therefore, eclipsed the Prime Minister. Besides, the current Army Chief has quickly acquired a “cult hero” status by battling terrorism and bringing in relative peace in the generally violent city of Karachi. Self-confessedly, the Army Chief plays a wider “soldier-statesman” role given the inability of the democratically elected government to govern effectively. He has opened a front against the jihadists operating in the West but opening a front against those operating in the East against India is another matter. These jihadists are his assets for inflicting those “1000 cuts”.

The pity, however, is that this attack has come so soon after the “détente” arrived at official talks held between the National Security Advisers and the foreign secretaries of the two countries at Bangkok early in December 2015. The first of the several take-aways from these talks was engagement with each other after years of harsh language and diplomatic sulk. Another take-away was the agreement reached to hold talks on Kashmir and terrorism. Th disengagement happened at Pathankot even before the ink used for the agreement could dry up. If a country could renege so quickly after arriving at an agreement at such a high level, perhaps, there would be no point in having anything to do with it.

Having invested so much in his ‘peace-mongering’ with Pakistan the attack on Pathankot should be a serious setback to Modi. The Opposition Congress is likely to tear him to pieces though its efforts over the last few decades did not yield anything much. The alternatives for Modi would seem to be only two - to go ahead with his peace initiatives either with the civil authority or with the Pak Army Chief or to take an about-turn and severe all relations (to the extent possible) with Pakistan. Already shrill voices are pitching for the latter course of action. It perhaps would be unwise but seems right at least in the immediate aftermath of Pathankot.

*Photo: from internet 

Chickens coming home to roost

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A blood-splattered class room in the Army Public School, Peshawar

So snugly does the idiom fit Pakistan. The terror that it disseminated has now come to haunt it. Purveyor of terror has now become its victim. And the worst manifestation of it was the Peshawar tragedy where as many as 145, including 132 children, were literally gunned down in a mid-morning attack in its Army Public School. It was said to be in revenge of the killings by Pak Army which has been conducting military operations against several terrorist groups in North Waziristan. It was a planned attack by a suicide squad of seven belonging to the terrorist group Teherik e Taliban Pakistan. With prior knowledge of the lay of the land they had come only to kill army officers’ children and they ruthlessly killed as many as they could. That some others, mostly teachers, were killed in the process was probably incidental. The attack created shock and awe, not in Pakistan alone but all over the world as this was perhaps the most barbaric and dehumanised act of terrorists bred in the fertile Islamic theological seminaries.

Having been the epicentre of terror it was a sad denouement for Pakistan to have been at the receiving end of their own terror network. Pakistan was probably enjoying the show when its terror networks were killing elsewhere. Their boys, radicalised to the core, were terrorising Eastern Europe, Russia, Central Asia, China, South East Asia and, of course India in the name of Allah and the daring brutal killings of the so-called non-believers was a matter of pride for their masters. In the process, a number of young and courageous young lads were lost, so brainwashed were they that they were prepared to give up their life in the prime of their youth for the cause of spreading the massage of the Prophet. Running seemingly an assembly line, the merchants of terror, the maulanas, mullahs and their ilk, have no qualms in readying young children or adolescents as suicide bombers or “fidayeens” for sacrifice for a cause that is as preposterous as their progenitors. Hitherto acting on foreign lands, their masters have now turned their evil eyes inwards on their own people and, what is more, on fellow Muslims. That they have the support of the Pakistani military in their endeavours is also a truth and yet the military launched blistering attacks on the perpetrators of the demonic Peshawar attack killing as many as 120 militants within three days in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

Pakistan has had a violent streak since its inception. Although the country was created for Muslims who felt they could not live with non-Muslims (read Hindus) yet its founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah had visualised a secular state. Ironically, he was at the back of the attack in 1947 on the Valley of Kashmir by Pakistani Army regulars and other tribal raiders just because a Muslim majority princely state acceded to a Hindu majority state. He wanted to grab by force whatever did not come his way in the manner he thought it should have. The violence fostered by the father of the nation has somehow stuck with the country and it happily treaded its violent ways down the years. A virtual genocide was launched against all non Muslims in Pakistan, Hindus getting the best of attention. Hindus constituted 15% of West Pakistan population when the country came into existence. By 1998 their strength had come down to 1.6% and today it should be much less as most of the Hindus have been driven out of the country. A majority of the Hindu population of Sindh is now in India, harassed as they were by abductions and then conversions of minor girls, demolition of temples and just plain killings.

 Gen. Zia ul Haq’s advent as the dictator of the country saw incremental increase in violence. Having been unable to wrest Kashmir from India in as many as three wars, he planned to bleed India with “a thousand cuts” – in the shape of terror and proxy war in Kashmir. Radicalisation of the country and its Army was seen in full play in the 1980s during the Afghan War where Zia threw in his radicalised Army as also Mujahideens to assist the local resistance with the financial backing of the Western Powers to drive the Soviet Army out of Afghanistan. As the Russians withdrew the mujahideens morphed into two jihadist groups – the Taliban and al Qaida. It is these two groups which have spread the cult of violence. While al Qaida is somewhat quiet, the Talibans continue to operate in Afghanistan and in the FATA along the Afghan border, each distinct from the other with a different name and not quite aligned. Tehrik e Taliban Afghanistan generally takes on the government establishments and security forces of Afghanistan and Tehrik e Taliban Pakistan has earmarked for its operations the FATA region.

The massacre of the children saw Nawaz Sharif, Prime Minister of Pakistan meeting chiefs of all political parties to arrive at a consensual approach for dealing with the escalating terror. Obviously the consensus was to deal with the terrorists with a strong hand and the Prime Minister, a bit carried away, declared that he would root out terrorism from the country. In fact, earlier he had said that the entire region had to be rid of the scourge. Whether that happens or not remains to be seen. In the scheme of things of Pakistan and its Army, the Taliban working the Western frontiers have become a menace and need to be liquidated. But that apparently, would not apply to those who operate in Kashmir and other parts of India. They, after all, are “strategic assets” nurtured by the Inter-services Intelligence of Pak Army in pursuit of the planned “thousand cuts”. Called “non-state actors”, they are as much state actors as any. No wonder the mastermind of 26/11 attack on Mumbai was bailed out soon after the Peshawar massacre and, despite broad hints to the contrary, the Pakistani prosecution failed to file an appeal against the court’s orders.

 As it appears now, regardless of what happens, Pakistan, , will not touch Dawood Ibrahim, Lashkar e Toiba and Hafiz Saeed’s conglomeration of terror organisations. Saeed went about spewing venom against India, brazenly holding Narendra Modi responsible for the Peshawar attack even as the dead children were being buried. The intense hatred for India that permeates the Pak Army, the Pak government and some terror outfits would not allow dismantling of all terror infrastructures especially created for India. That would leave Pakistan as Bruce Reidel, Director of Brookings Intelligence Project said, with the only alternative, “to play patron while bleeding as victim”. An Indian retired general too had said that keeping snakes in the backyard and feeding them milk is a sure prescription for getting stung once in a while. Apparently, only after the loss of many more innocent lives can one, perhaps, expect Pakistan to change its spots.

Photo: From the Internet

Airport musings

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In order to escape the noisy, ear-splitting Diwali of our Idgah Hills in Bhopal, where residents have loads of money to burn by way excruciatingly loud bombs by hundreds for days before and after the ‘D’ Day, we took a flight to Goa via Mumbai. We chose Goa for our escape as Diwali there is reported to be far less raucous and much more civilized and, I dare say, certainly more dignified. The flight to Mumbai was at 7.40 in the morning arriving at Mumbai before 9.00 and the flight to Goa was more than 5 hours later at 2.30 PM.

Called Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, the Santa Cruz Airport of earlier times, does not have a lounge for passengers transiting through it. We are pretty prompt in Indianising the old Western names but we are very tardy in upgrading the facilities. This is true of this Airport as it is true of many other outfits and institutions. Hence we had to wait at the crowded, rather inadequately provided departure lounge for all of those five hours and more.

Sitting on a chair that was not meant for being sat on for long hours I saw through the skylight a large number of planes fly away.The Santa Cruz airport, barring its international arrival area, those days used to be wide open to the public. Anybody could get into it. For example, all of us could go right up to the glazed walls of the arrival lounge from where we could see bigger planes mostly of foreign airlines and Air India parked up in front. Almost all international airlines - from SAS to BOAC to KLM and Pan American down to Quantas would touch down at Bombay. It is here that I happened to see an Air India Super Constellation one of which had crashed near Djakarta in 1955 before the famed Bandung Non-Aligned Conference killing many Chinese delegates. We saw all these planes through the glass panes as none even in those days could step on to the tarmac. However, those who were keen on an unrestricted and better view would go on to the terrace of the then single storey structure of the Airport and crowd around its parapets to ogle at the aircraft landing or taking off or even those that were stationary.

Obviously, the airport was a pretty busy one, a far cry (naturally) from what it used to be more than fifty years ago. Watching the planes fly away one after another my mind flew across more than fifty years to 1955 when my sister and I were visiting  during the summer vacation an uncle of ours who used to live and work in what was then Bombay and who was very fond of watching planes flying in and flying out. Whenever he could squeeze out some time he would take us out to show us the sights of Bombay. And whenever there was nothing much to do after his office in the evenings he, along with our aunt, would drive us down to the Santa Cruz airport. Parking the vehicle in front of the Airport building we would all saunter down to the arrival lounge for domestic flights. Civil aviation in India in those days was in its infancy and, hence, not many flights would be arriving. The arrival area was, therefore, largely unoccupied.

 Today getting into the Santa Cruz airport, or for that matter into any airport in the country, just like that is impossible. Those were the terror-free innocent days when men were simpler and uncomplicated. Securing of lives and property, both public and private, was not an activity of such a mammoth proportions as it has become today. True there were deviants even then; there were thefts, robberies, rapes and murders - the crimes that could be taken care of by the usual policemen. But, the menace of organised terror that seeks only to kill people in as large a number as possible had not yet made its appearance. All public and private places vulnerable to terror attacks have therefore had to be closed to the casual visitors and specialised security personnel have had to be engaged to guard them.

 Providing security from stray unexpected bombings in dense urban areas or premeditated armed attacks such as those on the Indian Parliament in 2005 or on Bombay in 2008 or preventing hijacking of passenger aircraft like the one of Indian Airlines in1998 or for crashing into predetermined targets like in 2001 on the World Trade Centre in New York have become
the most obsessive activities of governments the world over. On the back-room boys, on installation of systems for relentless vigilance and logistics of the foot soldiers of the security organisations mind boggling sums are being spent in order to provide failsafe security to people all over the world. All because some people of a particular faith do not like people of other faiths - a persuasion that is unquestionably medieval in character. One cannot but hark back to the statement of Ajmal Qasab, the young Pakistani participant in the Mumbai terror attack who, to his misfortune, was captured alive. Sent along with others on a suicide mission he said they were mission was to kill as many as possible from among Hindus, Jews and others for no apparent reason. As it appears now, preparations for this attack had been going on for at least three years. His parent jihadi organisation seems to have an assembly line that produces in continuum terrorists who are prepared to remorselessly kill or get killed in the service of their faith which, incidentally, makes loud claims to be a religion of peace. So efficient is the brainwashing of young minds by the purveyors of terror.

Sitting there in the departure lounge of the Mumbai Airport I wondered how things have changed and how life has become restricted with public organizations   becoming more and more restrictive, taking away the small pleasures and the absolute freedom that we once used to enjoy without any let or hindrance - all because of a few thousand creepy and sneaky terrorists who never come upfront to attack but do so by stealth and surprise.

Today at the same Santa Cruz airport  or any other airport of the country, forget about a casual visitor, even a passenger holding a valid ticket has to clear at least three layers of security checks before emplaning. And then one cannot carry any fluids, not even drinking water, in the plane. In the US even shoes have to be taken off for security checks as a suicide bomber once hoodwinked the security personnel by carrying a bomb into a plane concealed in his shoes.

From what is happening all around looks like there is going to be no let up in terror – hatred of one community for another relentlessly enlarging its area of influence. Those carefree and innocent days of half a century ago seem like gone forever.

Photo of an Air India plane is taken from the Internet