During his long stint in the Bureau, Dhar saw action in almost all Northeastern states, Sikkim, Punjab and Kashmir. He also handled delicate internal political and several counterintelligence assignments. After retiring in 1996 as joint director, he took to freelance journalism and writing books. Titles credited to him are Open Secrets-India's Intelligence Unveiled, Fulcrum of Evil – ISI, CIA, al-Qaeda Nexus, and Mission to Pakistan. Maloy is considered a top security analyst and a social scientist who tries to portray Indian society through his writings.
“Nehru wrote The Discovery of India in the Ahmednagar Fort prison. I began my journey to Discover Pakistan in the New Central Jail, Multan…”
So reads a small segment of the book on the Discovery of Pakistan, The Indus Saga-From Pataliputra to Partition by Aitzaz Ahsan, a legal luminary, human rights activist and an unrelenting champion of democracy.
History is often made by the churning of buoyant minds, and discoveries are made by great explorers delving into the realms of cranial electrodes and the physical world.
But the Discovery of Pakistan by Pakistanis has more metaphysical ingredients than the ingredients needed to make an Einstein.
Before the acclaimed Mr Ahsan discovered Pakistan while moving from one jail to another during Zia-ul-Haq regime, another worthy explorer, Chaudhry Rahmat Ali, had discovered the ethnic, linguistic, and religious wirings of the odd bubble of modern history — Pakistan.
Read all Maloy Krishna Dhar columns here
He coined the word and scribbled the philosophy around the time Allama Mohammad Iqbal discovered and pronounced the historic imperative for a separate Muslim homeland.
To be true to history, Mohammad Ali Jinnah did not discover Pakistan, he just delivered the child through the most painful Caesarean Operation India had ever witnessed; especially the Direct Action Operations. His final blow to India was not less gory than the invasion by Ahmad Shah Abdali in the 18th century.
Allama Iqbal, Choudhry Rahmat Ali, and Aitzaz Ahsan have a common connectivity. They all studied in Cambridge and contributed to the Idea of Pakistan significantly.
However, Ahsan’s journey to discover to the roots of Pakistan takes him back 5,000 years in history. The Pakistanis, according to him are the people of the Indus, while the rest of the Indians are the people of the Ganges, Yamuna etc. Even the people of Mohenjodaro were the predecessors of present day Pakistanis.
Pakistan, thus, is a great country of discoverers. But the latest discovery by Lieutenant General (Retd) Hamid Nawaz Khan, caretaker Interior Minister of Pakistan, surpasses the discoveries by his illustrious predecessors.
On March 1, he disclosed that knowledge derived by him from Pakistan Military Academy proved that India, Afghanistan, and the United States were behind proliferating acts of terrorism in Pakistan. He did not offer any proof, but asserted in Goebbelian style that the people of Pakistan “nurtured this perception.”
He also found that the waning of the Taliban offensive in Afghanistan matched the rising graph of terrorism in Pakistan. Similar discoveries were made by him in the recent past identifying Indian, Afghan, and even Iranian hands in the ongoing rebellion in Balochistan.
The itch of India pointing fingers at the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and Pakistan discovering the ghost of the R&AW in every nook and corner have assumed the character of inevitable kitchen-soot. Both periodically suffer from amnesia and fail to identify cancers in their own bellies.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is perceived as a US stooge and a stumbling block between Pakistan’s geopolitical hegemony and Afghanistan’s assertion of sovereign nationhood.
Pakistan’s Acting Interior Minister also hinted that the Durand Line should not be the restraining line of Pakistani operations against the terrorists. In reality, he wants to push the line nearer to Kabul, and thus rewrite the history of Pak-Afghan relations.
Afghanistan, like India, is now a hate object in Pakistan.
Also read: A troubled Pakistan bodes ill for India
What about the US? Perhaps the General tried to sound a warning that in the wake of Benazir’s assassination and the elections to the National and provincial assemblies, the US was cooling off towards Musharraf. Segments of the army still loyal to Musharraf are worried about their own and mentor’s future.
Huge chunks of the billions pumped in by the US for fighting terrorism, aka Taliban and al-Qaeda etc, are allegedly siphoned off to the pockets of Pakistani men in uniform.
The recently concluded elections have brought the US and the elected government-in-waiting on the same table. Washington has to deal with the new government directly, and not through the military. That’s what worries General Nawaz Khan.
His cracker-shot was thus aimed at the White House, insinuating that NATO was pushing the Taliban and al Qaeda onto Pakistani soil for strengthening Karzai. Such allegations are also aimed at justifying clandestine Pakistani support to Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda operators.
Such demented discoveries are meant to conveying the message to US that the fuel pipeline to the army and ISI should not dry up. However, past lessons indicate that the US is capable of reactivating the ISI and the Army behind the back of an elected government, and bring back another General to serve its interests.
General Hamid Nawaz did not spell out prescriptions for dealing with the alleged US involvement in spreading terrorism in Pakistan. Coming from a Minister of the ruling government, the US has either not taken the utterances seriously or brushed aside as tomfoolery of a Big Fool.
Obviously, it might not be immediately possible for another ISI chief to finance a terrorist like Mohammad Atta to stage another 9/11 like event. Or is everything possible in the Land of the Indus? America should know better.
Hamid Karzai is a worried --and an amused -- man. He is worried because despite the NATO operations, the Taliban controls major parts of the country. He is amused because his bugbear, the al-Qaeda, and its Arab, Waziri, Chechen, Uzbek and Pakistani warriors are nestled in Pakistan and for the time being incapable of joining forces with Mullah Omar. He expects that an elected government might prefer to normalise relations.
But the biggest hurdle is Balochistan. The Baloch rebels, headed by followers of Nawab Akbar Bugti and well-trained Baloch Liberation Army etc, have continued to resist Pakistan Army and the ISI. The Bugti, Marri, Mengal, and Zarakzai, Achakzai and other tribes have refused to surrender.
The Baloch struggle has passed through four crucial stages. I will discuss the heroic people of Balochistan and Balawaristan (Gilgit-Skardu of occupied Northern Area) in later columns.
However, The civil disobedience movement launched by the Marri, Mengal, Bugti, Zarakzai and other tribes and ‘Pakhtoons’ had very fast turned to armed struggle. Mir Hazar Khan Marri led the Baloch liberation movement under the banner of Balochistan Peoples Liberation Front (BPLF). The BPLF was forced to move to Afghanistan with thousands of its supporters.
From the original BPLF the Baloch people, in recent times, have branched into organisations like BLA, BLM, BLO, etc. There exists a Balochistan Government in Exile in the US, with branches in Europe. But the media in Pakistan is not allowed to indulge in deep examination of the tragedy in Balochistan and Balawaristan.
Pakistan has consistently alleged Indian, Russian and Afghan support to the Baloch rebels.
In an interview to the Outlook magazine (16.04.2006), PML (Q) secretary general Mushahid Hussain said: “RAW has established its training camps in Afghanistan in collaboration with the Northern Alliance remnants. Approximately 600 ferraris, or Baloch tribal dissidents, are getting specialised training to handle explosives, engineer bomb blasts, and use sophisticated weapons in these camps.”
The Baloch struggle is endorsed by scores of tribes and their brethren in Afghanistan and Iran. Pakistan, according to both Pakistani and EU human rights watch bodies, has carried out acts of genocide against them. If India, Russia, Iran and Afghanistan supported their movement, as alleged by Pakistan, the Baloch people would already have had a nation of their own, like Bangladesh. But India is sympathetic to the Baloch cause because of the heavy Chinese presence in Gwadar areas on the Arabian Sea and the acts of genocide by Pakistan.
Full coverage: Power game in Pakistan
Regarding the genocide in Balochistan, Asma Jahangir, chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said: “I have a very different view. It is not a matter of Indian government or Pakistan government. My view is that human rights issues are universal…And I think when our government takes out the issue of the massacres that took place in the Indian Gujarat, not only our government but all governments of the world should make India accountable for what they did…And therefore, it is just as right that when systematic human rights violations are taking place as they took place in Gujarat and what is taking place in ‘Baluchistan’, that the world community does pay attention to it. …so what is happening in ‘Baluchistan’ is grave enough to take notice of.”
Asma Jahangir and others did not blame India.
Pakistan is capable of hurting India significantly. Whether there is military dictatorship or an elected government, Pakistan’s Kashmir policy is unlikely to change. But a new chord has been struck by PPP leader Asif Ali Zardari, whose wife and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in December last year. In an interview to an Indian television news channel, he suggested that the Kashmir issue could be put on the backburner while ties in other areas were strengthened. It is hoped that Zardari’s voice would be heard by the Army, ISI and the Jihadi tanzeems. Hope is the only factor that keeps alive the relationship between the two arch rivals.
However, Pakistan continues to sabotage and subvert the integrity and sovereignty of India. Over a dozen of jihadi tanzeems were churned out from mosques and madrasas like the Darul Uloom outfits in Sind, Balochistan, Punjab, North West Frontier Province; the Binori mosque, Lal Masjid and Markaz Islamia Madrasa etc specifically for waging jihad against India.
The most notorious tanzeems are Harkat-ul- Ansar (Harkat-ul-Mujahideen), Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Al Badr, Harkat-ul-Jihad al Islami, Jundulla, Jamait ul Mujahideen Bangladesh etc.
In Bangladesh, over 600 mosques still churn out militants to fight against India in collaboration with the Bangladeshi Directorate General of Forces Intelligence, the ISI, and Pakistani tanzeems.
Over 5000 trained Jihadis trained by Pakistan and Bangladesh are available in the reserve pool. These outfits have spawned innumerable ‘cells’ and branches in India. They are ready to strike against Indian targets selected by the ISI. Immediate targets are Atomic installations, economic hubs, symbols of national authority etc.
Pakistan has exhausted the military option and the valiant Muslim nation cannot repeat the march of Islam to India like their predecessors did.
Excesses committed by the Muslim conquerors have been aptly described by Francois Gautier (Rewriting Indian History), “Let it be said right away: the massacres perpetrated by Muslims in India are unparalleled in history, bigger than the holocaust of the Jews by the Nazis; or the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks; more extensive even than the slaughter of the South American native populations by the invading Spanish and Portuguese.”
What we witness in India today -- the series of bomb blasts, killing of scores of innocent people, targeting of holy places --- are directly related to the legacy of the colossal killings of Indians by the Muslim invaders.
What was done by hordes of Turk, Afghan and Persian horsemen is now being attempted by the jihadis trained by ISI, DGFI and the tanzeem leaders through their fidayeen dastas (suicide squads) and jihadi vanguards. They are progressively trying to subvert certain weaklings among Indian Muslims.
This is the very war that people like Lt General Hamid Nawaz Khan have in mind when they shout war cries against India. Such ghostly discoveries keep the blood flow steady in a country which is yet to attain nationhood.
Discoveries by Aitzaz Ahsan, Iqbal, and Rahmat Ali etc have been overshadowed by the ‘discoveries’ of warmongers like General Nawaz.
But the fact remains that the so-called 5,000 year-old Nation on the Indus is no nation at all. It is a jihad exporting region ruled by fanatic army commanders, mullahs and paranoid politicians.
The views expressed in the article are the author's and not of Sify.com
