- ISLAMABAD - With winks and
nods from the hawkish pro-Israel and rabidly anti-China quarters of the
US, The News found out after chatting with some reliable sources in India
on the net, some psychological-war planners in New Delhi are desperate
to play a dangerous game. They want India to deploy and mobilise its
troops
and other military assets very close to international boundary with
Pakistan,
for the purpose of creating the illusion of preparations for an all-out
assault.
-
- Such an aggressive profile, they are confident, would
compel Islamabad to "bring out its nuclear assets into the
open."
That, in return, "should compel the international community (read
the USA and Israel) to exfiltrate these assets" in the name of
"pre-empting
a nuclear showdown in South Asia."
-
- In a widely quoted, reproduced and discussed piece,
which the renowned US journalist, Seymour Hersh, wrote for New Yorker
on October 29, the possibility of such an "exfiltration" had
already been disclosed. Hersh quoted a "senior military officer (of
the USA)" to claim that "an elite American military unit is
preparing for possible incursion into Pakistan in order to steal its
nuclear
weapons arsenal." Members of Israel's Unit 262, Sayaret Matkel, which
staged many clock and dagger acts for the Zionist state, were also
reported
to have joined the same exercise on the US soil.
-
- Neither the US nor the Israeli authorities ever bothered
to refute the sensational story as told by Hersh. Though
"revealing"
the "intense planning" for stealing Pakistan's nuclear assets
Hersh did express the doubt "whether the CIA -or any other
intelligence
agency- knows the exact location of Pakistan's warheads."
-
- Some other stories in the Western media later claimed
that immediately after the ominous events of September 11, Islamabad
remained
hecticly busy, for almost a week, in "dismantling and spreading its
nuclear assets to safer places," which could still not be located
even by "on the spot satellite devices" of the USA and its
allies.
They are now expected to get out into the open, if India really appears
preparing for an all-out war with Pakistan.
-
- The suspicions that India wants Pakistan to show its
nuclear hand also were provided with some substance to our sources through
an article C. Raja Mohan wrote for the prestigious Indian newspaper, The
Hindu, on Thursday. Mohan relishes an active access to defence and foreign
policy establishment in New Delhi. That also makes him a formidable mover
and shaker on the so-called track-II, which pretends pursuing the
"lasting
peace" between India and Pakistan through "informal
channels."
-
- And Mohan wrote: "There is a growing belief in
New Delhi that the time has come to call Pakistan's nuclear bluff. If it
does not, India places itself in permanent vulnerability to cross-border
terrorism from Pakistan."
-
- He claimed that since "the nuclearisation of the
subcontinent in the 1980s, India has exercised considerable military
restraint
vis-a-vis Pakistan." New Delhi's "limiting" the military
operations to "its own territory" during the Kargil crisis of
mid-1999 and fighting "the war with one hand tied behind the
back"
are projected as if the culminating point of the said restraint. But,
Mohan goes on, "India is now confronted with the possibility that
its restraint in the face of nuclear escalation is taken as a fundamental
weakness. India must deal with the possible assessment in Pakistan that
its nuclear capability has foreclosed all conventional military
options."
-
- Mohan is not alone who is discussing "the
restraining
effects" of a nuclearised South Asia in Indian media these days.
A very popular news portal, Tehelka, is also flooded with articles which
seriously question BJP government's decision of getting out of the nuclear
closet in May 1998 in the context of consequences "we confront
now."
-
- The demand is becoming louder that New Delhi must do
something to "foil the nuclear blackmail, Pakistan indulges in every
other day." Indian army is engaged in hostile build-up on its borders
with Pakistan in the background of these noises. Even the dispassionate
observers from afar are getting upset about it. Professor Stephen P Cohen,
the weighty scholar of South Asia, is one of them.
-
- Speaking at a seminar in Washington early this week,
he virtually hit the panic button. "South Asia may have reached a
point," said he, "where the two countries (India and Pakistan)
are really bent on hurting each other one way or another and it may be
time to consider more unilateral, more forceful American steps --
diplomatically
and economically forceful -- to get compliance from India and Pakistan
separately on some vital concerns. Clearly, we may have reached a point
where the peace process is simply too little, too late, and we may have
to turn to other forms of diplomacy."
-
- Cohen strongly believed that "the language and
the rhetoric", India and Pakistan are using these days, "is
extremely harsh." There could be another crisis "sometimes this
year." Like the ones, India and Pakistan went through in 1987, 1990
and 1999. They had to be pulled off the brink by outside mediators.
-
- Little wonder, Cohen urged the US administration to
"prepare a crisis team, get ready to go out there (South Asia), get
a good understanding of the personalities you will be dealing with because
there may be a sudden crisis blowing up very quickly. This could come
out of a misperception of one side or the other side in terms of troop
movements or possibly movement of nuclear forces around the
country."
-
- Contrary to distant observers, the spin doctors of the
Musharraf government are working overtime to churn the feel good stories.
So much space of the print media and time on the electronic media is
wasted
in drumming the self-serving theme that like many "half-baked
dramas,"
stage managed by the cloak and dagger boys of the Indian security outfits,
the recent attack on the Indian parliament was also a mock affair. And
the so-called international community had realised that. It's also
presumed
that since the USA is fighting its 'war on terrorism' from Pakistan's soil,
India would dare not contemplate an adventure against it.
-
- This hackneyed line fails to appreciate as to why
President
General Musharraf took no time in condemning the attack on the Indian
parliament in strongest possible words. And, why is he so keen to find
out the whole truth about Dec 13 incident through credible probes and
investigations.
-
- The obvious objective of the assault on the parliament
house in New Delhi was to provoke an all-out war between India and
Pakistan.
Even the rabid elements of Hindu-Right would hate to confront that
provocative
situation at this stage, when the American ground troops are physically
present and engaged in the region.
-
- The desperate remnants of al-Qaeda are the obvious
suspects.
We must expose them and their dirty, lethal and suicidal games. An Indian
participant of the seminar, which Professor Cohen addressed, was very
annoyed with the USA for not using the same language with Gen Musharraf,
after the attack on the parliament house in New Delhi; like the one
"it
is using with Arafat." Cohen bluntly told him: "Musharraf is
not Arafat. We happen to need Pakistan right now. There are American
troops
based in Pakistan, literally based there for some military purpose
connected
to Afghanistan and perhaps beyond that. For all I know, they're going
to stay there for some indefinite period of time. That's an extraordinary
thing for a country to do, especially a Muslim country, to allow American
troops to be based on their territory. So in a sense he (Musharraf) can
offer us much more than Arafat has been able to offer us."
-
- Saying this, however, did not stop the same professor
to wonder: "While we do need Musharraf for the short term, the
question
is do we need him for the long term? Do we need a Musharraf who is
supporting
what I would call terrorist groups in India and (its) administered
Kashmir."
And, this precisely is "the eventuality," Musharraf and his
spin doctors should prepare for now.
-
- The News International, Pakistan
|
