LOL...! Made me laugh and cringe, but the 15 minute window had already passed by the time i registered the connection....! <g>
Oh, the winds in Chicago have torn me to shreds
Reality has always had too many heads
Some things last longer than you think they will
There are some kind of things you can never kill
From www.tehelka.com
Musharraf's India card -
a diversionary tactic
The Pakistan Army has a huge number of Pashtuns, who are increasingly agitated about Pak betrayal of Afghanistan.Iit is to divert their attention that Musharraf is desperately attempting to raise the India bogey, says M D Nalapat
New Delhi, October 25
It is clear from the Vajpayee government's behaviour that even a nuclear attack on India is unlikely to be met with a matching response. External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh will hie off to Paris, London and Berlin on the way to Washington, Home Minister L K Advani will spew more bellicose rhetoric as a substitute for action, while the Great Man himself will compose more doggerel on why human beings kill each other. The "nationalist" Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government has proved to be the weakest so far where national security is concerned, even worse than I K Gujral's and coming close to the records set by Morarji Desai's and V P Singh's governments.
This being so, one wonders why Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf is ranting about "threats" from India. A few rounds of light weapon fire across the border do not an invasion make, and yet, Pakistani forces have been put on the "highest alert" to foil threatened Indian "mischief or misadventure". Either George Fernandes - and let me in this forum confess to being politically incorrect, and say that I admire the man, though I seldom agree with him - is being taken seriously at last, or there is some other motivation behind the Musharraf's dusting off the India bogey.
There is. The Pakistan army is run by Punjabis, with help from Pashtun collaborators. The latter form over a fourth of the military strength, around half of the Punjabi quota. In some units, Pashtuns number nearly half the total. They have been used by the dominant Punjabi elite to "maintain order" in Sindh and Balochistan, and to help in the training of terrorists in camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Till October 7, they have been loyal servitors to the Punjabi herrenvolk, as domesticated as Mullah Omar's Haqqani and Binori-trained battalions.
No longer. The willingness of the Punjabi elite (under cover of poor Pervez Musharraf, who will finally get sacrificed) to stab the Taliban in the back by giving logistical and intelligence support to their US tormentors, in exchange for financial and other goodies, has hit at the heart of Pashtun pride. These brave fighters regard the informer as being the lowest category of life, and that is what the Pakistan Army and its agencies have become.
While cagey about input regarding Pakistan, China and Turkey's huge investment in Talibanland, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has supplied extensive details on both the Omar clique and the Arab jihadis in Afghanistan. Powerful khans, such as the Haqqanis of Kabul and the governors of Jalalabad, Herat and Kandahar, have been contacted and told to ditch Omar and the Arabs to save their skins. In days past, Pakistan was willing to fight to the last Kashmiri in Kashmir. Clearly, Islamabad is now prepared to help the US to the last (Arab-Omar) Talibani.
Pashtuns within the army are seething at the "sellout". They are not assuaged by the continuing flow of help to what is left of the Pakistan-controlled forces across the border. For the first time since the 1950s - till before Ayub Khan took over as Army chief - Pashtuns are beginning to resent the overlordship of their Punjabi masters. Should this undercurrent increase in intensity, the Pakistan army could crack at its core, and no longer be a reliable instrument of Punjabi domination.
It is to divert the attention of the Pashtuns in his force from the "betrayal" in Afghanistan, and to focus their gaze on India, that Musharraf is bleating about the "threat" from a regime that makes a marshmallow look like steel.
Sadly for him and his controllers, such a diversionary ploy is unlikely to work. Already, units of the ISI have in effect revolted. They have refused to convey reliable intelligence about the Afghans. Others have joined captains, majors and even brigadiers in the Pakistan Army in sabotaging cooperation with the US by giving information and assistance to the Taliban via trusted jihadi groups.
In the months ahead, the Pakistan Army is going to slide out of the control of those officers seen as helping the US defeat the Taliban. Rather than waste resources trying to stave off the inevitable, Washington needs to prepare for the emerging chaos in Pakistan. |
