Pakistan: Who will name foreign hands?

THE FRONTIER POST

Even the prime minister has spoken up. He too has said that the unrest in Balochistan is "foreign-abetted". But he also has not named the foreign hands involved? Why this secrecy? Shouldn't those vile hands be identified specifically when they are playing so maliciously with the very territorial integrity of this nation and its solidarity and cohesion? Shouldn't our people know of this? Shouldn't the world be told of this? Why indeed this newly-wed damsel-like shyness to call her bridegroom by name? Is it because the names are too big that the rulers dread to name? But does anyone in Islamabad have an idea how hurtfully this stupidity of theirs is damaging Pakistan nationally and internationally? Off and on, someone in Islamabad whispers inaudibly that the Indian intelligence agency RAW is involved. But is that all? What base does it use to infest Balochistan and fan the separatist sentiments in Balochistan? What else if not Afghanistan? And could the Indian spy agency employ our western neighbour as the springboard for its vile activities in Balochistan all surreptitiously? And could it be acting all alone? We must be kidding ourselves. It has to have the local or foreign collusion in Afghanistan to carry out from there its subversion and infestation in bordering Balochistan. Our own hierarchs could be coy and reticent to our people. But not the objective realities. For years, the US viceroy and real effective power in Afghanistan after its US-led invasion and occupation was the American intelligence agency CIA. It indeed had conducted the invasion and was berthed by the Bush administration in Afghanistan to administer the occupied country thereon. Not a leave could flap on the security front in Afghanistan without the consent and acquiescence of CIA. For reasons known to it, the CIA at once shunted aside the Pakistani establishment, especially the ISI, and embraced alien agencies hostile to Pakistan. RAW was one of them, which had a free hand to subvert Balochistan as well as Pakistan's tribal and adjoining settled areas. But that was not all. In one fatal "terrorist" strike, several Chinese engineers and technicians building the key Gwadar port, which the American have been eyeing covetously all along, were killed and wounded. The Pakistani investigators must have found the hands responsible for this carnage. But they did not make their finding public, while the thinking public has still been pointing the finger at the CIA for that deadly attack. In any case, contrary to the general expectation that on completion the port would be handed over to the Chinese to operate, Pervez Musharraf, then ruling the roost, contracted it out to the Singapore Port Authority at throwaway terms and conditions. This he is widely believed to have done at the behest of the Americans. Pertinently, the Baloch dissidents, snuggled up in the warm laps of American spooks and lawmakers advocating deviously Balochistan's secession from Pakistan, have been giving out telltale utterances. When Balochistan secedes, they promise, they would not allow the gas pipeline from Iran pass through Balochistan to Pakistan. And the Gwadar port they would hand over to America. Anyway, our own spooks are still to tell the nation who were the merchants in human loyalties, who started descending on Balochistan in the mid-2000s with bags brimming with greenbacks. They were hawking to buy every Baloch youthful loyalty at the running rate of $10,000 per head plus a lot of goodies later on. This is a widely known fact in Balochistan, even though not much spoken of for the reasons not hard to fathom. And surely the government's ears and eyes must be knowing all about those merchants in human loyalties and their trading. Yet neither Musharraf ever dared to speak out nor our spooks have ever alluded to it, not even now. Why indeed are they so mum about something that they should have blared out at the top of the voice from the rooftop? They must take a lesson or two from the Indian establishment. With loud-mouthed surmises and allegations, it has successfully demonised the Kashmiris' palpably indigenous uprising for freedom as Pakistan-sponsored terrorism and India's own homegrown terrorism as Pakistan-abetted. And likewise the US administration officials, congressmen and intelligence community have peddled fictions so dexterously that the world has come to believe that everything is okay with Afghanistan except the Afghan insurgents' safe havens in Pakistan from where they crawl out and attack the Afghan and NATO forces. Someone in Islamabad has to break this silence fast and cry out the home truths. A lot is at stake in Balochistan for this nation's security and stability. A lot of foreign interference is occurring there to hurt us grievously, with Afghanistan serving as the nestling place of hostile alien agencies. And it is sinful not to tell the world what actually is happening there. Both Quetta and Islamabad must speak of it, but specifically and persistently, not vaguely or generally.