Thursday, February 28, 2019
#PeaceNotWar - #India-#Pakistan - Playing by the enemy’s rules
If Masood Azhar drinks, he’s breaking out his best bubbly now I’m guessing Masood Azhar is currently a very happy bunny. At the moment the man is probably feeling like someone who has won three jackpots at the same time. If Azhar had written down a wishlist of things he wanted out of the Pulwama attack, his tick marks have gone far below and beyond his list and he has summoned a slave for a new ball-point pen, because this operation is a gift that will clearly keep giving. I suspect Azhar doesn’t drink, but if he did, he’d be breaking out his best bubbly to go with the three kinds of biryani his favourite wife has just made.
There is an old and basic axiom that applies to both sport and war and it is this: don’t play the game your opponent wants you to play, or, don’t let your enemy dictate how you fight the battle; force the other side to play your game, fight the enemy in such a way that he doesn’t enjoy the battle. In the wake of the Pulwama attack, all sorts of people across India seem to have forgotten this simple principle.
What did Azhar want when planning this operation? He wanted to create anger and outrage of the kind where ordinary Kashmiris would be attacked by their fellow Indians. Check. Accomplished on a big scale. He wanted to give a fillip to all the brainless warmongers in India and Pakistan in order to increase tensions and raise the chances of a conflagration between the two countries. Check. Azhar knows the worst outcome for people like him would be pincering by two sensible governments in Delhi and Islamabad working together; conversely, the best result would be to have two cynical leaders using jingoism and war-braying for their own ends; well, he’s neutralised the compromised Imran Khan and just provided extra fuel to the faltering engines of Narendra Modi’s agenda just as elections approach, so wahaan bhi mithai baanto, hand out sweets for that too. If Modi and Amit Shah now manage to snaffle the elections, the mithai distribution in Bhawalpur, where Azhar has his headquarters, will double — business will be good for the next however many years.
Gets the jackpot
On top of all this basic bonanza, Azhar has won extra jackpots as well. We now have Sourav Ganguly and Harbhajan Singh, not among the brightest cricketers who’ve worn the India cap, loudly proclaiming that India should not only boycott playing Pakistan in the forthcoming World Cup but cut off sporting ties altogether. The one theory Bhajji and the Prince of Bengal have put out is that in the forthcoming World Cup, India can afford to give Pakistan a walk-over in the group games and still get to the knockout stage. Nice. What neither has laid out is what happens if pesky Pakistan also gets into the knockouts and meets India in the semi-finals or finals. Do we play them? Or does Virat Kohli show them rude gestures and give them another walk-over? Is Prime Minister Imran ‘Imm the Dim’ Khan going to burst into tears as he lifts Pakistan’s second World Cup because those nasty, nasty Indians didn’t play their matches? Or is he going to have to take tranquilisers to stop chortling madly?
Part of the huge soft power we have is that Pakistanis can see that our cricket grows from strength to strength while they can’t even play international matches at home. Not playing them on the world stage would make us look silly and churlish. Our soft power punches big and deep every time a Bollywood film is a hit in Pakistan. Shut these things down and we become more like them, closer to being a sad, depressed, ingrown toenail of a failed state. Therefore, let’s remember: every time some clown TV anchor in military fatigues calls for a war that he will not fight, every time some Facebook stormtrooper demands spectacular retribution, every time some crazy parivarted academic calls for the executions of the people from the minority community, Azhar feels like he has middled the ball and hit a sixer.
Of course, we need to respond to Pulwama but we need to do what the terrorists don’t want. So, every time the people who rule us keep quiet about attacks on innocent Kashmiris while counting their projected votes, imagine Azhar. Imagine Azhar with his salwars hiked up, hand splayed on lower stomach region, rocking to the beat of the ‘Jingostan’ track from Gully Boy, not dancing because the song is critical of jingoism, but dancing to the fact that we, in India, are following his plan and becoming more and more like Pakistan.
#India gives #Pakistan a dossier on Jaish
Has specific details of JeM’s complicity in Pulwama attack and its continued recruitment drives A dossier handed over by India to Pakistan mentions nine specific instances, in the past two years, when Jaish-e Mohammad (JeM) was conducting rallies and religious congregations to recruit men to the terror outfit.Vijaita Singh
India said these activities were conducted “right under the nose of the Pakistani establishment,” even though it was banned by the Pakistani authorities in 2002.
On Islamabad’s list
The outfit still features at serial number 3 in the list of 67 terror organisations proscribed by Pakistan’s Ministry of Interior published on the website of National Counter Terrorism Authority.
The Ministry of External Affairs said on Wednesday that a dossier was handed over to Pakistan with “specific details of JeM complicity in Pulwama terror attack and the presence of JeM terror camps and its leadership in Pakistan.”“The information about these activities of JeM are available in open source platforms like blogs, websites, Facebook and Twitter. Many of the posts openly declare association of JeM with terror attacks in India,” said a senior government official.The dossier said on February 20, 2018, JeM concluded a six-day congregation in Lahore when its “Shoba-e-Taaruf” (Department of Introduction) delegation held 13 interactive sessions in which 700 people, including 65 ‘Ulemas’ (Religious Scholars), participated.“During these interactions, around 30 people expressed their desire to take part in JeM training course — Daura-e-Tarbia. The participants showered praise on organizational activities of JeM and the role played by its chief Masood Azhar,” it said.
JeM’s propaganda blog Al Qalam claimed that its ‘Mujahideen’ carried out a “suicide attack” on February 10, 2018 at the Army’s Sunjuwan camp in Jammu where five Army officers were killed.
The blog claimed that the attack was a gift for “Modi government” on the occasion of the death anniversary of 2001 Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru and also for keeping its chief Masood Azhar in captivity when he was arrested in Kashmir in 1994. He was exchanged for release of hijacked passengers of Indian Airlines IC 814 in 1999. Afzal Guru was hanged on February 9, 2013. The dossier said the JeM claimed on its website that “revenge’ operations launched by the Afzal Guru Shaheed Squad continue in Kashmir.”
The dossier said that on March 27, 2018, a four-day congregation was organized by JeM in Sialkot district spanning over 17 sessions in which 1500 people, including 50 Ulemas (Religious Scholars), participated. “They (participants) appreciated the religious services rendered by Masood Azhar and prayed for JeM’s ‘Mujahideen’. The delegation held five separate sessions with JeM activists, which were attended by 28 Ulemas and activists,” it said.
Apart from this, posters and banners of training courses offered by JeM regularly appeared from February 3, 2018 to March 30, 2018 at Markaz Sharif, Bahawalpur, Jama Masjid Rashidiya in Karachi and Madrasa Sanan bin Salma in Peshawar. Bahawalpur is the headquarters of JeM.
On November 27, 2017, JeM organized a conference - Ghazwa-e-Hind (Holy War Against India) in district Okara that was attended by over 2,000 people, the dossier said. It was addressed by Abdul Rauf Asghar, the brother of Masood Azhar. One of the participants Qari Naveed Masood Hashmi wrote on Al Qalam that the “courage of Masood Azhar had inspired the continuation of jihad against Indian Army in Kashmir in accordance with the guidance of Prophet Muhammad.”
#PeaceNotWar - Does #Pakistan Have The Capability To Eradicate Terrorism? – OpEd
By Nauman Sadiq
After losing tens of thousands of lives to terror attacks during the last decade, an across-the-board consensus has developed among Pakistan’s mainstream political forces that the policy of nurturing militants against regional adversaries has backfired on Pakistan and it risks facing international isolation due to belligerent policies of Pakistan’s security establishment.
Not only Washington, but Pakistan’s “all-weather ally” China, which plans to invest $62 billion in Pakistan via its China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects, has also made its reservations public regarding Pakistan’s continued support to jihadist groups.
Thus, excluding a handful of far-right Islamist political parties that are funded by the Gulf’s petro-dollars and historically garner less than 10% votes of Pakistan’s electorate, all the civilian political forces are in favor of turning a new leaf in Pakistan’s checkered political history by endorsing the policy of an indiscriminate crackdown on militant outfits operating in Pakistan. But Pakistan’s security establishment jealously guards its traditional domain, the security and foreign policy of Pakistan, and still maintains a distinction between the so-called “good and bad Taliban.”
Regarding Pakistan’s duplicitous stance on terrorism, it’s worth noting that there are three distinct categories of militants operating in Pakistan: the Afghanistan-focused Pashtun militants; the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants; and foreign transnational terrorists, including the Arab militants of al-Qaeda, the Uzbek insurgents of Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the Chinese Uighur jihadists of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM). Compared to tens of thousands of native Pashtun and Punjabi militants, the foreign transnational terrorists number only in a few hundred and are hence inconsequential.
Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is mainly comprised of Pashtun militants, carries out bombings against Pakistan’s state apparatus. The ethnic factor is critical here. Although the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) like to couch their rhetoric in religious terms, but it is the difference of ethnicity and language that enables them to recruit Pashtun tribesmen who are willing to carry out subversive activities against the Punjabi-dominated state apparatus, while the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants have by and large remained loyal to their patrons in the security agencies of Pakistan.
Although Pakistan’s security establishment has been willing to conduct military operations against the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), which are regarded as a security threat to Pakistan’s state apparatus, as far as the Kashmir-focused Punjabi militants, including the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, and the Afghanistan-focused Quetta Shura Taliban, including the Haqqani network, are concerned, they are still enjoying impunity because such militant groups are regarded as “strategic assets” by Pakistan’s security agencies.
Regarding the question does Pakistan have the capability to eliminate terrorism from its soil, Pakistan is evidently a police state whose civic and political life is completely dominated by military and affiliated security agencies. In order to bring home the military’s absolute control over Pakistan’s politics, an eye-opening incident that occurred last November is worth noting.
On the evening of November 2, Maulana Sami-ul-Haq was found dead in his Rawalpindi residence. The assassination was as gruesome as the murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul a month earlier on October 2. He was stabbed multiple times in chest, stomach and forehead.
Sami-ul-Haq was widely known as the “Godfather of the Taliban” because he was a renowned religious cleric who used to administer a sprawling religious seminary, Darul Uloom Haqqania, in Akora Khattak in northwestern Pakistan.
During the Soviet-Afghan War in the 1980s, the seminary was used for training and arming the Afghan jihadists, though it is now used exclusively for imparting religious education. Many of the well-known Taliban militant commanders received their education in the seminary.
In order to understand the motive of the assassination, we need to keep the backdrop in mind. On October 31, Pakistan’s apex court acquitted a Christian woman, Asia Bibi, who was accused of blasphemy and had been languishing in prison since 2010. Pakistan’s religious political parties were holding street protests against her acquittal for several days before Sami-ul-Haq’s murder and had paralyzed the whole country.
But as soon as the news of Sami-ul-Haq’s murder broke and the pictures of the badly mutilated corpse were released to the media, the religious political parties promptly reached an agreement with the government and called off the protests within few hours of the assassination.
Evidently, it was a shot across the bow by Pakistan’s security establishment to the religious right that evokes a scene from Francis Ford Coppola’s epic movie The Godfather, in which an expensive racehorse’s severed head was placed into a Hollywood director’s bed on Don Corleone’s orders that frightened the director out of his wits and he agreed to give a lead role in a movie to the Don’s protégé.
The entire leadership of the religious political parties that spearheaded the campaign against the release of Asia Bibi and hundreds of their political workers have been put behind the bars on the charge of “disturbing the public order” since the assassination.
In the manner thousands of religious protesters who had been demonstrating against her acquittal were treated by the security agencies brings to the fore the fact that Pakistan’s military wields absolute control over its jihadist proxies. Thus, cracking down on terrorist outfits operating in Pakistan, particularly on Kashmir-focused Punjabi militant groups, is not a question of capacity but of will.
What further lends credence to the conclusion that Pakistan’s security establishment was behind the murder of Sami-ul-Haq is the fact that Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a close associate of the Taliban’s founder Mullah Omar, was released by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies in October and was allowed to join his family in Afghanistan.
Baradar was captured in a joint US-Pakistan intelligence-based operation in the southern port city of Karachi in 2010. His release was a longstanding demand of the US-backed Kabul government because he is regarded as a comparatively moderate Taliban leader who could play a role in the peace process between the Afghan government and the Taliban. He is currently leading the Taliban delegation in the negotiations with the US Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad in the capital of Qatar, Doha.
Furthermore, Washington has been arm-twisting Islamabad through the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to do more to curtail the activities of militants operating from its soil to destabilize the US-backed government in Afghanistan and to pressure the Taliban to initiate a peace process with the government. Under such circumstances, a religious cleric like Sami-ul-Haq, who was widely known as the “Godfather of the Taliban,” becomes a liability rather than an asset.
Opinion: India, Pakistan, and the remote but real threat of nuclear war
Michael Kugelman
India and Pakistan are currently embroiled in their most serious crisis in several decades. While a nuclear exchange between the two sides is highly unlikely, the possibility nevertheless remains, says Michael Kugelman.
For years, it's been a bedrock principle of international security: Possessing nuclear weapons deters nations from using them in warfare. Indeed, since 1945, no country has used one. However, there's an important caveat to this: Nuclear weapons may forestall nuclear exchanges, but they don't deter nuclear states from using military force against each other.
This means that the potential for escalation to nuclear conflict, while remote, is still quite real. There's no better illustration of this than the India-Pakistan relationship, which is currently embroiled in its most serious crisis in several decades. India and Pakistan fought three major wars before they became nuclear weapons states. But since they achieved formal nuclear status in 1999, they have continued to use limited military force.
Audacious use of force
And then came India's move earlier this week. After a Pakistan-based terror group with deep links to the country's security establishment carried out an attack in India-administered Kashmir that killed more than 40 Indian security personnel, New Delhi retaliated with arguably its most audacious use of force in Pakistan since a brutal war back in 1971.
Indian aircraft, according to New Delhi's official statements, flew over the airspace of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, crossed into the province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, and carried out air strikes on Pakistani terrorist targets. Not since the US raid on Osama Bin Laden's compound — admittedly, a much more sophisticated and riskier operation than the one staged by India this week — has such a dramatic military incursion been made on to Pakistani soil.
New Delhi described this operation not as defensive, but as preemptive — an effort to disrupt fresh plans for terrorist attacks on India. The implication is that India has declared its willingness to use force in Pakistan — and well into Pakistan, not just along the border — to eliminate imminent terrorist threats. This suggests the potential for more military force in the future.
It's also a reflection of India's "Cold Start" doctrine, which essentially institutionalizes the strategy of using limited military force, all below the nuclear threshold, against Pakistan. Islamabad, undeterred, carried out its own retaliatory strike after India's. It hit Indian military targets in India-administered Kashmir. Clearly, when it comes to India and Pakistan, there is plenty of space to operate under the nuclear umbrella. But that space is not unlimited.
A sobering lesson
It's not just all these escalations below the nuclear threshold that put India and Pakistan at risk of a possible nuclear exchange. Consider that Pakistan is producing tactical nuclear weapons at one of the highest rates in the world, and that Islamabad has never declared a no-first-use policy — which means, hypothetically, that any conventional use of force by India could be met with a Pakistani nuclear response.
The intention here is not to make alarmist predictions. A nuclear exchange remains highly unlikely. In the current crisis, escalation would need to go up quite a few more rungs. And at any rate, if tensions really spiral out of control, the international community — led by Washington, but also by institutions like the United Nations — would intervene to defuse tensions. Still, the possibility remains. And recent history offers a sobering lesson.
Back in 1999, around the time India and Pakistan formally became nuclear states, Pakistan-backed forces crossed into India-administered Kashmir. India attempted to repel them with airstrikes. The conflict, which began in May, stretched into July. Early that month, according to a disclosure made in 2015 by Bruce Reidel, a former US intelligence analyst, the CIA concluded that Pakistan was planning to deploy — and possibly use — nuclear weapons. "The intelligence," according to Reidel, "was very compelling." Soon thereafter, the Bill Clinton administration helped defuse the conflict, known as the Kargil crisis.
If Reidel's account is accurate, then the Kargil crisis may have marked the closest the world has come to nuclear war since the end of World War II.
Unfortunately, one can't rule out another Kargil-like moment for India and Pakistan sometime down the road.
Russia's Putin hopes for quick settlement of #India-#Pakistan crisis
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has already offered to facilitate talks between the two sides.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-kashmir-russia/russias-putin-hopes-for-quick-settlement-of-india-pakistan-crisis-kremlin-idUSKCN1QH2A7
#SayNotToWar - India must reciprocate Pakistan PM's call for dialogue: Bilawal Bhutto
Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Thursday urged India must reciprocate Prime Minister Imran Khan's call for dialogue and called for de-escalation before it is too late.
"It is the youth of the subcontinent who will pay in blood and coin for generations to come for the shortsighted decisions of a few today," Bilawal tweeted.
"Pakistan’s Prime Minister’s call for dialogue must be reciprocated, time to deescalate before it’s too late," the PPP chairman added.
It is the youth of the subcontinent who will pay in blood and coin for generations to come for the shortsighted decisions of a few today. Pakistan’s Prime Minister’s call for dialogue must be reciprocated, time to deescalate before it’s too late.
2,100 people are talking about this
Political leaders on Wednesday voiced their unflinching support for the government and armed forces of Pakistan in the face of Indian aggression over the past couple of days, which saw violation of Pakistani airspace by Indian jets and subsequent downing of Indian aircraft and capturing of a pilot.
Members of political parties also lauded Prime Minister Imran Khan's offer for a dialogue with New Delhi to give a chance to peace between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
PML-N's Ahsan Iqbal said, "The entire Pakistani nation is on one page. Wherever there would be a question of Pakistan's freedom, sovereignty or integrity, there we all stand as one rising above all differences. With the same passion, the opposition offered its unconditional support to government in the Parliament and it is still offering and will continue to offer this support for the defence of Pakistan.
"I understand this that there is also a very important message in it that both countries are nuclear-capable states and neither can run down the other, but its price can be too high. So, we should move on the path of peace instead of war, but if Indian miscalculates Pakistan's capability, and perhaps it has come to know that it cannot miscalculate the capability of the Pakistani forces and the nation, and it will have to pay the price for that."
He further said: "So instead of acting in tit-for-tat mode and taking this confrontation towards escalation, India should wisely opt for the way of talks, but it should also not take our dialogue offer for our weakness at all, because if it again cast an evil eye on Pakistan, then the Pakistani nation will fully fight it."
https://www.geo.tv/latest/229568-india-must-reciprocate-pakistan-pms-call-for-dialogue-bilawal-bhutto
Wednesday, February 27, 2019
Surgical Strike 2: It was dark, says Pakistan Defence Minister on PAF role. Internet trolls him apart
Pakistan Defence Minister Pervez Khattak was savagely trolled on social media after a clip from his press conference went viral. Khattak answered it was dark to a question on why the Pakistan Air Force did not shoot down Indian Air Force jets. Twitter erupted.
akistan Defence Minister Pervez Khattak is right in the middle of a Twitter storm after his press conference on the Indian Air Force's airstrike in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The minister is being trolled left, right and centre on Twitter after a clip from his presser went viral on the micro-blogging platform.
The minister was asked a question on why the Indian fighter jets were not brought down by the Pakistan Air Force (PAF), Khattak's response to the question was, "Our air force was ready but since it was dark they could not assess the damage so they waited and now there is clear direction that if there is any other similar attack we will respond adequately."
On February 26, the Indian Air Force struck deep within Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinceand eliminated training camps of the terrorist organisation Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM). The pre-dawn strike was conducted by 12 Mirage 2000 jets of the Indian Air Force, in retaliation to Jaish's attack on a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) convoy on February 14, an incident that took the lives of 40 CRPF jawans.
Pakistan's Defence Minister Pervez Khattak, in a joint press conference with the country's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and Finance Minister Asad Umar, spoke about the Indian Air Force attack.
After Khattak's explanation that the Pakistan Air Force could not shoot down the Indian Air Force fighter jets because 'it was dark', Qureshi jumped to his defence saying, "May I just add. The Pakistan Air Force was already airborne. We were ready for all eventualities."
The clip from the presser was shared widely on social media on Tuesday.
"This is the Defence minister of Naya Pakistan: "Our air force was ready but it was dark.." Guys, ghabrana nahi hai. #okbye," wrote Pakistani journalist Naila Inayat.
Twitter soon followed suit, from both sides of the border.
"India se phele China se confirm krlo... Radar diye the tumhe.. Ya fir anteena he pakda diya hai... Baate dekho airborne ki kr raha hai.." wrote a Twitter user.
Someone else attacked Pervez Khattak, "Pakistani DefMin sounds like old uncle asking for 10 rs near Tea stall."
"Angrezi mein bolne se izzat nahi bache gi z aur defence minister ko chavanprash khilao," read another tweet.
When a Twitter user wrote, "Oye defence minister ko kuch khilaaya pilaaya bhi karo !!", someone responded, "Hehe 7 bn dollar hai unke paas abhi. Saare paise military aur ISI khaa jaate hai, uske upar usme corruption. Tamatar bhi 200 mein bik rahe hai. Electricity nahi. Kuchh dino baad paani bhi nahi rahega."
"Is he your defence minister...give him some glucose water please...he need it.." was another tweet targeted at Khattak.
Enter PM Narendra Modi: "Modiji next time don't attack in night. Please wait for sunrise. Be fair."
And Amitabh Bachchan is here too: "When asked what happened, the Pak Defense recited a few words from an Amitabh song from Mr Natwarlal: 'Ghadi thi, andhera magar sakt tha.'"
If Pakistan is being trolled, can tomatoes be left behind? "So cool, they were bombing us, since it was dark we couldn't see what was happening and by God's grace we saw that nothing happened in the morning. Now let us all go back and start searching for the tomatoes."
"Lol. Hum torch/bulb hi fenk dete !" was another response to Khattak's words.
's other Tweets
On Tuesday, a fan account dedicated to Pakistan Defence faced a similar plight on Twitter after a tweet from the handle went viral for terrible timing. The account, called Pakistan Defence, tweeted at 12.06am on February 26, "Sleep tight because PAF is awake."
The Indian Air Force's airstrikes in Pakistan were conducted three and a half hours later. Twitter went crazy trolling the Pakistan Defence tweet all through Tuesday.
https://www.indiatoday.in/trending-news/story/surgical-strike-2-it-was-dark-pakistan-defence-minister-paf-trolled-1466149-2019-02-27