Thursday, September 12, 2019
Going ballistic: Why Imran Khan's nuclear threat is a sign of Pakistani impotence
Powerless to do anything after India revoked Article 370 and turned Jammu & Kashmir into a union territory, the Pakistani political-military leadership has been reduced to firing rockets on Twitter, trying to storm the Indian embassy in London, and issuing threats of nuclear war.
What's ironic is the Pakistan Army (which has 600,000 soldiers) urging Pashtuns to fight in Kashmir. A clash with India would be too much for the corrupt generals of the Pakistan Army. The conqueror of corner plots doesn't have the cojones to fight the powerful Indian Army. Having lost all four previous wars against India, the actual war would be well outside their comfort zone.
Nearly broke and facing unprecedented inflation, Prime Minister Imran Khan has been on expeditions to Beijing, Washington and the Gulf emirates. In fact, so happy was Khan after the US released a few measly millions for the Pakistani military that upon his return from Washington DC he said, like a gushing bride, "It doesn't feel like I have come back from overseas, it feels like I have come back with the World Cup."
But after India's Kashmir checkmate, the ear to ear grins have disappeared from the faces of the Pakistani leaders. Most of them now wear a grim look as they have to explain what went wrong to an increasingly despondent - an irate - public which had been deluded for decades that the invincible Pakistan Army could roll into Delhi and defeat the Hindus at will.
In order to justify their existence, the Pakistani elites are now using their final card - threaten nuclear war over the Kashmir issue and hope to get the world's attention.
Pakistani art of negotiation
Pakistan is the only country in the world which negotiates with a gun to its head. Pakistani commentators like to say they can turn Mumbai and Delhi into ashes within minutes of war breaking out. This is their favourite catchphrase which they use on TV talk shows, at international forums and before anyone who cares to listen.In a whiny editorial in the Indiaphobic New York Times, Imran Khan once again rattled the nuclear sabre: "If the world does nothing to stop the Indian assault on Kashmir and its people, there will be consequences for the whole world as two nuclear-armed states get ever closer to a direct military confrontation."
Khan cited Defence Minister Rajnath Singh to show India's belligerence. Rajnath had recently made it clear that the future of India's "no first use" policy on nuclear weapons will "depend on circumstances". Since irony is not a faculty that Pakistanis have in abundance, Khan failed to see that India's position on no first use now fully aligns with that of Pakistan.
Islamabad's favourite strategy for the past several decades has been to go to the brink, get into a war it cannot win and hope that China and the West will step to stop India from delivering the knockout punch.
Nuclear capabilities
Before we analyse the Pakistani nuclear bogey, let's do an inventory check of its arsenal. Pakistan has cranked up the production of nuclear weapons in a bid to pull ahead of India in the South Asian version of the nuclear arms race.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) puts the Pakistani arsenal at around 120 warheads. According to the International Panel on Fissile Materials, an independent group that estimates worldwide nuclear production, "Pakistan may have a stockpile of material sufficient for more than 200 weapons and could currently be producing material for about 12-21 weapons per year. It has a capacity to increase this production rate to 14-27 weapons per year when two under construction reactors become available."
Judging by the pace at which Pakistan's doomsday stockpile is growing, the Islamic country could overtake France to become the fourth-largest nuclear weapons state by around 2024. Since the raison d'etre of the Pakistani nuclear weapons programme is to counter India's conventional might, should India be worried?
A difference of 10 or 20 nuclear weapons is hardly alarming. Even if Pakistan overtakes France's total of 300 warheads and the Indian tally is, say, 200, it will matter little in a nuclear exchange. Even 100 is overkill - for, there just aren't enough targets in all of Pakistan.
Islamabad's nuclear dilemma
From Pakistan's point of view, the dilemma is bigger. It can keep producing as many nuclear warheads as it wants to, but whether it can actually use them is a totally different matter. While the Indian strategic forces can erase Pakistan off the map with a dozen well-aimed warheads, India is too big to be decapitated by a first strike.
"Nuclear warfare is not a commando raid or commando operation with which Pakistan is more familiar," says Subhash Kapila, an international relations and strategic affairs analyst at the New Delhi-based South Asia Analysis Group. "Crossing the nuclear threshold is so fateful a decision that even strong American Presidents in the past have baulked at exercising it or the prospects of exercising it," he added.
Islamabad cannot expect New Delhi would sit idle and suffer a nuclear strike without massive retaliation. So basically, if Pakistan goes for the nuclear trigger first, it commits suicide. If India goes for first-use, Pakistan still ceases to exist. It's lose-lose for Pakistan in every situation.As US strategic analyst, Ralph Peters, the author of Looking for Trouble, explains, "Pakistan's leaders know full well a nuclear exchange would leave their country a wasteland. India would dust itself off and move on."In fact, New Delhi called Islamabad's nuclear bluff during the Kargil War, when it launched a ferocious offensive to push back the Pakistanis from the Himalayan heights. The Pakistanis had assumed India would not dare to risk nuclear war, believing they would use nuclear weapons early on in a conflict.
According to Kapila, the myth of Pakistan's low nuclear threshold is planted by US academia or probably officially inspired to keep India's political leadership in awe of the fearful consequences of a nuclear war.
In January 2000, India's then defence minister George Fernandes observed that in precipitating the Kargil War, Pakistan "had not absorbed the real meaning of nuclearisation - that it can deter only the use of nuclear weapons, but not all and any war".
Who else faces the Pakistani nuclear threat?
Ironically, the biggest threat from the Pakistani nukes is not to India, which has developed adequate countermeasures, but to the West, which winked at Islamabad's clandestine nuclear programme during the Cold War.
There is a possibility that radicalised Pakistani military officers with access to nuclear weapons could collaborate with the Pakistani Taliban, al-Qaeda or even members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) to launch a nuclear attack on the West or Israel. A compact Pakistani battlefield nuke smuggled into New York, Riyadh or Tel Aviv is the ultimate jihadi wet dream.
The ease with which terrorists are able to penetrate well-defended strategic targets in Pakistan such as military bases, ports and airports highlights the threat that these groups might even launch an assault against nuclear weapons depots.
Imploding economy
The India-Pakistan arms race is driven by the same set of fears and misinformation that sparked the ruinous arms race between the Soviet Union and the US during the Cold War.
The Manhattan Project scientists estimated 100-200 nuclear weapons would have been more than enough to defend America. But driven by the fear its own deterrent was not enough and that the Russians had more, the US went on a nuclear buildup, peaking at 31,255 warheads in 1967.
Not to be outdone, the Soviets decided they must overtake the US in both conventional and nuclear weapons. The Russian arsenal stood at an astounding 45,000 nuclear warheads.
The Soviets were ahead by miles, and yet all that firepower couldn't help them when an internal revolution broke up the country. It wasn't the arms race per se that weakened the Soviet Union's economy; rather it was the desire to overtake the US - whose economy was several times bigger - that exhausted the Soviets.
Pakistan is making the same strategic mistake. Its plan to achieve at least nuclear parity with India and then overtake its giant neighbour will only spell doom for its economy. For, Pakistan is a dirt poor country, which is dependent on handouts from the West and the Gulf states.
Producing nuclear fissile materials is an extremely complicated and expensive process. Maintaining a growing arsenal and then securing it round the clock also requires massive manpower and a huge expenditure outlay. Unlike India, Pakistan cannot sustain production and maintain the arsenal without driving itself into bankruptcy.With the acquisition of nuclear weapons, Pakistanis may feel cockier as they can now threaten nuclear Armageddon on the planet. Visions of a full-blown nuclear exchange (say, 50-100 nuclear explosions) in South Asia are enough to get the world's attention.
The problem is Islamabad has been doing this since the 1980s and most astute observers are aware these are empty threats with no intention to deliver - and little courage to push the doomsday button. The only people who continue to amplify Pakistan's threats are the left-liberal media in the West and India.
https://www.businesstoday.in/opinion/columns/pakistan-nuclear-threat-war-imran-khan-pakistani-army-india-article-370-jammu-and-kashmir-narendra-modi/story/377963.html
Pakistan Left Red-Faced At UN As Baloch Activists Expose Islamabad's Hypocrisy
Ironically, while Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi was addressing the UN Human Rights Council session in Geneva on Tuesday, protests took place right outside the UN Headquarters against the dire situation of Human Rights in Pakistan.
Baloch political activists and human rights defenders shredded Pakistan for atrocities and gross human rights violations against Baloch people. The Baloch Human Rights Council organised a briefing on 'The Humanitarian Crisis in Balochistan' at a special tent at Broken Chair in front of the UN headquarters in Geneva on Tuesday.
In the briefing, the activists stated how the Pakistani army continues to torture people and carry out operations in Balochistan, which has also lead to a massive increase in the number of enforced disappearances across the region.
Speaking to news agency ANI, Nabi Bakhsh Baloch from the US-based Baloch National Movement said, "Until Pakistan has its foot in our territory, Balochistan will never be at peace."
"Shah Mahmood Qureshi (Pakistan's Foreign Minister) will never reveal what atrocities are being committed by Pakistan there (in Balochistan). That is why we are here. Who will listen to our voices if we come out and speak," the activist stressed.
The activist highlighted how the world can see the what Pakistan is doing to Balochis in their own country. "Everything is out in the open. People do keep a watch on the activities of Pakistan through social media," he said, seeking global support for the liberation of Balochistan and its people.
Switzerland: Posters and banners highlighting human rights violations in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa installed in front of the United Nations in Geneva where 42nd session of UN Human Rights Council is underway.
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Referring to his speech at the UN Human Rights Council or UNHRC session, Peter Tatchell, a UK-based Human Rights activist, told news agency ANI that "All pieces of evidence from human rights defenders inside Pakistan and international human rights organisations, including Amnesty and other human rights watchdog, show repeated stories of brutality, abductions, disappearances, torture and extrajudicial killings carried out by the Pakistani state and military agencies."
"This is in clear violations of Pakistan's own constitutional as well as international human rights law," Mr Tatchell pointed out.
When asked about the standpoint of the international community that Pakistan exports terror across South Asia, the activist highlighted how Islamabad faces charges of funding, aiding and colluding with terrorists within its own state and exporting terror abroad.
"Until it ceases its human rights violations and its collusion with terrorism by cracking down on fundamentalists and extremists, the international community should institute economic sanctions and break diplomatic relations with Pakistan," he stressed.
He added, "There is no way that Pakistan should be receiving military aid from countries like Britain and the United States. That aid has to stop because it is complicit in human rights abuses" against its own people, especially minorities.
Speaking about Pakistan on similar lines, Razzak Baloch, Organiser of the US-based Baloch Rights Council, told news agency ANI, "This is what you call heights of hypocrisy." Pakistan wants to hide the gross human rights violations they are doing in Balochistan by diverting the world's attention, he said.
Ironically, while Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi was addressing the UN Human Rights Council session in Geneva on Tuesday, protests took place right outside the UN Headquarters against the dire situation of Human Rights in Pakistan and Balochistan.
Pakistan, on Tuesday, was left red-faced when Islamabad's desperate attempt to divert attention with its "fabricated narrative" on Kashmir fell flat with countries like Russia, United States, UAE all siding with India.While Pakistan has been running from pillar to post, New Delhi has made it very clear that Kashmir is a strictly internal matter for India.
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/pakistan-left-red-faced-at-un-as-baloch-activists-expose-islamabads-hypocrisy-2099354
Pakistan committing ‘systematic genocide’ of minorities, alleges Balochistan's human rights council chief Samad Baloch
Calling Pakistan a 'breeding ground' for terrorism, secretary-general of Baloch Human Rights Council, Samad Baloch, on Wednesday said Pakistan is committing 'systematic genocide' of the minorities
He also termed Islamabad a 'rogue state' with no law and justice
Along with Samad, many other activists have also called out Islamabad for committing human rights violation against the religious minorities
Geneva: Calling Pakistan a "breeding ground" for terrorism, secretary-general of Baloch Human Rights Council, Samad Baloch, on Wednesday said Pakistan is committing "systematic genocide" of the minorities.
File image of Samad Baloch, secretary-general of Baloch Human Rights Council. ANI
He also termed Islamabad a "rogue state" with no law and justice. "We have suffered a lot. Our socio-cultural, economic rights have been denied. Balochistan has been plundered, they have looted our resources. Balochistan is rich in minerals and natural resources, yet the people suffer," Baloch told ANI.
"Pakistan is a breeding ground for terrorism. Pakistan is not only committing systematic genocide of Baloch people but also involved in the genocide of our Sindhi brothers, Pashtuns. It is also a threat for the world because it is a rogue state, there is no law, no justice," he added.
Along with Samad, many other activists have also called out Islamabad for committing human rights violation against the religious minorities.
This comes at the time when the Pakistan government has submitted a dossier in UNHRC over Kashmir. At the UNHRC session, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi presented a false narrative on Kashmir maintained by his country following the Indian government's historic move to abrogate Article 370.
However, Pakistan has been strongly reprimanded by the Indian delegation. Interestingly, while Qureshi was addressing the session, protests were held outside the UN headquarters against the dire situation of human rights in Pakistan.
On Tuesday, the Baloch Human Rights Council organised a briefing on 'The Humanitarian Crisis in Balochistan' at a special tent at Broken Chair in front of the UN headquarters. Before that, a protest was organised by the World Sindhi Congress (WCS) at a time when Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi was speaking at the 42nd session of the United Nations Human Rights Council.
Pakistan has been condemned internationally for cracking down on the minorities living in their countries. Islamabad has also reportedly been discriminating against its religious minorities which is manifested in various forms of targeted violence, mass murders, extrajudicial killings, abduction, rapes, forced conversion to Islam, etc., making the Pakistani Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Ahmadiyyas and Shias one of the most persecuted minorities in the region.
Last month, the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada had raised the issue of suppression of religious freedom by China and Pakistan and slammed the two Asian nations for "persecuting and repressing" their religious minorities.
During the meet on safety of religious minorities, the US, UK and Canada expressed concerns over the increasing, widespread and undue restrictions on religious freedom in the two countries. They also highlighted the discrimination suffered by the Uyghur community in China and of Christians, Ahmadis, Hindus and other minorities in Pakistan.
Pakistanis happily convert girls to Islam but love marriage faces honour killing axe
NAILA INAYAT Updated: 11 July, 2019
Three years on, justice in Qandeel Baloch’s honour killing case remains due despite her brother’s boastful confession of murder.
This 15 July marks the third anniversary of Qandeel Baloch’s brutal honour killing at the hands of her brother. Qandeel was Pakistan’s first social media celebrity, whose persona made many in the devout country uncomfortable.
Unapologetically flaunting her sexuality in social media videos, 26-year-old Qandeel would address her naysayers with remarkable defiance: “I’m 99 per cent sure that you all hate me but I’m 100 per cent sure not even my shoe gives a damn about it.” Qandeel was indisputably a social spectacle of a woman’s manifestation of her attitudes and defiance, which was not only rebuked by all but also eventually brought her tragic end.
On the night of 15 July 2016, Qandeel’s brother Waseem Azeem first drugged her, and then strangled her as she slept. While confessing his crime in court, he said he was proud of committing the murder. “I’ve earned heaven and honour by providing relief to my family,” Azeem said. “Girls are born only to stay at home and bring honour to the family by following traditions but Qandeel had never done that. My friends used to send me her videos/pictures on my mobile and everyone was sharing.”
Not a single week passes without such horror crimes in Pakistan. It’s the same story every time, only with different characters and settings. What remains unchanged is the misery of women – sometimes at the hands of their fathers, brothers, husbands or uncles: all those relationships that are embedded in the idea of providing ‘security’ to women.
Numerous murders have taken place in recent years where the killers have committed such horrific crimes in the name of honour. It was the killing of Qandeel Baloch that brought this issue into national debates and resulted in the tightening of law against honour killing to protect women. Unfortunately, the situation continues to remain the same.
On 30 June, Muhammad Ajmal of Multan killed his wife, their two children and six in-laws on the suspicion that his wife, Kiran, was having an affair. Ajmal burnt their bodies by setting his wife’s family home on fire. This week in Nowshera, one Akbar Khan killed his daughter and her fiancé after learning that his soon-to-be son-in-law had visited her when he wasn’t home. Khan was helped in the killing by his son Ahmed Ali.All this in the name of honour.
There are many examples where men use honour as a means to reprimand women for certain acts that they disapprove of. This creates a situation where the man has the right to act as the victim whose honour has been smeared by an action carried out by a woman. This once again deprives women of their basic rights and gives the men in their lives to hold their actions as dishonourable at will.
This practice has not come down and the law has failed to generate awareness. There is also minimum coverage in the media. This shows the triviality with which the issue is perceived in society and puts a mirror on the psyche of people at large. We have become insensitive to this vice and there are no concrete measures in practice to put an end to this social evil.
The rare outrage over Qandeel Baloch’s murder forced Pakistan Parliament to bring new legislation against honour killing. The anti-honour killing law called for tough punishment, tightening a legal loophole that allowed killers to walk free if pardoned by the family members of the victim. The new law took away that power from the family members, except in cases where the convict has been sentenced to death.
However, this still hasn’t made much of a difference. Three years on, justice in Qandeel Baloch’s case remains pending despite her killer brother’s boastful confession. Similarly, the father, brother and uncle of Sana Cheema, an Italian woman of Pakistani origin, were acquitted in February despite them confessing of having strangulated her in April last year because she wanted to marry a man of her choice in Italy. In 2016, British-Pakistani citizen Samia Shahid, 28, was raped and murdered by her ex-husband Muhammad Shakeel with her father’s help while visiting Pakistan. The family had initially claimed Samia had suffered a heart attack but the authorities determined she had been strangled. Her father was released on bail that year and later died in a Lahore hospital in 2018.
A World Economic Forum’s report in 2018 on gender gap had ranked Pakistan 148th in the list of 149 countries. This report was received with much contempt, similar to the contempt Pakistan shows for crimes against women. Considering how such crimes are justified, one wonders how the conversions of minority girls into Islam are being perceived as Cupid’s doing, when similar love marriages – and within the same religion – are seen as issues of honour and lead to killings. This is indeed a tragic situation where the society is once again seen as manipulating a crime by calling it acceptable, even commendable, to suit its own beliefs.
Imran Khan lectures Modi on minorities. He must ban forced conversions in Pakistan first
NAILA INAYAT
In the last few weeks, a Sikh, a Hindu and a Christian girl were abducted and forcibly converted to Islam in Pakistan.
In the last few days, three prominent cases of girls from minority communities being forcefully converted to Islam have surfaced in Pakistan. These girls, hailing from Sikh, Hindu and Christian families, have highlighted the deep-rooted problem in the country, which has continued for decades now, prominently in Sindh and Punjab provinces. A problem that is clearly not a priority for the Imran Khan-led government.
Prime Minister Imran Khan is struggling to fulfil his grand campaign promises of making Pakistan a pluralistic society. Is saying that forced conversions are “un-Islamic” enough or can the beleaguered minorities expect a bit more from their PM?
After all, the Pakistan Prime Minister is leading a moral crusade of sorts against the Narendra Modi government’s treatment of Muslims and other minorities in India, especially after the abrogation of Article 370 in J&K.
While pointing fingers at India, Imran Khan can also consider raising voice for the minorities in his own country – that would be a good policy too. Khan did say that he will show Modi how to treat religious minorities.
A textbook conversion case
In the last few weeks, a Sikh girl was allegedly abducted and forced to marry a Muslim man and then sent back to her parents; a 15-year-old Christian student was forcibly converted to Islam; and a Hindu girl studying BBA was taken to a PTI worker’s house and forced to convert and marry a Muslim.
In Pakistan, there is no law banning forced conversions. It is a religious issue with no political party willing to legislate against it, which is the state’s biggest failure.
When Jagjit Kaur, a 16-year-old Sikh girl from Nankana Sahab in Lahore returned home last month, her family heaved a sigh of relief.
Like a textbook conversion case, the girl was kidnapped at gunpoint, forcibly converted, married to a Muslim man and when the family filed a case against the perpetrators, the girl gave a ‘false’ statement in the court under duress.
Jagjit’s kidnapping brought much embarrassment to the Pakistani government because the Indian Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh took up the issue publicly. This made the Pakistan Punjab chief minister Usman Buzdar form an inquiry committee to investigate what happened. No one knows what the findings of that committee were or who was reprimanded.
The governor of Punjab Chaudhry Mohammad Sarwar reached what we know as an ‘amicable’ resolution with the girl’s family and the alleged kidnapper, with the father of the kidnapper in a video saying he won’t press for the girl’s custody. In which civilised country can those who abduct and convert a girl on gunpoint stand tall like this, but in Pakistan.
Waiting for justice
However, this is not the first and definitely not the last time this kind of ‘justice’ has been served. While the parents of a girl from the minority community are only relieved to have her back, everyone moves on to the next case.
Hindu girl Renuka Kumari, who was allegedly abducted from Sukkur in Sindh and forcibly converted by her Muslim classmate, was released to her parents when she told the court that she wanted to go home with them. Again, no action was taken against the alleged perpetrators of the crime.
In another similar instance, 15-year-old Christian girl Faiza Mukhtar’s parents in Sheikhupura, Punjab, await justice as their child was abducted and forcibly converted at a madrassa. The family is now facing pressure from the local Islamist groups to either convert or forget their child.
Who to blame?
The issue of forced conversions of young Hindu and Christian girls has persisted in Pakistan for decades now.
These conversions are rampant in Sindh where thousands of girls from Hindu families are picked and converted with impunity, according to the annual report of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. It is no secret that the dargahs and madrassas in the area work as Islamic conversion factories. And, the perpetrators and the pirs of the shrines always have political backing.
The blame must clearly rest with the state because there are no laws against forced religious conversions.
The government of Sindh backtracked on the anti-conversion bill, which was passed by the Sindh assembly in November 2016. The bill made conversion under the age of 18 a punishable offence even if any person converts out of his/her own choice. Religious parties protested against the bill and called it ‘anti-Islam’. They said that the Council of Islamic Ideology should be consulted before any such legislation is moved.
In March, Sindh assembly member Nand Kumar tabled a new bill against the conversions – the Criminal Law (Protection of Minorities) Act of 2019. Within weeks, religious groups threatened protests, and leading the charge was the notorious Pir Mian Abdul Khaliq of Bharchoondi Sharif, popularly known as Mian Mithoo, the man behind several cases of conversions.
Sindh has a marriage law, which sets the marriageable age at 18 and above, but when it comes to marriages of Hindu girls, this law is never implemented. The much-hyped case of sisters Raveena and Reena Meghwar is an example of that. Both girls were minors, 12 and 15, yet their marriages were considered legal and the law wasn’t implemented. In March, Imran Khan ordered action and inquiry against the culprits in the Raveena-Reena case, but nothing has come out of it so far.
Forced conversion of young girls is the worst form of persecution that marginalised minorities face in Pakistan.
Imagine one day your daughter is abducted, next you know she has a different name, you can’t meet her, and she is as good as dead to you. But even death gives you closure. There is no closure in forced conversions. Even the ones who are lucky to return to their families live with the trauma and shame of rape.