Source: https://gadyalkashmir.com/
Editor’s note: Lieutenant General Asad Ahmed Durrani is a retired three-star general from the Pakistan Army. He has held prominent positions, including serving as the Director General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Director General of Military Intelligence for the Pakistan Army. Currently, Durrani is active as a commentator, speaker, and author. The article expresses the personal opinion of the author and may not coincide with the view of News.Az.
India was there before Modi – and had some remarkable prime ministers.
Morarji Desai was asked by the Great Satan to tighten a few screws on Pakistan to keep ZAB off the nuclear path. MD retorted that on behalf of a distant power he was not going to cause any discomfiture to a neighbour. I doubt if many of my compatriots have even heard of Chandrashekhar – looked more like a revolutionary than the chief executive of an elephantine country. No one talked more sense than him but what got stuck in my memory was his displeasure with any Paki-bashing. IK Gujral was probably the most visionary of them. The brain behind the Composite Dialogue – the best conflict resolution formulae I’ve ever known – his concept of sub-regionalisation, if ever India and Pakistan got lucky to be led by sane contemporary voices, would provide the best way forward. Communities straddling the frontiers if left to themselves could create the most robust basic brick to build a stable regional structure. Anyone familiar with the cross-border sentiments knows that the Bavarians have better empathy with the Austrians than with the rest of Germany.
Vajpayee was indeed in a class of his own. Ratted by Kargil he still gave peace a chance. Coming as close to the Plato’s philosopher king as possible in the modern times, he warned that if the regions didn’t hang together, the constituent countries would one day be hanged separately by the US. Manmohan Singh though a technocrat still took a giant leap by concluding a JATM agreement with Pakistan – if terrorism was India’s bug bear, let’s address it together.
Source: moneycontrol
Pakistan too had once leaders with an amazing ability to work for its interests – defying in the process the desires of its powerful patrons.
Ayyub Khan suffered from the illusion that the US had given up on India (any similarity with the current situation is not incidental). As soon as he found Washington again hobnobbing with its first love after the latter clashed with the Chinese in 1962 along the Himalayan borders, Khan reached out to China. Washington was not amused but soon thereafter beseeched us to connect it with the Middle Kingdom. God bless all our head honchoes who did not flinch when we were enriching Uranium (or was that Plutonium?) and daring the sole superpower riding rough shod in Afghanistan. Though we succeeded on both the accounts, I still have to keep reminding our scared rabbits that we also once did a Desai act — refused to severe our relations with the post-revolution Iran, and thus rankling our friends in Washington. Representing Iranian interests in the US for the last fifty years is an ode to our statesmanship.
So, what happened that we’re now celebrating the rupture in the region and falling head over heels in a paradise lost time and again?
Militaries do have a role in decision making; in Pakistan it’s ordained. After the fate Musharraf faced, the successor generation of generals found a better recipe to continue ruling the roost. A pliable mufti façade served the purpose perfectly. Bajwa-Imran combine survived on the “one-page” mantra. Asim Munir had no stomach for such gimmicks and with Shehbaz Sharif ever ready to play the Khaki ball, decided to run the country like a battalion.
For Trump the situation was now cut out to make an offer the naive Pakistanis could not resist. It was a masterstroke.
Source: Xinhua
You only have to convince one man now that this time around the myth of the infidelity of the Yankee Paramour could be buried – notwithstanding Kissinger’s warning that the American friendship was more lethal than its friendship, and that the free lunches cost a leg and a limb. And just in case we had a longstanding score to settle with India, the mighty US would pick up the tab by extracting some hidden minerals in the country’s troubled hinterlands. There was no need to mention China because in Pakistan the J 10s were now more popular than the F16s. I took a long time looking for a better rationale for Washington’s sudden infatuation with us but didn’t find any.
Indeed, this coup could not have worked without some willing or unwilling help from within the country. Having worked on threats to our homeland I was convinced that the external adversaries legitimately working against our interests were not so deadly as their native collaborators. They operate discreetly, create reasonable doubts, and promote the agenda of their foreign master in the name of national interest. Not too difficult to identify they remain under the cover of our equally deadly establishment. One only has to track their roots and the safe havens and if by a miracle succeed in this endeavour, get hold of them before they’re eliminated by their handlers.
The tragedy of Gaza might provide us a few clues how they operate. There were times we reached out far and wide to support the communities under duress and in the process fought the evil with the help of our allies. Though never seriously charged with sponsoring terrorism we not only were persuaded to fall back within our frontiers but also blackmailed with stuff like the FETF. No surprise there because it’s only the retreating armies that are subjected to death by a thousand cut. Withdrawal of the British Army from Kabul in 1841 if one cared to remember.
When Israel was pummelling Palestinians and others in the neighbourhood the foe within did its utmost to rein us in. Since the strategy worked well with many of our ilk, it was not too difficult for the great evil nexus to sequentially eliminate or neutralise the resistance – and some are now wondering who would be the next in line. No one thus needs to marvel when our fifth columnists advise us to embrace the executioners voluntarily – and nominate the man who saved Israel from the Persian wrath for a Nobel Peace Prize. Trump may have an unbroken record of going back on all his declared ventures but that’s more than matched by our wish to be taken for a ride.
(If you possess specialized knowledge and wish to contribute, please reach out to us at opinions@news.az).