The events of the past month have overtaken efforts to chronologically bookmark the layers of an onion. It is woeful that my hypothesis on the romantic notion of Pakistan superimposed by layers of diverse interests is true. Children of opportunity who wished to exploit the creation of Pakistan are in overdrive to undermine its existence. This hotchpotch of narrow institutional and self-interests, international intrigues, petty politics and greed have coagulated into a lethal waste that must be incinerated.
For the past nine years I had been reiterating that international intrigues with local complicity were hell-bent on destabilising Pakistan. The areas chosen were Balochistan, FATA, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Karachi, South Punjab and Kacha around River Indus and economics.
The destabilisation plan was complimented through unsustainable consumerism, economic meltdown, debt trap and devaluation. It gave rise to wide and vertically rising pockets of poverty, making crime attractive. Selective mega projects were to project a mirage of rapid development. The services sector was to replace capital goods. The objective was to wrest permanent control of Pakistan’s consumer sector.
To create perceptions, some media houses were taken on board to play themes of corruption against individuals who were resisting such designs, and demean the armed forces and agencies to distort realities. All regulatory and transparency organisations were made toothless through a joint operation of media houses, Chaudhry Iftikhar and the federal and provincial governments. To appease the religious right, themes subtly played by these houses keep agitations alive. The surge of non-kinetic warfare against the Pakistani nation is a Trojan galloping at full steam.
Back in 2007, it was assessed that efforts to destabilise Balochistan will signal the epitome of deliberate international interference. India hired services of ex-KGB agents who had planned the insurgency of the 70s. Now many local actors are in high places and affect policy making. With the experience of Mukti Bahini, India was emboldened to replay the script and destabilise Pakistan across the spectrum. With assistance of local capitalists, India positioned itself to play a big role in Pakistan’s cartel of political industries as also keep leaders in compliance through corruption. In the course of eight years, Indian agents took control of religious dissent in Pakistan, reorganised TTP, infiltrated diverse forms of violence through zealots, smugglers, warlords, secessionists, ethnic groups, dacoits and economic power houses.
Balochistan is eyed by different countries for diverse reasons. Iran has historically resisted the construction of the port of Gwadar. When Pakistan bought this port from Oman and included it in the federal areas of the country, many did not like it. For Arab Kingdoms it reduces the strategic and economic importance of Persian Gulf. Americans in pursuit of containment policy abhorred development. When Ayub Khan, Bhutto and Pervez Musharraf realised its economic and security significance to Pakistan, they were orchestrated out of power. For Zia, Gwadar was never an issue. He was content to play his politics of holy war by providing access to foreign agencies to wage a Sunni dissident uprising in Iran. The policy forced Iran elsewhere. Three years ago, when the military barged with effective military and pacification operations and CPEC, all forces destabilising Pakistan had to move quick time in synergy to counter it. Karachi operations made sense.
Arrest of a serving Indian naval officer Kulbushan Yadev is the tip of an iceberg that Pakistan’s security agencies and analysts had been yelling for over a decade. Allegations about the use of Iranian neighbourhoods were subdued in nature of diplomacy. The group that India alleges kidnapped Yadev is an Indian proxy killing Punjabis and Hazaras at will in Balochistan. Similar footprints are also visible in Karachi.
In fact like East Pakistan, India felt emboldened to physically venture into sparsely populated expanses of Balochistan. The super spy laid caution to wind. During interrogations, he has become a whistleblower and would in due course reveal the extent and depth of Indian sponsored terrorism with militant, economic and societal tentacles. The exact date of Yadev’s apprehension will place Indian Prime Minister Modi’s flash visit to Pakistan in the correct perspective. Dynamics are deeper than they appear in the biggest spy scandal of this century.
When Benazir Bhutto in team with Dr. Zafar Altaf decided to make Canola, the edible oil crop of Pakistan, discourage water intense crops like sugar and developer Pakistani hybrids of BT cotton, the Monsanto and Indian soya meal lobbies moved swiftly in offensive. By 1997, Effed Industries Kabirwala, a research station financed by Germans was forcibly shut down under pressure from India and poultry lobby in Pakistan. The alternate was cheap soya meal from India for residual extractions. Political industrialists took control of the poultry industry.
Similarly, sugar despite being cheaper in tropical regions became a political industry. Canola project was bamboozled and remains so. The present government went out of way to shut down agricultural models of Late Dr. Zafar Altaf while some media houses projected him a villain. Sugar cartels reacted with vengeance and diversified into alcohol, ethanol, power and spirits to extent that sugar became a byproduct. Indian engineers and technicians became handy. Most co-generation plants despite burning waste products invoiced heavily for furnace oil. In return for hefty reimbursements this keeps their political ambitions in check and Indians know it. The political cartels controlling consumer items like fertiliser, steel, power, sugar, milk, soya oil and cotton are all interlinked amongst themselves and to foreign countries. No wonder that Engro, a role model of management, came to a grinding halt and moved into Engro foods. Industrialists in capital and value added goods when starved of energy and high cost inputs moved operations to Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia and even Australia. The small but performing manufacturing sector vanished. Hitmen are placed in every political party to ensure that the game goes on.
In the nuclear security summit in Washington the focus on sidelines is the growing nuclear arsenal of Pakistan. The scenario of sit-ins in Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore by the rightists, and a suicide explosion on Easter Day painted a country under siege and made Indian suggestions of an unstable nuclear Pakistan with USA more aggressive.
And wait! In the next few days, lobbies in Bangladesh will begin mock trials of 195 Pakistani military officers accused of genocide. Due to lack of evidence in 1972-73 both Bangladesh and India could not do it. How could an armed force of 35,000 soldiers fighting India on four sides, under siege by Indian Mukti Bahini for months managed to kill over 300,000 civilians. Once DNA sampling of mass graves in Chittagong, Sylhet and Santahar is carried out, most samples will emerge as Biharis and West Pakistanis.
Forces within and without against Pakistan are in full swing.
