One can’t thank Mr Ehsanullah Ehsan enough for unraveling who the likes of Taliban, al-Qaeda, Daesh, et al actually are. In a masterfully directed video, Mr Ehsan has eloquently set the record straight on these foot soldiers of Indian Intelligence Agency Research & Analysis Wing (RAW). His successful decade-long career as a spokesperson clearly self-manifests in the effortless performance and the commanding screen presence.
Mr Ehsan undoubtedly is the Edward Snowden of Dar-ul-Islam and one would be surprised if a biopic isn’t in the offing. And while PEMRA might’ve stopped some of the footage being aired by a TV channel, the four-minute trailer has already gone viral on social media.
There’s no shame in admitting when one is wrong. Following Mr Ehsan’s revelations, it now seems ridiculous that there was ever a doubt over the fact that Daesh is headquartered in Karnataka.
Deoband, where almost all South Asian jihadists’ ideological roots are, is of course in Sahranpur, Uttar Pradesh whose Chief Minister now is Yogi Adityanath. It was Dar-ul-Uloom Deoband that issued a fatwa against Pakistan and staunchly opposed its creation in the lead up to the freedom movement.
Dear reader, do you, like this half-baked writer, also feel infinitely thick for not being able to put two and two together? Of course many of you were cognisant of these jihadists’ RAW origins from the get-go, but the rest of us could never keep pace with your intellectual prowess.
One would have to say then that an apology has long been overdue. Please forgive those of us who seek irrefutable evidence over blind faith, or as you might rightly call it – common sense.
But now the lid has been lifted, it is now up to us to explain the designs of these agents for those who might still be unaware of the plot that many of us have been falling prey to.
These RAW-funded jihadists have been tasked with global destruction through the one weapon that the Muslim World has always been vulnerable to: enforcement of Islam. They unite us under the Shariah banner, and use our brainwashed minds to justify their brutalities, which gives credence to their actions and garners popular support for them.
As Mr Ehsan so decisively disentangled, it is Taliban’s Islam that forms almost the entirety of their arsenal.
Taliban’s Islam is founded upon the idea of takfir, i.e that certain individuals or groups should be excommunicated because they do not adhere to a particular belief, ritual or idea.
Their Islam sanctions violence as a means to enforce their interpretation of religion on both Muslims and non-Muslims alike, claiming that ‘jihad is mandatory on every believer’.
Most pertinently, Taliban’s Islam says people should be killed for blasphemy, adultery, apostasy, homosexuality, etc. But here’s the clincher: so does the Islam of many of us.
Therefore, anyone who interprets Islam according to the aforementioned beliefs is, in fact, a RAW agent as well.
Now according to multiple surveys a comfortable majority in the Muslim world, and even more Pakistani Muslims, would espouse at least some of those beliefs given above. That’s how deeply entrenched RAW is.
The odds, then, are that you and I are RAW agents as well. We just don’t know it yet.
But more than the ordinary folks like us, it’s the high-profile RAW spies in Pakistan that need to be called out.
Despite establishing Shariah in Pakistan being a RAW design, everyone from the founding fathers of our country to our current leadership has somehow managed to mimic this agenda of the Indian intelligence agency, at some point or the other.
Since the erstwhile mujahideen are anti-Pakistan groups, the first illustrious RAW official was Mr Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who supervised over their penetration into Afghanistan in the 70s following the Fall of Dhaka, to allow (West) Pakistan to gain strategic depth after no longer being able to flank India from two wings.
As Taliban’s Islam is the yardstick, Zia-ul-Haq was arguably the most successful RAW officer having rammed their ideology in Pakistan’s Penal Code, exclamation marked by the blasphemy law. This particular spymaster was also in-charge of these anti-Pakistan battalions on the Afghan front ostensibly assembled to thwart Soviet designs in the 80s.
Since PPP is still chanting for Bhutto, the entire party thence is RAW-sponsored. The current ruling party PML-N, the offspring of Zia, and ally of sectarian RAW agents in Punjab like SSP, ASWJ and LeJ, falls in the same category. The PTI, of course, is credited with ‘mainstreaming’ RAW.
The more common RAW spies would be anyone who has supported the Taliban. These include almost every high profile Islamic scholar that hasn’t had to flee Pakistan, most mosque imams and virtually every instructor at the majority of madrassas.
We’ve had lawyers venerate Mumtaz Qadri – who literally confessed to being a RAW agent – and senior High Court judges toe the Taliban line in their judgments. The Taliban have also been used as strategic assets by the establishment, and acknowledged as such by former intelligence heads and Army chiefs.
When Pakistan’s Constitution is a RAW agent as well, we clearly can’t seem to catch a break anywhere.
What, then, do we do at a time when our backs are against the wall and the state institutions are so openly siding with the enemy?
We fight.
We fight against anyone trying to use Islam for violence. We identify anyone expressing Islamist supremacy in and around us – that person, right there, is a RAW agent.
We counter anyone who uses Islam to perpetuate discrimination, human rights abuse and bigotry. And we stop the enemies from enforcing Islam in a region that was multiethnic and religiously pluralistic long before RAW even came into being.
Let’s see what we have in common with the Taliban and eliminate the RAW agent inside all of us. That’s when our state will cease to be a RAW agent as well.