Brown Pundits

From Dr Hamid Hussein.

Marked for Death – Assassination Attempts on Senior Officers of Pakistan Army
Hamid Hussain

Since 2002, Pakistan army is involved in a rapidly evolving struggle against terrorism.  When the first shots of this new war were fired, Pakistan army was neither trained nor prepared for the conflict.  Confusion, complacency and utter incompetence at all levels gave an upper hand to the extremists all over the country.  First, the government lost the control of tribal areas followed by the loss of the large swaths of the settled division of Malakand.  Militants established themselves in tribal regions and from there launched forays into major cities.  They abducted, killed and bombed civilians and soldiers alike all over the country sending the whole nation into a deep depression.

Police and paramilitary forces faced the brunt of the militant onslaught.  Many soldiers and disproportionately large numbers of young officers of army were killed and wounded in clashes with militants.  Militants embarked on a deliberate course of targeting senior officers of security forces including army.  Many senior police, paramilitary and army officers were targeted by militants.  This was a multipronged strategy with objectives of eliminating individual officers to shake morale of officer corps and on psychological plane sending the signal to general public that security forces couldn’t protect them.

On June 10, 2004, the convoy of Karachi Corps Commander Lieutenant General (later General and VCOAS) Ahsan Saleem Hayat came under attack that resulted in death of eight soldiers.  Ahsan’s driver and co-driver were shot killing co-driver on the spot while driver was seriously wounded and later died.  Driver’s foot remained on the accelerator and car kept moving but in a zigzag fashion.  Ahsan’s ADC seated behind the driver got hold of the steering wheel and got out of the ambush.  Attacker’s plan was to first detonate an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) stopping Ahsan’s car and then spray it with bullets to finish the job.  IED failed to explode and attackers hiding near the bridge opened fire killing several guards but Ahsan survived.

On February 25, 2008, Surgeon General of Pakistan army Lieutenant General Mushtaq Ahmad Beg was killed when a suicide bomber blew himself near his car stopped at a traffic signal in the garrison town of Rawalpindi.  He is the senior most army officer killed by militants.  On November 19, 2008, retired Major General Amir Faisal Alvi was shot and killed in Islamabad.  Alvi had served as GOC of army’s elite Special Forces Special Services Group (SSG) and involved in many early operations in tribal areas.  He was known for joining his troops in the heat of the operations that boosted the morale of his troops. After his retirement, militants had issued several threats to him and finally succeeded in killing him.

In a three week time period, three serving Brigadiers of Pakistan army were targeted in the capital city of Islamabad sending shock waves among the officer community.  On October 22, 2009, Brigadier Moinuddin Ahmad along with his driver was shot dead in Islamabad.  A week later, another Brigadier Waqar Ahmad Malik was shot in Islamabad. He was director Defence Services Guards (DSG).  On November 05, 2009, Brigadier Sohail and his driver were shot and injured when their car was ambushed in Islamabad.

On December 04, 2009, terrorists attacked a mosque in Rawalpindi cantonment used by soldiers and their family members killing more than forty people including several children.  Two suicide bombers blew themselves inside the mosque while other two threw hand grenades and sprayed the congregation with automatic rifle fire.  This was one of the most devastating attacks on army fraternity.  The dead included Major General Bilal Omar, Brigadier Abdul Rauf, Lieutenant Colonel Manzoor Saeed and Lieutenant Colonel Fakhar ul Hassan.  The only son of then Peshawar Corps Commander Lieutenant General Masood Aslam was also among the dead as well as sons of Major General Nasim Riaz, Brigadier Mumtaz, Brigadier Sadiq, Colonel Qaiser, Colonel Shukran and Colonel Shabbir.   Fathers of Major General Awais Mustafa and Colonel Farooq Awan were also among the dead.  Colonel Kaleem Zubair lost his father as well as his son in the carnage. This was the most heart breaking tragedy until militants trumped their own brutality when in December 2014 they attacked Army Public School in Peshawar killing around 150 students as well as many teacher.

On September 07, 2011, two suicide bombers targeted the residence of Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Frontier Corps (FC) – Baluchistan Brigadier Farrukh Shahzad.  In a devastating precision and coordination, first suicide bomber rammed the explosive laden car targeting FC vehicles waiting to escort the DIG-FC who was coming out of his residence killing several soldiers.  Five minutes later rushing through the chaos, second suicide bomber was able to barge through the damaged gate and partially demolished walls of the residence and detonated his explosives.  The second attack inside the residence killed the wife of Brigadier Shahzad, FC administrator Colonel Khalid Masood and injured Brigadier Shahzad and one of his children.  Thirteen FC personnel lost their lives and another sixteen injured in this incident.

In September 2013, GOC of Swat Major General Sanaullah Khan Niazi was visiting a remote outpost in Dir when his vehicle hit an IED killing him and Lieutenant Colonel Tauseef Ahmad.  It was a planned attack and later militants released a video of the attack.  Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) leader Mullah Fazlullah claimed that they were planning to target the Corps Commander of Peshawar based XI Corps but Niazi’s turn came first.

Though rare, but militants have also attempted to kidnap officers or their family members with the objective of exchanging them for the release of captured militant leaders.  Son-in-Law of then Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (CJCSC) General Tariq Majeed; the senior most officer of Pakistani armed forces was abducted by militants and kept in Waziristan for several years.  He was from a wealthy family and militants asked for a large sum of money as well as release of some high profile militants under army’s custody.  He was released but the terms of his release are not known.  On October 11, 2012, Brigadier Tahir Masood who had retired a week before from the media wing of Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) was kidnapped right from the heart of Islamabad while his driver was killed.  To date, he has not been recovered and believed to be in the custody of militants in Islamabad.

There were two major assassination attempts on then Chief of Army Staff (COAS) and President General Pervez Mussharraf in December 2003.  The first attack was on December 14, 2003 when terrorists planted large amount of explosives under a bridge.  When Mussharraf’s convoy reached the bridge, it was blown but no one was killed.  Over five hundred pounds of explosives were placed on the farther side of the bridge and explosive charge was detonated by an operative on the site via a telephone call to the receiver attached to the explosive charge.  Terrorists hoped that by this placement the oncoming car of General Mussharraf would either hit the concrete flying in car’s direction or ram into the exposed steel bars.  In case of missing these two eventualities, the car may plunge into the huge gap in the bridge slamming down in the bed (see the pictures below).  The operator in an effort to be not too visible positioned himself in such a way that obscured his direct visual contact with the convoy.  The result was that he couldn’t time the detonation with the car getting on the bridge.  These precious few seconds saved everybody.

Two weeks later on December 25, Mussharraf’s convoy was hit by two suicide car bombs in quick succession.  The driver of first attack was later identified as a Kashmiri named Mohammad Jamil.  The skin of his face blew off clean from skeletal structure preserving features.  An army plastic surgeon reconstructed it and it matched the picture on burned out identity card.  His cell phone was damaged but SIM was intact and from the calls as well as his diary recovered from his home provided some clues.  The driver of second car was a Pathan named Khaleeq.  The tracking of this piece of the investigation led to discovery that two soldiers of elite Special Services Group (SSG) were helping militants.  One named Dogar had served in the security detail of General Mussharraf and other Arshad was in the security detail of Vice Chief of Army Staff (VCOAS) General Yusuf Khan.  Later Military Intelligence (MI) recovered powerful rockets from his house in Kahuta.

General Mussharraf assigned the task of investigation of the assassination attempts to then Rawalpindi based X Corps Commander Lieutenant General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani.  This interaction brought Kayani very close to Mussharraf and later resulted in his succession to Mussharraf as COAS.  The puzzle of the December 14 attack was solved by a chance discovery by military authorities in Quetta.  They found that a civilian chap named Mushtaq had links with extremist elements in technical staff of Pakistan Air Force (PAF) at Quetta and Peshawar bases.  Quetta based XII Corps commander Lieutenant General Shahid Hamid called Kayani and informed him about this information.  This information led to arrest of several low level PAF technicians who were involved in the assassination attempt.

The ending of the saga of these two assassination attempts is tragic as well as comic.  On April 15, 2012, 150 to 200 heavily armed militants attacked central jail in Bannu freeing over 400 prisoners including a chap named Adnan Rashid.  Adnan was involved in assassination attempt on General Mussharraf.  Details of his arrest were never disclosed and there is some confusion.  A senior police intelligence official informed me that he was single handedly apprehended by an inspector of Intelligence Bureau (IB) (this inspector was later killed in a target killing incident).  Adnan was a PAF technician and may be member of the group suspected to have links with militants.  Later, he was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for his involvement in assassination attempt on General Mussharraf.

After his escape from Bannu jail, Adnan became another alligator in the swamps of Waziristan and quickly rose among the militant cadres due to his discipline and thorough planning.  He was no boy scout and was busy planning high profile strikes.  He established a small elite group and personally trained them for another assassination attempt on General ® Mussharraf.   He planned and executed a mass jail break in 2013.  On July 29, 2013, over one hundred heavily armed militants stormed central jail in Dera Ismail Khan freeing around 180 inmates from the center of the city flooded with police, paramilitary forces and headquarters of a whole infantry division of the army.  This was another sad day for the state of Pakistan.  In July 2014, Adnan was arrested in South Waziristan when military started a push in Waziristan.

Another key member of the group that planned attack on General Mussharraf was a chap named Mushtaq.  He was arrested and kept in the custody of PAF at a base in Rawalpindi.  In November 2004, when he came out of shower he saw the guard sleeping.  He put on an overall used by PAF technicians, walked to the main gate where guards waved him and then asked a uniformed PAF soldier on motorcycle to give him a ride to the bus station close by and disappeared.  A deeply embarrassed army vowed to capture him and a special cell in Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) was assigned for his capture.  Mushtaq was not the one to be happy with this one in a life time chance.  He went straight back into the belly of the beast and started planning another strike on General Mussharraf.  ISI got his scent, followed his contacts and he was finally arrested when he was travelling from Lahore to Islamabad.

Pakistan army paid a heavy price in the last decade and loss of such a high number of senior officers is unprecedented in recent military history. With the hind sight of 20/20, it seems that many of these losses were avoidable. One much neglected aspect is orientation towards personal security.  In my own observations, I found that almost all officers use drivers and in some cases guards.  Analyzing many assassination attempts, it is quite clear that assassins first shoot the driver thus immobilizing the target.  This quite clearly shows that if you are not driving your own vehicle, you are a sitting duck as you cannot escape from the ambush.  Compare this with the notorious case of Raymond Davis who was driving his car alone in a foreign country carrying his own personal weapon, reacted quickly and shot two who tried to stop his vehicle. If competent and professional, guards can provide some screen but in most cases they fail to protect their charge.  Personal security is a special task and simply handing a weapon to a lazy soldier from the cantonment does not equate to security.  I recall attending a high profile wedding in rural Pakistan.  I was chatting with one of the guests; a local garrison commander. I observed that he had three armed soldiers in civilian clothes guarding him. Even casual look showed that they were probably from supply or signals, handed a weapon and asked to accompany the local commander.  Few minutes later I noticed that two handed their weapons to the third and probably either went to rest room or eat food.  The lone guard had his own weapon slung over his shoulder while the two weapons of his colleagues were at his feet.  I sincerely hoped that garrison commander carried his own personal weapon and was not putting his life in the hands of his guards.  Many officers at the forefront of the operations have been threatened by militants.  Officers should be briefed about basic principles of personal security.  Two simple measures of driving their own vehicles and carrying personal weapon will help to keep the initiative in their own hands.

A decade ago, Pakistan army stumbled into a war with an unhealthy mix of confusion and hesitation at the highest level and unpreparedness at all levels thus handing the initiative to the militants. It took several years for the army to take the fight to the militants.  In the last one year, cleaning of some of the swamps of tribal areas and clean up in the cities has dramatically reduced violence all over the country.  Now that the militants are on the run, it is important to keep the momentum in tribal areas as well as cities to keep the citizens of the country soldiers and civilians alike safe.

Acknowledgements: Author thanks many for their valuable input and clarifications.  However, conclusions as well as all errors and omissions are author’s sole responsibility.

Notes:

Sources of information are based on author’s frequent visits to the troubled regions and interaction with a diverse group of individuals.  Most of the information about attempts on General Mussharraf is from his autobiography, Pervez Mussharraf.  In the Line of the Fire: A Memoir (London: Simon & Schuster), 2006

Hamid Hussain
coeusconsultant@optonline.net
July 31, 2015

A post with that title, over at Unz. The final paragraph:

If Dara Shikoh had defeated Aurangzeb and the British had never brought India into their Empire, would history have been different? I would like to hope so, but I doubt so. Akbar had attempted to create a new religion, but it did not last beyond his life. By the 17th century what was becoming Hinduism, and Indian Islam, were already sufficiently developed that they were becoming cultural attractors. Not through cognitive bias, but the weight of inertia of their cultural history and precedent. The transition from Akbar, to Jahangir, to Shah Jahan, and finally Aurangzeb, is one from an individual who brooked the displeasure of Naqsbhandi shiekhs, to one who worked hand in hand with them. An alternative vision is one where the heirs of Akbar turn their back on their dreams of Fergana, and rely upon Rajputs to dominate their lands instead of a mix of Central Asians and native Indians, Hindu and Muslim. Perhaps the Mughals would have become indigenized enough that they would transform into that they would have become fully Indian in their religious identity. Ultimately the answers of history are more complex than can be dreamed in your post-colonial philosophy, and the white man is neither nor the devil, but a subaltern of historical forces.

I had a longish exchange on twitter with a Hindutvadi friend and then just ordered all the tweets by time into this storify story. It’s crude, but you get the drift. I am posting it here so that people can comment on it if they wish.
This is twitter, so one can only say so much in 140 characters. And much is assumed or taken for granted in the background. Please go easy 🙂

And of course, it is a discussion with some more or less Hindutvadi Indians. A discussion with postmarxist Indians would look very different.

The discussion started with reading this article , in which the writer tries to define Hinduism for a young man who is confused (and lives in South India, with it’s peculiar history of this question). He classifies Hinduism as an “aggregate religion”, hence my first tweet asking if “aggregate” will prevail or Christianity will?

Just in case you are wondering why the discussion starts with me asking whether Hinduism or Christianity will prevail (and not metioning Islam), I think the likely Abrahamic faith for most Hindus to convert to (if they convert) in this day and age is Christianity, not Islam. If you think differently, please comment.

And of course, Hindu and Secular are both in scare quotes, so all arguments about what IS Hinduism and what IS secularism are included in those quotes 🙂

Last but not the least, my comment about “those with superior asabiya and means will prevail” if the current system is wrecked is, of course, meant to hint that it’s collapse will not necessarily (or even likely) lead to Ram-Rajya. Muslim and Sikh Asabiya and means will dominate the Northwest (at least). Something like that.

Frank Furedi has a piece up in Spike. 

Excerpts:

Reports that three sisters from Bradford and their nine children are on their way to Syria show that British Muslims inspired to make the journey potentially to join the Islamic State are no longer unusual or unique individuals. Likewise, the response to the reports shows how bewildered and confused many now are when confronted with the so-called radicalisation of fellow members of society.
The very language used to discuss the sisters’ preference for life in Syria over life in Britain betrays a complete lack of comprehension of the social and cultural dynamics at work. Bradford West MP Naz Shah, who spoke with the families of the sisters, stated, ‘I asked them if there was any indication [as to what the sisters were planning to do], and they said, absolutely not – it was a shock to them, it came out of the blue’. That it always comes ‘out of the blue’ is testimony to a failure to understand the cultural chasm that separates the world of many young Muslims from mainstream society.
Others report that the women came from a ‘hardworking’ and ‘respectable’ family. Yet young people going to Syria invariably come from normal families. The fact that the parents’ respectability is remarked upon at all shows that commentators are fixated on a non-existent pathology…


..What Clarke identified was a symptom of a far more profound and difficult problem. Young people do not turn into suicide bombers overnight or ‘out of the blue’, unless they can draw on cultural and political resources that affirm their decision. They draw support for their conviction that theirs is a cause worth fighting for from their everyday experience.


..The myth of grooming
Anglo-American societies have become so obsessed with child protection that they often interpret a variety of social problems through the prism of paedophilia. The idea of online grooming, for instance, has mutated into a fantasy used to explain every disturbing example of homegrown jihadism. The model of perfidious groomers seducing otherwise innocent young Muslims turns what is a struggle of ideas, a battle between ways of life, into a malevolent act of deception.
No doubt there are some clever online jihadists who are good at attracting the attention of would-be supporters. However, no one is forcing people to go online or to enter chatrooms or visit jihadist websites. Most of the time, it is the so-called vulnerable youth who, in the process of searching for answers, actively look for the ‘groomers’.


…In reality, the term radicalisation captures only part of the story. The sentiments and behaviours associated with radicalisation are more accurately expressed through terms like ‘alienation’ and ‘estrangement’. The sense of estrangement from, and resentment towards, society is logically prior to the radicalising message internalised by individuals. In Europe, the embrace of a radical Islamist ideology is preceded by a rejection of society’s Western culture. Invariably, such a rejection on the part of young jihadists also reflects a generational reaction against the behaviour and way of life of their parents.
This double alienation – from parent and society – is not unconnected to normal forms of generational estrangement. What we see here is a variant form of the generational gap, except that, in this instance, it has unusual and potentially very destructive consequences.


The embrace of radical Islam is underpinned by a twofold process: an attraction to new ideas and alternative ways of life, and a rejection of the status quo. The radicalisation thesis, however, one-sidedly emphasises the so-called groomers’ powers of attraction…

My own comment: They are not rejecting their parent’s values completely. They are embracing their “formal values”, while rejecting their “lived values”. The Islam their parents taught them almost certainly included Jihadist and anti-infidel elements that, taken literally and taken to their “logical conclusion”, lead to Jihad in Syria, if not in Britain itself. Their parents failed to teach them how they selectively follow this “ideal” and compromise with reality. And I do believe that Western education is also to blame in the sense that Western cultures emphasize authenticity and honesty and “being true to yourself” while rejecting the notion of saying one thing while doing another as undesirable. Sure, there are hypocrites in the West just as there are in the East, but some kids will take their education more seriously than others…this is a failure of hypocrisy … a crisis of hypocrisy is upon us.

This is Ajmal Kamal‘s brilliant review of Mumtaz Mufti’s autobiography “alakh nagri”. It was published in Adabi Duniya but I think it deserves publication in as many places as possible. Unfortunately, those who cannot read Urdu will not be able to enjoy it, but those who can should not miss it. The second half is even better than the first, so don’t stop halfway 🙂

for those who don’t know Urdu, it is impossible for me to translate this, but a little of what it is about and the background to the book:

Qudratullah Shahab was a senior Pakistani bureaucrat who also dabbled in literature (and in the management of literary figures on behalf of the Martial Law regime of Field Marshal Ayub Khan). He later wrote a self-serving and intensely “Paknationalist” autobiography that remains a bestseller in Pakistan until today (the last time I was at Karachi Airport, it was near the top of the list of books the airport bookstall guy mentioned as “current bestsellers”). He cultivated (or was cultivated by) a group of “mystical-Islamist-Paknationalist” writers including Ashfaq Ahmed, Bano Qudsia and Mumtaz Mufti and over time these people all wrote books and articles that hinted (or outright claimed) that the other members of the cabal were spiritually enlightened and possessed some mysterious knowledge about the inner (real) workings of the universe…workings in which the creation of Pakistan and its rise as an Islamic power were the central issue of the age. The workings of this particular brand of Paknationalism are briefly reviewed here. For more, see here and here….. and some positive and “inside” views as well as a few skeptical reviews here.  (the skeptical reviews are rather far down the page).
Anyway, Alakh Nagri has a lot of stories about Qudratullah (and his disciples) and how they are moving the cause of Islam forward. Even when they act so strangely that observers claim “the bastard is dead drunk”. They are not drunk, they are being visited..

btw,  a less toxic and more pragmatic version of this “mystical babas of Pakistan” tradition is now in the hands of Professor Rafique Akhtar, who is, among other things, the spiritual mentor of General Kiyani and the hero of best-selling columnist Javed Choudhry. Professor Rafique is not as completely bananas as the Qudratullah Shahab party but even a relatively sane person has his quirks…he reportedly claimed to Javed Choudhry that he had the key that unlocks the 12 hard drives of the Quran and therefore had access to ALL spiritual AND temporal knowledge, from astrophysics to astral projection. I am not kidding..it’s in Javed Ch’s book.

Dr McHugh doesnt think so, and he has just said so in the WSJ.

Yet policy makers and the media are doing no favors either to the public or the transgendered by treating their confusions as a right in need of defending rather than as a mental disorder that deserves understanding, treatment and prevention. This intensely felt sense of being transgendered constitutes a mental disorder in two respects. The first is that the idea of sex misalignment is simply mistaken—it does not correspond with physical reality. The second is that it can lead to grim psychological outcomes.

The transgendered suffer a disorder of “assumption” like those in other disorders familiar to psychiatrists. With the transgendered, the disordered assumption is that the individual differs from what seems given in nature—namely one’s maleness or femaleness. Other kinds of disordered assumptions are held by those who suffer from anorexia and bulimia nervosa, where the assumption that departs from physical reality is the belief by the dangerously thin that they are overweight.

…
At the heart of the problem is confusion over the nature of the transgendered. “Sex change” is biologically impossible. People who undergo sex-reassignment surgery do not change from men to women or vice versa. Rather, they become feminized men or masculinized women. Claiming that this is civil-rights matter and encouraging surgical intervention is in reality to collaborate with and promote a mental disorder.

Dr. McHugh, former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, is the author of “Try to Remember: Psychiatry’s Clash Over Meaning, Memory, and Mind” (Dana Press, 2008).

What do you think?

I think some, very few, people have such severe gender dysphoria that they really should change their own gender identification to the opposite sex. i.e., I think there are (and have seen, though not managed) patients who, as children, are completely and totally unhappy about their gender. There are young boys who endlessly dream of being a girl and young girls who desperately want to be boys. I assume some of the same carries over into adult life. If gender dysphoria is powerful and persistent, why not allow them to live as the opposite gender?
But I also think any surgery is cosmetic and is not a medical necessity and should not be done to children. I realize that this is a bit of a muddled position. It’s a muddled topic. I am wary of surgery because it is so hard to reverse and is such a “physical” treatment for what is, after all, a psychological issue… a problem that the patient may think will be helped by surgery, but that the data (and the surgical procedures themselves) suggest is not cured by surgery in the sense of “no more problem”.

The SJW community is fully committed to this cause and it has mainstream liberal support. But I am not sure the SJW community has thought it through. Just as an example, the same community is committed to the belief that sex roles are social constructs, not biological. That leads to obvious difficulties with this topic.
Anyway, I think civil rights for people who do opt to live like the opposite gender is not a bad cause (everyone should be free to live as they please as long as they dont hurt others, etc), but surgery for children may be a step too far.
I am open to being converted, one way or the other 🙂

Many Ismaili families from Gujrat moved to Karachi after partition. They became part of a prosperous, hard-working community. They kept a low profile. As in any community, everyone could not be rich enough to buy large houses next to the Bhuttos and Zardaris in Clifton. Some of them therefore bought land on the outskirts of town, where it was cheap, and built a housing society there and called it Al-Azhar Gardens.

People moved in 8 years ago and as is the tradition in this particular community, they maintained their colony exceptionally well. Almost everything was available right there. Proud residents boasted about the well designed housing, the community facilities, the cleanliness, the security.
But you still have to get to town to work and go to school and so on. So they ran a shuttle bus service.

Today, the shuttle left Al-Azhar Gardens with 60 or so people on board. Someone else got on at Safoora Chowrangi. Armed men stopped the bus and using 9 mm pistols, systematically shot dead women and children, one by one, at close range. It is said that a few children were spared, or survived by hiding. Or something. The dead include women and the elderly.
Imagine the scene in the bus. The mind boggles, does it not?

Who did it? Jundullah (and/or the Islamic State, they are one and the same in any case and these days the name IS will sell better), a well known anti-shia group with a long history in Karachi (including a history of getting people out of police custody in mysteriously easy escapes) has claimed responsibility.

Not to be left behind, Mubasher Lucman, Pakistan’s most popular “paknationalist” anchor has blamed the Indian “Relatives and Wives Wing” (otherwise known as RAW) for the attack.

Most people seem to take Jundullah/IS at face value, with their history of dragging Shias off buses and shooting them in the head. But there are those who blame MQM (supposedly operating on the instructions of RAW and Mossad). But whoever did it (I tend to go with Jundullah, but cannot claim to know for sure, so we will leave it at that), someone stopped a bus at a major crossing, calmly shot 60 people (43 of them now dead) and walked away without getting caught (and without any fear of getting caught). That does not look good. Not good at all.

We may soon hear that this is Pakistan’s 9-11. Unlike Amrika, Pakistan is rich in 9-11s. It depends on how you count. Using the standard formula of 1 Sunni Punjabi=3 Shias= 5 FATA Pakhtoons there have been at least nineteen 9-11s till now (more if you start counting poor people as humans, but that would be just too much). Unfortunately, I am afraid there may be more in the days to come.

The Prime minister has condemned it. He has also “ordered the police to arrest the culprits”. I am not kidding. He actually ordered the police to arrest the culprits!

 More to the point, the army chief has called up the Aga Khan and said he will use his iron hand at the earliest opportunity. Coalitions support funds may have been mentioned. Life goes on.

Before I am accused of cynicism, let me paint two (fictional) scenarios. Which one is more likely?

1. General X has figured out that Pakistan’s policy of nurtuting Jihadist terrorists as force-multipliers against India has blown up in its face. He wants to change things root and branch. Not just the Kashmir Jihad and strategic depth (a direct consequence of that jihad), but the whole shebang. Mufti Naeem and his ilk will be terminated with maximum prejudice. All training camps will be shut down. All militants will be reformed or terminated (with the same maximum prejudice). India will be offered a deal: Lets both stop using this kind of terrorism for any reason and settle all future disputes via negotiation or all out war, like civilized countries. No more shooting of random people sleeping on the platform at Chatrapati Shivaji Railway terminus. But General X realizes that 50 years of Islamic-Paknationalist education has prepared a generation of morons who cannot be told the whole truth without having their heads explode. So General X is going to lie, deceive, dissimulate and detour his way to a future TNT-free Pakistan. Sometimes his public actions will appear contradictory. Sometimes he will have to make up all sorts of bullshit about RAW and Mossad to get his way. He will do what has to be done. But in the end, we will have a defanged Pakistan where every poor man’s son (or daughter) has the chance to become a toll-collector on the Pak-China-Economic-Corridor. Then, our problems will be no different from those of Thailand or Phillipines (both of whom have some Islamist terrorists, but the government are not in bed with them). And so on…

2. General Y has figured out nothing but even he can see that something has to be done. Ismailis have been killed in cold blood and the Aga Khan is on the phone. Next the damn American ambassador will call and before night falls he will even have to pretend to have a meeting with the prime minister. He is pissed off. He promises to deal with everyone with an iron hand. He sends general Z to see the big boss in the Pentagon and General Z reports that the Pentagon is pretty pissed off too. Block E/F F-16s will not be free. Loans will have to arranged and then paid back at 27% compound interest by fleecing the patriotic people of Pakistan. But all is not lost. Brigadier April Glaspie does seem to have hinted that a transfer of mujahideen into IOK would probably be OK with the US. Or at least, that is what General Z gathered from the conversation. He also met the Chinese ambassador, who served the best halal dimsum in Islamabad and nodded and smiled through most of the dinner. General Z reports that all seemed higher than Himalayas and deeper than the Indian ocean, though his excellency Sun Weidong did become a little stern after that last shot of Mai Tai and said something like “we hope the fraternal people of Pakistan will do whatever is necessary to establish good public order”. But mostly he smiled. Not for lack of language skills. The man speaks perfect English and Urdu (and our man in the embassy reports, also some Punjabi) but most of the time, he just doesn’t speak. One hopes for the best.
All the corpse commanders nod their heads at these words of wisdom from General Z. The bearer brings in the tea and Peak Freans biscuits. Iron hands are waved around. All will be well.

Which (fictional) scenario sounds more plausible?

It started with the Kashmir Jihad (which started back in 1947, so Zia is not the only culprit). That jihad is the gift that keeps on giving. Everytime one of the foot soldiers in these massacres is caught (sometimes, they are. In fact, we even had Malik Ishaq in custody for a while), it turns out that they either went to a Kashmir Jihad training camp or were trained by people who got their start in the glorious Kashmir Jihad. Strategic depth. Where would we be without it?

For more on Shia-killing in Pakistan, see here.

btw, here is something I wrote four years ago. See the halva story at the end to understand what the PPP government in Sindh is doing. In fact, since people don’t like to click through, I will paste that four year old article here too. Try to figure out what has changed and what has not.

Pakistan: The End Of The Affair (June 11 2011)

1. “The imperialists” are unlikely to leave as soon as imagined. This alone puts the whole strategy in question because as in Kargil, there seems to be no plan for the possibility that the “enemy” may not do what we expect it to do.
    
2. “Our side” is unlikely to win all of Afghanistan even if the Western imperialists leave according to our timetable.  Given the opposing interests of many regional powers, that struggle is likely to be even more prolonged and bloody than the last attempt to fill the Afghan vacuum.
    
3. “Blowback” from this war will be worse than the blowback from the current confused operation. The Taliban refused to cooperate with us against anti-Shia terrorists even in the good old days of the nineties. This time around, they will be much more difficult to control. We cannot even control the current (relatively small) Islamic Emirate of Waziristan. To imagine that we will control the much larger and more fractious Islamic emirate of the future seems to be a pipe dream.
    
4. Any exit of the imperialists and return of the Taliban will inevitably be followed by a house-cleaning of Western “fellow travellers” in Pakistan. That cleansing may not be on the army’s immediate agenda, but pressure to Islamize Pakistan will be hard to resist once the Islamists are winning. The establishment may then find it expedient to try and get rid of the ANP, Pakistani liberals and other riff-raff that the army has tolerated in the Sulah e Hudaybia phase. Naturally the Americans will respond with retaliatory measures of their own and a liberal efflux will have some modest but detectable negative impact on the economy and the state; the final outcome, in a weak and fractious state, may not even be up to North Korean standard.