Ram Sahib I hope you enjoy this..<Questions: Is the present military sufficiently secular so as to be able to rationally control civilian use of The Bomb?
How serious are the inroads that Islamic fundamentalism may have made into the armed forces? Should the opponents of Islamic terror be concerned? >
Let go through this assortment of various issues that will give you some background of what has happened and what could have happened!! If Pakistan was a rogue state and if its army was fully infested, things could have been very very different, it was the 11th Sept events that decided the fate of our nation and to great extent the avoidance of a greater conflict for the world, although I don't think that Arab regimes would have bothered much if Pakistan as expected by many of its enemies would be at the core of the attack but fragmentation or dismemberment process like Turkish empire would have started if we would have made a wrong decision, in my opinion this was a collective decision and vested decision and that counts, nations that are problematic get killed on such stumbling blocks.
"Pakistan had to choose between going along with America or becoming another Iraq," said Pervez Hoodbhuy, a physicist at Quaid-I-Azam University and one of Pakistan's few anti-nuclear activists. "Our foreign policy was being held hostage by the fundamentalists, and Sept. 11 brought it all to a head."
Seeking to pre-empt threats to the stability to his government on the first day of U.S.-led attacks on Afghanistan, President Pervez Musharraf purged key senior officers in the Pakistani military and intelligence services, agencies that helped to create and support the Afghan Taliban militia, according to military sources. "He jettisoned a lot of ideological, emotional and historical baggage because he believed it was in the country's best interest. He can neutralize the opposition, but if he is to live up to his new road map, he needs a stronger hand." Musharraf's sudden overhaul, which included pushing the country's intelligence chief, Gen. Mahmoud Ahmad, into "premature retirement," was intended to rid his security agencies of top officers unwilling to abandon their support of militant Islamic groups and to prevent them from undercutting orders to sever Pakistan's ties with the Taliban, the sources said. Bomb since 1987 has been under Military control, the military as an institution is well organised and can distinguish very well if very national interests are at stake. They have been responsible with the technology and maintaining an adequate deterrence.
Any transfer of that technology to any other country is unthinkable, or indiscriminate use of any weapon, as a modern Army they have their strategic priorities right.
This makes them little more stable than their Islamic counterparts in the Arab and non-Arab world.
Look at this recent strategic somersault after 11th Sept, who could have predicted this one? Ditching the slogan of ‘army of Islam’ overnight did show that is not overtaken so far by religious zealots, Islam is just a camouflage to fulfil national interests and objectives. The use of political Islam and the militant strain of that philosophy legitimise many a illegalities, inhuman and unconstitutional excesses, it is indiscriminately used in the entire Islamic world for the furtherance of AGENDAS THAT SUITS NATIONS, each time when BOMB STARTS FALLING the nation under attack TURN THEIR GAZE TO God, they make evil things happen on earth but remission from God is expected there is always none, Ghaddafi, Saddam ASSAD ARAFAT AND NOW OMAR ALWAYS LEARNED IT HARD WAY, MUSHARRAF AS AN EXCEPTION CAME OUT GOOD WHEN IT MATTERED THE MOST.
Musharraf's decision last week to aid the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism has angered militant Muslim groups here, many of which have long-standing ties to Pakistan's military and intelligence services. Reflecting concern that Islamic clerics and senior officers could try to destabilize his two-year-old military government, the self-appointed president pushed out at least five prominent officers.
"General Musharraf clearly said that those who want to accompany him in this new journey can stay aboard, while others may leave," said one senior military official. "In every army of the world, either you follow the commander or leave."
Musharraf also ordered the house arrest today of one of the most vocal religious leaders in Pakistan, Fazlur Rahman of the Jamiat-e-Ulema-i-Islami party. Rahman was released later in the day. Meanwhile, leaders of 24 religious groups called for rallies in Pakistan's largest cities on Monday to protest tonights attacks in Afghanistan.
Some senior military officers, including Ahmad, the intelligence services chief who led two unsuccessful delegations to Afghanistan to ask the Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden, have argued strongly against Musharraf's willingness to support U.S.-led attacks against the Taliban.
In addition, some members of the intelligence service reportedly balked at orders to provide intelligence information to the United States as it prepared for military attacks against bin Laden and the Taliban leadership.
Now some of those top commanders, including three who helped Musharraf overthrow Pakistan's elected civilian government in October 1999, have been forced out of key positions, allowing Musharraf to recast Pakistan's most crucial new foreign policy and national security goals.
Musharraf, who was given 48 hours' notice of the start of the U.S. operations in Afghanistan by British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Friday, negotiated this rapid power shift using a deft combination of promotions and unexpected "early retirements," replacing hard-line senior members with moderates more compatible with his new policies.
He curtailed the power of Lt. Gen. Mohammad Aziz Khan, a strong supporter of Pakistan's radical Islamic groups, by promoting him from his key decision-making role as the army's vice chief of staff to the largely ceremonial position of chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. Unlike its counterpart in the U.S. military, the Pakistani joint chiefs chairman is little more than a figurehead.
At the same time, two hard-line officers who have resisted Musharraf's demands for compliance with U.S. requests to attack the Taliban -- intelligence chief Ahmad and the Army deputy chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Muzzaffer Usami -- privately submitted "premature retirements," according to military officials.
Musharraf named Lt. Gen. Ehsanul Haq, a moderate with an extensive background in Afghan issues, as new head of the intelligence services. Haq is also an ethnic Pashtun -- the same ethnic background as most members of the Taliban and about 40 percent of the Afghan population.
"By all standards, a moderate has replaced a hard-liner in this key job," one former intelligence official said.
The president also appointed new commanders in two strategic provinces on the Afghan border -- Baluchistan and the North West Frontier Province, volatile tribal areas where many leaders and residents have strong ties to the Taliban. The original members of the Taliban were trained in religious schools in Baluchistan and the North West Frontier Province, and those schools have remained active recruiting grounds for the Afghan movement.
The tough U.S. demands on Musharraf have given the Pakistani president the chance to redirect a military which has become increasingly supportive of hard-line religious groups in recent years. His efforts to curb the military's involvement with religious organizations and discourage the intelligence services' support of the Taliban had met little success until the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.
U.S. officials warned Musharraf soon after the attacks on New York and Washington that they expected him to silence public dissent in the ranks of his own military and intelligence services in the build-up to military action against the Taliban. But from the first days of Musharraf's efforts to coordinate intelligence and military operations, some of his commanders had offered stiff resistance and showed little resolve in supporting the president.
Pakistan's intelligence services has played a critical role in financing, arming and training the Taliban throughout its rise to power in Afghanistan between 1994 and 1996. Although Musharraf had come to believe the Taliban had become too extremist in the last two years, the radical Islamic movement retained many avid supporters within Pakistan's intelligence services and military.
Many military officers also have expressed discontent with Musharraf's willingness to cooperate with the exiled king of Afghanistan, Mohammed Zahir Shah, in organizing a government to succeed the Taliban. The Pakistani military has long distrusted the ex-king and is particularly riled that he has agreed to include the Northern Alliance, a rebel coalition fighting the Taliban, in discussions on forming a new government.
Musharraf's efforts to replace some of the most recalcitrant of the officers cuts deeply, however. Three of the men who today lost their influential positions were the three officers most important to the success of Musharraf's military coup in October 1999 and were his long-time personal associates.
But with the onset of military action that could continue over the course of several days or weeks and the possible need to establish a new government in Afghanistan after a collapse of the Taliban, Musharraf would have faced increasing pressure from officers with only lukewarm commitment to meeting U.S. demands.
To solidify his own position, Musharraf quietly extended his own three-year term as Pakistan's army chief of staff, the most powerful position in the government. His claim on that position expired Saturday, but in his role as president of the country, he could re-appoint himself to the job.
Pakistan's decision to side with the U.S. anti-terrorist campaign has left this military-ruled Muslim nation in the throes of change as shattering -- and potentially as liberating -- as the air strikes that began tonight next door in Afghanistan.
When President Pervez Musharraf cast Pakistan's lot with the West three weeks ago, he abruptly turned a Muslim neighbor into an enemy, challenged the popular grip of radical Islamic groups here and moved to break their formidable alliance with segments of the Pakistani armed forces.
Instead of grudgingly acquiescing to U.S. demands for support and trying to minimize the political fallout, Musharraf has worked to turn the crisis into an opportunity to bring about far-reaching changes in Pakistan's society, institutions and foreign relations that many people here have felt were long overdue.
But in doing so, Musharraf has also taken enormous risks, sharpening the religious contradictions and institutional divisions in a volatile, impoverished nation of 140 million. Moreover, he has staked his country's future on support from Western powers that have abandoned Pakistan in the past and until recently had shunned Musharraf as a dictator. Only now has the West embraced him out of strategic necessity.
"President Musharraf realized this was a defining moment for Pakistan," said Khalid Mahmood, director of the Institute for Regional Studies here. "He jettisoned a lot of ideological, emotional and historical baggage because he believed it was in the country's best interest. He can neutralize the opposition, but if he is to live up to his new road map, he needs a stronger hand."
By far the most significant step Musharraf has taken is to defy the small but vocal radical religious groups that, with growing influence, have sown violence and intolerance inside Pakistan, tarred its image abroad and held its foreign policy hostage to a militant Islamic agenda.
Over the past 20 years, the mission of Pakistan's army has become increasingly religious, based largely on opposition to Hindu-led India and favoring Islamic-ruled Afghanistan. Pakistan's military intelligence agencies nurtured Islamic guerrilla groups, first to fight Soviet troops in Afghanistan with U.S. support and later to covertly fight Indian troops in Kashmir.
Musharraf, a moderate Muslim who pledged to reform and modernize Pakistan when he seized power in October 1999, has tried to curb the influence of these groups ever since. But he has been repeatedly forced to back off -- in part because the groups commanded passionate support from some Muslims, and in part because of the key role they played in Kashmir and Afghanistan.
After the terrorist attacks last month in New York and Washington, a wave of vituperative, anti-American protests was launched by radical Islamic groups who support the ruling Taliban Islamic movement in Afghanistan. They threatened mass violence if the United States launched an attack there.
Until last weekend, Musharraf tolerated the protests. Police were instructed to intervene only if serious violence broke out. But today, Musharraf ordered Maulana Fazl-ur Rehman, leader of the most virulent Islamic group, placed under house arrest, removing him from the scene just before U.S. missiles began to strike.
Musharraf unexpectedly replaced his intelligence chief and other senior generals known to have strong religious views -- even though three of them had been key players in the 1999 coup. In the short term, Musharraf was trying to eliminate any institutional challenge to his leadership during the current crisis.
It was not clear, though, whether these combined actions will be sufficient to quell the threat of violence from other Islamic leaders, who have called for mass protests Monday -- and how the army would now respond. If mayhem does erupt, it could divide or paralyze the armed forces, splinter the country along religious and ethnic lines, and even destabilize the government.
In the long term, however, some civilian analysts and moderate government aides said Musharraf has taken a crucial first step toward calling the bluff of Islamic groups and permanently separating the army from their agenda. Some critics, who before Sept. 11 were calling for a quick return to civilian rule, now note that only an army general would have dared make such changes.
Over the past three weeks, moreover, Musharraf's authority has been reinforced by pledges of strong diplomatic and economic support from Western powers that once shunned him and by praise from Pakistani opinion makers who had criticized him.
"
I think we are lucky President Musharraf was in power when this happened," said one civilian cabinet minister. "He is a gutsy guy who has made the right decision. He didn't vacillate or panic. This has put Pakistan back on the world map and it can turn the country around, but the implications will be prolonged and difficult to manage."
Musharraf's sudden shift in policy toward Afghanistan has brought its own new dangers and opportunities for Pakistan. Most Pakistanis have little love for the Taliban, a rigid regime that has sent only trouble spilling into their territory. Musharraf's new stance has instantly distanced his government from radical Islam in the approving eyes of the world.
On the other hand, the two countries share a long border and a large floating populace of Afghan descent. Many Afghan refugees in Pakistan are sympathetic to the Taliban and strongly oppose a U.S. attack on their homeland. War in Afghanistan could easily spill across the border, leading to violence and unleashing a flood of refugees the nation can ill afford to absorb.
The United States has pledged to provide economic help, but many Pakistanis do not trust the United States. They bitterly recall the Cold War flip-flops of the 1980s in which the United States sided with Pakistan against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, only to walk away after the Soviets were driven out and bloody civil strife erupted there, sending millions of refugees fleeing into Pakistan.
Pakistan's military and intelligence sources helped to support the Taliban when it formed in 1994, and until recently had hoped that by maintaining cordial ties with the Taliban, they could exert a moderating influence on the movement's behavior. But last month, when the United States asked the Taliban to hand over bin Laden, even Pakistan's intelligence chief could not persuade the Afghans to comply. An angry Musharraf had no choice but to turn against the Taliban.
At the same time, however, he has clung to a second controversial pillar of his foreign policy -- support for separatist Muslim guerrillas in Indian Kashmir -- in hopes of shoring up his domestic credentials as a supporter of jihad, or holy war, and to counter criticism that he has sold out Pakistan's interests to the West.
The insurgency in Kashmir is a far more popular national cause than Afghanistan. Most Pakistani Muslims view it as a justified "freedom struggle" against oppression by India, the much larger, Hindu-led neighbor that is Pakistan's longtime military adversary and more recent nuclear rival.
Musharraf also hopes that by doing the United States' bidding, he can win international pressure on India to negotiate a Kashmir settlement. But U.S. ties with India are closer now than they have been in decades, and the Bush administration has increasingly adopted the Indian argument that the guerrilla movement in Kashmir is part of the regional terrorist threat.
Meanwhile, a second controversial component of Pakistan's rivalry with India, its nuclear weapons program, has suddenly become an international liability.
In 1998, both India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests, alarming the West and drawing economic sanctions from the United States. But to many Pakistani Muslims, the "Islamic bomb" was a source of national pride, while Musharraf asserted that Pakistan's nuclear capability could deter a military clash with India and ensure regional stability.
After the U.S. terrorist attacks, however, the Bush administration presented Musharraf with an all-or-nothing choice between standing with the West or with terrorism. Suddenly, the Pakistani leader realized that his country's nuclear asset could become a liability, vulnerable to attack by far greater powers than India.
With Pakistan's pretensions to regional influence suddenly deflated, Musharraf hopes his new strategic alliance with the United States and Europe can at least bring enough economic benefits to reverse Pakistan's downward economic spiral and prove to a skeptical and impoverished nation that he has not delivered Pakistan's support for peanuts.
In the past three weeks, there have been numerous indications that the West intends to offer substantial help. The Bush administration has lifted the economic sanctions imposed after Pakistan's nuclear tests, and it appears likely to lift a second set of sanctions imposed after Musharraf's coup. A sizable chunk of Pakistan's foreign debt has just been rescheduled, and the European Union has promised new economic support.
The most serious sign of commitment, however, came last week from British Prime Minister Tony Blair, until now an outspoken critic of Musharraf. On Friday, he flew to Pakistan and spoke to reporters with Musharraf, praising him and pledging to restore military ties, promote trade and assist with debt relief.
Musharraf's decision, Blair predicted, would be "significant and long-lasting in strengthening the outside world's relations with Pakistan. In Britain we will play our part. We will not walk away, and neither will the others."
Iqbal Latif
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