Indian Analyst Bharat Karnad to Modi: Use TTP Terrorists to Attack Pakistan
By Riaz Haq
CA
With the home-grown resistance of a new generation of Kashmiris against India's brutal military occupation turning into a full-blown insurgency, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's right-wing Hindu Nationalist government is trying desperately to divert attention from its human rights abuses by blaming Pakistan for the Pulwama attack. Mr Modi and his ministers are making war threats to "punish" Pakistan for the attack carried out by a local Kashmiri young man using explosives obtained locally. How will Mr Modi "punish" Pakistan? Will India launch a full-frontal attack? Or opt for covert warfare using its terrorist proxies?
In a recently published Bloomberg Quint Op Ed on the Pulwama attack in Indian Occupied Kashmir, a top Indian analyst Bharat Karnad has said that "it (TTP) is an asset for India to support and grow with moral and materiel support, and to develop".
"Indeed, TTP’s fighting qualities are sufficiently developed and effective to simultaneously fight the Pakistan army in Pakistan and the US-led NATO forces in Afghanistan", Karnad adds.
During former US Defense Secretary James Mattis' visit to New Delhi in 2017, Bharat Karnad had also acknowledged the TTP-RAW link in a Hindustan Times Op Ed in the following words:
"Mattis’ request that India moderate its support for TTP will put Delhi in a fix because TTP is useful as an Indian counterpart of the Hizbul Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Toiba, and Jaish-e-Mohammad deployed by the Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in Jammu and Kashmir. Severing relations with TTP will mean India surrendering an active card in Pakistan and a role in Afghanistan as TTP additionally provides access to certain Afghan Taliban factions. This, together with the Abdul Ghani regime’s desire for India’s presence and the tested friendship with Abdul Rashid Dostum and his Tajik-dominated ‘Northern Alliance’, ensures that no solution for peace in Afghanistan can be cobbled together without India’s help."
Bharat Karnad is a Research Professor in National Security Studies at the Center for Policy Research, New Delhi. But Karnad is not alone in advocating the use of India's terrorist proxies against Pakistan. Since 2013, India's current National Security Advisor Ajit Doval has been talking about "Pakistan's vulnerabilities" to terrorism and India's ability to take advantage of them. Here are excerpts of his speech at Sastra University:
"How do you tackle Pakistan? ... We start working on Pakistan's vulnerabilities-- economic, internal security, political, isolating them internationally, it can be anything..... it can be defeating Pakistan's policies in Afghanistan...... You stop the terrorists by denying them weapons, funds and manpower. Deny them funds by countering with one-and-a-half times more funding. If they have 1,200 crores give them 1,800 crores and they are on our side...who are the Taliban fighting for? It's because they haven't got jobs or someone has misled them. The Taliban are mercenaries. So go for more of the covert thing (against Pakistan)..." - Ajit Doval, India's National Security Advisor.
Based on recent comments from Indian analysts and past pronouncements of senior India officials like Ajit Doval, I expect India to intensify its proxy war of terror against Pakistan.
Here's a video of Ajit Doval explaining his "Doval Doctrine":
https://youtu.be/eYRuk8H5M9E
(Riaz Haq is a Silicon Valley-based Pakistani-American analyst and writer. He blogs at www.riazhaq.com)
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