AFP
A Security Imperiled Pakistan?
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
Any Pakistani, high or low, was tempted to dismiss Indian PM Narendra Modi’s Pakistan-obsessed rants as typical bluster of a habitual bully.
One of Modi’s favorites was his oft-repeated mantra of, Ghar mein ghus key marengey (will attack inside your home). He tried to lend teeth to his bullying in the wake of February, 2019, Pulwama incident, in which scores of Indian soldiers were killed in Indian-Occupied Kashmir at the hands of Kashmiri freedom fighters. Modi, blaming Pakistan for it, sent Indian fighter planes into Pakistan-administered Kashmir to bomb alleged hideouts of Pakistan-based ‘terrorists.’
But he ended up with a lot of egg on his face when Pakistani Air Force shot down the invading Indian jets and captured, alive, an Indian pilot, Abhi Nandan. But the then Pakistani PM, Imran Khan (IK) rose in stature and earned praise, globally, by setting free the captured Indian pilot and returned him safely home.
However, an unrepentant Modi seems to have, since changed his tacks. Instead of abandoning his nefarious tactics—of threats and intimidation—his notorious spy-network, headed by the infamous RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) appears to have adopted the Israeli practice of sending trained killers—or hiring local guns—against their targets in neighboring or distant lands.
A recent investigative report in the prestigious British newspaper, The Guardian, alarmed bells among Pakistanis, at home and abroad, about security threats posed to their country by a hostile India,
According to the Guardian’s findings, at least 20 Pakistanis have been killed, inside Pakistan, since 2020, in operations carried out by Indian security agents, or their hired local guns. The pattern of these targeted killings carried hallmarks of tried-and-tested Mossad tactics, which have been adopted by RAW as a template. All the victims of these cloak-and-dagger operations are said to be Kashmiris, or people sympathetic to them.
That Modi not only remains unrepentant but, quite to the contrary, seems to have become emboldened because of these successful (to India, no doubt) killing sprees.
India’s Defense Minister, Rajnath, proudly asserted, in a public statement—in response to Pakistan Foreign Office’s spokesperson’s condemnation of Indian tactics—his determination to send his killers, in hot pursuit of alleged targets, if Pakistan or any other neighbor of India posed a ‘threat.’
Rajnath’s rant, or Modi’s bluster needs to be taken seriously because it has, quite obviously, been inspired by Pakistan’s ongoing internal strife and turbulence.
There’s an old adage that says that if you don’t lock the main door of your house, at night, thieves would be prompted to break in.
That Pakistan is in the throes of one crisis after another, for the past so many years, is known to the whole world beyond its frontiers. The focus on a crises-hobbled Pakistan has been especially sharpened in the preceding two years since IK was toppled from power in an operation in which Pakistan’s security establishment played a leading role.
That Pakistan’s ‘Establishment’—the euphemism used for its highly politicized military command—has had a frontal role in the making or breaking of all civilian governments is a reality known to all friends and foes of Pakistan. But the notorious establishment has never had such a frontal façade as in the high-stakes drama that preceded, and has followed, the toppling of IK from his pedestal, exactly two years ago, to date.
What has followed the engineered fall of IK from power is nothing short of a weird drama being played out in full view of the people of Pakistan, as well as the Pakistani diaspora overseas, in this age of cyber and digital technology.
The omniscient presence of power-hungry Pakistani generals in any political dispensation in Pakistan, over the past seven decades of its sovereign existence, has been accepted, by and large, as a ‘reality’ of governance in Pakistan, irrespective of how distasteful or repugnant it may be to those concerned with the stunted growth of democracy in the Pakistani context.
However, what’s unpalatable to any conscientious Pakistani—at home and abroad—is the current spectacle unfolding since IK’s engineered exit from power. The power-addicted generals holding Pakistan to ransom have become besotted and inebriated with the power accumulated under their belts.
Friends of Pakistan—especially those lamenting the snuffing out of basic norms of democracy in the country—may feel sorry for its downward slide. But foes of Pakistan look at this scenario with obvious glee. The Pakistani security establishment’s overt involvement in ‘extra-curricular’ activities is an invitation—if not a bonanza—to Pakistan’s enemies to seize the moment to put accent to their subversive designs against it. That’s precisely what has happened in the years since the toppling of a democratic and popularly elected government became a whole time concern, and passion, for the Pakistani establishment.
Those tasked with the primary responsibility to guard Pakistan’s frontiers, as well as ensure its safety against disruptive and subversive plans of its enemies, have been busy in doing things that aren’t in their remit.
The establishment sleuths have been snooping on politicians on the hit list of their bosses. IK tops this list and they have achieved their target of keeping him off the center stage of governance with the help of a supine and obliging—corrupt to its bones—judiciary. Other prominent members and luminaries of IK's political party, PTI, have been, likewise, boxed in, haunted, abused, and black-mailed with tactics befitting any notorious mafia.
Pakistan’s judicial apparatus—especially the cleaner and unsoiled segment of it—has long been in the crosshairs of the military and security establishment’s extra-curricular activities, as borne out by the collective letter of grievances penned by six honorable judges of Islamabad High Court (IHC) to Pakistan’s Supreme Judicial Council. Judges' bedrooms have been bugged. Other strong-arm tactics—such as ‘disappearing’ their family members and close relatives and torturing them—have been deployed with impunity.
The bottom line in this macabre and ersatz episode is that Pakistan's internal security has been compromised. It lies in tatters, not because of any grand design of its enemies but, obviously, because of the shenanigans of those bearing primary responsibility for it.
What’s most alarming and ominous is that there’s nothing to suggest that the highest echelon of the military and security establishment has any awareness of the dire threats posed to Pakistan’s security, as a result of their overt and gross involvement in politics.
The generals’ appetite for more of the same—their monopoly role of total dominance of power—seems to have grown with the passage of time. Having shamelessly subverted, and overturned, the popular mandate of the people of Pakistan in favor of IK and PTI—as manifested in last February 8 general elections—the generals are going, brazenly, for the overkill.
The name of the Bonapartes’ weird game is more aggrandizement and more accumulation of power under their wings. So, while they are, up to their ears, in hot pursuit of ‘inconvenient and pesky politicians, such as IK and his ilk, Pakistan’s perennial enemy, next door, is threatening to violate its sovereignty and territorial integrity in ‘hot pursuit’ of those on its hit list. Is any Pakistani Bonaparte listening?
- K_K_ghori@hotmail.com
( The author is a former ambassador and career diplomat)
