Even Obama Foresees The Third Nuclear Horn of Pakistan (Daniel 8:8)

What if Pakistan hands a nuclear bomb to Mullah Omar or Haqqani?

Diplomat

January 3, 2015

What happens if one day some cranky army general of Pakistan fails to give in to the temptation of knocking more than a few heads and decide to hand over one or more of the bombs to a Mullah Omar or a Haqqani, asks veteran diplomat Rajiv Dogra in his new book: “Where Borders Bleed: An Insider’s Account of Indo-Pakistan Relations.

Here are some excerpts from the book published by Rupa and priced Rs.360.

“Actor George Clooney recalls in an interview in the December 2012 issue of Esquire magazine: I talked with the President (Obama) at one of those fundraisers some months back, and I asked him, ‘What keeps you up at night?’

And he said, ‘Everything. Everything that gets to my desk is a critical mass. If it gets to my desk, then no one else could have handled it.’

So I said, ‘So what’s the one that keeps you up at night?’

He goes, ‘There are quite a few.’

So I go, ‘What’s the one? Period.’

And he says, ‘Pakistan.’

Do Indian leaders lose any sleep because of Pakistan? There is nothing in the public domain to suggest that they do. However, one thing is certain, and it is this that Indian leaders lose no opportunity in convincing the world at large that they have no ill-will towards Pakistan, and that a prosperous and stable Pakistan is in India’s interest. They also go on to say that they would do all they can to help promote stability in Pakistan.

How exactly will they help, and what form India’s help would assume, is never clarified. Nor is the fact taken into consideration that help by India would be seen as the kiss of death for anyone in Pakistan who receives or agrees to receive such assistance, be it a political party or an individual.
On the other hand, if the desire is to shore up Pakistan economically by cash transfers, it will be well worth recalling the US experience. Its billions have disappeared without trace, and without any stabilizing effect, in a bottomless pit called Pakistan.

Therefore critics of a realistic persuasion have often asked, ‘Is Pakistan an Indian responsibility? Or is it a dangerous distraction?’

Political scientist and economist Francis Fukuyama wrote in his book State Building, ‘Weak and failing states have become the single most important problem for international order.’ Fukuyama may or may not have had Pakistan in view as the perfect model for his conclusion, but the vast body of international writing on Pakistan has consistently maintained that Pakistan is weak as a society and failing as a state.

There is no indication so far that Pakistan would, at any identifiable future date, be able to put in place a system that delivers efficiently and reasonably transparently. Nor is there any sign that the massive effort required to industrialize the country is about to begin in the immediate future. Without the necessary wherewithal of job creation, the large numbers of unemployed youth will take the only option available to them. And that is the path of terror. There is no antidote that India can provide to prevent that from happening.

In fact India’s equanimity in the face of a very grim situation surprises observers.

The US worries endlessly about a nuclear bomb that Iran is nowhere close to possessing. It fought two wars with Iraq on the suspicion that there were weapons of mass destruction in its basement. The US’ treatment of Libya bordered on impetuous brutality despite the fact that it had already forced Muammar Gaddafi to dismantle the nuclear process that was still in a nascent stage. And the US keeps worrying about the trigger-happy Pakistani generals and their arsenal of hundred-plus nuclear bombs. But the US sits thousands of kilometres away, well out of the reach of Pakistan’s nuclear delivery systems.

So, is Obama right to have sleepless nights over Pakistan? Given all the information at his disposal, he may have many reasons to be worried. A principal one could be the unpredictability of the Pakistani generals. No one is denying the fact that they are solid, professional army men. But if they can commit atrocities of the type they did in (what is now) Bangladesh, and continue to do in Baluchistan, and if they gloat over 9/11 and 26/11, who and what can stop an angry general from ordering a nuclear strike?

The record shows that they are prone to using violent means. Look, for instance, at the number of wars they have dragged Pakistan into. If you count the two Afghan wars and the continuing terror enterprise, then Pakistan has fought a major war in every decade of its existence; sometimes even two wars simultaneously.

Or look at the number of coups it has had over the years. No other major country is held to ransom as whimsically as Pakistan is by its volatile generals.

Therefore, if they are happy providers for the likes of Mullah Omar, and long-time protectors of terror icons like Osama bin Laden, what is the guarantee that one day some angry general may not give in to the temptation of knocking more than a few heads and decide to hand over one or more of the bombs to a Mullah Omar or a Haqqani?

(Rajiv Dogra has served as India’s consul general in Karachi and as ambassador to Romania and Italy. He can be contacted at ambraja@gmail.com)

The Third Horn of Pakistan Is Falling Apart

Nuclear Pakistan’s Spies Target India—and Their Own Prime Minister

Daily Beast

 

Extremist Group LeT Attacks India Consulate

 

Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence directorate is using terrorist brinkmanship to threaten India and undermine Nawaz Sharif. It’s time to stop this dangerous game.Just when you thought the world was dangerous enough, another crisis between nuclear-weapons-armed India and Pakistan is brewing, and now al Qaeda is adding fuel to the fire by calling for jihad in the subcontinent.Tensions have been growing all summer long, even though, ironically, things began on a positive high note: in June, newly elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who swept into power on a landslide, invited his Pakistan counterpart, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, to his inauguration.

Behind this unprecedented gesture, however, darker forces were planning a different sort of event. A squad of heavily armed terrorists attacked the Indian consulate in Herat, Afghanistan, right on the eve of the inauguration. They planned to take Indian diplomats hostage and then execute them as Modi was took office. Fortunately the Indian security guards at the consulate killed all the attackers.
The U.S. State Department publicly blamed Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, the group which attacked Mumbai in 2008. LeT is very close to the Pakistani military’s Inter Services Intelligence Directorate or ISI. LeT would not have taken such a highly provocative action without at least some advance nod from the Pakistani spies in the ISI and the generals who command them. LeT’s leader, Hafeez Saeed, lives openly in Pakistan, frequently appears on television denouncing the United States, and is the darling of the ISI.

If there is another LeT attack like the one in Mumbai or the one in Herat, it will provoke the most serious crisis in years between India and Pakistan, and the more that can be done by the United States and other to prevent such a disaster the better. But it won’t be easy.

On Wednesday, to complicate the situation further, Al Qaeda released a new videotape of its leader Ayman Zawahiri announcing the creation of a an al Qaeda franchise in India. Zawahiri made the tape in his hideout in Pakistan, no doubt, and many Indians suspect the ISI is helping to protect him. Zawahiri has longstanding links to LeT and to Saeed. The 55-minute video is Zawahiri’s first this year and threatens jihadist attacks across India.

The domestic politics of Pakistan are central to this drama, and to this threat.

The United States should also consider a unilateral step if another attack occurs, threatening to place Pakistan on the State Department list of states sponsoring terrorism.

One of the goals of the Herat operation was to discredit Sharif, who has no control over the ISI or the Pakistani army. Since he was elected in his own landslide victory last year, the army has become increasingly unhappy with Sharif. They are very upset that he has put the former army dictator Pervez Musharraf on trial for treason and did not just let him leave the country quietly. Musharraf ousted Sharif in a coup in 1999, and while the army doesn’t care that much for Musharraf, it does not like the judicial system holding a general accountable for coups. For them that sets a bad precedent.

The army also was unhappy with Sharif’s reluctance to take on Pakistan’s own militant extremists, the Pakistan Taliban. Sharif wanted to talk to the Taliban, the army for once wanted to fight. Sharif ultimately gave in.

Meanwhile, violence has surged along the line of control in Kashmir, the province disputed by India and Pakistan since 1947 and the cause of several wars. This week the Indian army discovered a tunnel built under the line to infiltrate terrorists into Kashmir. Routine diplomatic talks between India and Pakistan have been suspended because Modi called them off when Pakistani diplomats met with Kashmiri leaders, a practice previously tolerated by New Delhi. Sharif had been urging deescalating the Indo-Pakistan rivalry and cutting back on the arms race, positions the army hardliners find threatening.

Sharif has been under siege—literally—in his office in Islamabad for the last couple of weeks, surrounded by an angry mob led by Pakistan’s famous photogenic cricket star and politician Imran Khan. Allied with a Canadian-Pakistani Islamic preacher, Khan has called for Sharif to resign. His movement has little nationwide popular support and there have been no demonstrations in other Pakistani cities backing his call, but it has kept Sharif preoccupied for weeks. Khan’s critics say he is being manipulated by the ISI to try to bring down Sharif or at least to neuter him. The army and the ISI were effective in neutering Sharif’s predecessor Asif Zardari. In fact that was a key goal achieved by the Mumbai attack in 2008. They want to neutralize Sharif by any means possible.

In short, the Pakistani army and its ISI spies are once again playing with fire—with India, the LeT and Kashmir—in order to secure domestic gains against their civilian leaders. Sharif is a weak prime minister today, just as he was the last two times he held that position in the 1990s, but he is the elected leader of the country. He should be allowed to finish his time in office.

The US should step up intelligence cooperation with India to prevent and deter attacks such as the ones in Mumbai and Herat. Even if a terrorist action cannot be foiled, the more information exchanged about Pakistani ISI involvement with LeT, the more likely the US will have credibility with New Delhi if a crisis does occur.

The United States should also consider a unilateral step if another attack occurs, threatening to place Pakistan on the State Department list of states sponsoring terrorism. America would treat Pakistan as a pariah like North Korea. It certainly meets the criteria and has for decades. The first Bush administration seriously considered this measure in 1992, although such a step obviously would have immense consequences for U.S.-Pakistan relations.

A more limited option would be to target specific sanctions against individual Pakistani officials involved in supporting terrorism, like members of ISI’s “S” branch that handles liaison with LeT, the Haqqani network and others. A targeted sanctions move against specific Pakistani military officials would send a strong deterrent message to the Pakistani army and could be a warning shot before putting Pakistan on the list of terror patrons.

Finally there should be contingency planning between Washington and New Delhi about managing a future Indo-Pakistan crisis like the Mumbai crisis. This would be intended to create dialogue, not creat a platform to gang up on Pakistan. But in any case it would be prudent to plan for the worst.