M Ziauddin
Monday, June 29, 2015 - NUCLEAR powers don’t fight frontal wars. That was perhaps why the two nuclear powers—the US and the Soviet Union— possessing nuclear arsenal capable of sending the entire world up in smoke more than dozen times over preferred to settle their hegemonic scores through their respective spy agencies—CIA and KGB. Throughout the cold war that lasted for almost 35 years the spymasters of the CIA and the KGB working behind the enemy lines tried to destroy each other’s countries from within. Even their final battles were fought by their respective spy agencies in Poland and Afghanistan bringing the cold war to its logical end with the Soviet Union disappearing for good from the world map without any one of the two super powers even contemplating using their nuclear weapons either in defence or offence.The same rule applies to the nuclear armed rivals of the sub-continent. Had it not been so the Indian Army would have done what it did in 1965 (it had retaliated our incursion into the Indian Held Kashmir (IHK) by crossing—almost— Pakistan’s international borders) when New Delhi claimed that the 2002 attack on its parliament was plotted by the ISI or when Musharraf tried to invade the IHK via Kargil in April 1999 or when New Delhi blamed Pakistan for the November 2008 Mumbai massacre. India held back on all three occasions because of the fear that it would eventually lead to a self-destructive nuclear clash. Even the so-called cold-start strategy would seem going the same route.
Finding that the most obvious counter-attack option available—frontal war—has an inbuilt self-destructive mechanism India, it is presumed, decided to pay Pakistan back in its own coins by increasing the scope of activities of its intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW or RAW) behind the ‘enemy’ lines. Formed in September 1968 RAW is the primary foreign intelligence agency of India. It is also responsible for mounting counter-terror activities as well as obtaining and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations and persons to advise Indian policymakers.
In order to get a fair idea about India’s current intentions one only has to recall some of the anti-Pakistani rants of its National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval. A former IB chief he has developed what is known as Doval’s mad-cap strategy based on what he calls the defensive –offence theory. Explaining this theory, he says: ‘You can do one Mumbai, you may lose Balochistan...’ In one of his many anti-Pakistan papers titled ‘Internal Security — Need for Course Correction’, he wrote that ‘…Indian foreign policy must re-gear itself to go on the offensive against its enemy Pakistan by funding, arming, training and directing non-state actors to wage a campaign of chaos within Pakistan by exacerbating existing sectarian and ethnic differences through violence….’
Without meaning to link what Mr Doval said in the above mentioned passage of his paper to some of the internal reversals that we have suffered since the Mumbai massacre like the attacks on our GHQ, Kamra rebuild factory, Naval installations in Karachi and many other such attacks on our security installations and armed forces one would like to suggest to our intelligence agencies to take a second look at the clues unearthed during the investigations into these incidents. One wonders those living in the forsaken bad-lands of our tribal region would have what it takes to plan and execute on their own such high profile attacks with such exquisite timing and deadly sophistication.
And seen in the backdrop of Doval’s mad-cap theories, the allegations that the MQM was in the pay of RAW do not appear so far-fetched. But then this could be true for all those mainstream political parties of Pakistan that have their branches all over the world. RAW would have very little difficulty in infiltrating these overseas branches of our political parties as in foreign countries Pakistanis and Indians tend to socially interact more frequently and more closely than they do with citizens of host countries or immigrants from other countries.
And a word about BBC and friend Owen Bennett Jones. Both enjoy a very high measure of credibility and integrity. So what follows is not meant to bring in question their impeccable reputations but only an attempt to set a context. In my experience I have very rarely seen foreign correspondents coming to Pakistan not visiting as soon as they arrive in Islamabad, their countries’ embassies or high commissions presumably for in-depth briefing about the host country and the nature of relations between their countries and Pakistan. It has also been my experience that most often than not the stories thesecorrespondents file do not digress much from their countries’ foreign policy towards Pakistan.
BBC’s credibility was tested severely during Iraq’s non-existent WMD saga that preceded that country’s invasion by the US, UK and European troops. During 1985 the BBC had commissioned Tariq Ali to write a TV serial on the circumstances leading to the overthrow, trial and execution of Zulfikhar Ali Bhutto but it was abandoned at the rehearsal stage by the broadcaster ostensibly on the advice of their lawyers. When I interviewed Tariq Ali on the subject in London early 2007 for Dawn he said the BBC had used the legal pretext as an excuse as it failed to resist the pressure from the Foreign Office which in turn did not wish to unsettle General Zia, who was a key ally in the West’s war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
Could it be that after all these years Britain has finally decided to abandon its famous citizen, Altaf Hussain? And could there be any truth in the anecdotal tale that despite May 12 of 2007 or the dossiers submitted to Scotland Yard first by the late Naseerullah Babar and then by Imran Khan the law enforcement agencies in Britain refused to take any action in return for the protection the MQM was supposed to be providing to the British economic interests in Karachi?
