Indian machinations?
By Ahmed Quraishi
A London-based Bangladeshi author, M B I Munshi, is preparing to release in August a revised version of a book, The Indian Doctrine, which is expected to shed new light on what happened in Pakistan in 2007. Simply said, it was an impressive destabilization campaign, combining suicide bombings with threats of taking out Pakistani nukes and open insinuations in op-ed editorials in major US dailies about the breakup of the Pakistani homeland.
A small incident in Karachi in September 2007 gave Pakistani policy strategists a rare glimpse into the larger game plan in the region at the time. The incident fitted a pattern and provided clues to the unfortunate role played by some actors in India, apart from the sitting government there, in compounding Pakistan's problems on our western borders. A car raced by a police check post in the city's busy downtown, stopped close enough for the policemen to see it but far enough to ensure escape. Two men were inside. One of them pulled down the window, threw out some jackets on the street and then screeched away. The unknown car had just dropped a few 'suicide vests' ready for use, with markings that indicated US origin. "It was a lousy act linked to the Indian intelligence services trying to create an impression that CIA was sponsoring terrorism in Pakistan," Mr Munshi's book quotes a Pakistani source as explaining. "Neither the CIA nor the actual suicide bombers are in the business of dropping US marked suicide vests on roadsides from moving cars in front of the police."
Later that month, Washington sent a rare message to New Delhi that basically said, 'Please don't make things difficult for us. Try to get out of this Pakistan obsession. You are too important to limit yourself in this way.' According to a transcript released by the Pentagon, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Defence, James Clad, told a visiting group of retired Indian generals and diplomats that the US had "de-hyphenated its relations with India from its relations with Pakistan. New Delhi should do the same".
The US official was essentially telling the Indians they should not feel threatened by the Pak-American cooperation in Afghanistan for the simple reason that it was not going to affect Indian interests. The Indians, Clad implied, should desist from trying to undermine Pak-US ties based on that false notion. But Clad's advice fell on deaf ears because, by 2007, India was in the advanced stages of executing an ambitious intelligence operation suspected of having substantially contributed to the multiple and unprecedented security challenges that Pakistan faced in its western regions in the period between 2004 and early 2008.
In a special chapter titled, The Peace Charade: How 9/11 Helped India Penetrate Pakistan, Mr Munshi's book shows how a document prepared by two Indian security analysts in the year 2000, recommending to the Indian government a creative approach to expand Indian intelligence operations in Pakistan, inspired an ambitious Pakistan-specific plan after 9/11, exploiting the unprecedented uncertainty on the ground in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region.
The ultimate goal of this massive operation was "to help [India] in the foreign policy objective of breaking the monopoly of the ISI and army over Pakistan," according to the Indian document, aptly titled, 'India's Experience and Need for Action Against Pakistan,' authored by Dr. Bhashyam Kasturi and Pankaj Mehra. "The aim is," the authors wrote, "to break the stranglehold of the intelligence agencies, the bureaucracy and the military in Pakistan." We Pakistanis need to learn how our domestic politics should be managed unless we want to lose everything.
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Ahmed Quraishi
Web : http://ahmedquraishi.com
The writer also works for Geo TV.
Email: aq@ahmedquraishi.com
A small incident in Karachi in September 2007 gave Pakistani policy strategists a rare glimpse into the larger game plan in the region at the time. The incident fitted a pattern and provided clues to the unfortunate role played by some actors in India, apart from the sitting government there, in compounding Pakistan's problems on our western borders. A car raced by a police check post in the city's busy downtown, stopped close enough for the policemen to see it but far enough to ensure escape. Two men were inside. One of them pulled down the window, threw out some jackets on the street and then screeched away. The unknown car had just dropped a few 'suicide vests' ready for use, with markings that indicated US origin. "It was a lousy act linked to the Indian intelligence services trying to create an impression that CIA was sponsoring terrorism in Pakistan," Mr Munshi's book quotes a Pakistani source as explaining. "Neither the CIA nor the actual suicide bombers are in the business of dropping US marked suicide vests on roadsides from moving cars in front of the police."
Later that month, Washington sent a rare message to New Delhi that basically said, 'Please don't make things difficult for us. Try to get out of this Pakistan obsession. You are too important to limit yourself in this way.' According to a transcript released by the Pentagon, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Defence, James Clad, told a visiting group of retired Indian generals and diplomats that the US had "de-hyphenated its relations with India from its relations with Pakistan. New Delhi should do the same".
The US official was essentially telling the Indians they should not feel threatened by the Pak-American cooperation in Afghanistan for the simple reason that it was not going to affect Indian interests. The Indians, Clad implied, should desist from trying to undermine Pak-US ties based on that false notion. But Clad's advice fell on deaf ears because, by 2007, India was in the advanced stages of executing an ambitious intelligence operation suspected of having substantially contributed to the multiple and unprecedented security challenges that Pakistan faced in its western regions in the period between 2004 and early 2008.
In a special chapter titled, The Peace Charade: How 9/11 Helped India Penetrate Pakistan, Mr Munshi's book shows how a document prepared by two Indian security analysts in the year 2000, recommending to the Indian government a creative approach to expand Indian intelligence operations in Pakistan, inspired an ambitious Pakistan-specific plan after 9/11, exploiting the unprecedented uncertainty on the ground in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region.
The ultimate goal of this massive operation was "to help [India] in the foreign policy objective of breaking the monopoly of the ISI and army over Pakistan," according to the Indian document, aptly titled, 'India's Experience and Need for Action Against Pakistan,' authored by Dr. Bhashyam Kasturi and Pankaj Mehra. "The aim is," the authors wrote, "to break the stranglehold of the intelligence agencies, the bureaucracy and the military in Pakistan." We Pakistanis need to learn how our domestic politics should be managed unless we want to lose everything.
---------------------------------------
Ahmed Quraishi
Web : http://ahmedquraishi.com
The writer also works for Geo TV.
Email: aq@ahmedquraishi.com
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