PTI has reported from Beijing that amid reports that it was building a dam in Tibet on the River Brahmaputra,
We welcome the
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Drama at Deoband
By Yoginder Sikand, TwoCircles.net
Last week, tens of thousands of men—this was a strictly all-male gathering—descended on the town of Deoband in Uttar Pradesh's Saharanpur district to attend the 30th annual convention of the Jamiat Ulema-I-Hind, a leading body of Muslim clerics of the ultra-conservative Deobandi sect. Sources claimed that the gathering numbered over five hundred thousand, brought in from across India. Impassable crowds clogged the narrow, dusty pathways leading to the venue of the rally, and so, although I had traveled all the way from Bangalore to report on the event, I had to content myself by listening to the speeches relayed by loudspeakers while sitting a mile away, in the portals of the Darul Uloom, possibly the world's largest madrasa and the nerve-centre of the Deobandi movement.
The event commenced with a maulvi reciting an Urdu poem extolling the sacrifices of the ulema of the Jamiat in India's freedom struggle. 'Were it not for us', he burst forth, 'you'—by which he probably meant the Hindus of India—'would still be labouring under the yoke of the British.' 'We stiffly opposed the creation of Pakistan. We have sacrificed our lives for the country. We condemn all forms of terror. We love our India, whether or not you believe this', he went on. The men sitting around me—dressed, like the rest of the crowd, in white kurta-pyjama, and sporting unkempt beards and white skull-caps—enthusiastically shook their heads in agreement. Like the maulvi-poet, they laboured under the burden of being forced to prove their patriotism, their anti-Pakistani credentials, and their opposition to terrorism—an unenviable predicament they were compelled to share with the rest of their co-religionists at a time of heightened
Islamophobia the world over.
More than the speeches delivered at the rally it was the response of some of those who attended the event, including a number of students and graduates of the Darul Uloom, that interested me. And, among these, it were the cynics who impressed me the most. 'This is just a political stunt orchestrated by the self-styled head of the Jamiat, Maulana Mahmud Madani', said Akram, a peasant from a village near Saharanpur. 'The rally is simply a show of strength, to impress upon the Congress his claim to be the leader of the Muslims, and to curry favour with Congress bosses'.
Akram spoke of murky goings-on within the Jamiat. 'These selfish mullahs can never agree, though they keep harping on Muslim unity. They love nothing more than fighting among themselves.' The Jamiat had split into several rival groups, he explained. One was led by the recently deceased Maulana Fuzail. The other two were headed by Maulana Arshad Madani and his nephew, Maulana Mahmud Madani, respectively. Maulana Arshad had recently organized an anti-terrorism conference, which had invited much media attention. Not to be outdone, Akram explained, Mahmud, who had emerged as his principal rival, had now arranged for this mammoth rally. 'A petty game of one-upmanship', Akram remarked. Mahmud's branch of the Jamiat, he claimed, had splurged vast sums of money for this purpose, subsidizing train fares to the men who had been brought in, lured by the prospect of a free holiday in Deoband and free chicken biryani—'neither of which', Akram joked,
'a true Deobandi could ever refuse'. 'How can these mullahs unite the Muslims and speak for us, when they cannot even unite among themselves?', he angrily spluttered.
'You won't spot a single modern-educated Muslim in this huge carnival', said Faisal, the owner of a bookshop located adjacent to the Darul Uloom. 'The maulvis shun them, not just because they don't find them religious enough but also because they fear that they will challenge their hegemony'. He indicated the crowd surging past his shop. Their features, dress and mannerisms all revealed, he said, that they were all poor peasants, madrasa teachers or maulvis. 'The maulvis have little or no understanding of the modern world, so how can they provide us Muslims with proper leadership?', he continued. 'But because the Muslim middle class remains indifferent to community issues, engrossed in their pursuit of material acquisition or simply too scared to speak out against the mullahs' obscurantist views, the mullahs' hold on the community continues unchallenged'. 'That's why lakhs of Muslims have so easily been mobilized by the Jamiat
for this mela'.
Bilal, a student of the Darul Uloom, decried the opposition of the Jamiat leaders to madrasa reforms, which was reflected in the resolution they passed at the conclusion of the conference decrying the suggestion that the Government set up a national madrasa board. 'These politically influential maulvis send their sons to modern schools and even abroad, but they won't let us madrasa students, most of who come from very poor families, learn anything about the modern world. They want us to remain ignorant so that they can continue to play politics in our name.' He pointed to an open drain that ran along the wall outside the madrasa, clogged with grey water, plastic bags and blobs of fresh human refuse, out of which emerged an overpowering, nauseous sulphurous stench. Ahead, built into the outside wall of a mosque, a door-less toilet was littered with excrement that spilled out onto the street. 'According to a saying attributed to the Prophet,
cleanliness is half of faith. And so, as you can see, here half our faith is in the gutters!'
Bilal took me around the hostels of the madrasa, into dark, dingy airless rooms, each shared by more than half a dozen students. Cobwebs hung like thick curtains in corners, and the floors were strewn with filth. The scenario was even more pathetic at the nearby Darul Uloom Waqf, a madrasa set up by a rival group of Deobandi maulvis in the wake of a coup engineered by the Madani family that forcibly ousted the then rector of the Deoband madrasa, Maulana Qari Tayyeb, in 1980. Vegetable peels and waste daal and rice law thrown around in large puddles outside the students' rooms, under vast armies of flies. 'The maulvis here, who never tire of claiming to be heirs of the Prophet, simply don't care about all this. All they hanker after is power and fame', Bilal rued.
The next morning's newspapers gave wide coverage to the Deoband rally, focusing particularly on one of the many resolutions that the Jamiat had passed—its opposition to the compulsory singing of the Vande Mataram song. Rizwan, a graduate of the Dar ul-Ulum, now teaching in a Deobandi madrasa in Agra, summed up what seemed to be a widely-shared feeling among the participants at the rally. 'We love India, but it is ridiculous to demand that our loyalty be tested on the basis of our attitude to this song.' The song, originally contained in a book that openly spewed hatred against Muslims, had generated a major stir even in pre-independence days, he explained. It was also, he pointed out, unacceptable not just to Muslims but to other monotheists, for it spoke of the worship of the motherland as a deity. At the same time, he added, there was simply no need for the Jamiat to have raked up the issue that had been lying dormant for years. 'It's
probably a deliberate tactic of Maulana Mahmud and his cronies to leap into the limelight by igniting a controversy and then presenting themselves as leaders of the Muslims', he mused.
Rizwan was equally critical of the media coverage of the rally. 'The media has pounced on the Vande Mataram issue, conveniently ignoring the other resolutions passed at the rally—the Jamiat's condemnation of terrorism, its demand for the implementation of the recommendations of the Sachar Committee report, its call for combating communalism and providing security to Muslims and so on'. 'Like our self-styled leaders behind this Jamiat-sponsored drama', he added 'the media, too, is simply not interested in the welfare of the Muslim masses. They both revel in stirring wholly avoidable controversies, while it is the hapless Muslim masses who continue to suffer, and whose voices continue to go unheard.'
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Maritime strategy: Bangladesh perspective MARITIME strategy is the set of principles that govern a maritime war, in which the sea is a substantial factor. Naval strategy is but that part of national strategy which determines the movement of the fleet, in time of war. Maritime strategy determines how and what part of the fleet must be engaged in relation to the land and air strategy. The greatest Chinese strategist Sunzu said, "War is a matter of vital importance to the state, a matter of life and death, the road either to survival or to ruin. Hence, it is imperative that it be studied thoroughly". He further said "Strategy of any war whether land, air or at sea should be valued in quick victory, not prolong operations". Alfred Thayer Mahan, a naval philosopher said "Those nation who possessed sea power has certain options to them which give them advantages over those nations who do not possess sea power". It was only through the use of this advantage that a nation could become great. Chairman Mao Tse Dong said, "Military (maritime) strategy is nothing but war planning, preparing and direction by war commanders". There are many strategists who gave their different views on military and maritime strategy but the centre of their strategic philosophy remained same. Some say, 'Strategy is nothing but tactics talked through a brass hat'. Once the national security policy has been prepared, the military strategy can then be formulated of which maritime strategy becomes an important component. Therefore, maritime strategy has direct relation with national strategy. National strategy is total in concept and has potential, diplomatic, economic, commercial, cultural and military facets. Being small and a non-aligned country, Bangladesh would most probably define its maritime strategy in terms of the UN charter, that is to say territorial integrity and political independence. Bangladesh would not see threats to its maritime interests from major forces of the world. While preventing or limiting inter-state conflicts through diplomatic channels (which would clearly be the desired solution) the best alternatives would be to settle the conflict without external help. Bangladesh is a maritime country with 710 KM of coast line at the vertex of the Bay of Bengal with India and Myanmar on her three sides. It is a country of 150 million people living in an area of 55,000 square miles, making it the world's most densely populated area. The land mass is not sufficient to provide food and wealth for this vast population so the Bay of Bengal is very vital for providing protein and natural resources for this huge nation. On the other hand, 20% of the entire living resources and 80% of non-living resources are available at the bottom of the sea. The scientists have discovered half a million various types of living and non-living resources under the sea. Therefore, there will be ever-increasing dependence on the seas. The geologists found out that the most valuable assets are all under the sea - two billion tons of fish are being consumed by human beings every year. We can foresee that the powerful maritime countries would most likely entangle themselves in maritime conflict for controlling the vast seas in the near future. The provision of 200 nautical miles Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) under the laws of the sea convention (UNCLOS 1982) has given right to the littoral states a domain of the sea to a large extent. In case of Bangladesh, this available maritime asset is a sea area equivalent to 73% of the country's total mass. The EEZ, therefore, is of paramount national interest to Bangladesh. Sea lanes are vital for the very survival of the country because it is the most viable economic link Bangladesh has with the rest of the world. Therefore, Bangladesh Maritime Force (BMF) should be able to provide coastal defense, protect EEZ, sea lanes of communication, sea ward defenses and to protect merchant shipping. In today's world, economy can not be dealt separately. The economic life of a country relies upon free access and security of the sea ways. Moreover, we have to preserve the freedom of action at sea, being sufficiently strong to defend our presence. We should be aware of the importance of the sea which will play a vital role in coming centuries. In regards to maritime sector comments of transport economists and historians can be mentioned here as saying, "never a country is to expect to establish itself as a developed country without developing its maritime sector; as it is the only cheaper mode of transport [that] exists in the world." So we can say that we have to learn how to ride the sea. BMF, therefore, should be made capable of withstanding pressure having the support of other deterrent forces. Bangladesh cannot aspire for command of the sea in this region, but certainly its interests must be safeguarded for both in war and in peace. It would not be wise to maintain large standing maritime forces, but the country needs a small and efficient standing maritime force with substantial reserve as deterrence. No peace loving human being would like to see war occur, which has the potential for severe devastation. Nevertheless, war takes place because the tendency to flout international law to gain economic interests has become endemic. Availability of lethal weapons, terrorism and sabotage cause sudden crisis and skirmishes leading to wider confrontations. With satellite communications along with reconnaissance and having devastating missiles at sea, the scenario is going to be favourable for those nations who can claim good knowledge and intelligence of the dimensions of space above, over and under the sea. Bangladesh will have to play its role at least in the Bay of Bengal accordingly. Our maritime force cannot ever say, "Ring off main engines, revert to normal, notice for steam". It will have to lift its head in Bay of Bengal and keep the boilers bunked if not steaming. The writer is former Chief of Naval Staff. |
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India backed Shanti Bahini By Subhra Kanti Gupta Kolkata, Nov 9 (bdnews24.com)--Indira Gandhi was voted out of power in 1977, just when India's external intelligence organisation, R&AW, was preparing to substantially step up its backing for the Shanti Bahini, says Subir Bhaumik in his just-released book "Troubled Periphery:Crisis of India's Northeast". Bhaumik, a journalist and academic researcher for three decades, has provided graphic details of the R&AW's involvement in the Chittagong Hill Tracts and Burma's Kachin Hills in his latest book. But he makes it clear the "orders came right from the top" and were not operations generated by the agency. "The immediate provocation for the Indian sponsorship of the Shanti Bahini guerrillas .. was the military coup that killed Sheikh Mujibur Rehman and many members of his family. To Indira gandhi, this coup was a political defiance of India . "Within a week of the coup, senior R&AW leaders arrived in Tripura's capital Agartala with a clear brief for their subordinates: Get those Chakma leaders who want to fight Bangladesh." Bhaumik's findings is based on detailed interviews of Shanti Bahini guerrilla commanders and R&AW officials and the book is replete with such references. One Shanti Bahini leader tells Bhaumik about the quality of Indian training. "The Indian training was intensive and tough as the instructors had served with military units in Nagaland and Mizoram. The leadership element of the course was gruelling and involved war games and dummy attacks. "The instructors would observe how we went about the attack and whether we had absorbed the theoretical lessons. They would severely admonish us if we were found lacking. They always reminded us of the maxim that you bleed less in war if you train well in peace." Indira Gandhi's election defeat in 1977 saved Bangladesh, then grappling with mutinies and domestic unrest, from huge trouble, suggests Bhaumik. "Just when the Shanti Bahini were told to prepare for the big push forward and that India would support a strength of 15000 guerrillas came the news of Mrs Gandhi's election debacle and the Congress defeat... "It is not clear how far Mrs Gandhi wanted to go and it is possible that, after the liberation of Bangladesh, she could see the value of a successful foreign campaign could boost her dropping popularity back home. "But her defeat changed the course of events . The R&AW plans to intensify the guerrilla war in Chittagong Hill Tracts were put on hold when Morarji Desai took over as Prime Minister. The R&AW topbrass were categorically told to lay off from CHT." Bhaumik's book says the support to Shanti Bahini was resumed when Mrs Gandhi came back to power--but by then, the Bahini was in the throes of a fratricidal war that led to the assasination of its chief M N Larma. It says that R&AW's Agartala station chief at that time, Parimal Ghosh even resolved this fratricidal conflict by drafting an agreement between the two Shanti Bahini factions. Ghosh in 1971 was close to General (then Major) Ziaur Rahman and operated under his pseudonym Captain Hossain Ali. As a BSF officer, he fought at the Shuvapur bridge with the Mukti Fauj. Bhaumik also details how the R&AW won over the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and started giving them weapons -- just to ensure they would not back any Northeast Indian rebel groups anymore. The man instrumental in this operation was one of the most successful R&AW operatives , B.B.Nandi, who had also served as their station chief in Dhaka. During Nandi's tenure as station chief at Bangkok, he developed close links with the Burmese underground groups, specially the Kachins. Bhaumik says that Nandi even planted a R&AW communications team at the KIA headquarters in the early 1990s, from where they monitored the China-bound movements of the northeast Indian rebels . After retirement, Nandi became a fierce critic of the R&AW and the Indian government when Delhi started befriending Burma's military junta and the BNP-Jamaat combine in Dhaka. Bhaumik's book , published by Sage, details the major issues of conflict in northeast India -- land,language, leadership, ethnicity, ideology , religion -- and offers a policy framework for resolving the crisis. It says the region suffers from severe "democracy and development deficit" and argues that a secular and democratic Bangladesh and a truly federal and democratic Burma is crucial to the stability of India's Northeast. http://bdnews24.com/details.php?id=146560&cid=2 |
[Attachment(s) from Auniruddho Ahmed included below]
Attachment(s) from Auniruddho Ahmed
1 of 1 File(s)
"The younger children had not even heard of Modi. None of them knew what an 'encounter' was. And they could not believe that their beloved Ishrat was suddenly dead, and branded a terrorist. She was just 19." BAREFOOT The end of one life: Ishrat Jehan HARSH MANDER
The police cover-up was clumsy and ham-handed, the forensic evidence crystal clear, but no court had until then chosen to look this ugly and explosive truth in the face.
Vindicated: Ishrat Jehan's mother Shameera, brother Anwar and sister Mussarat. Ishrat Jehan was barely 17 when her father died from a brain tumour, leaving behind a large bereaved family in a small rented apartment in Mumra, a Mumbai suburb. Ishrat was not the eldest of the six children, but she was the brightest and most respo nsible. Still in high school, she started tuitions for children of the neighbourhood. The fees the children gave her became the main source of survival for the closely knit family. Ishrat entered college for a bachelor's degree in science. She would cook breakfast for the family, rush to college, and return to teach two batches of children. Their mother Shameema spent most of her day at the sewing machine, stitching zari borders to saris. They owned no television, and were not allowed to watch films or even to visit friends. They were busy just in the business of everyday living: content in their routine of studying, working, dreaming; hardly aware of the world outside their home. Hard days The summer months after school examinations were the hardest for the family, because school children were on holiday, and none came to Ishrat for tuitions. In March 2004, some relatives introduced the family to a middle-aged man Javed, who was looking for help with marketing and accounts for his perfume business. He would pay 3,500 rupees a month. It would also involve some out-station visits, for which he would pay extra. With seven mouths to feed, her mother had little option but to allow Ishrat to accept the employment, for the lean summer months. Ishrat made two short visits to Pune and Lucknow. On June 11, she left on her last out-station assignment. Her brother left her at the bus stand. Javed was to meet her at Nasik, from where they were to travel by car to other cities. On the evening of June 16, a group of young strangers visited their home. They asked them: Have you not heard the news? Don't you watch television? The visitors initially said they were from Ishrat's college, and they needed her passport photograph for her college forms. Around 8 at night they finally broke the terrible news. They were journalists. Ishrat had been killed in a police encounter. She was charged with a conspiracy to kill Modi. Television channels were broadcasting the sensational news all day. They needed her photograph to flash on television. The cold dread and shock of Ishrat's family was matched only by their utter bewilderment. The younger children had not even heard of Modi. None of them knew what an 'encounter' was. And they could not believe that their beloved Ishrat was suddenly dead, and branded a terrorist. She was just 19. But they had no time even to grieve. By 9 p.m., police came to their home, evacuated and sealed the house, and drove the entire terrified family to the police station. Throngs of journalists and television cameras had by then crowded outside their home. The police dropped them back at 2.30 a.m. Their house was sealed. Shameera and the children sat sleepless the whole night at a nearby shop. By morning, the journalists had grown virtually into a mob. A team of women policemen arrived, opened the seal of the house, and searched it, roughly throwing out the contents of cupboards, stripping the beds, over-turning all their furniture. Ishrat's mother then was driven to Ahmedabad by some sympathetic neighbours, to collect her daughter's body. She was grilled and abused by the senior police officials there. Finally they gave her the body — stiff, bloodied, defaced with bullet wounds. The assembled media went wild with their cameras and questions. Back in the Mumbai suburb Mumra, they were stunned when literally tens of thousands of people attended the funeral; all their faces were grim and strained, as though for each it was a personal loss. Continuing harassment
In a few weeks, the media forgot about them, but the police did not. The neighbours were initially helpful, but if anyone tried to assist the family, they were soon summoned for questioning and harassed by the police for sympathy to terrorists. The family was soon left almost alone. "There were times when we wondered why we were still alive", her sister Mussarat recalls. 'Why were we being punished?' They moved into a new rented house, but the mundane business of feeding now six mouths, without their father and Ishrat, loomed over their lives. Mussarat dropped out of studies, and helped her mother in sewing. Young Anwar also sewed, and started holding computer classes. Not everyone abandoned them, and there were a few in the local community who collected money for them once in a while, to help them survive. They also assisted Shameera to file a petition in the Gujarat High Court seeking a CBI enquiry into the deaths. But the case remained dormant. Then in 2006 unexpected glimmerings of hope were lit. Their friends came with the news that the same Gujarat police officers led by Vanazara, involved in Ishrat's death, had been jailed for the killing of Sohrabuddin and his wife in another 'fake encounter'. Shameera wrote a letter to the Chief Justice of the Gujarat High Court, that she wanted to know who the killers of her daughter were. They did not hear from the Court. Shameera persisted, aided by human rights lawyers Vrinda Grover and Mukul Sinha. Javed's father filed a petition in 2007. Two years later he was advised to go to the Supreme Court. As these superior courts prevaricated, an unknown junior metropolitan magistrate S.P. Tamang, responsible for conducting what is almost always an utterly routine statutory enquiry into the encounter killings, stood tall, bravely affirming justice and truth. He examined the forensic reports and statements, and in a lucid and tightly argued report on September 7, 2009, stunned everyone by concluding that the police version of how the killings occurred was an 'absolutely false and concocted story'. The police had charged that Ishrat was a Lashkar-e-Toiba activist, who drove into Ahmedabad with three other terrorists, in a plot to kill Chief Minister Modi. The police was tipped off, and chased their vehicle, and fired into the car tyre, forcing it to halt. The terrorists are then said to have alighted from the car, and fired relentlessly at the police vehicle. In self-defence, the police finally felled all four in a fierce gun battle. Official cover-up
Magistrate Tamang analysed the post-mortem and forensic evidence, to conclude irrefutably that Ishrat and the three men were actually killed several hours before the alleged shoot-out, from close range. The police had then taken their bodies to the roadside, fired themselves on their police jeep, and planted an AK 47 weapon in the hands of one of the dead men, and explosives in their car. It was cold blooded murder by the police, including of an innocent 19-year-old college girl. The police cover-up was clumsy and ham-handed, the forensic evidence crystal clear, but no court had until then chosen to look this ugly and explosive truth in the face. This is what Tamang did. Ishrat's family received the news with complete disbelief, and then a poignant sense of elation, as they distributed sweets. The grim report confirmed the brutal circumstances in which their beloved Ishrat was killed. But it also cleared her name, and identified her killers to be men in uniform. The family could emerge at last from the dense darkness of isolation and stigma of the last five years, which they thought would never end. After these long years, they could once again step out of their homes with their heads high. They could begin to live, and hope again. This hope was fragile, frail, tentative… But still it was hope. With Regards Abi "At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst" - Aristotle |
Annals of National Security
Defending the Arsenal - In an unstable
by
November 16, 2009
New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/11/16/091116fa_fact_hersh?printable=true
Taliban In the tumultuous days leading up to the Pakistan Army's ground offensive in the tribal area of South Waziristan, which began on October 17th, the Pakistani Taliban attacked what should have been some of the country's best-guarded targets. In the most brazen strike, ten gunmen penetrated the Army's main headquarters, in
On April 29th, President Obama was asked at a news conference whether he could reassure the American people that
The questioner, Chuck Todd, of NBC, began asking whether the American military could, if necessary, move in and secure
Obama did not say so, but current and former officials said in interviews in
The secrecy surrounding the understandings was important because there is growing antipathy toward
A senior Pakistani official who has close ties to Zardari exploded with anger during an interview when the subject turned to the American demands for more information about the arsenal. After the September 11th attacks, he said, there had been an understanding between the Bush Administration and then President Pervez Musharraf "over what
The ongoing consultation on nuclear security between
In response to a series of questions, Admiral Mullen acknowledged that he and Kayani were, in his spokesman's words, "very close." The spokesman said that Mullen is deeply involved in day-to-day Pakistani developments and "is almost an action officer for all things
In interviews in Pakistan, I obtained confirmation that there were continuing conversations with the United States on nuclear-security plans—as well as evidence that the Pakistani leadership put much less weight on them than the Americans did. In some cases, Pakistani officials spoke of the talks principally as a means of placating anxious American politicians. "You needed it," a senior Pakistani official, who said that he had been briefed on the nuclear issue, told me. His tone was caustic. "We have twenty thousand people working in the nuclear-weapons industry in
But, the Pakistani official said, "both sides are lying to each other." The information that the Pakistanis handed over was not as complete as the Americans believed. "We haven't told you anything that you don't know," he said. The Americans didn't realize that
High-level coöperation between
Safeguards have been built into the system. Pakistani nuclear doctrine calls for the warheads (containing an enriched radioactive core) and their triggers (sophisticated devices containing highly explosive lenses, detonators, and krytrons) to be stored separately from each other and from their delivery devices (missiles or aircraft). The goal is to insure that no one can launch a warhead—in the heat of a showdown with
But the safeguards meant to keep a confrontation with
The triggers are a key element in American contingency plans. An American former senior intelligence official said that a team that has trained for years to remove or dismantle parts of the Pakistani arsenal has now been augmented by a unit of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the élite counterterrorism group. He added that the unit, which had earlier focussed on the warheads' cores, has begun to concentrate on evacuating the triggers, which have no radioactive material and are thus much easier to handle.
"The Pakistanis gave us a virtual look at the number of warheads, some of their locations, and their command-and-control system," the former senior intelligence official told me. "We saw their target list and their mobilization plans. We got their security plans, so we could augment them in case of a breach of security," he said. "We're there to help the Pakistanis, but we're also there to extend our own axis of security to their nuclear stockpile." The detailed American planning even includes an estimate of how many nuclear triggers could be placed inside a C-17 cargo plane, the former official said, and where the triggers could be sequestered. Admiral Mullen, asked about increased American insight into the arsenal, said, through his spokesman, "I am not aware of our receipt of any such information." (A senior military officer added that the information, if it had been conveyed, would most likely "have gone to another government agency.")
A spokesman for the Pakistani military said, in an official denial, "
Early this summer, a consultant to the Department of Defense said, a highly classified military and civil-emergency response team was put on alert after receiving an urgent report from American intelligence officials indicating that a Pakistani nuclear component had gone astray. The team, which operates clandestinely and includes terrorism and nonproliferation experts from the intelligence community, the Pentagon, the F.B.I., and the D.O.E., is under standing orders to deploy from Andrews Air Force Base, in Maryland, within four hours of an alert. When the report turned out to be a false alarm, the mission was aborted, the consultant said. By the time the team got the message, it was already in
In an actual crisis, would the Pakistanis give an American team direct access to their arsenal? An adviser to the Pentagon on counterinsurgency said that some analysts suspected that the Pakistani military had taken steps to move elements of the nuclear arsenal "out of the count"—to shift them to a storage facility known only to a very few—as a hedge against mutiny or an American or Indian effort to seize them. "If you thought your American ally was telling your enemy where the weapons were, you'd do the same thing," the adviser said.
"Let me say this about our nuclear deterrent," President Zardari told me, when asked about any recent understandings between
Zardari and I met twice, first in his office, in the grand but isolated Presidential compound in
Zardari spoke with derision about what he depicted as
Zardari offered some advice to Barack Obama: instead of fretting about nuclear security in
In May, Zardari, at the urging of the
Zardari's view of the Swat offensive was striking, given that many Pakistanis had been angered by the excessive use of force and the ensuing refugee crisis. The lives of about two million people were torn apart, and, during a summer in which temperatures soared to a hundred and twenty degrees, hundreds of thousands of civilians were crowded into government-run tent cities. Idris Khattak, a former student radical who now works with Amnesty International, said in
Zardari did not dispute that there were difficulties in the refugee camps—the heat, the lack of facilities. But he insisted that the fault lay with the civilians, who, he said, had been far too tolerant of the Taliban. The suffering could serve a useful purpose: after a summer in the tents, the citizens of Swat might have learned a lesson and would not "let the Taliban back into their cities."
Rahimullah Yusufzai, an eminent Pakistani journalist, who has twice interviewed Osama bin Laden, had a different explanation for the conditions that led to the offensive. "The Taliban were initially trying to win public support in Swat by delivering justice and peace," Yusufzai said. "But when they got into power they went crazy and became brutal. Many are from the lowest ranks of society, and they began killing and terrorizing their opponents. The people were afraid."
The turmoil did not end with the Army's invasion. "Most of the people who were in the refugee camps told us that the Army was equally bad. There was so much killing," Yusufzai said. The government had placed limits on reporters who tried to enter the
The Obama Administration has had difficulty coming to terms with how unhappy many Pakistanis are with the
Last year, the Washington Times ran an article about the Pressler Amendment, a 1985 law cutting off most military aid to
I have met and interacted with the entire military staff from General Kayani on down and all the general officers on their joint staff and in all the services, and I haven't spoken to one that "loves us"—whatever that means. In fact, I have read most of the TS [top secret] assessments of all their General Officers and I haven't read one that comes close to their "loving" us. They play us for everything they can get, and we trip over ourselves trying to give them everything they ask for, and cannot pay for.
Some military men who know
The recollections of Bush Administration officials who dealt with
No American, for example, was permitted access to A. Q. Khan, the metallurgist and so-called father of the Pakistani atomic bomb, who traded crucial nuclear-weapons components on the international black market. Musharraf placed him under house arrest in early 2004, claiming to have been shocked to learn of Khan's dealings. At the time, it was widely understood that those activities had been sanctioned by
A former State Department official who worked on nuclear issues with Pakistan after September 11th said that he'd come to understand that the Pakistanis "believe that any information we get from them would be shared with others—perhaps even the Indians. To know the command-and-control processes of their nuclear weapons is one thing. To know where the weapons actually are is another thing."
The former State Department official cited the large Pakistan Air Force base outside
In the July/August issue of Arms Control Today, Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, who recently retired after three years as the Department of Energy's director of intelligence and counter-intelligence, preceded by two decades at the C.I.A., wrote vividly about the "lethal proximity between terrorists, extremists, and nuclear weapons insiders" in
Leslie H. Gelb, a president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, said, "I don't think there's any kind of an agreement we can count on. The Pakistanis have learned how to deal with us, and they understand that if they don't tell us what we want to hear we'll cut off their goodies." Gelb added, "In all these years, the C.I.A. never built up assets, but it talks as if there were 'access.' I don't know if Obama understands that the Agency doesn't know what it's talking about."
The former high-level Bush Administration official was just as blunt. "If a Pakistani general is talking to you about nuclear issues, and his lips are moving, he's lying," he said. "The Pakistanis wouldn't share their secrets with anybody, and certainly not with a country that, from their point of view, used them like a
Sultan Amir Tarar, known to many as Colonel Imam, is the archetype of the disillusioned Pakistani officer. Tarar spent eighteen years with the I.S.I. in
Tarar, who retired in 1995 and has a son in the Army, believed—as did many Pakistani military men—that the American campaign to draw Pakistan deeper into the war against the Taliban would backfire. "The Americans are trying to rent out their war to us," he said. If the Obama Administration persists, "there will be an uprising here, and this corrupt government will collapse. Every Pakistani will then be his own nuclear bomb—a suicide bomber," Tarar said. "The longer the war goes on, the longer it will spill over in the tribal territories, and it will lead to a revolutionary stage. People there will flee to the big cities like
Tarar believed that the Obama Administration had to negotiate with the Afghan Taliban, even if that meant direct talks with Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader. Tarar knew Mullah Omar well. "Omar trained as a young man in my camp in 1985," he told me. "He was physically fit and mission-oriented—a very honest man who was a practicing Muslim. Nothing beyond that. He was a Talib—a student, and not a mullah. But people respected him. Today, among all the Afghan leaders, Omar has the biggest audience, and this is the right time for you to talk to him."
Speaking to Tarar and other officers gave a glimpse of the acrimony at the top of the Pakistani government, which has complicated the nuclear equation. Tarar spoke bitterly about the position that General Kayani found himself in, carrying out the "corrupt" policies of the Americans and of Zardari, while
A $7.5-billion American aid package, approved by Congress in September, was, to the surprise of many in
Lieutenant General Hamid Gul was the director general of the I.S.I. in the late eighties and worked with the C.I.A. in
If Pakistani officers had given any assurances about the nuclear arsenal, Gul said, "they are cheating you and they would be right to do so. We should not be aiding and abetting Americans."
Persuading the Pakistan Army to concentrate on fighting the Taliban, and not
A retired senior Pakistani intelligence officer, who worked with his C.I.A. counterparts to track down Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, said that he was deeply troubled by the prospect of
"My belief today is that it's better to have the Americans as an enemy rather than as a friend, because you cannot be trusted," the former officer concluded. "The only good thing the
I flew to
The Indian intelligence official went on, "Do we know if the Americans have that intelligence? This is not in the scheme of the way you Americans look at things—'Kayani is a great guy! Let's have a drink and smoke a cigar with him and his buddies.' Some of the men we are watching have notions of leading an Islamic army."
In an interview the next afternoon, an Indian official who has dealt diplomatically with
The Indian official, like his counterparts in
Pervez Musharraf lives in unpretentious exile with his wife in an apartment in
Musharraf, who was forced out of office in August, 2008, under threat of impeachment, did not spare his successor. "Asif Zardari is a criminal and a fraud," Musharraf told me. "He'll do anything to save himself. He's not a patriot and he's got no love for
Musharraf said that he and General Kayani, who had been his nominee for Chief of Army Staff, were still in telephone contact. Musharraf came to power in a military coup in 1999, and remained in uniform until near the end of his Presidency. He said that he didn't think the Army was capable of mutiny—not the Army he knew. "There are people with fundamentalist ideas in the Army, but I don't think there is any possibility of these people getting organized and doing an uprising. These 'fundos' were disliked and not popular."
He added, "Muslims think highly of Obama, and he should use his acceptability—even with the Taliban—and try to deal with them politically."
Musharraf spoke of two prior attempts to create a fundamentalist uprising in the Army. In both cases, he said, the officers involved were arrested and prosecuted. "I created the strategic force that controls all the strategic assets—eighteen to twenty thousand strong. They are monitored for character and for potential fundamentalism," he said. He acknowledged, however, that things had changed since he'd left office. "People have become alarmed because of the Taliban and what they have done," he said. "Everyone is now alarmed."
The rise in militancy is a sensitive subject, and many inside
Others are less sure. "Nuclear weapons are only as safe as the people who handle them," Pervez Hoodbhoy, an eminent nuclear physicist in
The current offensive in
During my stay in Pakistan—my first in five years—there were undeniable signs that militancy and the influence of fundamentalist Islam had grown. In the past, military officers, politicians, and journalists routinely served Johnnie Walker Black during our talks, and drank it themselves. This time, even the most senior retired Army generals offered only juice or tea, even in their own homes. Officials and journalists said that soldiers and middle-level officers were increasingly attracted to the preaching of Zaid Hamid, who joined the mujahideen and fought for nine years in
A senior Obama Administration official brought up Hizb ut-Tahrir, a Sunni organization whose goal is to establish the Caliphate. "They've penetrated the Pakistani military and now have cells in the Army," he said. (The Pakistan Army denies this.) In one case, according to the official, Hizb ut-Tahrir had recruited members of a junior officer group, from the most élite Pakistani military academy, who had been sent to
"Where do these guys get socialized and exposed to Islamic evangelism and the fundamentalism narrative?" the Obama Administration official asked. "In services every Friday for Army officers, and at corps and unit meetings where they are addressed by senior commanders and clerics."