A view from India worthy of attention. It is an Army personnel's view, which is not quite the same as a political analyst's, but it puts together an interesting array of events in an area still under tremendous turmoil due to the bungling of the Colonial Masters.
Farida Majid
Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2011 22:07:09 +0530
Subject: "SOMEONE BLUNDERED: OURS TO REASON WHY"-- By LT. GEN.(RETD) S.K. SINHA
Farida Majid
Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2011 22:07:09 +0530
Subject: "SOMEONE BLUNDERED: OURS TO REASON WHY"-- By LT. GEN.(RETD) S.K. SINHA
(From another list)
A very nice article on why we are in the state we are vis-a-vis the
USA, China,Pakistan, Afghanistan & Nepal, which brings out facts
forgotten by most.......
http://www.deccanchronicle.com/columnists/s-k-sinha/someone-blundered-ours-reason-why
George Tanham, the American security analyst, stated that Indians had
no strategic doctrine and formulated strategy on ad hoc basis. I
regretfully accept that he was not far wrong. However, recent events
show that despite all its security think tanks and vast resources, the
United States has not done much better in dealing with Islamic
fundamentalism. I recall that during the Second World War, there used
to be a joke that the Americans are slow on the uptake. They joined
the First World War three years late and the Second World War two
years late. Today it seems to have taken them many years to fully
realise the dimensions of jihadi terrorism and Pakistan's duplicity.
Unfortunately, Jawaharlal Nehru, despite his great contribution during
the freedom movement and in establishing Indian democracy, showed a
lamentable lack of strategic vision. He handled Kashmir's accession
badly, leaving a running sore. There was no requirement to commit in
1947 that the people will finally decide after peace was restored. He
compounded this in taking the Kashmir issue to the UN in January 1948.
We claim that Gilgit-Baltistan is legally Indian territory. Yet we did
not give even moral support to the people's uprisings there against
anti-Shia policy, colonial status and changing demography by settling
people from mainland Pakistan.
In an agreement signed at Delhi on August 4, 1947 by Mountbatten,
Jinnah and the Khan of Kalat Baluchistan was to revert to its 1876
independent status on Pakistan coming into being. In January 1948
Jinnah forced the Khan, then on a visit to Karachi, to sign the
Instrument of Accession. No referendum was stipulated nor special
status. The Baluchistan Assembly unanimously rejected this and Baluch
insurgency has continued since January 1948. Pakistan has been
carrying out artillery shelling and air strikes against the
insurgents. The veteran Baluch leader, Nawab Akbar Bugti, was killed
in a air strike against his hideout in 2007.
In 1950 King Tribhuvan of Nepal came to Delhi and offered to merge
Nepal with India. Despite Sardar Patel's advice, Nehru refused the
offer. His daughter showed sagacity in 1975 by merging Sikkim with
India, otherwise Sikkim would also have become a running sore. Nehru
ignored Patel's letter of November 17, 1950 warning him about the
threat posed by China's occupation of Tibet. We lost a buffer in the
Himalayas. He did not accept the US offer of India getting a permanent
seat in the Security Council and urged that the People's Republic of
China be given the seat. At that time the Communist regime in China
had not been recognised by most countries, including the US.
The British imposed the Durand Line, arbitrarily dividing the Pashtuns
on either side of the then Indo-Afghan (now Pakistan-Afghan) border.
Afghanistan refused to recognise this line. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan,
the tallest Pashtun leader, had been closely associated with the
Congress Party and Nehru. India did not show any interest in the
Pashtun problem and decided to remain aloof from the internal affairs
of a neighbouring country. Idealism does not have a place in real
politik.
Pakistan aligned with the US to obtain military hardware for use
against India. Similarly, with worsening Sino-India relations from the
late Fifties, it befriended China. This relationship is now said to be
higher than the Himalayas and deeper than the ocean. India had to
contend with a two-front defence strategy. In 1975, on an official
visit to Kabul, I was told by a senior Afghan general that if India
and Afghanistan had worked together in 1971, their armies could have
shaken hands across the Indus. We have never tried to impose a
two-front strategy on Pakistan.
Samuel Huntington, an eminent political analyst, lectured on the clash
of civilisations and also wrote a widely read book on the subject.
There was an attack on the World Trade Centre in New York and growing
Islamist violence in Asia. The US ignored all this. The CIA provided
funds and weapons to Pakistan for launching jihad against the Soviets
in Afghanistan. The Taliban was helped to power in Afghanistan. This
barbarity included the destruction of the famous Bamiyan Buddha
statues while the lone superpower and the UN issued meaningless verbal
condemnation.
Further, the US turned a blind eye to Pakistan clandestinely acquiring
nuclear weapons. On 9/11, the twin towers came crashing down. The
civilised world was outraged. The US launched a successful attack
within a month, clearing the Taliban from Afghanistan but allowing the
defeated elements to take refuge in Pakistan which clandestinely
helped them reorganise and re-equip. Without fully consolidating its
success in Afghanistan, the US got misled and diverted to wasteful
operations in Iraq. And when it got back to pursuing operations in
Afghanistan, it had a full-blown insurgency on its hands reminiscent
of the war in Vietnam. The Taliban, with ISI complicity, began
attacking from havens in Pakistan.
The US is dependent on Pakistan for moving supplies by road to
Afghanistan across Pakistani territory. Its convoys and personnel have
been frequently attacked in the Pakistan territory and have suffered
casualties. On the plea of economy air supply was not used to remove
dependence on Pakistan nor was any alternative land route developed
with the cooperation of Russia and the Central Asian republics. During
World War II, the 14th Army was put on air maintenance for several
months when air transport capability was comparitively primitive.
Pakistan exploited the US dependence for surface communications. The
US gave Pakistan aid amounting to $20 billion. Yet the US remained the
most hated country in Pakistan and the latter had no compunction in
assisting the Taliban in killing US soldiers.
The operation against Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad, where he had been
sheltered by Pakistan, fully exposed Pakistan's blatant duplicity. Yet
US aid to Pakistan continued as an unavoidable imperative. Apart from
dependence on Pakistan for land communication, the US is now also
dependent on Pakistan for an honourable exit from Afghanistan. The
recent attacks by the Haqqani group, with the complicity of the ISI,
has now completely blown the lid off. Adm. Mike Mullen, the retiring
Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff who had all along been fully
supportive of Pakistan, has now come out strongly against it, saying
that the Haqqani group is an arm of the ISI. The US and Pakistan are
engaged in a war of words.
Against this backdrop, we signed a strategic partnership agreement
with Afghanistan on October 4, 2011 during President Hamid Karzai's
visit to Delhi. No doubt this is a commendable achievement. However,
the implications of this agreement must be carefully analysed and
necessary follow-up action taken most expeditiously to ensure national
security.-------------------------------------
The author, a retired lieutenant-general, was Vice-Chief of Army Staff
and has served as governor of Assam and Jammu and Kashmir
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