NATO and Afghanistan Help India Foment Terror in Pakistan
"Today's
negative political and security environments are in fact a plot against nuclear
Pakistan. … the current wave of sectarianism and tarnishing of the ISI’s image
by former CIA officials are very much part of the hidden agenda of foreign
intelligence agencies."
On October 7, at least nine
individuals were killed and more than 85 injured in two successive blasts near
a prominent shrine in Pakistan’s commercial capital of Karachi. The blasts
occurred within minutes of each other where a large number of people gather
every day at the gate of the shrine of Abdullah Shah Ghazi
in Clifton [Abdullah Shah Ghazi is considered a saint by Sufis, a moderate branch of
Islam the Taliban consider apostate]. Just days earlier, a Sunni leader was
killed by unknown assailants. At least 32 people were killed and over 200 injured
on September 1, when three suicide bombers blew themselves up during a Shiite march
in Lahore. In another incident on the same day, gunmen opened fire on a Karachi
procession, wounding seven. Terrorist activities like bombings, targeted
killings, robberies and kidnappings have remained high in the last two months.
Reportedly, two heads from suicide bombers involved in the Karachi blasts have
been recovered. Due to increasing foreign involvement, Pakistan’s security
situation has become pathetic. The terrorists have been operating covertly in
the guise of religious and political individuals. It's quite alarming that this
year alone, more than 430 people have been killed in Karachi.
In July 2010, another shrine,
the Data Darbar
Shrine [also housing the remains of a prominent Sufi saint] was targeted by
suicide attackers. In that attack, over 100 people were killed and many
injured. In March of this year, many innocent people were killed when
terrorists targeted Ahmadi
mosques [the Ahamdis are another Muslim sect commonly derided by groups such as
the Taliban].
These blasts are all linked,
as they are likely aimed at causing division within the society through
sectarianism. The current wave of terrorism clearly indicates the involvement
of the Indian intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), and
other foreign intelligence agencies. The conspicuous increase in volatility has
been noticed since the “Mumbai attack.”
India has begun an all-out proxy war against Pakistan and is trying to drag it
into sectarianism. Neither has she let any chance to malign Pakistan by tying
it to some terrorist attack slip by.
Most local analysts believe
that today's negative political and security environments are in fact a plot
against nuclear Pakistan. It's worth noting here that the twin blasts in
Karachi seem connected to the collaboration of NATO and India's Research and
Analysis Wing [RAW]
against Pakistan. The blasts occurred during the time that the Torkham border crossing was
closed because of NATO’s attack on Pakistani troops. That closure resulted in
supply convoys being stopped and 300 containers being left stranded. Although
International Security Assistance Force [ISAF] and NATO officials are struggling
to get the Torkham crossing reopened, the government yet to do so [the crossing
was reopened
just after this article was published].
The NATO attack has been
condemned by huge swaths of Pakistani society and Islamabad has taken the
situation seriously by stopping NATO and ISAF from using Pakistani territory to
provision their troops. As NATO and ISAF have been under heavy criticism for
the past few days, the American ambassador apologized to
Pakistan for the helicopter attack.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
The current wave of terrorism
has also exposed more ways to identify the precise causes of terrorism in the
country. First, RAW has tried to cash in on the current rift between NATO and
Pakistan by carrying out the bombings in Karachi. Second, with the tacit
support of foreign intelligence agencies, RAW decided to target Karachi and
other cities in order to force Pakistan to act against the Taliban and the Haqqani group in North
and South Waziristan. Third, ISAF and NATO intelligence are backing RAW in
fomenting terrorism in Pakistan to justify previous drone and helicopter
attacks. Since August 2008, the covert U.S. drone war in Pakistan has killed about
1,240 people in about 152 strikes. It's also worth noting that about 31,925
civilians and more than 8,000 soldiers have sacrificed their lives to fight
this foreign-imposed war. On the other hand, only 2,100 Western and American
troops have been killed.
Fourth, the situation in
Kashmir and the Maoist
areas grow worse by the day. In this regard, India's political and military
leadership have been quite upset about the shift in global opinion against New
Delhi. Indian Interior
Minister P Chidambaram and Chief of Army Staff [Vijay Kumar Singh] have
repeatedly threatened Pakistan and accuse China of helping the Maoists. In a
ceremony held on March 12, 2010, Chidambaram blamed Pakistan for ongoing
domestic violence and militancy related to the Maoists. He said that in the
future, no act of terrorism against India originating in Pakistani territory
would be tolerated. In fact, statements like this from the political and
military leadership serves only to justify India’s covert and open sabotage
against Pakistan.
On March 13, 2010 in the
densely populated area of the RA Bazaar in the Lahore Cantonment,
two suicide bombers walked over to Pakistan military vehicles and blew
themselves up. In the same month, the Pakistani Intelligence Agency’s
“sub-office” in Model
Town Lahore was also targeted by a suicide attack.
This strategy of
destabilizing and targeting Pakistan was reportedly devised in mid-June during
a meeting in Kabul chaired and supervised by the former director general of the
National Security Directorate of Afghanistan, Amrullah Saleh. India’s
local intelligence chief, ISAF intelligence representatives and CIA officials
were all in attendance. The main features of their consensus were weakening
Pakistan through its economy; damaging its political system; supporting separatists in Balochistan;
defaming the military and the Inter-Services
Intelligence agency (ISI); and spreading sectarianism by carrying out
targeted killings of religious leaders and attacking sacred places and
religious processions.
Members
of a Pakistan family try and preserve their belongings in
the
worst flooding in the nation's history. With Pakistan in crisis on
multiple
fronts, anger at the authorities, U.S. and NATO is palpable.
Thus, the current wave of
sectarianism and tarnishing of the ISI’s image by former CIA officials are very
much part of the hidden agenda of foreign intelligence agencies. It's an open
secret that former Afghan Intelligence Chief Amrullah Saleh was a key linchpin
of the entire anti-Pakistan game. Though President Hamid Karzai picked a former
presidential guardian, Rahmatullah
Nabil, to lead the intelligence service, he too failed to address Pakistani
concerns about Indian intelligence using Afghan territory to launch terrorist
attacks on Pakistan.
Gestures by the Pentagon and
CIA toward Pakistan’s security forces and the ISI appear to have remained quite
cordial, but relations have been tainted because of enduring Pentagon and CIA mistrust.
For example, the foreign channel Fox News reported on October 7 that CIA
spokesman Colonel
Dave Lapan said that the Pakistani intelligence service doesn't support
terrorism as an organization, but that some ISI elements may be providing
assistance to terrorists. Lapan was responding to a report in the Wall
Street Journal that suggested that the ISI is pushing the Taliban to keep
fighting in Afghanistan, undermining efforts by the Pentagon to end the war.
The report was undoubtedly an eye opener for Pakistan’s political and military
leadership, and proves that American and Western partners in the global war are
biased against Pakistan. The Obama Administration should also know that this
type of loose statement by Pentagon spokesmen will further weaken the already
deteriorating relationship between Islamabad and Washington.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
President Asif Ali Zardari,
Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani and Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq
Pervez Kiyani condemned the Karachi blasts. They expressed condolences to the
families of those who lost their lives in the dastardly terrorist act. The president
said that the government and people are determined to defeat terrorism and that
such gruesome acts cannot deter the national spirit.
In short, the twin blasts of
October 8 will be taken as a continuation of Indian militancy supported by
foreign hands against Pakistan. The international community should come out and
condemn this. India and her allies should be forced to stop fomenting terrorism
against a country that's already passing through the worst kind of catastrophe
(the recent floods) in her history. Thus, to meet this threat to our national
security, there is a need to stand up against terrorists, and the government should
devise a counter-terror strategy. A clear message of “enough is enough” should
be communicated to ISAF and NATO.
