Attack in Mumbai -2

[ramana]

Op-Ed. Telegraph, Kolkota, 18 Dec 2008

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>DANGEROUS PLAYERS IN AN ELABORATE CHARADE </b>
Given the long history of US support enjoyed by the Inter-Services Intelligence, <b>India faces a tough challenge ahead</b>, writes Abhijit Bhattacharyya


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<b>Hamid Gul, the sixth boss of the Inter-Services Intelligence of Pakistan, assumed charge at the height of the Soviet-Afghan war in April 1987 and was witness to six memorable events connected with his country</b>: first, the death of his military boss and the nation’s president, General Zia-ul-Haq, in an air crash on Wednesday, August 17, 1988, in Bahawalpur. Second was the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Kabul, beginning February 15, 1989. Third was the beginning of civil war in Afghanistan following the vacuum created by the Soviet defeat and US withdrawal. Fourth, the accession of Benazir Bhutto as the first woman prime minister of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Fifth was his brazen support to the Khalistan movement, and the last was the masterminding of the Kashmir turbulence, before abdicating the post of the director-general, ISI, in May 1989.

Born in Sargodha in 1935, commissioned in the Armoured Corps in 1954, and having served, first as the director-general of military intelligence, then of the ISI, and finally as the lieutenant-general of the Strike Corps II in Multan, Gul is remembered more for his 27-month stint at the ISI than for anything else. <b>General Zia-ul-Haq picked up Gul for his hardcore Islamic views as the former was keen to radically Islamize the Pakistani army. Gul successfully nurtured right-wing politicians and created Islami Jamhoori Ittehad, a religion-based political party to counter Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party.</b> Although he failed to stop Benazir from becoming the prime minister, he succeeded in incurring her wrath, which paved the way for his ouster from the ISI in May 1989.

When the Soviets began withdrawing from Kabul in February 1989, Gul’s tactics of direct action to capture Jalalabad to install a puppet Afghan government with the help of the Mujahideen, ended in total failure due to the inability of the Mujahideen to switch over from their traditional expertise of guerrilla warfare to conventional military operations. <b>On the Khalistan front, Gul was equally adventurous and innovative as he felt that “backing the Sikh separatists was the only way of pre-empting any fresh Indian threat to Pakistan’s territorial integrity”. He finally believed that “keeping the Indian Punjab destabilized is equivalent to the Pakistani army having an extra division at no cost to the Pakistani taxpayers”.</b>

Today, Indians should scan through leading newspapers from 1987 to 1989 to find out how many innocent lives were lost, how and where. <b>Indians should reflect on the contemporary reports from 1989, when Benazir was new to the machinations of the Pakistani army and the ISI, which were headed respectively by the Azamgarh-born refugee (mojahir), Mirza Aslam Beg, and the Sargodha-born Punjabi, Hamid Gul — the two anti-democracy stalwarts, who accepted the first female prime minister in Pakistan more out of compulsion than choice.</b>

<b>Politically too, the ISI, during Gul’s tenure, successfully created the coalition of the anti-Benazir religio-political force, called IJI. Gul, therefore, stood out not only as a military general and a spy-master but also showed features of a religious preacher and political leader.</b>

<b>Gul’s succession to the post of the ISI chief in April 1987, however, was partly owing to his being a favourite of the station chief of the Central Intelligence Agency, Milton Bearden, and the then US Ambassador to Pakistan, Arnold Lewis Raphel, both of whom considered Gul as an ally waging the jihad of the Mujahideen against Kremlin in Kabul, and a potential national leader of Pakistan. </b>The US-Gul honeymoon, however, was short-lived, owing to Washington’s loss of interest, as the mission of military mayhem of Marxist Moscow was complete. This re-energized the free-for-all fight among Muslim militants, militia, middlemen and the merchants of death in the vast arid land of Afghanistan. <b>Subsequently, the fury of the United States of America multiplied, as evidence appeared in the late Nineties that Gul, despite being a retired man, somehow was able to give the Taliban an advance warning of the US attempts to assassinate Osama bin Laden with missile strikes. The worst allegation against Gul followed in 2004 in the US media that the former ISI boss was a key participant in the 9/11 plot and “Osama bin Laden’s master planner”.</b>

President George W. Bush had recently asked, “Who controls the ISI?” The world today is asking this question too, but very few, so far, has paid any heed to bleeding India’s recurring plea to take a united stand against the machinations of the <b>military, mullah, and militants of Pakistan</b>, a combination that makes the ISI not only the State within a State but also something more than that. The ISI is not merely a “non-state actor” as referred to by the leader of the Opposition in the Indian Parliament on December 11, 2008. <b>The ISI is a parallel State that gets money from Islamabad’s exchequer, but operates on auto-pilot with several State actors as well as extra-territorial factors that determine its course, direction, aim, speed and the angle of attack on its targets by pouring in money</b>

<b>Thus, Pakistan government apart, the nearest and dearest traditional supporters of the ISI have been the US, the CIA and some countries in the Middle-East.</b> History shows that the likes of Gul first played the role of a pawn and subsequently that of a power-broker from the wrong side of the fence. Today, <b>the reality is that the US is unlikely go against the ISI and Pakistan beyond a point. Or else history will expose the US’s actions, which, of course, were born out of the strategic compulsions of the superpower.</b> Thus, despite the love-hate relationship between the CIA and the ISI,<b> Associated Press reported on July 22, 2004, that the “9/11 Commission Report fails to mention possible ISI connection to 9/11”. This, despite reports that the commission was given a document by a high-level, anonymous source claiming that the “ISI was fully involved in devising and helping the entire 9/11 plot.” The document blames Gul for being the “central participant in the plot.” It noted that Gul is a self-avowed “admirer” of bin Laden and that the CIA considers Gul to be “the most dangerous man in Pakistan”. A senior Pakistani political leader said, “I have reason to believe Hamid Gul was Osama bin Laden’s master planner.”</b> The 9/11 document also suggested that “Pakistan’s appearance of fighting al Qaeda is merely an elaborate charade and top military and intelligence officials in Pakistan still closely sympathize with bin Laden’s ideology.” <b>Despite this exposure, the 9/11 commission’s final report rarely mentioned the ISI.</b>

The only significant mention is a brief comment that the ISI was the Taliban’s “primary patron”. The director-general, ISI, lieutenant-general Mahmood Ahmed (1999-2001) is mentioned twice, both in the context of post-9/11 diplomacy. <b>It is noted that the details of 9/11 plot were widely known by the Taliban leadership, but the report fails to consider if the Taliban shared this knowledge with their “primary patron.” </b>Far from criticizing Pakistan, the commission praises the country for its support in the war on terror and suggests that the “US should greatly increase its foreign aid there”. Given this attitude, India should recall the popular adage, “God helps those who help themselves.” The geopolitics of realpolitik can only be ignored at India’s own peril.

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