May 23, 2009

Baitullah Mehsud is rolling in dollars and has access to highly sophisticated light weaponry. He is also in possession of highly sophisticated communication equipment, or homing devices in other words. The Pakistan army has been asking the US for help in ‘taking out’ Mehsud and has on at least four different occasions provided the US with accurate information of his location over a period of twelve to twenty four after the US was informed, but he was never targeted.
Shaukat Qadir
India would be better off trying to negotiate a state of peaceful coexistence with Pakistan, rather than follow a course that is bound to be self-destructive
Finally, some American analysts have acknowledged that New Delhi is actively involved in destabilising the Pakistani province of Balochistan. They have also come to the realisation that it is also funding some of the Taliban.
Foreign Affairs, a journal published by the Council for Foreign Relations in Washington, has published this discovery, supported by the large variety of speakers at a round table conference held recently in Washington.
The speakers at the conference included Christine Fair, a senior political analyst formerly at the RAND Corporation; Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institution; Sumit Ganguly, an Indian-born American citizen; and Ashley Tellis, the author of “India’s emerging nuclear doctrine”, published by RAND in 2001.
When Ashley asked me to comment on his work, I wrote back: “You have provided India with a nuclear doctrine that no one in India could have come up with, and have legitimised it through the RAND.”
With such participants, the conclusion is indisputable, but the US chooses to consider the evidence inconclusive. Though not when the evidence is against Pakistan!
I am prepared to believe that Pakistan, through Bangladesh, is involved in supporting insurgencies in India. The reasons are obvious: India is a far larger country, with greater resources and, in due course, is likely to outstrip Pakistan, economically and militarily, unless bled constantly.
Indian involvement to destabilise Pakistan is less easily understood, except as a tit-for-tat response, because it cannot take possession of Balochistan, and if Pakistan implodes India will face disastrous consequences.
A tit-for-tat response has its own logic and, in the wake of the Mumbai attacks, many Indian analysts, convinced of the Indian military’ inability to gain a decisive victory against Pakistan, suggested this policy.
One of them, Bharat Karnad, ex-member of the Indian national security advisory board, even sent me his article for ‘comments’. However, if the outcome of such a policy is as obviously self-defeating in the long run; perhaps India would be better off trying to negotiate a state of peaceful coexistence with Pakistan, rather than follow a course that is bound to be self-destructive.
I am a reluctant believer in conspiracy theories, but the writings of Charles Ferndale, Norman Finkelstein, Uri Avnery and Israel Shahak — not to mention Noam Chomsky — have half-convinced me that central to the Israeli Zionist — mind you, all Jews are not Zionists; Jews have their extremists, just like Muslims and Christians and Hindus have theirs — survival theory is that no regional power in its vicinity should be capable of confronting it militarily. Thus Iraq’s nuclear capability had to be destroyed, Iran prevented from getting there and, since Pakistan is already there, it must be destroyed from within. If this be so, theorists contend that the US and India are unwitting pawns in the hands of Israeli Zionists.
That would explain a number of inexplicable pieces of information. However, many of these could also result from the ineptitude of the CIA, a conclusion I strongly subscribe to, as well as policies for short-term political gains by Indian politicians. Take your pick.
The vast, silent, and irrelevant majority amongst the Mehsud tribe have no love lost for Baitullah, the undisputed Taliban leader of their tribe. I am reliably informed that he is rolling in dollars and has access to highly sophisticated light weaponry. Now he could have got these from a number of sources; India, Israel, Iran, Russia, or even the US.
I am also reliably informed that Baitullah Mehsud is in possession of highly sophisticated communication equipment and what are presumably homing devices. That narrows the field a little: Israel, the US, or Russia.
I am also, not so reliably, informed that there are strong rumours afloat that Baitullah Mehsud has been in touch with the CIA.
We know for certain that the Pakistan army has been asking the US for help in ‘taking out’ Mehsud and has on at least four different occasions provided the US with accurate information of his location over a period of twelve to twenty four after the US was informed, but he was never targeted.
We also know that US drone attacks have been more successful in the last few months and that their kill ratio of militants to innocent people has increased dramatically in favour of militants killed.
However, if my information is correct, that there are less than twenty hard-core Al Qaeda personnel present in each tribal area, not a single one of them has been successfully targeted. In fact, almost all of the militants killed in the Mehsud area were lowly soldiers, many of them Uzbeks and, according to some Mehsuds, some of those killed included those who disputed Baitullah’s leadership.
With a puzzle as disconnected as this, the dotted lines can be connected in many different ways to lead to widely divergent conclusions. I will leave it to the readers to arrive at their own conclusions. However, I will adjure them to bear in mind that the US refused to target Baitullah Mehsud on a number of occasions, despite Pakistani requests and accurate information on his location for many hours, and that no really high value target has ever been hit in the Mehsud area.
Each time a hit on a high value target has been claimed, it has been refuted within hours, sometimes days, occasionally even months later.
I leave it to you to dot the lines, but this time I am almost certain that there is a conspiracy; let each of you decide where it leads.
This article is a modified version of one originally written for the daily National. The author is a retired brigadier. He is also former vice president and founder of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI)

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