Brigadier Ali Khan: Terrorist or Hero; An Analysis - فوج میں امریکہ مخالف جذبات کے نمائندے

بی بی سی اردو ڈاٹ کام :Courtesy

فوج میں امریکہ مخالف جذبات کے نمائندے

آصف فاروقی

کالعدم تنظیم حزب التحریر کے ساتھ مبینہ تعلقات پر زیرحراست پاکستانی فوج کے بریگیڈیئر علی خان، ان کے بعض ساتھیوں اور سینئر افسران کے مطابق، گزشتہ کئی سالوں میں پاکستانی فوج میں امریکہ مخالف جذبات کے نمائندے کے طور پر سامنے آئے تھے۔

انیس سو اٹھاون میں میانوالی کے ایک گاؤں کے غریب خاندان کے صوبیدار مہر خان کے گھر پیدا ہونے والے علی خان نے انیس سو اناسی میں پاکستانی فوج میں کمیشن حاصل کیا۔
کلِک ’گرفتاری انتقامی کارروائی ہے‘
وہ اپنے گولڈ میڈل اور شاندار سروس ریکارڈ کے باعث پاکستانی فوج کے ’بہترین‘ افسران میں شمار ہوتے تھے۔ اپنے ریکارڈ کے مطابق وہ تقرریوں اور ترقیوں کی دوڑ میں نمایاں حیثیت میں کامیابی کی منازل طے کرتے رہے یہاں تک کہ امریکہ کے ورلڈ ٹریڈ سینٹر پر دہشت گرد حملے ہوئے اور پاکستانی فوج نے امریکہ کو افغانستان میں فوجی کارروائی کے لیے فوجی تعاون فراہم کرنا شروع کر دیا۔
بریگیڈیئر علی خان اس وقت کمانڈ اینڈ سٹاف کالج میں کورس میں شامل تھے جس کے بعد ان کی میجر جنرل کے عہدے پر ترقی تقریباً یقینی تھی۔ بری فوج کے سربراہ جنرل پرویز مشرف کوئٹہ پہنچے اور سٹاف کالج سے خطاب کیا۔ سوال و جواب کی نشست شروع ہوئی۔ بریگیڈئر علی خان نے مائیک سنبھالا اور تقریر نما سوال داغ دیا۔

Pakistan’s Nuclear Surge: Fourth Nuclear reactor at Khushab (Newsweek, 15 May 2011)

Courtesy: "Newsweek", 15 May 2011
Pakistan’s Nuclear Surge

Photos obtained by NEWSWEEK reveal a more aggressive buildup than previously known. So why does Washington still stay mum?

Even in the best of times, Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons program warrants alarm. But these are perilous days. At a moment of unprecedented misgiving between Washington and Islamabad, new evidence suggests that Pakistan’s nuclear program is barreling ahead at a furious clip.

According to new commercial-satellite imagery obtained exclusively by NEWSWEEK, Pakistan is aggressively accelerating construction at the Khushab nuclear site, about 140 miles south of Islamabad. The images, analysts say, prove Pakistan will soon have a fourth operational reactor, greatly expanding plutonium production for its nuclear-weapons program.

“The buildup is remarkable,” says Paul Brannan of the Institute for Science and International Security. “And that nobody in the U.S. or in the Pakistani government says anything about this—especially in this day and age—is perplexing.”

Unlike Iran, which has yet to produce highly enriched uranium, or North Korea, which has produced plutonium but still lacks any real weapons capability, Pakistan is significantly ramping up its nuclear-weapons program. Eric Edelman, undersecretary of defense in the George W. Bush administration, puts it bluntly: “You’re talking about Pakistan even potentially passing France at some point. That’s extraordinary.”

Pakistani officials say the buildup is a response to the threat from India, which is spending $50 billion over the next five years on its military. “But to say it’s just an issue between just India and Pakistan is divorced from reality,” says former senator Sam Nunn, who co-chairs the Nuclear Threat Initiative. “The U.S. and Soviet Union went through 40 years of the Cold War and came out every time from dangerous situations with lessons learned. Pakistan and India have gone through some dangerous times, and they have learned some lessons. But not all of them. Today, deterrence has fundamentally changed. The whole globe has a stake in this. It’s extremely dangerous.”

It’s dangerous because Pakistan is also stockpiling fissile material, or bomb fuel. Since Islamabad can mine uranium on its own territory and has decades of enrichment know-how—beginning with the work of nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan—the potential for production is significant.

Although the White House declined to comment, a senior U.S. congressional official who works on nuclear issues told NEWSWEEK that intelligence estimates suggest Pakistan has already developed enough fissile material to produce more than 100 warheads and manufacture between eight and 20 weapons a year. “There’s no question,” the official says, “it’s the fastest-growing program in the world.”

What has leaders around the world especially worried is what’s popularly known as “loose nukes”—nuclear weapons or fissile material falling into the wrong hands. “There’s no transparency in how the fissile material is handled or transported,” says Mansoor Ijaz, who has played an active role in back-channel diplomacy between Islamabad and New Delhi. “And the amount—they have significant quantities—is what’s so alarming.”

That Osama bin Laden was found in a Pakistani military community, and that the country is home to such jihadi groups as Lashkar-e-Taiba, only heightens concerns. “We’ve looked the other way from Pakistan’s growing program for 30 years,” says Sharon Squassoni, a director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. What we’re facing, she says, is “a disaster waiting to happen.”

A Defense Department official told NEWSWEEK that the U.S. government is “confident that Pakistan has taken appropriate steps toward securing its nuclear arsenal.” But beyond palliatives, few in Washington want to openly discuss the nightmare scenario of terrorists getting hold of nuclear material or weapons. “The less that is said publicly, the better,” says Stephen Hadley, national-security adviser to President George W. Bush. “But don’t confuse the lack of public discussion for a lack of concern.”

The bomb lends the Pakistanis a certain diplomatic insouciance. Nukes, after all, are a valuable political tool, ensuring continued economic aid from the United States and Europe. “Pakistan knows it can outstare” the West, says Pakistani nuclear physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy. “It’s confident the West knows that Pakistan’s collapse is too big a price to pay, so the bailout is there in perpetuity. It’s the one thing we’ve been successful at.”

Pakistani leaders defend their weapons program as a strategic necessity: since they can’t match India’s military spending, they have to bridge the gap with nukes. “Regretfully, there are several destabilizing developments that have taken place in recent years,” Khalid Banuri of Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division, the nuclear arsenal’s guardian, wrote in response to NEWSWEEK questions. Among his country’s concerns, Banuri pointed to India’s military buildup and the U.S.’s -civilian nuclear deal with India.

“Most Pakistanis believe the jihadist scenario is something that the West has created as a bogey,” says Hoodbhoy, “an excuse, so they can screw us, defang, and denuclearize us.”

“Our program is an issue of extreme sensitivity for every man, woman, and child in Pakistan,” says former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf, adding that the nukes are “well dispersed and protected in secure locations.” When asked whether the U.S. has a role to play in securing the arsenal, Musharraf said: “A U.S. role to play? A U.S. role in helping? Zero role. No, sir. It is our own production?.?.?.?We have not and cannot now have any intrusion by any element in the U.S.” To guard its “strategic assets,” Pakistan employs two Army divisions—about 18,000 troops—and, as Musharraf drily puts it, “If you want to get into a firefight with the forces guarding our strategic assets, it will be a very sad day.”

For now, the White House appears to have made a tacit tradeoff with Islamabad: for your cooperation in Afghanistan, we’ll leave you to your own nuclear devices. “People bristle at the suggestion, but it follows, doesn’t it?” says Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, formerly the CIA’s chief officer handling terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. “The irony is that the U.S. presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the money we’re giving them to fight terrorism, could inadvertently aggravate the very problem we’re trying to stop. After all, terrorism and nukes is the worst-case scenario.”

With this fourth nuclear facility at Khushab coming online as early as 2013, and the prospect of an accelerated nuclear-weapons program, the U.S. is facing a diplomatic dilemma. “The Pakistanis have gone through a humiliation with the killing of Osama bin Laden,” says Nunn. “That’s never a time to corner somebody. But with both recent and preexisting problems, we are in a race between cooperation and catastrophe. Both sides need to take a deep breath, count to 10, and find a way to cooperate.”

With Ron Moreau in Islamabad and Fasih Ahmed in Lahore

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Pakistan exhibits low yield nuclear capability through HATF-9 , NASR Tactical Missile (Reuters)

Courtesy: "Reuters", 15 May 2011

Analysis: Pakistan builds low yield nuclear capability 

By Sanjeev Miglani 
SINGAPORE

(Reuters) - Pakistan's successful test of a missile able to carry short range nuclear weapons threatens to raise tensions in a region already nervous that the death of Osama bin Laden will create more instability.
Tactical nuclear weapons, as these are called, are often seen as more dangerous than the traditional strategic weapons because their small size and vulnerability to misuse. Theft makes them a risk to global security.
The biggest concern is that these low yield weapons are seen as less destructive and therefore more likely to be used than other classes of weapons, forcing most nuclear states to minimize the risk by cutting back stockpiles.
Pakistani experts say the country has been forced to develop tactical nuclear weapons because of India's "Cold Start" plan under which Indian troops are primed to carry out a lightning strike inside Pakistan if another Mumbai-style attack is traced back to Pakistan-based militant groups.

The military said it had tested last month the 60-km (36-mile) range NASR surface-to-surface missile which carries nuclear warheads to boost "deterrence at short ranges."
Security experts in the United States, India and Pakistan said it meant the military planned to deploy these weapons in the battlefield, escalating the regional nuclear competition that has often seemed a replay of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry during the Cold War.
"Pakistan's development and testing of nuclear-capable short-range missiles is a destabilizing and potentially dangerous development," Daryl G. Kimball, the executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said.
"It suggests that Pakistan would seriously contemplate use on the battlefield in the event of an incursion by Indian forces."
India may yet respond by mounting nuclear warheads on its shorter range missiles to meet the Pakistani threat. It tested low yield nuclear devices in 1998 but there has been no word since then on whether it has added them to its arsenal.
"Our capability in the area of low yield fission devices is well known," a former Indian defense scientist involved in the 1998 tests said, declining further comment.
Pakistan responded to India's tests with explosions of its own. Both nations have since been expanding their arsenal, Pakistan even more and at a pace that Western experts say may, within a decade, make it the fourth largest weapons power, behind the United States, Russia and China.
Pakistan says it has invested a lot of resources to ensure that its nuclear facilities, materials and weapons are secure.
But Pakistan's support for militant groups including al Qaeda and the Taliban, who have found sanctuary along the Afghan border, has always heightened concerns about its ever expanding armory. These worries have deepened after al Qaeda leader bin Laden was found and killed in a garrison town.
If there was one nuclear-armed country that kept him awake at night, it was Pakistan, senior White House coordinator on weapons of mass destruction and terrorism, Gary Samore said.
"What I worry about is that, in the broader tensions and problems within Pakistani society and polity...even the best nuclear security measures might break down," Samore said in an interview published in the May 2011 issue of Arms Control Today.
"You're dealing with a country that is under tremendous stress internally and externally, and that's what makes me worry."
DISPERSED WEAPONS
The problem with deploying tactical weapons to the battlefield is that command and control has to be dispersed down to military units on the ground.
This increases the risk of things going wrong, either through miscalculation, an accident or the nightmare scenario of infiltration by militant groups, nuclear experts say.
In either case, once Pakistan had fired off the missile, it would invite retaliation, the extent of which is unknown.
Within Pakistan itself, security experts have questioned the logic of deploying tactical weapons, arguing that it exposed the country to bigger risks rather than improving security.
Ejaz Haider, a Pakistani security expert and columnist, said if Pakistan is going to unleash these weapons as the Indian military crosses the border, it would effectively be dropping them on its own soil.
"We are, of course, not even considering how our own troops and population would be exposed to the fallout from a TNW (tactical nuclear weapon)," Haider said.
But several experts also say that India's Cold Start doctrine, even if it is not fully operational, is seen as a real threat in Pakistan.
Cold Start is aimed at mounting rapid military incursions into Pakistan to punish it, take limited amounts of territory, and then negotiate to compel Islamabad to rein in militant groups that act against India.
It is not aimed at threatening the Pakistani state into resorting to its final, nuclear option, but it's a risky gamble. Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Kayani has warned the Indian battle plan could lead to a "sudden spiral escalation."
"India's military planners foolishly believe that they can engage in and win a limited conventional conflict without triggering a nuclear exchange even though the Pakistani army's strategy lies on nuclear weapons to offset India's overwhelming conventional superiority," the Arms Control Association's Kimball said.

(Editing by Miral Fahmi)

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Bangladesh 1971 War Myths Busted by New Research - By Sarmila Bose (Aljazeera English)

Courtesy: "Aljazeera English", 9 May 2011

Myth-busting the Bangladesh war of 1971

An author discusses her new book about the historical narratives of the 1971 civil war that broke up East Pakistan. By Sarmila Bose

Guerilla fighters of the Mukti Bahini prepare to bayonet men who allegedly collaborated with the Pakistani army during East Pakistan's fight to become the independent state of Bangladesh [GALLO/GETTY]

Last month, Al Jazeera published an article entitled Book, film greeted with fury among Bengalis. Here, Sarmila Bose, author of Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War, responds to the criticism levelled at her work.In all the excitement about the "Arab spring" it is instructive to remember the 1971 war in South Asia. Then too there was a military regime in Pakistan, easily identified as the "baddies" -  and a popular uprising in its rebellious Eastern province, where Bengali nationalists were reported to be peacefully seeking freedom, democracy and human rights.

When the regime used military force to crush the rebellion in East Pakistan, India intervened like a knight to the rescue, resulting in the defeat of the bad guys, victory for the good guys and the independence of Bangladesh... Or so the story went for forty years. I grew up with it in Calcutta. It was widely repeated in the international press.
Several years ago I decided to chronicle a number of incidents of the 1971 war in-depth. I observed that many Bangladeshis were aggrieved that the world seemed to have forgotten the terrible trauma of the birth of their nation. Given the scale of the suffering, that lack of memory certainly appeared to be unfair, but there did not seem to be many detailed studies of the war - without which the world could not be expected to remember, or understand, what had happened in 1971.
My aim was to record as much as possible of what seemed to be a much-commented-on but poorly documented conflict - and to humanise it, so that the war could be depicted in terms of the people who were caught up in it, and not just faceless statistics. I hoped that the detailed documentation of what happened at the human level on the ground would help to shed some light on the conflict as a whole.
The principal tool of my study was memories. I read all available memoirs and reminiscences, in both English and Bengali. But I also embarked on extensive fieldwork, finding and talking to people who were present at many particular incidents, whether as participants, victims or eye-witnesses. Crucially, I wanted to hear the stories from multiple sources, including people on different sides of the war, so as to get as balanced and well-rounded a reconstruction as possible.
As soon as I started to do systematic research on the 1971 war, I found that there was a problem with the story which I had grown up believing: from the evidence that emanated from the memories of all sides at the ground level, significant parts of the "dominant narrative" seem not to have been true. Many "facts" had been exaggerated, fabricated, distorted or concealed. Many people in responsible positions had repeated unsupported assertions without a thought; some people seemed to know that the nationalist mythologies were false and yet had done nothing to inform the public. I had thought I would be chronicling the details of the story of 1971 with which I had been brought up, but I found instead that there was a different story to be told.
Product of research
My book Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War, the product of several years of fieldwork based research, has just been published (Hurst and Co. and Columbia University Press). It focuses on the bitter fratricidal war within the province of East Pakistan over a period of a little more than a year, rather than the open "hot" war between India and Pakistan towards the end. It brings together, for the first time, the memories of dozens of people from each side of the conflict who were present in East Pakistan during the war. It lets the available evidence tell the stories. It has been described as a work that "will set anew the terms of debate" about this war.
Even before anyone has had the chance to read it, Dead Reckoning has been attracting comment, some of it of a nature that according to an observer would make the very reception of my book a subject of "taboo studies". "Myth-busting" works that undermine nationalist mythology, especially those that have gone unchallenged for several decades, are clearly not to be undertaken by the faint-hearted. The book has received gratifying praise from scholars and journalists who read the advance copies, but the word "courageous" cropped up with ominous frequency in many of the reviews. Some scholars praised my work in private; others told me to prepare for the flak that was bound to follow. One "myth-busting" scholar was glad my book was out at last, as I would now sweep up at the unpopularity stakes and she would get some respite after enduring several years of abuse.
Scholars and investigative journalists have an important role in "busting" politically partisan narratives. And yet, far too often we all fall for the seductive appeal of a simplistic "good versus evil" story, or fail to challenge victors' histories.
So far the story of valiant rebels fighting oppressive dictators in the so-called "Arab spring" has had one significant blemish - the vicious sexual attack and attempted murder of CBS foreign correspondent Lara Logan by dozens of men celebrating the downfall of Hosni Mubarak in Tahrir Square in Cairo. It initially vanished from the headlines and has still not led to the kind of questioning of the representation of such conflicts that it should have generated. "Tahrir Square" became shorthand for freedom and democracy-loving people rising up against oppressive dictators.
People in other countries started to say they wanted their own "Tahrir Square". Logan has given a brave and graphic account of what happened to her at the hands of those supposedly celebrating the fall of a dictator and the coming of freedom, democracy and human rights. Her life was saved by burqa-clad Egyptian women and she was rescued by soldiers. Her account endows "Tahrir Square" with an entirely different meaning.
It should caution us against assuming that all those opposing an oppressive regime are champions of non-violence, democracy or human rights. It should alert us to the complexities of political power struggles and civil war, and stop getting carried away by what we imagine is happening, or would like to happen, rather than what the evidence supports.
Such was the impact of the 1971 war on South Asians that the year has transformed into a shorthand for its particular symbolism: 1971, or ekattor, the number 71 in Bengali, has come to stand for a simple equation of a popular nationalist uprising presumed to embody liberal democratic values battling brutal repression by a military dictatorship. But was it really as simple as that? Over time, the victorious Bangladeshi nationalist side's narrative of Pakistani villainy and Bengali victimhood became entrenched through unquestioned repetition.
The losing side of Pakistani nationalists had its own myth-making, comprising vast Indian plots. Pakistan had been carved out of the British Empire in India as a homeland for South Asia's Muslims. It was a problematic idea from the start - a large proportion of Muslims chose to remain in secular and pluralistic India, for instance, and its two parts, West Pakistan and East Pakistan, were separated by a thousand miles of a hostile India. In 1971 the idea of Islam as the basis of nationhood came apart in South Asia along with the country of Pakistan, after a mere 23 years of existence. What went wrong? And what do the memories of those who were there reveal about the reality of that war?
The publication of Dead Reckoning has spoiled the day for those who had been peddling their respective nationalist mythologies undisturbed for so long. Careers have been built - in politics, media, academia and development - on a particular telling of the 1971 war. All the warring parties of 1971 remain relentlessly partisan in recounting the conflict. As the dominant narrative, which has gained currency around the world, is that of the victorious Bangladeshi nationalists and their Indian allies, they stand to lose the most in any unbiased appraisal. Unsurprisingly therefore, the protests from this section are the shrillest.
Mixed reaction
The reaction to the publication of Dead Reckoning by those who feel threatened by it has followed a predictable path. First, there has been an attempt to damn the book before it was even available. Apart from random rants on the internet - which provides opportunity for anyone to rail against anything - reports have been written by people who haven't read the book, citing other people who also haven't read the book. The reason for this may be summed up as the well-founded fear of "knowledge is power".
When people read the book they will be far better informed as to what really happened in 1971. Hence the desperate attempt by those who have been spinning their particular yarns for so long to try to smear the book before anyone gets the chance to read it. A few people also seem to be trying to laud the book before reading it, an equally meaningless exercise. These commentaries are easy to dismiss: clearly, those who haven't read the book have nothing of value to say about it.
Second, detractors of the book claim that it exonerates the military from atrocities committed in East Pakistan in 1971. In reality the book details over several chapters many cases of atrocities committed by the regime's forces, so anyone who says it excuses the military's brutalities is clearly lying. The question is - why are they lying about something that will easily be found out as soon as people start reading the book? The answer to this question is more complex than it might seem. Of course the detractors hope that by making such claims they will stop people from reading the book.
Part of the answer lies also in that the book corrects some of the absurd exaggerations about the army's actions with which Bangladeshi nationalists had happily embellished their stories of "villainous" Pakistanis for all these years. But an important reason for falsely claiming that the book exonerates the military is to distract attention from the fact that it also chronicles the brutalities by their own side, committed in the name of Bengali nationalism. The nature and scale of atrocities committed by the "nationalist" side had been edited out of the dominant narrative. Its discovery spoils the "villains versus innocents" spin of Bangladeshi nationalist mythology.
A key question about the "controversy" over Dead Reckoning is why this book is stirring such passions when other works do not. One reason for this is that there are precious few studies of the 1971 war based on dispassionate research. This is the first book-length study that reconstructs the violence of the war at the ground-level, utilising multiple memories from all sides of the conflict.
Two eminent US historians, Richard Sisson and Leo Rose, published the only research-based study of the war at the diplomatic and policy level twenty years ago. Their excellent book, War and Secession: Pakistan, India and the Creation of Bangladesh (University of California Press, 1990), challenged the dominant narrative, but their work does not seem to be known among the general public as much as within academia.
However, a crucial reason for the special impact of Dead Reckoning has to do with who the author is. I am a Bengali, from a nationalist family in India. As Indians and Bengalis our sympathies had been firmly with the liberation struggle in Bangladesh in 1971. The dominant narrative of the 1971 war is the story as told by "my side", as it were. My reporting of what I actually found through my research, rather than unquestioningly repeating the partisan narrative or continuing the conspiracy of silence over uncomfortable truths, is thus taken as a "betrayal" by those who have profited for so long from mythologising the history of 1971.
It is important to note that not all South Asians subscribe to the myth-making. One eminent Indian journalist thought that my "courage, disregard for orthodoxy and meticulous research" in writing Dead Reckoning made me "the enfant terrible of Indian historians". A senior Bangladeshi scholar has found it "fitting that someone with Sarmila's links with Bengali nationalism should demonstrate that political values cannot be furthered by distorting history."
South Asians are prone to conjuring up all manner of conspiracy theories when faced with unpleasant realities, but those looking for one for Dead Reckoning are at a loss, as the only explanation for what it contains is that it reconstructs what really happened on the basis of available evidence.
The process of dismantling entrenched nationalist mythologies can be painful for those who have much vested in them, but the passions stirred by the publication of Dead Reckoning has sparked the debate that the 1971 war badly needed - and set on the right course the discussion of this bitter and brutal fratricidal war that split the only homeland created for Muslims in the modern world.

Sarmila Bose is Senior Research Fellow in the Politics of South Asia at the University of Oxford. She was a journalist in India for many years. She earned her degrees at Bryn Mawr College (History) and Harvard University (MPA and PhD in Political Economy and Government.)

Dead Reckoning: Memories of the 1971 Bangladesh War is published by C. Hurst and Co. and Columbia University Press.....................

Note: The viewpoint expressed in this article is solely that of the writer / news outlet. "FATA Awareness Initiative" Team may not agree with the opinion presented.
....................

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