By M D Nalapat
According to GHQ elements, the US side has privately asked Indians to abandon hostility to the Taliban and join in the US-Pakistan strategy of co-opting the militia.
Former cricketing star Imran Khan, whom the Pakistan army wishes to
get sworn in as Prime Minister of Pakistan before 14 August (the day the
state was founded out of a partition of the subcontinent), has “already
passed his first test”, according to the upper echelons of GHQ
Rawalpindi. This was to ensure through his modern and moderate image in
the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union that both
sides of the Atlantic would give their seal of approval to the
military-supervised mock election that nevertheless failed to give his
PTI party a simple majority in the Pakistan National Assembly (NA). Had
the election been as fair as the Good Conduct certification awarded to
the clearly dodgy process by the EU monitors, Nawaz Sharif’s party would
have secured an easy majority among the 272 members directly elected to
the National Assembly, rather than fall far behind that mark. Observers
in Pakistan say that the 2018 national election is similar to those
conducted in 1977, when Z.A. Bhutto converted through fraud certain
defeat into an overwhelming victory, claiming 155 out of 200 seats. The
subsequent public reaction gave an opening for General Zia-ul-Haq to
bring Bhutto down and later have him executed for murder, not of
democracy but of a political rival. However, in 2018, the Pakistan army
itself is the principal prop holding up Imran Khan. While 137 seats are
needed to secure an NA majority, Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf party won only
116 seats, despite vote-rigging on an industrial scale by the military.
However, the trusted loyalist of the men in khaki is expected to be
assisted by the ISI to ensure that he secures at least 145 seats.
Already, the MQM as well as numerous independent National Assembly
members have been given “offers they cannot refuse” in case they wish to
remain in good health and out of prison in Pakistan. It is calculated
by those aware of internal developments in that country that the
Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) and the Pakistan People’s Party would
have, in a fair election, secured 151 and 83 seats, respectively, rather
than the 64 and 43 the Pakistan military could not stop them from
winning.
A POWERLESS PARTY
That the PTI is only a puppet party became clear from the way in
which GHQ Rawalpindi forced it to dial back, in a humiliating manner,
from the earlier plan to emulate Prime Minister Narendra Modi and invite
all SAARC leaders to Islamabad for the Imran Khan swearing in. Even the
incoming Prime Minister’s personal friends from India were barred from
being invited by GHQ, which would like to avoid any rise in public
sentiment favouring closer relations between Islamabad and Delhi. In the
tradition of attempted peacemaker A.B. Vajpayee, Prime Minister Modi
reached out to Imran Khan soon after the polls had closed, offering the
hand of peace exactly as Vajpayee had done to Nawaz Sharif and
subsequently to Pervez Musharraf, the jihadi commando general who had
been busy finalising the Kargil assault during the very time that
Vajpayee was in Lahore as the guest of Prime Minister Sharif. Later,
even though Army Chief of Staff Musharraf insulted Vajpayee by refusing
to call on him at Lahore, the Indian Prime Minister ensured global
rehabilitation to the uniformed coup master soon after the Kargil war by
inviting Musharraf to Agra for a summit with the elected leader of the
world’s most populous democracy. Showing the same spirit of trust and
accommodation, Prime Minister Modi ensured the accession on 4 April 2016
of “soft separatist” Mehbooba Mufti to the chief ministership of Jammu
& Kashmir, despite warnings that such a move would exacerbate rather
than promote peace in the Valley. PM Modi took the risk (of alliance
with the PDP) for the sake of peace, just as he took the risk of
demonetisation later that year in the hope of stopping the use of paper
currency in transactions across India. Such a change would have enabled
the tracking by state (and other) agencies of every financial
transaction in the country, had it worked out the way it was intended
to. His reaching out to Imran Khan, despite the anguish this caused to
the PML(N), PPP and the tens of millions of ordinary Pakistanis unhappy
at the stealing of an election yet again by the army, was an act which
once again has demonstrated Prime Minister Modi’s fealty to Vajpayee’s
commitment to peace with Pakistan.
FIRST TARGET:
AFGHANISTAN
Those familiar with the higher echelons of GHQ Rawalpindi claim that
Imran Khan has been installed as Prime Minister in order to provide a
civilian cover for the military’s plan to ensure control of the bulk of
the territory of Afghanistan through the Taliban. In this process, GHQ
has been encouraged by the warmth newly shown by the US National
Security Council towards its plan to insert the Taliban into the core of
the governance mechanism led by Ashraf Ghani in Kabul. Once ensconced
inside the government, the Taliban would “scoop out other elements and
expand their reach”, until they were in a position to topple Ghani and
replace him with one of their own commanders, of course vetted by GHQ
Rawalpindi. It is expected that the first overseas visit taken by the
new Prime Minister of Pakistan will be to Kabul, where he would be
expected by GHQ to deploy his charms towards convincing Ghani to permit
elements of the Taliban into the government. Those close to Imran Khan
say that “substantial informal contacts, both with the NSC as well as
with the State Department”, have taken place between him and key US
policymakers, who (according to GHQ elements) are “fully on board” where
the question of strengthening the relative position of the Taliban is
concerned. “Imran has promised (the US side) that he would see to it
that only Afghan and not US soldiers were killed (by Taliban elements)”,
they claimed, adding that “this is all the US wants to hear”. The new
PM of Pakistan would also ensure that “conditions get created that would
permit President Donald Trump to declare victory and pull US troops out
of Afghanistan”. Apparently, in much the same way as the Soviets did in
1988, and with the same result: an Afghanistan soon almost wholly under
Taliban (i.e. GHQ) control. According to GHQ elements, the US side has
privately asked their Indian interlocutors to abandon hostility to the
Taliban and join in the US-Pakistan strategy of co-opting the militia
that has held US forces to a humiliating stalemate as a consequence of
the not so clandestine backing of the group by the Pakistan army and its
terror proxies. Washington has demonstrated its backing to GHQ by, for
example, killing first Hakimullah Mehsud of the Pakistan Taliban and
subsequently, Mullah Fazlullah, who had been battling the Pakistan army
in the name of “freedom for Pashtuns from Pakistan army control”. He was
killed by a US drone strike six weeks back.
NEXT OBJECTIVE: KASHMIR
In its plan for the re-conquest of Afghanistan, the role of Imran
Khan will be to present a moderate face to the NATO powers, so that they
accept GHQ Rawalpindi’s designs in the same manner as they certified as
kosher the “election through selection” of Imran Khan as the next Prime
Minister of Pakistan. Clearly, despite the assurances being given
publicly and privately to New Delhi and the tweets and statements
condemning Pakistan from President Trump and key associates such as
Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo, there remains a considerable distance
between what, for India, would be a desirable outcome in Afghanistan and
what the Trump administration seems to be promoting. While India would
like to see Afghanistan wholly under the control of the moderate
majority within the population of that long-tortured country, the US, in
effect, is giving indications of going along with the Pakistan army
objective of inserting a fanatic and terror-supporting layer into the
heart of the Afghan government, thereby negating all that NATO claims to
have been working for (at substantial cost in personnel and resources)
since 2001. What is worrisome for the Government of India is the fact
that control over Afghanistan is only a stepping stone towards the next
objective of GHQ Rawalpindi, which is the taking over of effective
control of most of that part of Jammu & Kashmir which remained in
Indian hands after the 1948 ceasefire suggested by Governor-General
Mountbatten and acceded to by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Deputy
Prime Minister Vallabhbhai Patel. Months after the Taliban get securely
installed in Kabul, the temperature within the Kashmir valley will be
boosted to a level that GHQ expects will “drive the Indians out by
making any form of (coherent) administration of the territory
impossible”. Throughout this process, Imran Khan is expected to lead a
“human rights drumbeat against India” that would camouflage the reality
of the state coming under Wahhabi fanatics not very different in their
outlook and methods from the Taliban.
Another task of Imran Khan (in which it is expected that he will be
able to enlist the support of major NATO powers) will be to convince the
Government of India to once again adopt the course favoured for long
stretches of time by Prime Ministers I.K. Gujral, A.B. Vajpayee and
Manmohan Singh. This is the dampening down of Indian military responses
to Pakistan army provocation (such as shelling and firing) from across
the Line of Control in Jammu & Kashmir. The robust response by the
armed forces led by Chief of Army Staff General Bipin Rawat has dismayed
the Pakistan army and affected its ability to increase mayhem in the
Valley despite the negative effect on the situation of the Mehbooba
Mufti government. Through his considerable public relations skills, it
is anticipated that the Indian side will go back to the hesitant and
half-hearted responses to Pakistan army provocations across the LoC that
was so marked during the period when the world renowned pacifist A.K.
Antony was the Defence Minister of India.
THE FINAL STAGE: CHAOS IN INDIA
The re-conquest of Afghanistan is Stage I of the GHQ Rawalpindi plan,
a key facet of which is the propping up of the telegenic Pashtun
cricketer as the Prime Minister in Islamabad. Stage II is the de facto
takeover of the Kashmir valley, while the final stage is a meltdown of
governance in India through a continuous rash of violent incidents
resulting in a breakdown of law and order across much of the country.
This would assist in GHQ’s desire to bring India’s growth rate back to
the pitiable level it was during the 1950s and the 1960s, thereby
preventing India from emerging as the world’s third largest economy. The
soon-to-be-installed Prime Minister of Pakistan is expected to play his
designated role of charming the Afghanistan leadership, the NATO powers
and the leadership in India into following policy paths that would
inadvertently carry forward the agenda of GHQ Rawalpindi. Congratulating
Imran Khan on his contrived victory and expecting him to sincerely join
hands with Prime Minister Modi to ensure peace between India and
Pakistan may, therefore, be a noble idea whose time still appears to be
very distant.
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