Wisdom by Hindsight
In my post “Coincidence? Women Bug The Lashkar e Toiba” I had informed about Indian Border Security Force deploying an all women unit on the border with Pakistan.
Some of my readers had requested that I keep them updated with developments. Here is an interesting news item from our Indian Express, Sunday edition of September20, 2009.
I shall keep posting about any further news of interest.
For quite some time now, I have refrained from writing about Pakistan, terror etc as a deliberate policy following some requests from readers to be less serious in my writing. This however is too important a matter not to be written about and I seek the indulgence of my readers. On the one hand, I am very proud of a significant development and on the other, apprehensive about the very probable fallout of a perhaps unrelated terrorist activity.
On Friday the 11th inst. the Indian Border Security Force posted women troopers on the border with Pakistan. Their primary role was to frisk women in the border areas when suspected of being infiltrators and/or to help them with border crossing formalities. Details can be had from this post.
One more male bastion broken by India’s women. Indian women now play increasingly important roles in politics, business, government, local self government, medicine and para medicine, the legal profession, science, technology, education and in all the three armed forces besides the police forces of the various states as well as now, our para military forces. They are increasingly becoming significant players in India’s march towards development.
Close on the heels of this development, the Lashkar e Toiba, a militant outfit based in Pakistan, fired rockets into into Indian territory and caused retaliatory fire from the Indian side. A major confrontation was avoided thanks to a flag meeting at the border post between the two commanders of the Indian and Pakistani forces. Some details can be read here.
Many Indians and I believe that this is Lashkar’s way of provoking border incidents to divert the Pakistani focus on their war with the Taliban and other terrorist groups from within Pakistan. There is also the possibility, however remote, that the Pakistanis want a border incident to divert their attention to their border with India as a deliberate policy to cry wolf to the USA about Indian intentions. Every war with India has been provoked by the Pakistanis and they still believe that India is their problem and not their own internal problems created and nurtured by them. The Lashkar may well be acting on behalf of the notorious ISI!
There is another school of thought that is gaining ground fast that this is the LeT’s response to the posting of women BSF personnel on the border, which is perceived by them as an insult, or an instigation to Pakistani women! The usual Fundamentalist Muslim mentality regarding women. If this is the case, we can expect different types of provocation from these elements soon enough. One however hopes that this reading is wrong and the idea that it is the LeT wants to divert Pakistani attention to the border with India is right.
There is also food for thought about the kind of weapons that these people have access to and can impudently use from within Pakistan. I am not a soldier but I find it difficult to understand how rockets that can travel 8 kms can be fired by operatives without launch vehicles of some sort, without anyone in authority knowing about it.
Congratulations USA. You have just overtaken us Indians as the most unpopular nation on earth. I quote from The New York times – “Polling in Pakistan shows that a majority of Pakistanis blame America for the country’s internal violence. India comes in second place, and al-Qaeda and the militancy comes in third place. Any time that you are outpolling India as the bad guy in Pakistan, you’re in deep, deep trouble.”
This is by Bruce O. Riedel, an expert on South Asia, who has worked for the CIA, Pentagon, and The National Security Council. I strongly urge my readers to read the full interview.
Along with it comes another very interesting news item from a completely different source, high up within the Pakistani establishment. This is about the Pakistani resolve to flush out the Taliban from the Swat valley. I do not wish to elaborate and leave my readers to judge for themselves the seriousness of the problem from this news article.
The possibility of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal falling into the hands of the Taliban and by extension, Al Queida has been a worrying thought for the West for quite some time. It does worry me too, but other, possibly more influential brains are perhaps already worrying over that possibility. Heavens help us all, if they are not.
My concern in writing this post is to highlight a factor that has not received the attention that it deserves. In fact, no important leader has thought through the possibility that if Pakistan and Afghanistan, do come under the control of the Taliban, and I give it a fifty-fifty probability, both the USA and India will have a major problem. That will be the fleeing refugees from Pakistan. How the Indian state and the USA will react, is anybody’s guess. Indians will react very violently. I have no doubts whatsoever on that score.
I am not an alarmist. There is a significant, educated minority in Pakistan which will not accept the rule of the Taliban and they will seek refuge firstly in the USA and other Western countries and secondly in India. I dread that possibility for what can happen to the latter and consequently to Indian Muslims with familial ties in Pakistan, and as a fall out, many other uninvolved Indian Muslims. It will not all be one sided and Hindus of India will also be affected and we may well see another blood bath comparable to what happened at the time of partition in 1947. Here is a pictorial depiction.
I urge my readers to do whatever it is that they can do to influence policy, towards the elimination of the Taliban, Al Quida, Lashkar e Toiba etal. If we do not do so, the cost in human lives will be greater than anything that the world has ever seen before.