The Nuclear Noose Around Pakistan’s Neck

re:#162 by Maharana
Thanks for your post.
You mentioned tolerance, which has been the trade mark of Indian civilization. Up until the advent of Islamic warriors, India had abosorbed every other invader in its fold and influenced him deeply by its culture. So, if the first Kushan king Kanishka was a mongol, his son became accepted into the fold as Vasudeva. With Islam, this stopped as latter came as a threatening religion, unwilling to accomodate and be accomodated.
I quote the world famous historian and author of the 12 volume series on world history, Arnold Toynbee:
``It is already becoming clear that a chapter which had a Western beginning will have to have an Indian ending if it is not to end in self-destruction of the human race. At this supremely dangerous moment in human history , the only way of salvation is the ancient Hindu way. Here we have the attitude and spirit that can make it possible for the human race to grow together in to a single family.``.
Again, Toynbee was talking about the Indian tolerance to other cultures, woefully lacking in the West as well as in other cultures like the Chinese or Islamic.

Chinese are so arrogant that many do not even acknowledge that Indian civilization exists. Today, China is developing rapidly but it has tightly controlled all religious or spiritual discussions and does not allow free practice of religion. Its idea of rapid developement is to emulate the West not just in material possessions but even in lifestyle. Chinese have rapidly destroyed their own culture and replaced it with communism. Whatever remains in mainland China is a sheer coincidence if not a miracle. They have even completely destroyed Tibet, a highly spiritual center for the Buddhists who follow a unique form of Buddhism called ``Tibetan Buddhism``. These people, if you recall, have had spiritual affinity with the Yogis of India for millenia and together have given to this world the practice of Yoga, so much popular in the West today.
India on the other hand still has some remnants of that ancient culture. Philosophy and religion are freely debated in India. India seems to welcome newer ideas without fear whereas some Feng Gong religious group doing their ritualistic exercise in the open had put the Chinese authorities on a tailspin some years ago. Of the 2, i think China is going to face an uphill task reconciling the spiritual and religious aspirations of its people with its obsessive march towards material progress.
I feel funny having to be told by Tahmed that China is not a threat. China seems to be Paki`s ``maibaap`` and can do nothing wrong. The truth is very different.
Of course, it is a great threat to India. Both China and India are vying to dominate the same space viz the Indian Ocean. In years to come, their interests will clash. US considers China as a potential rival as it directly threatens the interests of its allies viz Taiwan, Japan and has been friendly to its enemy viz North Korea.
Sridhar

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re: #169 by tahmed32

``...And I have no doubt that the philosophy of non-violence (forgotten unfortunately in the land of its birth in india under BJP)...``
At the risk of sounding repetetive and boring, let me say this again: BJP is not India and India is not BJP. I hope at least tahmed gets this right. I have little hope that others will.
Sridhar

urstruly #184 - that was moving.

Perhaps you could have added other things like the poor pakistani on the street will not ask how got all that real estate outside Pakistan. He will ask about that caviar concession and villas from the persians. He will not ask about the loot xerox khan had stashed away.

Though I agree with you in as muchg that xerox khan is the fall guy. But I would go to the extent you went in painting him a blameless goon.

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Dr. Qadeer has once again sacrificed for the sake of this nation. He took the fall for coward despots. Is there anything this son of the soil won`t do for his motherland. Dr. Qadeer will always be a hero in our eyes like Tipu Sultan Shaheed, General Bakht Khan and Roy Ahmad Khan Kharl Shaheed and people will spit on this despot and his minions` faces like they do on Mir Sadiq and Mir Jaffar.

Dr. Qadir! forgive us for we are weak and voiceless and couldn`t save your honor. but I promise you that Paksitani mothers will keep telling your name to their sons as a hero, who gave everything he had to his nation, till eternity.

From a very grateful nation - a nation in shackles and chains

SALUTE!!!

About an hour ago, Dr. A. Q. Khan in an interview on PTV admited that he was guilty of proliferating nuclear technology and the evidence against him was true. He called it a lapse of judgement and before his interview, in which he spoke in english, he had a meeting with Musharraf and during that meeting, he filed a petition for mercy.

Khan has admited his mea culpa.

Two things have emerged out of the Khan interview.

One, Pakistani scientists did pass information to other nations, because in that interview Khan, without naming names, identified that there were others, who gave information upon his recommendations. Pakistani scientists were participating in this behavior on their own accord and even if that is true, the crime cannot be pardoned. Pakistan`s nulcear program involved too many people and for Khan to become sacrificial scapegoat is not going to be enough. The military is implicated, because the director of military operations, corps commanders and the COAS also had access to information on Pakistan`s nuclear program. The bureaucracy is implicated, because defence secretary and ministers of defence from 1970 to 2004 were aware of the details of the program. The entire ``establishment`` of Pakistan stands accused in this matter.

Secondly, much to the annoyance of the conspiracy theorists in Pakistan, the original accusation did not come from Israel or the United States or Europe or the so called Jewish controlled western media, but from two Muslim states: Iran and Libya. These Muslims state identified Pakistan, when their own short and curlies were being squeezed by the plyers of IAEA and the United States` efforts to curb nuclear proliferation. The fact that Pakistan was charged and put into the dock international opinion by Muslim states was like manna from heavens. This will end the false believe of Pakistanis in the unity of Muslim ummah and teach them, that when it comes to self preservation, ummah and religion are non issues.

As an aside, this remark is adressed to Digit; I still stand by my judgement that ummah and Islam have caused more harm to Pakistan`s interests than all its enemies could hope. We allowed drugs and gun culture from Afghanistan in the name of Muslim unity. We allowed our nation to be made into theocracy to appease an illegal dictator who wanted political legitmacy and we allowed our politics to become hostage to the wars of jihad in the name of religion and we aided and abetted Iran and Libya in the name of ummah. Our polices, which sought to base Pakistan`s interests on the paeans of religion have caused us to undermine those interests and make Pakistan more vunerable; not secure. A country that was claimed to be created in the name of religion as a security for the Muslims is being destroyed in the name of religion and is making the Muslims, whom it was supposed to protect, more insecure than ever.

Pakistan is at a cross-roads of its existence. It has a choice. Either it pretends nothing has happened and it continues in the present path only to see itself ruined or it can admit the truth and once and for ever, leave religion to the private concerns of the individual and end the poisoniously symbiotic relationship between the state and mosque and the miltary and the bureaucracy.

Ciao

All those – mostly Pakistanis – who think that India didn’t invade Pakistan in 2002 because of Pervez Musharraf’s ‘brilliant move’ in referring to the nuclear option and carrying out a few tests of imported missiles, are invited to examine what demonstrable connection – whether causative mechanism or mere temporal correlation – there really is between Pakistani missile tests and the waxing or waning of belligerent actions from India. They might also look for other, more plausible if less comforting, motives for Pakistan’s missile testing.

For instance: the last series of Pakistani missile tests took place in October 2003. Now – there was no ‘million man army’ on Pakistan’s borders at that time. The Indian army was of course killing jihadi terrorists from Pakistan at a steady clip in J&K, but that was within India’s own borders, and no different from what was being done down the years. IMO the most significant event in India in that period, from the paranoid viewpoint of Pakistani strategists, was the clearance of the Phalcon deal with the Israelis. No matter how many times Indians try to explain that the Phalcon (like the Agni series of IRBMs, or a naval base in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, or a blue water navy, etc. etc.) are not targeted at Pakistan or Pakistan-specific, the Pakistani regime cannot allow themselves or their subject populace to believe it.

The recent revelations have confirmed what Indians have claimed all along - namely that Pakistani missiles are pure imports from North Korea and China – and therefore repeated testing on technical grounds makes no sense. The missile tests after the Phalcon deal clearance are likely to have been aimed at two target audiences. First, Pakistan’s population, both to reinforce the idea of an imminent threat from India, and to providing morale-boosting reassurance that measures are being taken to counter it. Second, the international community – i.e. the US and the West – as a desperate cry for help to ‘maintain the vital strategic balance in the region’ or preserve vital interests of the Pakistani regime which are thought to be in danger of being overrun.

The same explanation is also likely to hold for the June 2002 missile tests. The timing does not correlate with either the start or the end of the Indian deployment or any visible moves to attack. A better explanation: something developed or culminated in Pakistan around that time which greatly heightened the regime’s perceived sense of insecurity and called for reassurance in the form of missile tests. What that trigger event could have been I leave unsaid.

here is the alternative view from the telegraph. It says pakistan is onto a winning proposition here with the nuclear proliferation thing - tahmed32 sort of thing.....

interesting read. read it all at the following

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1040204/asp/opinion/story_2855404.asp

FOR A MUCH BIGGER PRIZE
- Pakistan’s record of proliferation may be turned to its advantage

(a) quarter century ago, General Zia-ul-Haq walked away from Washington’s inducements and blandishments to become a frontline state against Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, dismissing the offer of then president, Jimmy Carter, of $ 400 million in assistance as mere “peanuts”. Zia then blackmailed Ronald Reagan into converting the Georgian peanut-farmer-turned-president’s offer of “peanuts” into a tidy aid package of $ 3.2 billion.

(b)Because the world’s attention is focused on Iraq, the spectacular Anglo-American intelligence failures there and the consequent political problems in London and Washington, Afghanistan’s slow slide into conflict has gone largely unnoticed.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, once a protégé of Islamabad and a recently designated terrorist in Washington, is now running the primary resistance operation against Western presence in Afghanistan, independent of any support from Pakistan. He has been joined by splinter groups, many of which once looked across the border and to the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency for money, training and arms to continue their operations.

(c)Washington may actually appeal to Musharraf, instead, for greater support in ending the taliban menace in Afghanistan. Even if the hypothetical, albeit real, possibility that the capture or death of Osama bin Laden is crucial to ensuring another term for George W. Bush in the White House is dismissed, the Americans still need Pakistan’s support to ensure that Afghanistan does not once again become a staging ground for terrorist operations worldwide.

Tahmed #46

{{For pakistan to get rid of the nukes, it would require a change in the Indian goals of becoming the regional heavy - and i dont see that happening anytime soon.}}

Newsflash for Rip van Winkles: India is already the ‘regional heavy’ and has been for a while – i.e. India is by a large margin the most powerful state in the subcontinent apart from the United States. It’s just that Indian predominance relative to the region’s minor states is inexorably becoming even more lopsided with every passing day.

{{See, e.g., the purchase a couple of days ago of a the russian aircraft carrier Gorshkov for 1.5 billion dollars by the indians - clearly the intent is to try and do what the soviet empire tried and failed to do: develop a deep sea navy capable of projecting indian power in the indian and south china seas.}}

Second news update for Rip van Winkles: India has operated aircraft carriers for 43 years, starting with the INS Vikrant (ex HMS Illustrious – commissioned into the IN in 1961) and continuing with the INS Viraat (ex HMS Hermes). The Gorshkov acquisition is really a stopgap measure until India’s homebuilt ADS being built at Cochin comes on line– the Viraat will be decommissioned within a decade and there is really no other option on the horizon if the IN wants to keep its carrier operating skills honed.

Of the 1.5 billion dollars, less than half is for the vessel itself – basically for its refit, with new powerplants, ski ramp, updated weapon systems, etc. The remainder is for the Gorshkov’s air group – a score of Mig-29K fighters, plus half-a dozen Kamov AEW helicopters. The money for the Gorshkov will not be paid until the refit is completed to India’s satisfaction, around the end of the decade.

Incidentally, what is probably much more significant is what has not been publicized as much – the expected acquisition of Akula class nuclear submarines and Tu-22 Backfire long-range strategic bombers. Haggling over that deal is what may have partly accounted for the delay in signing the Gorshkov deal.

{{clearly the intent is to try and do what the soviet empire tried and failed to do: develop a deep sea navy capable of projecting indian power in the indian and south china seas.}}

Sahib, let me point out a salient difference between the Indian republic and the Soviet Empire. The Soviets collapsed because of an unviable economic model, not because of building a ‘deep sea navy’ as you call it. You are confusing cause and effect. Other nations have not failed in the blue-water navy enterprise and suffer no ill effects. India’s GDP is growing at more than 7% per year while defense spending remains at a very modest 3% of GDP. India is also busy shedding state socialism which should result in continued growth and make further development of their armed forces both necessary and economically viable. In other words, India is plainly able to afford a ‘deep blue sea navy’ and other defense projects.

Tahmed #62

{{It is unrealistic for reasons I mentioned in my post - India has neither the need nor the resources to maintain a deep sea navy.}}

India`s defense needs are for Indians to decide - Pakistanis have no say in the matter. India’s energy supplies and much of her foreign trade depend on unimpeded passage across the Indian Ocean. These will only grow, and by a large factor, in the years to come. India has to have the independent means to protect her commerce with the rest of the world. Further, it would not be a good idea to have a power vacuum develop in the Indian Ocean should the US’s global commitment lessen in the years to come. India has to be ready to fill that gap, or it may be occupied by the Chinese Stalinists and assorted jihadic riff-raff. In the arc from Suez to Malacca, India is practically the only stable democracy and the most substantial and promising major country in a wasteland of dictatorships and Islamist regimes. It also has a large fraction of the region’s population. It is the obvious choice to be regional hegemon and anchor for the good of all countries in the region.

In any case, if India lacks the resources, they’ll fail in their ‘deep blue sea navy’ endeavours. That should be of no concern to Pakistanis.

{{Even china (with far more resources than india) has stayed away from such ambitions and has focussed on a navy that basically assures coastal defense.}}

Sahib, let me clue you in once again. There is a reason why the Chinese haven’t gotten beyond a green-water surface navy as yet. It is because the United States bottles them up in the China Sea using the Seventh Fleet as well as two unsinkable aircraft carriers called Japan and Taiwan. The Beijing Stalinists don’t like the situation one bit but can only gnash their teeth in silent rage and wait for a more opportune time to break out – when American power projection has been whittled away through economic decline. They do have a maritime history going back millennia, just as India does. They also want a presence on both the Arabian Sea – at Gwadar - and the Bay of Bengal.

As to resources – the PRC may have an economy twice the size of India’s, but they are severely constrained in other ways. For instance, no one will sell them a functioning aircraft carrier, and they have no experience operating one, let alone maintaining or building one. However, they did acquire the incomplete ex-Soviet carrier Varyag (sister ship of the Kuznetsov), and studied it quite thoroughly. They did the same with two earlier Minsk-class Soviet carriers. They are now reportedly building three carriers in Shanghai. So much for China’s lack of blue-water ambitions.

{{I am sorry if I use harsh words here for the indian government, but i think it is appalling for a poor country like india to spend one point five billion dollars (plus huge additional supportive investments and maintenance ocsts) on a piece of junk that the russians never had any use for.}}

Sahib, these decisions are made by the Indian government, which being democratically elected, is ultimately answerable to the Indian taxpayer (i.e. my parents and siblings and people like them). If enough people think an aircraft carrier is not the right priority for India, the government will eventually get the message.

So while I am touched by your expressions of concern over India’s use of resources, I suspect it has less to do with India’s welfare than with the clash between the traditional Pakistani imperative of competition with India and maintaining India-Pakistan equal-equal at all costs, and the reality that Pakistan cannot hope to compete. I sympathize with your plight but don’t think it should stop India from doing what is necessary to protect her future.

Stuka #160

Oops, teach me to stay up late at night. I meant ``redundant`` and not ``oxymoron.`` Thanks for the correction.

ballukhan

Indians should take pride in not letting its army create the type of civilian and nuclear mess we have in Pakistan whose megalomaniac army Generals thump their chests before its scared civilians by displaying its fabricated nukes, clandestinely procured missiles and junked satellites in order to legitimize the usurpation of civilian power

I am sorry, but take pride? Be relieved perhaps, but certainly not take pride. The day we as a country start taking pride in things like this is the day we start becoming like that. What is happening in Pakistan is messy, and what is happening in India is non-messy. But non-messy should not qualify for ``pride``. Only spectacular should qualify for pride, methinks.

tahmed32

About China being peaceful and all that. I think you forget Vietnam and Tibet. You are also forgetting their intentions about Taiwan, were it not for America wielding the stick.

hossp #171 While no one has a monopoly on virtue, I think the scale of the damage done by qadeer enterprises does not begin to compare:

a. he handed nuclear technology to Gadaafi, who has been proven (and has basically accepted) to be behind the murder of the lockerbie passengers and of the passengers of the french airline in africa. The detonation of a nuclear bomb in a city by some arab terrorist thus becomes a very real possibility. the indian military were engaged in good old corruption, but it was no match for the irresponsible behavior of qadeer.

b. tehelka was exposed via sting operation conducted by domestic journalists. qadeer was exposed not by domestic journalists or some other whistle-blower within the government of pakistan, but as a result of qaddafi and the iranian mullahs learning how to sing after seeing saddam come out like the groundhog.

c. these revelations make the recent assassination attempts on musharaff take on more sinister tones: e.g., it is not unrealistic now to think that some individuals (qadeer and co) within the government were trying to knock musharaff out, thus protecting themselves from arrest by making the entire pakistan nation hostage.

For those getting mad a hoodbhoy, i think should get mad at those who were willing to give nuclear bombs to gaddafi (thus exposing innocent civilians to his murderous ways before he reformed himself after the US got serious with his kind). the damage they have done to the sacred cause of the defence of pakistan is far more, i think, than people realize.

Stuka,

I agree with you... every extremist Indi-basher in Pakistan loves Arundhati Roy, and every extremist Paki-basher in India loves Hoodbhoy. Sadly this is the fate of these self proclaimed liberal humanists.. to used as pawns by extremists. The future of peace lies with people like you and me ... people of the centrist, centre left and centre right point of view.


rafay,

I wasn`t aware that 295 C has been amended to include Dr. Hoodbhoy alongside Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

-ylh

#127 by dullabhatti on February 3, 2004 9:23am PT
Remember the sting operation involving that Indian arms dealer- that guy was caught selling ``dummy`` missiles- but that does not absolve him of charges. Infact, this shows that apart from a proliferator and corrupt person Xerox Khan is an international crook as well