Pak Army's Afghan Strategy Cause Of Concern For India - News - Current Affairs

As US forces are expected to thin out from Afghanistan, revelations in recently assassinated journalist Syed Salim Shahzad's book, Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban (Pluto Press and Palgrave Macmillan, marketed by Pentagon Press, India) and Pakistan Army's recent actions to subjugate Afghanistan are raising India's anxieties as reflected in think-tanks' discussions.

Syed Saleem Shahzad became the 37th journalist killed in Pakistan since the 9/11 attacks, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. His waterlogged body retrieved from a canal 60 miles from Islamabad, bore 17 lacerated wounds delivered by a blunt instrument, a ruptured liver and two broken ribs.

An investigative journalist contributing to Asia Times Online, who used to write articles exposing the relationship between the militants and the military, Shahzad, had written scathing reports about the infiltration of militants into Pakistan's military.

A New York daily quoted White House officials, who now believe that Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) ordered the killing of Shahzad, confirming the allegation made in media a few weeks ago. Classified intelligence obtained both before Shahzad's disappearance on 29 May and after discovery of his body showed that senior officials of ISI directed the attack in order to silence criticism. Yet another senior US official was reported to have said that there was enough other intelligence and indicators immediately after Shahzad's death to conclude that the ISI had ordered the killing. "Every indication is that this was a deliberate, targeted killing that was most likely meant to send shock waves through Pakistan's journalist community and civil society," said the official.

The anger over his death followed unprecedented questioning in the media about the professionalism of Pakistan army and the ISI in the aftermath of the US raid that led to the killing of Osama Bin Laden.

Dr Lal Khan, in his book The Pakistan's Other Story, released in October 2009, wrote that to look at the Pakistan Army solely as the instrument of the ruling class would mean ignoring the real contradictions that had developed within it. Top military brass were involved directly in the economy, both the legal and the "black economy", including drug running. The heroin pipeline in the 1980s could not have operated without the knowledge, if not connivance, of officials at the highest level of the army, the government and the CIA. Everyone chose to ignore it for the larger task that was to defeat erstwhile Soviet Union. Drugs control was on nobody's agenda. In this orgy of destruction and loot, while General Ziaul Haq and his coterie of generals amassed huge amounts of black money, they were not content with the black capital coming from the drugs trade because they had to share this drug money with the different warlords, constantly changing loyalties, and the leaders of dif ferent Islamic fundamentalist parties and Islamic mercenary outfits involved in this reactionary insurgency. Hence, Dr. Khan claims, they also started smuggling the most advanced US weaponry for the jihad through the Pakistani supply lines under the auspices of the sections of the Pakistan Army involved in this CIA-planned operation.

According to Ashley Tellis, the daring raid that killed Osama Bin Laden marked a turning point not only in U.S-Pakistan ties but also in power relations within India Pakistan. Most observers have focused on the first, but have failed to understand how worsening civil-military relations in Pakistan have contributed to the recent meltdown between Washington and Islamabad. "The shock that the United States could discover Bin Laden from thousands of miles away in a cantonment town, when he was overlooked by the military and its powerful intelligence services, confronted the Pakistani public with one of two possibilities: either their army was malicious, harboring an enemy whose allies were ravaging Pakistan every day, or it was incompetent, incapable of its discharging its principal task of protecting the nation. In either case, the Bin Laden affair raised the fundamental question of why such a military was offered preferential access to the public trough given its debilitatin g failures.

In June 2011, Pakistan army launched a series of missile and artillery attacks on Kunar and Nangarhar provinces in eastern Afghanistan, killing dozens of civilians. The missile attacks were accompanied by raids by the Pakistani Taliban, which is backed by the Pakistan army. On July 2, 2011, Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said in Afghan parliament that two Pakistani helicopters entered the Afghan territory. On July 5, 2011, Afghan border police commander Aminullah Amarkhel reported that hundreds of fighters from the Pakistani Taliban crossed the border into Afghanistan's Nuristan province, where they attacked police outposts and torched homes.

The Afghan foreign ministry expressed concern, warning Pakistan that "the continuation of such incidents could adversely affect the spirit of improving the trust and cooperation between the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan." Afghan lawmakers strongly condemned the Pakistani missile attacks, describing them as an "invasion" and as a reflection of Pakistan's "dishonesty" in its bilateral talks with the Afghan government, meant to strengthen the Afghanistan peace process. Criticizing the Karzai government for its silence over the missile attacks, Afghan lawmaker Farhad Azimi is reported to have said: "I want to ask government officials as to why they call Pakistan a friend when it fires missiles into Afghanistan."

Afghanistan's intelligence service National Directorate of Security (NDS), accused the Pakistan military of being behind the missile attacks. NDS Spokesman Lotfullah Mashal told reporters that Pakistan has long been operating in secret to destabilize Afghanistan by backing the Taliban in the Pakistani tribal regions, "but this time the Pakistani Army is taking its [military] intervention further, through heavily shelling Afghanistan in [broad] daylight." Afghan President Hamid Karzai referred to the attacks for the first time only on June 26, slamming Pakistan for firing 470 missiles into Afghanistan's eastern provinces. A July 4, 2011 resolution of the Afghan parliament, which urged the UN Security Council and the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) to mount diplomatic pressure on Pakistan, described the Pakistani attacks in Kunar, Nangarhar, Khost and Paktia provinces as an "act of invasion" by Pakistan.

Responding to the accusations, the Pakistani army denied targeting Afghanistan. Army spokesman Maj.-Gen. Athar Abbas said: "Rounds were fired for engaging the fleeing militants and there is a possibility that some may have accidentally gone across the border."

The June attacks were not Pakistan's first use of force against Afghanistan this year. In early February, Pakistani planes bombarded Afghan Border Police posts and civilians' homes in Afghanistan's Nangarhar and Khost provinces.

Pakistan's military campaign to control Afghanistan has been accompanied by the expulsion of U.S. and British military and intelligence officials from Pakistan. According to an April 21 report in the Pakistani media, some 500 CIA personnel were told to leave Pakistan in the beginning of this year. In late June, Pakistani Defense Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar revealed that Pakistan has asked the CIA to leave the Shamsi airbase in Pakistan's Baluchistan province, from which drones are dispatched to monitor and attack the Taliban safe havens in the Pakistani tribal region. In addition, 18 British military trainers have been told to leave.

On April 16, 2011, the entire top Pakistani leadership (except for President Asif Zardari) descended on Kabul for bilateral talks with the Afghan leaders. According to reports in the Afghan media, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani presented Karzai with a set of written demands: Afghanistan must sever its relationship with the U.S. and forge ties with China; keep Pakistan informed on the training and number of the Afghan security forces; appoint Pakistani officials to Afghan government institutions; and clarify Pakistan's share in Afghan mining and development projects; in addition, future Afghan governments must implement Pakistani strategies, and Pakistan must be made aware of any agreement between Afghanistan and its Western allies, including the U.S. and NATO.

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