Recent interviews by Admiral Mike Mullen have had a consistent theme. The ISI continues to fund terrorist organizations like the Haqqani Network and Lashkar e Taiba. However, his analysis as to where and how to combat and eliminate this ongoing problem lies on the eastern Pakistani border with India, and not Afghanistan.
Recently, on National Public Radio in Washington DC, Admiral Mike Mullen said, “The ISI specifically has enough support for the Haqqani’s in terms of financial support, logistic support—and actually, sort of free passage in the safe haven—and those links are part of what enable the Haqqani’s to carry out their mission.” As Admiral Mullen continues spelling out for the public the long history of not only the relationship between the Haqqani network and the Inter Intelligence Services, but other militant factions such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, the soon to be retiring military chief continues to remind policy makers that real progress must be initiated on the civilian side, and not just fighting an insurgency. The irony of this focus is that the real solutions, according to Admiral Mullen, are on the eastern border with India, rather than in the northwest territories of Pakistan. “I’ve said for a long time: I think unlocking Kashmir, which is a very difficult issue on the Pak-Indian border, is one that opens it all up.”
Kashmir remains the Pakistani genesis of utilizing Islamist militant groups as not only proxies, but more specifically as “weapons” against India, in what is commonly known in security circles as Pakistan’s “Bleed India” campaign. The use of militant groups as proxies has gone ignored by the United States despite constant attacks against India. However, now that the ISI militancy connection stretches across both the Indian and Afghanistan borders of Pakistan, Admiral Mullen continues to seek the necessary civilian solutions between the three nation states as the key to solving this problem for all countries. “Engagements with the civilian leaders, engagements with the economic leaders, engagements in the region, I believe we have to continue to try to, all of us, figure out a way to work that as well,” Mullen observed. The folly in this whole plan to this point remains with India, whose constant refusal of outside intervention or mediation and framing the problem as an “internal issue.”
Admiral Mullen obviously understands that the only way to possible peace in the region is through tri-partite agreement between leadership in Islamabad, Kabul, and especially New Delhi. The Indians need to come to the realization at some point that they must finally show some flexibility in the Kashmir Issue. Moreover, those flexibilities must begin by including the involvement of the various Kashmiri leaders in the discussions. Even if their representation were presented as an “observer” status, it would go a long way with garnering greater public support. From establishment politicians like Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and Mahooba Mufti, to separatist leaders like Yasin Malik, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Sajad Lone, their inclusion will show the Kashmiri people that India and Pakistan are serious in this round of talks. Additionally, this will be necessary for both India and Pakistan to finally extract the tangible results they desire in solving the conflict, by including those who hold leadership positions among the varying constituencies in the battle hardened region. Utilizing the influence these individuals hold among their constituencies can gain the necessary traction with the local populations who are the most susceptible to influence and intimidation by outside groups. Should this level of cooperation actually occur, the truth behind Admiral Mullen’s claims will come to fruition.
The greatest way in which India and Pakistan can gain this public support is via the truth and reconciliation avenue. India obviously has concerns for possible prosecution of war crimes, if not crimes against humanity given the extent of mass graves being found throughout the valley of Kashmir. The reason for the inclusion of the various leadership factions within the Kashmiri populations as well plays into this scenario given their ability to sell an agreement to the people who lack the necessary trust in Indian and Pakistani leadership.
All Kashmiri leaders have at one point or another either supported terrorist elements and/or participated in attacks not only against Indian troops, but the civilian population as well. By participating in seeking solutions, it will undercut the call to jihad by groups they once supported by rendering this call mute. This acknowledgement will also lend a hand to the Pakistani establishment to finally come clean with regards to how deep down the rabbit hole ISI-terrorist ties actually reach.
However, it may surprise outsiders just how far this type of “kumbaya” moment would bring in terms of public support, and establishing trust and faith in their leaders that a just and open society can be achievable. By including the long relationship with groups in Kashmir, it will without a doubt extend to the activities adversely affecting the stabilization of Afghanistan. The two are inextricably linked to one another, and will finally reduce the power and influence of these groups in the entire region.
Obviously, there are elements within the ISI who do in fact aid and support terror outfits; they have done so in plain sight for the past two decades, mainly in the region of Kashmir. This longstanding public acceptance in Pakistan, as well as indirectly funded either blindly or knowingly, via US military appropriations to Pakistan, makes breaking the linkages all the more dire for the Pakistani authority. Should the Pakistani government wish to continue to receive the billions in aid from the United States for non-military related purposes, these steps are the most necessary. There is widespread recognition that these connections within the ISI are at a mid to high level within the organization, whose main purpose is to cause problems for India. This reality is exacerbated by the conflict with India remaining totally ingrained in the psyche of all Pakistani military and intelligence personnel.
It is only in the last five years that Pakistani and Kashmiri groups expanded their jihadi efforts against the United States and coalition forces in the region. However, these groups were key to transportation and safe passage in the region to outside groups such as Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and so their involvement in Afghanistan was only a matter of time. Given this primary directive, engaging the Indian and Pakistani officials to legitimately explore all possible amicable solutions to the six decade old conflict would make the extraction of such groups that much more achievable without the concern of full civil war in Pakistan. It is through these means that public support will be the most possible and sustainable. Admiral Mullen is quick to point out that this multi-pronged approach to solving the problems of the region will not happen in the short term. “I just think those links have to be broken. I don’t believe they can be broken overnight, but if they’re broken, I think that fundamentally changes the viability of that safe haven and the overall strategy.” Let’s hope that the Admirals view will be taken seriously, and not just the words of an outgoing military head who feels he can now speak freely due to the coming end to his tenure.
David Wolfe doesn’t improve his low credibility by identifying his affiliation with the Pakistan-funded Kashmir American Council, whose leader Ghulam Nabi Fai was recently arrested by the FBI for covertly operating as foreign agent for Pakistan.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/19/syed-ghulam-nabi-fai-arre_n_903572.html
It’s nonsense for Wolfe or his Pakistani friends to pretend that Pakistan’s attempts to manipulate and dominate the Pashtuns through terrorist mafias like the Haqqanis are somehow due to Pakistan’s conflict with India over Kashmir. It’s exactly the other way around — it’s because of Pakistan’s quest to dominate and subjugate the Pashtuns that Pakistan started a conflict with India over Kashmir. Readers should not swallow the Pakistani line blindly and uncritically, but should question it every step of the way.
In 1839, the British Empire sought to expand the borders of its colony of British India, by launching a war of conquest against the neighboring Pashtuns. The Pashtuns, as a fiercely independent tribal warrior people, resisted ferociously, so that the British conquest of them was not successful. The British were only able to conquer part of the Pashtun territory, and even that remained in constant rebellion against them. Meanwhile, the remaining unconquered portion of Pashtun territory became the nucleus for the formation of Afghanistan. In 1893, the British imposed a ceasefire line on the Afghans called the Durand Line, which separated British-controlled territory from Afghan territory. The local people on the ground however never recognized this line, which merely existed on a map, and not on the ground.
In 1947, when the colony of British India achieved independence and was simultaneously partitioned into Pakistan and India, the Pakistanis wanted the conquered Pashtun territory to go to them, since the Pashtuns were Muslims. Given that the Pashtuns never recognized British authority over them to begin with, the Pakistanis had tenuous relations with the Pashtuns and were consumed by fears of Pashtun secession.
When Pakistan applied to join the UN in 1947, there was only one country which voted against it. No, it wasn’t India – it was Pashtun-ruled Afghanistan which voted against Pakistan’s admission, on the grounds that Pakistan was in illegal occupation of Pashtun lands stolen by the British. Their vote was cast on September 30, 1947 and is an historical fact.
In 1948, in the nearby state of Kashmir, its Hindu princely ruler and Muslim political leader joined hands in deciding to make Kashmir an independent country rather than joining either Pakistan or India. Pakistan’s leadership were immediately terrified of this precedent, fearing that the Pashtuns would soon follow suit and also declare their own ethnically independent state. In order to pre-empt that and prevent it from happening, Pakistan’s founder and leader Mohammad Ali Jinnah quickly decided to raise the cry of “Hindu treachery against the Muslims” and despatched hordes of armed Pashtun tribesmen to attack Kashmir. This was his way of distracting the Pashtuns from their own ethnic nationalism by diverting them into war against Kashmir “to save Islam”. These are the same Pashtun tribesman whose descendants are today’s Taliban. Fleeing the unprovoked invasion of their homeland, Kashmir’s Hindu prince and Muslim political leader went to India, pledging to merge with it if India would help repel the invasion. India agreed, and sent its army to repulse the Pashtun invasion. Pakistan then sent its army to clash with Indian forces, and the result was Indo-Pakistani conflict, which has lasted for decades.
Pakistan’s fear of Pashtun nationalism and separatism, which it worries can break up Pakistan, is thus the root of the Indo-Pakistani conflict over Kashmir and also the root of Pak conflict with Afghanistan, not any alleged Indian takeover of Kabul. This is all due to the legacy of 1839, which happened long before Pakistan was even created.
When a communist revolution happened in Kabul in the late 70s, Pakistan’s fear of potential spillover effects on Pashtun nationalism caused Pakistan to embark on fomenting a guerrilla war against Kabul that led to Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Aligned with with the USA, Pakistan then proceeded to arm the Pashtuns while indoctrinating them with Islamic fanaticism. The USA was not allowed any ground role, and was told it could only supply arms and funds to Pakistan, which would take care of the rest. Pakistan then simultaneously embarked on destabilization of India by fomenting insurgency there.
After the Soviets withdrew, Pakistan again feared that the well-armed Pashtuns would turn on it and pursue secession. So Pakistan then created the Taliban as a new umbrella movement for the fractious factional guerrilla groups under an ultra-fundamentalist ideology. Bin Laden’s AlQaeda then became cosy with Taliban, and the result was 9-11.
When the 9-11 attacks occurred, the cornered Pakistanis then did a 180 and promised to help the US defeat the Taliban and bring the terrorists to justice. Meanwhile they were racking their brains hoping to come up with a way to undermine the War on Terror from within. Now that they have succeeded in doing that, and in bleeding US/NATO forces, they hope to jump horses by kicking the US out and aligning with China.
Because of Pakistan’s attempts to illegitimately hang onto Pashtun land, it has brought itself into conflicts with so many countries – first against its neighbors and then against more distant larger powers. This is the reason why Pakistan is an irredentist state and can never be an ally against Islamic extremism, because Pakistan depends on this very Islamism as a national glue to hold itself together, and keep nationalistic ethnic groups like the Pashtuns from breaking Pakistan
apart.
At the same time, Pakistanis don’t dare own upto the Pashtun national question at any level, nor its effect on their national policies, because any attempt to do so would open up the legitimacy of their claim to Pashtun land.
Sovereignty is a 2-way street, entailing not just rights but obligations. Pakistan only wishes to assert rights owing to it from sovereignty, and wishes to completely duck the issue of any sovereign obligations to apprehend terrorists on what it claims as its own territory. This is because the fundamental reality is that the Pashtun territory is not really theirs, is not really under their control, and the Pashtuns don’t really recognize Pakistani central authority over them.
Pakistan uses Islamic fundamentalism to submerge traditional Pashtun ethnic identity in a desperate attempt to suppress Pashtun ethnic nationalism, and to stave off the disintegration of Pakistan. The Pashtuns are a numerically large enough ethnic group possessing the strength of arms to be able to secede from Pakistan at any moment, should they decide upon it.
The answer is to let the separatists have their way and achieve their independent ethnic states, breaking up Pakistan. It’s better to allow Pakistan to naturally break up into 3 or 4 benign ethnic states, than for it to keep promoting Islamic fundamentalist extremism in a doomed attempt to hold itself together. Pakistan is a failing state, and it’s better to let it fail and fall apart. This will help to end all conflict in the region and the trans-national terrorist problem. An independent ethnic Pashtun state will be dominated by Pashtun ethnic identity instead of fundamentalist Islam, and thus AlQaeda will no longer be able to find sanctuary there. Conventional ethnic identity is far more natural and benign than trans-nationalist Islamism with its inherent collectivist political bent. Supporting the re-emergence of 4 natural ethnic states – Pashtunistan, Balochistan, Sindh and Punjab – would be far better than continuing to support a dangerous and dysfunctional failed state like Pakistan which continues to spew toxic Islamist extremist ideology in a doomed attempt to hold itself together.
Following the failure of the Vietnam War, many Americans later recognized that war was really a war of ethnic reunification by the Vietnamese people. It wasn’t a case of one foreign country attempting to conquer another foreign country – indeed, the north and south Vietnamese were not strangers or aliens to one another – they were 2 halves of a common whole. The question was whether they would reunify under communist socialism or under free democracy, but because a blinkered American leadership refused to recognize the Vietnamese grassroots affinity for one another and their desire to reunify, it pretty much ensured that Vietnamese reunification would take place under communist socialism.
Likewise, the Pashtun people live on both sides of an artificial Durand Line (Afghan-Pak “border”) which they themselves have never accepted or recognized. It’s a question of whether they will politically reunify under close-minded theocratic Islamism or under a more secular and tolerant society. Because today’s blinkered American leadership is again blindly defending another artificial line on a map, and refusing to recognize the oneness of the people living on both sides of that artificial line, America is again shutting itself out of the reunification process, guaranteeing that Pashtun reunification will occur under fanatical fundamentalist Islamism as prescribed by Pakistan (much as Hanoi’s Soviet backers prescribed reunification under communist socialism.) It’s only later on, much after America’s defeat, that some Americans will realize too late that they should have seen that the Pashtuns on both sides of the artificial line were actually one people. Pakistan knows it all too well, because they’ve been living with the guilt and fear of it ever since Pakistan’s creation – but that’s why they’re hell-bent on herding the Pashtuns down the path of Islamist fanaticism, using Islamist glue to keep the Pashtuns as a whole hugged to Pakistan’s bosom.
If only Washington policymakers could shed their blinkers and really understand what’s going on, then they might have a chance to shape events more effectively, and to their favor. Pakistan is rapidly building up its nuclear arsenal, as it moves to surpass Britain to become the world’s 5th-largest nuclear state.The Pakistanis are racing to build up as much hard-power as possible to back up the soft-power they feel Islamist hate-ideology gives them.
The world needs to compel the Pakistanis to let the Pashtuns go, and allow them to have their own independent national existence, along with the Baluchis and Sindhis. Humoring Pakistan and allowing it to continue using Islamist hatred to rally the people towards unity to counter slow disintegration is not the way to achieve stability in the region, or security for the world.
A very nice article, I like the neutrality with which the writer approaches the whole issue, don’t worry about Indians…..as the nobel laureate and ex-Indian Amartya Sen puts it, Indians by nature are argumentative and cannot reach a just consensus(perhaps the main reason why they have been conquered time n again for a large part of known history).
I congratulate the author on bringing this news article out.
As Winston Churchill famously said, “While the Hindu elaborates his argument, the Moslem sharpens his sword.”
Aziz Kashmir may not like Indians who dare to talk back to him, but they’re far better company than the ultra-violent Pakistanis whom Admiral Mullen has directly accused of killing US and NATO forces for the past 10 years, and even orchestrating the latest attack on the US embassy in Kabul.
Alongside the past 10 years of Pakistan’s treacherous terror attacks can be added its simultaneous sheltering of Osama Bin Laden mere hundreds of yards from its national military academy. With friends like this, who needs enemies?
The idea that Pakistan has done all these treacherous things because “India made them do it” is absolutely laughable – about as laughable as the Nobel Prize, which unfortunately these days can be awarded to anyone purely on their political leanings, regardless of actual merit. The narrow-mindedness entrenched into the Norwegian parliament ensures that.
David Wolfe may not care which country he rents his allegiance to in representing clandestine foreign lobby groups bankrolled by hostile foreign powers, who are themselves funded by duped US taxpayers. But while Pakistan pursues its 2-pronged strategy of stealing US taxpayer dollars to fund terrorists to kill Americans on the one hand, and fund lobbyists like David Wolfe to propagandize them from the other side, you have to wonder how long this charade will last.
Apparently, it’s gone on far too long for Mullen to maintain his silence on the matter.
very nice story and its tru
@ Sanjay Your insight is good but what do you say about divide artifical line between two parts of kashmir. I found your article very prejudice. we want to be united with our other partof Kashmir.why not India accept this reality.
Indian occupied Kashmir the most highly militarized area in the world, anytime you look up, there on the rooftop is a soldier pointing a gun at your head, there are endless checkpoints, intimidations, pat downs & that is only to get into the post office. I lived in villages for 2 1/2 years in Kashmir, away from tourists, to learn what was life like in an occupied territory.The troops shoot peacefull protestors on a regular basis, women are raped, anyone killed is labeled a terrorist, even if it is an 80 year old farmer coming out of his field. Can I tell you how I wanted to hate the soldiers because they were killing my friends.
Who are these vampires that command that the poor of one country slaughter the poor of another country. How much blood do you require & do you know your time is coming to an end?
Indian Subcontinent is a region in South Asia .where since 1947 exist three countries India,Pakistan and Bangladesh.Prior 1947 there were more than five hundreds Princly States under the rule of British.So after ww2 British decided to give independenc to Subcontinent which had a more than five hundreds Princly States Populated with Hindu,Muslim,Sikh,Christian.So it was decided to divide Subcontinent between two countries India and Pakistan, depending on the majority of people in each Princly State. if the State has Hindu papulation in majority it should join India,for muslim majority Pakistan. So Kashmir had a muslim majority it should joined Pakistan. But India invaded the State of Kashmir by military force against the wishis of people of Kashmir. There has been Self Determination going on In Kashmir against brutal Indian occupation since 1947, more than two hundred thousands Kashmiri Killed by Indian Occupy forces,more than thirty thousands women been Raped by occupied Indian forces.Kashmir freedom struggle is not reported in the Main Streem Media.
So, Pakistani supported Taliban and Haqqani network attack Americans in Afghanistan and India is the one that has to show ‘flexibility’ on Kashmir! Thank goodness America is an ‘ally’ of Pakistan. I shudder to think what would happen to India if the Americans were to ally with India.
“The greatest way in which India and Pakistan can gain this public support is via the truth and reconciliation avenue. India obviously has concerns for possible prosecution of war crimes, if not crimes against humanity given the extent of mass graves being found throughout the valley of Kashmir.”
Can author elaborate with collaboration of the link between India and these graves if they are found. The experts can not omit the issues of Kashmiri Pandits, and displaces Kashmiri Hindus. And the author is also ignorant of the issues of Kashmiri Land “bribed to China by Pakistan”
What a shitty article.. The Pakistani goverment supports terrorism throughout the world and kills our innocent soldiers in Afganistan. And this writer is writing propoganda based story.
Bob Racho,
Our innocent Soldiers in Afganistan??as far as Afgani are concerned they are enemy combatants. Remember your president sends drones to kill those he labels enemy combatant! so as much as I feel sorry for these soldiers, I believe Afgani have the same rights as American do!”
Zoe, you don’t believe Afghans have any rights to do anything but be slaves of Pakistan, which doesn’t recognize their sovereignty at all! It’s Pakistan which sends fanatics armed with AK-47s and RPGs into their country. What selective powers of observation you have!
mr sanjay you qouted winston churchill ,but the hegemonic attitude of india in the region negates your claim where it appears that hindu wants to pile up lethality being the 9th biggest nation sa far spending on defence. india being the largest country in south asia must act like a elder brother and make a scrifice over kshmir, enduring the UN convention at the issue to allow a free and fair plebiscite
Mr “live and belived”,
The fact is that it’s Pakistan which spends more as a percentage of GDP, and it’s Pakistan which is the military-ruled banana republic. India has only been forced into spending because of the aggressiveness of its neighbors. Pakistan has started each and every one of the Indo-Pakistani wars. Likewise, it was China which started the Sino-Indian war of 1962.