Ruler's Games

"Since 1977 (that is, after the deposition of Mr. Z. A. Bhutto) there has been a frank discussion on the 1965 War in Pakistan by writers and those who were directly connected with the war. Among them were Gen. Musa, who was the Army Chief then, Air Marshal Asghar Khan and Air Marshal Nur Khan, who commanded Pakistan's Air Force one after the other, Mr. Altaf Gaudar, who was the powerful information secretary then, and Gen. Yahya Khan, who was in charge of the Chhamb sector. All these writers have made points which show that invaders were sent into Kashmir under what Ayub's coterie called 'Opertion Gibraltar', not for the 'liberation' of Kashmiris but for strengthening the position of Gen. Ayub Khan, who was reportedly toying with the idea of either becoming the President for life or the Shah of Pakistan."

p108-109, My life and times by Sayyid Mīr Qāsim

Pakistan is the Problem

The very name Pakistan inscribes the nature of the problem. It is not a real country or nation but an acronym devised in the 1930s by a Muslim propagandist for partition named Chaudhary Rahmat Ali. It stands for Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, and Indus-Sind. The stan suffix merely means "land." In the Urdu language, the resulting acronym means "land of the pure." It can be easily seen that this very name expresses expansionist tendencies and also conceals discriminatory ones. Kashmir, for example, is part of India. The Afghans are Muslim but not part of Pakistan. Most of Punjab is also in India. Interestingly, too, there is no B in this cobbled-together name, despite the fact that the country originally included the eastern part of Bengal (now Bangladesh, after fighting a war of independence against genocidal Pakistani repression) and still includes Baluchistan, a restive and neglected province that has been fighting a low-level secessionist struggle for decades. The P comes first only because Pakistan is essentially the property of the Punjabi military caste (which hated Benazir Bhutto, for example, because she came from Sind). As I once wrote, the country's name "might as easily be rendered as 'Akpistan' or 'Kapistan,' depending on whether the battle to take over Afghanistan or Kashmir is to the fore."

Pakistan Is the Problem by Christopher Hitchens
15 September 2008

From terror to politics

"Just before I left for India, there was a ferocious showdown over the course of events, with an ISI officer whom we knew as General Liaqat Ali. I was then the vice-chairman of the council of 15 groups active in Jammu and Kashmir. At a meeting in Rawalpindi, I asked him point-blank what Pakistan wanted to do about this aimless war of attrition. He replied that our job was to prick India just enough to make it bleed, but not enough to make it bite back. I became very angry, since we were the ones who were doing the bleeding, not India. Nine of us walked out, and came back only after a great deal of persuasion. I now knew that we were fighting a war for Pakistan, not for Jammu and Kashmir.", Usman Majid, once a key member of the Jammu and Kashmir Students' Liberation Front

From terror to politics by Praveen Swami. Frontline, Volume 19 - Issue 04. Feb. 16 - Mar. 1, 2002

Pakistan a Militant State

"Even if by some act of miraculous diplomacy the territorial issues [with India] were to be resolved, Pakistan would remain an insecure state. Given the realities of the subcontinent (e.g., India's rise and its more effective foreign relations with all of Pakistan's near and far neighbors), these fears are bound to grow, not lessen. This suggests that without some means of compelling Pakistan to abandon its reliance upon militancy, it will become ever more interested in using it -- and the militants will likely continue to proliferate beyond Pakistan's control.", Christine Fair.

What's the Problem With Pakistan? - A Foreign Affairs roundtable discussion on the causes of instability in Pakistan.

Kashmiri Freedom Fighters are 'Terrorists': Zardari

WSJ: When I [Bret Stephens] ask whether he would consider a free-trade agreement with traditional archenemy India, Mr. Zardari responds with a string of welcome, perhaps even historic, surprises. “India has never been a threat to Pakistan,” he says, adding that “I, for one, and our democratic government is not scared of Indian influence abroad.” He speaks of the militant Islamic groups operating in Kashmir as “terrorists” — former President Musharraf would more likely have called them “freedom fighters” — and allows that he has no objection to the India-U.S. nuclear cooperation pact, so long as Pakistan is treated “at par.” “Why would we begrudge the largest democracy in the world getting friendly with one of the oldest democracies in the world?”

The Most Difficult Job in the World, The Wall Street Journal, page A13

04 October 2008

India, Pakistan & Kashmir

"When it comes to Kashmir, India is like the alcoholic who refuses to accept that he has a drinking problem. Pakistan on the other hand is like the lover who lost his beloved a long time ago to a stronger and richer man and has tried often enough to get her back without any success. "

India, Pakistan and Kashmir by Syed Mansoor Hussain

06 July 2009