Why this anti-ISI propaganda?
EDITORIAL (August 05 2008): Both the Foreign Office spokesman and the ISPR chief have rubbished the NYT report that accuses the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of masterminding the July-7 bombing of Indian embassy in Kabul - with promptness and anger that this half-baked 'scoop' probably did not deserve.
Given western media's biased coverage of Pakistan's national attributes, ranging from its ideological basis to its nuclear status, the NYT report is nothing but an ante to keep Islamabad in line in matters that essentially promote its rivals' objectives. Such subversive accounts always pop up if Pakistan is seen to be making diplomatic gains in relations with other countries.
But, sometimes, they shifting the focus from the real to the mirage. Not unexpectedly, therefore, at the time the ISI is being pilloried by the US media, Pakistan's so-called partners in the 'war on terror' are falling over each other in the rush to sanctify the illegal and immoral co-operation India is going to get from the Western countries in the name of helping its civilian nuclear programme.
Who doesn't know it is being done in clear violation of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. Perhaps, there is also this rising criticism of the US-led coalition forces' failure to control and snuff out the Taliban militancy in Afghanistan, for which the ISI has been found as a scapegoat.
To insist that Pakistan is an unwilling partner in the war on terror is too naïve an assertion to sell in Pakistan. If Islamabad had decided not to be a partner it could well do it. After all, Pakistan had turned down American pleadings to send forces to Iraq; signed up the gas pipeline project with Iran despite Washington's loud protestations; and rejected President Clinton's intense pressure not to conduct the tit-for-tat nuclear tests.
The fact is that the 9/11 attacks in American causing huge loss of innocent lives had saddened every Pakistani. Such an act of wanton mayhem generated deep revulsion among the people here who had lost whatever sympathy they had for the al Qaeda and their supporters. This is also a fact that the Mullah Omar regime in Afghanistan did not have very comfortable relations with the Pakistan government as both nurtured mutual suspicions.
That Pakistan lost over a thousand soldiers in its battles with the Taliban in the tribal areas and suffered a series of suicide-bombing attacks should be blown off the palm just because of an ambiguous conversation on phone, it is not acceptable. Very conveniently, anonymous sources leak information to newspapers suspecting the sincerity of an ally who has paid more in terms of damage to its internal security, economic setbacks, and military and civilian losses than all the US-led coalition partners put together.
The fact is there is no conclusive proof of the ISI's alleged involvement in the Indian embassy blast. If Indian and Afghan intelligence agencies are bent upon maligning Pakistan, that is an old game. It is time that the newly elected coalition government should conduct a comprehensive review of its policy to continue to be a thankless ally of the West in Afghanistan.
If in seven years the world's greatest military alliance, Nato, has not been able to secure even the capital city of Afghanistan, then it is definitely not a handful of terrorists they are fighting against. The fact is that the US-led coalition is pitted against a whole nation who has a history of standing up to the invaders and never surrendering.
If the coalition governments think they want to improve the quality of life of Afghans, who supposedly suffered oppression of medieval times under the Taliban government, then why nothing is being done to rescue them from their biggest bane - the scourge of opium production. If the mission was to establish democracy in Afghanistan then is it the one under Karazi and his warlords that the coalition had envisaged?
There was this great realist American, Alan Greenspan, who in his life-long distilled wisdom found "For Oil" as the only motivation behind the US invasion of Iraq. One would not be widely of the mark to say that in Afghanistan it's not the Taliban but the need for a "central base" to control fossil fuels of Central Asia that has brought there the Nato forces.
The review suggested above should look into the emerging reality of the situation particularly the growing Indian political and diplomatic presence in Afghanistan and then, if warranted, reframe its response irrespective of what the NYT writes. Like all intelligence agencies the ISI forms Pakistan's first line of defence. The knowledge that attempts are being made to break it up does remind us of the impending dangers to our national survival.
Business Recorder [Pakistan's First Financial Daily]
