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| Hafiz’s release was a masterstroke by Pak | | | ANIL BHAT
he release of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba’s top ideologue Hafiz Mohammed Saeed in Lahore earlier this week was a masterstroke by the Pakistan government, timed well to coincide with the "success" of its military’s operations in the Swat region — it signalled to India exactly how much its concerns in the aftermath of 26/11 in Mumbai weighed with the government in Islamabad and simultaneously served as a message to its domestic audience that the Pakistan government was not, after all, a pawn in the hands of the United States.
If one of the motives behind the series of terrorist attacks in Pakistan recently, particularly the one in Lahore on May 26, was to free Hafiz Saeed, who was due to be produced in court that day, then it succeeded all too well as both Saeed and his associate, Col. Nazir Ahmed (Retd), were released on the orders of the Lahore high court just days afterward. The Lahore terror strike, preceded by attacks in Islamabad and Chakwal, comes after a series of recent events which are too "interesting" to be merely coincidental.
If reports of the successes of Pakistan’s military against the Taliban in the Swat Valley are indeed true, their count of killed or captured should exceed 1,000 by now. But given the lack of access to an independent media, this aspect is hard to confirm. And while there is very little "evidence" in terms of dead bodies or graves, there are reports of the Taliban fleeing or trying to get rid of their beards and shalwars (baggy, tapered pyjamas), so it is entirely possible that the attacks in Lahore and elsewhere were by escaped Taliban men or close Lashkar-e-Tayyaba sympathisers retaliating over the Swat operations. It could also be retaliation for the US-Nato offensive against the Taliban in Afghanistan or in Pakistan’s NWFP or FATA.
A key reason why such attacks will continue, if not intensify, is that the Pakistan Army, which still calls the shots in that country, has not (and is not expected to) dismantle the anti-India terror networks it has built up over the last two decades. And while all this is no secret to American officials as well as US think-tanks and the media, President Barack Obama’s administration has, despite these recent events, trebled aid to Pakistan. The US is fully aware not only about the India-oriented focus of Pakistan’s Army, but also about the far more dangerous expansion of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme.
In view of the well-known North Korea-China-Pakistan nuclear partnership, could the recent North Korean nuclear tests have been proxy tests for whatever nukes Pakistan is trying to acquire or has already acquired?
This is something to which the US needs to find answers. And if the US already has the answer, then it will only add to India’s problems by giving the US more scope to "advise" India not to "overreact" even if there are further terrorist attacks, which might already be in the planning stage.
The Israeli journal Debka stated recently that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had warned President Obama that nuclear sites in Pakistan’s disturbed NWFP might already be partly in the hands of Islamist extremists. Debka also referred to an Indian publication quoting US scholar Robert Windrem: "It is quite disturbing that the administration is allowing Pakistan to quantitatively and qualitatively step up production of fissile material without as much as a public reproach." It said scholars like Mr Windrem fear that US officials’ confidence, based on Islamabad’s assurance that its nuclear arsenal will not fall into the hands of Islamic extremists, is misplaced because Pakistan’s nuclear programme "may already be infected with the virus of radicalism from within..."
Senior US officials are on record as saying recently that Pakistan has the fastest-growing nuclear weapons programme in the world, particularly in installing additional capacity to produce materials for nuclear weapons. Commercial satellite imagery supports this, showing Pakistan has concentrated on expanding its nuclear weapons production complex. This is undoubtedly related to its decision to upgrade its nuclear arsenal, currently estimated at 60-100 nuclear weapons deliverable by aircraft and ballistic missiles. Fears have been expressed that as part of its plan to improve the destructiveness and deliverability of its arsenal, Pakistan might build smaller, lighter plutonium-fission weapons and deliverable thermo-nuclear weapons that use plutonium as the nuclear trigger.
The United States needs to be clear about why its war on terror in the region is getting compromised. The Pakistan Army’s anti-India and anti-Afghan compulsions, combined with the expansion and upgradation of its nuclear arsenal, not only neutralises much of its efforts in Afghanistan but also — frighteningly — greatly increases the chances of terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons. If large quantities of weapons and war material for Nato forces in Afghanistan have been destroyed or diverted to the Taliban, there is every possibility of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons getting into the wrong hands, if this has not already happened.
There’s one other factor that the US must take note of — as Nasir Abbas Mirza noted in Daily Times on May 11: "Remote madrasas may be turning boys into drones, but there are thousands of madrasas across Pakistan’s urban centres that are producing millions of neo-drones... They may not become suicide bombers, but they are totally unfit to live in this world. These kids need to be rescued."
There is no doubt that the US has increased pressure on the Pakistan Army, but apart from the displacement of two million-plus hapless civilians, we do not know what the Swat campaign has achieved as long as there is no confirmation of the number of terrorists killed or captured. The Pakistan Army, expert in raising terror outfits, is not geared to effectively fight them, even on home soil with heavy artillery and attack helicopters. Counter-terror operations can succeed only if troops close in on terrorists and either capture or kill them. If not, the terrorists get away to fight another day, at another place, which they appear to be doing unabashedly now.
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