PAKISTAN
AN INTERNATIONAL CASE OF...................
 CLICK & READ HOW THE MANGOEs WERE EXPLODING & TILL DATE MANGOEs ARE STILL EXPLODING | |
| http://nusa.wikispaces.com/file/view/A+Case+of+Exploding+Mangoes+-+Mohammed+Hanif.pdf | |
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“Murshid, marwa na daina.”
PAKISTAN ARMY'S SPRAWLING SHOPPING MALL
OF
PRIVATE PUTTARS (sons)
ORIGINALLY AUTHORED BY
EXPLODING MANGOES
OF
GENERAL ZIA UL HAQ
FOUNDER OF
RIVERS OF BLOOD
OF
PAKISTAN'S PRIVATE PUTTARS
"....the biggest strategic mistake PAKISTAN ARMY has made is that it has not even taken advice from the late Madam Noor Jehan, one of the Army’s most ardent fans in Pakistan’s history. You can probably ignore Dr Eqbal Ahmed’s advice and survive in this country but you ignore Madam at your own peril."
NATIONAL WAR EPITAPH ANTHEM
FOR
PAKISTAN ARMY
BY
LATE MADAM NOOR JEHAN
FOR
LOST PAKISTAN ARMED FORCES
IN MEMORY OF
A DREAM OF PAKISTAN
WHICH
REMAINS A BLOODY DREAM ONLY
A long read, but worth it...especially for us in uniform...
Pakistan’s General Problem...
~ Mohammad Hanif...
What is the last thing you say to your best general when ordering him into a do-or-die mission? A prayer maybe, if you are religiously inclined. A short lecture, underlining the importance of the mission, if you want to keep it businesslike. Or maybe you’ll wish him good luck accompanied by a clicking of the heels and a final salute.
On the night of 5 July 1977 as Operation Fair Play, meant to topple Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s elected government, was about to commence, then Army Chief General Zia ul Haq took aside his right-hand man and Corps Commander of 10th Corps Lieutenant General Faiz Ali Chishti and whispered to him: “Murshid, marwa na daina.” (Guru, don’t get us killed.)
General Zia was indulging in two of his favourite pastimes: spreading his paranoia amongst those around him and sucking up to a junior officer he needed to do his dirty work.
General Zia had a talent for that; he could make his juniors feel as if they were indispensable to the running of this world. And he could make his seniors feel like proper gods, as Bhutto found out to his cost.
General Faiz Ali Chishti’s troops didn’t face any resistance that night; not a single shot was fired, and like all military coups in Pakistan, this was also dubbed a ‘bloodless coup’. There was a lot of bloodshed, though, in the following years—in military-managed dungeons, as pro-democracy students were butchered at Thori gate in interior Sindh, hundreds of shoppers were blown up in Karachi’s Bohri Bazar, in Rawalpindi people didn’t even have to leave their houses to get killed as the Army’s ammunition depot blew up raining missiles on a whole city, and finally at Basti Laal Kamal near Bahawalpur, where a plane exploded killing General Zia and most of the Pakistan Army’s high command. General Faiz Ali Chishti had nothing to do with this, of course. General Zia had managed to force his murshid into retirement soon after coming to power. Chishti had started to take that term of endearment—murshid—a bit too seriously and dictators can’t stand anyone who thinks of himself as a kingmaker.
Thirty-four years on,Pakistanis a society divided at many levels. There are those who insist on tracing our history to a certain September day in 2001, and there are those who insist that this country came into being the day the first Muslim landed on the Subcontinent. There are laptop jihadis, liberal fascist and fair-weather revolutionaries. There are Balochi freedom fighters up in the mountains and bullet-riddled bodies of young political activists in obscure Baloch towns. And, of course, there are the members of civil society with a permanent glow around their faces from all the candle-light vigils. All these factions may not agree on anything but there is consensus on one point:
General Zia’s coup was a bad idea. When was the last time anyone heard Nawaz Sharif or any of Zia’s numerous protégés thump their chest and say, yes, we need another Zia? When did you see a Pakistan military commander who stood on Zia’s grave and vowed to continue his mission?
It might have taken Pakistanis 34 years to reach this consensus but we finally agree that General Zia’s domestic and foreign policies didn’t do us any good. It brought us automatic weapons, heroin and sectarianism; it also made fortunes for those who dealt in these commodities.
And it turned Pakistan into an international jihadi tourist resort.And yet, somehow, without ever publicly owning up to it, the Army has continued Zia’s mission. Successive Army commanders, despite their access to vast libraries and regular strategic reviews, have never actually acknowledged that the multinational, multicultural jihadi project they started during the Zia era was a mistake. Late Dr Eqbal Ahmed, the Pakistani teacher and activist, once said that the
Pakistan Army is brilliant at collecting information but its ability to analyse this information is non-existent.
Looking back at the Zia years, the Pakistan Army seems like one of those mythical monsters that chops off its own head but then grows an identical one and continues on the only course it knows.
In 1999, two days after the Pakistan Army embarked on its Kargil misadventure, Lieutenant General Mahmud Ahmed gave a ‘crisp and to the point’ briefing to a group of senior Army and Air Force officers. Air Commodore Kaiser Tufail, who attended the meeting, later wrote that they were told that it was nothing more than a defensive manoeuvre and the Indian Air Force will not get involved at any stage. “Come October, we shall walk into Siachen—to mop up the dead bodies of hundreds of Indians left hungry, out in the cold,” General Mahmud told the meeting. “Perhaps it was the incredulousness of the whole thing that led Air Commodore Abid Rao to famously quip, ‘After this operation, it’s going to be either a Court Martial or Martial Law!’ as we walked out of the briefing room,” Air Commodore Tufail recalled in an essay.
If Rao Abid even contemplated a court martial, he probably lacked leadership qualities because there was only one way out of this mess—a humiliating military defeat, a world-class diplomatic disaster, followed by yet another martial law.
The man who should have faced court martial for Kargil appointed himself Pakistan’s President for the next decade.
General Mahmud went on to command ISI, Rao Abid retired as air vice marshal, both went on to find lucrative work in the Army’s vast welfare empire, and Kargil was forgotten as if it was a game of dare between two juveniles who were now beyond caring about who had actually started the game.
Nobody remembers that a lot of blood was shed on this pointless Kargil mission. The battles were fierce and some of the men FCC and officers fought so valiantly that two were awarded Pakistan’s highest military honour, Nishan-e-Haidar. There were hundreds of others whose names never made it to any awards list, whose families consoled themselves by saying that their loved ones had been martyred while defending our nation’s borders against our enemy. Nobody pointed out the basic fact that there was no enemy on those mountains before some delusional generals decided that they would like to mop up hundreds of Indian soldiers after starving them to death.
The architect of this mission, the daring General Pervez Musharraf, who didn’t bother to consult his colleagues before ordering his soldiers to their slaughter, doesn’t even have the wits to face a sessions court judge in Pakistan, let alone a court martial. The only people he feels comfortable with are his Facebook friends and that too from the safety of his London apartment. During the whole episode, the nation was told that it wasn’t the regular army that was fighting in Kargil; it was themujahideen. But those who received their loved ones’ flag-draped coffins had sent their sons and brothers to serve in a professional army, not a freelance lashkar.
The Pakistan Army’s biggest folly has been that under Zia it started outsourcing its basic job—soldiering—to these freelance militants. By blurring the line between a professional soldier—who, at least in theory, is always required to obey his officer, who in turn is governed by a set of laws—and a mujahid, who can pick and choose his cause and his commander depending on his mood, the Pakistan Army has caused immense confusion in its own ranks. Our soldiers are taught to shout Allah-o-Akbar when mocking an attack. In real life, they are ambushed by enemies who shout Allah-o-Akbar even louder. Can we blame them if they dither in their response? When the Pakistan Navy’s main aviation base in Karachi, PNS Mehran, was attacked, Navy Chief Admiral Nauman Bashir told us that the attackers were ‘very well trained’. We weren’t sure if he was giving us a lazy excuse or admiring the creation of his institution. When naval officials told journalists that the attackers were ‘as good as our own commandoes’ were they giving themselves a backhanded compliment?
In the wake of the attacks on PNS Mehran in Karachi, some TV channels have pulled out an old war anthem sung by late Madam Noor Jehan and have started to play it in the backdrop of images of young, hopeful faces of slain officers and men. Written by the legendary teacher and poet Sufi Tabassum, the anthem carries a clear and stark warning:Aiay puttar hatantay nahin wickday, na labhdi phir bazaar kuray(You can’t buy these brave sons from shops, don’t go looking for them in bazaars).
While Sindhis and Balochis have mostly composed songs of rebellion, Punjabi popular culture has often lionised its karnails and jarnails and even an odd dholsipahi. The Pakistan Army, throughout its history, has refused to take advice from politicians as well as thinking professionals from its own ranks. It has never listened to historians and sometimes ignored even the esteemed religious scholars it frequently uses to whip up public sentiments for its dirty wars. But the biggest strategic mistake it has made is that it has not even taken advice from the late Madam Noor Jehan, one of the Army’s most ardent fans in Pakistan’s history. You can probably ignore Dr Eqbal Ahmed’s advice and survive in this country but you ignore Madam at your own peril.
Since the Pakistan Army’s high command is dominated by Punjabi-speaking generals, it’s difficult to fathom what it is about this advice that they didn’t understand. Any which way you translate it, the message is loud and clear. And lyrical: soldiers are not to be bought and sold like a commodity. “Na awaian takran maar kuray”(That search is futile, like butting your head against a brick wall), Noor Jehan goes on to rhapsodise.For decades, the Army has not only shopped for these private puttars in the bazaars, it also set up factories to manufacture them.
It raised whole armies of them.
When you raise Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish Mohammed, Sipahe Sahaba, Sipahe Mohammed, Lashker Jhangvi, Al- Badar Mujahideen,
others encouraged by the thriving market place will go ahead and
start outfits like Anjuman Tahuffuze Khatame Nabuwat and Anjuman Tahuffuze Namoos-e-Aiyasha. It’s not just Kashmir and Afghanistan and Chechnya they will want to liberate, they will also go back in time and seek revenge for a perceived slur that may or may not have been cast by someone more than 1,300 years ago in a country far far away.
As if the Army’s sprawling shopping mall of private puttars in Pakistan wasn’t enough, it actively encouraged import and export of these commodities, even branched out into providing rest and recreation facilities for the ones who wanted a break. The outsourcing of Pakistan’s military strategy has reached a point where mujahids have their own mujahids to do their job, and inevitably at the end of the supply chain are those faceless and poor teenagers with explosives strapped to their torsos regularly marched out to blow up other poor kids.Two days before the Americans killed Osama bin Laden and took away his bullet-riddled body, General Kiyani addressed Army cadets at Kakul. After declaring a victory of sorts over the militants, he gave our nation a stark choice. And before the nation could even begin to weigh its pros and cons, he went ahead and decided for them:
we shall never bargain our honour for prosperity. As things stand, most people in Pakistan have neither honour nor prosperity and will easily settle for their little world not blowing up every day.
The question people really want to ask General is that if he and his Army officer colleagues can have both honour and prosperity, why can’t we the people have a tiny bit of both?
The Army and its advocates in the media often worry about Pakistan’s image, as if we are not suffering from a long-term serious illness but a seasonal bout of acne that just needs better skin care. The Pakistan Army, over the years, has cultivated this image of 180 million people with nuclear devices strapped to their collective body threatening to take the world down with it. We may not be able to take the world down with us; the world might defang us or try to calm us down by appealing to our imagined Sufi side.
But the fact remains that Pakistan as a nation is paying the price for our generals’ insistence on acting, in Asma Jahangir’s frank but accurate description, like duffers.
And demanding medals and golf resorts for being such duffers consistently for such a long time.
What people really want to do at this point is put an arm around our military commanders’ shoulders, take them aside and whisper in their ears:
“Murshid, marwa na daina.”
+++
Mohammed Hanif is the author of A Case of Exploding Mangoes(2008), his first novel, a satire on the death of General Zia ul Haq.
PAKISTAN
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Posted by Eric at September 18, 2014 3:59 AM ET:
Was PNS Zulfiqar seaworthy?
Last information I can find, she was anchored off Karachi in 2011, was mistaken for an Indian missile boat, and then attacked by PAF F-16's. Strafed with hundreds of rounds of gunfire, she was in an serviceable condition when she was towed to the PNS dockyard, where Zulfiqar has sat ever since, awaiting, but not yet completing, repairs. A ship in such a condition would not normally retain its ordnance on-board. Weapons would be off-loaded and stored in shore magazine bunkers. Like wise the ready-for-sea condition would be significantly relaxed.
If that is, in fact, Zulfiqar's true status, then even a full PN crew could not have gotten the ship underway. The C-802 variant of the Ying 8 surface to surface anti-ship missile has an effective range of 75 miles. US Warships operating in the N Arabian Sea are typically hundreds of sea miles away and need to be detected and tracked by PNS Zulfiqar's ship-based fire control radar in order to provide a targeting solution to the missiles before they are fired. The Ying 802 is programmed to evade enemy radar by flying under 25 feet above the sea surface on its approach to the target. As such, its own radar is incapable of searching and acquiring its own target over-the-horizon, hence PNS Zulfiqar would need to get underway to pursue, detect, track, and assign a US Navy ship to the missile, if the missiles were even kept on-board. If the ship were even repaired from 3 years ago.
What I labor to point out is that Mahmoud is taking his pick of what propaganda value he intends to extract from this incident, while the Pak Navy is silent on the seaworthiness and weapons handling status of the ship that was attacked, for obvious security reasons. Whereas the real likelihood of success for al-Qaeda was less than or equal to Zero. Even to concede all of the above were possible, there was no trained crew standing by to operate any of the technical equipment related to targeting and attacking another vessel with a Sf-Sf missile.
And it just occured to me to wonder, might this have been Ayman al-Zawahiri's "9/11 Reprise".
If they had pulled it off, it could have been a major propaganda coup in the Recruitment Wars with ISIS.
Okay looks like longwarjournal has been censoring me.
Pakistan army is after all a mercenery force.
The average Pakistani
Ashfaq is totally ignorant and he thinks about his closeness
to the middle east rather than South Asia. This would have
another green on blue attack of epic proportions.
I contend that the US Navy should completely stop any ships
from going to Karachi or any ports in Pakistan.
No US Navy commander should not unaware of the risks in Pakistan. One day I contend that the US Navy will be forced to attack Karachi with the legendary 14 inch naval guns and ensure
it cannot be used for a centuries- a dirty nuke on Karachi will solve the problem permanently.
. Why didn't we know about this attempt? Could it because brave, unarmed journalists are cowed by the cowards of the ISI?
Eric, do please share any info you have on a 2011 attack. That seems awfully recent to be so little reported on. The 1971 attack accounts are all over. Thanks for the missile info!
Eric,
I responded to you in an earlier discussion and you didn't give a response.
Here is a story about the PNS Zulfiqar making a visit to Saudi Arabia in February 2012.
http://www.arabnews.com/node/406170
Here are two links about an earlier PNS Zulfiqar taking friendly fire in 1971.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNS_Zulfiqar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Trident_(1971)
Since you come across as quite confident with your story of the current PNS Zulfiqar taking friendly fire in 2011, please provide links to support your position on this matter.
Posted by Don at September 19, 2014 12:04 AM ET:
I don't know why many are quick to dismiss these rogue officers abilities. Ever since ISI Lt Gen Mahmood Ahmed was mailing money to Muhammad Atah in 2001, they have effectively started everything since 9/11, covered blunder after blunder (they buried this story folks, can we interrupt the Bengahzi coverage for a moment to cover something that could have changed the world yet again), kept the US out of terrorist run havens, and made jihad global.
From the outset, the missile was designed to sink American carriers.
Pakistani atomics are derived from Chinese designs, AFAIK.
Because of operational secrecy, the Pakistanis are never going to spill the beans, but it's a pretty good bet that at least one of the C-802 missiles deployed on these frigates has an atomic warhead.
This would go a long way to explaining why the security guards on the vessel were so able and paranoid. They were, in fact, elite atomic troops -- hand picked and well trained -- and well paid.
Using elite troops to guard atomic weapons is standard fare in American, Russian, et. al. militaries.
AQ had a plan that ran into the Pakistani "A" team; first string troops. That was unexpected.
When a missile, such as a C-802, mounts an atomic warhead, it usually has very extended range. The atomic warhead will be substantially lighter than a conventional round. All other structures will be built to the highest standard. (lightest weight) Externally it will appear to be entirely conventional.
This provides operational security.
For these reasons no-one should trust the 'missile effective range' statistics that are kicked around in public. If it's public, it's a lie.
America's cruise missiles designed for atomics had staggering ranges w a a a a y beyond that of the conventional cruise missile version. The Soviets considered them so threatening that they were one of the first atomic systems subject to arms control.
I would not be surprised to find out that an atomic C-802 can travel hundreds of miles.
Knowing AQ's style, I wouldn't put it past them to bird dog the American fleet with a 'fishing' boat and a suicide crew. GPS would then do the trick.
My gut tells me that AQ wasn't even thinking about taking the ship to sea.
%%%
I suspect that Islamabad is tearing the house apart tracking down the conspirators. For if they'd pulled it off, Pakistan would be glowing from end to end by now.
After the OBL fiasco, Islamabad is dancing on thin ice.
The Pakistani navy is going to simply have to remove all atomics from their ships.
IIRC, Islamabad was offered PAL technology -- and turned it down flat.
So, a mere handful of junior naval officers can imperil that entire nation -- with no notice at all.
AQ wants a war so big that Pakistan can't survive it.
Blert, you seem to be saying that a nuclear cruise missile launch on an Indian city right from the dock in Karachi was a possible aim, if they were guarding what you postulate. I'm reminded that the Indian Mujahideen (now part of AQIS) wanted to nuke Surat and discussed it w the ISI. That city, in Modi's home state, would have been a tempting target to someone like Z, don't you think? And so close to Karachi. I bet that was the plan.
"Why does ISIL want Siddiqi out of jail, a Pakistani female scientist who had pounds of cyanide on her and map of sites in US? Pakistani negotiators asked for the same thing when they had one of our guys."
&&&
This gal keeps coming up on the Muslim radar because:
1) Opfor psyops has lifted XXX porno footage which was shot in New Jersey (circa 2002) which features a orchestrated 'rape' of a hot young 'Muslim' babe -- and used it ever since as an instance of 'Crusaders' victimizing 'Siddiqi.'
2) Those pleading for 'Siddiqi's' release have absolutely no conception that the real Siddiqi is an ugly hag, PhD scientist, who has found her love life empty for many, many, years -- long before 2001.
3) They also have yet to figure out that they've been viewing out-cuts from a XXX porno shoot -- every last participant was an infidel.
As for Westerners: it's a rare man in the West that has any clue that bootlegs of the New Jersey shoot have been passed around on AQ DVD agitprop all of these years. All that they see is that a gal that belongs in solitary for life is constantly being brought up by Muslims as a victim. (of infidel rape!)
&&&
There is ANOTHER agitprop video that has been circulated by Islamist media. They took a "Boys In The Hall" gag video that was filmed over twenty-years ago and spread it around.
The "Boys In The Hall" were a gay Canadian comedy troupe that was broadcast by HBO a generation ago. Many of those players have gone on to other high profile media projects -- usually on TV.
@@@@
Because both the porno and the comedy bit would be rated as either XXX or R -- they are not ever brought up in any news broadcast in the West.
This keeps these two toxic memes floating on in the Muslim collective (male) mind while being entirely off the radar in the West.
It is quite impossible for me to overstate the impact of the porno agitprop. The way it has been handled, each new viewer thinks that the footage has been smuggled out of a CIA detention center within only the last twelve months. That's the power of a bootleg DVD agitprop video. It's compounded by being, very likely, the first porno that the Muslim boys have ever seen. They've got absolutely no basis of comparison. They buy it hook line and sinker.
%%%
The comedy video -- I saw the original broadcast -- was one of the funniest - and lewdest - ever aired.
It was released to coincide with Holloween week. Lacking any story boards, it's hard to relate in words. The gist of it is that a young man is nervously awaiting his (obviously gay) date. Wordlessly, the script tosses out his fantasy imaginings of dating horror -- with allusions to Dracula, perverted sex, sadism, bondage, and entrapment. These visuals are snapped on by -- contrasted with the naive innocence of his date -- who is utterly harmless and dressed like the boy next door.
The punchline/ image is that even before his date knocks on his door our young man has passed out -- and dropped to the floor unconscious. His date finally breaks in to his bedroom to discover that the young man's (very large) dog is taking advantage of him... to the complete horror of his date.
This sequence was tossed into the mix of political art criticizing Mo' that originated in Denmark -- all those years ago.
Stills from both the porno and the HBO broadcast were added to those of the Jyllands-Posten and are STILL circulating.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy
As you might expect, Westerners are totally confused as to why the Denmark series is STILL a hot button.
The connection laid out here is largely unknown. The Islamists have got both sides arguing at cross purposes. It's the two 'additions' that have got Muslims upset the most. Whereas, the Westerners keep defending the harmless political artwork.
Like 'The Protocols', this agitprop figures to have really long legs.