Pakistan’s greatest enemy today is the enemy within. “Ameer,” Quaid-e-Azam told Raja Sahib of Mahmudabad in 1948, “You have no idea of the situation here. I am surrounded by traitors”. The situation we face today is much worse. Traitors and foreign agents have captured political power with foreign support. They are busy undermining our political and military institutions and constitute a serious threat to the independence and sovereignty of our country. A lesson to be drawn from the works of Gibbon is that Rome’s enemies lay not outside her borders but within her bosom, and they paved the way for the empire’s decline and fall – first to relentless barbarian invaders from the north, and then, a thousand years later, to the Turks. We must not let this fate befall our country.
Look where Pakistan risks going, in contrast to where she was headed a decade ago. The Supreme Court defied, all our institutions trampled upon by a corrupt ruler, our international prestige debased and a bankrupt economy. Tragedy aplenty: no drinking water, no electricity, no gas, no jobs, no cash, rampant corruption, no hope and Zardari. And to cap it all, the Memogate scandal: a dark, sinister, high-level conspiracy directed at the armed forces, a dastardly, cowardly, despicable criminal conspiracy designed to emasculate and destroy the army as a fighting force, the only shield we have against foreign aggression and the only glue that is keeping the federation together. It was an unsuccessful attempt to undermine the army’s much cherished independence and make significant changes in its decision-making system. The plan was to sweep away the existing system of command and raft of unpalatable generals and merge political and military power.
The affair began with an article published in the Financial Times on October 10, 2011, authored by Mansoor Ijaz, wherein it had been claimed that early on May 9, a week after US special forces stormed the hideout of Osama bin Laden and killed him, a senior Pakistani diplomat telephoned him with an urgent request that Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari needed to communicate a message to White House national security officials that would bypass Pakistan’s military and intelligence channel. After the publication of the said article, former ambassador Husain Haqqani and the presidency of Pakistan dismissed the author’s claim by lightly brushing it aside as mere fantasy. It is now abundantly clear that, if proved, the act in question of the individuals who initiated the said memorandum, the ones who rendered any help or assistance in the matter and those who blessed or approved it, renders them culpable for acts of high treason.
I worry about one thing only: that light may not be shed in full and may not be shed immediately on this sordid affair. A judgement behind closed doors following a secret investigation would not put an end to anything. The apex court, which is now cognisant of the matter, must, therefore, identify the individuals responsible for, or involved in, initiating the process leading to the said memorandum, authoring the same, providing any assistance, whatsoever, in the process or approving the said act. Only then would this sad story really unfold. For people would have to speak up, since keeping silent would make them accomplices. What folly it is to think that anyone can prevent history from being written! Well, the history of this heinous crime shall be written, and not one person with any responsibility in it, irrespective of how high up, will go unpunished.
I realise what storms it is going to stir up, but truth and justice are sovereign over all else, for they alone make a nation great. Political interests or special interests may blot them out momentarily but any nation that did not base its raison d’etre on truth and justice would today be a nation doomed. I am striving for the honour of the armed forces and the greatness of the nation and nothing else. If some corrupt people, who still hold sensitive positions of trust and responsibility, have to be brought to justice and given exemplary punishment to make Pakistan healthy again, why shield them? Why not make a horrible example of them?
I realise that the interests involved are too great and the men who wish to stifle the truth and protect the guilty, are too powerful and, therefore, the truth may not be known for some time. But there is no doubt that sooner or later – perhaps sooner rather than later – every bit of it, without exception, will be divulged. It will be difficult. It will require a great deal of effort, but the truth will be revealed. And those who are combatting the truth will find, to their dismay, that as the poet Euripides said: “Quos vult perdere Jupiter” (Jupiter drives to madness those whose downfall he desires).
President Nixon was not corrupt. Nobody questioned his integrity. Nobody said he had conspired with a foreign power to undermine national interests by secret or insidious means. Nixon was not charged with treason. But for his involvement in the cover-up of the Watergate scandal, he was forced to resign and hounded out of the Oval office. Twenty-five people were sent to prison because of the abuses of his administration, and many others faced indictments, including two attorney generals of the United States and several top officials of the White House. We in Pakistan will not be able to live with ourselves if the real culprit, the man whose duty, honour and raison d’etre it was to obey the law, serve the state and protect the Constitution, goes unpunished.
After the fall of Nixon, David Gergen, a White House advisor to President Nixon, wrote, “the received wisdom is that Watergate teaches us two basic rules about politics. One, never elect a man of low character to high office. Two, if a president and his team do make an egregious mistake, a cover-up is always worse than the crime.”
The story of Watergate should be required reading for every head of state and head of government in every country governed by law. Not in Pakistan. Here corrupt rulers get away with murder. They defy the Supreme Court, resist implementation of its orders, commit contempt of court with impunity, enter into criminal conspiracies with foreign powers and rule the country as if they have done nothing wrong.
“Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord.” The crime against the state of Pakistan cries out to heaven for vengeance. It is but one example of the executive’s treachery and contempt for the Constitution, military institutions and the laws of this country. It is a challenge we must all accept. It is a challenge we have every intention of winning. We are in for a real battle. Today, it is a political and moral imperative for all patriotic Pakistanis to expose the traitors, unmask the conspirators, resist foreign intervention in our internal affairs, civil and military, and destroy the roots of evil that afflict Pakistan.
The writer is a former federal secretary. Email: roedad@comsats. net.pk,www.roedadkhan.com

Analysis: India’s military build up may be too little too late?

(Reuters) – India’s 1.3 million-strong armed forces, hobbled by outdated equipment and slow decision-making, are undergoing an overhaul as defence priorities shift to China from traditional rival Pakistan.

And like a refit of the imposing but dilapidated defense ministry on Delhi’s grand South Block, it’s a plodding process.

Defense chiefs are hurrying to modernize ageing weaponry as China reinforces a 3,500-km (2,200-mile) shared but disputed border through the Himalayas.

It took 11 years to select France’s Rafale as the favored candidate for a $15 billion splurge on 126 new combat jets to replace a Soviet-era fleet of MiGs dubbed “flying coffins” for their high crash rate.

At the same time, feeling encircled as China projects its fast-growing naval power from Hormuz to Malacca, India is rushing to firm up friendships the length and breadth of the Indian Ocean.

India is the world’s largest arms importer with plans to spend $100 billion on weapons over the next decade.

“The Indian military is strengthening its forces in preparation to fight a limited conflict along the disputed border, and is working to balance Chinese power projection in the Indian Ocean,” U.S. Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper told the U.S. Senate this week.

That “balance” includes a strategic alliance with Washington that in turn has stoked Chinese fears of containment. It is due to test-fire its nuclear capable Agni V rocket in the next few weeks, with a strike range reaching deep into China.

In 2009, the air force reopened a high-altitude, landing strip in Ladakh last used during a 1962 border war with China. Along with other Himalayan bases, it is now upgrading the strip for fighter operations.

About 500 Indian MiG-21s have plunged to the ground since the 1960s, yet the jet is still in use, raising the question of whether painfully slow defense procurement procedures can come up with new hardware faster than old equipment is sent to the scrap heap.

According to Indian media, Russia delivered the nuclear submarine INS Chakra on a 10-year lease at the end of last month, eight years after India first asked for it.

A shortfall of about 200 planes means the air force is operating at its lowest level in decades – just 33 squadrons against a goal of 45. By the time all the Rafales are delivered, more MiGs will have been decommissioned.

“It’s taken too long,” said Jasjit Singh, a retired commander and director of the think tank Centre for Air Power Studies. “Can we live with a certain shortfall in the force, and for how long?”

India is developing a fifth-generation fighter with Russia and aims to fly it in 2015, as well as a fleet of 272 Sukhois, half of which have already been built.

From a defense perspective, India has traditionally had the upper hand over China’s numerically superior air force, but rapid modernization over the border may have flipped the balance.

Both forces are now smaller than 20 years ago, but China’s has a fast-growing core of 350 advanced combat jets, including its own Sukhois. It also has a stealth fighter program.

India’s military modernization plans are focused on the navy and air force, more than the army, which has traditionally squared off with Pakistan. But with Pakistan’s air force also modernizing fast, India risks losing its edge on two fronts.

In the 1980s, a scandal engulfed the government of then-prime minister Rajiv Gandhi over millions of dollars in kickbacks on artillery contracts for Sweden’s Bofors.

Weapons purchases have since been a tortuous process, with rules rewritten several times to avoid graft.

“There has been a tremendous shortage of artillery systems acquisition after the Bofors scandal,” said Rahul Roy Chaudhury, a South Asia expert at London’s IISS security think tank.

Defense Minister A.K. Antony is known to be very cautious, with no desire to be caught up in corruption scandals that have in recent years returned to haunt the government.

On Tuesday, he made clear no deal would quickly be signed for the Rafale or any other fighters.

“MEETING OF MINDS”

The relationship between India and China is complex, involving as much cooperation as competition. But while the generals and admirals rarely say as much publicly, India fears a repeat of a brief, humiliating 1962 border war and wants to be prepared for surprises.

Seafaring officers from 14 countries from New Zealand to the Seychelles have gathered on remote Indian islands in the Bay of Bengal this week for exercises and a “meeting of minds” about maritime security.

It is one of the largest such gatherings of maritime allies that India has organized, but China and Pakistan were conspicuously not on the guest list.

Predictably, since China is also a major trading partner, India’s assistant chief of naval staff, Admiral Monty Khanna, was at pains to play down China’s absence.

“There are many nations that have not been invited,” Khanna said in New Delhi, adding China would not be discussed at the meeting. “India and China might share a land border but we are quite distant by sea,” he said.

Distant they may be, but increasingly the world’s fastest-growing major economies find themselves jostling as they compete for resources, sea lanes and allies. A lack of friendly engagement increases the risk of misunderstandings.

This week’s exercises are being held on the Andaman Islands, where India is spending $2 billion to set up a military command and from where the contested and congested South China Sea is only a short hop away.

Last year, India’s INS Airavat, an amphibious assault vessel that sailed from the Andamans was challenged in the South China Sea by a radio caller identifying himself as an official of the Chinese navy. Both sides later played down the incident.

“The Indian navy is coy about formally engaging with the Chinese navy because it feels that, if it does, it legitimizes the Chinese naval presence in the Indian Ocean,” said Roy Chaudhury.

“There needs to be much more communication, especially navy to navy, because they are bumping into each other more and more.”

(Additional reporting by Arup Roychoudhury in NEW DELHI and Sanjib Kumar in PORT BLAIR; Editing by John Chalmers and Ron Popeski)

Courtesy Reuters.com