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Archive for category Punjab Held Hostage Sharif Bros

SLAVERY IN PAKISTAN: Pakistan’s Feudal gods led by Zardari & Nawaz Sharif Play Musical Chairs to Stretch their Stranglehold on Economy & Perpetuate Brick Kiln Poverty

 Feudals and Politicians are gods of Pakistan. They have decided to destroy the country by stealing from the 180 million poor. They are good at it and no one can touch them. The reason being, that their god is ready to rescue them. It is the only global power and these guys are having a ball playing in its lap. Their god,  comes to their rescue instantly, whenever their fiefdoms are threatened. Their lord is the most powerful nation on this earth.They can kill and get away with it. Sikander Jatoi, a feudal, even in jail is enjoying “A’ Class. He is the blue eyed boy of his Zardari Sain, who told him to hang in there, till the Shahzeb Murder storm dies down and memories fade. Then Zardari will do his magic .  Sain Sikander Jatoi will be sprung from jail, by his mentor Zardari. Sikander Jatoi and his son, Shahrukh Jatoi will lead lives of luxury, protected by their god, Zardari.  Pakistanis are committing shirk, by letting these mere mortals like Zardari, Pervez Ashraf, Sikander Jatoi, and the rural khachar like Asif Pervez Kiyani continue their misrule of a nation with a great potential.  These thieves are holding Pakistan hostage,only an Act of God, can free this hijacked nation. Pakistan’s poor are becoming slaves and indentured for life, NO ONE CAN STOP THIS TRAVESTY OF HUMAN LAWS. THE CHIEF JUSTICE IS ALSO SILENT ON THIS ISSUE.

SIKANDER JATOI, AN  ANGEL OF god OF PAKISTAN ASIF ZARDARI WILL GET AWAY WITH MURDER AND ENJOYS A-CLASS IN “JAIL.”

THESE LIVES OF THESE CHILD BRICK KILN LABORERS ARE WORTH LESS THAN DIRT UNDER SIKANDER JATOI/SHAHRUKH JATOI AND THEIR PROTECTOR ZARDARI’S FEET

Two woven rope beds are wedged into one side of the room next to Sadiq’s small Honda motorcycle and a large bag of cow chips used as fuel for fires. A faded Bollywood action movie poster hanging from the hut’s weathered front door serves as the home’s only decoration. Exhausted, Shahzad and Shahbaz flop onto their beds. They have no toys, no diversions, but it doesn’t matter. They’re too tired to play.

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 Feudals and Politicians are gods of Pakistan. They have decided to destroy the country by stealing from the 180 million poor. They are good at it and no one can touch them. The reason being, that their god is ready to rescue them. It is the only global power and these guys are having a ball playing in its lap. Their god,  comes to their rescue instantly, whenever their fiefdoms are threatened. Their lord is the most powerful nation on this earth.They can kill and get away with it. Sikander Jatoi, a feudal, even in jail is enjoying “A’ Class. He is the blue eyed boy of his Zardari Sain, who told him to hang in there, till the Shahzeb Murder storm dies down and memories fade. Then Zardari will do his magic .  Sain Sikander Jatoi will be sprung from jail, by his mentor Zardari. Sikander Jatoi and his son, Shahrukh Jatoi will lead lives of luxury, protected by their god, Zardari.  Pakistanis are committing shirk, by letting these mere mortals like Zardari, Pervez Ashraf, Sikander Jatoi, and the rural khachar like Asif Pervez Kiyani continue their misrule of a nation with a great potential.  These thieves are holding Pakistan hostage,only an Act of God, can free this hijacked nation. Pakistan’s poor are becoming slaves and indentured for life, NO ONE CAN STOP THIS TRAVESTY OF HUMAN LAWS. THE CHIEF JUSTICE IS ALSO SILENT ON THIS ISSUE.

SIKANDER JATOI, AN  ANGEL OF god OF PAKISTAN ASIF ZARDARI WILL GET AWAY WITH MURDER AND ENJOYS A-CLASS IN “JAIL.”

THESE LIVES OF THESE CHILD BRICK KILN LABORERS ARE WORTH LESS THAN DIRT UNDER SIKANDER JATOI/SHAHRUKH JATOI AND THEIR PROTECTOR ZARDARI’S FEET

Two woven rope beds are wedged into one side of the room next to Sadiq’s small Honda motorcycle and a large bag of cow chips used as fuel for fires. A faded Bollywood action movie poster hanging from the hut’s weathered front door serves as the home’s only decoration. Exhausted, Shahzad and Shahbaz flop onto their beds. They have no toys, no diversions, but it doesn’t matter. They’re too tired to play.

SLAVERY IN PAKISTAN IS ALIVE AND WELL COURTESY ZARDARI’S CORRUPT FEUDAL GOVERNMENT

Brick makers and others live a life of indentured servitude known as bonded labor.

They must borrow to live, and their debts pass on to their children when they die. In Multan, Pakistan, Shahbaz, 10, unloads a cart of mud that will be made into bricks by his mother, Nazira Bibi, brother Shahzad and father Mohammed Sadiq

The Eternal Tragedy

MULTAN, Pakistan – The mounds of clay are so heavy that they have warped Shahbaz’s creaky wooden cart. The 10-year-old boy’s spindly arms struggle with the weight, about 45 pounds. He teeters as he wheels cartload after cartload to his mother, a waifish woman crouched on the ground who is turning the wet clay into bricks at a rate of three per minute. A few feet away, 12-year-old Shahzad matches his mother brick for brick. Without the help of the two boys, their daily brick yield wouldn’t be high enough to feed a family of seven. “I hate this,” says the mother, Nazira Bibi, slapping a clod of mud into the brick mold and flipping it over with a thump. “I hate the fact that my kids have to do this work, that they’re not in school. When I see other kids going to school, I wish my kids were those kids.” “But we’ve got no choice. If we don’t work, we don’t eat.

Taliban Attacks and Growth are a result of corruption and poverty

” The Pakistani Taliban’s brutal attack on teenage education activist Malala Yousafzai provided the world a window on the insurgent group’s long-running campaign against “un-Islamic” schools in the country’s northwest. But in much of the rest of the country, one of the most entrenched barriers to education comes from moneyed landowners, brick kiln operators, carpet makers and other business people who rely on a form of indentured servitude known as bonded labor. Among the victims are millions of children such as Shahbaz and Shahzad, who cannot read or write and are likely to spend the rest of their lives tethered to debt they inherited – and can never repay.

Shahbaz Sharif & Nawaz Sharif are no less corrupt than Zardari

In Punjab province, bonded labor is a way of life at thousands of brick kilns that for generations have ensnared workers in a hopeless cycle of loans and advances. The workers don’t earn enough to survive, so they’re forced to accept loans from the kiln owners. The meager pay keeps them from being able to repay the loans. When they die, the debt is passed on to their children. From the brick kilns and tanneries of the Punjab heartland to the cotton fields of the southern province of Sindh, millions are doomed to bonded labor. Kashif Bajeer, secretary of Pakistan’s National Coalition Against Bonded Labor, says there are no statistics on bonded laborers in Pakistan, but most estimates put the number at up to 8 million.

Morbidly Corrupt Government has no time to care for slavery

Pakistan officially outlawed bonded labor in 1992, but enforcement has been almost nonexistent in the face of the financial and political clout wielded by southern Pakistan’s wealthy landlords and kiln owners, who provide payoffs to keep police and administrative officials at bay. Bajeer estimates that 70% of bonded laborers in Pakistan are children, few of whom attend school. Pilot projects in eastern Punjab province have put children from 8,000 kiln families into classrooms, but those efforts have yet to be expanded to the rest of the province. “The government is supposed to provide schooling to these children, but it doesn’t take the issue seriously,” Bajeer says. “Most parents in bonded labor don’t have national ID cards, and so they don’t have the right to vote. And because of that, they are not a big priority for local lawmakers.” Many bonded laborers live in impoverished regions where few people obtain birth certificates, which are required for a national ID card. At the kiln where Bibi, 30, and her boys work, the acrid odor of chemicals from a fertilizer plant next door hangs over a dirt field where dozens of families toil amid the ceaseless clapping of brick molds as they hit the ground. Bibi’s husband, Mohammed Sadiq, also 30, readies the day’s supply of trucked-in clay by adding buckets of water and trudging through it to knead it into the right consistency. Life at a brick kiln is all Bibi and her husband have ever known. Both are children of kiln laborers; Bibi began working at a kiln when she was 10, Sadiq when he was 12. Their debt to kiln owner Akram Arain built up shortly after they got married more than a decade ago. They took out a loan to pay for their wedding, more loans to pay for the births of their five children, and still more to get through the annual monsoons, when kiln work shuts down and no one gets paid. Arain declined a request for an interview. Their current debt stands at 20,000 rupees – about $200, but to Bibi and Sadiq it might as well be $2 million. The family gets 500 rupees, about $5, for every 1,000 bricks it produces. That’s about $7.50 for a grueling eight hours of work. At midday, the family sits together for a few minutes to eat what usually serves as its lunch: a few fist-sized plastic bags of boiled orange lentils and a small wheel of bread. Shahzad and Shahbaz gulp down their lunch and get back to work. As he churns out bricks, Shahzad’s thoughts wander. He daydreams about playing cricket, or anything else to get his mind off the kiln. “Right now, I’m thinking about being far away from here,” Shahzad says, wiping a fleck of mud from his cheek. “Sometimes I dream about studying. I think about these things all the time.” Shahzad is tall for his age, with a wiry frame and jet-black hair that falls over his forehead. He is his father’s right-hand man, never needing a nudge or a rebuke to keep pace with the rhythm of the brick-making. When the wheel on his younger brother’s wooden cart gets wobbly, Shahzad fixes it in seconds. The kiln field is filled with mothers, fathers, sons and daughters squatting as they churn out new rows of gray bricks alongside ever-growing stacks of drying bricks. Only a small cluster of white egrets wading through a small pond at the kiln breaks the monotony of the landscape. If Shahzad were in school, he would be in the seventh grade. A government teacher is supposed to show up at the kiln to run a classroom in a tiny mud hut, but she appears so sporadically that most parents have stopped bothering to send their children. Shahzad can write his name but nothing else. He can count to 10 in Urdu and no higher. His younger brother, Shahbaz, winces when asked what two plus two is. He thinks for a moment, then shrugs. “I can’t do it.” Both boys know education is their way out of life at the kiln. They just don’t know how they can make it happen. “I want to go to school; I want an education to get a good job and to make something of myself, to be a respected man,” Shahzad says. “Maybe I can be a doctor. Even an office job would be fine.” As the day wears on, a dull ache creeps into the boys’ shoulders, arms and knees. The tedium wears on everyone. Nearby an argument breaks out between two families over who has the rights to a small pile of mud behind a reedy ditch. Sadiq and Bibi’s youngest, a toddler named Komal, sleeps on a bed of bricks, a small shawl shielding her face from the hot sun. Though Komal is a year old, she could fit into a shoe box. Her hands and feet are not much bigger than those of a newborn. Sadiq is convinced that Komal is undersized because she is possessed by demons, but Hyacinth Peter, a Multan-based child welfare activist who works on improving conditions for families at the kiln, says the child is severely malnourished. “She’s had so many fevers,” Peter says. “Her father has taken her to phony street doctors, and of course they don’t help at all.” By midafternoon, Bibi, Sadiq and their children are spent. A thick black plume spews out of the kiln’s smokestack, where everything from used motor oil to discarded plastic sandals are used as fuel to dry newly formed batches of bricks. Shahzad moves slowly as he digs out a new mound of clay, splashes buckets of water on top and begins trudging through the mound to make tomorrow’s mud. Sadiq and Bibi are slapping down the last of the day’s tally of bricks. As a bracing wind chills the air, the family tosses shovels and brick molds into the wooden cart and heads to its home on the kiln compound: a dark, 11-by-11-foot hut, itself made of mud and bricks. Ashes from yesterday’s cooking lay piled on the hut’s dirt floor. The family’s clothes are stuffed into plastic bags that hang from the mud walls. Two woven rope beds are wedged into one side of the room next to Sadiq’s small Honda motorcycle and a large bag of cow chips used as fuel for fires. A faded Bollywood action movie poster hanging from the hut’s weathered front door serves as the home’s only decoration. Exhausted, Shahzad and Shahbaz flop onto their beds. They have no toys, no diversions, but it doesn’t matter. They’re too tired to play.

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Crooked Lahori Lohars: Sharif Bros still on the list of Loan Defaulters: These thieves will never confess, unless brought to Justice

Sharifs in NAB list of ‘bank loan defaulters’

 | 5th April, 2013
 
 AB provided another list to the ECP of people who benefited from plea bargain and deals for voluntarily returning the payable amounts.

Unknown-7When contacted, NAB spokesman Ramzan Sajid declined to give details of the cases against the Sharifs. He neither denied nor confirmed that the names of the PML-N leaders were in the list.

“We have sent the record of more than 16,000 people to the ECP,” he said.

The spokesman said NAB had received records of 19,400 candidates and the record of 16,526 had been scrutinised and sent back to the ECP. “Of the total applications received by NAB, 2,874 are under process and will be returned by late tonight,” he added.

The election cell of NAB receives relevant information from regional offices, compiles the record of candidates and forwards it to the ECP within 24 hours, in accordance with a decision taken at a meeting with the ECP last month.

Representatives of relevant departments including National Database Registration Authority, Federal Board of Revenue, and State Bank of Pakistan attended the meeting.

 

Reference

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WHITE HAT TALIBANIZED CROOKS: Loan default: NAB shares data on Sharif graft references

Loan default: NAB shares data on Sharif graft references

Published: April 5, 2013
 

The two brothers were found accused of loan default in the Hudaibiya Paper Mills scandal by the NAB during the scrutiny of their nomination papers. PHOTO: TMN/FILE

LAHORE: 

The National Accountability Bureau (NAB) has passed on information to election authorities about three graft references against Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s leadership, an official said. The references are pending in the Accountability Court, Rawalpindi.

Unknown-4The move drew an angry response from the party, whose spokesman counselled the corruption watchdog not to do “politics”. The party intends to give a detailed response at a press conference on Friday.

NAB’s reply to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) is part of the scrutiny process of candidates and it has not spared PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif and ex-provincial chief minister Shahbaz Sharif.

The two brothers were found accused of loan default in the Hudaibiya Paper Mills scandal by the NAB during the scrutiny of their nomination papers, sources told The Express Tribune.

The record was sent to the returning officers (ROs) through the ECP. The NAB found that the Sharif brothers were accused in the case of loan default of Rs3,486 million rupees in the Hudaibiya Paper Mills case.

NAB records show that the Sharif brothers had filed a petition for quashing the First Information Report (FIR) against them in the Lahore High Court (LHC) and the case was still pending. “In that respect, they [Sharifs] were still accused in the default case,” said an official.

The case was filed in March 2000 with the Attock NAB Court where the Sharif brothers were accused of misusing their authority and accumulating wealth beyond their means. The other accused included their third brother Abbas Sharif, Nawaz Sharif’s son Hussain Nawaz and his daughter Maryam Nawaz, Hamza Shahbaz, and Senator Ishaq Dar.

“The competent authority to decide the candidature of the Sharif brothers were the respective returning officers and not the NAB,” said a NAB spokesperson while reacting to television reports that the NAB had objected to the candidacy of the two PML-N leaders.

The NAB spokesperson said that the bureau has neither raised objections on any candidate during the scrutiny of the nomination papers nor has it returned the name of any candidate with objection to election commission.

NAB has received more than 18,000 nomination forms and it has only provided the information that was to be provided to the special cell of the poll body.

But the PML-N directed its wrath at the anti-corruption authority. A party spokesman said NAB’s objections against Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif were based on mala fide intentions.

“NAB should not do politics but rather it should refrain from becoming a party in this regard”. The NAB’s report against the Sharif brothers is part of a well-calculated conspiracy.

He said the PML-N will disclose facts at a news press conference on Friday (today).

In a separate statement, PML-N’s spokesperson Senator Pervez Rasheed said there is no discrepancy in the assets declared on the nomination papers of the PML-N president.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 5th, 2013. 

 
 

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Akhtar Mengal to ride to power on the shoulders of Nawaz Sharif to become the Sheikh Mujib of Baluchistan

All these Baloch warlords Nawabs, Khan and Sardars are same, with a typical Sardari mentality. They use the ordinary middle class Baloch for their interest and when times come they will discard them like they are no body. Time has come that the ordinary Baloch must join hand and ditches these all Nawabs, Khans and Sardars and sends them all in one big grave.

Foreign Hands Supporting Baloch Sardars

 

 

Reference

 

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Akhtar Mengal Returns from Self-Exile – 22 Mar. Akhtar Mengal announced he would return from Dubai and participate in elections. He refused to condemn his brother Javed Mengal who is sitting inLondon under MI6 patronage and carrying on militancy. Brahmdagh Bugti also announced boycott of the elections saying ‘Baloch are not part of Pakistan’. Akhtar being the son of Attaullah Mengal is also fiercely anti Punjab and anti Army like his father. He and his father never protested against target-killings of some 1600 Punjabis during the last 5 years but go on protesting that thousands of Baloch are missing and agencies have been killing them. Attaullah, as Chief Minister, had dismissed and repatriated Punjabi teachers and all the Police in 1972. But Nawaz Sharif is bending over backwards to befriend them. Incidentally, Mengal are Brahuis and not Baloch. They are a different racial stock and speak an ancient dialect called Brahui which has no script and negligible literature. On arrival, he met the CM and demanded the ouster of FC and Army from Balochistan. He demanded personal security by named individuals and the CS complied.

 

With the politician-rulers remaining busy in massive corruption, the bureaucracy has also abdicated its responsibility to run their departments. This is the state of all the departments – health, education and law and order are not the only areas suffering neglect; even the administration of justice has collapsed. The Baluchistan High Court as well as the Supreme Courts routinely interfere and try to run the departments without much success as it is not their job. Instead, they should haul up the politician-rulers and award exemplary punishments to civil servants for failure to justify their appointments and salaries.

The Baloch/Brahui activists are now focused on election and securing of their ‘rights’. There is no talk of ‘Independence’, other than by those five who are sitting abroad under patronage of CIA/MI6 in Europe. Incidents of target killings, sectarian killing, IEDs and crime have greatly reduced but people do not still feel safe, especially while going to Baloch/Brahui areas.

Zardari’s hurried signing of Iran-Pak Gas Pipeline and allowing regularization of smuggled vehicles during the last days of the PPP government, while doing some good, is seen as a cynical ploy to garner support which may fail in its political purpose but are nevertheless welcome because of being of long range public benefit.

Unknown-7The selection of weak persons as caretaker CM and PM is viewed as effort to avoid heat of controversy. Their weakness and inexperience of administration may end up doing good as the focus would remain on fairness of elections. While a majority in Balochistan would have liked the caretakers to haul up the criminals of the former government and do something assertively to ensure writ of the government, they can be content and comfortable if the bureaucracy and the Army were unhindered in their statutory roles of efficient administration and stern enforcement of law and order. The people are happy that neither the Governor nor the departing CM were able to get their candidates appointed caretaker CM. Nothing much is expected from the caretaker CM except that he appoints impartial officials of good repute in administration.

The rush of the JUI F, PML (N) and (Q), ANP and several others to join the Opposition one day before the tenure of PA came to an end, further brought down the dignity and prestige of the MPAs. They announced with a poker face that they had decided to leave the Treasury Benches for the good of the people. The people in their response used quite a foul language for the quality and character of all the MPAs. With no accountability of the regime in sight, all the former MPAs have filed their papers to be re-elected.

This election is presenting two broad possibilities; both directly dependent upon the party which might form the federal government. One: Aslam Raisani type corrupt administration coming into power again through massive horse-trading; two: Akhtar Mengal becoming the CM through lack of far sight in PML(N) leader, and support of RAW/CIA/MI6. The First possibility will almost immediately take the province back to loot, plunder and lawlessness – worse in every facet of civic-life this time with more crime, more corruption, and more slogans for ‘independence’.

Akhtar Mengal as the CM appears to be the preference of the Establishment which is being viewed with great optimism. That will result in strengthening the separatists sitting abroad pursuing the US Agenda of destabilizing Pakistan. India will be overjoyed and the Baloch/Brahui militants’ camps in Afghanistan will get a new lease of life. Akhtar and his father Attaullah Mengal are known Punjab/army and Pakistan haters. They have never condemned the target killings of Punjabis in Balochistan nor ever declared their allegiance to Pakistan. Having already demanded that FC and the Army ‘get-out-of-Balochistan’, should Akhtar become CM, he would demand the same saying it was his election-promise. The Army is smug and detached as it was in pre-1971 election in East Pakistan, which gave the Awami League overwhelming majority which presented it as mandate for secession. Mengal and his allies cannot contest or win elections in Pashtun areas but if they win big in Baloch/Brahui areas, they will present it as a mandate for secession of Central and coastal Baluchistan. With USA and Afghanistan supporting insurgency in Baloch/Brahui areas and India enjoying considerable influence with the ANP, the situation would be out of the control of patriotic politicians. The military would then have to crush the rebellion. What would be chances for success? That is not hard to guess. A political solution is preferable but it would be much harder to pursue after insurgency supporting parties win outright with blackmail and intimidation as in the past. With no writ of government in Baloch/Brahui areas, free-and-fair elections will only be a slogan. The local sardar will win by dint of their tribal authority despite, nay because of, their anti-Pakistan credentials. Is the Army doing right in the name of sham democracy which would to let the country be torn apart?

During the last 5 years the Pashtun population, which is nearly 50% of the total, was sidelined in the province. The only hope is that the Pashtun, Hazara, settlers, and minor tribes unite in a coalition. JUI (F) has always sold itself to the highest bidder, even if its anti Pakistan. But if the majority Pashtun vote remains pro-Pakistan, the CM will not be able to openly go against Pakistan. The damage to the federation from allowing anti-Pakistan elements to operate as legitimate politicians free to plunder at home and make deal with hostile foreign powers would then make the TTP appear to be saviors and redeemers. Giving a free reign to the foreign enemy and their local collaborators would not create patriots; it will create and encourage traitors. The elections used to be contested for political power but now with the scale of corruption having reached billions of rupees, elective office has become a goldmine. With foreign powers supporting their collaborators agents, the stakes have risen by several notches. Militancy and inter-tribal turf war is expected to intensify as the Elections draw closer. Balochistan may see the worst bloodshed of its 43 years history

 

 

 

 

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BHAGHORA OF KARGIL NAWAZ SHARIF: Kargil was a big success for Pakistan: Musharraf

Kargil was a big success for Pakistan: Musharraf

 
 
 
 
Islamabad: Claiming that his 1999 Kargil operation was a “big success militarily”, former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf has said that if the then prime minister Nawaz Sharif had not visited the US, the Pakistani Army would have “conquered” 300 square miles of India. 

He defended his action to launch the operation in Kargil in the wake of fresh allegations that he masterminded the intrusions. 

Referring to Lt Gen (retired) Shahid Aziz’s allegations that he had kept other military commanders in the dark about the operation, Musharraf said, “Telling everyone about it was not necessary at all”. 

He claimed Aziz had an “imbalanced personality” and had resorted to character assassination by making these accusations. 

 

“We lost the Kargil war, which was a big success militarily, because of (then premier) Nawaz Sharif…If he had not visited the US, we would have conquered 300 square miles of India,” Musharraf said in an interview with Express News channel. 

Though Pakistan had initially claimed mujahideen were responsible for occupying strategic heights along the Line of Control in early 1999, Musharraf later revealed in his autobiography ‘In The Line Of Fire’ that regular Army troops had participated in the operation. 

But Musharraf claimed the action in Kargil was a “localised” operation and not a major operation. 

“Kargil was just one of many sectors under a Major General stationed in Gilgit, (who was) in charge of the area. Exchange of fire was routine there,” he claimed. Musharraf said he would not go so far as to accuse former premier Nawaz Sharif of betrayal but his decision to withdraw from Kargil was a mistake. 

 

Unknown-2“Nawaz lost a political front which we had won militarily,” he claimed. 

The former general, who has been living in self-exile outside Pakistan since 2009, said the “prime consideration” for actions like the Kargil operation is security and secrecy. 

“So the Army leadership decides who is to be informed and when. As the operation progressed and the proper time arrived, a briefing of the corps commanders was held,” he said. 

Musharraf said he was “really astonished” that Aziz was writing about the events 10 years later. 

Blaming the nation at this juncture, as Aziz had done, seems to be “part of a conspiracy”, he claimed. 

“It was a tactical action that had a strategic importance in which no more than a few hundred persons were involved, but which engaged thousands on the Indian side and was of tremendous importance,” he claimed. 

Musharraf justified Pakistani casualties in the conflict, claiming the country lost only 270 men against India’s 1,600 soldiers. 

 
Courtesy
Press Trust of India
INDIAN VIEWPOINT: NEVER CALL A DEFEAT, A DEFEAT

Eyeball to eyeball   July 1999

India has to mask its initial intelligence failure by regaining the peaks regardless of heavy casualties. Both sides need a face-saving way out. Since early May there has been a see-saw military, political and diplomatic struggle between the two Subcontinental protagonists, Pakistan and India. Islamabad’s position has been that the guerrillas who have captured the heights overlooking the Drass-Kargil-Leh road, are Kashmiri freedom fighters struggling for their long-denied right of self-determination. 
 
 

India eventually decided, after examining the pros and cons of widening the conflict across the Line of Control (LoC) or even across the international border, on a strategy of containment within the narrower objective of regaining the Kargil heights. This narrower framework meant higher casualties on the Indian side because of the difficulty of traversing slopes against dug-in defenders where the terrain offers no cover.

New Delhi calculated that it does have the political will and military morale, despite the heavy casualties, and can sustain the cost in human and material terms. A near-consensus domestically and the willingness of the Indian military command to accept constraints allowed India to continue with an operation in which it suffered disproportionately heavy casualties.

With regard to Pakistan, the intriguing question is whether the Kargil heights seizure was part of the normal stepping up of guerrilla activity during summer, or whether it had more ambitious objectives. If it were the former, little can be added, except to mention in passing a failure of Indian intelligence. The guerrillas’ presence was only discovered by accident when two Indian army patrols happened to spot them. The true extent of the guerrilla presence did not sink in until the Indian army had carried out an aerial survey of the area, which revealed that between 400 to 700 guerrillas had seized the heights. This could have put them in a position in any future war to threaten the sole overland logistics link with the Indian forces deployed in Siachen, i.e. the Srinagar-Drass-Kargil-Leh road.

But the Kargil seizure could have other strategic objectives with military, political and diplomatic dimensions. Militarily, if the seizure could be maintained for a reasonable period of time and at least until winter sets in, it could open up possibilities of forcing either an Indian withdrawal from Siachen, or a trade-off between the Kargil heights and the Siachen Glacier.

Politically, it could reflect the impatience in Islamabad with lack of progress in bilateral discussions on Kashmir under the Lahore Declaration process after the fall of the BJP government in end-April. Despite the fact that Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of India heads a caretaker government until elections are held in September-October, the hope may have been to force New Delhi back to the negotiating table in a serious mode. Diplomatically, since the bilateral process had not yielded results, an internationalisa-tion of the Kashmir issue may have been sought to bring it back onto the frontburner.

If we assume for the sake of argument that all or some of these objectives formed part of the Pakistani thrust into Kargil, or at least were taken on board once things hotted up on the Line of Control, we can examine the results achieved or likely to be achieved in the foreseeable future and then draw up a balance sheet of gains and losses.

Missing Kashmir for Kargil

Militarily, the inherent difficulty of holding on to the Kargil heights in the face of overwhelming firepower and numbers has become a key question as the battle drags on. India has weighed the costs of heavy casualties against the bigger costs of potentially adverse international intervention if the conflict is widened. It has relied on the political consensus to hold on to Kashmir no matter what the cost, which informs its domestic political spectrum (the weak and scattered chinks of rationality represented by liberal opinion notwithstanding). India’s slow but definite gains against the guerrillas have produced collateral pressures for a withdrawal of the guerrillas from what is turning into a suicidal mission.

The political timing of the Kargil seizure, if the idea was indeed to force New Delhi back to serious negotiations, could not have been worse. A caretaker government heading into an election was hardly likely to be in a position to negotiate, let alone offer any flexibility or concession on such a major issue. There has been speculation in the Indian press after the visit to Pakistan by the US emissary General Anthony Zinni regarding proposals purportedly from Islamabad for India to allow safe passage to the guerrillas, quoting the precedent of the Hazrat Bal shrine siege. Whether these reports hold any water or not is not known.

However, Western diplomatic pressure on Islamabad is mounting, especially after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s visit to Washington DC and London, and these could take various forms, economic, political, diplomatic. The dependence of the Pakistani economy on the goodwill of the West, and particularly the US, to keep foreign fund flows going makes Pakistan that much more vulnerable to ‘persuasion’.

It goes without saying that such ‘persuasion’ seeks to maintain the status quo on Kashmir, while advocating peaceful negotiations. Pakistan’s experience indicates that retaining the status quo has always proved favourable to India. Any disturbance of New Delhi’s hold on Kashmir, even if partial or temporary, serves to refocus the attention of the global community on a long-neglected, festering wound. But in trying to disturb the status quo in its favour, the manner in which Pakistan pursues this tactical goal is crucial. This cannot happen by ignoring the ground reality.

The Pakistani army chief, General Pervez Musharraf, put his finger on the problem by describing Kargil as “a tactical, military issue”, while Kashmir as such was “a strategic, political” one. In other words, to see only the Kargil part of the picture represented by the Kashmir problem, is to miss the forest for the trees. However, in the present instance, Islamabad appears to have failed to persuade the global powers-that-be of the justness of this linkage. On the contrary, opinion seems to have hardened in the West that the status quo must be restored before diplomatic “business as usual” can be resumed.

Most thinking people in Pakistan are by now convinced that there is no (regular) military option to obtain a solution to Kashmir, particularly after both India and Pakistan have demonstrated their nuclear capability. The irregular military option (guerrilla war) faces considerable political and ideological disabilities, especially since the Kashmir guerrilla movement has acquired a fundamentalist hue over time. This does not appear to be sufficiently inspiring for large numbers of the Kashmiri people who are well known for their traditional religious tolerance. This despite continuing repression by the Indian military in Kashmir.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has been castigated by the right-wing, religious, fundamentalist opinion for stating an obvious truth that without both India and Pakistan going beyond their “stated positions”, no solution to the Kashmir problem is possible. The hue and cry against him for saying that, particularly in the Urdu press, reflects the limitations which restrict the country’s political leadership. No flexibility, political or diplomatic, is allowed to any Pakistani leader to even explore some middle ground. Any such suggestion is treated as treason, betrayal, the worst kind of skullduggery. For such ideologically ‘pure’ elements, it is either all or nothing as far as Kashmir is concerned.

Before it is too late, sober heads must begin to ponder how much cloth we have remaining and how to cut it. Passion cannot replace cool calculation required for a strategic plan for peace. The Pakistani leadership must take into account a heavily dependent economic structure, an inability to rouse the world’s conscience beyond rhetoric, and the lack of a solid consensus across the

domestic political divide. The risk is that any attempt to work out a strategy based on the art of the possible would fall foul of Pakistan’s ideological hawks.

 

 
Reference

 

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