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General Forum: Current 'Affairs' | | Is nuclear war almost certain in the Indian subcontinent? | |
| Following is the email we have received from Shri Ram Narayanan of http://www.usindiafriendship.net
*****
It's a chilling thought? But the thought is based on sound premises.
First, here is former President Bill Clinton's Special Assistant for Middle Eastern & South Asian Affairs in the National Security Council, Bruce Riedel's chilling insider's account of what General Musharraf had planned to do during Pakistan's incursion into the Indian territory of Kargil in Kashmir in 1999. It's titled "American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit at Blair House".
This is an extract which brings out the insidious role of General Musharraf:
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Clinton asked Sharif if he knew how advanced the threat of nuclear war really was? Did Sharif know his military was preparing their nuclear tipped missiles? Sharif seemed taken aback and said only that India was probably doing the same. The President reminded Sharif how close the U.S. and Soviet Union had come to nuclear war in 1962 over Cuba. Did Sharif realize that if even one bomb was dropped. Sharif finished his sentence and said it would be a catastrophe.
Sharif asked again to have me leave the room. The President dismissed this with a wave of his hand and then told Sharif that he warned him on the second not to come to Washington unless he was ready to withdraw without any precondition or quid pro quo. Sharif had been warned by others as well. The President said he had a draft statement ready to issue that would pin all the blame for the Kargil crisis on Pakistan tonight.
The President was getting angry. He told Sharif that he had asked repeatedly for Pakistani help to bring Usama bin Ladin to justice from Afghanistan. Sharif had promised often to do so but had done nothing. Instead the ISI worked with bin Ladin and the Taliban to foment terrorism. His draft statement would also mention Pakistan's role in supporting terrorists in Afghanistan and India. Was that what Sharif wanted, Clinton asked? Did Sharif order the Pakistani nuclear missile force to prepare for action? Did he realize how crazy that was? You've put me in the middle today, set the U.S. up to fail and I won't let it happen. Pakistan is messing with nuclear war.
Sharif was getting exhausted. He denied that he had ordered the preparation of their missile force, said he was against that but he was worried for his life now back in Pakistan. The President suggested a break to allow each leader to meet with his team and consider next steps. He would also call Prime Minister Vajpayee to brief him on the discussions.
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It's a gripping story worth reading in full. This is the URL:
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/casi/reports/RiedelPaper051302.htm
What now makes a nuclear war probable is the jihadi mentality exhibited by many Pakistanis in positions of power or who have held positions of power, as typified by Army Brigadier Amanullah.
Read an even more chilling account pubished in ATLANTIC MONTHLY (see below).
The United States needs to take some crucial decisions HERE AND NOW.
Destroy Pakistan's nuclear installations in one swoop and then invite the Indians to help them get rid of the remnants of Al Qaeda and the Taliban hiding in Pakistani territory.
We Americans are wary of body bags.
But bin Laden's Al Qaeda still in Pakistan cannot be liquidated without active military operations by the United States and/or its dependable allies. The Indians with their highly trained fourth largest Army in the world and who know the terrain, should be invited to finish the job for America.
But first America needs to do its job: take out Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.
In a a few months, the entire democratic world - and, of course, the world's most powerful democracy (America) and the world's largest democracy (India) - will be a much safer place for us and our kids.
There is no time to lose!
God bless America and the world!
Ram Narayanan
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/03/landesman.htm
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY MARCH 2002
A MODEST PROPOSAL FROM THE BRIGADIER
In the center of the biggest traffic circle of every major city in Pakistan sits a craggy, Gibraltarish replica of a nameless peak in the Chagai range. This mountain is the home of Pakistan's nuclear test site. The development, in 1998, of the "Islamic Bomb," intended as a counter to India's nuclear capability, is Pakistan's only celebrated achievement since its formation, in 1947. The mountain replicas, about three stories tall, are surrounded by flower beds that are lovingly weeded, watered, and manicured. At dusk, when the streetlights come on, so do the mountains, glowing a weird molten yellow.
Islamabad's monument to the atomic bomb occupies a rotary between the airport and the city center. Nearby stand models of Pakistan's two classes of missile: Shaheen and Ghauri. The Islamabad nuclear shrine stands at a place where the city is dissolving into an incoherent edge town of shabby strip malls and empty boulevards and rows of desolate government buildings. A little farther in one comes to the gridded blocks of gated homes. The neighborhoods are called sectors. The streets are numbered, not named.
Late last year, after nearly two months in Pakistan, I paid the last of many visits to house No. 8 on street 19, sector F-8/2, a modern white mansion known as Zardari House. The house has been used by Asif Ali Zardari, the imprisoned husband of Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's exiled former Prime Minister. Neither Zardari nor Bhutto has been there for a long time. Zardari has been confined for five years, most recently in Attock Fort, a medieval fortress perched over the Indus River between Islamabad and Peshawar. He is charged with a slew of crimes: large-scale corruption; conspiracy in the murder of Bhutto's brother Mir Murtaza; conspiracy to smuggle narcotics. Bhutto, who also faces corruption charges in Pakistan, lives in Dubai with their three children. Pakistan's leader, General Pervez Musharraf, has promised to have her arrested and tried if she ever returns to Pakistan. Outside the gate to the empty Zardari House sits a man with his back to the wall, a sawed-off shotgun across his knees.
I had been going there to consult with Brigadier Amanullah, known to his friends as Aman. Aman, in his early fifties and now retired, is lithe and gentle-natured and seemed to me slightly depressed. He works in a small office behind Zardari House, where, as the secretary to Benazir Bhutto in Islamabad, he coordinates Bhutto's efforts to return to Pakistan and regain its prime ministership. He also keeps in close touch with old colleagues, who include many powerful people in Pakistan. Aman was once the chief of Pakistan's military intelligence in Sind Province, which borders India. Pakistan's biggest city and a cultural center, Karachi, is in Sind. That put Aman squarely in the middle of things, his finger near many sorts of buttons. Today Aman is believed to act as Bhutto's liaison with the armed forces, and he maintains contacts with serving army officers, including senior generals. When I wanted to speak to someone in the Pakistani government, I asked Aman. When I wanted to speak to someone in the Taliban, or in military intelligence, or in the political opposition, I asked Aman. His replies were mumbled and monosyllabic. He never offered opinions. He would simply hear me out and, most times, tip his head and say, "Why not?" Within an hour after Aman and I parted, I would receive a phone call from his secretary. References would be made to "that man" or "that matter," and I would be given a phone number and a time to call. Having spoken with Aman, I was always expected.
On the day of my final visit Aman seemed more sullen than usual. He ushered me into a room adjoining the office. The room was long and spare. There was an oil painting on the far wall. The other walls were empty and lined with cushioned chairs. Aman sat across from me. We had tea and spoke about the latest events.
As we were wrapping up our conversation, I looked at the oil painting. It was a strange picture, a horizontal landscape about four feet across, with overtones of socialist realism. In the foreground a youthful Benazir Bhutto stood in heroic pose on an escarpment overlooking the featureless grid of Islamabad. Beside her stood her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a Prime Minister who in 1977 was ousted in a coup and two years later hanged. On the other side of Bhutto was Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the long-dead founding father of Pakistan. Their postures were exalted, their expressions a combination of pride and awe. Jinnah's arm pointed to the vast plain beyond the city, where a rocket was lifting out of billowing clouds of vapor and fire into the sky.
Aman noticed me looking at the painting and followed my gaze. I asked him if Benazir Bhutto had commissioned it, and Aman said no. He told me that one day when she was still Prime Minister, an unknown man, an ordinary Pakistani citizen, had come to the gate of Zardari House with the picture and told Aman that he'd painted it for the Prime Minister and wanted to present it to her as a gift. Aman said that he was immediately transfixed by the painting. He called to Bhutto inside the house, but she refused to come down to see the man. Aman was persistent, and eventually she came down.
"I insisted Benazir accept it as a gift," Aman told me.
We both looked up at the painting in silence. "A rocket ship heading to the moon?" I asked.
Aman tipped his head to the side. A smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth. "No," he said. "A nuclear warhead heading to India."
I thought he was making a joke. Then I saw he wasn't. I thought of the shrines to Pakistan's nuclear-weapons site, prominently displayed in every city. I told Aman that I was disturbed by the ease with which Pakistanis talk of nuclear war with India.
Aman shook his head. "No," he said matter-of-factly. "This should happen. We should use the bomb."
"For what purpose?" He didn't seem to understand my question. "In retaliation?" I asked.
"Why not?"
"Or first strike?"
"Why not?"
I looked for a sign of irony. None was visible. Rocking his head side to side, his expression becoming more and more withdrawn, Aman launched into a monologue that neither of us, I am sure, knew was coming:
"We should fire at them and take out a few of their cities-Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta," he said. "They should fire back and take Karachi and Lahore. Kill off a hundred or two hundred million people. They should fire at us and it would all be over. They have acted so badly toward us; they have been so mean. We should teach them a lesson. It would teach all of us a lesson. There is no future here, and we need to start over. So many people think this. Have you been to the villages of Pakistan, the interior? There is nothing but dire poverty and pain. The children have no education; there is nothing to look forward to. Go into the villages, see the poverty. There is no drinking water. Small children without shoes walk miles for a drink of water. I go to the villages and I want to cry. My children have no future. None of the children of Pakistan have a future. We are surrounded by nothing but war and suffering. Millions should die away."
"Pakistan should fire pre-emptively?" I asked.
Aman nodded.
"And you are willing to see your children die?"
"Tens of thousands of people are dying in Kashmir, and the only superpower says nothing," Aman said. "America has sided with India because it has interests there." He told me he was willing to see his children be killed. He repeated that they didn't have any future-his children or any other children.
I asked him if he thought he was alone in his thoughts, and Aman made it clear to me that he was not.
"Believe me," he went on, "If I were in charge, I would have already done it."
Aman stopped, as though he'd stunned even himself. Then he added, with quiet forcefulness, "Before I die, I hope I should see it."
Posted by: Site Administrator At: 20, May 2002 10:10:04 AM IST
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