http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_1-1-2004_pg3_2

[As a doctrine of expansion and conquest jihad will never again get
the free hand which it enjoyed for a few hundred years after the
advent of Islam. It is time to stop dreaming impossible dreams because
they have invariably proved to be delusions]

Daily Times, Pakistan
Thursday, January 01, 2004

Learning To Live In Peace
By Ishtiaq Ahmed

..... In 1956 when I was only nine years old the khaksars had put up a
camp on the outskirts of our locality of Mozang, in Lahore, inviting
volunteers to join a jihad against India. We were to march on towards
the Wagah border and keep going until we reached Delhi’s Red Fort,
where we were to unfurl the Pakistani flag from the rampart and thus
declare the victory of Islam over kufr.

I remember being deeply moved by the demagoguery and wanting to go on
that long march but was left behind because of my tender age. The
khaksars, true to their salt, marched to the Wagah border where the
Pakistani authorities quickly dispersed them and they returned home in
a triumphant mood. They were garlanded and praised as if they had
really returned victorious from battle. I suppose everyone enjoyed
that charade.

Now, the khaksars were devoted but simple folk. The supreme leader of
the khaksars was Allama Inayatullah Mashraqi, a mathematics wizard
with a degree from Cambridge, whose politics was prone to quixotic
acts of bravado. The classic khaksar tale also dates back to 1956. The
Suez Canal dispute had erupted into a war and Egypt was attacked by
French, British, and Israeli units. Anti-imperialist Third World
leaders strongly condemned the attack but our prime minister, Hussain
Shaheed Suhrawardy when asked to explain why Pakistan was not
supporting the Arabs made the notorious remark ‘Zero plus zero is
equal to zero’.

This greatly angered the people of Pakistan and not surprisingly a
group of khaksars dressed in khaki, carrying spades on their shoulders
and kaffans [the shroud Muslims are buried in] tied around their
heads, went marching down the Mall Road in the direction of Gol Bagh.
The poet Zaheer Kashmiri was among the spectators watching them.
Zaheer could not resist asking the leaders loudly: “Where are you all
heading, great leader of the mujahids?”

He replied, “We are marching to the Suez Canal to fight the infidels.”
Zaheer remarked, “Are you going to walk all the way to the Suez
Canal?” “Yes,” answered the leader of the khaksars with great
emphasis. “Then, please, take the turn to Beadon Road. It is a short-
cut and you will reach the Suez Canal more quickly,” advised Zaheer
Kashmiri.

Things have indeed moved far ahead and although we still have a
problem marching on to Delhi or to the Suez Canal, such a mindset is
no longer confined to tiny groups of simpletons. At least since the
time of the Afghan war of the 1980s Pakistani society has increasingly
been brutalised with huge dozes of jihadi propaganda about conquest,
violence and expansionism.

Let me illustrate with an example. A few months before 9/11 a Swedish
student wanted to write her research paper on the Kashmir Dispute and
approached me for advice. She collected information from the JKLF and
Indian sources rather easily from the Internet, but I wanted her to
look at the Pakistani position too so that a balanced and
scientifically valid study could take place. Upon my suggestion, she
scanned some websites to learn the official Pakistani position. While
working through various Internet links she reached the website of the
Laskhar-e-Toyba, accessing some of their statements. This I thought
was very good because all sides and angles of the problem needed to be
included.

Five weeks later when she presented the first draft she pointed out
that whenever she opened the website of the Laskhare-e-Toyba a chill
ran down her spine. At the top of their homepage were Quranic verses
stating ‘In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful’. Blood
seem to drip all over the screen, and the only news given everyday was
the number of Indian soldiers and Hindus killed in Kashmir and
elsewhere. She could not understand how one could talk about God’s
mercy but report with relish the deaths of non-Muslims every time.

I found her observation quite embarrassing and forthwith wrote to the
Laskhar-e-Toyba beseeching them either to remove the Quranic verses
from their homepage or get rid of the ‘blood’ and report the killing
of Indian soldiers and Hindus less crudely. I never received any
reply. The student who had originally entertained a great deal of
sympathy for the Kashmiris wrote in her conclusion that Pakistan was
being used as a base for mounting terrorist attacks in Indian-
administered Kashmir. .....

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It is instructive to recall Transparency International's reports that
show Pakistan to be more corrupt under General Pervez Musharraf's
dictatorship that at any other time of its short history.

Pakistan's military and the ISI were never representative of the hopes
and aspirations of ordinary Pakistanis. It is very illuminating to
keep in mind the geographical concentration of military personnel -
eighty percent of officers, rank and file, come from only five
districts: Attock, Rawalpindi, Chakwal, Jhelum and Gujrat in Punjab;
and three districts of NWFP: Mardan, Peshawar and Kohat - ill gotten
wealth of the military funnels prosperity to a very narrow segment in
the country (professionally & geographically). The so-called
"recruitment area" (term inherited via the courtesy of British
colonial rulers) is essentially the area between the Indus and the
Jhelum.

It is this mal-distribution of the military (kept alive artificially
by the British propounded "martial races theory") that has made it
easier for the military's top brass to manipulate the lower ranking
soldiers into upholding the corporate interests of Pakistan's
military.

It is not surprising that General Tikka Khan who earned infamy as the
Butcher of Bengal in 1971 went on to earn infamy as the Butcher of
Balochistan after the 1971 partition of Pakistan.

Military's hegemony has not helped nation-building in Pakistan. On the
contrary it has thwarted it.

Democracy was never given a chance by the military. Generals like
Aslam Beg and Asad Durrani openly brag of the millions (where did the
get the millions?) they spent to make sure that the "right party" wins
the majority in elections and that the "right person" becomes the
Prime Minister. The military was basically into playing musical chairs
with the Prime Ministership, getting a Prime Minister kicked out
whenever he/she became too big for his/her britches and getting his/
her opponent elected in place. It was the voters that lost out in the
process.

It is a testimony to the inconsequence of the Prime Minister that
Benazir Bhutto had to ruefully admit that even as the Prime Minister
she was denied access to the Kahuta Research Laboratory and to all
information about the nuclear weapons program by the military on the
ground that she did not have a need to know! The military was never
under civilian authority - the civilian authority always existed at
the sufferance of the military.

To give democracy a fighting chance, it needs to be ensured that the
government of the day must receive a favorable review from the voters
at election time to continue in office. That way the nation gets a
government that is answerable to the people. The government knows
there is a price to be paid if it fails to deliver. It knows that the
voters (and not the military) are the boss. And that alone is enough
toward evolution to a better quality of elected representatives - if
not in the short run then at least in the long run.

Even if certain politicians of questionable repute do get elected a
few times by fooling some of the people some of the time, it is
unlikely that they will be able to fool all the people all the time.
Even a bad politician (governing for a limited term) answerable to the
voters is better than a good dictator (governing for an indefinite
period) and not answerable to the people. As Winston Churchil had
famously observed, ".. democracy is the worst form of government
except all the others that have been tried."

The military in Pakistan has stood effectively in the way of voters
empowerment. Its excuse is that the civilian politicians are at the
root of all of Pakistan's troubles. But that's a cop out and a
dishonest one at that. It is the military that has been wielding
effective power. The buck has always stopped at the GHQ in Pakistan
for the last quarter of a century, if not since the days of "Field
Marshal" Ayub Khan. It is the military that has been determining who
gets to get away with corruption and who doesn't. And it has done so
by dint of the absolute power it has enjoyed by virtue of its monopoly
over the guns. Such absolute power inevitably leads to lasting
corruption - there's just no one to bell this cat.

Pakistan's military has always dreamt of being the rulite elite in the
subcontinent as the successor to the Muslim empires in India. After
winning Pakistan in 1947, it had exulted, "Haske liya Pakistan, ladke
lenge Hindustan". It was this mindset that gave rise to the wars of
1947, 1965, 1971 and 1999. Pakistan's irredentist dreams always
included a Pakistani flag fluttering atop the Red Fort at Delhi!

This is how a Pakistani writer summarized the mindset in a 2004
article:

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http://www.jang-group.com/thenews/aug2004-daily/06-08-2004/oped/o6.htm

The News, Karachi, pakistan
Friday August 06, 2004-- Jamadi-us-Sani 19, 1425 A.H.

A long way since 9/11
By Anees Jillani

..... We were so excited about bleeding the Indians, and in the
process, more than 70,000 Kashmiris got killed. We at times were
anticipating the Pakistani flag officially flying in Srinagar, and
some even visualised it over the Red Fort in Delhi. India kept asking
us to initiate a dialogue and we insisted upon resolving first the
Kashmir issue. We did not let the Indians build a fence on the LoC for
55 long years. But now, the fence is there and we are so keen to
negotiate about anything with the Indians, and the word Kashmir is now
seldom heard anywhere. .....

============================================================

Pakistan's ruling elite never thought of itself as the "weaker" power
in South Asia in danger of being gobbled up by India the bully. In
fact, Pakistan's rulers prided themselves as the bully in the block.
Pakistan's ruling class had only contempt for
Indians who were lumped as "Hindus" in their parlance.

One Pakistani soldier was deemed more than enough to teach ten "Hindu"
sodiers the lessons of their lives.This is how some Pakistani writers
have alluded to this arrogance:

============================================================

DAWN, Karachi, Pakistan
28 July 2000 Friday 25 Rabi-us-Saani 1421

Core issue, my goat
By Ayaz Amir

..... we were victims of our own myths, seriously believing ..... that
one Muslim was good enough for ten Hindus. Hard though it may be to
believe this, in the order for Operation Gibraltar signed by Field
Marshal Ayub Khan (who deserved his rank about as much as Uganda's Idi
Amin did his) it was said that as a rule Hindu morale could be
expected to crack under the impact of a succession of hard
blows. .....

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The Nation
(Reprinted in Pakistan Link of 9/10/99)

Four Wars, one Assumption
Altaf Gauhar

..... all these operations were conceived and launched on the basis of
one assumption: that the Indians are too cowardly and ill-organised to
offer any effective military response which could pose a threat to
Pakistan. Ayub Khan genuinely believed that,"as a general rule Hindu
morale would not stand more than a couple of hard blows at the right
time and place." (Ayub Khan: Pakistan's First Military Ruler,
page 328). .....

============================================================

This country deserves me
By Altaf Gauhar

The Nation, Lahore, Pakistan
Sunday Nov 14,1999

..... What were Yahya's assumptions when he ordered military action in
East Pakistan? His first assumption was that the Bengalis would not
have the guts to face the tall, muscular, West Pakistani jawans. His
associates would recall how Ikhtiaruddin conquered Bengal with only 17
Muslim soldiers in 1203-1204 A.D. .....

===========================================================

The arrogance of power in South Asia is unambiguously Pakistani. When
Pakistan's military swears by:

(a) the "martial race theory"

(b) asserts that one Pakistani soldier can take care of ten "Hindu"
soldiers or,

(c) promises compatriots that they will unfurl Pakistan's flag at the
Red Fort,

it does so, not because it believes in the bluster, but because that
makes it easier for the military to usurp a disproportionate share of
the country's wealth for the Kakul kleptocrats.

In real life, Pakistan's military has always been far tougher on its
own citizens, most of them unarmed, than on armed soldiers of "enemy"
countries. Thus, General Tikka Khan is far better known to the world
as the Butcher of Bengal and as the Butcher of Balochistan than as the
Knight in shining armor who will ride his big white horse to the Red
Fort to unfurl Pakistan's flag.

When Pakistan's military breathes fire, it is to "prove" to Pakistani
citizens that the military is indispensable to the nation's welfare.
But this is nothing but a fraud because the primary aim is to make
sure that Pakistan's army can continue steal a disproportionate share
of the country's wealth for itself.

Here's an article by Professor Ishtiaq Ahmed (himself a Punjabi
Pakistani and currently a faculty member in National Singapore
University) that details the mindset that have made the Pakistan
military behave like bullies in the block right from the days of the
1947 partition (it continues even after the 1971 partition):

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On May 14, 7:21 am, Javed Iqbal Kaleem <JavedIqbalKal...@gmail.com>
wrote: