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From the beginning, Pakistan's strategic culture was dominated by Kashmir. In "Pakistan: A Hard Country," Anatol Lieven described it as an obsession that defined the "character and vision of the world" of the military. He noted that the pursuit of Kashmir had caused terrible damage to Pakistan and completely destroyed Pakistan.
Lieven remembers that a retired Pakistani general had told him that army officers are drawn to believe that India is an inveterate enemy and that the reason for it is that it is not an enemy. to be of the army is to defend against an Indian invasion
. Indians are anti-Pakistani, anti-Muslim and traitors. They think that India is trying to break Pakistan by supporting the insurgents and that Pakistan should therefore react by trying to break up India. This, in the minds of the officers, would be a reward for what India did in 1971.
Officers also engage in a self-congratulatory reflection: "L & # 39; India is not as strong as it looks. The fracture lines of the Indian Federation are much deeper than those of Pakistan. "Lieven says the army is tragically blind to the harm its policies have caused to the nation."
Similar sentiments were expressed by Carey Schofield in his book "Inside the Pakistan Army." "In preparing for this operation, she benefited from the full cooperation of President General Musharraf and spent five years in the army.
Despite interviews with senior and junior officers, Schofield" often despaired of having to go to war. to reach the truth. "She stated that most officers had agreed that the initial incursion into Indian Kashmir, gloriously called Operation Gibraltar, had failed to unleash an uprising in Indian Kashmir without realizing that their actions in October 1947 had also failed to spark a revolt.The Grand Slam operation, which followed Gibraltar, also failed in its goal of taking Akhnur.But it blew up and unleashed a total Indian badault along the international border, first to Lahore and then to Sialkot.Many officers conceded that they had not anticipated the reaction s Indian along the international border and also underestimated the Indian army.
But the war that persisted in the officers' mind was the disastrous encounter of 1971. Speaking to the officers, the loss of half of the country … was the elephant in the room, l & # 39; Extraordinary outcome that (almost) nobody has mentioned. The elections of 1970 gave the majority of the seats to the Awami party of the League of East Pakistan and it would be their right to form the government. "
" The nightmare – planned for a long time – was now on the country. Western Pakistan was simply unable to tolerate the political dominance of the despised Bengalis. After futile attempts at compromise, Yahya suspended the badembly and the East went on strike. Yahya and his generals treated the Bengali problem as an insurgency, and brutally repressed it in March 1971. Reports of Pakistani army savagery spread throughout the world. Inevitably, the civil war broke out, resulting in the mbadacre of hundreds of thousands of people. "
Finally, the large – scale war broke out in December, and in less than two weeks the Eastern garrison had surrendered, saying:" The Pakistani army has lost more than the face. The independent state of Bangladesh is born. Pakistan has been humiliated, losing 54% of its population, valuable raw materials and much of its cultural diversity. "
It seems like no lesson was learned.In 1999, a failed bomb attack was mounted on Kargil.In 2011, the American raid at Abbottabad destroyed the morale of the army. to kill Osama Bin Laden.For a long time, the army has struggled to regain public confidence.None of these face losses would have occurred if the army had simply not adopted the policy myopic to support militant groups, seeking to create a strategic depth in Afghanistan and seeking to wrest Kashmir
Why not convert the line of control into a border and allow the free movement of Kashmiris across the border? not reopen bilateral trade with India and let the two countries reap the peace that will follow the end of hostilities?
She says that "officers, even elderly people, are willing to believe theories of conspiracy wild. s thousands … really believe that the West wants to dismember Pakistan … Almost no one believes that Osama bin Laden orchestrated the 9/11 attacks. "
In his book" The Wrong Enemy ", the Carlotta Gall of the New York Times recounts the testimony of Admiral Mike Mullen, the president of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in front of the US Senate in 2011 , after the Haqqani network attacked the US embbady in Kabul.
Admiral Mullen said that he had worked hard to create a connection with General Kayani for years and visited Pakistan many times, but all of this came to nothing.He added that Pakistan had outright denied being behind the Haqqani network attack against the US Embbady in Kabul.Mullen was convinced that the Pakistani generals him and then he brilliantly summed up his badessment of Pakistan's strategic culture.
"They may believe that by using these proxies, they cover their bets or straighten out what they feel is an imbalance in the regional power l. But in reality, they have already lost that bet. By exporting violence, they have eroded their internal security and their position in the region. They undermined their intellectual credibility and threatened their economic well-being.
These three narratives lead to three basic conclusions: First, Pakistan's strategic culture is largely determined by its army and semi-autonomous intelligence agencies Secondly, it is Kashmir-focused, and third, strategic culture Pakistani failed to improve national security and bring prosperity and economic development to the Pakistani people.
It is hoped that the new government that will follow the elections will be able to change the strategic culture. It is time for Pakistan to stop its permanent hostility to India and finds a pragmatic solution to the problem of Kashmir.In spite of several major and minor wars in which thousands of lives and millions of dollars were wasted, the line of control not much moved since a United Nations ceasefire was declared in 1948. After the 1965 war, Marshal Ayub once again risk the lives of 100 million Pakistanis for 5 million Kashmiris
Why not convert the line of control into an international border and allow the free movement of Kashmiris across the border? Why not reopen bilateral trade with India and let the two countries reap the peace that will follow the end of hostilities?
The two brothers and sisters should be inspired by the recent rapprochement between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Pakistan and India have a lot in common, cooking, dress and cricket. Both have young populations whose lives are waiting for them. Let them experience the joys of life and not the deprivations of poverty and disease.
The author has written extensively on issues of national security
Posted in Daily Times, July 21 st 2018.
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