Pakistan faces 26/11 everyday: Mani Shankar Aiyar

[acid rain]

Because of the imbecile nature of the Pakistani military leadership. If they had not been obsessed from 1947 onwards with tactical brilliance, they would have realised the strategic incoherence that they were creating.

If I am not wrong these Jihadists that they created may it be the taliban or the Kashmiri terrorist groups are not your average mercenaries.
They associate themselves with religion of Islam and have a higher caalling then pure dough. They draw inspiration from Islamic teaching and way of life which motivates them for e.g. the concept of Jannat and fruits of afterlife for killing kafirs. For them nothing is above God neither the state, Government, human laws or the state military.

This is where the PA leadership went wrong in creating them, the simple assumption that they will work for money or a state of Afghanistan as a pay is not what the jihadists are looking for..they are out to convert people to their idealogy and elimite them too if they dont oblige, and Pakistani's are as much a target as any other group of people. This is in direct contrast to what the Pakistani establishment wanted from them in the first place.

This is just an assumption and I may be wholly wrong here.

 

[KS]

lst page post

 

[clmeta]

That's because the culprits are your own countrymen where as in India, the culprits come from the neighborhood.

Ya... But we don't send dossiers to the culprits.. We bomb their caves..

 

[Rusty]

it's funny how short a memory people have when the egg is on their face.
India pioneered the use of state sponsored terrorist groups by supporting a little known group called the LTTE.
Of course that didn't end well for them as they got their PM blown up.

Pakistan is now also learning this lesson, but it's funny how Indians live in their own universe and are acting like they have some moral high ground.

Sorry to break it to you, but your $hit stinks just as bad.

As for Pakistan, once we change our government we can start dealing with all these groups.

 

[Hutchroy]

Ya... But we don't send dossiers to the culprits.. We bomb their caves..

Do you mean to imply that the Indians should Bomb Pakistani Origin Terrorists in Pakistan?

 

[Roybot]

And you have a better programme to suggest? Most alternatives suggested are hilariously implausible - bomb the training camps, mount a military attack, cut off relations with the Pakistanis - no visas, no travel, no cultural exchange, no trade - and the like.

What is your solution, btw?

Please don't call the complacence and basically the we-don't-give-a-crap attitude of the current Indian leadership a "programme". The current set of leaders basically just wait these things out, wait for the public to forget about it or wait for the next terrorist strike to happen, hoping that the public will forget about the previous one and latest terrorist attack will get all the limelight. And when that doesn't happen, they shamelessly and bluntly ask the public to move on. I would love to see Mr Iyer ask the family members of those killed in 26/11 to move on, in person.

Are we just supposed to sit here quietly and offer 100 or so innocent lives every now and then to this demon to keep it pacified? Is this how weak we are? We need to value life. Loss of innocent life, even 1, at the hands of terrorists scum is not ok! This docile attitude and spineless "policy" of just waiting it out is not working. Its just wishful thinking or a hogwash, take your pick.

As for alternative solution, yes a more aggressive policy is the need of the hour. We need to hit the enemy when its already down writhing in pain, there is no need to give them time to "recuperate", so that they can come back and start their shenanigans again. We need to start executing the terrorists who have been sentenced, zero tolerance, no non sense policy, if that means bombing the militant camps, then so be it. What are we afraid of ?

P.S: And this is not directed at you, but why on earth are we discussing Jinnah here. Does it really matter in todays world, whether Jinnah was a great man or not? Pakistani leaders today, both military and political, are no Jinnahs, they have never been! So its totally irrelevant what Jinnah wanted or what he didn't for Pakistan and India.

Unfortunately the politicians on our side of the divide are still harping on about Nehruvian policies and Gandhian principles, or more like hiding their incompetence behind it.

 

[Capt.Popeye]

P.S: And this is not directed at you, but why on earth are we discussing Jinnah here. Does it really matter in todays world, whether Jinnah was a great man or not? Pakistani leaders today, both military and political, are no Jinnahs, they have never been! So its totally irrelevant what Jinnah wanted or what he didn't for Pakistan and India.

Unfortunately the politicians on our side of the divide are still harping on about Nehruvian policies and Gandhian principles, or more like hiding their incompetence behind it.

@Roybot,
Jinnah today is a photograph of a patrician looking man in gilt-edged frames hanging on walls in the country that he created. He does get quoted sometimes and remembered not too much; going by the response that I saw on PDF threads on 11th Sept (his death anniversary). You are right, there has been no one of the stature of Jinnah since then in Pakistan.

Likewise, Gandhi too is a picture on every Indian currency note and solely responsible (in the words of Munnabhai) for a "dry-day" on 2nd October. Nothing else.

As for Nehru, he still gets talked about and written about only just to keep a "family firm" going.

Now whether these are good or bad things is simply a matter of opinion.

 

[Sashan]

Please don't call the complacence and basically the we-don't-give-a-crap attitude of the current Indian leadership a "programme". The current set of leaders basically just wait these things out, wait for the public to forget about it or wait for the next terrorist strike to happen, hoping that the public will forget about the previous one and latest terrorist attack will get all the limelight. And when that doesn't happen, they shamelessly and bluntly ask the public to move on. I would love to see Mr Iyer ask the family members of those killed in 26/11 to move on, in person.

Are we just supposed to sit here quietly and offer 100 or so innocent lives every now and then to this demon to keep it pacified? Is this how weak we are? We need to value life. Loss of innocent life, even 1, at the hands of terrorists scum is not ok! This docile attitude and spineless "policy" of just waiting it out is not working. Its just wishful thinking or a hogwash, take your pick.

As for alternative solution, yes a more aggressive policy is the need of the hour. We need to hit the enemy when its already down writhing in pain, there is no need to give them time to "recuperate", so that they can come back and start their shenanigans again. We need to start executing the terrorists who have been sentenced, zero tolerance, no non sense policy, if that means bombing the militant camps, then so be it. What are we afraid of ?

P.S: And this is not directed at you, but why on earth are we discussing Jinnah here. Does it really matter in todays world, whether Jinnah was a great man or not? Pakistani leaders today, both military and political, are no Jinnahs, they have never been! So its totally irrelevant what Jinnah wanted or what he didn't for Pakistan and India.

Unfortunately the politicians on our side of the divide are still harping on about Nehruvian policies and Gandhian principles, or more like hiding their incompetence behind it.

Roybot - mate - you are asking the wrong person for what the solution is.

Here is my observation on my interactions with Joe sir on few issues - he is good at explaining the past events and is knowledgeable about different events but ask him a question about some issue which need a solution - I have seen him give some non-practical response.

Few examples - ask him to take a pick - BJP vs Congress - he does not like both but does not say what is the alternative.
Ask him about the uniform civil code - his response is to educate all the youth and bring one(mind it not when the educated achieve a majority but only when all religious groups are educated) or he would raise the point on what prevents people to use the non-religious civil code for marriages.

 

[Punjabbi Munda]

Same way you created Kashmir violence and now getting back the fruits?

Just came back from Kashmir..very peaceful and beautiful..they here was curfew though..Shia and Sunni fought on Muharram and the curfew had to imposed

 

[KS]

Please don't call the complacence and basically the we-don't-give-a-crap attitude of the current Indian leadership a "programme".

+1.

As for alternative solution, yes a more aggressive policy is the need of the hour. We need to hit the enemy when its already down writhing in pain, there is no need to give them time to "recuperate", so that they can come back and start their shenanigans again. We need to start executing the terrorists who have been sentenced, zero tolerance, no non sense policy, if that means bombing the militant camps, then so be it. What are we afraid of ?

Slightly disagree. An overt aggression from India would only unify the warring factions of ethnicities, religious sects again into a single country called Pakistan and that is not in out interest. What we need to be doing, in case we decide to be aggressive is, start "exploiting" the wide schisms in pakistani society to our benefit and tie down the pak agencies to within its borders. Remember as bad as it sounds, a peaceful and united pakistan is not in indian interest. The Pakistani problem with India is not limited to Kashmir as many would like to believe. There is a significant part of their population (and by extension the armed forces and intelligence agencies) to which the problem transcends from a mere political to an idealogical plane and we can realistically expect their struggle against India to continue till either of us is the only one standing. To them death is just a promotion to paradise and hence all the more attractive. The "agencies" of pakistan need to be kept focusing on their internal troubles so that they dont have time for their external ambitions. But the problem is that we have a lameduck PM with no actual authority but only the longing to leave behind a legacy and willing to bend down to ever greater angles to achieve that.

But if people find the above solution "morally wrong" the least we should have done is cut off all "peace-talks" with Pak. enhance the presence in Afghanistan by sending our military trainers to train the Afghan troops, supplying them weaponry and maintain a strong presence on our borders so that the pak army is not able to focus properly on the western border thus indirectly creating a easy front for the insurgents on the other frontier. At some point when the casualties become too much to bear it would have pressured them to re-evaluate their strategy vis-a-vis India.

Unfortunately the politicians on our side of the divide are still harping on about Nehruvian policies and Gandhian principles, or more like hiding their incompetence behind it.

The unfortunate legacy of a false sense of moral superiority and a stupid belief in non-violence not knowing that it was always a part of the Indian civilization to use violence as a means to counter adharma. Or it is simple political impotency.

Roybot - mate - you are asking the wrong person for what the solution is.

Here is my observation on my interactions with Joe sir on few issues - he is good at explaining the past events and is knowledgeable about different events but ask him a question about some issue which need a solution - I have seen him give some non-practical response.

+1

 

[rubyjackass]

With reservations.

I believe his zeal for his cause and for his community took him into territory which the Jinnah of the 20s and 30s would have been amazed to see. His integrity remained intact, no doubt, he was too principled a person to yield on those basics, but there were issues relating to the Hindu Muslim boundary where he compromised to gain political traction. And that cost a huge number of lives.

Having said that, let me nail my colours to the mast: I am a firm supporter of the man that Jinnah was.

About PTH, best ask Raza.

Please try to help brother. Why don't you give the links yourself.

 

[rubyjackass]

British left us alone because they could no longer afford maintaining their grip on an empire thousands of miles away with a drained economy and military courtesy WWII

Ok. We can argue about this for years. I will however state my position in short.
British were able to 'maintain' India for a long time. After all they were not building roads for the use of Indians here and it does not take much to 'maintain' a colony. With the freedom movement in picture, this was getting difficult. But then the British could easily and successfully sell off the violent revolutionaries as terrorists to their home population(They sold Jallian Wala Bagh to their government and people!). And they had hordes of armies, Indian armies, to help them weed out any uprising. With Gandhi, they had no response.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Joe,
But there were two Jinnahs. One was the Professional Man (an urbane educated lawyer) then the other was the Politician. Sometimes there was some confusion and contradiction between the two. His one-time junior in chambers and admirer Mohammed Currim Chagla had some views about him, some of which he wrote about in his autobiography "Roses in December". I heard him speak a little more on the subject at the residence of H.M.Seervai which provided even more insight.

I agree. And most people do fret about the contradictions between the two. My unreserved admiration is for the man Jinnah. The politician Jinnah was unfortunate and not so successful.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Please try to help brother. Why don't you give the links yourself.

Just saw this. The reason is it's in the archives. I don't know how to access the archives; it's been a long time since I last posted there. That's why.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Please don't call the complacence and basically the we-don't-give-a-crap attitude of the current Indian leadership a "programme". The current set of leaders basically just wait these things out, wait for the public to forget about it or wait for the next terrorist strike to happen, hoping that the public will forget about the previous one and latest terrorist attack will get all the limelight. And when that doesn't happen, they shamelessly and bluntly ask the public to move on. I would love to see Mr Iyer ask the family members of those killed in 26/11 to move on, in person.

Are we just supposed to sit here quietly and offer 100 or so innocent lives every now and then to this demon to keep it pacified? Is this how weak we are? We need to value life. Loss of innocent life, even 1, at the hands of terrorists scum is not ok! This docile attitude and spineless "policy" of just waiting it out is not working. Its just wishful thinking or a hogwash, take your pick.

As for alternative solution, yes a more aggressive policy is the need of the hour. We need to hit the enemy when its already down writhing in pain, there is no need to give them time to "recuperate", so that they can come back and start their shenanigans again. We need to start executing the terrorists who have been sentenced, zero tolerance, no non sense policy, if that means bombing the militant camps, then so be it. What are we afraid of ?

P.S: And this is not directed at you, but why on earth are we discussing Jinnah here. Does it really matter in todays world, whether Jinnah was a great man or not? Pakistani leaders today, both military and political, are no Jinnahs, they have never been! So its totally irrelevant what Jinnah wanted or what he didn't for Pakistan and India.

Unfortunately the politicians on our side of the divide are still harping on about Nehruvian policies and Gandhian principles, or more like hiding their incompetence behind it.

No offence meant, but that is just verbiage. What does this mean, in practical terms? When was the enemy down, writhing in pain? Who gave them time to recuperate, how, when? There is one terrorist due for execution, Afzal Guru, and he is in our minds because a politically bankrupt BJP conceals its own responsibility for alienating huge masses of our people by its actions by pointing to this one slim delay. Is that your whole programme, btw, execution of Afzal Guru? The militant camps are known to exist, but no one knows where. Is anyone here of the notion that these can be found on a Google Earth survey? And if a suspect patch of forest clearing is found (these need not be larger than twenty or thirty square yards), you are seriously suggesting taking on a very powerful air force which equals ours in strength and bombing attacks on a nuclear adversary? Are you truly serious?