The Hindu published a vicious attack on COAS Gen. Kayani this week saying that he is supporting jihadi elements, even while our troops are on the front lines of battle fighting these militants.
Ambassador Husain Haqqani has already made the point to NDTV that it is our own military – led by Gen. Kayani – that is making the greatest sacrifice to fighting extremism, and that we will not be intimidated by India in this fight.
Ambassador Haqqani: Pakistan’s Intelligence Services, Pakistan’s Military, and Pakistan’s Government have taken a very clear stand against terrorism and extremism. Over the last two years, more Pakistanis have died fighting terrorism than any other country’s military. We have already proven our sincerity in fighting terrorism through our actions. I don’t think that we will engage in a debate with anyone – an individual legislator in the United States, an individual political figure in India, or for that matter any of our individual critics in the region. Time will prove that Pakistan made a clear choice, and our choice was to rid our entire region and the world of terrorism, and we will not endure terrorist attacks in any part of the world, including in any of our neighbouring countries.
NDTV: Since a lot of what you do here in Washington as Pakistan’s Ambassador is impacted by the India-Pakistan-Afghanistan dynamic, what role do you think India can legitimately play in Afghanistan without causing Pakistan to feel buffeted in?
Ambassador Haqqani: I think that the best course for India in Afghanistan is to make sure that whatever they do there does not create misgivings in Pakistan, a little more transparency, a little more open discussion as neighbours that this is what we are about to do. It’s a part of the confidence building that we need to do to overcome the misgivings of the past. Look, we all know that there are always issues that each side can raise with one another, complaints that one can have towards one another, but if the intention is to have a stable Afghanistan, a stable Pakistan, and a stable India, playing their respective roles, working together, then I think we can find a way of reassuring each other. In Afghanistan, as long as there is no significant military intelligence activity that Pakistan finds threatening, India of course will remain a country with which the Afghans will do business, and similarly, at some point in future, Pakistan itself looks forward to a normal trade relationship with India, but until we get there, we have to have a more reassuring posture towards one another. There are things Pakistan has to take India into confidence over just to be reassuring, and similarly India has to understand that it had to do that.
Of course, it is not only The Hindu that is making such blatant attacks on our military force, but again the fifth-column in our borders called The Nation is up to its old tricks. Writing about Gen. Kayani’s extension, The Nation says it is a bad idea:
WHILE it was expected that General Kayani would get an extension, the unprecedented full three-year term extension came as a surprise, especially because it was granted by a civilian government. What was equally unprecedented was the Prime Minister announcing this extension of the COAS’s term through an address to the nation. The announcement for this address also came barely an hour before leading one to wonder why there was this haste to sew things up for General Kayani. No one can deny General Kayani’s professionalism and competency as well as his assiduous efforts to keep the military out of politics and back in the barracks in the post-Musharraf era. Having said that, the manner and timing of the extension, as well as the time period, all raise some serious issues.
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Beyond these points of contention, there is the whole policy of extensions for senior civil and military bureaucrats that itself is highly contentious. Our problem in Pakistan has always been that institutional development has been thwarted by the rulers reliance on individuals rather than the institutions they serve. This renders institutional development superfluous. That in turn hinders a cohesive decision-making process to evolve and be strengthened and our policies only reflect the personal whims and preferences of individuals.
It almost sounds like the same people are writing for The Hindu and The Nation. Certainly both are against our military.
Shireen Mazari has finally let the cat out of the bag and exposed herself as anti-military. In today’s The Nation, the editorial suggests that because of suspicion and mistrust between the American and Pakistani militaries, Pakistan’s military should cut off it’s ties to the US military. This is a stab in the back from a member of the national media.