Column
By Ajay Kaul
After a lull of about two months, West Asia is again in the grip of a massive war involving the United States, Iran, Israel and all the Gulf countries.
Over the last two weeks, the intensity of fighting has been increasing, with missiles and drones flying all over the region.
As a result, the entire world has again plunged into deep anxiety as global energy supplies, sourced from the West Asian region, have almost stopped in the wake of repeated attacks on vessels attempting to transit through the crucial Strait of Hormuz.
The resumption of fighting with sustained intensity makes it evident enough that the so-called ‘mediation’ by Pakistan has utterly failed, or was a farcical exercise.
A lot of trumpeting was done by Pakistan regarding its ‘mediation’ and self-portrayal as a ‘peace-maker’.
Interestingly, US President Donald Trump participated in that chorus by repeatedly praising Pakistan’s Field Marshal Asim Munir and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
A so-called ‘peace deal’ was also signed by Trump with Iran’s leadership on June 17.
However, three weeks later, Trump threw that ‘deal’ into a dustbin and restarted attacks on Iran on July 7, using the pretext of two vessels being attacked in the Strait of Hormuz.
This action by Trump meant a huge loss of face for the ‘mediator’ Pakistan, which was still in the early phase of enjoying a sort of international relevance that it had lost since decades because of continued support to international terrorism.
Before its un-requisitioned ‘mediation’ in the deadliest war of the 21st century, Pakistan was virtually a pariah globally.
It was an outcaste at the international stage, rightly so, for actively supporting terrorism and its dubious record in relation to acquisition of nuclear weapons through smuggling.
For years, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global watchdog for international terrorism, had kept Pakistan in the ‘Grey List’ (watch list) for its financing terrorism, a matter of absolute shame for any nation.
Host to the World’s most wanted terrorist:
While Trump repeatedly showered praise on the Pakistan Army chief, he forgot, or deliberately ignored, the fact that the same military had been exposed by the US itself just 15 years back for hosting the most wanted global terrorist Osama bin Laden.
That exposure came when the US, despite having strategic partnership with Pakistan, conducted a top-secret surgical military operation in Abbottabad, near Islamabad, in the dead of the night on May 3, 2011 to hunt down the Al Qaeda chief.
Such was the lack of trust in the Pakistani military leadership that the US had to keep it in the dark during the months-long operation to track, locate and then swoop down on Laden who was living in a carefree manner with his family in a 3-storey house, located nearby a cantonment of Pakistan Army.
In fact, the operation exposed how Pakistan had cheated its ally, the US, which was frantically searching for Osama bin Laden for 10 long years in Afghanistan.
All through, Pakistan pretended to be helping the US in its efforts to find bin Laden, but in reality it had provided a safe hideout to the globally most wanted terrorist.
Interestingly, Trump, during his first term as the US President, had publicly highlighted how Pakistan had been deceiving America for decades while giving “safe haven to terrorists”.
On January 1, 2018, Trump had tweeted: “The US has foolishly given Pakistan more than $33 billion in aid over the last 15 years and they have given us nothing but lies and deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!
Surprise
Isn’t it surprising and intriguing that the same Trump trusted the same Pakistan when it came to ending hostilities between the US and Iran?
Or is it that Trump used Pakistan as a face-saving tool to take a break in the war after the US military faced unprecedented losses and ran short of missiles after using those in 40 days of war with Iran?
It has already been reported that after the US faced severe Iranian attacks on its military bases in the Gulf region from March 1 onwards, Trump had talked about the missile stocks running out and urged the country’s defence industry to scale up production on urgent basis.
Perhaps, it was to allow that replenishment that Trump announced a ceasefire with Iran and once that was done, the war was restarted.
Pakistan’s Lack of Credibility:
While Trump played blow-hot, blow-cold, there could be nothing more ironic than Pakistan projecting itself as a ‘peace maker’ considering its history of being a war-monger and destabilizing factor in the region.
Leave aside others, even within Pakistan, most common people are unable to digest that its Army chief is a peacenik as they see the brutal face of the Pakistani military day in and day out.
The Pakistani military and its intelligence agencies are notorious within the own country for human rights violations, oppression and atrocities through abductions, killings and other criminal acts.
While Munir and Shehbaz Sharif were projecting themselves as ‘peace makers’ before the world, the Pakistani military remained busy with abducting and killing innocent people in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, Balochistan and Sindh.
Just when Munir was playing the ‘mediation’ drama in the US-Iran fight, he was ordering his military to carry out airstrikes on the neighbouring Afghanistan, killing and injuring hundreds of civilians, including children and women, and destroying hospitals, residential houses and mosques.
In one such barbaric act, the Pakistani military bombed a drug rehabilitation centre in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul in March, killing 265 and injuring over 400 patients and medical staff.
Pakistan’s belligerence against Afghanistan increased so much that China, a common friend of the two countries, had to step in to ‘mediate’ between them.
Interestingly, the talks, mediated by China, were held between Pakistan and Afghanistan, in Beijing only a few days before the first round of negotiations between the US and Iran in Islamabad on April 11, brokered by Pakistan.
So, at a time when Pakistan was projecting itself as a ‘peace maker’ in the war between the US and Iran, it itself was hosted as a ‘war monger’ by China to stop it from attacking Afghanistan.
Promoter of terrorism:
The credentials of Pakistan as a ‘peace maker’ are also questionable because of its sickening track record of using terrorism and other criminal acts against its neighbours India and Afghanistan with the objective of causing destabilization.
With respect to India, the Pakistani military has been indulging in terrorism, drug peddling and circulation of fake currency for several decades.
Similarly, the Pakistani military has, for decades, sponsored and promoted terrorism in Afghanistan, which has badly impacted the US also.
When the US-led international forces were in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021, many attacks on them were engineered by the Pakistani intelligence agencies.
The US intelligence agencies, like the CIA, are quite aware of this fact.
Atrocities by Pakistani military in occupied territories:
While Pakistan claimed to be a ‘peace maker’, it remains illegal occupant of several territories, like those of Jammu and Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan and Balochistan.
These regions continue to witness extreme forms of atrocities and oppression by the Pakistani military and its notorious intelligence agency ISI.
In occupied parts of Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, the Pakistani military and its secret agencies suppress even the freedom to life, leave aside other basic necessities, and currently a mass uprising is underway there for over one-and-a-half month.
The Pakistani military and its secret agencies also carry out extreme atrocities against the Baloch people in occupied Balochistan on daily basis, including abductions, rapes and extra-judicial killings.
Thousands of youth, including girls, are abducted by the Pakistani military every year in Balochistan and most of them never see the light of the day again even as their loved ones keep waiting endlessly.
Some of them may be freed after years but the extreme torture leaves them in a vegetable state.
Similar abuses are carried out by the Pakistani military in Sindh too.
The military regime of Pakistan has also been carrying out brutal crimes and human rights abuses against its own people, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province.
On the pretext of targeting militants, the Pakistani military conducts aerial bombings and kills civilians and children.
Muslim religious scholars are also not spared, with State-sponsored personnel indulging in their killings in a recurrent manner.
Elsewhere also, anyone criticizing the military is silenced by threats or eliminations.
If all these aspects about Pakistan had been taken into account, it would have become clear in the beginning itself that peace-making efforts between the US and Iran would lead nowhere since the credentials of the ‘mediator’ were anything but impeccable.
By now, this must have become clear to all those who were praising Pakistan.
Ends
