Letters to the Editor

Dear Sir,

Accidentally I came across your web site. I happen to be a Bangladeshi and also Australian and presently living permanently in Australia. This e-mail is about the forthcoming book of Brig (Retd) ZA Khan “The Way it was” and specially his interview with AH Amin in your April 2002 Edition. I do like to thank Brig ZA Khan for documenting some rare part of the liberation history of my motherland. True or fabrication, I am not going to talk about the wonderful description of events that happened inside the army and his view about his superior and their English skill. But I would certainly like to object strongly to his view about atrocities committed during the liberation war by the Pakistani Army. By the way my English is also a bit funny in different ways and I do apologise in advance for that. Anyway it does not matter unless you are writing some legislation or law. In one sentence my view about his opinion regarding atrocity and why the division could not be stopped reflected in his book and interview is “With a escapist mentality he tried hard to justify the misdoing of him and his Army as a whole with no facts and poor fabrication and imagination.”

First of all I like to clear my stand regarding this, I am not blaming you for publishing this interview, after all that is his own view but you also have the responsibility to the people of the world not to mislead in any way specially when it is in the web and I think you should be more careful in future before publishing any such interview.

Now few points in support of my view. Hypothetically lets go back to 1971 and think Sheikh Mujib is the Prime minister of undivided Pakistan and ruling the country (that is what he was supposed to be in the first place). From the history we can have very good idea about his capability as ruler, without going into that detail let me put it in this way, we killed him to get out of his mis-management. I am more than sure he could not even survive one/two years and Bengalis would welcome any change. It is most unfortunate that the Pakistani Army did not have that far-sightedness, judging from the present situation and situation after 1971 I am sure still they are very much lacking behind in that field. Any good leader need vision in the first place to work with and Pakistan did not even have one. This is the only truth behind the division of Pakistan. Please do not get me wrong I am very much in support of the division, it was always there and I do support the view of ZA Khan that the deference was too much to keep these two countries together. It would happen today or tomorrow, but it could be better if it happened without the intervention of third country, that could at least save Pakistan from the shame.

May be from pride ZA Khan is trying to justify the atrocities by telling Bengalis did the atrocities first and they followed. I was in Bangladesh in 1971 and I know what Pakistani Army did there. ZA Khan has one picture (who was stopping him from taking picture, he had the army and gun), I can give thousands of picture and documents to prove he his wrong. ZA Khan has one story to tell, I have thousands of stories. It is not wise to deny your own responsibility and mistakes, try to take responsibility which we the subcontinent people are always lacking behind, we often blame others for our mistakes. In my view you are half human if you do not have the courage to take responsibility of your own action. ZA Khan is welcome to ask me for more information on atrocities, I am not going to describe it here, let us forgive and forget the past, bringing up those bad memories will only create more hatred for each other. I cannot check myself to bring this up, millions of Biharies still living in Bangladesh, considering their act during 1971 we had our chance to kill them during 1971 but we did not. Our religion teaches us not to hate or harm people from other religions. all Hindus are not bad guys, if you think so you have some mental problem.

Thank you.

Chowdhury Sadaruddin
Darwin, Australia.

From: Brigadier Z. A. Khan (Ret’d) <shehzil@super.net.pk>
To: defjrnl@pathfinder.com.pk
Sent: 15 June 2002

Dear Editor,

Thank you for giving me a copy of the e-mail of Mr. Chowdhury Sadaruddin. This may be published in the Defence Journal if Mr. Sadaruddin’s e-mail is published and a copy may be sent to Mr. Sadaruddin.

Mr. Sadaruddin, and probably his countrymen, do not want the atrocities that they committed during the 1971 rebellion to be known by the world. Bangladesh, like her sponsor and benefactor India , has given itself the mantle of being one of the world’s “good guys”, atrocities they commit or have committed are not to be publicised on the internet or otherwise, hence the admonition to the Defence Journal. In the interview I described what I saw, I did not comment on the atrocities after the surrender as I was not there.

I give full credit to the then government of Pakistan, not a single anti-Bengali incident took place in West Pakistan due to the prevention of publicity and publication of photographs of the atrocities committed by Bengalis.

Here atrocity stories are told by those who came back from Bengal during the rebellion and by those who returned after we lost the war, the stories told in Bangladesh can be matched story for story.

I, and many like me in Pakistan, fought and lost, Bangladesh became independent and is welcome to it, I and all of us who fought to maintain the integrity of the country are ashamed that we lost, we did not lose to Bangladesh. Bangladesh can go its own way — bon voyage.

Z. A. Khan

May 7th 2002

October Elections

Dear Ikram Sehgal

With referendum behind and a mixed reaction to it trailing, the nation is looking forward to October Elections, but apprehensively lest the opportunist plunderers find their way to the Assemblies yet once again, manoeuvring for which has already started by them. Alliances of sorts for and against the President are coming up, ironically both in the name of democracy. Resilience of some of the elder power brokers, who should rather be preparing for the finals to meet their Maker, is astonishing to watch. Their eloquence in advocating the reason for uniting to restore the government of, for and by the people, notwithstanding the basic differences in their political philosophies, stands and manifestoes, is a treat to the ears. Yet, how very naive of them not to realize that ‘one cannot fool all for all time’. Masses of the 21st century are way wiser than their predecessors who could be easily lured into believing by catchy slogans and hollow promises. Every one now knows that the real reason behind such alliances is to horse-trade for fielding their respective candidates in the common constituencies where they claim to wield some influence, if at all any, everyone, including the so-called Allies, know that such marriages of convenience cannot last for long and are bound to break up sooner than later. Even a cursory glance at the fate of all previous such Political Alliances will prove the point. However, due to the plethora of political parties in the country, their leaders have no choice but to enter into such give and take arrangements with one another to survive, though in the process they do immense damage to the country and its politics.

This overabundance of the political parties is one of the major causes for the failure of democracy in Pakistan. President will do the nation an everlasting service by curtailing their number. Implementing the following few steps, along with the other existing Rules of Conduct for the elections will help achieve the desired results:-

(1) A candidate be allowed to contest from one constituency only and that too of his domicile.

(2) Candidate must poll at least 51 percent of the votes cast to be declared elected. Hypothetically speaking, in a constituency with five contestants, how can a ‘winner” with, say, 21 percent of the votes have the right to represent the other seventy nine percent of the people who voted AGAINST him. If required, a second round of voting be held for the top two candidates only to decide the winner from between them.

(3) Fee for the candidacy should be fairly high — say Rs. 200,000 for the MNA and Rs. 150,000 thousand for the MPA — which should be paid by the party fielding the candidate.

(4) Fee to be confiscated if the candidate fails to secure less than 33 percent of the total votes cast in his constituency. Fresh fee to be paid for the second round of voting for the top two candidates.

(5) No Political Alliance allowed for fielding candidates in the election. If the political parties so desire, they could merge into one another.

(6) No Joint Candidate allowed to be fielded by different Political Parties.

(7) A candidate losing his fee to be debarred for contesting the next election.

(8) Candidate to file return of his and his immediate family’s all movable and immovable assets, duly supported by Income Tax returns for the last three years with his application.

(9) A suitable limit on expenditure be imposed on the electioneering campaign of the candidate.

Above would automatically wean out the trivial and leave two or three major political parties with strong and healthy political culture in the field. Then, there would be no need for the alliances or for making of weak collation governments where horse-trading is the order of the day to ‘accommodate’ all.

Yours truly
Col. Riaz Jafri (Retd)
30, Westridge-1
Rawalpindi 46000
Tel : (051) 546 3344
e-mail: jafri@rifiela.com

From: “Filipe Salgueiro” <rouquita@hotmail.com>
To: defjrnl@pathfinder.com.pk
Sent: Wednesday, 05 June 2002

I would like to correct some errors i made while responding to Vice-Admiral Quadir’s article and that you edited last March.

The battle of Al-Ksar Al-Kibir was fought and lost by the Portuguese in 1578, after which their independence was lost to the Spanish in the field of Alcantara, 1580. The other erroneous information i gave was the date of the naval engagement between an english-dutch fleet and a portuguese one, off Ormuz, which was fought in 1624, two years after Shah Abbas’s conquest.

In his response to my letter, Vice-Admiral Quadir referred also the destruction of the Fatimid fleet-train off Chaul. After reviewing some of the historical sources (not free of bias, as the Vice-Adm. well wrote) available, i found just one reference to the destruction of that fleet: a comment made by the portuguese flagship’s artillery master, referring that the enemy vessels could easily be sunk by aiming to the lower decks. Galleys, vessels favoured by the fatimids and suited to mediterranean navigation, had low “calados” — i have to use the portuguese word indicating the part of the ship’s keel that’s above the water level, and so were more vulnerable to artillery fire.

I found, however, no evidence of the destruction of the Fatimid fleet in that battle. The sources mention the defeat of the portuguese fleet and the death of its captain, Dom Lourenco de Almeida. I am forced to believe that the historical sources here diverge, for i couldn’t find any information about the destruction of the fleet-train between 1508 (engagement off Chaul) and 1509 (battle of Diu).It’s more probable that the fleet-train was destroyed together with the warships, while anchored, during the naval engagement at Diu, thus explaining why there are no historical sources putting it at an earlier stage of that naval conflict. Other possibility is that only the fleet-train was destroyed at Diu, but after reading some comments made by the Vice-Rei after the battle, referring to the size and weaponry seen aboard the enemy vessels, as well as the number of men-at-arms each one carried, the damage inflicted to the portuguese warships, and the number of muslim vessels, both large and small, i had to discard it.

Respeitosamente,
Filipe A. Salgueiro
Fur Cav. PE (rsv.)

Dear Sir,

Dalits or Scheduled Castes communities of Pakistan are the successors of those Dalits of united India who chose to follow a liberal Muslim Quaid-e-Azam instead of a secular Hindu costumed in Brahmin wardrobe physically and spiritually 55 years back. Dalits form 70 per cent of population counted as Hindus in Pakistan.

On the other hand during the period, which India calls independence, 3 million Dalit women have been raped and one million Dalits have massacred. This is 25 times more than number of Indian soldiers killed during the wars it fought after independence. (The Pioneer, 30 Jan. 2000 ) Even today “More than 60 per cent of Dalits are landless. Over 40 million of them are bonded labourers. Dalits are the worst victims of labour coercion.” (The Daily Star, Sun. May 30, 1999)

Though heavily underestimated, “The 1991 Government Survey of India states that on an average day, two Dalits are killed, three Dalit women are raped, two Dalits’ houses are burned and fifty Dalits are assaulted by people of a higher caste.”

The genocide and massacres of Muslims in Held Kashmir and latest bouts of gruesome genocide of Muslims in Gujarat proves that Quaid-e-Azam’s two-nation theory at the time of partition was the best available remedy for a peaceful South Asia, free of communal hatred that is why the Scheduled Castes Federation of UP and top Scheduled Castes leaders supported Pakistan before partition was enacted.

The monster of BJP is dragging entire South Asia to a nuclear war thus putting at risk the lives of more than one-fifth human population of the world. Instead of coming to a dialogue table, the BJP monster and its killer squads like VHP, Bajrang Dal, and Shev Sena has turned blood thirsty. However, we warn the Indian government to stop injecting conspiracies into the Pakistan-India relationships and come to the dialogue table to sort out the issue of Kashmir to finish the partition agenda once for all and divert the sources to human development.

SCFP is concerned about the lives of millions of Dalits and Muslims and other minorities and calls upon the world community, especially the United Nations, to influence to stop forthwith the genocide of Dalits and Muslims in India and constitute an international commission to investigate into the horrible Human Rights violations against Dalits and Muslims in India.

SCFP is proud of the decision of the Dalits who followed Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah 55 years ago as their current generations are more safer than of those who went with India.

SCFP makes it clear to India that the people of Pakistan, irrespective of any caste, creed, religion, and ethnicity are united to defend their motherland if India commits any adventure.

Surendar Valasai
Scheduled Castes Federation of Pakistan
Kaloi, THARPARKAR
Phone: Karachi: 5804044
Mobile: 0300-9206547

Dear Sir

Recent situation between India and Pakistan raises certain questions of concern. We are confident that Pakistan defence forces are fully prepared in giving a befitting reply to any misadventure from Indians, who have been threatening to launch a full scale offensive. Indians know very well that their aggressive design will be successfully foiled by a highly motivated, disciplined, trained and qualitatively superior Pakistani forces. This is the main reason that they have not crossed the limits and restricted themselves to mere verbal threats. Strong missile system is yet another deterrence which kept the Indians at bay. However, in any long conflict, the numerical superiority may shift the balance towards Indian favour and Pakistani forces may feel over stretched in men and material. Our Generals must have felt this psychological pinch of facing an enemy three times their size.

In any conflict, the numerical strength does play a vital role in executing decisive war plans. With sufficient manpower, Generals have the liberty of concentrating their forces at one point to nullify enemy’s pressure while at the same time they can launch a full strength offensive at another point to gain tactical advantage. Given the present strength of Pakistan and Indian armed forces, it seems that Pakistan cannot enjoy this liberty. Although, Pakistan can defeat aggression successfully but it may not be possible to force the enemy into a position where we can negotiate a ceasefire deal according to our terms and conditions. It is, therefore, imperative for Pakistan to devise a contingency plan at this stage and re-process some of the strategies in order to increase its numerical strength vis-a-vis the Indians.

The most cost effective way to achieve this is to provide rigorous military training to all men and women above 18 years of age. NCC programme in colleges can provide a solid base to initiate this plan. Young and enthusiast men and women should be imparted detailed combat training like proper armed forces. This can be done through short courses like OTS. Initially the training could be imparted for 9 to 12 months followed by 30 days refresher every year. This will not only provide a useful combat force to defend the motherland but also inculcate valuable virtues among our young men and women. Usually, after clearing F.Sc./F.A., the students have to wait for about 6 to 9 months before joining their professional colleges. This time period can be utilised (with slight extension in the time frame) to provide the initial training. Everyone accomplishing this training should be provided various incentives like extra percentage of marks and priority in government jobs. This will not only relieve the armed forces under situations like we are facing today but also provide better understanding and coordination between armed forces and civilians. Furthermore, we will have a strong defence force which will be superior to Indians both in quality and quantity.

I would highly appreciate more views from fellow Pakistanis about the practicality of this proposal.

Aamir Nawaid
P.O. Box-22550
Doha, Qatar
Phone: +974 531 5636

Dear Mr. Sehgal:

Your article was informative. Although focus of your Op-ed was suicide bombings recently witnessed in Pakistan, it essentially conforms to a commonly held view that Islamist-Jihadis among Islamic Ummah are driven to desperation in search of justice for Muslims grievances against Western world, Israel and India.

This letter offers a different explanation based on the motives of the ring leaders responsible for suicide bombings and Jihad. I would appreciate it if my opinion is published in your letters to editors section.

Terrorism is carried out by warriors disguised as civilians, it targets civilians by means of “civilian” weapons — cars, trucks, airliners. Attacks are planned by organizations and warlords who hide behind and mix with civilian populations. These people operate within a state territory, openly challenge its authority and act in disregard of it. They are not bound by international laws. They do not target armies but their innocent civilian populations. They do not aim to overcome the enemy but to defeat its will to fight and impose concessions and capitulation by destroying its morale rather than its infrastructure and military capability. Suicide bombers are recruited, indoctrinated, supplied with explosives, sent on a mission and delivered to target — in short, supported all the way — by a network of people who are alive and well and who plan to stay alive and reap the benefits of these only apparently suicidal actions.

This is not desperation. It is a strategy. It is the byproduct of a new world (dis)order produced by the end of the Cold War and globalization.

Terrorism is neither the act nor the product of desperation performed by the lone madman, but an effective tactical weapon that maximizes the military objectives of a mission, where the human being who carries out the operation is part of the weapon system. Suicide bomber is a highly versatile missile, not affected by adverse weather conditions or rough terrain. Suicide bombers are smart weapons of the poor. As low-tech, low-cost weapons, they are weapons of choice, not of necessity. That is why it is time to understand terrorism for what it truly is — a new kind of warfare — for only such clarity will produce effective responses.

Conventional wars are too costly and too brutal to be acceptable “continuations of diplomacy by other means.” Most states accept this. For weak, non-state actors, terrorism is the best available strategy to mount a challenge. Their aim is not to conquer enemy’s territory or to defeat it on the battlefield, but rather to wear down the enemy and break its will to fight. The strategy of terror is therefore low-intensity conflict fought over a long period and mostly far away from battlefields, focusing on civilian aspects of life and being dependent on highly decentralized operatives often acting entirely on their own deep inside enemy territory, and relying on a vast network of support across the globe, both human and financial.

Terrorism is an instrument of war, a war method not entirely of new kind for Pakistan. Fighting it must be kept distinct from the political objectives terrorism portends to promote

Best regards,

Kishan Bhatia, Ph.D.
20222 Laverton
Katy, TX 77450
281 492 0380

Dear Editor:

It is quite amusing to read about the recent statement of the Indian Government’s spokesperson at a press meeting as following:

Quote “Pledges are pledges. Nations have to abide by them... These are commitments on which Pakistan must deliver if we are to see lasting peace and stability in the region and reduction in tensions.” Unquote

It might be highlighted that the statement was made in response to what President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan has told to “Newsweek” that his commitment to USA and other countries of the world to stop cross-border activity was not “an assurance that, for years, nothing will happen.”

However, I would like to remind the worthy spokesperson of the Indian Government including all the Ruling Junta of India about the pledges made by the former Prime Minister J. L. Nehru, who was not only one of the founding fathers of that country and father of Indira Gandhi, the first woman Prime Minister of India but a very respected and revered politician as following:

1. After landing of the Indian troops in Kashmir on Oct. 26, 1947, Nehru pledged to his counterpart in Pakistan, Prime Minister Liaquat A. Khan verbally as well as through a telegram, which is part of historical manuscripts now that the people of Kashmir would be allowed to decide through a referendum whether they would like to join India or Pakistan.

2. He also pledged the same to the people of Kashmir living throughout the world and to the whole world community.

3. In a speech at the UN which is part of the UN records now, which nobody can either deny or destroy, Nehru pledged that his government would allow the people of Kashmir their right to self- determination through a plebiscite under the auspices of the UN

Fifty-five years including 17 years of Nehru’s rule have passed but his pledge is yet to be implemented.

If Nehru had fulfilled his pledge by the time he died in 1964, lasting peace, stability, prosperity and uplift of the basic amenities of life and civic infrastructure on both sides of the border would have been effected by now and standard of living of ordinary citizens in both the countries would have been far better than what it is today.

The real irony is that Nehru never wanted to fulfil his pledge made to the world because of his deep routed bias against the predominantly Muslim people of Kashmir as his ancestors were Kashmiri Hindu Pandits including him.

This is also confirmed by his admission to Gen Sir Frank Messervy, after the latter convinced him in early 1948 that Kashmir’s real place was in Pakistan, that Kashmir was written on his (Nehru’s) heart as Calais was written on Queen Mary’s heart.

It is a shame that due to highly biased thoughts, policy and convictions of few powerful ruling class persons of India, the whole region of South East Asia has come closer to nuclear holocaust. I urge the educated, mature, civilized and peace-loving but silent overwhelming majority of the Indian people to force their government to abide by its pledges and promises made to the whole world about Kashmir so that the future generations on both sides of the border could become more prosperous with better standard of living than their predecessors under the umbrella of peace, happiness and liberty.

Thanks and Best Regards,

Sincerely,

Engr. Aamir A. Salaria,
St. Louis, MO. 63131
U.S.A.