Pakistan and a changing world - PART 3

Contributing Editor Vice Admiral (Retd) Iqbal F Quadir says Pakistan needs to adjust to a changing world.

Continuing the preview of immediate and past events that have affected the country internally or externally since independence, and official records not being easily accessible, this and subsequent parts of the article were confined to events in personal knowledge of this scribe. Starting with imperialism that was raising its head once again after a break of almost sixty years it would be good to appreciate that the powerful have their own agenda and goals that take shape in different forms and were achieved by differing means. One such event was witnessed when British India’s Viceroy Mountbatten gave away Muslim majority and Pakistan contiguous district of Gurdaspur in Punjab to India, merely to achieve the objective of giving that country direct access to Jammu and Kashmir, a Muslim majority state but ruled by a Hindu Maharaja that should have under the inpendence agreement acceded to Pakistan. The purpose of this squalid deal was to allow India, after her independence, to continue with the century old Western great game in Central Asia and Tibet; access to where for India was only possible through Kashmir.

Similarly, the story behind the accession of the province of Sindh to the Federation of Pakistan at the time of independence and as narrated to me by the son of an intelligence officer of the old British Indian CID again highlights how the aims and objectives of an imperial / colonial power were translated into deeds. According to him, a day before the Sindh Assembly was to vote on joining the Federation of Pakistan; his father then posted not far from New Delhi in United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh) was ordered to report to the Headquarters immediately. On reaching there around 10 pm he was immediately taken to a room with a chair and table carrying some writing material. It transpired that the British CID had intercepted a telephone call that afternoon from the Manager of the now defunct Dalmia Cement Factory, then lying outside Karachi but now almost the centre of a vast megalopolis, to his Seth (owner of the mill) then visiting Calcutta, which alarmed the British top 
circles in New Delhi no end. The conversation was in the dialect of the Dalmias, which this intelligence officer understood well. He was asked to listen to the intercepted conversation and translate the same into English. Having done that he was surprised to find an English intelligence officer entering from an adjacent room with his version of the translation of the taped telephone conversation. Both confirmed that Dalmia Factory’s manager had in modern day parlance succeeded in creating a secret forward bloc of six Muslim members of the provincial assembly. Unknown to all save a few, Pakistan’s creation hung in balance were this diabolical and perfidious scheme to succeed. But that was not what the British wanted and it would seem the British intelligence and bureaucracy moved fast and at the time of voting in the assembly, Dalmia and the Congress were completely surprised and more than that greatly chagrined with the second U-turn taken by the six. Al Hamd o Lillah, by this merciful act of God through the designs of an imperial power, Pakistan came into existence and saved the almost three hundred million Muslims of Pakistan and Bangladesh from miseries currently faced by over one hundred and twenty millions Muslims of India and the horrendous killings, lootings, wanton burning of property and rapes of women that Muslims of Indian Occupied Kashmir and Gujarat state were facing in unprecedented numbers even in these so-called days of modern Indian liberal democracy and a US clasp of strategic relationship.

Mercifully again for Pakistan, by an act of God a new class of politicians has emerged in Balochistan and the Frontier Province (though all four federating units of present Pakistan were frontier provinces in their own right in the geographic sense) who’s conscience, based on Islamic values, was so far stronger than the lure of worldly or immediate gains that was popular with a lot of our graduates in the assemblies. Many self-proclaimed Muslims of the so-called secular liberal hue and the Western world, call this new class of legislators ‘fundamentalists’ etc, forgetting that but for the liberalism of these so-called fundamentalist Muslims of the 7th c AD, the present Western society based on pre-Christian era Greek mythology and democracy could never have been there. Under Amr bin Aas in Egypt, these fundamentalist Muslims saved thousands of papers / books (estimated at over twenty thousand) of Greek history and literature that would otherwise have been burned like the many more thousands already burned by the Clergy of the Christian Church when the Muslims arrived in Alexandria. This Greek treasure was translated into Arabic through which language and Arab schools and colleges of the 8th to 18th c AD, Western Europe acquired its knowledge that spawned the much proclaimed and revered Renaissance there. Contrary to those liberal actions of these fundamentalist 
Muslims, one feels appalled and horror-struck at what was done to Islamic culture in Spain, in India and much more recently in Baghdad by the self-proclaimed liberals of the world. What was done to the Muslims as the tide turned against them, for sliding away from the preachings of their own faith, was fairly well-documented in some history books. What was most recent was the reported killing (on GEO-TV tape) of ten thousand innocent Iraqi civilian men, women and children in their homes or around when the Iraqi Army, Navy or Air Force did not even put up a face leave alone fight, and who like the US armed forces suffered hardly any casualties. Ten thousand civilians in twenty days make for an average of five hundred a day. What happened to Afghan population being liberated from the terrible Taliban only history books would tell some day? One learns from history and modern history was being made right in front of us on our TV screens. Furthermore, Muslims fundamentalist or of other hues, should not forget that historiography i.e., researched historical records with comments or otherwise, was a science started by the Muslims after the death of Prophet Muhammad PBUH to list all his true sayings and doings. The complete assembly of the Ayats and Surahs of the Quran and of all the Ahadis were the result of this effort and research work. West Europeans; mainly French, English and Germans learnt of historiography during the 18th c AD and the Germans turned it into a perfect science by the late 19th c. In Pakistan, we should not hesitate to resurrect this Islamic gift to the world, starting with our own domestic affairs. It would make us better Muslims and Pakistanis, and the future generations would benefit greatly from studying truthfully recorded proceedings and mistakes of the past. Events and errors that so far have prevented the people of the federation becoming one nation at heart and from the country having a constitution that was voluntarily respected and followed faithfully by all the elements of the state.

After independence in August 1947, the first major international move by Pakistan following the firming up of relations with United Kingdom and United States of America was to allow Finance Minister Ghulam Mohammad to act as Financial Advisor to the King of Saudi Arabia. In that capacity Ghulam Mohammad helped King Saud to organize Saudi Arabia’s financial and accounting system and further, to finalize oil agreements with USA and an American oil company. That was the start of a happy relationship that brought great dividends both to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. These included billions of dollars of aid and assistance to Pakistan, in a variety of forms, specially after the Western oil companies raised the price of crude oil to new heights during the nineteen-seventies, to bring the Arab-oil price in line with the projected sale price of oil from their new off-shore oil-wells, particularly in the North Sea region that was estimated between US dollars seven and ten per barrel against the then current price of less than three US dollars. An action foretold to this scribe in 1971 by a French friend and relayed to authorities in Pakistan. During 1972, the French government and 
business circles had estimated how the Arab rulers would spend their newfound wealth, and having witnessed large Pakistani military advisory presence in all Gulf Arab States; some people in France felt French industry could benefit from a triangular cooperation. Yet they kept their feet on the ground and heads clear. Some one concerned with Defence-Industrial Complex in France mentioned that the Gulf States’ military equipment demand would be so large that the French industry would not be able to digest more than ten to twelve percent of their requirements. Even for these, they were willing for transfer of technology and establishing joint ventures without political commitments, in Pakistan and Gulf countries. Mr. Bhutto certainly saw the opportunity in the idea that unfortunately could not eventually be availed because USA fearing a threat to her interests, stymied the whole exercise by a diplomatic finesse. Her diplomatic maneuver was incredibly simple Through the Shahinshah, US authorities confidentially enquired Pakistan’s military equipment needs in preparation of endeavors to lift the then prevalent embargo on Pakistan. These lists, prepared post haste in Pakistan, were then made known to an important Arab country that was largely to fund the joint ventures, with 
predictable results. One finds Pakistan’s credibility with the Arabs has been on the wane ever since. Much later, during the 1990 Gulf war, Pakistan’s stance confused matters further for Saudi Arabia, who fearing greater threat from the North than from Iran or Israel, let US forces be based on her soil instead of depending on Pakistan any further for defence. After my retirement, during an Umrah in the late nineteen nineties, some Saudi Arabs that I had the opportunity to meet did not fail to convey their deep sense of hurt and dismay at Pakistan’s incomprehensible attitude during that war.

A long time earlier, during the days of Ayub Khan there had been a similar faux pas by Pakistan with Iran and much later in late nineteen-seventies an Iranian humanitarian gesture towards India allowed India to pose last year the severest ever threat existing-Pakistan had faced in its history so far. But more about them in the next issue as world events were moving very fast and Pakistan had recently faced two important diplomatic failures that need to be highlighted to avoid similar serious failures in the future. The first was the apparent failure of Pakistan Embassy in Washington to keep track of US determination to go after international terrorism since mid-2000 when it formed a committee of elected representatives, Senators and Congressmen, to investigate the new phenomenon and the type and extent of threat posed to USA and her interests abroad. Its report, submitted in January 2001 included Pakistan in the third category of states involved with international terrorism. On the same subject of our relations with USA, there was another apparent failure when Pakistan remained unaware of the US-Northern Alliance Defence Pact during March 2001 to finance the equipping and 
training of NA troops by USA with collaboration of Russia, India and to some extent even of Iran against 
the Taliban. In any case, by that time the Indians had built a large hospital on Tajikistan’s border with Afghanistan that not only acted as the conduit of Russian and Indian military supplies and training to NA but also acted as the base for Northern Alliances’ helicopters operating against Taliban forces in Northern Afghanistan. These and other similar diplomatic cum intelligence failures resulted in the famous surprise midnight call from General Powell to General Musharraf, either you are with us or with them. Further, according to a recent issue of The News of Karachi, another similar serious diplomatic intelligence failure took place when General Musharraf was disturbed once again at midnight with a most urgent telephone call from our ex-Minister of Information attending an OIC Foreign Minister’s conference that six Arab states were bent up-on proposing India’s membership of OIC and only General Musharraf’s threat to withdraw from that organization cooled the six-Arab-states’ ardor for India. It would seem that a lot of our ambassadors and embassies and those Pakistanis in OIC were beginning to behave like our cricketers abroad recently. Even at home we do not appear to be on terms with our Arab diplomatic guests, such that would have made atleast one of them to warn our government of what was afoot.