Normally I refrain from elaborating on topics related to politics and typical political biases because my main interest revolves around strategic subjects, however, events are taking place, one after the other, targeting the Pakistan Army and its unity of command. I cannot just sit by. I have to elaborate the importance of unity of command and I will definitely back our forces and the establishment in order to protect Pakistan’s interests. The Pashtun Tahafuz Movement’s (PTM) was gathering in Islamabad last month where PTM leaders like Manzoor Pashteen, Ali Wazir and Eman Mazari voiced slogans against the Pakistan Army and its unity of command.
The majority of people present were deemed to be Afghan refugees while some were also imported from Afghanistan. Soon after the gathering, the former Afghan vice president Amrullah Saleh tweeted.
“The media in Pakistan aren’t allowed to give coverage to this brave & historic rally. The conformist social & political platforms also feel threatened by uncoventionalism, charisma and appeal of the PTM. It is original and isn’t barrowing from anyone. Dear brothers and sisters in PTM, you all have our prayers and best wishes. Keep it up.”
This tweet by ex-Afghan vice president clearly indicates that all undesirable forces are behind the PTM rally.
The PTM led by Manzoor Pashteen is said to be supported by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) terrorist group as well as other terror organizations. The point of concern is that people who are misled by PTM forget the fact that the Pakistan Army is the only strong force that stands against enemy plans in Pakistan, as is being done in Libya, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan and lately Sudan. When threatened and when a nation is vulnerable it is the strong armed forces that can deal with challenges like foreign invasion and 5th generation proxies.
In this regard, the Russia-Ukraine war should be a huge eye opener for Pakistan and we must be thankful that Pakistan has a strong deterrence and a strong military establishment.
India has emerged as one of the trusted comrades of western allied forces in the present Great Game scenario and moreover, India has also established deep relations with all Afghan regimes in Kabul since the partition of the sub-continent.
The Indian presence in Afghanistan is that of a spoiler rather than a helper, although India has spent billions of dollars in Afghanistan with massive infra structure related projects but the real reason was to create maximum leverage amongst Afghans and ignite rivalry against Pakistan. Indians have done this task very well since many decades as is clearly visible from Afghanistan attitude towards Pakistan. Moreover, India wanted to destabilize Pakistan using Afghan soil by creating terror outfits like TTP, BLA and other terror groups present in Afghanistan.
The bloody insurgency that Pakistan experienced in the past decade was ultimately an Indian-sponsored campaign against Pakistan and further to repeat their vicious plans as per Akhand Bharat ideology. One worrisome fact is the emergence of the RSS and its Hindutva ideology that has expansionist plans west ward. The “previous” Indian investment in Afghanistan and military base in Tajikistan is the clear example of such ambitions.
We all well know that India is surrounded by oceans on three sides. The north part lie the Himalayas and China where the Indians always found threat from. On the eastern side is Myanmar and the ASEAN nations but that is not really of any interest to India for many reasons. The only direction where they would like to expand is the west towards Central Asia and West Asia and here, Pakistan is located like a strong bulwark in their way.
Just consider for a moment, had Pakistan not be located in their way, the Indian RSS ideology would have spread like wildfire and would have overrun and captured Central Asia, even Iran and the Gulf would be under existential threat.
The historical hatred for the Muslim invaders coming from Central Asia, the Arabian Gulf and Iran has always been in the hearts and minds of extremist RSS leaders. They want revenge for these invasions from Central Asia for thousand years. We have often heard an Indian retired General in Indian TV talk shows telling viewers and proclaiming to never forget what these Mughals and other rulers did to our ancestors hundreds of years ago, and keep this in mind always and never forget it.
Now a new form of 5th generation warfare has been initiated after many lessons learnt by enemies of Pakistan like how successful Pakistan army has been countering TTP proxies in SWAT and FATA, nullifying Indian proxies in Balochistan and Karachi.
This failure of the enemy’s model plan against Pakistan to weaken it or disintegrate by 2015 spawned a new form of approach, that is, targeting Pakistan’s strong military establishment and try to shake its Unity of Command. As I have written previously, there is a complete lecture on Pakistan army’s Unity of Command from a British thinktank “Anatol Lieven” who lectured at Sydney with an Australian institute 12 years ago that suggested that if the Pakistan Army as an institution would fall, the country will disintegrate pretty quickly.
He described that process in his book “Pakistan: A Hard Country”. This is now the prime target from external forces to create such well known icons, populous political forces that could challenge the Unity of Command of Pakistan army.
Of course, this task has to be done diligently and exploiting the sentiments of common people’ the PTM, TTP aided by with disgruntled local political elements and Afghan refugees are the main tools of this anti-military campaign.
The key point of 5th generation warfare is to utilize the flow of popular sentiments that could potentially be bought well within various sections of population. For example, in the 80s era the MQM utilized popular sentiments against the quota system, urban and rural division of resources, etc.
The TTP insurgency in Swat used Shariah Law as the basis of their struggle, the FATA based TTP used Pakistan’s involvement in the War on Terror and collateral damage by drone attacks and PTM’s Manzoor Pashteen is now using the people’s suffering due to War on Terror as an excuse to their further vicious agenda.
At the current time the social media is being used to target Pakistan Army’s Unity of Command that must not be tolerated at any cost. The collaborators of such campaign are mostly comprised of the young generation that actually knows nothing about the history of Pakistan and related provincial sensitivities. The main purpose of this type of campaign is to weaken the country’s soft image, infrastructure, and economy.
It is a matter of some concern that manpower utilized for such vicious events are mostly Afghan refugees and/or people coming from Afghanistan. For example, during the May 9th events, many Afghan nationals were captured who were found involved in creating chaos, burning buildings and sabotage activities.
I am convinced that the time has come to put curbs on Afghan nationals and Afghan refugees who are mostly being used as a human resource, rather human fodder for adverse activities against Pakistan. They are carrying out businesses in every big city and are grouped like small Mafias in every financial and residential district of Pakistan. They use the bribe culture to get away with their crimes and are literally abusing Pakistani Passport and National Identity Cards. Afghan nationals own considerable real-estate in Pakistan and they are also engaged in smuggling and dollar manipulation.
They have B-type currency exchange companies that is one of the main sources of dollar devaluation, as dollars are being smuggled to Afghanistan via these B-type exchange dealers.
Moving forward, in order to handle the PTM, TTP and Afghan elements, our intelligence networks need more resources (state of the art technology tools) and rigorous training, keeping in mind various internal and external fronts.
It includes all levels of resources starting from getting additional resources for defence agencies to civil law enforcement agencies, so we need to develop counter capabilities of civil law enforcement agencies for handling any type of chaos, riots, etc, aggressive Intelligence Based Operations (IBOs) must continue on long term basis. IBOs are proving extremely effective and must be extended to all other domains wherever necessary.
Our Police is not yet designed to handle hybrid warfare, so it is necessary to setup training for overall police structure in Pakistan on how to handle such situation on quick response basis.
It is a matter of satisfaction that Pakistani authorities have successfully controlled smuggling by sealing off the entire Afghan border and heavy crackdown on illegal dollar and smuggling mafias, resulting in considerable in gain in dollar value against the Rupee.
My suggestion will be to continue strict curb and control on the Afghan border to ensure the Afghans will not be able to utilize tools of economic proxy against Pakistan.
