European Union as a Counterweight to Russian Influence

Is this not the international politics’ most significant coincidence that the Soviet Union was dissolved in December 1991 and the Maastricht Treaty that laid the foundations of the European Union was signed in February 1992? The basic purpose of the EU, it appears, has been nothing more than to induce the formerly communist states of the Eastern and Central Europe into the folds of the Western capitalist bloc by offering incentives and inducements, particularly in the form of the Schengen Agreement that has allowed the free movement of labor from the impoverished Eastern Europe to the prosperous countries of the Western Europe.

No wonder then, the Western political establishments, and particularly the US, are as freaked out about the outcome of Brexit as they had been during the Ukrainian Crisis in November 2013, when Viktor Yanukovych suspended the preparations for the implementation of an association agreement with the European Union and tried to take Ukraine back into the folds of the Russian sphere of influence by accepting a billions of dollars of loan offered by Vladimir Putin to Ukraine.

In this regard, the founding of EU has been similar to the case of Japan in the Far East. After the Second World War, when Japan was about to fall in the hands of the geographically-adjacent Soviet Union, the Truman Administration had authorized the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to subjugate Japan and also to send a signal to the leaders of the Soviet Union, which at the time had not developed their nuclear program, to desist from encroaching upon Japan in the east and West Germany in the Europe.

Then, during the Cold War, the American entrepreneurs invested heavily in Japan’s economy and made it a model industrialized nation to forestall the expansion of communism in the Far East. The revolutionary Marxist manifesto of the communal ownership of the modes of production had such an appeal among the dispossessed masses of Asia, Africa and Latin America that the capitalist “trickle-down” economics was simply not a match for it.

Eventually, the pragmatic Machiavellian strategists of the Western capitalist bloc had to invent democracy as a ground for intervention in order to offset the moral superiority and mass appeal of the communist bloc.

Notwithstanding, there is an essential precondition in the European Union’s charter of union according to which the developing economies of Europe that joined the EU allowed the free movement of goods (free trade) only on the reciprocal condition that the developed countries would allow the free movement of labor.

What’s obvious in this stipulation is the fact that the free movement of goods, services and capital only benefits the countries that have a strong manufacturing base; and the free movement of workers only favors the developing economies where labor is cheap.

Now, when the international financial institutions, like the IMF and WTO, promote free trade by exhorting the developing countries all over the world to reduce tariffs and subsidies without the reciprocal free movement of labor, whose interests do such institutions try to protect? Obviously, they try to protect the interests of their biggest donors by shares, i.e. the developed countries.

Some market fundamentalists who irrationally believe in the laissez-faire capitalism try to justify this unfair practice by positing Schumpeter’s theory of “Creative destruction:” that the free trade between unequal trading partners leads to the destruction of the host country’s existing economic order and a subsequent reconfiguration gives birth to a better economic order.

Whenever one comes up with gross absurdities such proportions, they should always make it contingent upon the principle of reciprocity: that is, if free trade is beneficial for the nascent industrial base of the developing economies then the free movement of labor is equally beneficial for the workforce of the developed countries.

The policymakers of the developing countries must not allow themselves to be hoodwinked by such deceptive arguments, instead they should devise national policies which suit the interests of their underprivileged masses. But the trouble is that the governments of the Third World countries are dependent on foreign investment, that’s why they cannot adopt an independent economic and trade policy.

The so-called “multinational” corporations based in the Western financial districts make profits from the consumer markets all over the world and pay a share of those profits to their respective governments as bribes in the form of taxes. Every balance of trade deficit due to the lack of strong manufacturing base makes the developing nations poorer, and every balance of trade surplus further adds to the already immense fortune of the developed world.

A single large multinational corporation earns more revenue annually than the total GDP of many developing nations. Without this neocolonial system of exploitation the whole edifice of supposedly “meritocratic” capitalism will fall flat on its face and the myth of individual incentive would get busted beyond repair, because it only means incentive for the pike and not for the minnows.

Notwithstanding, while joining the EU, Britain compromised on the rights of its working class in order to protect the interests of its bankers and industrialists, because free trade with the rest of the EU countries spurred British exports.

I am of the opinion that the British working classes overwhelmingly voted in the favor of Brexit, because after Britain’s entry into the EU and when the Schengen Agreement on abolishing the internal border checks between the EU member states became effective in 1995, the cheaper labor force from the Eastern and Central Europe flooded the markets of Western Europe; and consequently the wages of indigenous British labor force dropped and it also became difficult for them to find jobs because the foreigners were willing to do the same job for lesser pay.

Hence raising the level of unemployment among the British workers and consequent discontentment with the EU. The subsequent lifting of restrictions on the Romanians and Bulgarians to work in the UK in January 2014 further exacerbated the problem.

The biggest incentive for the British working class to vote for Brexit is that the East European workers will have to leave Britain after its exit from the EU, and the jobs will once again become available with better wages to the indigenous workforce.

Although the champions of globalization and neoliberalism all over the world are bemoaning the fate of the EU after Brexit, but the recent success of right-wingers all over the world: like the rise of Trump in America, the Brexit referendum in the UK, the success of Modi and his hardline BJP in India, the emergence of Buddhist extremists in Sri Lanka and Myanmar and the ascendancy of Islamic hardliners in the Muslim-majority countries, all of these are not the success of conservatism, as such. Conservatism is an outdated political creed which is simply not a match for the more refined liberal worldview.

The aforementioned reactionary anomalies signify only one thing: the failure of neoliberalism as a political and economic ideology. Social liberalism of ‘60s and ‘70s used to be an inclusive and egalitarian philosophy while neoliberalism, ‘90s-onward, with its exclusive emphasis on economic growth and elitist values, and without any regard for social justice and class equality, is losing its appeal among the masses all over the world.

In fact, politics has become such a comic business after the onset of neoliberalism and the so-called “globalism” that actual comedians, like Jimmy Morales, have won a resounding victory in the Guatemalan elections last year; similarly, the Italian comedian, Beppe Grillo’s, “Five Star movement” has also secured more than 100 deputies in the last Italian elections; and the biggest tragicomic of them all, Donald Trump, too, has been elected as the president of the US.

Notwithstanding, although the EU's labor provisions ensure adequate wages and safeguard the rights of workers, but the British working class chose to quit the EU on the basis of demand and supply of labor. With East European workers out of the country, the supply of labor will reduce hence increasing the demand. The native British workforce can then renegotiate better terms and conditions from the owners of industries and businesses, and it will also ensure ready availability of jobs.

Regardless, instead of lamenting the abysmal failure of globalization and neoliberal economic policies, we need to ask a simple question that why do workers choose to leave their homes and hearths, and family and friends in their native countries and choose to work in a foreign country? They obviously do it for better wages.

In that case, however, instead of offering band aid solutions, we need to revise the prevailing global economic order; and formulate prudent and far-reaching economic and trade policies that can reduce the imbalance of wealth distribution between the prosperous and impoverished nations; hence, reducing the incentive for immigrant workers to seek employment in the developed countries.

Free movement of workers only benefits a small number of individuals and families, because the majority of workforce is left behind to rot in their native developing countries where economy is not doing as well as in the developed world, thanks to the neoliberal economic policies. A comprehensive reform of the global economic and trade policies, on the other hand, will benefit everyone, except the bankers, industrialists and the beneficiaries of the existing neoliberal world order.

More to the point, the promotion of free trade by the mainstream neoliberal media has been the norm in the last several decades, but the implementation of the Schengen Agreement in March 1995 that allowed the free movement of people between the EU member states has been an unprecedented exception.

Free trade benefits the industrialized nations of the EU, particularly Germany and to some extent the rest of the developed economies of the Western Europe; but the free movement of labor benefits the cheaper workforce of the impoverished Eastern and Central Europe.

The developed economies of the Western Europe would never have acceded to the condition of the free movement of labor that goes against their economic interests; but the political establishment of the US, which is the hub of corporate power and wields enormous influence in the Western capitalist bloc, must have persuaded the unwilling states of the Western Europe to yield to the condition in order to wean away the formerly communist states of the Eastern and Central Europe from the Russian influence.

Had there been any merit to the founding of the EU, the Western Europe would have promptly accepted Turkey’s request to join the EU. But they kept delaying the issue of Turkish membership in the EU for decades, because with a population of 78 million, Turkey is one of the most populous countries in Eurasia. Millions of Turks working in Germany have already become a burden on the welfare economy of their host country. Turkey’s accession to the EU will further open the floodgates of immigrant workers seeking employment in the Western Europe.

Moreover, Turkey is already a member of the NATO and a longstanding and reliable partner of the Western powers; while the limited offer to join the EU, as I have already mentioned, serves as an inducement to the formerly communist states of the Eastern and Central Europe to forswear their allegiance to Russia and to become the strategic allies of the Western powers.

Thus, all the grandstanding and moral posturing of unity and the equality of opportunity aside, the hopelessly neoliberal institution, the EU, in effect, is nothing more than the civilian counterpart of the Western military alliance against the erstwhile Soviet Union, the NATO, that employs a much more subtle and insidious tactic of economic warfare to win over political allies and to punish the adversaries that dare to sidestep from the global trade and economic policy as laid down by the Western capitalist bloc.

Motives behind the Assassination of Russian Ambassador to Turkey

In order to identify the likely motives of the 22 years old Turkish police officer who assassinated the Russian ambassador to Turkey, Andrey Karlov, we must keep in mind the backdrop that the Turkish and Iranian foreign ministers are en route to Russia to find a solution to the five years old Syrian conflict for the first time without the participation of the US.

Although the mainstream media is trumpeting that Mert Altintas, the assassin of the Russian ambassador, had shouted Islamist slogans in broken Arabic with a Turkish accent at the scene of the murder, therefore he must either be a member of the Islamic State or the Al Nusra Front; but from his clean-shaven face and black suit, he appeared more like an intelligence asset than an Islamic jihadist.

Bear in mind that the Erdogan Administration has repeatedly accused the US-based liberal Islamic preacher, Fethullah Gulen, for hatching a coup plot against the Turkish government in July who is known to have inside connections in the US Administration. Moreover, it is also a known fact that thousands of Gulenists have infiltrated the Turkish armed forces, judiciary and more importantly the police and intelligence agencies, which are in the process of being purged by the Erdogan Adminstration.

All of these facts and the motive that an important NATO member, Turkey, which has the second largest army in NATO, has been drifting away from the American-led alliance since the July coup plot and has developed close working relations with Russia, particularly in their respective Syria policy, points the finger only in one direction: that is, the likelihood of a double agent whose mission was to sabotage the relations between Russia and Turkey and to bring the latter back into the folds of NATO.

The sudden thaw in Turkey’s relations with Russia and latent hostility towards America is partly due to the fact that Erdogan holds the US-based preacher, Fethullah Gulen, responsible for the July coup plot and suspects that the latter had received tacit support from certain quarters in the US; but more importantly Turkey also feels betrayed by the duplicitous American policy in Syria and Iraq, and that’s why it is now seeking closer cooperation with Russia in the region.

In order to elaborate America’s duplicity in Syria, let us settle on one issue first: there were two parties to the Syrian civil war initially, the Syrian regime and the Syrian opposition; which party did the US support since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in August 2011 to June 2014, when the Islamic State overran Mosul in Iraq?

Obviously, the US supported the Syrian opposition. And what was the composition of that so-called “Syrian opposition?” A small fraction of it was comprised of defected Syrian soldiers who go by the name of Free Syria Army, but the vast majority has been comprised of Islamic jihadists who were generously funded, trained, armed and internationally legitimized by the Western powers, the Gulf States, Turkey and Jordan.

The Islamic State is nothing more than one of the numerous Syrian jihadist outfits, others being: al Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, al-Tawhid brigade, Jaysh al Islam etc. The reason why the US has turned against the Islamic State is that all other jihadist outfits have local ambitions that are limited to fighting the Syrian regime only, while the Islamic State overstepped its mandate in Syria when it captured Mosul and Anbar in Iraq.

All the Sunni jihadist groups that are operating in Syria are just as brutal as the Islamic State. The only thing that differentiates the Islamic State from the rest is that it is more ideological and independent-minded, and it also includes hundreds of Western citizens in its ranks who can later become a national security risk to the Western countries; a fact which has now become obvious after the Paris and Brussels bombings.

This fact explains the ambivalent policy of the US towards a monster that it had nurtured in Syria from August 2011 to June 2014, until the Islamic State captured Mosul in June 2014 and also threatened America’s most steadfast ally in the region – Masoud Barzani and his capital Erbil in the Iraqi Kurdistan, which is also the hub of Big Oil’s Northern Iraq operations. After that development, the US made a volte-face on its previous regime-change policy in Syria and now the declared objective became the war against the Islamic State.

Notwithstanding, the dilemma that Turkey is facing in Syria is quite unique: in the wake of the Ghouta chemical weapons attacks in Damascus in August 2013 the stage was all set for yet another no-fly zone and “humanitarian intervention” a la Qaddafi’s Libya; the war hounds were waiting for a finishing blow and the then-Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, and the former Saudi intelligence chief, Bandar bin Sultan, were shuttling between the Western capitals to lobby for the military intervention. Francois Hollande had already announced his intentions and David Cameron was also onboard.

Here it should be remembered that even during the Libyan intervention, Obama’s policy was a bit ambivalent and France under the leadership of Sarkozy had taken the lead role. In the Syrian case, however, the British parliament forced Cameron to seek a vote for military intervention in the House of Commons before committing the British troops and air force to Syria.

Taking cue from the British parliament, the US Congress also compelled Obama to seek approval before another ill-conceived military intervention; and since both the administrations lacked the requisite majority in their respective parliaments and the public opinion was also fiercely against another Middle Eastern war, therefore, Obama and Cameron dropped their plans of enforcing a no-fly zone over Syria.

In the end, France was left alone as the only Western power still in the favor of intervention; at this point, however, the seasoned Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, staged a diplomatic coup by announcing that the Syrian regime is willing to ship its chemical weapons’ stockpiles out of Syria and subsequently the issue was amicably resolved.

Turkey, Jordan and the Gulf Arab states: the main beneficiaries of the Sunni Jihad in Syria, however, had lost a golden opportunity to deal a fatal blow to the Shi’a alliance comprising Iran, Syria and their Lebanon-based proxy, Hezbollah.

To add insult to the injury, the Islamic State, one of the numerous Sunni jihadist outfits fighting in Syria, overstepped its mandate in Syria and overran Mosul in northern Iraq in June 2014 and threatened the capital of America’s most steadfast ally in the region, Masoud Barzani’s Erbil, as I have already mentioned.

The US had no choice but to adopt some countermeasures to show that it is still sincere in pursuing its schizophrenic “war on terror” policy; at the same time, however, it assured its Turkish, Jordanian and Gulf Arab allies that despite fighting a war against the maverick jihadist outfit, the Islamic State, the Western policy of training and arming the so-called “moderate Syrian militants” will continue apace and that Bashar al-Assad’s days are numbered, one way or the other.

Moreover, declaring the war against the Islamic State in August 2014 served another purpose too: in order to commit the US Air Force to Syria and Iraq, the Obama Administration needed the approval of the US Congress which was not available, as I have already mentioned, but by declaring a war against the Islamic State, which is a designated terrorist organization, the Obama Administration availed itself of the “war on terror” provisions in the US’ laws and thus circumvented the US Congress.

But then Russia threw a spanner in the schemes of NATO and its Gulf Arab allies in September 2015 by its surreptitious military buildup in Latakia that was executed with an element of surprise unheard of since Rommel, the Desert Fox. And now Turkey, Jordan, the Gulf Arab states and their Sunni jihadist proxies in Syria find themselves at the receiving end in the Syrian civil war.

Therefore, although the Sunni states of the Middle East still toe the American line in the region publicly, but behind the scenes there is bitter resentment that the US has let them down by making an about-face on the previous regime change policy in Syria and the subsequent declaration of war against one group of Sunni militants in Syria, i.e. the Islamic State.

This change of policy by the US directly benefits the Iranian-led axis in the region. In the war against the Islamic State in Mosul, Turkey has also contributed troops but more than waging a war against the Islamic State the purpose of those troops is to ensure the safety of the Sunni population of Mosul against the onslaught of the Iraqi armed forces and especially the irregular Shi’a militias, which are known for committing excesses against the Sunnis in Iraq.

How Moderate Rebels are Supported by Islamic State in Syria?

During the last couple of months, two very similar military campaigns have simultaneously been going on in Syria and Iraq, while the Syrian offensive with Russian air support against the militants in east Aleppo has been reviled as an assault against humanity, the military campaign in Mosul by the Iraqi armed forces and Shi’a militias with American air support has been lauded as the struggle for “liberation” by the mainstream media.

Although the campaign in Mosul is against the Islamic State while in east Aleppo the Syrian regime has launched a military offensive against the so-called “moderate rebels,” but the distinction between Islamic jihadists and “moderate” militants is more illusory than real.

Before it turned rogue and overran Mosul in Iraq, the Islamic State used to be an integral part of the Syrian opposition against the regime and it still enjoys close ideological and operational ties with other militant groups in Syria. Keep in mind that although turf wars are common not just between the Islamic State and other militant outfits in Syria, but also among the rebel groups themselves; however, the ultimate objective of the Islamic State and the rest of militant outfits in Syria is the same: that is, to overthrow the Shi’a majority regime of Bashar al-Assad.

It is not a coincidence then that when the regime was on the verge of winning a resounding victory against the militants holed up in east Aleppo, the Islamic State came to the rescue of its brothers-in-arms by opening up a new front in Palmyra from where it had been evicted in March. Consequently, the regime has to send reinforcements from Aleppo to Palmyra in order to defend the city and thus the momentum of the military offensive in east Aleppo has stalled.

It defies explanation that while the US has announced the Phase II of the military campaign against the Islamic State in Syria and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have amassed north of the Islamic State’s bastion in al-Raqqah, instead of buttressing its defenses against the SDF in the north, the Islamic State has launched an offensive against the Syrian regime in the south? In order to answer this perplexing question, we need to revisit the ideology, composition and objectives of the Islamic State in Syria.

Unlike al Qaeda, which is a terrorist organization that generally employs anticolonial and anti-West rhetoric to draw funds and followers, the Islamic State and the majority of militant groups in Syria are basically anti-Shi’a sectarian outfits. By the designation “terrorism” it is generally implied and understood that an organization which has the intentions and capability of carrying out acts of terrorism on the Western soil.

Though the Islamic State has carried out a few acts of terrorism against the Western countries, such as the high profile Paris and Brussels attacks, but if we look at the pattern of its subversive activities, especially in the Middle East, it generally targets the Shi’a Muslims in Syria and Iraq. A few acts of terrorism that it has carried out in the Gulf Arab states were also directed against the Shi’a Muslims in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia and Shi’a mosques in Yemen and Kuwait.

Many biased political commentators of the mainstream media deliberately try to muddle the reality in order to link the emergence of the Islamic State to the ill-conceived invasion of Iraq in 2003 by the Bush Administration. Their motive behind this chicanery is to absolve the Obama Administration’s policy of supporting the Syrian opposition against the Syrian regime since the beginning of the Syrian civil war until June 2014 when Islamic State overran Mosul and Obama Administration made an about-face on its previous policy of indiscriminate support to the Syrian opposition and declared a war against a faction of Syrian opposition: that is, the Islamic State.

Moreover, such spin-doctors also try to find the roots of Islamic State in al-Qaeda in Iraq; however, the insurgency in Iraq died down after “the Iraq surge” of 2007. Al-Qaeda in Iraq became an impotent organization after the death of Abu Musab al Zarqawi and the subsequent surge of troops in Iraq. The re-eruption of insurgency in Iraq has been the spillover effect of nurturing militants in Syria against the Assad regime, when the Islamic State overran Fallujah and parts of Ramadi in January 2014 and subsequently captured Mosul in June 2014.

The borders between Syria and Iraq are quite porous and it’s impossible to contain the flow of militants and arms between the two countries. The Obama Administration’s policy of providing money, arms and training to the Syrian militants in the training camps located at the border regions of Turkey and Jordan was bound to backfire sooner or later.

Notwithstanding, in order to simplify the Syrian theater of proxy wars for the sake of readers, I would divide it into three separate and distinct zones of influence. Firstly, the northern and northwestern zone along the Syria-Turkey border, in and around Aleppo and Idlib, which is under the influence of Turkey and Qatar.

Both of these countries share the ideology of Muslim Brotherhood and they provide money, training and arms to the Sunni Arab jihadist organizations like al-Tawhid Brigade, Nour al-Din Zenki Brigade and Ahrar al-Sham in the training camps located at the border regions of Turkey.

Secondly, the southern zone of influence along the Syria-Jordan border, in Daraa and Quneitra and as far away as Homs and Damascus. It is controlled by the Saudi-Jordanian camp and they provide money, weapons and training to the Salafist militant groups such as al-Nusra Front and the Southern Front of the so-called “moderate” Free Syria Army in Daraa and Quneitra, and Jaysh al-Islam in the suburbs of Damascus.

Their military strategy is directed by a Military Operations Center (MOC) and training camps located in the border regions of Jordan. Here let me clarify that this distinction is quite overlapping and heuristic at best, because al-Nusra’s jihadists have taken part in battles as far away as Idlib and Aleppo.

And finally, the eastern zone of influence along the Syria-Iraq border, in al-Raqqah and Deir al-Zor, which has been controlled by a relatively maverick Iraq-based jihadist outfit, the Islamic State. Thus, leaving the Mediterranean coast and Syria’s border with Lebanon, the Baathist and Shi’a-dominated Syrian regime has been surrounded from all three sides by the hostile Sunni forces: Turkey and Muslim Brotherhood in the north, Jordan and the Salafists of the Gulf Arab States in the south and the Sunni Arab-majority regions of Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in the east.

The bottom line is that although the American efforts to stall the momentum of the Islamic jihadists’ expansion in Iraq appears to be sincere, but the Western powers and their regional allies are still pursuing the duplicitous policy of using the Syrian militants, including the Islamic State, to destabilize the Assad regime in Syria.

Why Turkey is seeking cooperation with Russia in Syria?

The sudden thaw in Turkey’s relations with Russia and latent hostility towards America is partly due to the fact that Erdogan holds the US-based preacher, Fethullah Gulen, responsible for the July coup plot and suspects that the latter had received tacit support from certain quarters in the US; but more importantly Turkey also feels betrayed by the duplicitous American policy in Syria and Iraq, and that’s why it is now seeking closer cooperation with Russia in the region.

In order to elaborate American duplicity in Syria, let us settle on one issue first: there were two parties to the Syrian civil war initially, the Syrian regime and the Syrian opposition; which party did the US support since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in August 2011 to June 2014, when the Islamic State overran Mosul in Iraq?

Obviously, the US supported the Syrian opposition. And what was the composition of that so-called “Syrian opposition?” A small fraction of it was comprised of defected Syrian soldiers who go by the name of Free Syria Army, but the vast majority has been comprised of Islamic jihadists who were generously funded, trained, armed and internationally legitimized by the Western powers, the Gulf States, Turkey and Jordan.

The Islamic State is nothing more than one of the numerous Syrian jihadist outfits, others being: al Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, al-Tawhid brigade, Jaysh al Islam etc. The reason why the US has turned against the Islamic State is that all other jihadist outfits have local ambitions that are limited to fighting the Syrian regime only, while the Islamic State overstepped its mandate in Syria when it captured Mosul and Anbar in Iraq.

All the Sunni jihadist groups that are operating in Syria are just as brutal as the Islamic State. The only thing that differentiates the Islamic State from the rest is that it is more ideological and independent-minded, and it also includes hundreds of Western citizens in its ranks who can later become a national security risk to the Western countries; a fact which has now become obvious after the Paris and Brussels bombings.

This fact explains the ambivalent policy of the US towards a monster that it had nurtured in Syria from August 2011 to June 2014, until the Islamic State captured Mosul in June 2014 and also threatened America’s most steadfast ally in the region – Masoud Barzani and his capital Erbil in the Iraqi Kurdistan, which is also the hub of Big Oil’s Northern Iraq operations. After that development, the US made a volte-face on its previous regime-change policy in Syria and now the declared objective became the war against the Islamic State.

Notwithstanding, the dilemma that Turkey is facing in Syria is quite unique: in the wake of the Ghouta chemical weapons attacks in Damascus in August 2013 the stage was all set for yet another no-fly zone and “humanitarian intervention” a la Qaddafi’s Libya; the war hounds were waiting for a finishing blow and the then-Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, and the former Saudi intelligence chief, Bandar bin Sultan, were shuttling between the Western capitals to lobby for the military intervention. Francois Hollande had already announced his intentions and David Cameron was also onboard.

Here it should be remembered that even during the Libyan intervention, Obama’s policy was a bit ambivalent and France under the leadership of Sarkozy had taken the lead role. In the Syrian case, however, the British parliament forced Cameron to seek a vote for military intervention in the House of Commons before committing the British troops and air force to Syria.

Taking cue from the British parliament, the US Congress also compelled Obama to seek approval before another ill-conceived military intervention; and since both the administrations lacked the requisite majority in their respective parliaments and the public opinion was also fiercely against another Middle Eastern war, therefore, Obama and Cameron dropped their plans of enforcing a no-fly zone over Syria.

In the end, France was left alone as the only Western power still in the favor of intervention; at this point, however, the seasoned Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, staged a diplomatic coup by announcing that the Syrian regime is willing to ship its chemical weapons’ stockpiles out of Syria and subsequently the issue was amicably resolved.

Turkey, Jordan and the Gulf Arab states – the main beneficiaries of the Sunni Jihad in Syria, however, lost a golden opportunity to deal a fatal blow to the Shi’a alliance comprising Iran, Syria and their Lebanon-based proxy, Hezbollah.

To add insult to the injury, the Islamic State, one of the numerous Sunni jihadist outfits fighting in Syria, overstepped its mandate in Syria and overran Mosul in northern Iraq in June 2014 and threatened the capital of America’s most steadfast ally in the region – Masoud Barzani’s Erbil, as I have already mentioned.

The US had no choice but to adopt some countermeasures to show that it is still sincere in pursuing its schizophrenic “war on terror” policy; at the same time, however, it assured its Turkish, Jordanian and Gulf Arab allies that despite fighting a war against the maverick jihadist outfit, the Islamic State, the Western policy of training and arming the so-called “moderate Syrian militants” will continue apace and that Bashar al-Assad’s days are numbered, one way or the other.

Moreover, declaring the war against the Islamic State in August 2014 served another purpose too – in order to commit the US Air Force to Syria and Iraq, the Obama Administration needed the approval of the US Congress which was not available, as I have already mentioned, but by declaring a war against the Islamic State, which is a designated terrorist organization, the Obama Administration availed itself of the “war on terror” provisions in the US’ laws and thus circumvented the US Congress.

But then Russia threw a spanner in the schemes of NATO and its Gulf Arab allies in September 2015 by its surreptitious military buildup in Latakia that was executed with an element of surprise unheard of since Rommel, the Desert Fox. And now Turkey, Jordan, the Gulf Arab states and their Sunni jihadist proxies in Syria find themselves at the receiving end in the Syrian civil war.

Therefore, although the Sunni states of the Middle East still toe the American line in the region publicly, but behind the scenes there is bitter resentment that the US has let them down by making an about-face on the previous regime change policy in Syria and the subsequent declaration of war against one group of Sunni militants in Syria, i.e. the Islamic State.

This change of policy by the US directly benefits the Iranian-led axis in the region. In the war against the Islamic State in Mosul, Turkey has also contributed troops but more than waging a war against the Islamic State the purpose of those troops is to ensure the safety of the Sunni population of Mosul against the onslaught of the Iraqi armed forces and especially the irregular Shi’a militias, which are known for committing excesses against the Sunnis in Iraq.

Notwithstanding, in order to create a semblance of objectivity and fairness, the American policymakers and analysts are always willing to accept the blame for the mistakes of the distant past that have no bearing on the present, however, any fact that impinges on their present policy is conveniently brushed aside.

In the case of the creation of the Islamic State, for instance, the US’ policy analysts are willing to concede that invading Iraq back in 2003 was a mistake that radicalized the Iraqi society, exacerbated the sectarian divisions and gave birth to an unrelenting Sunni insurgency against the heavy handed and discriminatory policies of the Shi’a-dominated Iraqi government.

Similarly, the “war on terror” era political commentators also “generously” accept that the Cold War era policy of nurturing the al Qaeda, Taliban and myriads of other Afghan so-called “freedom fighters” against the erstwhile Soviet Union was a mistake, because all those fait accompli have no bearing on their present policy.

The corporate media’s spin doctors conveniently forget, however, that the creation of the Islamic State and myriads of other Sunni Arab jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq has as much to do with the unilateral invasion of Iraq back in 2003 under the previous Bush Administration as it has been the doing of the present policy of the Obama Administration in Syria of funding, arming, training and internationally legitimizing the Sunni militants against the Syrian regime since 2011-onward in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa region. In fact, the proximate cause behind the rise of the Islamic State, al Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham and numerous other Sunni jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq has been the Obama Administration’s policy of intervention through proxies in Syria.

The List of Terror Incidents in Pakistan after the North Waziristan Operation

Zia-ul-Haq and Fazl-e-Haq.

The list of terror incidents in Pakistan after the operation Zarb-e-Azb, which was launched in June 2014:

November 2014: Wagah border attack: 60 killed, 110 injured.

December 2014: Army Public School, Peshawar massacre: 141 fatalities.

January 2015: Bombing at a Shia mosque in Shikarpur: 53 deaths.

February 2015: Bombing at Imamia mosque in Peshawar: 19 killed, 63 injured.

March 2015: Youhana Abad church bombing in Lahore: 14 deaths, 70 wounded.

May 2015: Massacre of Ismailis in a bus at Karachi: 46 killed.

May 2015: Mastung bus attack in Balochistan: 23 fatalities.

August 2015: Suicide blast targeting Punjab’s Home Minister Shuja Khanzada: 14 deaths.

September 2015: Attack at PAF base in Badhaber at Peshawar: 29 killed.

December 2015: Suicide blast in a market at Parachinar: 23 killed, 30 injured.

December 2015: Suicide blast at NADRA office in Mardan: 26 deaths, 56 wounded.

January 2016: Bacha Khan University attack in Charsadda: 20 killed, 60 injured.

March 2016: Attack on a bus carrying government employees in Peshawar: 17 deaths, 53 wounded.

March 2016: Gulshan-e-Iqbal park bombing targeting Christians in Lahore: 74 killed, 338 injured.

August 2016: Civil Hospital attack targeting lawyers in Quetta: 70 killed, 130 wounded.

September 2016: Suicide blast during Friday prayers in Mohmand: 23 fatalities.

October 2016: Attack at a police training center in Quetta: 61 killed, 117 injured.

November 2016: Blast at Shah Noorani shrine in Khuzdar, Balochistan: 52 deaths, 102 wounded.

Note: The list is NOT exhaustive and the toll of the Pakistan Army’s folly in the tribal areas is still mounting. Moreover, if the number of terror attacks before and after the launching of a military operation is not significantly different, then what’s the point of waging a WAR in tribal areas that has displaced millions of poor tribesmen from their towns and villages? 

Saudi Arabia and the Politics of Sunni-Shia Divide

John Kerry and King Salman.

It is an incontestable fact that the real culprit behind the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism all over the Islamic world has been Saudi Arabia. The Bani Saud (the tribe of Saud) were the most primitive and marauding nomadic tribesmen of Najd who violently defeated the Sharifs of Mecca after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War. Their title to the leadership of Saudi Arabia is only de facto, not de jure; since they neither have any hereditary claim to the Saudi monarchy, nor do they hold elections to ascertain the will of the Saudi people.

Thus, they are the illegitimate rulers of Saudi Arabia and they feel insecure because of their illegitimacy; a fact which explains their heavy-handed and brutal tactics in dealing with any kind of dissent, or movement for reform in the Gulf States.

The phenomena of religious extremism and jihadism all over the Islamic world is directly linked to the Wahhabi-Salafi madrassahs (religious seminaries) that are generously funded by the Saudi and Gulf’s petro-dollars. These madrassahs attract children from the most impoverished backgrounds in the Third World Islamic countries because they offer the kind of incentives and facilities which even the government-sponsored public schools cannot provide: such as, free boarding and lodging, no tuition fee at all, and free of cost books and stationery; some generously-funded madrassahs even pay monthly stipends to their students.

Apart from madrassahs, another factor that promotes the Wahhabi-Salafi ideology in the Islamic world is the ritual of Hajj and Umrah (the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina.) Every year millions of Muslim men and women travel from all over the Islamic world to perform the pilgrimage in order to wash their sins.

When they return home to their native countries after spending a month or two in Saudi Arabia, along with clean hearts and souls, dates and zamzam (purified water), they also bring along the tales of Saudi hospitality and their supposedly “true” and puritanical version of Islam, which some Muslims, especially the backward rural and tribal folk, find attractive and worth-emulating.

Authority plays an important role in any belief system; the educated people accept the authority of the specialists in their respective field of expertise; similarly, the lay folk accept the authority of the theologians and clerics in the interpretation of religion and scriptures. Apart from authority, certain other factors also play a part in the psychology of the believers: like, purity or the concept of sacred, and originality and authenticity, as in the concept of being closely corresponding to an ideal or authentic model.

Yet another factor which contributes to the rise of Wahhabi-Salafi ideology throughout the Islamic world is the immigrants’ factor. Millions of Muslim men, women and families from all over the Third World Islamic countries live and work in the energy-rich Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait and Oman. Some of them permanently reside there but mostly they work on temporary work permits.

Just like the pilgrims, when they come back home to their native villages and towns, they also bring along the tales of Saudi hospitality and their version of supposedly “authentic Islam.” Spending time in Gulf Arab States entitles one to pass authoritative judgments on religious matters, and having a cursory understanding of Arabic, the language of Quran, makes one equivalent of a Qazi (a learned jurist) among the illiterate rural folk; and they simply reproduce the customs and traditions of the Arabs as an authentic version of Islam to their communities.

The Shi’a Muslims have their Imams and Marjahs (religious authorities) but it is generally assumed about Sunni Islam that it discourages the authority of the clergy. In this sense, Sunni Islam is closer to Protestantism, at least theoretically, because it prefers an individual and personalized interpretation of scriptures and religion. Although this perception might be true for the educated Sunni Muslims, but on the popular level of the masses of the Third World Islamic countries, the House of Saud plays the same role in Sunni Islam that the Pope plays in Catholicism.

By virtue of their physical possession of the holy places of Islam – Mecca and Medina – they are the ex officio Caliphs of Islam. The title of the Saudi King: “Khadim-ul-Haramain-al-Shareefain” (the Servant of the House of God), makes him a vice-regent of God on Earth; and the title of the Caliph of Islam is not limited to a single nation state, he wields enormous influence throughout the Commonwealth of Islam: that is, “the Muslim Ummah.”

Notwithstanding, when we hear slogans like “no democracy, just Islam” on the streets of the Third World Islamic countries, one wonders that what kind of a simpleton would forgo one’s right to choose their government through a democratic and electoral process?

This confusion about democracy is partly due to the fact that the masses often conflate democracy with liberalism without realizing that democracy is only a political process of choosing one’s representatives through an electoral process, while liberalism is a cultural mindset which may or may not be suitable for the backward Third World societies depending on their existing level of cultural advancement.

One feels dumbfounded, however, when even some educated Muslims argue that democracy is somehow un-Islamic and that an ideal Islamic system of governance is caliphate. Such an ideal caliphate could be some Umayyad or Abbasid model that they conjure up in their minds, but in practice the only beneficiaries of such an undemocratic approach are the illegitimate tyrants of the Arab World who claim to be the Caliphs of Islam, albeit indirectly and in a nuanced manner: that is, the Servants of the House of God and the Keepers of the Holy places of Islam.

The illegitimate, and hence insecure, tyrants adopt different strategies to maintain and prolong their hold on power. They readily adopt the pragmatic advice of Machiavelli to his patrons: “Invent enemies and then slay them in order to control your subjects.”

The virulently anti-Shi’a rhetoric of the Gulf-based Wahhabi-Salafi preachers, who are on the payroll of the Gulf’s petro-monarchies, appears to be a cunning divide-and-rule strategy on the lines of Machiavelli’s advice. The illegitimate autocrats of the Gulf States cannot construct a positive narrative that can recount their own achievements, that’s why they espouse a negative narrative in order to vilify their political adversaries for regional dominance in the Middle East.

The Sunni-Shi’a conflict is essentially a political conflict which is presented to the lay Muslims in the veneer of religiosity. Saudi Arabia has the world’s largest proven petroleum reserves, 265 billion barrels, and its daily crude oil production is more than 10 million barrels (equivalent to 15% of the global crude oil production.) However, 90 % of the Saudi petroleum reserves and infrastructure are located along the Persian Gulf’s coast, but this region comprises the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia which has a significant and politically active Shi’a minority.

Any separatist tendency in this Achilles’ heel of Saudi Arabia is met with sternest possible reaction. Remember that Saudi Arabia sent thousands of its own troops to help the Bahraini regime quell the Shi’a rebellion in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings in the Shi’a-majority Bahrain, which is also geographically very close to the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia.

Al-Qaeda inspired terrorism is a threat to the Western countries but the Islamic countries are encountering a much bigger threat of sectarian conflict. For centuries the Sunni and Shi’a Muslims have coexisted in relative peace throughout the Islamic World but now certain vested interests are deliberately stoking the fire of inter-sectarian strife to distract attention away from the home front: that is, the popular movements for democracy and enfranchisement in the Arab World.

Islam is regarded as the fastest growing religion of the 20th and 21st centuries. There are two factors that are primarily responsible for this atavistic phenomena of Islamic resurgence: firstly, unlike Christianity which is more idealistic, Islam is a more practical religion, it does not demands from its followers to give up worldly pleasures but only aims to regulate them; and secondly, Islam as a religion and political ideology has the world’s richest financiers.

After the 1973 collective Arab oil embargo against the West in the wake of the Arab-Israeli war, the price of oil quadrupled; and the contribution of the Gulf’s petro-sheikhs towards “the spiritual well-being” of the Muslims all over the world magnified proportionally. This is the reason why we are witnessing an exponential growth of Islamic charities and madrassas all over the world and especially in the Islamic World.

Moreover, it’s a misconception that the Arab sheikhs of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and some emirates of UAE generally sponsor the Wahhabi-Salafi brand of Islam, because the difference between numerous sects of Sunni Islam is more nominal than substantive. Islamic charities and madrassas belonging to all the Sunni denominations get generous funding from the Gulf Arab states as well as private donors. Consequently, the genie of petro-Islamic extremism cannot be contained unless that financial pipeline is cut off. And to do that we need to promote the moderate and democratic forces in the Arab World even if they are moderately Islamic.

The moderate and democratic Islamism is different from the monarcho-theocratic Islamism of the Gulf variety, because the latter is an illegitimate and hence insecure regime; in order to maintain its hold on power it needs subterfuges and external rivals to keep the oppositional internal threats to its survival in check. Takfirism (labelling others as infidels) and jihadism are a manifestation of this Machiavellian trend.

In the nutshell, Islam is only a religion, just like any other cosmopolitan religion, whether it’s Christianity, Hinduism or Buddhism; we don’t have to find any exceptionalist justifications to explain the phenomena of Islamic resurgence; it’s the petro-Islamic extremism and the consequent phenomena of Takfirism and jihadism, which are like the collision of continental tectonic plates that have engulfed the whole of Islamic World from the Middle East and North Africa to the Af-Pak and Southeast Asia regions.

Pakistan's Lesser-Known Pashtun Insurgency

Imran Khan in Pakistan's Tribal Areas.

Is it not ironic that two very similar insurgencies have simultaneously been going on in Pakistan for the last several years: the Baloch insurgency in the Balochistan province and the insurgency of the Pashtun tribesmen in the tribal areas of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province bordering the United States-occupied Afghanistan.

The Pakistani neoliberals fully sympathize with the oppressed Baloch nationalists but when it comes to the Pashtun tribesmen, they are willing to give the security establishment a license to kill, why? It’s only because the tribal Pashtun insurgents use the veneer of religion to justify their tribal instinct of retribution.

The name Islam, however, is such an anathema to the core neoliberal sensibilities that they don’t even bother to delve deeper into the causes of insurgency and summarily decide that since the Pashtun tribesmen are using the odious label of the Taliban, therefore they are not worthy of their sympathies and as a result the security establishment gets a carte blanche to indiscriminately bomb the homes and villages of the Pashtun tribesmen using air-force and heavy artillery.

As the well informed readers must be aware that military operations have been going on in the tribal areas of Pakistan since 2009; but do you have any idea that what does the euphemism “military operation” stands for? The Pakistani troops have not been playing a friendly cricket match with the tribesmen out there. A military operation, unlike the law enforcement or paramilitary operations, is an all-out war.

Air-force bombardment and heavy artillery shelling has been going on for several years; the Pashtun tribesmen have been taking fire; their homes, property and livelihoods have been destroyed; they have lost their families and children in this brutal war, which has displaced millions of tribesmen who are rotting in the refugee camps in Peshawar, Mardan and Bannu districts.

I have knowingly used the term ‘Pashtun tribesmen’ instead of ‘Taliban’ here, because this phenomena of revenge has more to do with tribal culture than religion, per se. In the lawless tribal areas, they don’t have courts and police to settle disputes and enforce justice; the justice is dispensed by the tribes themselves: the clans, families and the relatives of the slain victims take revenge, which is the fundamental axiom of their tribal ‘jurisprudence.’

In Pakistan, there are three distinct categories of militants: the Afghan-centric Pashtun militants; the Kashmir-centric Punjabi militants and the transnational terrorists, like al-Qaeda. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is mainly comprised of the Pashtun militants, carries out bombings against the Pakistani state apparatus. The ethnic factor is critical here. Although the TTP likes to couch its rhetoric in religious terms, but it is the difference of ethnicity that enables it to recruit Pashtun tribesmen who are willing to carry out subversive activities against the Punjabi-dominated state establishment.

Here we must keep in mind that an insurgency anywhere cannot succeed, unless the insurgents get some level of popular support from the local population. For example: if a hostile force tries to foment insurgency in Punjab, it would not be able to succeed; because Punjabis don’t have any grievances against Pakistan. On the other hand, if an adversary tries to incite an insurgency in the marginalized province of Balochistan and the tribal areas, it will succeed because the local Baloch and Pashtun population has grievances against the heavy-handedness of Pakistan’s security establishment.

Notwithstanding, excluding religion, all the diverse and remote regions of Asia and Africa that have been beset by militancy share a few similarities: 1) the weak writ of the respective states in their faraway rural and tribal areas; 2) the marginalization of different ethnic groups; 3) the intentional or unintentional weaponization of militant outfits that have been used as proxies, at some point in time in history, to further the agendas of their regional and global patrons. When religious extremism blends with militancy, it can give birth to strands as deadly as the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the Boko Haram in Nigeria and al-Shabaab in Somalia.

After invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq, and when the American “nation-building” projects failed in those hapless countries, the United States’ policymakers immediately realized that they had been facing large-scale and popularly-rooted insurgencies against the foreign occupation, consequently the occupying military altered its CT (counter-terrorism) doctrines in the favor of a COIN (counter-insurgency) strategy. A COIN strategy is essentially different from a CT approach and it also involves dialogue, negotiations and political settlements, alongside the coercive tactics of law enforcement and paramilitary operations on a limited scale.

The goals for which the Islamic insurgents have been fighting in the insurgency-wracked regions are irrelevant for the debate at hand; it can be argued, however, that if some of the closest Western allies in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait, have already enforced Sharia as part of their conservative legal systems and when beheadings, amputation of limbs and flogging of the criminals are a routine in Saudi Arabia, then what is the basis for the United States’ declaration of war against the Islamic insurgents in the Af-Pak and Middle East regions, who are erroneously but deliberately labeled as “terrorists” by the Western mainstream media to manufacture consent for the Western military presence and interventions in the energy-rich region under the pretext of the so-called “war on terror?”

Regardless, what bothers me is not that we have not been able to find the solution to our problems, what bothers me is the fact that neoliberals are so utterly unaware of the real structural issues that their attempts to sort out the tangential problems will further exacerbate the main issues. Religious extremism, militancy and terrorism are not the cause but the effect of poverty, backwardness and disenfranchisement.

The Pashtuns are the most unfortunate nation on the planet nowadays because nobody understands and represents them; not even their own leadership, whether religious or ethnic. In Afghanistan, the Pashtuns are represented by the Western stooges, like Karzai and Ashraf Ghani, and in Pakistan the Pashtun nationalist party, ANP, loves to play the victim card and finds solace in learned helplessness.

In Pakistan, however, the Pashtuns are no longer represented by a single political entity, a fact which has become obvious after the 2013 parliamentary elections in which the Pashtun nationalist ANP had been wiped out of its former strongholds. Now there are at least three distinct categories of Pashtuns: 1) the Pashtun nationalists who follow Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s legacy and have their strongholds in Charsadda and Mardan districts; 2) the religiously-inclined Islamist Pashtuns who vote for the Islamist political parties, like the Jamaat-e-Islami and JUI-F in the southern districts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa; 3) and finally, the emerging new phenomena, i.e. the Pak-nationalist Pashtuns, most of whom have joined Imran Khan’s PTI in recent years, though some of them have also joined the Muslim League.

Additionally, it should be remembered here that the general elections of 2013 were contested on a single issue: that is, Pakistan’s partnership in the American-led war on terror, which has displaced millions of Pashtun tribesmen. The Pashtun nationalist ANP was routed, because in keeping with its supposedly “liberal” ideology, it stood for military operations against the Islamist Pashtun militants in the tribal areas; and the people of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province gave a sweeping mandate to the newcomer in the Pakistani political landscape: Imran Khan and his PTI, because the latter promised to deal with the tribal militants through negotiations and political settlements.

Though Imran Khan and Nawaz Sharif both have failed to keep their election pledge of using peaceful means for dealing with the menace of religious extremism and militancy, but the public sentiment was, and still is, firmly against military operations in the tribal areas. The 2013 parliamentary elections were, in a way, a referendum against Pakistan’s partnership in the American-led war on terror in the Af-Pak region, as I have already mentioned, and the Pashtun electorate had given a sweeping mandate to pro-peace political parties against the pro-war ANP.

Moreover, it’s a misperception to assume that the Pakistani security establishment used the Pashtuns as cannon fodder to advance their strategic objectives in the region. Their support to the Islamic jihadists, back in the ‘80s and ‘90s during the Cold War against the erstwhile Soviet Union, had been quite indiscriminate. There are as many Punjabi militants in Southern Punjab as there are Pashtun jihadists in the rural and tribal regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province.

The only difference between these two variants of militancy is that the writ of the state in Punjab is comparatively strong while in the tribal areas of KP it is weak, that’s why the militancy in KP has flared up into a full-fledged Pashtun insurgency. Furthermore, the difference of ethnicity and language between the predominantly Punjabi establishment and the Pashtun insurgents has further exacerbated the problem, and the militants do find a level of popular support among the rural and tribal masses of the Pashtun-majority areas.

Although the leadership of the Pashtun nationalist political parties loves to play the victim card but the fact of the matter is that religious extremism and terrorism have equally affected all the ethnicities in Pakistan, in fact this phenomena is not limited to Pakistan, rather it has engulfed the whole of Islamic World from North Africa and Middle East to Southeast Asia and even the Muslim minorities in China and Philippines have fallen prey to it.

However, without absolving the role of Pakistan’s security establishment in deliberately nurturing militancy in the Af-Pak region and in order to comprehensively identify the real cause of Islamic radicalism, it would be pertinent to mention that in its July 2013 report the European Parliament had identified the Wahhabi-Salafi roots of global terrorism. It was a laudable report but it conveniently absolved the Western powers of their culpability and chose to overlook the role played by the Western powers in nurturing Islamic radicalism and jihadism since the Cold War against the erstwhile Soviet Union.

The pivotal role played by the Wahhabi-Salafi ideology in radicalizing Muslims all over the world is an established fact as mentioned in the European Parliament’s report; this Wahhabi-Salafi ideology is generously sponsored by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf-based Arab petro-monarchies since the 1973 oil embargo when the price of oil quadrupled and the contribution of the Arab sheikhs towards the “spiritual well-being” of Muslims all over the world magnified proportionally.

However, the Arab despots are in turn propped up by the Western powers since the Cold War; thus syllogistically speaking, the root cause of Islamic radicalism has been the neocolonial powers’ manipulation of the socio-political life of the Arabs specifically, and the Muslims generally, in order to appropriate their energy resources in the context of an energy-starved, industrialized world.

Notwithstanding, in the Pakistani socio-political milieu there are three important political forces: the dominant Islamic nationalists; the ethno-linguistic nationalists; and the neoliberal elite. The Islamic nationalists are culturally much closer to the traditionalist, ethno-linguistic nationalists, but politically due to frequent interruptions of democratic process and the martial law administrators’ suspicion towards the centrifugal ethno-linguistic nationalists, the latter were politically marginalized.

As we know that politics is mostly about forming alliances, therefore the shrewd neoliberal elite wooed the naïve ethno-linguistic nationalists and struck a political alliance with them. But this alliance is only a marriage of convenience because culturally both these camps don’t have anything in common with each other. The Islamic nationalists and the ethno-linguistic nationalists belong to the same social stratum and they go through thick and thin together; while the comprador bourgeois are beholden to foreign powers.

Leadership is a two-way street: a judicious leader is supposed to guide the masses, but at the same time he is also supposed to represent the interests and aspirations of the disenfranchised masses; the detached and insular leadership that lives in a fantasy-world of outlandish theories and fails to understand the mindsets and inclinations of the masses tends to lose its mass appeal sooner or later.

Paknationalism: The Misunderstood Identity

Nehru, Mountbatten and Jinnah.

Although secularism, pluralism and multiculturalism are the accepted social axioms of the modern worldview, but a demand for separate nationhood on the basis of one's ethno-linguistic identity is accepted in the Western discourse; and it cannot simply be dismissed on the premise that since pluralism and multiculturalism are the accepted principles therefore the creation of a nation-state on the basis of ethno-linguistic identity becomes redundant. The agreed-upon principles of pluralism and multiculturalism become operative after the creation of a nation-state and not before it.

Similarly, even though secularism is an accepted principle in the Western discourse, but an ethno-religious group cannot be denied its right to claim separate nationhood on the basis of religious identity; in this case also the principle of inclusive-secularism becomes operative after the creation of a state and not prior to it.

The Muslims of Pakistan also share a lot of cultural similarities with Hindus as well, because we share a similar regional culture; however different ethno-linguistic groups comprising Pakistan, like the Punjabis, Pashtuns, Sindhis and Baloch, have more in common with each other than the Hindus of India, because all of them belong to the same religious civilization.

Notwithstanding, before joining the Muslim League, Jinnah was one of the leading proponents of Hindu-Muslim unity. He attended the meetings of the inner circle of the Indian National Congress, and reached a well-considered conclusion that the outwardly liberal and secular Congress is nothing more than a thinly-veiled Hindu nationalist party.

Even today, 68 years after the independence, Muslims constitute 15% of India’s 1.2 billion population; that’s more than 180 million Muslims in India. However, we do find a few showpiece Muslims in the ceremonial positions; but excluding Bollywood, where they have been overwhelmingly represented, I would like to know that what is the representation of Muslims in India’s state institutions, their proportion in higher bureaucracy, judiciary, police and army, and their presence and participation in India’s civic and political life?

Indian Muslims don’t even support the Indian cricket team in the Pakistan vs. India matches; they cheer for the Pakistani team instead. Fact of the matter is that just like the Indian National Congress, the Republic of India is also nothing more than a thinly-veiled Hindu nationalist state.

The Indian Muslims have lagged so far behind and they have been disenfranchised to such an extent that they need some kind of an “affirmative action,” like the one that had been carried out in the U.S. during the ‘60s to improve the miserable lot of the Afro-Americans.

And our Pakistani liberal “ashrafiya” wanted us to be like the “enviable” lot of the Indian Muslims? Our Westernized social elite is a bit too naïve apparently for its own good. Like Einstein famously quipped: "Only two things are infinite, the universe and the human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

Notwithstanding, theories, whether one nation, two nations or several nations, are only the subjective interpretations of the objective reality by the biased individuals. The proof of pudding is in the eating. If the Indian and Pakistani liberals claim that the Muslims would have fared better in a United India then they must prove their assertion by tangible actions rather than reductive theories.

There are currently about 180 million Muslims in India’s 1.2 billion population that constitutes about 15% of the total Indian population, as I have already mentioned. The day we see that these 15% Muslims are duly represented in all the institutions of the state and India’s federal, provincial and local governance structure, that day we will accept the Indo-Pakistani liberals’ contention that the founding fathers of Pakistan were wrong and that the Indian pundits were right.

Regardless, sometimes one’s religious sect can take precedence over one’s linguistic identity. The Syrian and Iraqi Shia speak Arabic while the Iranian Shia speak Persian; despite the linguistic difference, during the Iran-Iraq war from 1980 to 1988, the Syrian Shia Baathist regime took the side of Iran against the fellow Arabic-speaking Sunni, Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein. After the fall of Saddam, when the government in Iraq became predominantly Shia under Nouri al Maliki, the three Shia states formed an alliance comprising: Iran, Iraq and Syria against the Sunni Gulf Arab States.

Personally, I don’t see much difference between the Shias and Sunnis; they share a common history and culture, although they do have some minor theological and doctrinal differences. I have only drawn attention to this fact to emphasize the importance of religion in the Eastern societies. Modern secularists think of the social aspect of religion as some redundant idea, but it is a living reality in our part of the world. Theory is theory and practice is practice, and the Western Orientalist theories rarely meet the requirements of the ground realities of the Eastern societies.

Now Sunni and Shia are only two sects of the same religion, Islam, and these sectarian differences can make their followers forget their linguistic identities in choosing friends and forming alliances; while Hinduism and Islam are two completely different religions, so much so that most Muslims in Pakistan don’t even know that what deities the Hindus worship? And following in the footsteps of the Orientalist historians, the Indo-Pakistani liberals believe that the creation of a nation-state on the basis of religion was a wrong approach by Jinnah and the Muslim League?

Regarding the much-touted grievances of the minority ethno-linguistic groups against the supposed Punjabi dominance in Pakistan, the Baloch are the only ethnic group that has lagged behind in Pakistan. The Sindhis have the second largest political party in Pakistan in the form of People’s Party and two of our prime ministers, Benazir and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, were Sindhis.

The Pashtuns also have a significant presence in our bureaucracy, judiciary, army and all other institutions of the state; and some of our heads of state and army chiefs were also Pashtuns. We must give credit where it is due: Islam could be anything but it is a very inclusive religion, which makes absolutely no distinction whatsoever between its adherents on the basis of race, language and other such parochial affiliations.

The prefix “Pak,” which is the root of the word Pakistan, literally means “clean” in Urdu language. Choosing the name Pakistan for their newly founded country sheds light on the psyche of our founding fathers. As we know that Hindu religion is a caste-based religion which deems people belonging to other religions, and even the low-caste Hindus, as “Maleech,” or “unclean.”

The Muslims of India suffered this discrimination at the hands of the numerical majority during the British Raj; that’s why they chose the name Pakistan: the land of the “clean” or “pure,” for their newfound sanctuary. Thus, Pakistan and the oft-quoted epithet: “the land of the pure,” isn’t as much about some conceited sense of superiority as it was about a historical injustice and a reaction to the discrimination and persecution suffered by the disenfranchised Muslims of India at the hands of the Hindu nationalists.

Notwithstanding, the best thing about Islam is its history; if you study Islamic history, you would come to realize that Islam did not spread by force alone, it was the moral appeal of its superior ethics that won the hearts and minds of the medieval masses. For instance: the Mongols conquered most of the eastern lands of the Islamic Empire during the thirteenth century, however, the Muslims of those lands did not convert to the religion of the conquerors: that is, the Mongolian Shamanism. Instead, the conquerors adopted the religion of the vanquished, i.e. Islam. Not only the Mongols but several Turkish tribes also voluntarily converted to Islam. Such was the beauty of Islamic teachings and its sublime moral appeal.

During the medieval times when Europe was going through an age of intellectual and moral regression, the Islamic culture thrived and flourished under the Abbasids. That’s why I am of the opinion that Islam is not just a religion but a civilization. When the Europeans landed in the Americas and Australia, they committed a genocide of the indigenous inhabitants of those continents, by contrast, the Muslims ruled over India for more than 600 years; despite that, at the time of the partition, the Hindus outnumbered Muslims 3 to 1 (there were only 100 million Muslims in the population of 400 million Indians in 1947.) That’s how tolerant and inclusive Islamic culture was back then.

Regardless, I would implore the readers to allow me the liberty to scribble a tongue-in-cheek rant here: that Jinnah, Sir Syed and Iqbal were imperialist collaborators who fell prey to the divide-and-rule policy of the British Raj; there were only two progressive Muslim leaders who joined forces with Gandhi’s socialist and anti-imperialist Congress against the tyranny of the Raj: one was Sheikh Abdullah of Kashmir and the other was Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Bacha Khan) of Pashtunistan.

After the partition of British India, Sheikh Abdullah worked hand in glove with Pundit Nehru to make Muslim-majority Kashmir a part of secular and liberal Indian utopia; the Muslims of Kashmir trusted the charismatic messiah with their lives and the latter met their expectations by conniving with the Congress’ pundits. Today Kashmir is thriving and prospering under the suzerainty of India and the dynamic leadership of Sheikh Abdullah’s descendants: Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah, the true representatives of Kashmiri Muslims.

Had it been up to the “visionary and tactful” Bacha Khan, he too would have made sure to make Pashtunistan a colony of India; however, a plebiscite was held on the eve of the independence in the North West Frontier Province and unfortunately the naïve Pashtuns of the doomed province overwhelmingly voted to become a part of Islamist and reactionary Pakistan.

Let me clarify here that I am not against Bacha Khan or the Khudai Khidmatgar movement, as such, it was a good thing that he politically mobilized the Pashtuns for a cause; but I have doubts about his political acumen; from his bearing he appeared like a simpleton who was given to whims and personal attachments. But the people that he was dealing with, like Gandhi, Nehru and Patel, were shrewd politicians.

The astute Congress’ leadership wheedled and coaxed Bacha Khan and Sheikh Abdullah to form a political alliance with the thinly-veiled Hindu nationalist Congress against the interests of Pashtun and Kashmiri Muslims, whom the aforementioned leaders represented. And the way I see it, it had less to do with any political convergence of ideas; rather it was more about their personal bonding with the tactful Congress leadership.

Jinnah was a brash and forthright leader and the Pashtuns, as we all know, are given to Pashtunwali (honor), courtesy and other such trappings of symbolic respect; and Gandhi and Nehru, by their sycophantic behavior, touched a raw never there. In the end, Sheikh Abdullah legitimized India’s occupation of Kashmir by becoming its first chief minister, though he later had to spend eleven years in jail, but when Pakistan, and more importantly the Kashmiri Muslims, needed his leadership and guidance, he backstabbed them only because of his personal friendship with Pundit Nehru.

Notwithstanding, the Pashtuns are no longer represented by a single political entity, a fact which has become obvious from the 2013 general elections in which Bacha Khan’s Awami National Party (ANP) had been wiped out of its former strongholds. Now there are at least three distinct categories of Pashtuns: 1) the Pashtun nationalists who follow Bacha Khan’s legacy and have their strongholds in Charsadda and Mardan districts; 2) the religiously-inclined Islamist Pashtuns who vote for the Islamist political parties, like Jamaat-e-Islami and JUI-F in the southern districts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa; 3) and finally, the emerging new phenomena, i.e. the Pak-nationalist Pashtuns, most of whom have joined Imran Khan’s PTI in recent years, though some of them have also joined the Muslim League.

Additionally, it should be remembered here that the general elections of 2013 were contested on a single issue: that is, Pakistan’s partnership in the American-led war on terror, which has displaced millions of Pashtun tribesmen. The Pashtun nationalist ANP was wiped out because in keeping with its supposedly “liberal” ideology, it stood for military operations against the militants in the tribal areas; and the people of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province gave a sweeping mandate to the newcomer in the Pakistani political landscape: Imran Khan and his PTI, because the latter preferred to deal with the tribal militants through negotiations and political settlements.

Though, Imran Khan and Nawaz Sharif both have failed to keep their election pledge of using peaceful means for dealing with the menace of religious extremism and militancy, but the public sentiment was, and still is, firmly against military operations in the tribal areas.

Moreover, it’s a misperception to assume that the Pakistani security establishment used the Pashtuns as cannon fodder to advance their strategic objectives in the region. Their support to the Islamic jihadists, back in the ‘80s and ‘90s during the Cold War against the erstwhile Soviet Union, had been quite indiscriminate. There are as many Punjabi extremists and jihadists in Southern Punjab as there are Pashtun jihadists in the rural and tribal regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province.

The only difference between these two variants of militancy is that the writ of the state in Punjab is comparatively strong while in the tribal areas of KP it is weak, that’s why the militancy in KP has transmuted into a full-fledged Pashtun insurgency. Furthermore, the difference of ethnicity and language between the predominantly Punjabi establishment and the Pashtun insurgents has further exacerbated the problem, and the militants do find a level of support among the rural and tribal masses of the Pashtun-majority areas.

Although the leadership of the Pashtun nationalist political parties loves to play the victim card but the fact of the matter is that religious extremism and terrorism have equally affected all the ethnicities in Pakistan, in fact this phenomena is not limited to Pakistan, rather it has engulfed the whole of Islamic World from North Africa and Middle East to Southeast Asia and even the Muslim minorities in China and Philippines where Pakistan’s security establishment does not has any influence.

However, without absolving the role of Pakistan’s security establishment in deliberately nurturing militancy in the Af-Pak region and in order to comprehensively identify the real cause of Islamic radicalism, it would be pertinent to mention that in its July 2013 report the European Parliament had identified the Wahhabi-Salafi roots of global terrorism. It was a laudable report but it conveniently absolved the Western powers of their culpability and chose to overlook the role played by the Western powers in nurturing Islamic radicalism and jihadism since the Cold War against the erstwhile Soviet Union.

The pivotal role played by the Wahhabi-Salafi ideology in radicalizing Muslims all over the world is an established fact as mentioned in the European Parliament’s report; this Wahhabi-Salafi ideology is generously sponsored by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf-based Arab petro-monarchies since the 1973 oil embargo when the price of oil quadrupled and the contribution of the Arab sheikhs towards the “spiritual well-being” of Muslims all over the world magnified proportionally.

However, the Arab despots are in turn propped up by the Western powers since the Cold War; thus syllogistically speaking, the root cause of Islamic radicalism has been the neocolonial powers’ manipulation of the socio-political life of the Arabs specifically, and the Muslims generally, in order to appropriate their energy resources in the context of an energy-starved, industrialized world.

Notwithstanding, in the Pakistani socio-political milieu there are three important political forces: the dominant Islamic nationalists; the ethno-linguistic nationalists; and the Westernized liberals. The Islamic nationalists are culturally much closer to the traditionalist, ethno-linguistic nationalists, but politically due to frequent interruptions of democratic process and the martial law administrators’ suspicion towards the centrifugal ethno-linguistic nationalists, the latter were politically marginalized.

As we know that politics is mostly about forming alliances, therefore the shrewd Westernized liberals wooed the naïve ethno-linguistic nationalists and struck a political alliance with them. But this alliance is only a marriage of convenience because culturally both these camps don’t have anything in common with each other. The Islamic nationalists and the ethno-linguistic nationalists belong to the same social stratum and they go through thick and thin together; while the comprador liberals derive their inspiration from foreign sources.

Ostensibly the Westernized liberals preach minority rights and take a less hostile approach towards the ethnic minorities’ cultures than they take towards the majority’s culture. At times they are even generous enough to wear a Sindhi ajrak in a social gathering or listen to the folk music, but their supposed “indigenousness” never goes beyond cuisines and music.

Pray tell us, which local traditions or values you live by? You live in your quarantined suburbs, study in London and vacation in Hawaii, but when it comes to politics and getting the votes of the masses you pretend that you are a native? What do you have in common with the local cultures? You employ a Pathan chowkidar, a Punjabi cook and a Sindhi chauffeur; certainly quite a blend of local cultures you have in your household. So, spare us the lectures on minority rights and cultural diversity and preach the things that you really believe in: that is, complete Westernization, liberal values and social Darwinism.

Fact of the matter is that liberalism in Islamic societies is only skin-deep; it is restricted mostly to the privileged elite. The real flesh and bones of the Islamic societies is comprised of either the Islamic nationalists or the even more backward and traditional ethno-linguistic forces. The latter’s Westernized leadership may sometimes employ inclusive rhetoric to create a constituency for itself, but they have as much in common with the Muslim-majority societies, whether Islamic or ethno-linguistic, as Nehru’s political dynasty has in common with the Indian masses.

Leadership is a two-way street: a judicious leader is supposed to guide the masses, but at the same time he is also supposed to represent the disenfranchised masses; the detached and insular leadership that lives in a fantasy-world of outlandish theories and fails to understand the mindsets and inclinations of the masses tends to lose its mass appeal sooner or later.

Coming back to the topic, although the historians generally give credit to Jinnah, as an individual, for single-handedly realizing the dream of Pakistan, but the way I see it, Pakistan Movement was the consequence of Aligarh Movement. This fact elucidates that how much difference a single educational institution can make in the history of nations. Aligarh bred whole generations of educated Muslims who were acutely aware of the decadent state of Muslims in British India, and most of them later joined Muslim League to make Pakistan a reality.

Regarding the allegation that the Muslim League leaders were imperialist collaborators, until Lord Wavell the British viceroys used to take a reasonably neutral approach towards the communal issues in British India, but on the eve of independence, Gandhi and Nehru specifically implored the Attlee administration to appoint Lord Mountbatten as viceroy.

Moreover, the independence of India and Pakistan was originally scheduled for June 1948, but once again the Congress’ leadership entreated the British Empire to bring it forward to August 1947. It was not a coincidence that on both critically important occasions, Her Majesty’s government obliged Congress’ leadership because they wanted to keep India within the folds of the British Commonwealth after the independence.

Had they not brought forward the date of independence by almost an year, the nascent Indian and Pakistani armed forces and border guards could have had an opportunity to avert the carnage that took place during the division of Punjab.

Furthermore, it was Lord Mountbatten who served as India’s first governor general and he helped Nehru’s government consolidate the Indian dominion by forcefully integrating 500+ princely states. He also made a similar offer to Jinnah to serve as Pakistan’s governor general, and when the latter refused, Mountbatten threatened Jinnah in so many words: “It will cost you and the dominion of Pakistan more than just tables and chairs.”

No wonder then, it was the collusion between the Congress’ leadership, Radcliffe and Mountbatten that eventually culminated in the Indian troops’ successful invasion of the princely state of the Muslim-majority Kashmir, using the Gurdaspur-Pathankot corridor that was provided to India by the Radcliffe boundary commission.

Additionally, in the British Indian context the divide-and-rule policy originally meant that the imperialists used this strategy to sow the seeds of dissension and communal hatred to prolong their tyrannical rule in India, which is a valid assessment; however, some Indian historians later came up with the fancy notion that the colonial powers lent their support to the idea of the creation of Pakistan in order to use the latter as a bulwark against the communist influence in the region; this latter conspiracy theory is farthest from truth.

Firstly, the British imperialists took great pride in creating a unified and cohesive British Indian army and it’s a historical fact that the latter organization was vehemently opposed to the division of the British Indian armed forces; it simply defies common sense that if the colonial power was apprehensive of the expanding influence of Soviet Union in the region, in that case it would have preferred to leave behind a unified and strong India army, rather than two divided armies at loggerheads with each other.

Secondly, although Pakistan joined the SEATO and CENTO alliances in the ‘50s and it also fought America’s Jihad in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union during the ‘80s, but we must keep in mind that there were actually two power-centers of communism during the Cold War, i.e. the Soviet Bolshevism and the Chinese Maoism.

If the intention of the colonial powers was to use Pakistan as a bulwark against the communist influence in the region then how come Pakistan established such cordial relations with China during the ‘60s that Ayub Khan and his foreign minister, Bhutto, played a pivotal role in arranging Nixon’s visit to China in 1972?

Fact of the matter is that both India and Pakistan had good relations with the Western powers during the Cold War; however, India had friendly relations with Soviet Union and adversarial relations with China, while Pakistan had adversarial relations with Soviet Union and friendly ties with China. The relations of India and Pakistan with the communist powers were based more on their national interests than on ideological lines.

The relatively modern Indian historians who came up with this fancy conspiracy theory have actually retrospectively applied this theory to the chain of events: that is, they conceived the theory after Pakistan joined the anti-communist alliances and after it played the role of America’s client state during the Afghan Jihad. At the time of independence movement, neither the Hindus nor the Muslims knew anything about the aftermath of their respective freedom struggles.

Notwithstanding, apart from the divide-and-rule strategy on the part of the British imperialists, we also need to take a look at the attitudes and mindsets of the native British Indian leaders that why did they lauded certain rallying calls and denounced the rest?

In my opinion, this preferential treatment had to do with the individual ambitions of the Indian leaders and the interests of their respective communities as defined by the leaders in the heterogeneous societies like British India: a leader whose ambitions were limited only to his own ethnic group would have rallied his followers around their shared ethno-linguistic identity; but the leaders who had bigger ambitions would have looked for the common factors that unite the diverse ethnic groups, that’s where the role of religion becomes politically important especially in the traditional societies.

It suited the personal ambitions of the Muslim League leadership to rally their supporters around the cause of Islamic identity, and it benefited the self-interest of the Congress leadership to unite all Indians under the banner of a more inclusive and secular Indian national identity.

However, empty rhetoric is never a substitute for tangible actions; the Indian National Congress right from its inception was a thinly-veiled Hindu nationalist party that only had a pretense of inclusive secularism; that’s why some of the most vocal proponents of Hindu-Muslim unity, like Jinnah and Iqbal, later became its most fierce critics; especially when “Mahatma” Gandhi and his protégé Pundit Nehru assumed the leadership of Congress in 1921.

Moreover, while I concede that the colonial divide-and-rule policy was partly responsible for sowing the seeds of dissension among the British India’s religious communities, but generally most outcomes cannot be understood by adopting a simplistic and linear approach that tries to explain complex socio-political phenomena by emphasizing a single cause and downplaying the importance of other equally significant, albeit underestimated, plurality of causes.

The way I see it, Islamic nationalism in British India had as much to do with the divide-and-rule strategy on the part of the British colonizers as it was a reaction to the exclusionary Hindu majoritarianism. As I have said earlier that different rallying calls are adopted as political manifestoes by the leaders sometimes due to their genuine belief in the value of such calls and sometimes such calls are meant only to rally support for the personal ambitions of the leaders.

Looking at the demeanor of “Mahatma” Gandhi and his aspirations of being a savior of the Hindu-kind, did he look like a secular leader by any stretch of imagination? But he chose the rallying call of secularism because it suited the interests of the community which he had really represented, i.e. the Hindu majority.

Furthermore, every political rallying call has its express wordings but it also has certain subtle undertones. It is quite possible that some Westernized Congress leaders might have genuinely believed in the value of secular democracy but on the popular level of the traditional South Asian masses, the Hindus of British India coalesced around Congress not because of its ostensible secularism but due to its undertones of Hindu Raj; a fact which has become quite obvious now after the election of the overt Hindu nationalist, Narendra Modi, to the premiership 67 years after the independence of India.

More to the point, global politics has transformed drastically after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. We now live in the “war on terror” era in which the former allies have become adversaries and the former foes are now cordial friends.

Despite the ostensibly socialist and non-aligned credentials of the first and second generation Indian leadership, the third generation Indian leadership has become the “natural ally” of the Western powers against the economic might of “Rising China” on the world stage. No wonder then, we are witnessing a lot of bonhomie these days between the Indian and the Western leaderships and the signings of numerous arms deals, nuclear energy pacts and mutual defense treaties.

In the international politics there is only one empirically-proven axiom: that justice prevails among the equals, like it has prevailed between the Western powers on the one hand and Russia and China on the other; but justice never prevails among the unequals, like it has not prevailed between the Western powers on the one hand and Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria on the other.

When the Pakistani liberals preach peace between India and Pakistan, who incidentally endorse the Western wars in the energy-rich Middle East, they must keep in mind that India is six times bigger than Pakistan and it has recently announced $100 billion upgradation and modernization program for its armed forces.

Pakistan has always tried to bend over backwards to meet India’s stringent conditions for lasting peace in South Asia, but when has India ever reciprocated? India behaves like a nouveau riche regional power that has aspirations for global dominance. Pakistan is no longer India’s arch-foe, India has now set its eyes on China for regional dominance; and to that end it has struck military and nuclear accords with the U.S.

Historically speaking, immediately after the partition, India annexed Kashmir against all norms of justice and fairness. Jinnah ordered General Douglas Gracey – the Dominion of Pakistan’s army chief – to retaliate but the “loyal” British soldier refused to comply; perhaps after receiving a call from India’s governor general and Nehru’s chum, Lord Mountbatten.

Then in the ‘50s India took advantage of the Kashmiri territory (the riverheads of Pakistani rivers are in Kashmir) and diverted the waters of Pakistani rivers to irrigate India’s Western provinces. The whole of Bahawalpur region turned barren overnight and the agricultural economy of the nascent Pakistan suffered a tremendous blow.

With the involvement of the World Bank and the Tennessee Valley Authority of the U.S., Pakistan and India signed an unfair Indus Waters Treaty in 1960 which allocated exclusive rights to India for the use of three eastern rivers; and some rights, like the right to build hydroelectric projects, over Jhelum and Chenab also.

The Danube river flows through a dozen European countries, I wonder whether the downstream countries have any lower riparian rights to its waters or not? I am mentioning this only for the readers to understand the mindset of the subsequent Pakistani army generals, like Ayub Khan, and their obsession with India and strengthening the defense of Pakistan.

Regarding the Kashmir dispute, there can be no two views that the right of self-determination of Kashmiris must be respected; and I am also of the opinion that Pakistan should lend its moral, political and diplomatic support to the Kashmiri cause; but at the same time I am strongly against the militarization of any dispute, not just Kashmir.

Here we must keep in mind that an insurgency cannot succeed anywhere, unless the insurgents get some level of support from the local population. For example: if a hostile force tries to foment insurgency in Punjab, it would not be able to succeed; because Punjabis don’t have any grievances against Pakistan. On the other hand, if an adversary tries to incite insurgency in the marginalized province of Balochistan and tribal areas, they might succeed because the local Baloch and Pashtun population has grievances against the heavy-handedness of Pakistan’s security establishment.

Therefore, India’s claim that the uprising in Kashmir is the consequence of cross-border terrorism from the Pakistani side is unfounded. Historically speaking, India treacherously incorporated the princely State of Jammu and Kashmir into the Dominion of India in 1947, knowing fully well that Kashmir had an overwhelming Muslim majority and in accordance with the "Partition Principle" it should have become a part of Pakistan.

Even now, if someone tries to instigate an insurgency in the Pakistani part of Kashmir, I contend, that they would not be able to succeed; because Kashmiri Muslims identify with Pakistan. The Indian-occupied Kashmir has seen many waves for independence since 1947, but not a single voice has been raised for independence in the Pakistani part of Kashmir in our 68 years long history.

Pakistan's stance on Kashmir has been quite flexible and it has floated numerous proposals to resolve the conflict. But India is now the strategic partner of the U.S. against China; that's why India’s stance, not just on Kashmir but on all issues, has been quite rigid and haughty nowadays; because it is negotiating from a position of strength. However, politics and diplomacy aside, the real victims of this intransigence and hubris on both sides has been the Kashmiri people and a lot of innocent blood has been spilled for no good reason.