The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Friday, 8 July 2016

FOR HOW LONG WILL PAKISTAN BE ALLOWED TO WALK AWAY?

Saudi Arabia has arrested 19 people including 12 Pakistanis in the ongoing probe in suicide attacks in three cities of the Kingdom. The three suicide attacks on July 4, which were carried out near the Medina mosque, the second holiest shrine of the Muslims, near the US consulate in Jeddah and near a mosque in the Shia dominated Saudi city Qatif, had killed 7 people and injured many others.

On July 5, Saudi Arabia identified the Jeddah bomber as a Pakistani national who had migrated to the Kingdom 12 years ago. Saudi nationals were found involved in the other two incidents.

Apart from the direct involvement of a Pakistani national, what is important here is the number of people detained in the aftermath – 12 Pakistanis out of the total 19 detained!

Pakistan is yet to response. And Saudi Arabia is not the first country.

Terrorists killed 22 people in an attack on a Dhaka cafe on July 1. The Bangladesh government has blamed Pakistan for the attack. It refused to accept the theory of IS’s claims and said the attack was perpetrated by a home-grown terror outfit which gets active support from Pakistan’s ISI – the notorious intelligence agency that is seen as a terror export organisation in India. In fact, Bangladesh has always blamed Pakistan for promoting terror activities in the country and had expelled some Pakistani diplomats few days ago on the suspicion of being under-cover arms dealers.

On July 7, Iran, which shares border with Pakistan, blamed Pakistan for death of four Iran Border Guards who were killed on July 7 in a terror ambush from across the border in Pakistan. Iran consistently blames Pakistan for being negligent and complicit in allowing its soil to be used by terrorists fomenting unrest in Iran, especially in its border province Sistan-Balouchestan.

Then Afghanistan is another country that always blames Pakistan for terror activities on the Afghani soil – from across the border in Pakistan – be it the attack on the Afghan’s Parliament building in Kabul or countless suicide attacks in Kabul’s diplomatic area and in other parts of Afghanistan. And why not – every terror group active in Afghanistan has got refuge in Pakistan – including the Taliban, the Al Qaeda and the Haqqani Network. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has on record said that “war has been declared against Afghanistan from the Pakistani territory”.

For India, Pakistan is the terror factory that is responsible for every terror activity in Jammu & Kashmir and in other parts of India. The most wanted in India are public figures in Pakistan. Even the world accepts the use of Pakistani soil in launching terror attacks in India – with terror strikes in J&K, in Mumbai, in Delhi, in Pathankot – just to name a few.

Across the Pacific, in the US, one of the worst terrorist attacks post 9/11 - in San Bernardino, California that saw 14 dead - was perpetrated by a Pakistan born couple who reportedly got radicalized under the influence of a Pakistani preacher.

Even Pakistan’s claimed all-weather friend China is not free from this terror taint that emanates from Pakistan. It has been a long held suspicion that terrorists in the China’s Muslim dominated region Xinjiang, that again shares border with Pakistan, find passage and safe haven in Pakistan.

Yet Pakistan behaves as if it is the leader of the Islamic countries of the world – proudly flaunting its ‘Islamic nuclear bomb’ credentials.

The reality that we all in India realise is – Pakistan is a nation that has always used terror as its state policy. Saudi wealth may be the resource behind many terror organizations in the world but it is the Pakistani soil that is harbouring countless terrorists – from Al Qaeda to Taliban to LeT to JeM to Haqqani Network and many other smaller terror outfits.

A FRACTURED NATION – BUT A NATION OF DOUBLESPEAK

Pakistan is a fractured nation. Its political chaos, lost in its military juggernaut has made the country directionless. The perpetual disagreement among its controlling institutions failed to check insurgency in its restive provinces and now it has engulfed the whole country. Its civilian government cannot control it and its all powerful military has other considerations – like promoting “good terror” to destabilise India and running a propaganda machinery to show India as a demon that is out there to devour Pakistan.

Pakistan has created monsters of terrorism that are the threatening the world, including the Islamic countries. Pakistan sheds crocodile tears saying it is the biggest victim of terror and presents the supporting data but it does nothing to crackdown on the many terror groups that use the Pakistani soil to perpetrate terror in other countries – a terror network that has created havens even for many anti-Pakistan terror groups that refuse to bow down – so much so that now unless it is a news of some very big terror strike, the international media doesn’t notice it.

Afghanistan President Mohammad Najibullah had warned Pakistan of Taliban’s grave dangers saying its flames would burn Pakistan. Soon Taliban swept Afghanistan and killed Najibullah in a public display of brutality. Pakistan created Taliban and now Taliban is trying to undo an already chaotic Pakistan. Isn’t it?

FOR HOW LONG THE WORLD WILL ALLOW PAKISTAN TO FOOL EVERYONE!

The United States had agreed to extend for one year the aid to Pakistan to fight terrorism on the condition that it would stop differentiating between good and bad terror. And the country’s most powerful person, the Army chief of Pakistan Raheel Sharif had extended this promise during his US visit. Yet, many big terrorists like Hafiz Saeed and Masood Azhar, directly implicated in heinous terror acts in India, are roaming free and are even ‘respectable’ citizens there. We saw the Pakistani government’s attitude that allowed bail to Zaki-ur Rahman Lakhvi, main handler of the Mumbai 26/11 attacks, on technical grounds. This is when the US has put a bounty of US$ 10 million on Hafiz Saeed. This is when Masood Azhar, then lodged in an Indian jail, was ‘exchanged’ in a hijacking incident. Isn’t Pakistan taking Uncle Sam for a ride? Or Uncle Sam is allowing it to happen? And many other countries who support Pakistan?

There is no reason for the world community, for us, to think that the US is not aware of it. But apart from putting a reward and occasional back channel assurances, we don’t see any aggressive posturing by the US. Should we go by the explanation that when the US lawmakers demanded Pakistan to stop differentiating between ‘good and bad terror’, it was meant only in the context of Taliban and the AfPak theatre? Is it for the same reason that no other country, not any NATO nation, or any other nation from any grouping of the world countries question Pakistan for its terror credentials? When Pakistan is a haven for terrorists operating in so many countries, why can’t the world community take a coordinated action to pressurise Pakistan to crackdown on the terror infrastructure present in the country?

Hillary Clinton, the then US Secretary of State, had warned Pakistan sternly on its doublespeak on terrorism. Hillary’s blunt message delivered in Islamabad in October 2011 was: “It’s like that old story. You can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbours. Eventually those snakes are going to turn on whoever has them in the backyard.” That was some five years ago yet Pakistan has kept a blind eye and is still doing the same, harbouring many snakes while trying to crush only a few.

©SantoshChaubey