BY: Khaled Ahmed’s Urdu Press Review
Our goose is cooked because all the big states are conspiring against us. Balochistan is the hen that will lay the golden egg for the Americans while the Indians and Russians will exercise self-denial and let the Americans monopolise the hen, forcing it to lay bigger and bigger eggs until it can’t take it any more
We know very little about Balochistan. Most of us feel emotional about it without ever having gone there. Balochistan is hence the best place to fantasise about. There is Great Game going on there with neighbouring states bribing the Baloch into doing mischief. The Baloch are of course without a volition of their own. They are supposed to be agents of this or that enemy of Pakistan.
Writing in Jang (March 3, 2005) Nazir Naji stated that in November 2004 former US ambassador Robert Oakley went and met Nawab Bugti at Dera Bugti. After that, an organisation supportive of the PML government developed relations with the Baloch nationalists and thereafter a website appeared which was updated from London. What followed were terrorist attacks by BLA which no one owned up to. Another Great Game was on in Balochistan and there was only one power which could be involved in it.
The clear signal is that the Americans are doing mischief in Balochistan through Nawab Bugti. In the past, the various Baloch sardars were supposed to be doing mischief for the Russians. No solid proof was ever found.
According to Nawa-e-Waqt (March 3, 2005) two KGB spies had disclosed that America has asked Russia and India to guard its interests in Afghanistan and Balochistan, for which American and Indian spies with resources had entered Balochistan in 2002 and stayed with Nawab Khair Baksh Marri and his son Balach Marri. After that a training camp for terrorists was started in Marri territory of Kohlu. Balach Marri was made the head of the Balochistan Liberation army (BLA) that started its campaign of terrorism in the province.
Weapons and explosives were gathered in Kishan Garh, a small locality near Punjab-Sindh border with India. From this Indian locality, the munitions were sent through Punjab and Sindh to Balochistan. In 2002, there were 55 training camps for BLA in Balochistan where 550 terrorists took training. America wanted to control the trade routes of Central Asia and isolate China. India wanted China to stay away from the region.
This is a no-exit scenario. Our goose is cooked because all the big states are conspiring against us. Balochistan is the hen that will lay the golden egg for the Americans while the Indians and Russians will exercise self-denial and let the Americans monopolise the hen, forcing it to lay bigger and bigger eggs until it can’t take it any more.
Columnist Fawad Hussain wrote in Jang (March 5, 2005) that in March 1948 Khan of Kalat declared his own independent state consisting of Kharan, Mekran and Lasbela. His parliament had a majority of members coming from Ghaus Baksh Bizenjo’s party State National Party of Kharan, Abdus Samad Khan Achakzai’s Anjuman Watan Party and Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind. All these parties were against Pakistan. The Muslim League was represented by Qazi Isa. The independence resolution was passed by the lower house but not passed by the upper house. In 1948 the Quaid ordered military operation in Balochistan after which the Khan of Kalat joined Pakistan. At that time Gwadar was not a part of Balochistan. The federal government bought it from Oman in 1958.
The record is clear. The sardars had decided to become independent but there were difficulties, both legal and political. India did the same sort of thing to states trying to become unrealistically independent. Like the Chechens in our day.
Writing in Jang (March 4, 2005) Asghar Nadeem Syed stated that looking at President Musharraf and his broad chest and his iron fist one presumed that he would be able to prevent the Americans from harming Pakistan or kill him. Bhutto, too, thought he was powerful but was hanged. When Pervez Musharraf was recently greeted in Multan as the guest of the city of mangoes, he should have remembered that General Zia had died because of a crate of mangoes in his C130 plane.
Of course, Americans will not kill Musharraf. Neither Bhutto nor Zia was killed by the Americans. There is no proof, not even a circumstantial one, as was declared by the Justice Shafiur Rehman Commission, while there is some circumstantial proof for other possible killers. Benazir and Ijazul Haq should be believed rather than this columnist.
Writing in Khabrain, (March 5, 2005) Iftikharuddin Khatak stated that much before Chaudhry Rehmat Ali coined the word Pakistan in 1930, one Sardar Muhammad Gul Khan of Gandapur had proposed in 1923 that India be bifurcated into Hindu (south) and Muslim India (north). North would be upwards of Agra and south of that should be Hindu India. While the government was thinking of setting up a mausoleum for Chaudhry Rehmat Ali it should also create one for Sardar Muhammad Gul Khan in Dera Ismail Khan.
Like Chaudhry Rehmat Ali’s, Gandapur’s Project Pakistan was also a fantasy. It was a measure of the gaps the Muslims had developed in their understanding of their plight as an untalented minority. What they got ’realistically’ in 1947 they never liked. Perhaps that’s why they have run Pakistan so badly.
Writing in Khabrain (March 5, 2005) Shaukat Hussain Shaukat stated that a Hindu was a snake which became more and more poisonous if you gave it milk out of kindness. The Hindu will never refrain from biting you. He was expressing friendship because he wanted to retain possession of territories he had illegally acquired from Pakistan. A Hindu cared for only women, money and land, but a Muslim cared only for the Hereafter.
If a Hindu is a snake in the eyes of a Pakistani, what is a Muslim in the eyes of an Indian? The exercise is too general and unkind. The newspaper should have rejected the column for poor quality of writing. How does one prove that a Muslim is not interested in women? And how is a Hindu more lustful? History tells us that Muslims have always been more ’wholesomely’ interested in sex. That is perhaps why they are told to focus more on the Hereafter. *
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_6-5-2005_pg3_6 |
