Author:
Publication: Niticentral.com
Date: December 17, 2014
URL:   http://www.niticentral.com/2014/12/17/peshawar-mayhem-frankensteinistan-revisited-291769.html

Peshawar witnessed the most brutal Terror attack in recent memory with more than 100 school children dead and several teachers killed as well at an Army School.The intensity of the attack saw an unusually strong response from India with Prime Minister Narendra Modi going out of his way to reach to Pakistan and also declaring a day of mourning.

While the anatomy of this attack is yet to be laid threadbare in all its gory detail, there is but one curious aspect to these incidents in Pakistan. The “liberal” outrage that follows every one of these incidents has the effect of erasing all memory of the one before. Who can forget the bloodbath at the church, the Ahmeddiya Mosque, the Parade Lane Mosque which too saw Army Officers and their sons being deliberately targeted and of course Lal Masjid before that. The perps and the victims may have varied but the net effect the same incident after incident, as factions within have turned on each other to maim and bait.

Pakistan is now both Dr. Frankenstein and its own Monster creation having turned on itself, self-destructing bit by bit.

To us in India, sitting on the outside and watching Pakistan implode, it is inevitable that our innate Humanity in reaction to the monstrosity of the moment, will end up obscuring both our memory and clouding our judgment.

In 1947 we lost territory, but perhaps we lost the cradle of our civilization well before that, and yesterday we witnessed that civilization itself may be leaving the land of our ancestors.

The grim reality is we can neither “jointly fight” this nor can we “jointly overcome” it. We can at best work to “contain it ensuring its fallout remains within Pakistan’s territorial borders. Our Pakistan strategy must now be limited to”containment” while hoping that the Americans know what to do should Pakistan’s “crown jewels” ever be in jeopardy.

This grim reality of Frankeinstenistan was foretold eloquently many years back. More on that from Offsumped Archives.

Frankensteinistan Foretold by Dhirent Barot – Offstumped Archives

The deadly mosque attacks in Lahore on the Ahmeddiya sect remind us of an earlier deadly attack in December of 2009 on another mosque in Rawalpindi.

Both these attacks have brought home the spectre of the Frankenstein monster created by the Military Jihadi complex inside Pakistan .

It would be naïve and myopic to conclude that the turn of events in Pakistan are of recent origin spurred by the post 9/11 demands made of the Pakistani State by the International Community.

While the International Community may have woken up to the Afghanistan problem only in 2001 and to the Af-Pak conundrum since the Mumbai 26/11 attacks it is instructive to note that the Jihadists themselves saw this coming as far back as 1999.

The lone Jihadist of Hindu origin and subsequent neo-convert to Islam Dhiren Barot who assumed the kuniyat Eisa Al-Hindi currently languishes in a British Jail for having planned attacks on New York city.

Barot stands out for having actually spent time in Kashmir in the late 1990s in Jihadist terror training camps. But what stands out even more is the English language book that Barot authored in 1999 based on his first hand experiences in Kashmir living and learning with the Terrorists.

The book titled “The Army of Madinah in Kashmir” is remarkable for the English language articulation of first hand accounts from within the Jihadi Terrorist ranks in Kashmir. It is about 153 pages long with about sixteen chapters. It was publish in England by a Birmingham based Islamic entity Maktabah Al Ansaar before being banned. The book mostly delves into the tactics adopted by the Pakistan trained Islamist Terrorists in Kashmir apart from an extensive thesis on justifying Jihad in Kashmir and elsewhere. Most pertinent to this discussion is the penultimate chapter on Costs and Benefits of Jihad in Kashmir.

Specifically on Page 123, Dhiren Barot goes on to describe the role of the Pakistan State and implications for its future as he saw it back in 1999.

A reading of this section Pakistan offers a glimpse into the origins of the Frankenstein monster the Pakistani Military Jihadi complex is only now beginning to confront. Barot describes Pakistan in 1999 as harboring many thousands of Mujahideen including many who would come to be Mujahideen in the years to come. What is more striking is the specific detail with which Barot describes why Pakistan was exporting Jihadist Terrorism as an instrument of State Policy to neighboring States.

Barot describes the Pakistan State as being unable to “contain” the cognitive dissonance between the demands of Islamist Jihad and the needs of a decadent society. Barot sees the need for the Pakistani State to offer what he calls “an alternative tangible, practical and feasible solution whereby the zealots may relieve their natural instincts and fired up tensions”. This alternative outlet Barot describes to be the “active encouragement” by the Pakistani State of Muslim Youth to venture into neighboring States.

Barot back in 1999 also sees the roots of the anti-establishment faultline that we are now witnessing in 2009 in the form of indiscriminate suicide attacks against the Pakistani elite. On page 125 Barot writes that

the “Pakistani authorities receive the services of these mostly sincere but unsuspecting young men free of charge”.

An even more damning indictment of the Pakistani State follows in the next page when Barot describes Jihad’s foot soldiers as

“these innocent and unaware Muslim males who are no more than pawns in the game that adequately serve as cannon fodder performing the country’s dirty work”.

Barot then goes on to lay bare the underlying rationale behind Pakistan using Jihad as an instrument of State Policy with these words.

“The government of Pakistan is thus technically killing two birds with one stone, through the maximum manipulation of all this compound ignorance which exists among the ranks of her devout and yet easily impressionable native Mujahideen”.

Dhiren Barot’s insights into the faultlines within the Pakistani Military Jihadi complex are remarkable for their prognosis back then and for the reality they have become now.

On page 126 he foresaw sectarian faultlines within the Jihadist establishment that brought together many years later outfits like the Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and the HUJI in what we now understand to be 313 Brigade.

“It seems likely that sooner or later the government of Pakistan will pit the traditional Deobandis of Asia against the now and upcoming Ahle Hadith organizations in Pakistan”

Ominous warnings of Frankensteinistan come from Barot on pages 127, 130, 142 and 143

“But what can be the inevitable result of such flagrant usage of men, if not a tremendous backlash the government of Pakistan is playing with fire while trying to not get its fingers burnt at the same time.

It is directly responsible for burnishing these gullible lads with arms to keep Islamists distracted with semi-farcical issues far away from upholding any Islamism.

More and more there is a growing feeling of uncertainty in Islamabad that feels threatened by a monster they have created.

The government has long struggled to reconcile the differences between it and the Mujahideen that reside within its mainland.

Justifiably fear exists that the Mujahideen will forge greater ties of unity with the Taliban in Afghanistan. It is foreseeable that Pakistan will aspire to eventually implement closure of Mujahideen Training Camps and Offices which can be found in every City.”

Then comes the most defining prognostication that we just saw manifest in the string of suicide attacks in Lahore and earlier in Rawalpindi and other major cities in Pakistan.

There may soon be a new chapter, one the Pakistani authorities have bargained for though no doubt underestimated. The repercussions that may arise in the cooling of Kashmir conflict may well be surprising.

There will be of a surety those who will feel cheated, humiliated and let down. After all, submission tells people that all those who fought bravely and sacrificed their lives, did so in vain.

As such feelings will seek to be vented through retribution.