RAWALPINDI: While the Pakistan Army is alert to and fighting the threat posed by militancy, it remains an “India-centric” institution and that reality will not change in any significant way until the Kashmir issue and water disputes are resolved, according to army chief Gen Kayani.
In a presentation to Pakistani media, Gen Kayani reiterated his widely reported comments on the Pakistan Army’s view of the situation in Afghanistan and the way forward there.
But the army chief also made it clear that his institution’s “frame of reference” for addressing the problems in that country included certain concerns that are India specific.
History, unresolved issues, India’s military capability and its ‘Cold Start’ doctrine meant that Pakistan could not afford to let its guard down. Repeating a well-known formulation, Gen Kayani said: “We plan on adversaries’ capabilities, not intentions.”
‘Americans know only as much as they can guess and nothing more – about Pakistan’s nuclear programme’.
ISLAMABAD: Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Gen Tariq Majid has dismissed as ‘absurd and plain mischievous’ a report by American journalist Seymour Hersh published in The New Yorker about alleged vulnerability of Pakistan’s nuclear assets and facilities.
He said Pakistan did not need any foreign help to guard its nuclear facilities because they were already well protected.
Makhdoom Babar in Islamabad & Christina Palmer in New Delhi
While the western media and the western governments keep shouting about vulnerability of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and keep expressing the fears that these are likely to fall in the hands of extremists like Taliban, they have kept their eyes wide shut regarding the state of affairs of the nuclear weapons and nuclear capable missiles of neighbouring India where the situation is highly alarming, reveal the findings of The Daily Mail’s investigations into the matter.
According to The Daily Mail’s investigations, the Indian government, in bid to keep it maximum possible away from the striking capabilities of Pakistan that lies across India’s northern borders, decades back decided to install all its nuclear and missile facilities in the Eastern zone of the country. However, with the passage of time, the eastern region of India emerged as the most disturbed, fragile and ungovernable region of the country with a variety of insurgency movements including that of Naxal rebels, emerging in that very part of the country.
Washington: The US Air Force said on Thursday the commander of a nuclear wing had been sacked after his unit failed a safety inspection, trucks carrying missile parts crashed and officers under him fell asleep with launch codes in hand.
Colonel Christopher Ayres, commander of the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, was removed Wednesday “due to loss of confidence in his ability to command,” Air Force Space Command said in a statement.
Must watch episode of Dr. Shahid Masood’s ‘Mere Mutabiq’ in which he links Zardari’s mention of the 100bn figure with the idea floated last year to ‘buy off’ Pakistan’s nuclear weapons for 100bn. Also under discussion are Blackwater and other US mercenaries present in Pakistan.
Joining the discussion is the ex-head of Pakistan’s premier Intelligence agency, the ISI as well as Parvez Hoodbhoy
URGENT: India Pays Baitullah Mehsud To Attack Pakistan’s Nuclear Sites, Plan Deployed
The Indians working with their allies in the Karzai government have designed a foolproof plan to attack Pakistani nuclear sites using hired terrorists. They think they can pull it off and permanently damage Pakistan’s standing internationally and hasten calls for denuclearizing Pakistan. Any attack on Pakistani nuclear sites in the coming days will be taken as a declaration of war by India and will be dealt with equal force. There should not be confusion on this.
Pakistan has addressed issues of survivability in a possible nuclear conflict through second strike capability.
Pakistan now has deeply buried storage and launch facilities to retain a second strike capability in a nuclear war.
As the US prepared to invade Afghanistan after 9/11, Pervez Musharraf ordered that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal be redeployed to ‘at least six secret new locations’.
Zaid Hamid on Pakistan’s Nuclear Program, its history and the reasons why it became a necessity. Also discusses the persistent threats it has faced not only before the nuclear tests of 1998 which the entire Muslim world celebrated as their own, but even today.
Zaid Hamid also pays a touching tribute to our unsung heroes – those mujahids who risked and often lost their lives in helping Pakistan achieve nuclear status – those that you haven’t read or heard about on tv or in the papers. They deserve our prayers for their ultimate sacrifice not for personal recognition, but for Islam and the ideology of Pakistan.
A must watch program. First aired on Youm-e-Takbeer last year.
The Zardari government cited budgetary constraints to refuse uranium from Kazakhstan. But the real story is that the government has accepted aid in exchange for what appears to be a freeze on Pakistan’s advanced nuclear and strategic programs. These were Washington’s conditions. And it is part of a wider pattern.
“Those whose faith only increased when people said, ‘Fear your enemy: they have amassed a great army against you,’ and who replied, ‘Allah is enough for us: He is the best protector.” Al-Imran, 3:173
Introduction
Pakistan since its inception has faced one crisis after another. It has continued to stumble from one problem to another due to never having a leadership with the capability or the will to tackle Pakistan’s problems head on. Today, Pakistan faces a situation which is unprecedented in its history. From some perspectives Pakistan’s inability to deal holistically with its problems has compounded its current woes. US plans for Pakistan are fast reaching boiling point, with the Mumbai attacks accelerating attempts by the US to weaken Pakistan.
What should be clear is that Pakistan is in no position to shape the geopolitics taking place in front of its very eyes. India is playing a very prominent role with the US in order to shape what happens to Pakistan. Both India and the US have successfully created international public opinion against Pakistan for having so called ‘rogue elements’ within its security services that say are a menace to the world due to their support for Jihadi groups. Such claims are eerily similar to the case the US built against Iraq and should confirm to every Muslim that we are in the early phase of the world gathering against another Muslim nation. The question remains that is Pakistan fast descending into the next Iraq? This paper attempts to analyse US historical interests in south Asia, the problem Pakistan represents for the US and what options remain open for Pakistan.
Will India launch punitive strike(s) against Pakistan? Highly unlikely. India would have already struck if it had a choice. It doesn’t have a choice for two major reasons:
1. Indians know, they can start a conflict, but where and how the war ends will not be in their control.
2. By tangling themselves in a war, they run a too realistic risk of delivering a mortal blow to their service-based economy, which may not even survive the brinksmanship Indians are engaging in.
It has now been more than a month since the Nov. 26 Mumbai attacks, and India has not responded militarily in Pakistan. Some war preparations have been made and New Delhi has by no means taken the military operation off the table, but the crisis, for now, has hit a temporary lull. In a recent unscheduled conversation between Indian Director-General of Military Operations Lt. Gen. A. S. Sekhon and his Pakistani counterpart Maj. Gen. Javed Iqbal over the crisis hotline between New Delhi and Islamabad, Iqbal may well have overtly reminded Sekhon of Pakistan’s longstanding nuclear first-use policy. India may have consequently taken a step back to re-evaluate its options and the consequences of direct military intervention in Pakistan.
ISLAMABAD: Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Gen Tariq Majid has dismissed as ‘absurd and plain mischievous’ a report by American journalist Seymour Hersh published in The New Yorker about alleged vulnerability of Pakistan’s nuclear assets and facilities.
Will India launch punitive strike(s) against Pakistan? Highly unlikely. India would have already struck if it had a choice. It doesn’t have a choice for two major reasons:
