Sunday, July 31, 2011

When war theaters shift at the speed of thought....


The war theaters are shifting, literally at the speed of thought. This sudden shift is entrapping nations more like quicksand than anything else. The definition of national assets, particularly the strategic assets is being extended to include the digital infrastructures of the countries. Of particular importance is the cyberspace in which the defense establishments are operating. All the nations need to have a security policy for the changing scenarios and the most dynamic policies are needed for fighting wars in cyberspace. And the policies are to be updated at the speed of thought. These are extraordinary times and need extraordinary measures. We have extensively discussed 4GW which is being fought almost everywhere with non-state actors engaging national armies. The strategies to fight this kind of a war are covered under war-on-terror.  The terrorists, which are non-state actors, fight this war in order to inflict damages on the security apparatus of nation-states and kill innocent civilians. Various tactics are employed to effectively fight this kind of a war and the ultimate objective of terrorists, not achieved to this day, is to occupy a piece of land to start their own state. We are also living in an age of another kind of warfare called cyber warfare. This is defined as actions by a nation-state to penetrate another nation's computers or networks for the purposes of causing damage or disruption.

There are instances of cyber attacks on the sensitive websites of not only the USA but other countries. The common phrase so far used for this kind of attacks was “hacking” but when such attacks take place on the information assets of defense establishments, it is a serious business. The USA has anticipated such threats from China. According to The Economist, China has plans of “winning informationised wars by the mid-21st century”. They note that other countries are likewise organizing for cyber war, among them Russia, Israel and North Korea. Iran boasts of having the world's second-largest cyber-army. James Gosler, a government cyber security specialist, worries that the U.S. has a severe shortage of computer security specialists, estimating that there are only about 1,000 qualified people in the country today, but needs a force of 20,000 to 30,000 skilled experts.

US consider its digital infrastructure as “strategic national asset” and have set up its new U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM). Though it is not a territorial command like CENTCOM and AFRICOM, the significance of its mission can be understood from the fact the that head of NSA will head this new command. The threat has been taken so seriously that in future computer sabotage by another country against the United States might be considered an act of war and grounds for responding with military force.

The scope of cyber attack includes espionage and national security breaches, sabotage through communication, equipment and national power grid disruption. General Keith B. Alexander, first head of USCYBERCOM, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that computer network warfare is evolving so rapidly that there is a "mismatch between our technical capabilities to conduct operations and the governing laws and policies." Cyber Command is the newest global combatant and its sole mission is cyberspace, outside the traditional battlefields of land, sea, air and space." Alexander sketched out the broad battlefield envisioned for the computer warfare command, listing the kind of targets that his new headquarters could be ordered to attack, including "traditional battlefield prizes – command-and-control systems at military headquarters, air defense networks and weapons systems that require computers to operate."

According to a report recently published by The National Interest, the Pentagon has just released its security policy toward cyberspace. The strategy it sketches out is replete with “initiatives,” all of which are long on setting goals but curiously bereft of the means by which they might be attained. Even where there are some signs of the methods to be used, they seem for the most part quaint, rekindling as they do the concepts I remember being bruited about in the early 1990s.

The report has presented a critique of the security policy. The first initiative, according to the report, reiterates a two-decades-old point about recognizing cyberspace as an “operational domain.” It then embraces the equally hoary organizational mantra aimed at “synchronizing and coordinating” all activities—albeit under the rubric of yet another new military hierarchy, the Cyber Command. Given the balkiness and mixed operating records of other big-line organizations created since 9/11—the Department of Homeland Security and the Directorate of National Intelligence—it is sad to see the Pentagon’s failure to seize the opportunity to approach cyber issues in a more networked way. That is, with no central command, but lots of crosstalk and sharing of best practices between the services.

Once the big new organization is up and running, it will have to be defended, which is the subject of the second strategic initiative. This one calls for new concepts but then falls back on traditional notions of “cyber hygiene” (a term used repeatedly) and “hardening” of systems—both of which have been emphasized for at least fifteen years, neither of which has made the defense cybersphere safe from intrusion. Nowhere is this adequately acknowledged, nor is there any mention of how much more secure systems would be if, instead of relying on Maginot Line-like firewalls, widespread employment of very strong encryption—both for data in transit and data “at rest”—were the norm.

Given that much of the military’s information systems are highly reliant on commercial products, often from abroad, it is necessary to think in terms of working in conjunction with the private sector and other departments of government to try to ensure “supply-chain security.” This is the subject of the third strategic initiative, which gets pretty philosophical about the need to develop “whole-of-government approaches for managing risks associated with the globalization of the information and communications technology sector.” Again, this is a chestnut from the 1990s, when every commission looking at cyber security called for such cooperation. The problem is that this call is not a strategy. Rather, it is a symptom of the danger posed by market forces that drive us to seek the lowest cost, with less attention given to the security of the products in question. It is time to remember that even the great prophet of laissez-faire, Adam Smith, called for “free trade in all things save gunpowder and sailcloth,” the key military products of the eighteenth century. If he were alive in the twenty-first, he’d no doubt call for great circumspection regarding “microchips and software.”

Another aspect of international affairs, working with allies, emerges as the focus of the fourth initiative. Here the Pentagon’s proffered solution goes well back before the 1990s, all the way to the beginnings of NATO over sixty years ago, with a call for “collective security.” This is the notion that an attack upon one is an attack upon all. It was a powerful idea, one that animated many to join NATO and comforted them in the face of a looming Soviet threat. But it was based on the notion that an attack on one crippled only the one, leaving the strength of others intact to mount the liberating campaign. The problem with collective security in a cyber age is that a serious intrusion into—or attack upon—one ally’s information systems could lead to the crippling of the whole alliance. With this in mind, the Pentagon’s strategic analysis should contemplate the point that, whatever benefits allies bring—in political and/or military terms—when it comes to cyberspace they now carry very large risks as well.

Whatever might be needed to pursue the first four strategic initiatives, or to mitigate the risks that accompany them, the Pentagon’s fifth goal is to solve all difficulties with “rapid technological innovation.” The problem here is that such advances may do little to grapple with fundamental organizational challenges. Networks are needed now, not hierarchies. Another gap in Pentagon thinking is that technology itself, no matter how sophisticated—as some cyber weapons are—when not employed in conjunction with a clear-eyed concept of operations, can lead to disaster in the field. The Maginot Line was a marvel of advanced technology—but it couldn’t move, a fatal flaw in the age of mechanization. The Line was outflanked in just days by German panzers during the spring of 1940. Pentagon strategy should therefore be focused on seeing how advanced information technology can foster overall doctrinal innovation.

In sum, the Department of Defense Strategy for Operating in Cyberspace has little new to say, despite the long wait for it and the two decades that have passed since the early-1990s “quickening” of the information revolution. Indeed, the document seems far too steeped in older concepts to be able to meet the challenges of our time and those to come. The only hope now is that the commander-in-chief, our first cyber president, will become his own chief strategist and begin to move matters in more productive directions. His hero, President Lincoln, did this during the Civil War, overcoming his generals’ objections as he parsed the most effective ways to use rail and telegraph—the cutting-edge technologies of his time—to empower and guide Union forces to victory. Barack Obama will have to do something similar now. Otherwise, the information age is going to turn into one long slog.


Friday, July 15, 2011

From the Great Game to endgame; Militants may end up owning half the world after the draw-down….

 “Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world.” Archimedes
 
The super powers, in possession of some kind of a lever, have been trying to find a place to move the whole world. And this has been going on  since ages but this race to occupy a strategic lever-point in Central Asia started in eighteenth century. Tsarist Russia and Imperial Britain have been competing with each other to occupy Central Asian states and Afghanistan where, in their view, lied the point for fixing their lever. This war between them fought with covert operations, military conflicts and infrastructure development is known in history as the Great Game. The Game is still on with the only difference that this is now being played by a sole contestant who is nowhere near the victory. The war has been lost and with it, trillions of dollars of American taxpayers who were made to believe that their warmongering leaders were going to fight a great war. The loss of human lives may be insignificant as this is only a “collateral damage” which can be written off by the corporate mindset, but certainly not by the ruthless historians.

The sole contestant possesses the biggest lever ever available to mankind and it has the means to fix it but, sadly, it lacks the heart, and the moral ground. The end-game will, therefore, be a game-changer. Militants may end up owning half the world after the draw-down comes to an end. Emboldened by the end-game, they will have South and Central Asia to themselves and will have the lever too. And they have proved that they can fix the lever wherever they want. They will move and shake the whole world at will and with incredible ease. South and Central Asian region will not be the only candidate for destabilization. The instability has the inherent tendency of travelling faster than the bush fire. 

The fallout of drawdown may not figure in the calculations for winning the second term of office but there are people who have made chilling calculations. "The countries in the area that border Afghanistan are going to have a problem on their hands," Seth Cropsey, a former assistant to the U.S. secretary of defense, warns of the gradual drawdown of international troops there, "because even if the Afghan forces have been trained to defend their country from the Taliban, there are other places that the Taliban can go."

Immediately after President Barack Obama's June 22 speech announcing a timetable for the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, several other NATO allies, including the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, followed suit with statements detailing pullouts of their own. Canada has since ended its combat mission. “Today the Taliban may lack a physical presence in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia”, says a Central Asia-specific analysis of GlobalSecurity.org, “but those are the countries that have the most to fear as the security situation in northern Afghanistan continues to deteriorate.”

It is direct neighbor Tajikistan that is likely to feel the impact most directly. A nation of 7.5 million people that shares a 1,400-kilometer border with Afghanistan, it competes with Kyrgyzstan for the title of Central Asia's poorest country. Tajikistan's already fragile security situation contributes to its vulnerability, with some homegrown militant groups fighting against the government of long-serving President Emomali Rahmon. But the challenges to stability come not only from local militants. Culprits also include regional organizations like the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), with its close ties to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Reports suggest that the IMU is actively coordinating attacks with the Taliban in northern Afghanistan. The IMU is also said to be involved in insurgent activities in other parts of Central Asia and neighboring Pakistan. The IMU's stated goal is the creation of an Islamist caliphate across Central Asia. Founded in 1991, it has fought and trained with Al-Qaeda, notably along the notorious border region separating Afghanistan from Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

Alexander Cooley, a professor at Barnard College in New York City, notes that "one has to be careful about statements from Central Asian governments, who play militant cards to get military assistance from foreign countries. But the situation in Tajikistan is serious. In the case of Tajikistan, we see a country that's already deteriorating by a number of measures, and especially the eastern part of the country might be susceptible to sort of cross-border types of campaigns and insurgencies," Cooley says.
The cross-border threats are real, and infiltration across the border into Tajikistan is already a serious source of concern despite the presence of thousands of coalition forces on the ground in northern Afghanistan. Incidents in which Afghans cross the border and kidnap Tajik citizens on the other side have lately become a fixture of life for Tajik villages in the border region.

Tajiks whose relatives have been taken hostage are forced to pay large sums to secure the release of their loved ones. In addition to the constant threat of infiltration by militant groups, the cross-border drug trade is another serious cause of concern for Tajikistan and the wider region, including Russia. On July 1, Russian's antidrug tsar, Viktor Ivanov, visited Dushanbe to discuss Tajikistan's border with Afghanistan and the possibility of Russian soldiers returning to the Tajik-Afghan border to bring the situation under control. Russian troops were stationed on that frontier until 2005, when Moscow withdrew them to demonstrate confidence in the Tajikistan government.

Farther to the north, officials in Kyrgyzstan blame Afghan drug money and local Islamist militants for shaky security in southern Kyrgyzstan, where ethnic tensions led to bloodshed and massive displacement in 2010. Uzbekistan's leaders accuse Afghan groups of fomenting a 2005 revolt in the Ferghana Valley -- though such claims are disputed by independent analysts who contend that that rebellion should be blamed on domestic factors rooted in resistance to Uzbekistan's harsh authoritarian government. Afghan security officials acknowledge their failure to clamp down on the border but blame their inability to control the situation on a lack of troops and equipment.

Speaking on Afghan television, the commander of border security forces in the north of the country, General Abdul Habib Sayedkhil, said on July 8 that he had only 4,000 personnel to protect the entire 2,431-kilometer border with Central Asian states.

How the Afghan forces will fare in the absence of coalition troops remains an open question.
The ex-Pentagon official Cropsey, who is now a senior foreign policy fellow at the Hudson Institute, a Washington-based think tank, says that "such a scenario will only raise more serious concerns about the stability and security situation of the Central Asian countries, which are already unstable."

"There are serious problems in Kyrgyzstan...[and there are] serious problems in Uzbekistan," Cropsey says. "The question of political stability is a constant one in central Asia. If a country is politically unstable, its ability to resist invasion is reduced tremendously."

Barnard College professor Cooley points out that the security situation in Central Asia is not only a matter for concern to local governments. It is also a factor in the geopolitical competition among the great powers with direct interests in the region.

"I think one of the hidden consequences of the U.S. drawdown is that it's going to throw into sharper relief Russian and Chinese competition over the region, which I think has been hidden so far, in that they are both concerned and nervous about the permanency of the U.S. presence," Cooley says. "But with the U.S. drawing down, I think it's going to focus more the question of whose security priorities are being served in the region, China's [or] Russia's, and I think it's going to intensify the rivalry between the two."

Additional evidence of the regional anxiety about the drawdown came at the June 15 summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a security forum that brings together Russia, China, and the Central Asian states. The meeting devoted significant discussion to Afghanistan.
In an interview with "The Christian Science Monitor," Russian expert Aleksandr Dugin, who heads the right-wing International Eurasian Movement allying Russian academics, policymakers, and interested observers, said that "the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan concerns all the surrounding countries."

"The West is far away, but we are near," Dugin said. "This is our security zone, and that is why only an organization like the SCO can potentially hold out a constructive alternative for Afghanistan."

And imagine the fate of South Asia; al Qaeda is already in coalition with TTP, an umbrella terrorist organization killing innocent civilians and security personnel in Pakistan. With Pakistan’s army busy fighting these terrorists in FATA region, TTP is trying to broaden the war theater to suck in India and start an Indo-Pakistan war in order to achieve a space in Pakistan’s North Western border with Afghanistan. Pakistan army is hard pressed as it has to commit its resources evenly on both western and eastern borders with Afghanistan and India respectively. The ultimate aim of TTP in the short-term is Pakistan-India conflict through terrorist activities in the whole of South Asia. The region is at the risk of destabilization after the drawdown. The only reason this destabilization is not imminent is Pakistan’s remarkable restrain to open war in North Waziristan where some elements of Afghan Taliban have some sanctuaries. The moment Pakistan engages those elements in war, there will be a broader coalition of TTP, al Qaeda and Afghan Taliban and this coalition will have half the world to itself. And with the sole super power having lost the war in drawdown, nothing will be safe even in the farther lands.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Was the slain journalist another Raymond Davis for the US?

Hussain Saqib


American establishment, with the help of its allied international media, is working overtime to malign Pakistan’s security establishment. Its target of particular interest is Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency called ISI. It has the support of enthusiastic and willing partners in Pakistan’s corrupt and nincompoop politicians thrown up as “leaders” through a questionable democratic process. At the beck and call are also corporate media anchors known for their allegiance both to terrorist organizations and the Western imperialism. They think they have a reason to spit venom against Pakistan and its institutions. The charge-sheet drawn against security institutions is updated on daily basis and the latest charge added to the list is killing of a journalist of Asia Times, an online newspaper published from Hong Kong. The Pakistani government has already constituted a judicial commission to probe the killing and the panel is investigating the crime with a serving judge of the Supreme Court and members of journalist community as its members. The investigations, it is learnt, were initiated on the request of the ISI itself.

The latest diatribe by American press and senior members of administration implicating ISI in the murder without any evidence is yet another attempt to influence the outcome of the probe and increase pressure on Pakistan’s military. Those who have been following the story of Raymond Davis, a CIA operative caught with clear evidence of espionage and his contacts with banned terrorist organizations, will find striking similarities between handling by US administration and media of his arrest and journalist’s murder . The way this murder is being highlighted and the probe panel pressurized to incriminate ISI shows as if the slain journalist was another Raymond Davis working in Pakistan. 

This campaign launched in the name of killing of the journalist has come under scrutiny by the independent media also. An article titled, ISI Wrongfully Accused of Killing Journalist authored by John R. Schmidt, a former US political counselor in Islamabad has appeared in a recent issue of The National Interest. The author says ISI may have a long history of intervening in political affairs at the behest of its army masters but if ISI was responsible for murdering Shahzad, it may well have been a first. As far as physical coercion was concerned, this was much more the province of the considerably less disciplined and poorly trained civilian police and their political masters; it was Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, for example, who had Najam Sethi, one of Pakistan’s leading journalists, beaten and carted off to jail for criticizing him in 1999. Interestingly enough, Pervez Musharraf, the army chief who overthrew Nawaz, proved to be significantly more tolerant of press freedom than his predecessor.

The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that fifteen journalists have lost their lives in intentionally targeted killings in Pakistan since the murder of Daniel Pearl in early 2002, all of them Pakistani. Almost all were killed by radical Islamists affiliated with al-Qaeda or the Pakistani Taliban. The remainders were murdered for investigating regional ethnic conflicts or local corruption. None of the fifteen fit a plausible ISI scenario. But why would ISI choose Shahzad as its first victim? He was not a big-name journalist, nor was he among those who raised embarrassing questions about ISI and the army over the Abbottabad raid on bin Laden. His Karachi-naval-base story did not accuse ISI of improper conduct, and it is not clear why it would have killed him over a story that, if it embarrassed anyone, would not have embarrassed the Pakistani Army. ISI was well aware that some of its senior officers had recently had a word with Shahzad and should have realized that if he suddenly turned up murdered ISI might be blamed for it, further sullying its already battered reputation. And that, of course, is exactly what happened.

The author opines that others might have had a motive for killing Shahzad such as members of al-Qaeda and its various Pakistani affiliates, although none have claimed responsibility. But the fact remains that senior U.S. officials told the New York Times they had “reliable and conclusive” intelligence that ISI was responsible. Admiral Mullen, in an interview late last week, was somewhat more circumspect, saying merely that the evidence showed Pakistani government—but not necessarily ISI—involvement in the killing. The article goes on to say, “also unexplained is why U.S. officials would reveal such information even if they were in possession of it. Relations between the CIA and the ISI have been seriously strained ever since CIA contractor Raymond Davis was arrested and detained last January for killing two Pakistanis he said were trying to rob him but who later turned out to be working for ISI. The Davis affair was followed just six weeks later by the raid on the bin Laden compound in Abbottabad, which poisoned relations even further. Needless to say, telling the New York Times there was conclusive evidence that ISI was responsible for killing a Pakistani journalist was unlikely to improve the relationship. The U.S. officials involved may have been motivated by human rights concerns, hoping to deter ISI from committing further such acts. But given recent events, there could also be elements of bad blood at work here.”

It was not a mere coincident that just two days after Admiral Mullen made his accusations on the Shahzad murder, the New York Times revealed the United States was suspending military assistance to Pakistan. Washington has been increasingly frustrated at Islamabad’s unwillingness to go after those Afghan Taliban forces using the North Waziristan tribal area as a safe haven for conducting operations in eastern Afghanistan. The Pakistanis have refused to do so because they see the Afghan Taliban as a hedge against the emergence of a hostile government in Kabul allied to India after U.S. forces depart the region. 

This is what Pakistanis believe is in their national interest and have every right to protect it even though it may be quite contrary to what the US perceives to be in its national interest. Although little publicized in the West, the Indians have developed close ties to the Karzai government, flooded the country with aid workers and provided the Afghans with over a billion dollars in aid. Although the Pakistanis have no particular love for the Afghan Taliban—whose support for Osama bin Laden got them into their current fix—they fear the Indian presence in Afghanistan even more. Not only has the United States shown little sympathy for these Pakistani concerns, it has grown increasingly angry at Pakistani reluctance to do what it wants. Seen in this context, the U.S. decision to publicly accuse ISI of complicity in the Shahzad murder can be viewed as just another manifestation of American displeasure.

Given the strength of Pakistani concerns about Afghanistan, however, there may be no amount of pressure capable of forcing the Pakistani Army into going after the Afghan Taliban. If anything, U.S. pressure to date has only served to fan the flames of anti-Americanism both among ordinary Pakistanis and within the army. The danger is that, by continuing to ratchet up the pressure, Washington may provoke a final break with the Pakistanis. This would not only jeopardize the U.S. ability to supply its forces in Afghanistan, which rely heavily on land routes through Pakistani territory, but could lead both sides down the slippery slope to a shooting war. The Pakistani Army is already engaged in a protracted, bloody struggle against hostile Pakistani Taliban forces in the tribal areas and is widely regarded as the only force in the country capable of preventing a jihadist takeover of the government. While the current situation is certainly a mess—and U.S. frustrations are understandable—things could very easily get a whole lot worse.

The article presents a dispassionate and an excellent analysis and should be able to expose all those who thought they would be able to tarnish the image of ISI and drive a wedge between Pakistan’s security establishment and its people in a time when Pakistan is at war with foreign-funded insurgency. Such criticism, by those perceived to be anti-Pakistan, raises the image of ISI and the military in the eyes of its people.

Monday, July 4, 2011

Beware; “AfPak” means Pakistan after Afghanistan….


Everything has a price; so has the friendship. And Pakistan’s friendship with China is no exception. Pakistan is like a symbol of honor for the US; a sweetheart in typical South Asian context where the lover cannot reconcile to share him/her with anyone and would rather have her killed to save his honor. The same thing is happening with Pakistan. Its friendship with China will cost her so dearly that it faces the perils of disintegration at the hands of the US. This is the conclusion of a recent report of Center for Research on Globalization which appeared in GlobalResearch.ca. According to the paper, in the ‘Great Game’  for global hegemony, any country that impedes America’s world primacy – even one as historically significant to America as Pakistan -  may be sacrificed upon the altar of war. It was reported in these pages that Pakistan’s current troubles with India and the USA have their roots in its all-weather friendship with China. 
 
The report which appeared in two parts examines the changing views of the American strategic community towards Pakistan. The strategists base their analysis on their assumption, in fact a sinister desire that Pakistan will very likely continue to be destabilized and ultimately collapse. American military and intelligence community is trying very hard to translate their desire into reality. The report does not mention the role of Pakistani media who have clear leaning to and sympathies for both the USA and Taliban, and the opportunist and corrupt politicians very excited at the first-ever opportunity of military-bashing. These two “pillars of power” are aiding the intelligence community of the USA and Taliban to break up the country to prove the prophecies of doom. In December of 2000, the CIA released a report of global trends to the year 2015, which stated that by 2015, Pakistan will be more fractious, isolated, and dependent on international financial assistance. It further predicted that Pakistan will not recover easily from decades of political and economic mismanagement, divisive politics, lawlessness, corruption and ethnic friction. The situation will be worsened by political elite and radical Islamic parties. The latter will increase their role in national politics and alter the makeup and cohesion of the military – once Pakistan’s most capable institution.

Everything is taking place strictly according to the script authored by the CIA. All the actors, political elite, Pakistani Taliban and the media are performing their respective roles faithfully. The report concludes that the destabilization of Pakistan has the potential to be the greatest geopolitical catastrophe since WWII.

The report says that war in Afghanistan is inherently related to the situation in Pakistan. After attacking Afghanistan in 2001 with Pakistan’s cooperation, the war theater has now been renamed “AfPak” altering Pakistan’s role. The war has brought instability to Pakistan and the “AfPak” eliminates its role as a proxy state and makes it a target of US fury. This is, particularly, a cause for India to rejoice because destabilized Pakistan will bring multiple benefits to India including preventing China from gaining the port of Gwadar. According to Indian Defence Review, it would not only be a severe jolt to China’s expansionist aims, it would open up India’s access to Central Asian energy routes.

There are public perceptions in South Asia and elsewhere that 9/11 took place to give the USA an excuse to secure Central Asian routes through occupying Afghanistan. This was a dream of corporate America and for this purpose, Pakistani Taliban (TTP) were created to complete the agenda of Pakistan destabilization. According to an interview with ex-DG ISI referred to in the report, these Taliban are getting aid and weapons from across the Durand line, from Afghanistan where Indian and Israeli secret services have a strong presence under the umbrella of the US. 

Pakistani military is fighting a pitched battle to save Pakistan from the US agents (Pakistani Taliban aided and equipped by USA, India and Israel). In order to break its resolve to safeguard the national interest, it is being put under tremendous pressure from every corner. In wars, the armies are supported but in Pakistan it is being criticized which proves the point that the enemies are bent upon disintegrating Pakistan through destabilization being caused by Taliban, media and politicians. The military, which is the last rock between survival and disintegration of the country, is being weakened by media and opportunist politicians who call themselves as state pillars. Will the endgame of India succeed or the people support the military through fighting these so called crumbling pillars? Trust me, if these are pillars of the State, then the future of the people of Pakistan is not very bright.


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Beijing, Washington DC and the Gwadar port; the new game plan is not that new....