Bomb blasts in Mumbai trains later replicated elsewhere in Europe now seems to have been carried further, with the Nairobi mall assault bearing striking resemblance to 26/11 Mumbai mayhem.
Pakistani LET terrorists Ajmal Kasab and his deadly squad did what the al-Shabaab hitmen have done at Westgate Mall, Nairobi — held a civilian space to ransom and subjected innocents to death and torture.
The only difference — Kasab and his squad went around hitting multiple targets before being holed up in two hotels and a Jewish home. The al-Shabaab men in Nairobi just went for Westgate mall, realising it was a good enough target for them to make the point they wanted to.
While Indian television gave Kasab and squad all the media glare they would have bargained for, beaming the attack live, the al-Shabaab attackers smartly used social media, uploading ‘live commentary’ on social media.
The other difference — Kasab’s group was entirely Pakistani, while al-Shabaab claims their assault group was made up of various nationalities including some from the US — presumably Somalis from Maine and Minnesota.
So at the end of the day, if Mumbai 26/11 provides the template for global terrorism, we now know its architect.
Kasab had provided his Indian interrogators details of how his group was trained by Pakistani army and navy instructors under the watchful eye of the ISI, which planned the hit.
The US confirmed Kasab’s confessions on the basis of what Headley had told their intelligence — that the non-state actors had the official backing, support and planning of state agencies of Pakistanis.
So will it be too much to say that the ISI is the one agency that provides the template for global jihad and fine-tunes its latest assault strategies?
The Pakistan army lost the 1971 war because its troops deployed in East Pakistan were very low on morale.
This is exactly what happens when armed soldiers instead of fighting equals spend all their time raping women and murdering innocents for months together.
Or else how do you explain a whole army group, more than 90000 soldiers, surrendering without much resistance in less than a fortnight after the Indian offensive?
When India’s former army chief general Shankar Roychoudhury said a ‘brutalised army is no good as a fighting machine’, he had East Pakistan in mind.
“These troops were not inferior to our soldiers but they were totally demoralised because for eight months they had only been raping women and killing villagers and unarmed combatants,” Roychoudhury told the Indian army training command, which he was commanding and which had prepared the ‘Ten Commandants’ for Indian army, stressing on human rights obligations.
The Indian army will do well to learn from the neighbour’s experience and avoid exposure in counter-insurgency operations — at least it should finally accept the scrapping of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act that encourages and allows impunity.
But the Pakistan army never emerged as a fighting machine in the days after the 1971 humiliation.
Its officers and men had so much to live for as here was an army which controlled the state — so why die in the field of battle!
Under Zia-ul-Haq, it perfected the art of using non-state actors to bleed opponents — first in Afghanistan, then in Kashmir and else in India.
This was a form of war where officers and men were not called upon to make the supreme sacrifice — the jihadis were trained and primed for that role.
But the Pakistani army created a Frankenstein which it had to take on now.
But so often would one find regular Pakistani units surrendering en masse to forces of Taliban that it is difficult to believe it is a fighting machine worth it.
The US loves to fight its war with drones, the Pakistanis love to fight it through jihadis. Using use-and-throw assets.
Both are expendable. As the Jamaat in Bangladesh must now be finding out.
The US army lost Vietnam, the Pakistan army lost its East and Bangladesh was born. The rest is history.
Source: Bd news24
