POREG VIEW: Former military ruler, Gen. (Retd) Pervez Musharraf’s admission to German magazine Der Spiegel that Pakistan had trained militant groups to fight in Kashmir is neither a surprise nor a shock. A score of Pakistani leaders made the ‘disclosure’ a number of times. Former Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif said so in public, in interviews and on TV; several Pak Army Generals too admitted the fact. So there is no big secret that the loudmouthed Musharraf is letting out to his German audience on the very day German media was full of stories about Germans in the Osama Jihadi camps in North Waziristan. .
The admission per se, therefore, is not significant, but what undoubtedly is the unabashed way of saying it. Musharraf, who wants to bounce out of wilderness, doesn’t regret the Pakistani Army creating, rearing and directing numerous terrorist groups for Islamabad’s policy of imposing “thousand cuts” on India. Spiegel asked him a pointed question- ‘Do you regret for your secret Kargil Operation, which led to an armed conflict with India in 1999, and also for your mild treatment, as Pakistan President, of religious militants? Musharraf ducked the question, though he went on to lament, ‘Pakistan is always seen as the rogue state’.
As a young army officer, during Gen. Zia’s rule, Musharraf was deeply involved in training underground terrorist groups for duty in Kashmir and Afghanistan as well. The terrorist infrastructure that Pakistan Army has assiduously built and is remorselessly publicizing now has become a `destroyer’ of world peace. International community formed a military alliance in Afghanistan to root out this very menace.
Why did Musharraf make the grand admission now? It is not difficult to fathom the reasons. Consider the tone and tenor of his remarks to the German publication. He appears to take pride in the Pak army feat of creating and nurturing Kashmiri militancy. After two years of unemployment, that too during forced exile mostly in London, he sees an opening for his come back in the presently prevailing political anarchy his country. But he has no political constituency, and with no takers around, Musharraf has turned to a time tested tactic. If unemployed Pakistani youth turned to jihad for an entry pass to heaven, Pakistani rulers always turn to India bashing for instant stardom with loud statements of how they had bled India and how they would do so again when the next opportunity arises. General Kayani, Musharraf’s successor at the army headquarters, is no exception. His early statements as army chief were a reiteration of primacy to Kashmir militancy in his scheme.
Musharraf’s admission has another purpose, unacknowledged though. It is a `conciliatory’ message to the Islamist terrorists ‘hurt’ by the Lal Masjid (Rawalpindi) operation he had undertaken at the behest of ‘all-weather friend’ to ‘free’ Chinese who were taken hostage for running massage parlours patronized by high society clients, senior Generals including.
Gamble? Yes, it is indeed. Well, what other option the ‘Yesterday Man’ has?
