National Security
“Where Borders Bleed”
Dt: 26/6/15
“Where Borders Bleed”
( An insider’s account of Indo-Pak relations)
By
Rajiv Dogra
A former Indian Foreign Service Officer
Publisher: Rupa, 2015
Price: Rs. 500; Pages: 288
Review by Dr T.H.Chowdary*
This book is a chilling but true account of the India-Pakistan ‘s relations, wars and most importantly, Pakistanis’ mental makeup . The sum and substance and the message that it gives to the reader are that Pakistan is a congenital and incorrigible enemy of India. India’s Prime Ministers Nehru, Lal Bahadur Sastry, Indira Gandhi and Manmohan Singh had been easily fooled by the fox -like intelligence and vicious minds of Pakistan’s creators and subsequent leaders; Md. Ali Jinnah, Liaqat Ali Khan, Ayub Khan, Musharraf, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto and the latest, Nawaz Sharif . We get surprised at the ease and repetitive manner in which our leaders have been fooled. Bhutto gloated over the way he could fool India’s Prime Ministers. India had always been seeking to live in peace with Pakistan with no thought or design of ever breaking Pakistan. In regard to the sharing of the canal waters (fed by Sindh, Jhelum and Chenab) also India had been over -generous to this day. But Pakistan’s leaders had the single mindset of over -powering India with the idea that Muslims were once the rulers of India for centuries. Since Pakistan was created solely on the basis of religion, they would not understand why the Muslim majority Kashmir should not belong to them and why India should hold on to it.
2. The possession of nuclear weapons by Pakistan has changed the entire India-Pakistan military situation. As it is the belief of Muslims that by killing kafirs one becomes a ghazi , the Pakistan’s military leaders in any future major conflict will not hesitate to nuclear -bomb Delhi and Mumbai for which they are reported to have carried out exercises. India committed to the world that it would not be the first to use nuclear weapons in any conflict. Pakistan did not do so. It keeps the option of nuclear -bombing India when it chooses. The possibility is aggravated by various jihadi groups which are nurtured and sheltered and armed by the ISI (Inter Services Intelligence) they may go berserk. The tactical nuclear war- heads that Pakistan possesses could fall into their hands and the mad men could hurl them on Indian cities. So the conclusion of this book seems to be that India has to suffer the thousands of cuts Zulfikar Ali that Bhutto Wowed to inflict upon India to make it bleed without a pause, for fear that Pakistan would nuclear -bomb India. India is not going to take any hot pursuit actions against the jihadis trained and armed and hurled into India under cover from the Pakistani army’s fire within India are grown zihadis, Pakistan ‘s fifth column, as advised by Mao and Chow En Lai. (P
3. Narrated below are some very interesting facts revealing the Pakistani mind -set and because of that, what is in store for India.
· Jinnah labelled Nehru, “... an arrogant Brahmin who covers his Hindu trickiness under a veneer of western education “ and he called Mahatma Gandhi, “.. a cunning fox, a Hindu revivalist (page 12)
· Nehru used to assert that he was a rationalist. When the date for India’s Independence was to be chosen, he consulted Sri Goswami Ganesh Dutt, a leading Hindu seer. After looking at the astrological charts, Sri Dutt said that both 14 & 15 of August suggested by Nehru were inauspicious. They indicated a life of strife and uncertainty. Nehru asked him to consult the charts again and suggest the least troublesome time within that two-day period. Goswami suggested the midnight of 14-15 of August as the least troublesome. That is how Nehru made the midnight speech. (p-13)
· At a social party in Karachi Sri Rajiv Dogra met a Naval officer from the Naval Academy of Karachi . The Naval officer inquired “if there could ever be good relations between our two countries”. Dogra replied encouragingly and said that given the goodwill on both sides, there should surely come a time when we would begin to live in peace. There was puzzlement in the face of the Naval officer and with the annoyance of youth he asked, “then what will happen to the oath that I took earlier this evening ?” Rajiv Dogra later found that a part of the oath for all newly commissioned Defence Officers of Pakistan calls upon them to engage in a jihad against India. (p/19)
· When Gen.Zia Ul –Haq was the President of Pakistan. 84 temples were razed to the ground because they happened to be in the proposed alignment for a new highway between Karachi and Islamabad. During Zia’s seven year rule over 200 temples had been demolished in Pakistan . (P-21)
· Though a rigid Islamist, Zia was practical. In order to facilitate the construction of a hotel by a private company Gen. Zia permitted the demolition of a mosque under cover of darkness and had it rebuilt at another convenient location nearby (Saudi Arabia demolished the mosque where Prophet Mohammed prayed, to permit a new road alignment. Here in India, fundamentalist Muslims object to demolition or relocation of a mosque or even a mazaar for a fully justified reason).
· Marshal Ayub told Kennedy that 80% of Indian Army was on Pakistan’s border and only 20% was deployed against the Chinese borders and from this it was clear that for Indians the Chinese problem was just an aberration and Pakistan was its enemy number one .......
· Ayub further said that, India could take Jammu and Pakistan could take Kashmir. India’s support came largely from the Soviet Union and tenuously from the debating chambers of the non-alignment countries. ..... India had been humiliated militarily in 1962 and for all its claims of its leadership of the developing world Nehru found himself practically friendless against the Chinese aggression (P105/106)
He believed that if China could batter India, so could Pakistan. Ayub boasted further often that one Pakistani soldier was equal to five, even ten Indian soldiers in the battle field .
· Said Hassan, Pakistan’s permanent representative at the UN in 1960-61 told Ayub : “ when Bhutto visited New York for the UN session, he met US Secretary of State, Christian Herter and volunteered to spy for USA on all delegations to UN.
· At the same session Khrushchev (USSR’s Prime Minister) abused Bhutto and told him that if Pakistan looked towards India or Afghanistan, the Soviet Union would take its eye out. Bhutto told Khrushchev not to get angry. ( USSR and now Russia has always been a friend of India . On numerous occasions it vetoed every resolution against India in the Security Council. It was also our ally during the 1971 Dec India-Pakistan war giving birth to Bangladesh ( p-109)
· On 17 Oct 1963 Bhutto met R A Buttler, the first Secretary of State of UK in London at One, Downing Street . There he lashed out at Nehru, “Nehru was neither young nor vigorous” he said and further added that Pakistan “ had resisted incursions (by China) where they had been made. The Indians have adopted a different attitude and allowed Chinese to put barracks in the disputed territories which the Chinese then assumed was theirs”.
· When Nehru and Krishna Menon had said that they would throw China out of the disputed territory and they attempted to do so, the Chinese had counter- attacked and crushed India” –(P 110)
· Until 1958 Bhutto, when he first became Minister in Pakistan, he was saying that he was an Indian citizen living in Pakistan ( and that was to claim the properties that his father Sir Shanwaz Bhutto, the Diwan of Junagadh left in the state of Junagadh). A discussion in the Parliament of India about Sri Shanwaz’s properties revealed to Pakistan that Bhutto was lying, just for his properties.
· In March 1965 there were clashes between India’s and Pakistan ‘s armies in the Rann of Kutch . We did not do well. After an armistice, an international tribunal consisting of an Iranian (Pakistan’s choice) and an Yugoslav (India’s choice of a non-aligned country) and a Swede (UN nominee) gave its verdict in favour of Pakistan and we lost 802 sq. kmts. to Pakistan (P114) .
· In the 1965 war between India & Pakistan, two columns of the Indian Army were racing towards Lahore, just 20 kmts from the border. Our another army was marching towards Sialkot. When Lahore was to be attacked came the ceasefire. A strategic hill-top, Haji Pir was wrested by us from Pakistan. We were in possession of more than 1700 sq.kmts of Pakistan territory. Then there was the Soviet Union- brokered ceasefire and the Tashkent agreement on 3Jan 1966. Before going to Tashkent, Lal Bahadur Sastry said, “ If Haji Pir is to be given back to Pakistan, some other Prime Minister will do it . “ At Tashkent he was prevailed into giving up Haji Pir for the conquest of which more than 200 Indian soldiers died. When the news of Indian peoples resentment was conveyed to him by his daughter, Lal Bahadur Sastry had a heart attack and died. ( p- 124/125)
· Sastriji’s death was greeted with uproarious joy by the Pakistani delegation in Tashkent. Disturbed by the noise, Bhutto opened his door, saw senior members of his delegation in a boisterously joyous mood and demanded of his Foreign Secretary : “What is this, Aziz?” Aziz Ahmed replied, “Sir, the bastard (Lal Bahadur Sastry) is dead. (This is the Pakistani mindset and the regard they have for our Prime Ministers) P-125
· During the 1965 war, Turkey and Iran supplied ammunition to Pakistan . Indonesia supplied two submarines and missile boats and a few MIGs. These were members of the non-aligned movement whose leader was Nehru, the socialist and secularist. (P 128)
· The Durand Line was dictated ( in Nov 1893)by the British rulers of India to be the border between Afghanistan and India. The line divided the Pasthun population between Afghanistan and India. 26.2mln Pasthuns are in Pakistan’s NWFP and constitute 15% of Pak’s population. 11.8% Pasthuns are in Afghanistan, where they constitute 42% of its population. The Amir of Afghanistan who did not know English. The British bribed the Amir for R.s 12 mln to get his agreement. The Amir refused to sign the map but signed the English text of the treaty and refused to sign it in his language, Dari.
The Durand Line was to be valid only for 100 years. It expired in 1993. Therefore there is no mutually agreed boundary between Pakistan & Afghanistan, just as there is no agreed McMohan Line as border between India and China ( the Tibet province). Because of the claims of Afghanistan over Pakistan ’s Pasthun territory, Afghanistan voted against the admission of Pakistan to the UN in 1947. (P-175 to 177)
· Pakistan eyes Afghanistan for its strategic depth and for the supply of never diminishing jihadis. The tiny Afghanistan with mighty Islamist fervour could defeat two super -powers –USSR and the USA. Pakistan believes that if it has hegemony over Afghanistan, its Taliban and Al Queda and such jihadis would be able to defeat India easily, what with its own fifth column in sleeping cells all over India.
· A former Judge of Pakistan’s Supreme Court told Sri. Dogra the author, that the 1993 blasts in Bombay were approved by the then Pak’s Prime Minister, Nawaz Shareef. (P221)
· In his meeting with Manmohan Singh in Sept 2013 Nawaz Shareef called Manmohan Singh, “a village woman” for taking his complaint to Obama about cease-fire violations by Pakistan forces ( P 230). This once again shows the Pakistanis’ estimate of the poor calibre of India’s Prime Ministers.
· Bhutto ‘s mother was a Hindu. His father was a Shia Muslim. Bhutto dominated the Sunni majority Pakistan for seven years.
· In the war with Pakistan in Dec 1971, arms were supplied to Pakistan from the US bases in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran. (Nehru clan and “secularists” are Pavlovianly friendly with these Muslim countries as against Israel, which is a true friend of India. Kissinger suggested to China to help Pakistan in 1971 war. (P 153)
· After the 1971 war with Pakistan, ( which resulted in the creation of the state of Bangladesh), India had over 93,000 Pakistani soldiers as prisoners of war (POWs) and was in occupation of 5000 sq. miles of Pakistani territory. At the Simla meeting Indira Gandhi told Bhutto to choose either the return of the occupied territory or the release of the 93,000 (POW). |He chose territory. Banazir Bhutto, his then young daughter asked her father why he chose territory and not POWs. Bhutto replied with a twinkle in his eyes. “ prisoners are a human problem . The magnitude is increased when there are 93,000 of them. It would be inhuman for India to keep them indefinitely. And it will be a problem to keep on feeding and housing them. Territory on the other hand is not a human problem. Territory can be assimilated. Prisoners cannot be...”
On going back to Pakistan, Bhutto told his close political aide, “ I have made a fool of that woman” ( in asking for territory and not POWs) (P 167)
Sri Dogra records the views of some students whom he addressed.
· One of them said, “.... Pakistan behaves as Joseph Goebbels. ...Goebbels used to say - “Oh! How wonderful it is to hate.” Pakistanis are like that. They hate us every waking moment of their day and they plot our destruction in their dreams”. (P186)
· A young lady said, “ in 1933 while Gandhiji was spinning peace, Albert Einstein wrote to Sigmund Freud, “ every attempt to eliminate war had ended in a lamentable breakdown...man had within him a lust for hatred and destruction. (p186)
Sri Dogra observes that the young disillusioned students said all these and that Nehru had saddled India with an avoidable millstone. (Kashmir), secularism and unrequited regard for Muslims and soft corner for Pakistan. The students observed, “ India has prided itself for being a non-threatening power. To them this was rooted more in India’s weakness rather than a moralistic compulsion. (P 187)
· On Kashmir issue, all Pakistani leaders, civil and military have a similar view, “they saw the fight for Kashmir to be a jihad that was incumbent on Pakistanis and supported whatever trouble they could forment in Kashmir for India, even if it meant using the Islamic radicals from the north-west frontier region or the newly freed fighters that waged the successful jihad against the soviet’s in Afghanistan”. This is what a Pakistani scholar, Shuja Nawaz wrote in the book “Crossed Swords”. They believed a successful jihad drove the mighty USSR out of Afghanistan ; so can India be driven out of Kashmir (P 207)
· The Kargil war (1999) was code named “Operation Badr”. By March-April 1999, Pakistan built concrete bunkers in areas that were as far as 9-10 kmts inside Indian territory. Pakistani soldiers were in occupation of 140 Indian bunkers. Musharaff claimed that he had spent a night deep inside Indian territory in one of the bunkers occupied by Pakistan. Sri Dogra observes, “neither in 1999 nor thirteen years thereafter did India have any inkling about the fact that the Army Chief of Pakistan spent a night 9-10 kmts deep inside Indian territory”. ... (P210/211)
In the 1950s, China had built a road in the Aksai Chin region without India knowing about it for at least two years .
· The Pak Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif pretended as though Gen. Musharaff undertook the Kargil operation without his knowledge. But Gen. Ziauddin of the ISI recalled Nawaz Shareef saying , “ this is a military operation . All I can say is that ....there should be no withdrawal, no surrender of any post. (P211-12)
· The Pakistani scholar Shuja Nawaz wrote elsewhere that, “Nawaz Shareef and his generals had even thought of getting reinforcements from Afghanistan . Mullah Mohammed Rabbani, the Afghan president was asked by Pakistan to provide 20-30,000 volunteers for the Kashmir jihad. The Afghan president startled the Pakistanis by offering 500,000 (P214/215) [ During the Khilafat Movement in 1919-’21 its leader Maulana Mohammed Ali intended to invite the Amir of Afghanistan to invade India, a repeat of the request the tottering Moghul ruler of Delhi who invited Ahmed Shah Abdali of Afghanistan to invade India to crush the Maratha powers who overwhelmed the Mogul. Result: the third Battle of Panipat in 1761 when the Marathas were beaten and so the Mogul survived for some more times]
· In the chapter, “Breakfast in Delhi Lunch in Lahore” Sri Dogra writes, “which other country would readily agree to be bracketed with Pakistan on terror ? Yet India did that voluntarily in Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt when Manmohan Singh agreed to equate the happenings in Baluchistan (a secessionist insurgency ) with the terrorist attacks in India. This self goal defied logic because in one stroke, India had bracketed itself with Pakistan as a sponsor of terror. This delighted Pakistan giving it a handle to bad -mouth India internationally”. (P 202/203)
· Sri Dogra refers to the inglorious four months long mobilisation of the Indian armies along India-Pakistan borders in the wake of the 13 Dec 2010 attack on the Parliament of India by jihadi terrorists. India pulled our armies back after a 10 months immobilised “mobilisation”. This cost us $ 2 blns and 1500 soldiers dead in the firings across the border. (P 216/217)
· A Pakistani friend of Dogra recalled to him the following incident. This friend and Pakistan‘s foreign minister were travelling together on a flight. This friend asked the Pakistan minister what his greatest wish was during his ministerial tenure. The minister “opened his palms facing sky and said , “ if God were to grant me a wish I would ask him to place a nuclear bomb in each of my palms”. He then turned his palms downward and added, “ one I would drop on Bombay and other on Delhi”(P 240)
If this is the inner- most thought and wish of Pakistan‘s leaders , how naive our leaders especially the “secular” flock are, that we can ever have peace and friendship with Pakistan , ever ready to call upon its co-religionist countries to supply tens of thousands of jihadis to flood India and drown it in a war of elimination. (P 253)
· On 13 May 2011 The Director General of the ISI, Ahmed Shuja Pasha told the Pakistan Parliament, “ the Pakistan army had not only picked targets in India for retaliation but had also rehearsed striking them ( P 253)
· “ On 3 Dec 2013 Prime Minister Nawaz Shariff told the Pak Occupied Kashmir’s (POK) Council, “Kashmir is the flash point and can trigger a fourth war between the two nuclear powers at any time.” (P 253) So it should be clear to us that notwithstanding any sweet words Pakistan would in any major war with India, not hesitate to drop nuclear bombs on our cities.
· Here is great advice from our Chini bhais Mao Tse Tung and Chou en –Lai, “Pakistani leaders should develop thousands of armed resources in the enemy (Indian) territory to supplement its war effort in the next confrontation with India “. Sri Dogra adds, “the extent to which this has been done will become known only in the next war . But if the ease with which the Indian Mujahidin is able to plant bombs in any city of India is any indication, it does not augur well”. (p258)
· Here is a wise observation of India’s foreign service officer, Sri Dogra. “Idealism alone has not shaped Indian policies. Like moths to a flame, Indian leaders have repeatedly been drawn to moulding a new beginning with Pakistan. Almost without exception they have held on to the fatalistic belief that somehow, despite previous experiences to the contrary they would be able to paper over the rough patches and through their efforts, amity and fraternity would begin to prevail in India’s relations with Pakistan . Yet their failures do not deter those who succeed them. Invariably each new Indian leader wants to make a mark in the history of bilateral relations. He wants to start afresh out o f a conviction that transformation in relations for the better could become his lasting legacy.” (P 264) May this delusion not infect India’s present leaders .
May it not be so this time when Sri Narendra Modi goes to Pakistan to meet with the same inveterate, lying and cheating Prime Minister, Nawaz Shareef of Pakistan. (Reviewer).
· About Nehru Sri Dogra writes, “ in that pursuit (peace with Pakistan ) Nehru remained an incorrigible idealist till the very end. He was certainly conscious of the realities of Pakistan but his public posture and his policies, were rooted in the hope that aspiration might somehow triumph over experience. (p 264)
India’s “ vain efforts” and many setbacks can be ascribed to India’s inadequate understanding of Pakistan , of its establishment, its society and the societal churn it goes through occasionally’.( and in fact, Islam itself and its history of conquests, iconoclasm and forcible conversions)
4. Pervez Hoodbhoy is one of Pakistan’s great intellectuals and a fearless writer and interpreter of history and events. He wrote, “ there are now two armies . The first is headed by Gen. Kayani (Army chief)...the second , as of now, has no known leader and sees itself as God’s Army. Army-One and ISI-One and Army-two and ISI-Two have similar but distinct mindsets. The officers and soldiers in both, like all Pakistans were reared on the two-nation theory, the belief that Hindus and Muslims can never live together as equals in peace. Both sets of solders are steeped in anti-Indian prejudice ... For Army –one and ISI-One religion is largely a matter of culture and identity....Army - Two and ISI on the other hand are jihadists for whom Islam and the state are inseparable. ( p 266)
5. Few of our leaders including Mahatma Gandhi or Jawaharlal Nehru have read the holy Quran in full or the life and history of Prophet Mohammed , his and his successors’ conquests to spread Islamist imperialism and Islam their iconoclasm and conversions . It is this lack of knowledge in depth that makes not only our political leaders but even Hindu religious and philosophical leaders to tell glibly that all religions teach the same thing without realising why then conversion is necessary or why Hindus should oppose conversion.
6. This book, “Where Borders Bleed” must be read by every officer in the Defence and Security establishments of the country. Many who presume to be leaders of the public in this country have unfortunately no reading habit. They are slogan -mongers and beggars for votes; they stoop to flatter and promise everything, even unasked, to the block- voting minorities. The emerging middle class with their good education and prosperous life must realise who our enemies within and across the borders are, what has been their history and intentions. If one believes that his God has ordained him and if he be true to Him, he should convert every person not of his faith either by conquest or by subversion or by any means to his faith he constitutes a great danger . An UNESCO publication says that the seeds of war rise in the minds of men. Therefore the defences for peace must be built in the minds. The first thing necessary is a correct and comprehensive understanding of those who are inclined to instant violence and ultimate nuclear Armageddon. “Where Borders Bleed” equips the reader to understand Pakistaniat across the borders and within India.
7. Some facts: (P 254/255)
· Pak army is 600,000 strong, consumes 17% of it s GDP, while on education Pakistan spends only 2%
· Pakistan ‘s population in 1947 was 39 mln; in 2014 it was 180 mln
53.5% of its population is less than 19 years old ;by the year 2050 Pakistan‘s population would be 450 mln (more than 11 times since its birth)
· In 1947 Karachi was 70% Hindu-Sikh ; now Hindu/Sikhs are almost nil
· in 1941 in Lahore Hindus and Sikhs were 5,40,000 and Muslims were 4,33,170
By end of 1947, Lahore was left with only 10,000 Hindus & Sikhs (P 259)
· A 20% cut in the defence budget of Pakistan can open 7000 new schools a year or establish 1300 hospitals a year . A similar reduction of 20% in the defence budget of India can establish 45,000 schools or 8,000 hospitals a year. ( P 262)
(4,124 words)
END