The forthcoming visit of the Indian Prime
Minister, Mr.Atal Behari Vajpayee, to Washington in the middle of September, his meetings
with President Clinton and other US leaders and his address to the joint session of the US
Congress would be yet another historic landmark on the road to peace, prosperity and
co-operation, on which India and the USA have chosen to travel together in the new
Millennium, hand in hand and with their eyes focussed forward on the endless vista of a
new world order of the people, by the people and for the people, illuminated by the noble
ideals of democracy, peace, non-violence, dignity of every man, woman and child and
progress, ideals of which the people of the US and India have been the proud inheritors.
The first landmark was the memorable visit of President Clinton
to India in March, which laid the foundation for a new era of partnership, not only
strategic, but also humanitarian, between our two greatest democracies of the world.
There can be no reason for the least misgiving in the minds of any Indian or
American whether this foundation and the edifice since being built upon it would endure
and proceed from strength to strength, whatever be the nature of the new administration
coming to power in the US in January next and whatever be the composition of the new
Congress.
This is a partnership based on the will of the people of the two
countries and their mutual attraction for each other and the bipartisan support in the
Congress and public support outside have further strengthened it beyond measure. The
contribution of the Congress to this historic endeavour to bring the leaders and the
people of the two countries together in the pursuit of peace, prosperity, dignity and
humanitarian values deserves to be written in letters of gold.
Distinguished members of the Congress, I take the liberty of
writing this letter not only on my personal behalf, but also on behalf of millions of
people of India, who nurse great hopes that this partnership will usher in an era of
peace, progress and co-operation in Asia and whose hopes are, at the same time, mixed with
concerns, over what has been happening in Pakistan.
These hopes, commonly nursed by our two countries, would be
belied if attention was not paid to these concerns, which are now shared by an increasing
number of Congressmen, opinion-makers and other sections of the public even in the US,
thanks to the sterling role played by many Congressmen in drawing attention to these
concerns and in calling for US leadership in addressing them.
For more than a decade, the people of India have been living in a
state of half-war and half-peace due to the depredations of a large number of terrorists,
outrageously called jehadists, who have been trained, armed and funded and infiltrated
into the State of Jammu & Kashmir and other parts of India by Pakistan in order to
make the people of India and its security forces bleed in the name of religion.
More people belonging to different religions--Hindus, Muslims,
Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and others-- have been killed in India by these
mercenary-terrorists sponsored by the State of Pakistan than by any other terrorist groups
anywhere else in the world. The world media, which had assembled in India in March
to cover the visit of President Clinton, was a shocked witness to the atrocious massacre
of practically the entire Sikh menfolk of the village Chattisinghpura in Kashmir by
mercenaries instigated by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan and the
Islamic extremist organisations of Pakistan, working in tandem with the ISI.
These massacres of innocent civilians, in the name of religion,
by mercenaries sponsored by Pakistan, were not the first of their kind, though they
received greater global publicity than similar massacres of the past because of their
occurrence during the visit of the President; nor were they the last despite the strong
condemnation of these massacres by the US President during his stay in India and during
his subsequent visit to Pakistan.
The beginning of August saw the gruesome massacres of over a
hundred innocent civilians, many of them Hindu pilgrims, by mercenaries sponsored by
Pakistan in order to sabotage the moves then underway for a dialogue between the
Government of India and the Hizbul-Mujahideen, an indigenous Kashmiri organisation, many
of whose leaders are kept under duress by the ISI in Pakistan and which has been trying,
unsuccessfully, to free itself from the stranglehold of Pakistan.
India has been the worst victim of the terrorism sponsored by
Pakistan, but is not the only one. Many other States have suffered and have been
suffering due to the depredations of terrorists, made in and exported from Pakistan and
the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan---Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Central Asian
Republics, the Chechnya and Dagestan areas of Russia, the Xinjiang province of China,
Bangladesh, the Arakan area of Burma and the southern Phillipines.
The Abu Sayyaf group of the southern Philippines, which recently
kidnapped many foreign tourists and is still retaining some of them, including an American
tourist, whom it accuses of being a CIA officer, was trained and armed in Pakistan, by
Lt.Gen. (retd) Javed Nasir, who was the Director-General of the ISI during Mr.Nawaz
Sharif's first tenure as the Prime Minister and who was sacked by Mr.Sharif along with
many other ISI officers in the first half of 1993 on the demand of the US because of his
involvement in the training of foreign terrorist groups and his non-cooperation with the
CIA in buying back the unused Stinger missiles from the Afghan Mujahideen.
After his removal, Lt.Gen.Nasir travelled to Somalia, Chechnya,
Dagestan, the Central Asian Republics, the Xinjiang province of China and the Southern
Philippines as a preacher of the Tablighi Jammat, ostensibly a humanitarian organisation
of religious preachers, of which he was the head and helped the Islamic extremist
organisations, including the group which killed the US troops on UN peace-keeping duty in
Somalia in 1993, in organising themselves for jehad.
He was appointed by Mr.Sharif, in his second term, as his
Intelligence Adviser and, concurrently, as the President of the Pakistan Gurudwara
Prabandak Committee (PGPC), which manages the gurudwaras, the Sikh places of worship in
Pakistan, thereby breaking with the tradition of always appointing a Sikh religious leader
as its President.
In the last months of Mr.Sharif's regime, he removed Lt.Gen.Nasir
as his Intelligence Adviser because of his public criticism of the withdrawal of the
Pakistani troops from Indian territory in the Kargil area. However, Lt.Gen.Nasir
continues to be one of the trusted unofficial advisers of Gen.Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's
Chief Executive, and Lt.Gen.Mohammad Aziz, till now the Chief of the General Staff (CGS),
who is very close to the Islamic extremist organisations and is generally known in
Pakistan as the Mullahs'General.
To maintain the deniability of its official links with Islamic
terrorist organisations active in many countries, the ISI has been helping these
organisations through the Tablighi Jamaat and Lt.Gen.Nasir.
Lt.Gen.Nasir strongly believes in the need for a balkanisation of
India. His objective, as often stated by him, is not only to free Jammu & Kashmir from
the control of India, but also to "liberate" the Muslims in the rest of India
and create two independent "homelands" for the Muslims of North and South India.
In pursuit of this objective, he has always been stressing upon
the ISI the need to support not only the extremist groups in Jammu & Kashmir, but also
the destabilising elements in the rest of India and create a general atmosphere of
violence and disorder in different provinces of India, in order to keep the Indian army
constantly preoccupied with internal security duties all over India and permanently
bleeding.
It was he, who, during his tenure as the DG of the ISI before
June, 1993,had entered into an agreement with the LTTE of Sri Lanka under which in return
for the LTTE's assistance in smuggling Afghanistan-produced heroin in its ships to West
Europe, the USA and Canada, the ISI agreed to give arms and ammunition to the LTTE. An
LTTE ship, carrying a consignment of arms and ammunition loaded in Karachi under the
protection of the ISI and the Pakistan Navy, was intercepted by the Indian Navy in 1993.
Kittu, a London-based leader of the LTTE, who was travelling to the LTTE hqrs. in the
Vanni area of Sri Lanka by that ship, committed suicide after setting fire to the ship.
The ISI's action in assisting the LTTE defied logic because,
firstly, the Pakistan Government had cordial relations with the Sri Lankan Government and,
secondly, the LTTE had literally wiped out the Muslim population in the Jaffna area.
Despite this, his action in helping the LTTE was due to his
desire to use the LTTE for training and arming the Muslim extremist elements belonging to
the Al Ummah of Tamil Nadu in South India, which had carried out a series of explosions in
Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu in the beginning of 1998 and which had planted an explosive
device outside the US Consulate in Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu, later that year,
and the left extremist People's War Group of Andhra Pradesh.
After the interception of the LTTE ship by the Indian Navy in
1993, the US State Department, which had independently come to know of the ISI's arms
assistance to the LTTE, had severely warned the Nawaz Sharif Government of the
consequences, if it continued to help the LTTE.
Another reason for the ISI's helping the LTTE, despite its
anti-Muslim policies, was to use it for smuggling heroin to West Europe, the US and
Canada. During Zia-ul-Haq's regime in the 1980s, heroin had become a major source of extra
revenue not only to the State of Pakistan, specially the ISI and Pakistan's nuclear and
missile establishment, but also to many senior officers of the Pakistan Army, including
Gen.Pervez Musharraf, the present Chief Executive, Lt.Gen.Nasir, Lt.Gen.Mohammad Aziz, now
under orders of transfer from the GHQ in Islamabad to Lahore as the local Corps Commander,
Lt.Gen.Hamid Gul, who was the DG, ISI during Mrs.Benazir Bhutto's first tenure as the
Prime Minister, Lt.Gen.Mahmood Ahmed, the present DG of the ISI, Lt.Gen. Muzzafar Usmani,
CO, 5 Corps, Karachi, and Lt.Gen. Fazle Haq, a close associate of Zia, who was
assassinated by a Shia in Peshawar in October, 1991.
In the late 1980s, a Sindhi nationalist organisation of Pakistan
had managed to get hold of a document of the Swiss Government giving details of the secret
deposits held by Pakistani nationals in Swiss banks. It had brought out through its
investigation that many of these deposits were held by serving and retired officers of the
Pakistan Armed Forces and that the money had been deposited in the banks in their numbered
accounts by the narcotics barons of Pakistan in return for the protection which they
received in their heroin smuggling from the Army.
Amongst the deposit holders were the officers mentioned above,
who came to be known in Pakistan as "Pakistan's Noriegas". It was after
the discovery of these secret accounts that the Pakistani people started referring to
their Corps Commanders sarcastically as the Crore Commanders. A crore is an
expression commonly used in India and Pakistan to indicate 10 million. Each of these
officers had, at least, US $ 10 million to their credit in the numbered accounts of
Switzerland.
After seizing power in October, 1999, Gen. Musharraf, one of the
Pakistani Noriegas, had started a drive against those, who had defrauded Pakistani banks
over the years by borrowing billions of rupees without collateral or with bogus ones.
The drive was subsequently slowed down on the ostensible ground that it was
affecting the business morale of the investors, but the real reason was that the
investigations made by the Pakistani agencies into the details of the bank defaulters
brought out that amongst the major defaulters were many serving and retired officers of
the Pakistan Army, including Lt.Gen.Nasir.
Not only had Lt.Gen.Nasir borrowed large amounts himself for his
personal use, but he had also borrowed billions of rupees in the name of the ISI to
augment its secret operational funds. He had also recommended the cases of many
Pakistani businessmen to the banks, which gave them the loans without satisfactory
collateral. The entire case had been hushed up by Gen. Musharraf,
Pakistan's Chief Executive had also set up an Accountability
Bureau to investigate complaints of corruption against political leaders and other
civilians and prosecute them. He has been trying to misuse this Bureau to destroy the
future political career of Mrs.Benazir Bhutto and Mr.Nawaz Sharif and those considered
close to them.
Initially, he had exempted the Judges of Pakistan's Supreme Court
and the provincial High Courts and the military from the purview of the Accountability
Bureau. He justified the exemption granted to the armed forces on the ground that the
principle of accountability was strictly enforced in the Armed Forces.
Subsequently, when the then Chief Justice of the Pakistan Supreme
Court, and some other Judges refused to take a new oath prescribed by Gen.Musharraf in
order to prevent them from questioning the legality of his regime, he ordered an
investigation by the Accountability Bureau into their assets in order to harass them for
their defiance of the military regime.
Many reputed non-governmental organisations (NGOs) of Pakistan
had strongly criticised the Chief Executive for exempting himself and other officers of
the Armed Forces from the purview of the Accountability Bureau. In the face of their
criticism, he conceded that the Accountability Bureau could investigate complaints of
corruption, money-laundering etc against retired, but not serving officers of the Armed
Forces.
Taking him seriously, Lt. Gen. Syed Mohammad Amjad, the Chairman
of the Accountability Bureau, had started an investigation not only against a former Chief
of the Naval Staff, who was removed from office by Mr.Sharif on charges of corruption and
who has since taken shelter in the US, but also into the cases of the unpaid bank loans of
Lt.Gen.Nasir, the close friend of Gen.Musharraf, and his alleged involvement in the
smuggling of heroin. Annoyed by this, Gen. Musharraf has removed Lt.Gen.Amjad from his
post and sent him to Multan as the Corps Commander. Lt.Gen.Khalid Maqbool, who has now
been appointed as the Chairman of the Accountability Bureau, is also a close personal
friend of Lt.Gen.Nasir. Lt.Gen.Maqbool is a Punjabi belonging to the Baloch regiment. He
was GOC 4 Corps till his transfer to the Accountability Bureau. He is one of the Noriegas
of the Pakistan Army.
The way Mr.Sharif before October 1999 and Gen.Musharraf since
then have been using the heroin money to prevent the Pakistan economy from collapsing has
not received due attention in the US. Since 1990, tax collection in Pakistan has been
steadily going down since the people do not feel the need for paying taxes to a
Government, which only pampers the Armed Forces and does not care about the economic and
social conditions of the people, who do not belong to the new class of uniformed
plutocrats. Consequently, the State has been obliged to borrow more and more from domestic
and foreign banks and, after the suspension of the IMF assistance in May 1999, it has been
struggling to keep itself afloat in a sea of unrepaid debts.
According to all known economic laws, the Pakistani economy must
have collapsed by now, due to mounting debts and interest payments, decrease in industrial
production and widening trade deficit, but it has not. On the contrary, while all
the economic indicators point to a comatose state, the State has been managing to pay the
salaries and pensions of all public servants, civilian as well as military, and there has
also been no instance of the private sector not paying the wages of the workers.
If one goes purely by economic indicators, Pakistan's economy
must be in as bad a shape as that of Russia, or even worse, since Russia has been in
receipt of Western and IMF assistance, whereas Pakistan has not been, but (a big and
intriguing BUT here, distinguished members of the Congress), the State of Pakistan has
been managing to pay all salaries and pensions and the private sector all wages, without
defaulting even once.
Where does the money come from? From the smuggling of heroin to
West Europe, the US and Canada. The US Government might have stopped economic assistance
to the worse than rogue State of Pakistan from the tax payers' money, but why should the
Noriegas of Pakistan be worried over it when they get billions of dollars from the heroin
sale in the US. For every American boy and girl ruined and killed due to his or her
addiction to heroin, there is a Pakistani General fattening his Swiss bank account.
Respected representatives of the people of the US, you might
naturally like to ask me what proof I have to show that the Pakistani State has been kept
afloat despite the US economic sanctions and the suspension of IMF assistance by narcotics
money. The "News", a respected daily newspaper of Pakistan, had published on
March 16,2000, a report on how the State has been managing despite a negative flow of
money from abroad for two years in succession.
Quoting State Bank of Pakistan sources, it said: " There was
excess liquidity (of US dollars) available in the kerb market of foreign exchange which is
being fully absorbed by the central bank….. The present inflows of exports,
remittances and foreign direct investment are not enough to meet the international trade
gap and the cost of debt servicing. The difference is being covered through open market
buying to maintain a reserve level of around US $ 1.5 billion. The SBP has done this since
June 1999."
The foreign trade deficit continues to widen; the remittances
from overseas Pakistanis have been declining since the military seized power; foreign
investment flows have practically stopped; Japan, the most important supplier of economic
assistance in the past, and the West have refused to lift the economic sanctions; the
foreign banks are no more lending to Pakistan; and the IMF assistance has remained
suspended for 16 months now.
Despite this, there are so many millions of US dollars--genuine
dollars and not counterfeit-- circulating in private hands that the State Bank of Pakistan
has been able to buy from them over a billion dollars. Wherefrom did this private hoarding
of US dollars come? From the smuggling of heroin to West Europe, the US and Canada.
During President Clinton's visit to Pakistan in March, Gen.
Musharraf had promised that he would personally visit Kandahar, the religious headquarters
of the Taliban of Afghanistan, and persuade the Amir of the Taliban to moderate its
policies, to respect human rights, particularly the rights of women, and to co-operate
with the US in bringing Osama bin Laden to justice. Five months have passed since then,
but he has done nothing of that sort.
On the contrary, he has been conceding one after the other the
outrageous demands of Pakistan's pro-Taliban Islamic parties. Their demands are no
different from those of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Not satisfied with what he has already conceded, they are now
demanding that there be no reservations for women in elected local bodies since, according
to them, women "spread vulgarity"
And that there be a ban on Western and Western-assisted NGOs
taking up issues relating to the rights of the non-Muslim minorities, women and children.
They have also started a campaign to force Pakistani women working in Western and
Western-assisted NGOs to resign and their parents to get their daughters married off so
that their future husbands could prevent them from going astray!
Hon'ble Members of the Congress, has the time not come for a
comprehensive hearing by both Houses of the Congress into the state of affairs in Pakistan
so that the Noriegas of Pakistan and their religious mentors and accomplices could be
brought to justice for their crimes against humanity?
