MUSHARRAF: WILL THE GREAT SURVIVOR SURVIVE?
by B.Raman
(Personal Note: I was away to New Delhi from October
5 to 9. On my return, I was greatly touched to find a large number
of messages in my mailbox enquiring about my health since I had not
commented on the beginning of the USA's" war" against Osama bin
Laden and the Taliban in the SAAG web site. I am quite OK and thank
through this all those who had made enquiries about my health.
However, on September 21, an unidentified external source (the ISI?)
managed to penetrate my data base through a planted virus, despite the
precautions which I normally take, and destroy over 20,000 files which I
had built up. Fortunately, since I had back-ups of all of them, no
damage has been done. But, unfortunately, I had not backed up my
address book, which has been totally destroyed. With the courtesy of
SAAG, I am making this appeal to all those, who were in regular touch with
me, to send me an E-Mail so that I can reconstruct the address book.
Thanks in anticipation.)
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"If the US and other NATO powers really want their
counter-offensive to triumph, they have to work for the replacement from
power in Islamabad of Musharraf, Lt.Gen.Muzaffar Usmani, his Deputy Chief
of the Army Staff, Lt.Gen.Mohammad Aziz, presently a Corps Commander at
Lahore, and, possibly, Lt.Gen.Mahmood Ahmed, the ISI Director-General, by
moderate officers, who would be genuinely responsive to the concerns of
the world community and sincere in their commitment to co-operate in the
fight against international Islamic terrorism. For this purpose, the
US has to identify officers with no past links with bin Laden and the
Taliban. India might be able to help it in this
regard."----Extract from my article titled "The First World War
against Terrorism' and dated 14-9-01 at www.saag.org/papers4/paper315.html
)
"In case, the US decides to launch a reprisal
attack, a possibly workable plan for the US would be:
* Softening of the Taliban's ground positions by
focussed air strikes followed by;
* Assistance to the Northern Alliance, through air
support, to advance and occupy Kabul and Jalalabad and from there hunt
for Osama bin Laden, without the US troops directly getting involved in
the hunt. The Northern Alliance hates bin Laden for having got
Ahmed Shah Masood assassinated and would be only too happy to hunt for
him and his advisers and hand them over to the US.
"The US might be committing a serious error of
judgement if it puts its eggs, even some of them, in the Musharraf
basket."----Extract from my article titled "Musharraf Orders
Scram" and dated 17-9-01 at www.saag.org/papers4/paper318.html
)
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Two days after the departure of Mr.Tony Blair, the
British Prime Minister, from Islamabad for New Delhi and a few hours
before the launching of the combined US-UK air strikes on the
Taliban infrastructure in Afghanistan on the night of October 7, 2001,
Gen.Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's self-reinstated Chief of the Army Staff (COAS),
self-styled Chief Executive, and self-promoted President, gave to himself
an extension as the COAS and, took advantage of this opportunity, to ease
out Lt.Gen.Mahmood Ahmed,a Punjabi, as the DG of the ISI, and
Lt.Gen.Muzaffar Usmani, another Mohajir like Musharraf himself, as the
Deputy Chief of the Army Staff.
Musharraf promoted Lt.Gen. Mohammad Yousef Khan, Chief
of the General Staff (CGS), and Lt.Gen.Mohammad Aziz, a Corps Commander (4
Corps) at Lahore, as full-fledged Generals, superseding Mahmood Ahmed and
Usmani, thereby forcing them to seek premature retirement. Yousef
Khan, a Sindhi fundamentalist officer, has been appointed as the Vice
Chief of the Army Staff (VCOAS), and Aziz, a fundamentalist Kashmiri
officer (a Sudan),as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Comittee, a
post hitherto held by Musharraf himself.
Consequent upon this, he has made the following other
changes:
* Lt.General Ehsan-ul-Haq, a Pashtun officer, who was
formerly Director-General of Military Intelligence (DGMI) and then Corps
Commander at Peshawar, has been appointed as DG, ISI.
* Lt. General Ali Jan Orakzai, Adjutant-General,
belonging to the Orakzai (Pashtun) tribe of the North-West
Frontier Province (NWFP), has been made the new Corps Commander at
Peshawar. As Major-General, Orakzai had served as
Director-General Frontier Corps (Northern Areas).
* Major-Gen. Zarrar Azim, a Punjabi (?), who was the
Director-General of Pakistan Rangers, Punjab, has been promoted and
appointed as one of the two Corps Commanders at Lahore in the post
rendered vacant by the elevation of Aziz.
* Lt.Gen. Qadir Baluch, a Qadir Baluch hailing from
the Baluch dominated coastal areas of Balochistan, who was Corps
Commander, Gujranwala, has been posted as the Corps Commander, Quetta.
Maj.Gen.Faiz Gillani of the ISI, has been promoted as Lt.Gen. and
posted as the Corps Commander,Gujranwala. Being a Baluch,
Musharraf hopes that Qadir Baluch would have no hesitation in
suppressing the Pashtuns of Quetta who have been up in arms against the
military junta for acting as what they perceive to be the quisling of
the US-UK in supressing the Taliban. He is the first Baluch tribal
to have risen so high in the Pakistan Army.
The post of CGS, rendered vacant by the elevation of Yousef
Khan, has not yet been filled up. This is another important post, as
the CGS controls the DGMI and the Directorate-General of Military
Operations (DGMO).
Through these changes, Musharraf has sought to achieve
the following objectives:
* To pre-empt a possible coup against him by Mahmood
Ahmed, Aziz and Usmani, who had staged the coup against Mr. Nawaz Sharif
on October 12,1999, and paved the way for the take-over by Musharraf.
With the easing out of Mahmood Ahmed and Usmani and the kicking upstairs
of Aziz, thus depriving him of the command of any field formation, he
has tried to ensure that no threat to his position could arise from
these three officers. While the US strongly distrusted Aziz and Usmani,
Mahmood Ahmed was perceived to be close to Washington DC till recently
and Musharraf was always afraid that if the US wanted to have him
replaced, Ahmed could be its favourite choice.
* To send a message to the religious organisations and
the jehadi terrorist groups, through the elevation of Aziz as a full
General, that his co-operating with the US against the Taliban would not
mean any abandoning of his support to the jehadi groups. It is
understood that Aziz, who has been supervising Pakistan's proxy
war in Jammu & Kashmir since 1989 as the clandestine Chief of Staff
of the Army of Islam consisting of the jehadi organisations, would
continue to be in charge of it in his new post.
* To create a split among the Islamic organisations
which have been organising the protests against his co-operation with
the US. Playing the leading role in these protests are the
Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI) of Qazi Hussain Ahmed of the NWFP; the
Jamaat-ul-Ulema Islam (JUI) of Maulana Fazlur Rahman of Balochistan;
the Sipah-e-Sahaba of Azam Tariq of Punjab; and another faction of the
JUI led by Samiul Haq. Even though Qazi Hussain Ahmed has been
strongly supporting the Taliban and criticising the US action,he was in
the past a strong opponent of the Taliban and supporter of Gulbuddin
Heckmatyar, an Afghan Pashtun of the Hizb-e-Islami. The other
three Islamic leaders have always been strong supporters of the Taliban
and opponents of Heckmatyar. In the Army, Aziz, Yousef Khan and
Usmani were considered very close to Qazi Hussain Ahmed. By
promoting Aziz and Yousef Khan as full Generals and by keeping open the
possibility of bringing back Heckmatyar to power in Kabul after the
Taliban, Musharraf has sought to placate the Qazi and create a wedge
between him and the other religious leaders. Despite his anti-US
rhetoric, the Qazi is suspected by other religious organisations in
Pakistan of being a CIA agent. When he visited the US in August
last year, the State Department in Washington DC broke with its past
policy of not receiving religious extremist leaders and received him for
discussion. His JEI, while strongly criticising Musharraf's co-operatioin
with the US against the Taliban, has avoided mobilising its large cadres
in the Punjab and the NWFP against him.
Usmani's supercession is unlikely to be misunderstood by
the JEI. He was due to retire early next year and, hence, would not
have been able to continue for one year in the new post of Vice Chief of
the Army Staff. Moreover, it was being talked about in Islamabad
that he was unable to devote full attention to his work due to the illness
of some member of his family (son?).
The easing out of Mahmood Ahmed is significant.
Musharraf always viewed him as one officer who could become the rallying
point of the Punjabi officers unhappy with him. It is also
learnt that Musharraf was annoyed with the tardy compliance by Ahmed of
his orders for the shifting from the Taliban-controlled territory of all
the heroin refineries run by the ISI and the surplus stock of heroin to
Pakistan before international aid workers started moving into the areas
near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. It is said that Ahmed was able
to shift only about two-thirds of the heroin stocks in time.
It is said in Islamabad that Lt.Gen.(retd)Moinudeen
Haider, the Interior Minister,another Mohajir, had brought to the notice
of Musharraf a telephone conversation intercepted by the Intelligence
Bureau (IB), which comes under Haider, on October 1,2001, in which
Maulana Masood Azhar, the head of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JEM), had informed
Ahmed about the successful execution by the JEM cadres in Srinagar of the
task of carrying out an explosion outside the local Legislative Assembly
building.
There were also reports that Ahmed was aware of at least
one of the money transactions preceding the New York world Centre
attacks. Even though US officials have been projecting the September
11 terrorist incidents as the work of the Al Qaeda, many well-informed
persons in Pakistan believe that the terrorist strikes in the US were
actually carried out by the Al Jihad of Egypt with the collaboration of
the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) of Pakistan, both of which are members of
bin Laden's International Islamic Front For Jehad Against the US and
Israel.
They allege that the New York offices of the CIA and the
FBI were located in the World Trade Centre buildings, that the offices of
the FBI division investigating the past cases against bin Laden and which
had successfully prosecuted the cases against Ramzi Yousef and the
Egyptian cleric (Sheikh Omar) in connection with the WTC bombing of
Februrary, 1993, were also located there and that that was one of
the reasons why the Al Jihad and the HUM targeted it.
While Mahmood Ahmed would not have got involved with the
money transactions and the JEM's attack in Srinagar without the clearance
of Musharraf, the latter probably feared that if he did not immediately
ease him out, he (Musharraf) might himself come under the suspicion of the
US. While Ahmed has thus been eased out, he has reportedly been
assured by Musharraf that he would either post him as an Ambassador to an
important country or give him another important job in Pakistan
itself.
Musharraf is fond of describing himself as the
"great survivor". Will he survive the outbreak of violent
protests in different parts of Pakistan against the US-UK bombing and the
likely disatisfaction in the Army over the changes?
Till now, he seems to be confident that he can control
the situation, particularly if the Qazi only keeps barking and does not
bite, but the situation can rapidly slip out of his hands if bin Laden and
the Taliban Amir are killed or captured by the US-UK forces and/or the
street protests continue unabated. There are also indications of
rumblings (mild, at present) in the lower and middle ranks of the Army and
the Air Force. Stronger rumblings have been reported from the
Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), having a large concentration
of ex-military Pashtun tribes. Many of the mosques in the FATA have
reportedly issued fatwas against the US, the UK and Musharraf.
It is said that Musharraf himself is worried more over
the possibility of his being assassinated than of being overthrown.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet
Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For
Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: corde@vsnl.com
)
