While promoting terrorism abroad has been the trademark of Pakistan’s military establishment, new skeletons are tumbling out of the ISI’s cupboard. The “tell-all” book, Inside Al Qaeda and Taliban: Beyond bin Laden and 9/11, written by journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad, widely believed even within Pakistan to have been bumped off by the ISI, has been banned in Pakistan…

ISLAMISATION OF ARMY

Shahzad asserts that the “Pakistan army has always been closely allied with Islamist forces,” adding that mutinies from within the army’s ranks were always possible in the event of major operations against Al Qaeda and Taliban sanctuaries.

While the Islamist propensities of significant sections of the Pakistan army establishment are well-known, what is now emerging is that support for Islamic extremism is also significantly prevalent in the Pakistan Air Force and Navy.

The recent attack on the Mehran Naval Base in Karachi, where US-supplied naval reconnaissance aircraft were destroyed, has revealed the extent to which radical Islamist elements have infiltrated the Pakistan Navy…

ZIA’S LEGACY

The roots of this radicalisation can be traced back to the days when the US and Western world backed Pakistani military dictator, General Zia ul Haq, to the hilt.

It was General Zia who ushered in a new era of Islamisation, bigotry and blasphemy laws targeting minorities, and nurtured radical, armed Islamic groups bent on waging jihad across the world. Officers recruited in his era are three-star Generals today, and the army is largely motivated by the ideology of the “Quranic Concept of War” articulated by his protégé Brigadier (later Major General) S.K. Malik.

Describing anyone who stands in the way of jihad as an “aggressor”, Malik held that “the aggressor is always met and destroyed in his own country”. Malik also had a unique view of the concept of “terror”.

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