Source: http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009\06\24\story_24-6-2009_pg3_1
As Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) comes under pressure from the military operations launched in its stronghold, deserters from its rank and file are making revelations that belie some of the sacred beliefs the media has allowed to become common analytical currency. One big diversion from the truth is the discovery that Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the TTP, is an agent of the United States and India wreaking havoc in Pakistan to fulfil the US design to establish the hegemony of India in South Asia and to facilitate the elimination by the US of Pakistans nuclear arsenal.
Who has proof of all this? Who inside the government has spread this information without giving sufficient proof? If you ask the state functionaries they insist they have not planned any such massive disinformation. Yet one has to recall that some spokesmen have vaguely named agencies on the other side of the border, but again without tangible proof. This, however, convincingly looks like a part of the strategic decision that the presence of NATO in Afghanistan is not in Pakistans interest and that Indias presence in Afghanistan is hostile to the interests of Pakistan. Some Pakistani analysts have now started questioning the logic behind the stringing together of these tales of TPP-Indian and TTP-American collusion.
Logic is the first casualty. There are a number of statements of Baitullah Mehsud on record vowing revenge on the Americans for their invasion of Afghanistan, recalling his own time spent in that country fighting alongside the Taliban. His men have preyed on the trucks that take provisions to the NATO troops through Pakistan and for which the Americans bypassed the Pakistan government and made independent arrangements with various private hauling companies and warehouse owners. The TTP now has a good supply of high quality combat vehicles and other military supplies. How does one reconcile this with the fact that Mehsud is actually working for the Americans?
The willingness to believe Mehsud rather than the government was in evidence in the media after the assassination of Ms Benazir Bhutto in December 2007. Mehsuds telephonic conversation with the mastermind of the suicide attack was intercepted and made known by Pakistans intelligence establishment. However when he declared that he had not carried out the attack, Mehsud was immediately believed. Now that deserters from the TTP have revived the truth that Baitullah Mehsud actually planned the killing and personally sent off the attackers to Rawalpindi there is a silence of embarrassment in Pakistan. Had the fact been accepted in 2008 when the gang of assassins was apprehended, we would not have horribly falsified the evidence that linked the killing to Al Qaedas understanding of Ms Bhutto as an American asset in Pakistan.
Then in 2008 came the Mumbai attacks. The Indians reacted by rattling the sabre. Suddenly, India was the enemy and Mehsud a patriot. A disenchanted Pakistani analyst sought answers to such newspaper reports as the one quoting an army official saying that Baitullah Mehsud and Fazlullah were patriots. Another was reported as saying that in case of an Indian invasion the TTP will fight shoulder to shoulder with the Pakistani troops to save Pakistan.
From that to what is being said now is a big leap of the imagination. Such leaps are usually called fantasy. Now Mehsud is the paid agent of the Indians. Analysts appearing on TV have gone so far as to say that the Taliban inflicting savage cruelty on the people of Swat were actually Hindus! Everyone has forgotten about the 5,000 plus foreigners Uzbeks, Arabs, Chechens and Uighurs sheltered by Mehsud on behalf of Al Qaeda. One deserter has thrown in the red herring about how India trains its Hindu agents in the intricacies of Islamic learning till they become ulema before being sent into Pakistan looking like the Taliban!
So buried are we in our narcissistic obsessions that the world now rebukes us for living on the basis of contradictions. Foreign commentators now ask: If you hate the US so much and know that it is helping the Taliban to create chaos in Pakistan as a prelude to grabbing your nuclear weapons, why do you go asking Washington for money? They also say: If India is destroying Pakistan through the Taliban why are you seeking a composite dialogue with it instead of going to war with it? *
As Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) comes under pressure from the military operations launched in its stronghold, deserters from its rank and file are making revelations that belie some of the sacred beliefs the media has allowed to become common analytical currency. One big diversion from the truth is the discovery that Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the TTP, is an agent of the United States and India wreaking havoc in Pakistan to fulfil the US design to establish the hegemony of India in South Asia and to facilitate the elimination by the US of Pakistans nuclear arsenal.
Who has proof of all this? Who inside the government has spread this information without giving sufficient proof? If you ask the state functionaries they insist they have not planned any such massive disinformation. Yet one has to recall that some spokesmen have vaguely named agencies on the other side of the border, but again without tangible proof. This, however, convincingly looks like a part of the strategic decision that the presence of NATO in Afghanistan is not in Pakistans interest and that Indias presence in Afghanistan is hostile to the interests of Pakistan. Some Pakistani analysts have now started questioning the logic behind the stringing together of these tales of TPP-Indian and TTP-American collusion.
Logic is the first casualty. There are a number of statements of Baitullah Mehsud on record vowing revenge on the Americans for their invasion of Afghanistan, recalling his own time spent in that country fighting alongside the Taliban. His men have preyed on the trucks that take provisions to the NATO troops through Pakistan and for which the Americans bypassed the Pakistan government and made independent arrangements with various private hauling companies and warehouse owners. The TTP now has a good supply of high quality combat vehicles and other military supplies. How does one reconcile this with the fact that Mehsud is actually working for the Americans?
The willingness to believe Mehsud rather than the government was in evidence in the media after the assassination of Ms Benazir Bhutto in December 2007. Mehsuds telephonic conversation with the mastermind of the suicide attack was intercepted and made known by Pakistans intelligence establishment. However when he declared that he had not carried out the attack, Mehsud was immediately believed. Now that deserters from the TTP have revived the truth that Baitullah Mehsud actually planned the killing and personally sent off the attackers to Rawalpindi there is a silence of embarrassment in Pakistan. Had the fact been accepted in 2008 when the gang of assassins was apprehended, we would not have horribly falsified the evidence that linked the killing to Al Qaedas understanding of Ms Bhutto as an American asset in Pakistan.
Then in 2008 came the Mumbai attacks. The Indians reacted by rattling the sabre. Suddenly, India was the enemy and Mehsud a patriot. A disenchanted Pakistani analyst sought answers to such newspaper reports as the one quoting an army official saying that Baitullah Mehsud and Fazlullah were patriots. Another was reported as saying that in case of an Indian invasion the TTP will fight shoulder to shoulder with the Pakistani troops to save Pakistan.
From that to what is being said now is a big leap of the imagination. Such leaps are usually called fantasy. Now Mehsud is the paid agent of the Indians. Analysts appearing on TV have gone so far as to say that the Taliban inflicting savage cruelty on the people of Swat were actually Hindus! Everyone has forgotten about the 5,000 plus foreigners Uzbeks, Arabs, Chechens and Uighurs sheltered by Mehsud on behalf of Al Qaeda. One deserter has thrown in the red herring about how India trains its Hindu agents in the intricacies of Islamic learning till they become ulema before being sent into Pakistan looking like the Taliban!
So buried are we in our narcissistic obsessions that the world now rebukes us for living on the basis of contradictions. Foreign commentators now ask: If you hate the US so much and know that it is helping the Taliban to create chaos in Pakistan as a prelude to grabbing your nuclear weapons, why do you go asking Washington for money? They also say: If India is destroying Pakistan through the Taliban why are you seeking a composite dialogue with it instead of going to war with it? *
