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Dr. Ikramul Haq
27 December 2017 marks the fifteenth death anniversary of Benazir Bhutto. She sacrificed her life courageously while resisting the agenda of fanatics and terrorists in Pakistan. She fought relentlessly against forces bent upon to turn Pakistan into a terrorist state so that it could never progress towards egalitarianism and democracy. Unfortunately her assailants and their abettors are still at large. Those arrested were exonerated on August 31, 2017 after trial lingered on for nearly a decade.
Since the tragic assassination of Benazir Bhutto on 27 December 2007, Pakistan has been continuously entrapped in dreadful conflicts and grave crises. Country lacks leadership capable of pulling state out of the mess created not only by long military rule but also under the Decade of Democracy [2008-18] and then nearly four years [August 2018 to April 2002] of hybrid-regime experiment.
In today’s Pakistan there is not a single leader that matches the vision and determination of Benazir Bhutto [21 June 1953—27 December 2007] to regain what we have lost domestically and internationally. The coalition Government of Pakistan Tahreek-e-Insaf (PTI) also proved during it rule that it lacked the agenda to make Pakistan a true democratic polity and a welfare state.
It is tragic and shameful that the state machinery has utterly failed to unveil the real hands behind Benazir’s assassination even after a lapse of fifteen years. After verdict by Anti Terrorist Court on August 31, 2017, PPP accused Pervez Musharraf of hatching a conspiracy for her assassination and in retaliation the General accused Asif Ali Zardari having the main beneficiary—the well-known motive theory was applied by him.
The wages of appeasement towards militants, inaction of the rulers against them and their protection by certain quarters culminated in the most lamentable barbaric incident in Peshawar on 16 December 2014 when seven terrorists of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) launched an attack on the Army Public School. They were clad in the uniform of the Frontier Corps and entered the school from the rear. They stormed the premises and held it in a-hour siege. They moved from classroom to classroom, killing innocent students and staff—nearly 150 lost their lives and many hundreds received serious injuries. Thereafter many attacks were made by these cowardly forces but their ability to strike without challenge is valiantly countered and largely destroyed by our armed forces.
The carnage in Quetta of August 8, 2016 killing 70 and injuring over 100 was another great jolt to the entire nation. It was documented in detailed Inquiry Report prepared by an honourable judge of Supreme Court. There was wanton attack on Quetta’s Police Training Centre on October 23, 2016 killing 59 cadets and injuring 116. Peshawar tragedy of December 16, 2014, sad killings of General Sanaullah Niazi, Lieutenant Colonel Touseef and others on September 15, 2013, Bashir Ahmad Bilour, senior and respected leader of Awami National party (ANP) and others on December 22, 2012, bomb blasts at many places, attacks on armed forces and civilians by the militants since 2001, are links of a single chain. These have been openly claimed by TTP and/or other banned militants/religious outfits—all proxies of Neo-Colonialists in their ‘New Great Game’.
At one point of time, PML(Nawaz) and PTI were advocating “truce” with terrorists. PTI received their wrath, losing Law Minister Israrullah Gandapur and many others, after sharing power in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with Jaamt-i-Islami (JI)—an ardent and open defender of militant Islam.
It is obvious that there exists a ‘Grand Design’ under ‘New Great Game’ aimed at keeping Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Iran and India, especially in the wake of China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), in turmoil by certain powers that needs to be analysed and understood in its entirety if our cilivil-military leadership wants to overcome the menace of militancy.
The ghastly attacks on GHQ Rawalpindi, PNS Mehran Base in Karachi, PAF Base at Kamra, intrusion in Abbotabad, invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, campaigns against Libya, Iran, Syria and other Muslim States should be seen in the perspective of keeping the threat of fundamentalismaliveby some hidden hands. They admitted to have created the monsters like Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and provided them now billions. All these are well-designed ploys, observes Dr. Sachithanandam Sathananthan, in The Great Game Continues. His core argument is that “the purpose is not to eliminate the ‘Islamic threat’ but to contain it within manageable limits and to spawn the next generation of terrorists”. In Pakistan: Drug-trap to Debt-trap, detailed discussion is available how the Late Neo-Colonialistsinventing new enemies and eliminating the older ones as part of the ‘New Great Game’.
Dr. Sachithanandam Sathananthan says that “Islamic threat created through Al- Qaeda, the Taliban and ISIS etc is a leverage to intervene in countries for self-aggrandisement”. In the case of Pakistan, it’s prime goal is distancing Islamabad from Beijing and exploit energy resources abundantly found in Balochistan and, in the long run, perhaps derail US administration’s well-laid plans to bring Afghanistan to heel and to dominate Central Asia and its oil-rich Caspian Sea Basin,” Dr. Sachithanandam Sathananthan argues at length in The Great Game Continues.
The phenomenon of fundamentalism is complex and riddled with many puzzles. It cannot be understood without studying the foreign policy of United States in which terrorism, drugs, arms and war, play a pivotal role. This is not a recent phenomenon. From the early part of the twentieth century, US leaders have been using arms, drugs and war hysteria as tools to advance their foreign policy objectives. “Terrorism” is a tool in the hands of certain forces that want to impose the New World Order in the wake of 9/11.
Analyst and scholars have yet not examined assassination of Benazir Bhutto from the perspective of ‘New Great Game’ unleashed by powers at war in this region having economic interests. Benazir gave her life for resisting the designs of those who support militants to wreck Pakistan providing them pretext to intervene physically in the name of safeguarding nuclear arsenals.
Even after 15 years of the tragedy of losing great leader Benazir Bhutto, our rulers and agencies failed to punish her assailants and forces behind terrorism. The responsibility for this rests collectively on civil-military leadership and judiciary. Benazir, as leader of the poor and dispossessed will always live in the hearts of Pakistanis. If the legacy of Benazir is to prevail, people from all walks of life must work hand in hand to resist and counter the forces of exploitation, bigotry, extremism, fanaticism, fascism, which are part of New Great Game aims at controlling South Asian and Central Asian resources through the bogey of Islamic militants with the ultimate objective of containing, socialist China, defiant Iran and undermining nuclear Pakistan.
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The writer, Advocate Supreme Court, researcher and author of numerous books, is Adjunct Faculty at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and member Advisory Board and Visiting Senior Fellow of Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE)