After the fall of Kabul by Senator A. Rehman Malik

 

The punch line of the present era is that the General Bajwa Doctrine won and the Modi war doctrine bitterly failed, which rightly mentions the selfish and ill-motivated moves of India in the region and particularly against Pakistan. For details, I am referring to my book ‘Modi’s War Doctrine’ and I advise our foreign and information ministers to learn the real definition of anti-state elements.

I had predicted the fall of Kabul twice in my articles and continuously in my interviews though the West including the US was sure that Kabul would not fall to the Taliban so easily. US President Joe Biden, in his remarks on the drawdown of US forces in Afghanistan said “together, with our NATO Allies and partners, we have trained and equipped nearly 300,000 current serving members of the military—of the Afghan National Security Force, and many beyond those who are no longer serving. Add to that, hundreds of thousands more Afghan National Defence and Security Forces trained over the last two decades. We provided our Afghan partners with all the tools—let me emphasise: all the tools, training, and equipment of any modern military. We provided advanced weaponry. And we’re going to continue to provide funding and equipment. And we’ll ensure they have the capacity to maintain their air force.”

I think the President of the US was perhaps not informed that the training part was done by India on the instance of Hamid Karzai. India kept both Karzai and Ghani governments crippled and dependent on India and India planned and started the 5th generation warfare against Pakistan using Afghanistan. India started to import Daesh from Afghanistan and Syria and housed them in the south of India in its training centres from where they were being launched against Pakistan while using Afghan soil; they also used it against Sri Lanka to have control over all states of SAARC.

India used the Afghan soil against Pakistan by setting up seven terrorist training camps along the Pak-Afghan border and I provided the proofs to President Hamid Karzai in the presence of then DG ISI Lt Gen Zahir Ahmed. President Karzai showed his helplessness to finish them and asked us to contact the US and that the US will demand Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, as at that time he was in Pakistani custody and was undergoing interrogation.

India actually used the Afghan Government and its intelligence agency NDS but we countered all Indian sponsored anti-Pakistan in a nonviolent way under the ‘General Bajwa Doctrine’ and avoided counter-violence. Indian terrorism and terrorist financing were well exposed with the arrest of Indian spy Kulbhushan Yadav. India kept even the US in darkness and misinformed them, as out of 300000 Afghan forces, 200000 were ghost employees and the withdrawn funds from the US were being misappropriated jointly by Indian and Afghan elites. The army had to fall as it was ill-trained by India and India defeated the purpose of the US strategy miserably. I hope the USA will think twice before depending on India during the present cold war.

We must become part of the world’s powerful bloc—Russia, China, and the Middle East—and let Afghanistan be part of this bloc. Our region is sitting on a volcano with unresolved Indian Illegally Occupied Kashmir due to injustice and growing brutalities of Indian forces against oppressed and unarmed people there. Imagine if soon Kashmiris are forced by PM Modi and RSS to adopt the Afghan Taliban Doctrine of taking freedom by force then what will happen to this region; hence PM Modi should stop brutalities in Kashmir and let resolve the issue of Kashmir per the UNSC resolution of self-determination. Daesh will strike back in this region particularly against Pakistan and China duly supported by India. There will be various dirty political and psychological war tricks that will be engineered and executed by India.

It is important to mention in the end that Pakistani Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa played his doctrine smartly by building the fence on the Pak-Afghan border which blocked the new influx of refugees and forced the entry of terrorists from Afghanistan. That is why back on November 28, 2019, in my article titled “Continuity of General Bajwa as COAS is in the national interest”, I urged for his extension.

I had mentioned that General Bajwa refused to succumb to the pressure of Afghanistan and his western associates and ensured fencing on the Pak-Afghan border. I had also mentioned that Afghanistan is daily playing dirty and I can prove to the nation that we are already at war with India which has already initiated the fifth generation war which is being fought well through the Bajwa war doctrine and we need him to continue to counter India with his way and capability.

Moreover, we only defended our country whereas India played double both with the Afghan Taliban, US, and President Ghani. I hope President Joe Biden and his administration will revisit USA policies in South Asia and investigate the dubious role of India which created doubts against Pak via FATF, Anti-Pak propaganda exposed by DisinfoLab EU. There is great room for friendship between the USA and Pakistan. Our Foreign Office should find out the reasons for the US President’s annoyance and these should be addressed, as in my few interactions with him in presence of Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, I had realised that he likes the people of Pakistan. Let us find where the fault is and we must diplomatically address these misgivings due to various unforeseen acts and the anti- Pakistan role of India. Let us restore our relation with the US and other countries while keeping our integrity and self-respect and national interest supreme and intact.

The article was published in The Nation on August 17, 2021, link to the article: https://nation.com.pk/17-Aug-2021/after-the-fall

 

EVMs—yet another controversy by Senator A. Rehman Malik

Elections in Pakistan always remain controversial and despite a lot of complaints and the establishment of investigative teams and commissions, the nation has not been able to know the results of investigations. Our election commission remained weak in its performance because of improper control on the election process. The attempt on the establishment of RTS and RMS prototypes was a kind of electric reporting that eventually resulted in failure. RTS functioned fine initially but its sudden shutdown still remains a mystery. 

A committee under my supervision made the initial inquiry and it was later referred to the Senate for a larger commission investigation composed of members from the NA and Senate and also to a high-powered judicial commission. The outcome of the investigation is pending till date. Now a new e-machine has been introduced, which is a kind of RTS being converted to an e-machine. The RTS was designed by NADRA which was cost effective as well, but its purpose was frustrated for unknown reasons. Let us examine in detail the technical, administrative and security aspects of this newly introduced e-machine, which is a remarkable invention as per the claims of the government.

We do not have a pulse system as yet, but most electronic communication is now dependent on private internet service, which is insecure. It is an insecure medium of transferring any kind of data which is open to hackers. It looks like the present government is very keen on this and all set to conduct this highly expensive experiment of using electronic voting machines in Pakistan for the next general elections.

I am not against the use of modern technology to make our election processes easy, transparent and cost effective and free of ringing, but we need to look into its multiple aspects in light of past experience and failure of the RTS and RMS. I would like to shed some light on the past when this idea was first coined by our government in 2009. The idea of an electronic voting machine for Pakistan was conceived by me for the first time in my capacity as Interior Minister and I got a detailed study done on voting through the electronic machine.

It looked like a fascinating and quick mode of polling but it did not turn out to be perfect. I even directed the then Chairman NADRA in 2009 to look into it further and also attended two meetings with the then election commission on this subject as well. A major part of the team was not in favour of this, I, however, directed them to keep working and create a cost effective feasibility report and they should be rigging-free electronic vote processes. The NADRA team, along with the assistance of ECP, continued to work on it and the nation witnessed the launch of the RTS software instead of a voting machine. This proposed machine is basically a modified form of RTS which was introduced to cover the election results and transfer of collection of voting data to ECP via NADRA. The app installed in the mobile of respective presiding officers was responsible to transfer compiled voting of every candidate to the ECP. It performed well in communicating the initial results until the dealing staff was ordered to put a stop to the use of RTS. It remained a mystery as to who ordered to shut the RTS however, the mystery of the ordering authority could not be resolved though a voice recording was received through an unknown source, played by me in the parliament in my capacity as the Chairman of Parliament Committee comprised of 23 members that looked into the allegations of rigging. RMS being faulty is another story and I firmly believe that India, through its EC company (The Electronic Council of Commerce Consultants) had hacked websites. RMS was launched by ECP in collaboration with UNDP and the quality/functionality of RMS was certified by Kualitatem Inc., duly registered in the USA, having its office in Lahore.

Who will guarantee that India will not try to hack again and the results of our elections cannot be altered, just like the alleged Russian hacking of the US elections; the matter is still being investigated by Mr Robert Mueller. There are 95,000 voter identification units, hence, going by the number of polling stations, polling booths and voter identification units, Pakistan will need a total of 900,000-1,000,000 of these five different EVM modules to conduct polls for all provincial and national assembly seats in a single day. The total cost for 900,000 to one million modules will eventually be Rs45 billion to Rs70 billion, since the printer is the most expensive module. Any good printer is going to cost $700-1,000 each. The total for the printers will go up to about Rs15bn in local currency. On the other hand, Voter Identification Modules will cost around Rs10bn. Likewise, a reasonable quality ballot unit will cost $200 each, making it a blow of Rs12 billion in local currency. RTS modules will cost a further blow of Rs2-3bn. The total bill for this amounts to Rs55bn. A compromise on price would result in a compromise on quality, and we cannot afford to encounter another failure in our electoral system. Also, the cost is also not the only headache since, in order to get one million modules by the time the 2023 election swings around, Pakistan will need to produce 3,000 modules a day. Electronic voting was introduced in many developed countries as well yet it is declared an infamous idea for election over the series of serious doubts about the security, accuracy, reliability and verifiability of electronic elections. It will become a hacking and rigging tool. 

I feel improvement in this system must continue and perhaps our experts need to bring an efficient system ensuring the rigging-free elections. Major countries of the world have discarded it for not being efficient and workable enough especially for use in villages. It looks to me that even if we spend multibillion rupees, we will still not have the right system.

The article was published in The Nation on August 15, 2021, link to the original article.. https://nation.com.pk/15-Aug-2021/evms-yet-another-controversy

'Terrorism and Islamophobia' by Senator A. Rehman Malik

With every passing day, the world is getting a clear picture as to why only Muslim countries are under the menace of terrorism. There are 50 Muslim-majority countries with 45 Islamic countries and Islam has 1.8 billion adherents, making up about 24 percent of the global population. The statistical record of worldwide terrorism shows that almost every Muslim country has become the victim of terrorism irrespective of the fact whether it is in East Asia, South Asia, North Africa, the Sahel, or the Middle East. The question arises why it is so and why the West has been gunning for Muslim countries? 

Let me take the readers back in history and remind them what then US President Jimmy Carter (1977 to 1981) told Alexei Kosygin, then Premier of the Soviet Union (1964 to 1980); our actual enemies are the Muslims and there will be a war of civilisation. This is how planned propaganda started against Islam and its followers. The phrase of Islamophobia was floated after creating the impression that Muslims are extremists and breed violence.

The incident of 9/11 in fact stamped the Muslim world as terrorist while there is no plausible explanation as to how the 9/11 accused remained in the US system and how were they ignored by the US security and intelligence system. It is still a mystery; how could two planes be flown into the famous twin towers of the World Trade Centre and how could they collapse this way? The accused were declared from the Middle East and none from Afghanistan or Pakistan was found involved; even then the US attacked Afghanistan and Pakistan was forced to allow its soil for logistics and be part of the ‘War on Terror’ that ended without any result, bringing further instability to Afghanistan and peace in the region.

In any case, Taliban leader Mullah Omar had offered to hand over Osama Bin Laden (OBL) to a third country for a fair trial but the US declined. The world witnessed how Abdul Khaliq, brother of Hamid Karzai was brought in and after his killing, Karzai was presented as a hero and installed as President and the war continued till today. It is worth noting that despite the spending of trillions of dollars, nothing was achieved out of it except destabilisation, destruction, and deaths.

The entire Muslim Ummah is suffering and will continue to suffer in different forms and shapes like Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Turkey, Saudia and Yemen border conflict, Indonesia, Algeria, and Niger.

Has someone in the West demanded a UN commission for investigation into the strange and fast emergence of anti-Muslim Daesh which is now operating from Afghanistan and committing acts of terrorism in Pakistan with the connivance of RAW? In fact, Islamophobia is a term that has been created on purpose because Islam is currently the most dominant religion in Middle Eastern nations as well as the fastest increasing religion in western countries as well. Most importantly, this is the religion to which 80 percent of global oil reserves belong; that is one of the other reasons to create Islamophobia to make a conducive environment for military interference by creating fear and hate against Muslims around the world which is going on.

Two years ago in March 2019, I had written an article on Islamophobia, after a White terrorist, after carrying out an attack in a mosque of New Zealand was highlighted as a “Shooter” by western media instead of “Terrorist”. The statements by different world leaders surprised me to wonder if these leaders have different meanings of terrorism—a different code for Muslims to demonise them and a different label for non-Muslims. We have seen that an isolated engineered act of terrorism by “a hired Muslim terrorist” would be used to condemn the whole peaceful Muslim community but this has never been the case with any act carried out by a white person involved in an act of terrorism. Needless to say, all such attacks are carried out with a predetermined agenda and are thus equally liable to be condemned in the same fashion. In spite of rapidly increasing white supremacist terrorism around the world, US media and political elites spend a considerable amount of time discussing alleged “Islamic terrorism” alone, which only adds fuel to the already increasing more propaganda of Islamophobia. This is well-thought-out propaganda created by the West in order to develop zero-tolerance and hatred against Muslims among people.

The fight going on in Afghanistan is Muslim to Muslim and giving a good opportunity to the west to call Muslims extremists and promoters of violence. If the US was sincere to end the Afghan internal conflict then it should have ensured the end of violence and a civil war-free strategy before an exit.

It looks like the West may consider bringing its forces back to Afghanistan and it will begin another round of war and Pakistan will again be under the pressure of the ‘Do More’ syndrome as the UNSC recently presided by India and statement through the representative of Afghanistan has once again levelled their stereotype allegation of sponsoring of Taliban and alleging Pakistan for allowing Taliban sanctuaries which is totally a blame game by India whereas Pakistan is already facing the spillover of an internal fight in Afghanistan and Pakistan is the target of terror outfits like Daesh and other militant factions, as evident from the attacks on 14th July on Chinese nationals and attack in Quetta on 8th September.

These attacks are going to increase in Pakistan and our only fault is that we want a political solution in Afghanistan and moreover the west is upset because of our nuclear power. The indicators are that the Muslim bloc will continue to be in trouble as part of the west policy. The war in Afghanistan is not because of Pakistan but because of the attack of the US on Afghanistan. Trouble in Afghanistan means trouble for Pakistan and now FATF may bring a new charge sheet alleging so-called support of Taliban and terrorist sanctuaries as UNSC under the Indian presidency has already levelled these charges against Pakistan whereas Pakistan representative was not there to have defended his country though Mr Munir Akram had demanded his presence as right. Interestingly the upcoming meeting of UNSC is being presided over by PM Narendra Modi and he is bound to spit more venom against Pakistan. The major attacks from the West and India will be on Pakistan and nobody is going to ask PM Modi as to why has the Kashmiri Muslims are in captivity under curfew for the last two years as these Kashmiris are Muslim.

I hope the UN secretariat will place the following questions in the forthcoming meeting:

• Who attacked Afghanistan for the first time and subsequently created Jihadis?
• Who and how Jihadis were recruited, trained, and launched in the Afghan-USSR war?
• Who sponsored and financed Osama Bin Laden (OBL) and his associates?
• Who created ISIS/Daesh and what were the means of financing and strengthening a lethal terrorist organisation?
• Who created the concept of the Arab Spring to destabilise the Middle East?
• Who organised the coup in Turkey to overthrow an elected democratic government?
• How and who planted terrorism in Nigeria?
• Who is supporting Boko Haram in Niger?
• Who created unrest/terrorism in Niger—a poverty-ridden country?

The above questions are very necessary to be answered and these are very pertinent for the future peace process of the world. It is strange that all the holy four Divine books Quran, Torah, Zabur, and Injil teach faith in the oneness of God. If all the major religions have one faith and one God then why has the world failed to create peace and harmony in the world through interfaith harmony?

The Article was published in The Nation on August 10, 2021, link to the original article: https://nation.com.pk/10-Aug-2021/terrorism-and-islamophobia

A strong emerging bloc; China, Pakistan & Afghanistan by Senator A. Rehman Malik

 Pakistan has a great geographical location and has been helping its neighbours and other friendly countries and contributing towards regional peace. The progress made by Pakistan before the USSR and Afghan war was tremendous and was among the top developing countries of the region in various fields. Our airline, railways, and shipping routes proved to be the best and Pakistan had been providing technical assistance to other countries for establishing airlines, railways, and shipping etc.

Karachi Shipyard and Engineering Works was a masterpiece catering to shipbuilding, ship repair and general heavy engineering. After being trapped in the USSR and Afghan war, the Pakistani economy heading towards a negative and war brought a big crunch and retarded the developing speed of the county in various sectors. This brought the GDP down, the growth rate fell and inflation went up leading to irreversible setbacks. Sadly, the Afghan war brought misery, not only to itself but devastations to Pakistan and left long-lasting effects on our society and growth. It introduced us to Kalashnikov culture, sectarian clashes, extremism and terrorism, and access to all kinds of narcotics become very easy.

I wish that Pakistan, Afghanistan, and China may create a bond of tri-brotherly ties and start working in an era of a new bond of friendship as they stand interconnected with natural land routes and the natural bond of mountains. Let us learn from China which managed to remain away from the infection of war and controlled terrorism and in fact, China paid more attention to the economy and developed various sectors including agriculture and industry on the fast track and steered clear from dirty international politics. Today, China is on the top with an economy worth trillions of dollars, and whereas Pakistan’s economy stands on the negative side it is still sliding down due to huge international debts.

China and Pakistan have contributed together and have helped the international communities on various fronts and international crises. China is contributing a lot to the development of African and other developing countries. The Afghan conflict has been used by the west as a tool to keep this part of the world under pressure and to destabilise the region. This destabilisation is affecting Pakistan and Afghanistan adversely and needs to be rectified for the sake of the stability and prosperity of this region. I have been a student and contributor to the growing great relationship of China and Pakistan and I feel that there is room to create a powerful torque and potential for working together in the peace process of Afghanistan. Pakistan, Afghanistan and China have the huge potential to work in various fields of common interest and emerge as very strong political and economic forces with their God-gifted natural resources.

In view of the above, I enlist the following areas of cooperation between these three great nations;

Pakistan, Afghanistan, and China may sign a tri party MoU to work together. The three countries have potential in mineral, agriculture and other fields of mutual benefit. These three countries have a natural alliance and connectivity in the form of roads and other links, especially CPEC can bring a great revolution in the development of Afghanistan as China and Pakistan together can play a role in reconstructing Afghanistan. In a trilateral agreement, they can have this new opportunity to work together in the interest of this region. This troika MoU can also end the ever-continued foreign interference in Afghanistan. The three countries must sign an MoU to spread a railway line from Beijing to Afghanistan via Pakistan and these three great nations can have a quantitative economic, business,and cultural bond in the larger interest of Afghanistan and co-signatories.

I firmly believe that the trilateral relations between Pakistan, China, and Afghanistan will bring amazing effects on their economy, the stabilisation of Afghanistan and ensuring regional peace. I wish that the above proposal will be taken seriously by the leadership of three countries in the interest of the region as it will not only ensure the stability, progress and development of Afghanistan but will also eliminate terrorists and the misuse of Afghan soil by India.

The article was published in The Nation on August 1, 2021, Link to original article: https://nation.com.pk/01-Aug-2021/a-strong-emerging-bloc