Peshawar attack scares the hell out of the likes of Hafiz Saeed, Musharraf

The bodies of the slain children in Peshawar’s Taliban attack had barely gone cold when many of the regressive voices in Pakistan started pointing fingers at India. To add insult to injury, now comes news that  Zaki ur Rehman Lakhvi, said to be the key handler of the 26/11 attacks and LeT commander has now been given bail by a Pakistan anti-terror court. All this, when public sympathy in India for the victims of this mindless atrocity was peaking, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself asking schools to mourn the premature deaths. The accusations against India began almost as soon as the Tehreek-e-Pakistan Taliban (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack and even put out a photograph of its “martyrs”. The anti-India venom is intended to neutralise the Taliban claim that it was taking revenge against the Pakistani army for its drive against terrorists in North Waziristan, through Operation Zarb-e-Azb. [caption id=“attachment_1855775” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Pervez Musharraf and Hafiz Saeed in file photo. AFP[/caption] A Pakistani security analyst, Syed Zaid Zaman Hamid, was the first off the block. “India, we will not forgive you for this atrocity! You chose the day of December 16th to rub it in. We stand firm, united and will crush you,” he said on twitter. 16 December is when the Pakistani army surrendered to Indian forces in Bangladesh. (Read his full rant here in his blog). Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed, the man widely believed to be behind the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, was equally quick to jump in and say “India has done it”. He vowed revenge. And former Army Chief and subsequent President Pervez Musharraf also chose to draw the same India link to the attack. Saeed lied through his teeth, claiming India had sent troops to Afghanistan “to help the US” , and if they could do so, he had every right to send “mujahideen” to Kashmir. “Kashmiris are clamouring for help and it is our duty to respond to their call.” It’s obvious why he said this. If Pakistan is going to wipe out terror, as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif promised without naming either the Taliban or anyone else, how could they ignore Saeed’s brand of terror? Musharraf also drew the India-Afghanistan link and stretched it to breaking point. “Do you know who is Maulana Fazlullah? He is the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan commander. He is in Afghanistan. And I am reasonably sure that he was supported by the former (Hamid) Karzai government and RAW to carry out terror attacks in Pakistan,” he told CNN-IBN in an interview yesterday (17 December). This is laughable, for the truth is that Musharraf himself had ties to the Taliban, and it is believed that officers reporting to him asked the Taliban to get Benazir Bhutto killed. (Read Khaled Ahmed’s piece here explaining the connection, among other things). What explains these shrill accusations and direct threats when no one actually has any proof that can even remotely connect India to this atrocity? The simple answer is this: Peshawar scares the hell out of Pakistan’s Army-and-ISI-cultivated anti-India terror groups, including JuD and LeT. They know that if civil society starts treating the Taliban as pathological killers, they could be next. There can be three explanations for this. One explanation, of course, flows from the old rule: attack is the best form of defence. Once it became clear that Pakistani civil society was shocked enough to start asking tough questions from its leaders on who created the Taliban and other terrorist monsters in their country, it was not possible to separate the TTP’s jihad in Afghanistan and Pakistan from the India-facing jihadists – include Saeed’s JuD and its progeny, the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). So the JuD chief went on the offensive to deflect the question even before it started forming in the minds of ordinary Pakistanis. Two, the Pakistani army, in whose school the mass murders took place, faced an immediate problem: how to maintain the morale of its own officers and soldiers, brought up on jihadi slogans, from losing faith when the same jihad had now reached their door? The army used its own formula (anti-India rhetoric) to focus the internal anger in the rank and file on “Hindu India”. This is why the security analyst immediately targeted India. Three, soon after the attack, Pakistani army chief Raheel Sharif flew to Afghanistan to seek the extradition of the TTP chief. Pervez Musharraf, already under attack in Pakistan for his misrule and now a pariah with civil society, rushed to link India and Afghanistan through the TTP’s presence in Afghanistan. The Indian Express carries two Pakistani voices today – Husain Haqqani and Khaled Ahmed – and both made it clear that the problem of terrorism is home-grown. Writes Haqqani: “Jihadi militancy and terrorism have just been ways of enabling Pakistan to stand up to a bigger and increasingly powerful India through asymmetrical warfare. During the war against the Soviets, Pakistan used American money, weapons and training not only to equip fighters to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, but to also raise brigades of irregular fighters for Jammu and Kashmir and for permanent influence across the Durand Line. The problem with ideologically motivated warriors is that their ideology can morph and mutate in directions unacceptable to a pragmatic state.” Ahmed wrote: “Pakistan has persisted in its foreign policy (that is, its anti-India policy) at the cost of total regional a global isolation. The time has come to end it.” The Pakistani government claimed the bail a technical error on its part and officials said they would oppose it. But it is unlikely that Lakhvi will be going back to jail anytime soon. His release is symbolic of a greater malaise. The shrill anti-India voices of Hafiz Saeed, Musharraf and rabid analysts like Syed Zaid Zaman Hamid are intended to ensure that Pakistan remains mired in its jihadi, anti-Indian mindset. If that mindset changes, their game will be over.