Major Amin sent in an old article of his from 2013 (posted below).
I think Indian and Pakistan CAN make peace, but not yet… Anyway, you can read Major Amin’s more pessimistic take here..
I think Indian and Pakistan CAN make peace, but not yet… Anyway, you can read Major Amin’s more pessimistic take here..
Can India and Pakistan make Peace – Agha.H.Amin , Major (r)
(from 2013)
The recent sudden angelic desire on part of the Pakistani establishment to make peace with India has nothing to do with any major shift in Pakistan’s foreign policy written in the Pakistani military headquarters popularly known as the GHQ.
The Pakistani apparent shift is merely a tactical response to extreme confrontation with the US over perceived US view that Pakistan is playing a double game in Afghanistan.
This is similar to Musharrafs flirtation with India from 2000 to 2007 which in reality was a gambit to prevent a two front war with Afghanistan occupied by the USA and a hostile India in the east.
The real picture of true intentions of the Pakistani military will emerge when the US withdraws from Afghanistan.
This will be the time when the Russians ,Iranians and Indians will have no choice but to support the Northern Alliance against Pakistan sponsored Taliban who regard all Shias, Ismailis,Non Pashtuns,moderate Pashtuns as infidels who deserve to be massacred.
The Pakistani politicians are a compromised manipulated lot who are under firm control of the Pakistani military thanks to the politicians own massive financial corruption. They will do what the Pakistani generals tell them whether it is the PPP, PML or any new party like Imran Khans Tehrik i Insaaf.
Pakistan will remain the same state run by an army rather than a state with an army.The Pakistani generals will control Pakistan’s politics and foreign policy and Pakistan India relations will remain a mix of an uneasy and an unpredictable peace.
Pakistan will remain embroiled in an ever continuous civil unrest. Baloch will be gunned down by the Pakistani military while Pakistan’s politicians will remain the puppets of the military that they have been since 1977.
Terrorism will remain a tool of foreign policy while the Pakistani military runs the Pakistani state under a facade of PPP or PML or Tehrik i Insaaf.
By that time Pakistani military will be hoping to achieve all its objectives–
1. An extremist dominated Afghanistan.
2. A Balochistan fully fragmented and crushed.
3. A Pakistani political party leading Pakistan fully subservient to the Pakistani military.
4. A renewed infiltration in Kashmir.
5. A brinkmanship nuclear policy with India .
6. A greater Chinese vassal with far greater Chinese interests in Pakistan.
There is no doubt that Pakistan will be a semi autonomous Chinese province by 2030 or so. Its relations with India will be run on two basis , Pakistani military retaining its nuisance value based on the much trumped and misused Indian threat and secondly Pakistan as a Chinese pawn acting as Chinas western bastion in West Asia. Pakistani Balochistan by 2030 would be a completely Chinese run show while Pakistan”s military and corrupt politicians will control Pakistan’s corrupt par excellence economy.
Manmohan Singh etc will remain dupes that they always were.The region will remain unstable because instability is custom made to suit the Pakistani elite both military and civilian.
India’s budding middle class wants to make peace with the Pakistani establishment because they want to have a good time.
Manmohan Singh is a cheap social climber with no strategic vision.This means that the common man in both India and Pakistan will both come to grief.
Pashtuns and Baloch will remain pawns of Pakistani establishment with Baloch regarded as Red Indians and Pashtuns regarded as good cannon fodder to be launched like fools in the name of Islam. Pakistan’s economy will remain centered to serve the good of Pakistan elite and prosperity will remain confined to the triangle Pindi Multan Lahore and Karachi-Hyderabad.
The Pakistani supreme court will remain an arm of the Pakistani elite who turns a blind eye when any one challenges Pakistani military in the courts.
Pakistan shall remain a mirage which serves a 5 % elite and the region will remain unstable and a hostage to nuclear brinkmanship.
Pakistan’s pensioners will die like stray dogs ! Pakistan’s youth will be gunned down by the corrupt Pakistani police for money ! Pakistani intelligence will continue the kill and dump policy all over Pakistan and specially in Balochistan !
This is not about Islam ! This is not about Pakistan ! This is all about a 5 or 10 % establishment that has controlled Pakistan since 1948.
All that this elite wants is to preserve their unfair advantage ! These are the new Banias,the new Muslim Banias of Pakistan !
In 1947 Muslims of Pakistan got rid of Hindu Banias but the idea of the Muslim elite was that the Muslim masses need to be buggered not by the Hindu Banias but by Muslim Banias from Gujerat, Chiniot, Khotian (later Saigal Abad) and the elite feudals who had joined the Muslim League by the 1946 elections.
Third rate Pakistani lower middle class young men will continue to pass the CSS exam and join Police,FBR and DMG to become billionaires with phenomenal corruption of all types with houses in posh DHA Karachi or Lahore within ten years of passing the CSS exam !
Pakistan does not have hawks with aristocratic backgrounds like ZA Bhutto nor visionary generals ! It is run by carpetbaggers,robber industrial barons,arch intriguer feudals and generals who are NCOs sons and are just simply ambitious !
This means that Pakistan’s political economy of exporting terrorism as a foreign policy tool,massive corruption at home and the resultant ever growing reservoir of economically deprived youngsters who will fill ranks of extremists and suicide bombers will continue.
We salute the age of West Asian strategic anarchy
Depends on which Indian and Pakistani you are asking this question to
Unsentimental and realistic thoughts .
India and Pakistan remain locked in a cycle of hostility and it may take another 100 years to break it. That will come about by massive changes in geopolitics , not due to desire for peace
VijayVan, this needs Pakistani reform. Pakistani reform would be greatly helped by Islamic reform that ends the 14 century Islamic civil war but is not essential.
Pakistani reform needs freedom of art and thought. The rest takes care of itself over time.
India has very good relations with Afghanistan, Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia, Jordan, Iraq, Algeria, Tunisia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan.
India’s relations with Bangladesh are decent. With Pakistani reform India’s relations with Pakistan would improve dramatically.
Indians need to put their head down and focus on getting their economy to 3-4x that of Pakistan and 0.5x that of China. Focus on building technological competence during this time. Create jobs in states like UP and Bihar. Get them at least 2x that of Pak.
A lot of problems will start to fix themselves once the power differentials become apparent.
Prats, India’s primary focus appears to be increasing Indian merit, capacity, competence. Sadly Indian post modernists are getting in the way (they are opposed to “ableism”) 🙁
But this won’t solve the global Islamic civil war. The Asian economic miracle has not solved it. Neither has the European and North American and Chilean economic miracles. The primary security challenge for every country in the world is Islamism.
For Islamists this is not about money or marxist post modernist understandings of power. Islamists are idealists who who want to conquer and rule the world to make it better. Islamists are motivated by love as they understand it.
Pakistan has survived by being a hired gun for the US, NATO,Saudis and now Chinese. It’s ruling elite i.e. Pakistan Army has survived by these foreign remittances while keeping the education backward , industry backward and society backward
Today Saudis has promised $20 billion in investments. SA will cut it’s price in terms of anti-Iran alliance which will only bring blowback in Pakistan
A time will come when neither China or SA or the US can bail out Pakistan, then it will have to think of changing it’s course.
China started giving massive aid to Pakistan in the 1960s, Pakistan has been a Chinese hired gun since the 1960s.
“A time will come when neither China or SA or the US can bail out Pakistan, then it will have to think of changing it’s course.”
China and the USA pay Pakistan protection money so that Pakistan supports Takfiri Islamist Jihadi terrorist attacks against Chinese and Americans less than they otherwise would and so that Pakistan doesn’t dissolve . . . allowing Jihadis to get nuclear weapons. This has also been India’s de facto policy since Vajpayee was elected.
This is all a dance to buy time and space for global Islamic reform (that ends the 14 century Islamic civil war) and Pakistani reform. When Pakistan reforms Pakistan’s relations with the rest of the world will automatically improve.
The danger is that a WMD attack against China, Russia, India, Australia, Europe, muslim population center (most likely against Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan) or the Americas causes an international response against Pakistan. Pakistan does not have an unlimited amount of time to reform.
originally written in 2011 and not 2013 -please see link below:—
http://tarafits.blogspot.com/2011/11/can-india-and-pakistan-make-peace.html
In 2011 itself, you have predicted the Chinese hegemony over Pakistan.
“All that this elite wants is to preserve their unfair advantage ! These are the new Banias,the new Muslim Banias of Pakistan !”
Muslim banias sounds so contradictory. Its like dal khor pashtuns or sober punjabi. LOL
And what is wrong with banias. They are simply doing their traditional calling with gusto; that is why you have Mittals and Ambanis and international capitalists and industrialists from India.
I am shocked by how prescient this article actually is – Pakistan doesn’t work in the interests of its people whatsoever..
We continue to ignore climate change at our peril. If the predictions are correct, we will start seeing Himalayan glaciers receding which will be accompanied by massive floods in the Indo-Gangetic-Brahmaputra plains, as well as followed by occasional droughts. Water wars involving India and Pakistan could be precipitated quite simply if Pakistan continues to fund terror in J&K. Which in turn would incentivize China to do likewise to pressure India…..