India should sign the Teesta accord with Bangladesh and implement the enclaves agreement. We’ll need Dhaka’s support to ward off Islamist challenges
Pakistan's ceasefire violations along the line of Control once again underline the urgent need to sign the Teesta waters accord and implement the land enclaves agreement with Bangladesh. This becomes clear on recognising that the violations have to be seen in the context of the scenario likely to unfold in Central and South Asia following the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan in 2014. Pakistan is planning to step up then its efforts to achieve its twin objectives in the region — the search for strategic depth vis-à-vis India by controlling Afghanistan through a puppet Government, and fragmenting and/or weakening India by fomenting insurgencies in as many parts of it as possible.
As lieutenant General (retired) VR Raghavan pointed out in an article in The Hindu of November 7, 2001, the expression, “strategic depth” was first used officially by Pakistan's then Chief of Army Staff, General Mirza Aslam Beg, during the Pakistani Army's high-profile exercise, Zarb-e-Momin, in 1989-90. It was, however, in circulation since 1960 when a Pakistani official, Mr Aslam Siddiqi, wrote in a book, Pakistan Seeks Security, that Iran and Afghanistan could lend depth to Pakistan's defence against India.
Islamabad believes that a strong Indian presence in Afghanistan post-American withdrawal will hamper its installation of a puppet Government there. Hence the attacks on India's diplomatic establishments in Afghanistan by the ISI's two principal spawns — the Haqqani Network and the lashkar-e-Tayyeba. Hence two other stratagems — keeping India so pre-occupied with violent agitations and communal riots in Jammu & Kashmir, and skirmishes along the loC, that it cannot focus on retaining its rightful place in Afghanistan, and simultaneously, escalating the situation to such a level that, combined with a limited military thrust a la Kargil 1999, it becomes difficult for India to retain Kashmir.
The realisation of Pakistan's objectives in Afghanistan and Kashmir would require a severe weakening of India if not its balkanisation. lieutenant Colonel (later lieutenant General) Javed Hassan's book India: A Study in Profile, shows that this is precisely its objective. The book said that “with some encouragement”, Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and six North-East Indian States (remarkably, he left out one of the seven sisters) would become centres of insurgencies which would “at best, dismember India and, at [the] best, weaken India's ability to seek regional dominance for years to come.”
lieutenant Colonel Hassan's book, published and distributed by Services Book Club, Rawalpindi, represented a study on behalf of Pakistan Army's Faculty of Research and Doctrinal Studies, Command and Staff College, Quetta. The official stamp is unmistakable. Significantly, Syed Saleem Shahzad, the outstanding Pakistani journalist tortured to death by the ISI, wrote in Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond Bin laden and 9/11, that 9/11 “aimed to provoke a war in South Asia” and 26/11 “warned that Al-Qaeda was expanding its operations to the east, from the Central Asian republics to India and Bangladesh.” For Al Qaeda, all this was in preparation for the “End of Time” battles referred by Prophet Muhammad in Hadith. These would begin in Khurasan of yore comprising parts of “modern day Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia”. Victory would be followed by Ghazwa-e-Hind — the battle for India, which then included what are now Pakistan and Bangladesh. Having won this battle as well, the Muslim army would march to West Asia where they would finally defeat the West and establish Sharia’h law worldwide under a Caliphate.
According to Shahzad, the ISI launched Ghazwa-e-Hind in the 1980s through terrorism. As we have seen, this war is set to escalate massively in 2014. A coalition Government in Bangladesh, comprising Begum Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, which has close links with Al Qaeda and the Taliban, would then mean serious trouble for India, given the pathological hatred for both against this country and their record of turning Bangladesh into a staging ground for terror strikes against it. Hence the critical importance of Ms Sheikh Hasina, now desperately battling Jamaat and its allies, returning to power in the elections to be held a few months later. She would find it very difficult to do so without the Teesta accord and the exchange of enclaves.