Chinese Show of Naval Force: Chinese Navy Rescues Foreigners from Yemen's Aden

Source:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/china/2015/china-150403-sputnik01.htm?_m=3n%2e002a%2e1384%2eka0ao00b2h%2e19rb

Chinese Show of Naval Force: Chinese Navy

Rescues Foreigners from Yemen's Aden

Sputnik News

In-Depth Coverage

 

03 Apr 2015

In an unprecedented move, the Chinese military sent a warship to Yemen to evacuate 225 foreign nationals from the conflict-ridden country.


The operation marks the first time the Chinese military has helped other countries evacuate their citizens from a war zone. A statement released by the China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said evacuees were picked up from Aden, Yemen's second city, and transported across the Red Sea to Djibouti, from where they can take flights home. The naval frigate was redirected there from the coast of Somalia, where it had carried out anti-piracy patrols.

The evacuees consisted of nationals from 10 different countries, the majority of whom were Pakistanis, at 176. Chinese State television showed the foreign nationals aboard the naval frigate arrive to Djibouti, with footage showing children stepping off the warship and waving Chinese flags.


Speaking to the Associated Press, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said 'the Chinese government has taken special action to help with the evacuation of foreign citizens.'

According to the foreign ministry's statement, the operation came after the governments of Pakistan, Ethiopia, Singapore, Italy, Germany, Poland, Ireland, the UK, Canada, and Yemen requested China's help.

China has used its warships once in the past for a similar operation, when in 2011 it evacuated 30,000 people from a war-ravaged Libya. However, at the time, China had only evacuated its own citizens from the conflict zone.

The recent operation is illustrative of the ongoing transition in China's role in the international community, whereby the once-reclusive country is becoming increasingly active in humanitarian aid and relief abroad.

The country drew international praise last year after it sent troops to Liberia to help build a treatment center and transport medical supplies in response to the Ebola outbreak. In 2013, Beijing also sent a hospital ship to the Philippines in the aftermath of the Typhoon Haiyan.

'China has been keen to learn from the experience of other countries on how to evacuate people, especially after Libya,' A senior Western diplomat in Beijing said to Reuters. 'It's good to see China taking more of an interest in this.'

Yemen has become the site of intense conflict since last September, when Iran-back Shiite Houthi fighters seizes the capital city of Sanaa from Saudi and American-backed President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. A Saudi led bombing campaign against Houthi forces has plunged the country into more violence, as UN reports estimate that over 500 people have been killed in the past two weeks and more than 1,700 injured.

People's Liberation Army Navy Navy - Introduction Navy - Ships Navy - Modernization Navy - History Navy - Doctrine Navy - Organization Navy - Personnel Navy - Foreign Policy Navy - Facilities Navy - Glossary

Bernhard Zand wrote in Der Spiegel September 10, 2012: "One country that could give China good advice, a country whose historians are well versed in naval policies and in arms races on the high seas, is Germany. A century ago, Berlin stood where Beijing is now, as an emerging economic power that was admired, envied and feared. At the time, Germany wanted a navy that would broadcast its self-confidence to the world, one that could rival the world’s greatest naval force of the era, the British Navy. That plan almost succeeded. But it didn’t end well."

BRANCHES
Surface Forces			Submarine Force			Naval Air Force
Coastal Defense Force			Marine Corps
Commander, PLAN
North Sea Fleet			East Sea Fleet			South Sea Fleet
	Submarine, NSF			Submarine, ESF			Submarine, SSF
		Conventional Sub Flotilla			Conventional Sub Flotilla			Conventional Sub Flotilla
								1st Nuclear Sub Flotilla
	Surface Force, NSF			Surface Force, ESF			Surface Force, SSF
		Destroyer Flotilla			Destroyer Flotilla			Destroyer Flotilla
		Speedboat Flotilla			Speedboat Flotilla			Speedboat Flotilla
		Suport Vessel Flotilla			Suport Vessel Flotilla			Suport Vessel Flotilla
					Landing Ship Flotilla			Landing Ship Flotilla
								Sub Chaser / Frigate Flotilla
	Naval AF, NSF			Naval AF, ESF			Naval AF, SSF
		U/I Fighter DIV			4th Fighter DIV			8th Fighter DIV
		U/I Fighter/Bomber DIV			6th Fighter DIV			9th Fighter DIV
		U/I Bomber DIV			Radar Brigade			Radar Brigade
		Radar Brigade
		AAA Regiment
	Coastal Defense Force, NSF			Coastal Defense Force, ESF			Coastal Defense Force, SSF
		Shore-to-Ship Missile RGT			Shore-to-Ship Missile BN			Shore-to-Ship Missile BN
					AAA Regiment			AAA Regiment
					Shore-Ship Missile and AAA RGT
							Marine Corps, SSF
								1st Marine BDE
								164th Marine BDE

 

Conducting India-Sri Lanka relations the Modi way

               

Conducting India-Sri Lanka Relations
                         the Modi Way 
                                  By
                           G. Padmaja    

 

 

India's Narendra Modi and Sri Lanka's Maithripala Sirisena. Photo Credit: Sri Lanka government.

            
Mar 30, 2015                                                        

                                                   

         On March 18, 2015, the Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj made a statement in parliament on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Seychelles, Mauritius and Sri Lanka which took place from March 10-14. She began by saying: “The importance of these visits can be gauged from the fact that an Indian prime minister has paid a bilateral visit to Seychelles after 34 years, Mauritius after 10 years and Sri Lanka after 28 years.”

 

 Prior to Modi’s visit and after that too these facts have been repeated by many. This statement no doubt brings out the significance of the visit, but implicit in it is also the acceptance that the Indian foreign policy has either failed in conducting its relations with these countries at the highest level or faces challenges which prevent it from doing so.  The immediate question which arises is what has changed that the Modi government is undertaking these visits where the earlier governments hesitated to do so. In this context it is argued that the new government at the centre believes that India’s national, regional and global interests are best served by having these bilateral visits at the highest level. This article looks specifically at India-Sri Lanka relations to bring this out.

 

 Like the earlier governments, the Modi government too has been influenced by domestic interests and pressure groups from Tamil Nadu, especially with regard to the issues related to Sri Lankan Tamils.  Modi swept to power with an overwhelming majority in May last year. His government has not allowed the Tamil Nadu parties to dictate foreign policy. Whereas the earlier government could not resolve domestic dilemmas and undertake bilateral visits at the highest level, the Modi government did.  While conducting relations with Sri Lanka, Modi in no way diluted India’s stated position on important issues. On the contrary the prime minister, throughout his visit to the island nation, forcefully articulated India’s concerns. It’s only on the basis of strong trust and continuous engagement at the highest level will India’s long term political, economic and maritime strategic interests be served. Not engaging at the highest level is no longer a policy option for Indian foreign policy. It will only result in other external political actors actively engaging with Sri Lanka, which in the long run is not beneficial for India.

This paper looks at some specific issues to bring this out.

 

Overcoming Domestic Dilemmas

 

 The former Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh after much debate did not attend the CHOGM (Commonwealth Heads of Government Meet) which took place in Sri Lanka in November 17-18, 2013. In October 2013, the Tamil Nadu assembly passed a unanimous resolution demanding that India completely boycott the meet in Sri Lanka and seek temporary suspension of the island nation from the Commonwealth till Tamils are given rights on par with the Sinhalese and are able to live freely. All political parties, including the Congress, had supported this resolution. They argued that participation would give legitimacy to the then Mahinda Rajapaksa government which they believed had carried out human rights violations in its war against the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam). The then foreign secretary Sujatha Singh had said: “Foreign policy is an extension of domestic policy. It is meant to protect domestic interests and any decision that will be taken will be keeping in view the domestic interests, foreign policy and international obligations.” Finally the then external affairs minister Salman Kurshid participated.

 

 
In May 2014, when the SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) leaders were invited to attend the swearing-in-ceremony of Prime Minister Modi, the major political parties in Tamil Nadu once again criticised the decision. The Modi government however went ahead with the decision and all the SAARC leaders, including then president of Sri Lanka Mahinda Rajapaksa participated.
 

 

The ‘neighbourhood first’ policy of the Modi government, which he once again articulated in Sri Lanka by saying, “I am convinced that the future of any country is influenced by the state of its neighbourhood”, clearly implied engaging with the immediate neighbourhood at the highest level without compromising on India’s interests. The bilateral visit gave him an opportunity to address the Sri Lankan parliament and share his views on political, economic, maritime security issues concerning the two countries. He spoke of India’s own experience in centre-state relations. He said: “Today, my top priority is to make the states in India stronger. I am a firm believer in cooperative federalism. So, we are devolving more power and more resources to the states. And, we are making them formal partners in national decision making processes.”

Later in his media statement he said: “We stand with you in your efforts to build a future that accommodates the aspirations of all sections of society, including the Sri Lankan Tamil community, for a life of equality, justice, peace and dignity in a united Sri Lanka. We believe that early and full implementation of the 13th Amendment and going beyond it would contribute to this process.”

 

 He became the first Indian prime minister to visit Jaffna. He participated in the various rehabilitation activities being undertaken by India for the Sri Lankan Tamils. He now gave a ‘face’ to those activities. By being there, he once again championed their cause and India’s commitment to them. He further said, “For India, the unity and integrity of Sri Lanka are paramount. It is rooted in our interest. It stems from our own fundamental belief in this principle.” This statement would surely allay any fears from any quarters regarding India’s intentions.

 

 Other Issues

 

 A sense of realism too guided the complex fishermen’s issue where Modi was of the opinion that since it concerns livelihood and humanitarian concerns on both sides, the fishermen associations of both countries should meet and work out a mutually acceptable solution. Economic relations was also given focus. Modi while urging Sri Lankan businessmen to benefit from India’s growth story also agreed that the trade gap which is to India’s advantage needs to be addressed. He called for the early conclusion of the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement.

 

Modi also spoke of how the Indian Ocean was critical to the security and prosperity of both the countries. He referred to the maritime security cooperation between India, Sri Lanka and Maldives and how it needs to be expanded. It is important to note here that in July 2013, these three countries had signed an agreement on Trilateral Cooperation on Maritime Security (TCMS) to address common maritime security threats and challenges and enhance security through cooperative measures. In March 2014, the third National Security Advisor- level Trilateral Maritime Security Cooperation was held in Delhi where delegations from Mauritius and Seychelles participated as guest countries. Meaningful maritime security cooperation with other countries is indeed of critical importance. However, it cannot work in isolation of the nature of bilateral relations India has with them. They need to be built on strong bilateral relations and Modi’s visit sought to achieve this.

 

 Looking Ahead

 

 The sensitive issues involved in India-Sri Lanka relations make it one of the most difficult bilateral relations for both the countries. However, it can become the most beneficial for both countries if constant engagement at the highest level takes place to build trust which helps in resolving issues. 

 

 China is an important factor in India–Sri Lanka relations. China has close economic, political and security relations with Sri Lanka which at many times is perceived as being detrimental to India’s security concerns. One of the mechanisms for India to safeguard its interests while Sri Lanka–China relations are carried out is by actively engaging at the highest level. Prime Minister Modi’s visit sought to exactly do this. In this context Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena’s bilateral visit to China from March 26 will be eagerly watched by India.

 

(G. Padmaja, a former UNIDIR (United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research) Visiting Research Fellow at the United Nations, Geneva, is presently an independent researcher writing on SAARC and India’s policy towards its immediate neighbours.  She is based in Visakhapatnam. She can be reached at: sri2003ja@yahoo.com)

 




1, Analysis, India, Sri Lanka











 

YEMEN - Eye on Sana’a

SOURCE:
http://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/eye-on-sana%e2%80%99a/ar-AAamzZN






                                                 YEMEN - Eye on Sana’a

Saudi Arabia has got together with its inner circle of states in the Arab League to set things right in neighbouring Yemen, where a civil war is raging between a deposed president backed by Saudi Arabia and another president who was earlier deposed by it. Yemen’s own president has already run off to Riyadh. But there is a catch here.

 

The rebels include the Houthi tribe. They are called Shia but are actually Zaidi, which means they do not recognise the Twelve Imams of Iran because Imam Zaid was the son of the fourth Imam, which is where they end their confession. Iran is supporting the Houthis, backed by a split Sunni army in Yemen, which is also home to two other anti-Saudi killer outfits: al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. This means the Saudis are being squeezed in the south by more or less the same forces squeezing them from the north in Iraq.

 

Put Saudi Arabia together with the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), of which it is a member, and you have a clutch of very rich market states that can afford to spend on the Yemen invasion. They are target-killing the Houthis in Sana’a, Aden and elsewhere, without any “boots on the ground”. The big army of Egypt is on board, but the “biggest Muslim army of Pakistan” is not yet taking part.

 

 In Pakistan, no one supports participation in the invasion, forcing Islamabad to say Pakistan will go in if Saudi Arabia is invaded.

 

 

 

It is a tough decision not to go in and bomb the Iran-supported Houthis. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who is ruling Pakistan, was plucked out of prison in Karachi in 2000 —  where he was to serve a life sentence for having tried to kill his army chief, General Pervez Musharraf —  and given a comfortable life-in-exile in Saudi Arabia. Even earlier, when Nawaz faced sanctions for having tested a nuclear device in 1998, the kingdom had given him free oil for three years at the rate of $12 billion annually, which comes to a lot of money. In exile, Nawaz was able to restart his business in Saudi Arabia.

 

 

Saudi Arabia didn’t like socialist PM Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who took Pakistan leftward. But it took to General Zia-ul-Haq, who hanged Bhutto and then Islamised Pakistan with a lot of Saudi money. Bhutto had built up Libya’s then President Muammar Gaddafi in opposition to the Saudi king during an Islamic summit in Lahore in 1974, thus taking sides in a polarised Arab world. The kingdom, thereafter, never really took to Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party and fawned on the right-wing Muslim League supported by the Pakistan army.

 

 

Zia rolled back Bhutto’s leftist legacy with hard Islam. Lucky for him, he had America and Saudi Arabia fighting on the same side in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union. That meant Iran had to be ignored. The Soviet invasion had coincided with the Islamic Revolution led by the anti-US Imam Khomeini, who had mauled the US embassy in Tehran and started destabilising the small states across the Gulf in 1979. Zia was strapped for cash after the Bhutto interregnum of bad economics. He just couldn’t be neutral.

 

 

In the 1990s, the Muslim League (Nawaz) and the PPP (Benazir) alternated in power, with the army calling the shots, cutting short their tenures and expanding into Afghanistan with American and Saudi money. In 1996, Pakistan put in place the dreaded Taliban government and recognised it. The world stood aside, but Saudi Arabia and the UAE went along with Pakistan. In 1998, the Taliban killed Iranian “diplomats” in Mazar-e-Sharif and invited Tehran’s wrath. Pakistan, thereafter, became the arena of “relocated” sectarian mayhem that has, today, forced the country into a popular stance of neutrality as the Arabs and Iranians take each other on.

 

 

MUST READ: Nearly 400 Indians to be evacuated from Yemen in second phase

 

 

By the time Musharraf was ousted in 2008, he had already upset the Saudis because of the way he had treated Nawaz. The PPP alternative was never to the kingdom’s liking. When the party came to power after Musharraf, it favoured the Iranian pipeline project because America had imposed sanctions on a “nuclearising” Iran and India had ducked out of it earlier. At the fag end of the PPP rule in 2013, its leader, Asif Ali Zardari, went to Tehran as president and signed an impossible deal with his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — Pakistan would build its side of the $7.6 billion pipeline or pay $200 million a month if it failed to buy Iranian gas by December 2014.

 

In 2013, Nawaz returned to power, but wisely didn’t say how hopeless the pipeline project was under the sanctions. Tehran wooed him by proposing to lend him money for his part of the project. It then waived the post-December 2014 fine. But nothing moved. What moved was new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s palm-bearing diplomacy and the newfound “heroic flexibility” of Ayatollah Khamenei, who produced the clinching fatwa that Islam forbade nuclear weapons. Washington and Europe (P5+1) bit the bait and put Saudi Arabia — and Israel — off, landing Pakistan in an awkward locus of two very hard places.

 

 

Pakistan was unstable and broke. Iran has the rial but not much of it, and under sanctions, that too is scarce. Saudi Arabia has the riyal too, but its supply is abundant.

 

The kingdom played its cards better than Iran. Proud Iranians had backed a restless Ahmadinejad, who needled the region with dubious adventure and saw his oil — which he didn’t refine —  come under sanctions. The kingdom, pragmatic and plugged into the global economy, was heavy with dollars and purse-proud. A measure of its power was experienced when it refused to cut production in 2014, during a demand slump and piled more hardship on Iran through tumbling prices. It funded the generals in Egypt and propped up a Pakistan that can’t say no, paralysed by terrorism.

 

 

 

 

© Provided by Indian Express A photo taken by an Indian expat of an airstrike in Sanaa. 



 

Pakistan is going to get into more trouble in Afghanistan unless it gets together with India to fight the post-withdrawal war there, which no one is going to win after the 3,00,000-strong Afghan National Army takes to its heels — and the Taliban, now anti-Pakistan, kills all the “empowered women” in Kabul and pushes millions more refugees into Pakistan.

 

 

India is now a bigger presence in Afghanistan than Pakistan, and the Afghans are clearly not too enamoured of Pakistan. Singly, India and Pakistan will both come to grief. But a mutually agreed upon plan of action against the Taliban can stop the Islamic State — which Afghan President Ashraf Ghani says is already in Afghanistan — from entering Pakistan on its way to India as the “Army of Khorasan”.

 

 

 

Both Saudi Arabia and Iran are equally important for South Asia. The GCC states give employment nearer home and are the only kinds of states that Muslims provisionally seem able to run well, if you can keep democracy away. If India and Pakistan act clever and coordinate their plan of action, they can benefit from the mushrooming manpower of South Asia.

 

 

 

The writer is consulting editor, ‘Newsweek Pakistan’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PAKISTAN ARMY'S SPRAWLING SHOPPING MALL OF PRIVATE PUTTARS -“Murshid, marwa na daina.”

PAKISTAN

AN  INTERNATIONAL CASE OF...................

CLICK  & READ HOW THE MANGOEs WERE EXPLODING & TILL DATE MANGOEs ARE STILL EXPLODING
http://nusa.wikispaces.com/file/view/A+Case+of+Exploding+Mangoes+-+Mohammed+Hanif.pdf

                    “Murshid, marwa na daina.”


         PAKISTAN  ARMY'S SPRAWLING SHOPPING MALL
                                                   OF
                               PRIVATE PUTTARS (sons) 

                     ORIGINALLY AUTHORED BY 

                 EXPLODING MANGOES
                                            OF 
                        GENERAL ZIA UL HAQ  
                        
                                 FOUNDER OF 
                   
                          RIVERS OF BLOOD
                                       OF
                PAKISTAN'S PRIVATE PUTTARS






"....the biggest strategic mistake PAKISTAN ARMY has made is that it has not even taken advice from the late Madam Noor Jehan, one of the Army’s most ardent fans in Pakistan’s history. You can probably ignore Dr Eqbal Ahmed’s advice and survive in this country but you ignore Madam at your own peril."


        NATIONAL WAR EPITAPH ANTHEM 
                                   FOR
                          PAKISTAN ARMY
                                      BY
              LATE  MADAM NOOR JEHAN
                                     FOR
       LOST PAKISTAN ARMED FORCES
 
                           IN MEMORY OF

                       A DREAM OF PAKISTAN

                                 WHICH 

  REMAINS A  BLOODY DREAM ONLY

A long read, but worth it...especially for us in uniform...
Pakistan’s General Problem...

~ Mohammad Hanif...


What is the last thing you say to your best general when ordering him into a do-or-die mission? A prayer maybe, if you are religiously inclined. A short lecture, underlining the importance of the mission, if you want to keep it businesslike. Or maybe you’ll wish him good luck accompanied by a clicking of the heels and a final salute.

On the night of 5 July 1977 as Operation Fair Play, meant to topple Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s elected government, was about to commence, then Army Chief General Zia ul Haq took aside his right-hand man and Corps Commander of 10th Corps Lieutenant General Faiz Ali Chishti and whispered to him: “Murshid, marwa na daina.” (Guru, don’t get us killed.)

General Zia was indulging in two of his favourite pastimes: spreading his paranoia amongst those around him and sucking up to a junior officer he needed to do his dirty work.
 General Zia had a talent for that; he could make his juniors feel as if they were indispensable to the running of this world. And he could make his seniors feel like proper gods, as Bhutto found out to his cost.



General Faiz Ali Chishti’s troops didn’t face any resistance that night; not a single shot was fired, and like all military coups in Pakistan, this was also dubbed a ‘bloodless coup’. There was a lot of bloodshed, though, in the following years—in military-managed dungeons, as pro-democracy students were butchered at Thori gate in interior Sindh, hundreds of shoppers were blown up in Karachi’s Bohri Bazar, in Rawalpindi people didn’t even have to leave their houses to get killed as the Army’s ammunition depot blew up raining missiles on a whole city, and finally at Basti Laal Kamal near Bahawalpur, where a plane exploded killing General Zia and most of the Pakistan Army’s high command. General Faiz Ali Chishti had nothing to do with this, of course. General Zia had managed to force his murshid  into retirement soon after coming to power. Chishti had started to take that term of endearment—murshid—a bit too seriously and dictators can’t stand anyone who thinks of himself as a kingmaker.

Thirty-four years on,Pakistanis a society divided at many levels. There are those who insist on tracing our history to a certain September day in 2001, and there are those who insist that this country came into being the day the first Muslim landed on the Subcontinent. There are laptop jihadis, liberal fascist and fair-weather revolutionaries. There are Balochi freedom fighters up in the mountains and bullet-riddled bodies of young political activists in obscure Baloch towns. And, of course, there are the members of civil society with a permanent glow around their faces from all the candle-light vigils. All these factions may not agree on anything but there is consensus on one point:

General Zia’s coup was a bad idea. When was the last time anyone heard Nawaz Sharif or any of Zia’s numerous protégés thump their chest and say, yes, we need another Zia? When did you see a Pakistan military commander who stood on Zia’s grave and vowed to continue his mission?

It might have taken Pakistanis 34 years to reach this consensus but we finally agree that General Zia’s domestic and foreign policies didn’t do us any good. It brought us automatic weapons, heroin and sectarianism; it also made fortunes for those who dealt in these commodities.

And it turned Pakistan into an international  jihadi  tourist resort.And yet, somehow, without ever publicly owning up to it, the Army has continued Zia’s mission. Successive Army commanders, despite their access to vast libraries and regular strategic reviews, have never actually acknowledged that the multinational, multicultural jihadi project they started during the Zia era was a mistake. Late Dr Eqbal Ahmed, the Pakistani teacher and activist, once said that the
 Pakistan Army is brilliant at collecting information but its ability to analyse this information is non-existent.


Looking back at the Zia years, the Pakistan Army seems like one of those mythical monsters that chops off its own head but then grows an identical one and continues on the only course it knows.


In 1999, two days after the Pakistan Army embarked on its Kargil misadventure, Lieutenant General Mahmud Ahmed gave a ‘crisp and to the point’ briefing to a group of senior Army and Air Force officers. Air Commodore Kaiser Tufail, who attended the meeting, later wrote that they were told that it was nothing more than a defensive manoeuvre and the Indian Air Force will not get involved at any stage. “Come October, we shall walk into Siachen—to mop up the dead bodies of hundreds of Indians left hungry, out in the cold,” General Mahmud told the meeting. “Perhaps it was the incredulousness of the whole thing that led Air Commodore Abid Rao to famously quip, ‘After this operation, it’s going to be either a Court Martial or Martial Law!’ as we walked out of the briefing room,” Air Commodore Tufail recalled in an essay.


If Rao Abid even contemplated a court martial, he probably lacked leadership qualities because there was only one way out of this mess—a humiliating military defeat, a world-class diplomatic disaster, followed by yet another martial law.

 The man who should have faced court martial for Kargil appointed himself Pakistan’s President for the next decade.


General Mahmud went on to command ISI, Rao Abid retired as air vice marshal, both went on to find lucrative work in the Army’s vast welfare empire, and Kargil was forgotten as if it was a game of dare between two juveniles who were now beyond caring about who had actually started the game.

Nobody remembers that a lot of blood was shed on this pointless Kargil mission. The battles were fierce and some of the men FCC and officers fought so valiantly that two were awarded Pakistan’s highest military honour, Nishan-e-Haidar. There were hundreds of others whose names never made it to any awards list, whose families consoled themselves by saying that their loved ones had been martyred while defending our nation’s borders against our enemy. Nobody pointed out the basic fact that there was no enemy on those mountains before some delusional  generals decided that they would like to mop up hundreds of Indian soldiers after starving them to death.

The architect of this mission, the daring General Pervez Musharraf, who didn’t bother to consult his colleagues before ordering his soldiers to their slaughter, doesn’t even have the wits to face a sessions court judge in Pakistan, let alone a court martial. The only people he feels comfortable with are his Facebook friends and that too from the safety of his London apartment. During the whole episode, the nation was told that it wasn’t the regular army that was fighting in Kargil; it was themujahideen. But those who received their loved ones’ flag-draped coffins had sent their sons and brothers to serve in a professional army, not a freelance  lashkar.

The Pakistan Army’s biggest folly has been that under Zia it started outsourcing its basic job—soldiering—to these freelance militants. By blurring the line between a professional soldier—who, at least in theory, is always required to obey his officer, who in turn is governed by a set of laws—and a mujahid, who can pick and choose his cause and his commander depending on his mood, the Pakistan Army has caused immense confusion in its own ranks. Our soldiers are taught to shout Allah-o-Akbar when mocking an attack. In real life, they are ambushed by enemies who shout Allah-o-Akbar even louder. Can we blame them if they dither in their response? When the Pakistan Navy’s main aviation base in Karachi, PNS Mehran, was attacked, Navy Chief Admiral Nauman Bashir told us that the attackers were ‘very well trained’. We weren’t sure if he was giving us a lazy excuse or admiring the creation of his institution. When naval officials told journalists that the attackers were ‘as good as our own commandoes’ were they giving themselves a backhanded compliment?




In the wake of the attacks on PNS Mehran in Karachi, some TV channels have pulled out an old war anthem sung by late Madam Noor Jehan and have started to play it in the backdrop of images of young, hopeful faces of slain officers and men. Written by the legendary teacher and poet Sufi Tabassum, the anthem carries a clear and stark warning:Aiay puttar hatantay nahin wickday, na labhdi phir bazaar kuray(You can’t buy these brave sons from shops, don’t go looking for them in bazaars).

While Sindhis and Balochis have mostly composed songs of rebellion, Punjabi popular culture has often lionised its karnails and jarnails and even an odd dholsipahi. The Pakistan Army, throughout its history, has refused to take advice from politicians as well as thinking professionals from its own ranks. It has never listened to historians and sometimes ignored even the esteemed religious scholars it frequently uses to whip up public sentiments for its dirty wars. But the biggest strategic mistake it has made is that it has not even taken advice from the late Madam Noor Jehan, one of the Army’s most ardent fans in Pakistan’s history. You can probably ignore Dr Eqbal Ahmed’s advice and survive in this country but you ignore Madam at your own peril.
Since the Pakistan Army’s high command is dominated by Punjabi-speaking generals, it’s difficult to fathom what it is about this advice that they didn’t understand. Any which way you translate it, the message is loud and clear. And lyrical: soldiers are not to be bought and sold like a commodity. “Na awaian takran maar kuray”(That search is futile, like butting your head against a brick wall), Noor Jehan goes on to rhapsodise.For decades, the Army has not only shopped for these private puttars in the bazaars, it also set up factories to manufacture them.

It raised whole armies of them.

When you raise Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish Mohammed, Sipahe Sahaba, Sipahe Mohammed, Lashker Jhangvi, Al- Badar Mujahideen,

others encouraged by the thriving market place will go ahead and

start outfits like Anjuman Tahuffuze Khatame Nabuwat and Anjuman Tahuffuze Namoos-e-Aiyasha. It’s not just Kashmir and Afghanistan and Chechnya they will want to liberate, they will also go back in time and seek revenge for a perceived slur that may or may not have been cast by someone more than 1,300 years ago in a country far far away.





As if the Army’s sprawling shopping mall of private puttars in Pakistan wasn’t enough, it actively encouraged import and export of these commodities, even branched out into providing rest and recreation facilities for the ones who wanted a break. The outsourcing of Pakistan’s military strategy has reached a point where mujahids have their own mujahids to do their job, and inevitably at the end of the supply chain are those faceless and poor teenagers with explosives strapped to their torsos regularly marched out to blow up other poor kids.Two days before the Americans killed Osama bin Laden and took away his bullet-riddled body, General Kiyani addressed Army cadets at Kakul. After declaring a victory of sorts over the militants, he gave our nation a stark choice. And before the nation could even begin to weigh its pros and cons, he went ahead and decided for them:
we shall never bargain our honour for prosperity. As things stand, most people in Pakistan have neither honour nor prosperity and will easily settle for their little world not blowing up every day.
The question people really want to ask General is that if he and his Army officer colleagues can have both honour and prosperity, why can’t we the people have a tiny bit of both?




The Army and its advocates in the media often worry about Pakistan’s image, as if we are not suffering from a long-term serious illness but a seasonal bout of acne that just needs better skin care. The Pakistan Army, over the years, has cultivated this image of 180 million people with nuclear devices strapped to their collective body threatening to take the world down with it. We may not be able to take the world down with us; the world might defang us or try to calm us down by appealing to our imagined Sufi side.

 But the fact remains that Pakistan as a nation is paying the price for our generals’ insistence on acting, in Asma Jahangir’s frank but accurate description, like duffers.

And demanding medals and golf resorts for being such duffers consistently for such a long time.

What people really want to do at this point is put an arm around our military commanders’ shoulders, take them aside and whisper in their ears:


                 
                 “Murshid, marwa na daina.”
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Mohammed Hanif is the author of  A Case of Exploding Mangoes(2008), his first novel, a satire on the death of General Zia ul Haq.

PAKISTAN

Battle Anzac Cove, Gallipoli 1915

             Anzac Cove, Gallipoli 1915

                                  By
                       Roger Hudson

Published in

History Today Volume 65 Issue 4 April 2015

Turkey

 

Roger Hudson describes the bloody stalemate that followed the landing of Allied troops on the Turkish coast.

It would be hard to imagine a less suitable place to land troops than the strip of beach soon to be christened Anzac Cove. The Australians and New Zealanders were meant to have been put ashore further down the Gallipoli peninsula, but the strength of the current had been under-estimated, while those in charge of the pinnaces towing the boats got disoriented.

The Turks were ready, under the command of Mustafa Kemal, one of the outstanding figures to emerge from the First World War.

Anzac (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) attempts to move inland and seize the higher ground were repulsed.

General Birdwood, the Anzac commander, was only stopped from ordering an immediate re-embarkation by the prospect of it degenerating into a complete rout. By the following evening the hospital ships were full; after five days 136 officers and 3,313 men had been killed or wounded and the rest were confined to a beachhead perimeter only a few hundred yards inland and three or four miles long.

The beach itself, a mile-and-a-half long, was hidden from the Turks but vulnerable to shrapnel, its flimsy piers were regularly broken up by high seas and it was 1,400 miles away from the nearest railhead at Marseilles. There was soon a network of trenches – sometimes only ten yards from the Turkish line – dugouts, dumps and mule tracks. Gallipoli was meant to break the stalemate of the Western Front, but only succeeded in replicating it, here and at Cape Helles a little to the south, where the British landings had taken place on the same day, April 25th.


The Turkish record in recent years and in the first months of the war had not been good. They had lost Libya to Italy in 1911-12 and most of their European territory in the first Balkan War of 1912-13. An attack on the Suez Canal had been repulsed by the British and the Russians had defeated them in the Caucasus, triggering the Turkish genocide of the Armenians. All this helped Churchill to persuade Asquith's Cabinet that it should answer the Grand Duke Nicholas's call for the Allies to remove the distraction of Turkey so Russia could concentrate on attacking the Central Powers.

But what seemed a simple matter of a squadron of the Royal Navy's obsolete pre-Dreadnought battleships steaming through the Dardanelles and pounding the Turks into a swift surrender by a bombardment of Constantinople was soon shown to be far from that. Battleships were sunk and shore batteries were not subdued, while the Turks and their German advisers were prompted to strengthen the defences of the Gallipoli peninsula ready for the landings which they rightly anticipated.


As the weeks went by, the temptation to break off the offensive was resisted for fear of its effect on the millions of Muslims within the British Empire and on still-neutral Balkan countries, such as Bulgaria and Romania, whom the Allies hoped to bring in on their side. As the temperature rose and the number of unburied grew, so the Gallipoli flies bred, the stench increased and dysentery spread. In an attempt to get rid of dead mules, they were towed out to sea but the tide brought them back.

 A suicidal frontal attack by the Turks on May 18-19th produced 10,000 casualties and 3,000 dead lying unburied.

The Turkish-speaking Aubrey Herbert, inspiration for John Buchan's character, Greenmantle, managed to negotiate a truce – as remarkable as that of Christmas 1914 – so that the dead could be buried. 

He persuaded each side that the other had requested it.  


In August failure was reinforced one more time with the grossly incompetent aftermath of the landing at Suvla Bay, while the Australian attack on Lone Pine produced seven VCs and 1,700 casualties. Herbert recorded in his diary that:

 'The lines of wounded are creeping up to the cemetery like a tide, and the cemetery is coming to meet the wounded.' In October the overall commander, Sir Ian Hamilton, was recalled and his replacement set about planning for withdrawal.

By the end, half the 410,000 British Empire troops engaged at Gallipoli were casualties. Turkish losses were put at 251,000 but were probably higher. Australia's tally was 8,700 dead, New Zealand's, 2,700; a brutal coming of age.

More by Roger Hudson

- See more at: http://www.historytoday.com/roger-hudson/anzac-cove-gallipoli-1915#sthash.9Zm0Q62E.dpuf