Jai Prakash Parashar
The day when President Ashraf Ghani fled the country in Afghanistan and the Taliban chose August 15 to capture Kabul, pro-Taliban hardliners in India started calling them Freedom Fighters.
By then, Sheikh Hasina should have realised she would now be the next target of the Islamist terrorism and extremism operating from Pakistan. Bangladesh’s economic progress and close ties with India make Pakistan’s military-establishment uncomfortable.
The biggest agenda of the Chinese and Pak army for the last one and a half decades has been that the pro-India governance systems should be uprooted from the neighbouring countries of India. China executes it through Maoists while Pakistan achieves its goals through Islamist terrorism and extremism. There is a mutual understanding between the
two to isolate and weaken India in the long run for geo-strategic interests.
China, through the Maoists in Nepal, made more than half of the country population to go against India as the Islamist formula could not work in the Himalayan country. In Sri Lanka, China tried to oust India by using economic tools.
Bangladesh is now on the top priority for Pakistan after it claims the target had been met in Afghanistan. A biggest weapon of Pakistan is to radicalize the society through Islamist terrorist and extremist organizations. They do the work patiently and wait till favourable conditions are created. They are convinced that one day this strategy is going to work.
Ashraf Ghani was aware that the ISI had been keeping a close eye on him after he started speaking against Pakistan. Amrullah Saleh had even called Pakistan as “Hira Mandi”. The Pakistani army was ready to go to any extent to uproot them. Faiz Hameed did it regardless of world opinion. His goal is to destroy Bangladesh financially to cover up the embarrassment his country has faced in 1971.
His next target for sure is Sheikh Hasina. Hasina has made a mistake from the beginning; ignoring their activities to avoid confrontation with Islamist extremists, while the bulk of those organizations have been pro-Pakistan. Even from the point of view of domestic politics, they were not going to be in favour of Sheikh Hasina.
But as we have seen in Afghanistan, the whole process is taken up very slowly and strikes with a bang at an appropriate time. It is part of a script that you keep
brainwashing a large section of people and suddenly attack the whole system, which you are sure to be decisive.
If the media is also included in the Pakistani establishment, then we find that they are deeply hurt by the incident and picture of Niazi’s humiliating surrender in Bangladesh five decades ago. It is beyond their tolerance that Bangladesh is progressing at a faster rate while they are struggling for growth. The kind of derogatory language you hear on Pakistani media for Sheikh Hasina suggests that they want to wipe out Indian supporters in Bangladesh.
The attacks on ISKCON are also part of a larger plan supported by Pakistan, which not only seeks to eliminate pro-India governments, but also sees the annihilation of Hindus in Kashmir, Bangladesh and Pakistan as its political goal.
The Pak army and ISI want to send a message to the Hindu Nationalist Party government of India that they can kill Hindus wherever they want, this is a way to establish their reach, so as to force the Indian government to be brought to the negotiating table, where Pakistan can tell that it is a country of equality.
(The author is a senior journalist in Central India)
