Serial betrayals by the Pakistan military (and its PLA boosters) on the battlefields of Asia do not seem to have shaken President Biden’s conviction that the Pakistan military is an essential component in the battle against global terror, writes Prof. Madhav Nalapat
The terrorist knife attack in an Auckland NZ mall was sparked by the increase in confidence of elements of the “Global Terror Archipelago” (GTA), the complex of terror groups and modules intent on acts of mass terror in order to derail the orderly functioning of society, especially within giant democracies such as the United States and India. Across the world, the manner of US President Joe Biden’s bizarre withdrawal of all—repeat, all—US capabilities within Afghanistan has energised the GTA (terror archipelago) such that several elements within this toxic complex have begun planning fresh mass terror attacks, with a concentration of attention on countries across both shores of the Atlantic.
Given the successes of the Indian military and police in counter-terror operations since the intensification of such attacks, this country will need to play a keystone role in damping down planning and foiling the implementation of mass terror attacks by the various elements that together comprise the GTA. Just as no country is safe from SARS2 until all countries are secure, no country is safe from a mass terror attack until the entire world has been rescued from such depredations.
Given the lack of effective will and leadership of President Biden that has been shown up clearly to the world in his copying of the disastrous example of President Donald J. Trump in getting signed an instrument of surrender to the benefit of the Taliban at Doha last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will need to intensify moves designed to protect not just India but the world from an intensification of terrorist activities following the Biden kowtow to the Taliban and the kick administered by the 46th US President to the lawful government of Afghanistan and its armed forces.
While the PRC and Pakistan have a strategic interest in the strengthening of the GTA (except where it moves against their own narrow interests), the US, India, the EU as well as regional powers such as Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Iran and the moderate majority in Afghanistan and Pakistan need to unite against the challenge to global security and stability caused by Trump-Biden’s effective surrender to the Global Terror Alliance in Afghanistan. While Russia cannot look upon the evolving situation with the glee shown in Beijing and Rawalpindi (the actual capital of Pakistan), errors in diplomacy and strategy by NATO member-states have left no option for President Vladimir Putin but to ally himself with General Secretary Xi Jinping of the PRC, and this needs to be accepted as a fait accompli rather than be papered over in the manner that some policymakers in India are attempting.
Despite thousands of US lives having been lost in the Middle East and South Asia as a consequence of the activities of the Haqqani network, the Taliban and other elements of the Global Terror Archipelago, President Biden remains tethered to his long-time belief that the Pakistan military is an essential part of the solution to eradicating global terror. In reality, GHQ Rawalpindi and its force-multiplier, the Central Military Commission under CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping, are the main drivers of the GTA. In the case of the Auckland attack, the terrorist directly involved had extensive links with the GHQ-linked Wahhabi ecosystem in Sri Lanka, a spillover of the spreading influence of the PRC (and therefore its all-weather partner, Pakistan).
The Wahhabi network has struck deep roots in New Zealand, given the permissive approach of the Jacinda Ardern government to elements close to the Wahhabi Brotherhood, a propensity towards appeasement of extremism by another name that is shared by significant elements in the Biden administration. It is understood that such elements were behind the otherwise inexplicable series of disastrous decisions taken by Commander-in-Chief Biden in the matter of Afghanistan, as they have burrowed their way into several key institutions, including the Department of Defense, where the GHQ Rawalpindi lobby has always had considerable influence.
Amazingly, serial betrayals by the Pakistan military (and its PLA boosters) on the battlefields of Asia do not seem to have shaken President Biden’s conviction (shared by George W. Bush during his own presidency) that the Pakistan military is an essential component in the battle against global terror. There are fewer than 40 key individuals serving and retired within the Pakistan and Chinese militaries that are playing essential roles in acting as force-multipliers in the GTA, and were they to be subject to global sanctions, the impact on global terror operations would be immediate. Why Washington, London, Paris. Berlin and indeed New Delhi are hesitating in imposing sanctions, in making a move that several in their own establishments regard as essential, is incomprehensible to those outside the cool shade of the mechanism of government.
Although China (especially the Central Military Commission) will oppose any move within the UNSC to brand its collaborator GHQ Rawalpindi as what it is, the endemic focus of global terror, the effort has to be made by those countries with leadership structures that are not in thrall to the Sino-Wahhabi alliance. Before its term ends in 2022, India needs to present before the UNSC comprehensible and credible evidence linking GHQ Rawalpindi and its global force-multipliers to the Global Terror Archipelago. Keeping silent or escaping behind the curtain of perpetual dilly-dallying is not expected from the Government of India, a country whose voters in 2014 and in 2019 gave a comfortable mandate to the BJP in the expectation that national interests would be secured in a manner that was absent in the past.
In the US, whatever the PR exertions of the captive media of the White House, citizens are increasingly understanding the extent to which Biden has let them down by cravenly adopting the same policies towards Afghanistan in 2021 as his predecessor agreed to at Doha. Hopefully, those not serving the interests (wittingly or otherwise) of the Sino-Wahhabi alliance will rouse President Biden from his sleepwalking into disaster not just for his party but for the country. India needs to play not a passive but an active role in moving away from the generalities of officialese and enunciating in clear terms the danger posed by the Global Terror Archipelago that has the support of the Sino-Wahhabi alliance as a consequence of the decisions made by CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping since mid-2013.
President Biden will not be able to succeed in his declared mission of taking on and besting the China challenge by ignoring the fault lines created by the Sino-Wahhabi alliance. Should he shift gears and enter on a constructive rather than the present disastrous course, India will be an essential partner. Appeasement in the Europe of the 1930s led to the catastrophe of genocide and conflict witnessed during 1939-45. Facing up to the challenge posed by the GTA and its backers is called for to ensure that the societal and economic disaster planned for the major democracies by the Sino-Wahhabi alliance is to be averted.
The dilution of leadership shown in Washington will hopefully be temporary, but into the vacuum drained of common sense created by Joe Biden, there is need for India to step forward and assist in creating both a global awareness as well as a global coalition to battle efforts by the Sino-Wahhabi alliance to use the terror machine as a means of weakening geopolitical rivals such as India and the US, not to mention Japan, Australia and other countries committed to a free and open Indo-Pacific.
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