The Western world needs a different weapon to confront Vladimir Putin's Russia
By Arif Hasan Khan Akhundzada, researcher, regional affairs analyst, and member of the Sangar Advisory Council
The "ideology of Pakistan" is an oft-mentioned matter and is quite notorious. Perhaps my take on this "ideology" and its actual Pathan-Punjabi subject matter is rather unique.
Pathans (more accurately the Pashtun-Afghan ethnicity) comprise a motley of ramshackle, criminal minded and anti-social tribes, who value their lawless behaviour and extremist religious and cultural outlooks over and above everything else. And they (and the country bearing their Afghan name, if it can be called a country) have, in this manner, for the past 250 years -- served as the spearhead for the unscrupulous Anglo-American imperialist "Great Game" in this region, against Russia. The state of Pakistan was the last iteration of this Great Game strategy. It is the Punjabi spear shaft to which the Pathan spearhead has been affixed for this banal purpose.
This spear is now termite infested and its head is rusted. And it is no longer required. The Cold War has turned Hot and has reached the heart of the European hinterland. The Western world is now in need of some other sort of weapon and strategy for the new situation of facing off with Putin's Russia. Hopefully, this new standoff will be terminal -- and last less than 25 months, not to talk of 250 years.
I am privy to a recent top level security briefing, in which I heard things that literally confirmed my own views in this regard: that the Western border of this country was far more dangerous than the eastern one (despite all the cheap propaganda hullabaloo fed over the years about Islam, Kashmir, nuclear war, etc, etc). It was revealed that the defenders had far more to fear on the western side despite the lesser capabilities of the Afghans.
Moreover that also extended to a suspicion of the local Pathan population, not just those over the border. The Durand Line, it was further stated -- is merely "the Durand Line" and NOT an international border. Ha ha ha. What a gimmick! But that too conforms to reality, and more interestingly the concept was not further elucidated. Nobody seemed perceptive enough to ask for a clarification, and it would have been fairly unsuitable to do so, given the nature of the occasion and those assembled. The participants were told that "the basic defence doctrine had changed".
Indirectly, all of the above implied that the regular diatribes and noise that takes place between Pakistan and it's Indian cousins is just that -- noise and nothing else. The real enemy is elsewhere....and it is actually the historic enemy of both these seemingly estranged brothers.
I feel privileged to say that the "defenders" see things in much the same way as me -- even if our standpoints are 180 degrees apart!
Unlike most situations, the recent US-Iran events are epochal in their nature. But like all geopolitical incidents in this age of social media empowerment, they too have brought to the fore a slew of superficial commentators who are least qualified, and who cater to irresponsible "feel good" analysis which satisfies ordinary popular culture conversational requirements, without recourse to professional insight and knowledge of deep history and core issues.
Here I refer to inaccurate analysis and opinions promoted regarding the role of Pakistan during the US-Iran events. And I am not referring here to those operating with deliberate misinformative agendas, but to those who think they are offering the truth in this regard.
As an example of this, I may mention the Pathan-Punjabi dynamic in the Indus Valley at the social, cultural and political levels. The British knowingly and artfully harnessed this phenomenon to create a destructive mischief-sowing tool for their cynical strategic use in this crucial area (the entity called Pakistan), and that was the real reason for which they decided to partition their "Raj" when their defeat and decrepitude started to become apparent during World War 2.
