Pakistan’s General - the man the world needs to focus on
General Kayani The Indian government will make its case to the visiting US Secretary of State today. It is expected that the government will present evidence…
General Kayani
The Indian government will make its case to the visiting US Secretary of State today. It is expected that the government will present evidence linking elements in Pakistan to the attacks.
Whatever the evidence, both countries aren’t going to war. Here is a simple fact: India and Pakistan are nuclear weapon states.
Which also means that this is a simple way to understand how power is concentrated in both countries.
India’s nuclear command structure is a two-layered structure where any decision to launch a nuclear attack will be taken by the political leadership and executed through the nuclear command. The armed forces get involved with the Commander-in-Chief of Strategic Forces Command who is responsible for the administration of the nuclear forces.
More on the Indian structure here, and here.
The formation of Pakistan’s nuclear command structure makes for interesting reading. From GlobalSecurity.org:
The unwillingness of the civilian leadership to take the military leadership into confidence on nuclear weapons control matters is said to have figured in the October 1999 military coup by General Musharraf.
What emerges is that Pakistan’s civilian leadership isn’t in charge. It is Pakistan’s army that remains in control of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Which leaves us with the ISI, traditionally the most powerful agency during civilian rule in Pakistan.
India, and the world, needs to focus on General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the chief of Pakistan’s army. More interestingly, before he took over the army, he was the head of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI. I would recommend reading the wiki on him, just click on the image.
The decision against sending the ISI DG to India was taken by General Kayani, not President Zardari. He certainly approved Zardari’s rise to the presidency, after all he knew him well. Kayani served under Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
Kayani is the first officer in the history of Pakistan who held the position of DG ISI and then went on to become the Chief of Army Staff of the Pakistan Army (COAS). The last time a Director General of the ISI was to be made army chief in 1999, the Army staged a bloodless coup to reinstate the proposed outgoing Chief of Army Staff, General Pervez Musharraf.
Could it be possible that the Mumbai attacks are a result of a power struggle within Pakistan between the ISI, it’s terror offspring and the army?
Recovered from the site’s WordPress archive, where it was published on 2008-12-02.