Mullah Marshal Munir and his maniacal mad-dogging

India Today

a day ago

The maniacal mad-dogging of Pak's self-appointed Field Marshal Asim Munir, threatening a nuclear holocaust that will destroy half the world, isn't the first time he has said something like this. Nor is it the first time he has indulged in nuclear blackmail standing on American soil. During his last visit to the US, when he was wined and dined by a man who craves a Nobel Peace Prize and is ready to go to any length to get one, even if he had to hold a gun to the Nobel Committee's head, Munir said pretty much the same things to pretty much the same audience - Pakistani Americans.advertisementMunir's minders in the Pakistan Army are probably aware of the kind of lunatic talk that their boss indulges in and are therefore careful to ensure that no one can record the ravings and ranting of the world's first openly jihadist general with a finger on the nuclear button.The Americans, of course, closely monitor characters like Munir and are aware of his craziness. But invitees to these closed-door events also talk and disclose the rants of an unhinged mind who imagines he is in the league of legendary Muslim generals like Salahuddin and Khaled. Munir is cocksure that not only is Pakistan on the verge of receiving Allah's divine help to make it the centre of the world, but also that he has Allah's mandate to lead Pakistan to its manifest destiny. That Allah has for now given the Kashkol (begging bowl), which Munir and his sidekick, Prime Minister of Pakistan Shehbaz Sharif, take with him wherever they go, is a minor inconvenience to the larger narrative being peddled by the de facto generalissimo and the coterie of generals surrounding him.
Munir's rants - amongst other things, threatening to bomb any dam built on the Indus River System, claiming that Pakistan had signaled it will target India's largest petroleum refinery owned by the Reliance group, warning that next time Pakistan will lob missiles targeting Eastern India and then move to the West (probably to demonstrate the strike capability of Pakistani missiles), - are actually a full-toss he has bowled for India to hit out of the park in the propaganda wars underway between the two countries.To the rest of the world, he comes out as a deranged character using Islamist/jihadist imagery to drive home his arguments to audiences who are either enamored of him or too diffident to question him and his worldview. But his trash talk is probably popular with Pakistanis, who have convinced themselves of a non-existent 'victory'. Even so, the propaganda wing of the Pakistan Army - Inter-Services Public Relations - has glossed over the threats of a nuclear armageddon as part of the damage control measures.No one in India should be surprised that a fanatic Islamist like Asim Munir is leading the Pakistan Army. For years, strategic analysts and Pakistan watchers have been anticipating precisely these kinds of unhinged characters in the Pakistan Army. He is the second army chief of what is called the 'Zia bharti' (officers recruited after the Islamisation of the Pakistan Army by the former dictator Ziaul Haque).advertisementThe first was Munir's predecessor, Qamar Javed Bajwa. But at the time Bajwa was commissioned in 1980, the ethos of the old British Indian Army had still not been completely erased in the Pakistan Army. Munir was commissioned in 1986 when the Zia-inspired Islamization of the armed forces had been firmly implanted in the training academies. Add to this Munir's own family background - refugee family from Jalandhar, father, a lowly school teacher who doubled as an imam in a masjid and almost certainly a family of converts that sought to enhance their social status by claiming to be Syeds. Clearly, people like him and others of his ilk are deeply steeped in Islamist/jihadist thinking, which is reflected in his constant reference to Quran and other Islamic texts to validate his stance. Just like Donald Trump is no longer an aberration in American politics, Munir too is the beginning of the jihadist generals in Pakistan army.A fact often forgotten about Munir is that he was the ISI chief when the 2019 suicide attack in Pulwama happened. An attack like that could not have been launched by a Pakistani terrorist group like Jaish-e-Mohammad without a nod from the ISI. Similarly, the Pahalgam massacre - Hindu tourists targeted deliberately - had to have the go-ahead from the top brass of the Pakistan Army and ISI.advertisementIn other words, Munir's antics have brought India and Pakistan close to war twice already, and from his public utterances it is almost a certainty that there will be a third round, sooner rather than later. That he is doubling down on support for jihadist terrorists in Kashmir and the civilian regime has neither the legitimacy nor the credibility and certainly no political standing to block him running amok means that India needs to be ready to pre-empt any adventurism of Munir and his military/militant minions.Probably the only time that Munir hovered close to reality was when he metaphorically compared India to a shiny new Mercedes and Pakistan to a dump truck filled with gravel. In his jihadist brain, when such a truck collides with the Mercedes, the loss is that of the Mercedes because the dump truck is, well, a dump anyway. This is quite in line with the general thinking among Pakistani generals who have enriched themselves and settled their children in fancy Western countries while impoverishing their own country.advertisementPakistani generals, analysts, and journalists never tire of boasting that Pakistan has nothing and therefore has nothing to lose, unlike India, which has made great strides and has a lot more to lose in a conflict. This kind of thinking is pervasive in a culture that yearns to bring the house of the enemy down, even if it means coming under.Hopefully, instead of listening to Pakistan's apologists and advocates in India who latch on to meaningless anecdotes to present the Pakistanis as normal people, those charged with framing India's defence and security policies will understand the nature of the beast India is dealing with in Pakistan.People like Asim Munir and his cohort might have the trappings and spit and polish of the old British Indian Army, but fundamentally, they are part of an army that is jihadist in its mindset and believes itself to be a successor of the marauding and murderous armies that invaded India from Central Asia, Arabia, Persia, Afghanistan and Turkey. These people are informing us of their plans. Indian defence planners can either live in denial or work double time to visit ruination on India's implacable enemy.(Sushant Sareen is a Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation)- Ends(Views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author)Tune InMust Watch