Field Marshal Asim Munir's Armageddon rant

India Today

3 days ago

For a second time in nearly four months, Field Marshal Asim Munir made an inflammatory speech uncharacteristic of even the duplicitous Pakistan Army's standards.Munir's first, on April 17, emphasised the Two Nation Theory and the differences between Hindus and Muslims and how Kashmir was Pakistan's jugular vein. The speech was followed by the April 22 massacre of 25 Indian tourists and one Nepalese national, which triggered retaliatory Indian air strikes on terror camps and airbases and brought the region to the brink of war.advertisementOn August 9, the field marshal was back to brinkmanship. "We are a nuclear nation, if we think we are going down, we'll take half the world down with us,' the army chief told the Pakistani diaspora at a black-tie dinner hosted in Tampa, Florida in a story broken by The Print's Praveen Swami.
Munir is the first Pakistan Army chief to openly threaten the use of nuclear weapons. His words carry weight because he is de-facto ruler of a country with the world's sixth-largest nuclear arsenal— around 170 bombs, and he is the world's only military officer to directly control nuclear weapons— arsenals in the seven other nuclear powers are under political control.Yet, no other nuclear power has faced the imminent danger of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of extremists, a fact alluded to by India's Ministry of External Affairs. Munir's nuclear blackmail speech, an MEA statement on August 11 said, 'reinforced well-held doubts about the integrity of nuclear command and control in a state where the military is hand-in-glove with terrorist groups.' The MEA said it was regrettable that such threats had been made from the soil of a third country.There are multiple reasons for Munir's rants.Both his diatribes were made before the Pakistani diaspora— emigres who fled an economic basket case for a better life in the west. There are only two emotive triggers Munir can pull in front of them— religion, the basis of Pakistan's creation, and nuclear weapons, the country's only technological achievement since its inception.A second reason is how US support emboldens the Pakistan military. In recent months, Pakistan has struck minerals, oil and gas and cryptocurrency deals with the US and massaged President Donald Trump's ego by supporting his candidature for a Nobel Peace Prize.Munir gained a two-hour lunch meeting with the US President at the White House, a rare privilege for a military chief. Recent history shows that the price of its support is that the US looks away from its nuclear arsenal. In the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan turned a blind eye to Pakistan's clandestine acquisition of nuclear weapons because General Zia-ul-Haq was helping them fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. Post 9/11, George W Bush looked the other way as Pakistan expanded its nuclear arsenal under General Pervez Musharraf— Bush needed Musharraf to help in the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan.advertisementA third reason is straight out of an old Pakistan army playbook— its generals holding out fears of being overwhelmed by India to get advanced weapons like F-16 fighter jets from the US. 'They play us for everything they can get, and we trip over ourselves trying to give them everything they ask for, and cannot pay for,' investigative journalist Seymour Hersh quoted a former US special forces officer as saying in 2009.A fourth reason is the collapse of Pakistan's nearly four-decade policy of 'Nuclear Weapons Enabled Terrorism' (NWET), where the shield of nuclear weapons protected Pakistan from Indian military retaliation to Pakistan's covert war. India's May 10 air blitzkrieg on Pakistan's airbases, command posts and radar sites has shattered this doctrine. Munir believes the return of US military personnel and civilian contractors on Pakistan soil could protect Pakistan from Indian retaliation. India would not strike Pakistan for fear of killing US military personnel.A fifth and more sinister reason could be that Munir actually believes his apocalyptic rant. His recent words threatening to fire missiles at India bring back memories of Lt General Hamid Gul, a former DG ISI, who dreamt of a nuclear-weapon-armed Islamic Caliphate stretching from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan and threatened to nuke Indian cities.advertisementGul who died of brain haemorrhage on August 15, 2015, was among the most odious officers to have walked down the corridors of General Headquarters, Rawalpindi. The three-star general was a protege of the equally sinister General Zia- ul- Haq, Pakistan's third military dictator.The smooth-talking Zia inveigled himself to Pakistani President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to become army chief over the heads of other senior officers in 1976 and later overthrew and executed his benefactor. Zia snatched control of the nuclear weapons programme away from civilians, Islamised the Pakistan Army, making knowledge of the Quran important for a military career, even changing the army's motto to the Quranic 'Iman, Taqwa, Jihad fi Sabilillah' (faith, righteousness and holy war).Under Zia, Gul raised the Taliban in Afghanistan, implemented Zia's 'war of a thousand cuts', stoked militancy in Jammu and Kashmir and helped create the Lashkar-e-Taiba. But in his later years, Gul was largely irrelevant, a fringe TV commentator, conspiracy theory nut and windbag provocateur. He possibly never even saw the Islamic bomb he frequently invoked, leave alone control it. All through his lifetime, Pakistan's political class and military repeatedly told the West that Gul was the black sheep in a 'Western-trained, moderate and progressive' military and there was no danger of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of extremists.advertisementThings have changed under Munir, only a third of Pakistan's 'Zia Bharti' chiefs— those commissioned under Zia. Religion is central to Munir's identity. He got his early education in a madrasa and has made his memorisation of the Quran— 'Hafiz-e-Quran' central to his identity. His recent words show him to be the inheritor of the Zia-Gul legacy of a toxic Islamist army. The extremists have finally taken over Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. And this is why the world must worry.(Sandeep Unnithan is an author and senior journalist. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Chakra Newz, a digital media platform)- Ends(Views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author)Tune InMust Watch