XI WORKING TO ENSURE THAT UKRAINE AND GAZA BECOME 'FOREVER WARS'

Xi Jinping has followed the GHQ Rawalpindi guidebook on how the arsonist can pretend to be the firefighter where Ukraine and Gaza are concerned.

- MADHAV NALAPAT

General Pervez Musharraf succeeded in convincing George W. Bush that Pakistan was not part of the problem in Afghanistan but essential for the solution. This was when it had been clear throughout the 1990s that GHQ Rawalpindi had not jettisoned its 1980s policy of boosting the Taliban but was continuing to support the extremist militia. President Bill Clinton formed an administration riddled with fellow travellers of the Sino-Wahhabi lobby that was successful in pursuing a pro-Pakistan policy that opposed India on Kashmir and on issues such as technology transfer to, or development of nuclear power by, India. His final gift to GHQ Rawalpindi was to give the soon-to-be-ousted Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif a face-saving exit from Kargil. Had the people in Pakistan understood the dimensions of the defeat by India of the Pakistan military in the Kargil war, Musharraf could not have sold the untruth that his army was “stabbed in the back” by Nawaz Sharif in Kargil war despite being on a winning trajectory. In fact, the situation was catastrophic for the Pakistan army. However, the untruth of the army being done in by Nawaz Sharif gave Musharraf cover to oust the civilian administration of Nawaz Sharif and install open military dictatorship on 12 October 1999. Sharif had done his job by being the scapegoat for Kargil and was disposable, as was Imran Khan later when it became clear by February 2023 that the former cricketer could not persuade the US and its allies to once again lavish kinetic and non-kinetic assistance on a massive scale to Pakistan.