By Dr Shahid Qureshi: –
The deadly terrorist attack on the election meeting of a pro Pakistan and patriot Nawabzada Siraj Raisani in Mastung, a small town of Baluchistan province of Pakistan which left over 140 people dead and hundreds injured. A dodgy organisation called ISIS claimed responsibility which is operating in Afghanistan under occupation of the US and NATO forces since 2001. Targeting of Pro Pakistan and patriotic politicians in Baluchistan is part of international agenda to sabotage CPEC project, destabilise Pakistan and support the separatist terrorist elements.
The Baluchistan government on Saturday announced a two-day mourning period across the province in light of the recent bomb blast in Mastung that claimed innocent lives including Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) candidate and former Balochistan chief minister (CM) Aslam Raisani’s younger brother. Earlier on Friday, Balochistan witnessed a bloodbath when a suicide bomber, carrying at least 15kg of explosives, struck a Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) election rally in Mastung, martyring PB-35 candidate Siraj and others. From the US occupied Afghanistan, the so-called ISIS or Daish terror outfit claimed responsibility for the deadly attack in a short statement. To understand further we need to look at the following statement and doctrine by US high official.
“The Muslim Terrorist Apparatus was Created by US Intelligence as a Geopolitical Weapon”, Said Zbigniew Brzezinski in an Interview with Le Nouvel Observateur’s Published 15-21 January 1998, Translated by Jean Martineau makes clear.
Well lets starts with Afghan Mujahidins, later know as Taliban further rebranded Al-AQeeda and now also known as (aka) Daesh or ISIL. The US & European States are still using Brzezinski’s Muslim terrorist strategy.
As per following ‘Brzezinski Doctrine’, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yeman, Saudi Arabia are victims and target of the US policy. The US is in habit putting too much pressures on it friends until they collapse, damaged and destroyed. We have no reason not to believe US President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski who reportedly said that US lured the Soviets into Afghanistan trap and give USSR its Vietnam.
Raisanis are true patriots Pakistanis and that is one of the reasons they are targeted. BAP was formed in March this year after the ouster of the PML-N-led coalition government in Balochistan. Siraj had merged his own party, the Balochistan Muttahida Mahaz (BMM), with BAP in June 2018. Siraj’s teenage son 14, Akmal Raisani, had also been killed in an attack during a football match in the same district in 2011. The bombing was the deadliest attack in Pakistan in over three years since the APS tragedy — when Taliban extremists assaulted a school in Peshawar in 2014, killing over 150 people, mostly children — and is the third incident of election-related violence this week. Qaim Lashari, a senior police official, had earlier said over 1000 people were in attendance at the Mastung rally. Following the incident, an emergency was declared in Quetta hospitals, which summoned additional medical staff. Chief of the Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa expressed sorrow over the loss of innocent lives and condemned the terror attack.
H.E. Aminullah Raisani newly appointed Pakistani ambassador to Syria send his driver to pick me from Sheraton hotel in the centre of town in Damascus. It was a weekend, so we met at his official residence in suburb. I was in Damascus, Syria attending Silk Road Festival, with the British media delegation in October 2009. During the conversation the ambassador told me an interesting incident. He said: “as new ambassador in town I must call in the other ambassadors based as it is a diplomatic norm’. He said: “I went to see the US ambassador with prior appointment off course and as we arrived at the embassy my official car with Pakistani flag was checked as normal, and then something unusual happened as guard came to driver and asked him to open the boot. At that point I told my driver to reverse back the car as I felt it was insulting. The lady protocol officer was waiting and when she saw car is going back, she came running as to know what happened. At that point I decided to go back without meeting the ambassador as it was against the diplomatic norms”. I spoke to him about Syria being in category two countries and no Pakistani leader had visited for over two decades. He said: ‘I am working on it and may President Asif Zardari would come to Syria soon’. While visiting Golan UN Check post on Syria – Israel disputed border a senior Syrian army officer told me that: “UN was sending Pakistani troops as peace keepers which Israeli side objected but we did not have any problems Pakistan Army coming here as peace keepers. Now we have Indian and Philippine Army as peace keepers at this post. Than I understood why two Indian journalists were travelling with us on this highly secure visit when a Dutch female journalist was refused area entry based on security clearance. One more thing he told me about the Pakistan International School in Damascus which was run by the embassy of Pakistan. He said: “I removed all the teachers who were offering private tuitions to the students as it was immoral and unethical”.
We must analyse major events took place in Pakistan in last 72 hours. Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his daughter Maryam Nawaz flew from London to on 12 July 2018, via UAE to complete their jail sentence for corruption of over Rs 300 billion and properties in the United Kingdom. At the same time a rare event took place in Islamabad, Pakistan when intelligence chiefs of Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan met to discuss security situation in Afghanistan and emergence or rebranding of ISIS. That must have rattled many cages and rocked some boats of the players in the region. The hostile intelligence agencies operating in Afghanistan will be feeling the heat very soon of the new developments as they had a free ride for sometimes.
On 11 July 2018, Pakistan hosted an unprecedented meeting of heads of intelligence agencies from Russia, China and Iran to discuss counter terrorism cooperation, with particular focus on the build-up of Islamic State in turmoil-hit Afghanistan. Official sources in Islamabad confirmed that the participants held detailed discussions on joint measures to stop Afghan-based loyalists of the Middle Eastern terrorist group from threatening the territorial boundaries of the four nations.
The unusual huddle brought together spymasters from the countries which are “directly affected” by IS-led terrorism. However, it was “not targeted against any other country as it may be viewed,” the sources asserted in a bid to allay suggestions that cooperation involving Russia, China and Iran could undermine US-led efforts to stabilise Afghanistan.
A spokesperson for Moscow’s Foreign Intelligence Service also confirmed that the emergence of IS in Afghanistan prompted the deliberations in Islamabad. “The conference reached understanding of the importance of coordinated steps to prevent the trickling of IS terrorists from Syria and Iraq to Afghanistan, where from they would pose risks for neighbouring countries,” Sergei Ivanov told state-run TASS media outlet.
He said the director of the Russian spy agency, Sergei Naryshkin, attended the Islamabad meeting along with Chinese and Iranian counterparts. They “stressed the need for a more active inclusion of regional powers in the efforts” to end the war in Afghanistan.
The discussions followed months of Russian allegations that the United States is behind growing IS influence, particularly in northern Afghan provinces next to the border with Central Asian countries. Washington dismissed the charges as rumours, and an attempt to justify Moscow’s links to the Taliban insurgency.
Russian envoy to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, while addressing a Security Council meeting on Afghanistan last month, asserted that IS is creating training camps in the country for its fighters, including those who come from Central Asian states.
“This is a group, which has up to 10,000 fighters in its ranks, and it is already active in at least nine out of 34 provinces … and is constantly consolidating its positions in the north of the country, turning it into a springboard for its expansion into Central Asia,” Nebenzya said.
Three Afghans beheaded, school torched in suspected Islamic State attack. Iran, which shares a long border with Afghanistan, has raised similar concerns in the wake of IS’s growing terrorist activities in the region. IS calls its Afghan branch Khorasan Province, or ISKP, and it routinely carries out deadly suicide bombings in the war-hit country and occasionally plots such attacks in neighbouring Pakistan. Pakistani officials maintain the terrorist group has established strong bases in “ungoverned spaces” in Afghanistan and plans cross-border terrorist attacks from there.
They cite US military assessments that the Afghan government controls less than 60 percent of the territory. Islamabad, Moscow, Beijing and Tehran have all maintained contacts with the Taliban, saying they are meant to persuade the insurgency to seek a negotiated settlement to the Afghan war. But the diplomatic ties with insurgents have upset both Kabul and Washington because they see them as an attempt to legitimise the Taliban’s violent campaign.
Due to the new alliances in the region hostile elements operating in Afghanistan will be feeling the heat very soon as they had a free ride for sometimes.
(Dr Shahid Qureshi is senior analyst with BBC and chief editor of The London Post. He writes on security, terrorism and foreign policy. He also appears as analyst on Al-Jazeera, Press TV, MBC, Kazak TV (Kazakhstan), LBC Radio London. He was also international election observer for Azerbaijan April 2018, Kazakhstan 2015 and 2016 and Pakistan 2002. He has written a famous book “War on Terror and Siege of Pakistan” published in 2009. At Government College Lahore he wrote his MA thesis on ‘Political Thought of Imam Khomeini’ and visited Tehran University. He is PhD in ‘Political Psychology’ and studied Law at a British University. He also speaks at Cambridge University. He is a visiting Professor at Hebe University in China.)
