By Sushil Kutty
Lt. Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry is Pakistan Army’s 22nd Director General of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR). He belonged to the Pakistan Army Corps of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering before taking on the DG-ISPR role. Nowadays he addresses press conferences disparaging India’s military prowess. Of late, Lt Gen. Chaudhary keeps threatening India with dire consequences if India crosses the line.
Gen. Chaudhary’s latest threat has left India breathless! He warned that if India “stopped the Indus” Pakistan would “stop India’s life-breath.” The only consolation is Lt. Gen. Chaudhary doesn’t look or sound mean. On the contrary, he is the clean-shaven and clean-cut gentleman officer cadet!
That being said, Pakistan expects India to halt the Indus, Chenab, Ravi and Jhelum from flowing into Pakistan’s rural hinterlands and Pakistan says India “playing with Pakistan’s water” will be India “playing with fire.” Pakistan’s economy is largely agricultural and without water for irrigation the results would be catastrophic!
For the people of Pakistan the Indus is life-giving and there would be nothing more evil than redoing the Indus Water Treaty in India’s favour. Angry, dyspeptic, annoyed Pakistanis are losing sleep and want Indians also to be in the same state.
Bad-tempered Pakistanis are cursing India and coming up with all sorts of excuses for refusing to accept that Pakistan lost the war including insisting that “we won the war”. The standout signature for Pakistanis these days is ‘dyspepsia’ and the dyspeptic rants of Pakistanis are “enormously popular” among Indians on Social Media.
So much so, if there’s one reason given for why Chief of Army Staff Gen. Asim Munir was elevated to Field Marshal, it is that a dyspeptic nation needed the panacea of a make-belief victory to get out of the depression!
But then, but for Gen. Asim Munir’s dyspeptic “two-nation” rant before an effusive audience of overseas Pakistanis, there wouldn’t have been a ‘Pahalgam’ or an ‘Operation Sindoor’. Gen. Munir lost the war for Pakistan even before the war was fought and the Pakistani establishment rewarded the defeated 4-star General with a promotion to 5-Star Field Marshal.
The Pakistani Establishment couldn’t have gone any lower in the eyes of Indians. In fact, but for a weakened Sharif family – Nawaz, Shehbaz and Maryam – Gen. Asim Munir wouldn’t have made ‘COAS’, forget ‘Field Marshal’. Goes to show how a democracy cannot do without a strong civilian leadership. The late dictator Gen. Parvesh Musharraf would admit to that if he were still alive even if Nawaz Sharif at the time of Kargil ultimately folded under pressure. Like somebody wrote, “The daily annoyances of politics in modern-day Pakistan!”
So, what’s Pakistan waiting for? Can’t be redemption. Revelation would be more appropriate. There isn’t another nation on the planet where everybody is in a state of delusion, from the Prime Minister down to the clerk in his office, from the Field Marshal down to the high-stepping Ranger at the now shut down Wagah-Attari border.
Pakistan can’t chew the fact that its airbases lie debased from Indian missile and drone attacks while Gen. Asim Munir hid in an underground bunker with the nuclear button and emerged only to grab hold of yet another general’s star.
There’s news now trickling in that a few of the “other generals” aren’t happy that Gen. Munir got to become ‘Field Marshal’ and that they won’t be able to become COAS in a time-bound manner. Munir will remain COAS blocking the promotion of the next general in line for COAS.
In other words, restless is the word for the Pak Army! And while the Army has mixed reactions to Munir’s promotion, the Air Force is asking “wasn’t it the Air Force which brought down the five Rafales?” There is restlessness in the Pakistan Air Force, too. The only grace is, the Pakistan Navy is nowhere on the float!
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is back to trumpeting, for the 10th time in 11 days that he tariff-induced India and Pakistan into accepting a “ceasefire” and “now they’re blaming me for it!” Trump said this while meeting South African President Cyril Ramphosa in the Oval Office, during which he also spoke of “how excellent some Pakistanis are” and how much of a “friend Modi is”.
So, did or did not President Trump convince India and Pakistan to agree to a “ceasefire” or did India and Pakistan come to an “understanding” on their own to step back for the time-being? India has blocked several Pakistani media outlets but anybody can use ‘VPN’ and see Pakistani ads promoting and readying the Pakistani nation for the resumption of war!
Field Marshal Asim Munir has to prove he deserved the Field Marshal rank and he has to prepare the rank and file of the Pakistan Armed Forces for another round of “Missiles & Drones”. Pakistani civil society believes in the “Pakistan Army’s fortitude” and its “war-winning prowess”.
So does the Pakistani “Quom”, which believes that “one Pakistani soldier is equal to 10 Indian soldiers” and that the “Hindu Indian Army” lacks the “jazba” which the “Muslim Pakistan Army” has in abundance. Pakistani civil society is convinced that if push comes to shove, all-weather friend China “will block India’s water if Pakistan’s water is cut off”.
So no worry, Pakistan and China can always play ‘Water-Water-Cut-Off-Water’, young Pakistanis consoled each other at a seminar in Karachi. An American expert on India-Pakistan “tensions”, which is Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s word for the “4-Day War”, said in a report that “while China is an adversary for India, Pakistan is only an ancillary problem” even if Pakistan sees India as an “existential threat.”
Last word is that Pakistan has done away with the ‘Simla accord’ and there’s no ‘Line of Control’ to come in the way of dyspepsia, India-Pakistan’s anger at each other. (IPA Service)
