Junaid Shah
I don’t have any specific information about Baitullah Mehsud in Afghanistan and the failure of the US to kill him with missiles. All that I can say is that from my military experience a long time ago, shit happens. Perhaps the information was received too late and Baitullah Mehsud had already moved from the location where he had been by the time a decision was made and the aircraft was launched. Perhaps he had surrounded himself with too many women and children so that the US would not blow him up knowing that many innocents would die. Perhaps somebody in the chain of command just screwed up. That happens in any organization composed of human beings.
One thing that I am pretty sure of is that Baitullah Mehsud gets his money from drug gangs rather than Indian intelligence. I don’t think that the Indian intelligence services have enough money to outbid those drug gangs.
Over the years, I think that it has been the policy of India to try to keep Pakistan weak and disorganized just like it has been the policy of Pakistan to try to keep Afghanistan weak and disorganized.
With globalization, nuclear weapons in both India and Pakistan and the use of the Afghanistan failed state as a base to attack the United States, I don’t think that those beggar thy neighbor policies can work any more. Instead, I think that all countries in the area would be better off if they acted in ways that will benefit the whole area. For example, the steel mill in Karachi should produce large quantities of railroad rail and reinforcing rod. The reinforcing rod should be used to make railroad ties. The railroad rails and ties should be used to extend the railroad from the Khyber Pass to Jalalabad and from Baluchistan to Kandahar. All that construction activity in Afghanistan will employ people in Pakistan. When the railroad lines extend all the way to Kabul, it will increase trade making both Pakistan and Afghanistan more prosperous. If the railroads can be connected all the way through to connect to the railroad in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, Pakistani businesses will be able to sell their products in all of those places and the prosperity of the whole area will improve. If India wants to participate in this increased prosperity, it will have to maintain good relations with Pakistan so that trains carrying loads to and from India can pass through Pakistan without interference. Once this west Asian trade is established, any Indian politician who wants to win a few votes by threatening Pakistan will have to explain to the workers at an idled factory why the trains carrying that factory’s goods to Kazhakstan were stopped at the Pakistan border.
