Pak suffering from identity crises 8212; Report

All these factors led the Pakistani leaders to look for the ways and means to neutralise India8217;s geo-strategic advantages. Gradually the Pakistan strategists developed a grand design8217; to expand its strategic frontiers, by making inroads into Afghanistan and Kashmir. At the same time, Islamabd started contemplating acquisition of nuclear weapons to offset India8217;s conventional military capabilities, adds the report.

The stepsconsidered necessary for creating strategic depth, in order to reduce the geo-strategic vulnerability of Pakistan were: Unsetting the Afghan polity to control the balance of power between various factions, so as to weaken the national identity by launching fanatical militant groups.

Waging low intensity conflict in Jamp;K after gradually subverting the secular Kashmiri culture into a militant Islamic ethos, abetting and arming separatist and fundamentalist groups to wage violent struggle to undermine India8217;s political cohesion, and the events in Afghanistan, after Soviet intervention, sculpted the scenario that Pakistan had been dreaming of, the report says.

As a US frontline state, Pakistan was given physical control of arms supply and secret funds meant for Afghanistan. The Americans also helped Pakistan8217;s Inter-services Intelligence ISI in establishing two secret schools to train terrorist and insurgent cadres. One school imparted training in the use of electronic control devices, urban sabotagetechniques, and various methods of assassination. The second school trained large groups for covert operations in Afghanistan and Kashmir.

It also created a power vacuum which Pakistan was able to fill through the Pukhtoon Mujahidden. Hekmatyar, their chosen leader, failed to deliver a compliant Afghanistan. However, he was the first to suggest a Pakistan-Afghanistan confederation, a concept which later crystallised as the Islamic confederation of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Kashmir PAK, states the Asia Defence News International.

By then Pakistan8217;s psychological war specialists had created several Islamic fundamentalist groups in Kashmir, ready to take up arms at the behest of ISI. According to the original document, by the year 2000 ad several areas of Kashmir were to be liberated, and a puppet regime established in Kabul. However, by 1997, it become clear that neither of these two objectives could be achieved in this time-frame. Even the Taliban failed to achieve the desired political objectives,despite spectacular military advances. In Kashmir, the proxy war ran into trouble due to lack of popular support and a strong counter action by the India army against the mercenaries.

Afghanistan has proved a quagmire, with a destablising backlash directly affecting Pakistan. Shia-Sunni riots turned increasingly lethal, the Mujahir movement spread violence to large parts of the country, the Pukhtoonistan issue was resurrected and macro-terrorism acquired menacing proportions. In these circumstances the grand design8217; of greater Pakistan8217; had to be put on hold. The PAK plans have not, however, been given up, only postponed, adds the report.