And his message is loud and clear
Having announced his retirement plans, Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani no doubt feels less hesitant in speaking his mind on matters of import to the nation and the region. Sharing his insight in two speeches on Friday and Saturday at the GHQ and at Kakul, he spoke of Indian army’s belligerent barrage of unfounded allegations against the Pakistan Army and the ISI, and taming terror in our own backyard – among other mundane issues, such as the sapling of democracy gaining mass in Pakistan. His views were candid and forthright. His message to the Indian brass and to the TTP was concise and straight.
To the Indians: “The Pakistan army is exercising restraint but it should in no way be used as a pretext for leveling such baseless allegations that vitiate prospects of regional peace”. The general simultaneously reiterated the army’s unstinted support for the peace initiative with India undertaken by the new government in Pakistan. Gen Bikram apart from his ‘warnings’ to Pakistan on various past occasions, ruffled many feathers here by his unsubstantiated and brazen insistence that the Pakistan army was infiltrating militants into Indian-occupied Kashmir ‘before winter sets in, ahead of the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan’. The same tired old refrain. As if the Pakistan military did not have its hands full with the TTP and in chasing separatists of various hues and would be dumb enough to open up another front, one which had lain silent after a 2003 ceasefire brought about on Pakistan’s initiative. Gen Kayani’s stance seems all the more authentic as, of the ‘30 or 40’ militants supposedly infiltrated by the Pakistan army, the Indian army in occupied Kashmir, despite all its hysterical hype, has failed to produce any evidence of a skirmish, in corpses, captured arms or by any other evidence.
The Kakul speech to the fresh batch of graduating cadets however was for domestic audiences, in particular the government and the TTP. The main plank, ‘force shall be used as a last resort’, was meant to reassure both the government and the TTP of the army’s support to talks – albeit correctly stressing that the parleys must be within the ambit of Pakistan’s constitution. Another point was dismissing speculation that talks had been forced on the establishment owing to the failure of counter-insurgency operations. “This is far from the truth”, said he, alluding to the recapture of Swat and six other FATA agencies through military operations, the Tirrah valley the last of them. The message again was loud and clear: if the talks fail, the Pakistan Army has the capacity to bring this insurgency to its logical conclusion.