Like frogs croaking in a very deep well, our political leaders and media pundits speak about the resurgence of terrorist strikes in various parts of Pakistan as if our beloved land was an island on Mars with no link whatsoever with planet Earth. In the comfy universe of their well, the Third World War hasn’t started yet. Perhaps, they are expecting someone to cut a ribbon to formally launch it.
Meanwhile outside, multi-national patrons of terrorists are blatantly upping the terrorist ante on many fronts. News from the terrorist trouble-spots dotting the Middle East and Africa confirm that virtually every member of the US-led evil cabal is determined to use their favorite tool till it breaks. Clearly, it’s not just Pakistan that’s on the hit-list of their trans-continental network of terrorist proxies. And of course, it’s not just these terrorist proxies that they employ to advance their agenda for world domination.
Call it third generation, fourth generation or fifth, we are in the middle of a multi-faceted all-out global war that’s entering a crucial phase.
What’s happening here is deeply linked to the bigger war around the world. The violence in the actual theatres of war is deeply linked to the everyday violence of poverty in the less-privileged parts of our world. The sooner we become wiser about this larger conflict outside the well, the better it would be for all of us.
Rarely does one come across any attempt on part of our political and opinion leaders to understand our terrorist predicament within the context of the larger picture. Even when some of them venture to talk about the Indian hand, they talk about it as if the hand has no body attached to it, as if the hand dangles in Afghanistan pretty much like a free-floating object in vacuum.
Perhaps they forget that Afghanistan is still under the occupation of the US. Or maybe they are too busy dreaming about Disney-lands and treasure-hunts to worry about the criticality of the time upon us. Are they are too afraid of the emperor to tell him that he has no clothes on? Or are they blinded by their love for him and the crumbs he throws their way?
International developments are pushing us towards the right side of history, towards our natural partners in the fight against terrorism, China and Russia. The military leadership understands this better than all other segments of our power elite put together. The first Pak-Russia joint military exercise announced this week is just a recent reminder of this fact. As for the government, it would rather stay entrenched in the impotence of fake neutrality; giving Obama the opportunity to lecture us yet again about doing more and allowing Saudi prince-ministers to trash our much-trumpeted efforts at mediation.
This is not to suggest that the Prime Minister should declare open war on the United States, the patron-in-chief and chairman-for-life of the trans-national terrorist network, or on its regional puppets like Saudi Arabia, Turkey and India, its partners in nurturing and employing the monster of terrorism as a tool of war. Diplomatic engagement with everyone is all very well, but we definitely need more than a bit of clarity regarding the thrust of our foreign policy.
Wallowing in the unfounded euphoria of friendship with India is not going to take us very far. And nor would attendance at the Davos big-bucks talk-shop or the promised F-16s. Instead of walking into traps of distraction, we should be using our energy to fortify and diversify our cooperation with the China-Russia nexus and the brave new bloc of countries gathering around it to create a better world.
China and Russia have finally decided to take the raging bull by its horns. After President Putin of Russia, even the traditionally polite Chinese leadership is not mincing its words to expose the fraudulent US-led war on terrorism and its equally fraudulent freedom and democracy agenda. They can clearly see through the deceptive games of the empire aimed at camouflaging its overt and covert wars; the carrot-and-stick, good cop-bad cop, divide-and-rule routines. It’s time we got wiser as well, about the limitations of our engagement with the US-led cabal and the devious games its myriad members play.
Some friends would still like to insist, even in this day and age, that we must not blame others for our woes and focus on fixing our own house first. They’d rather not hear the huffing and puffing of bad wolves outside, even when window-panes rattle, even as they shatter.
They’d like to convince us that all the talk about our geo-strategic significance that we heard all these years was all bunkum. They tell us this, in this day and age, when this significance can’t be overstated. They tell us this when the Third World War is raging.
It’s a war that is as much about overt military interventions as it is about staged revolutions and terrorist proxies. The entire arsenal of the empire is lined up on a table like the pistols and grenades recovered from terrorists after a raid; the debt and development aid, the donor-driven NGOs and media propaganda, the many faces of corporate plunder and heart-rending visuals of its many victims. Don’t tell me, in this day and age, you need me to tell you what the Third World War has to do with children dying of malnutrition in Thar.
Look deeply and you’ll see that the seemingly disparate fragments of suffering and violence scattered around the globe are all pieces of a big jigsaw puzzle, pieces that are falling in place at an amazing speed with every passing day to complete the picture of a barbarous empire ruled by the super-rich of our world and corporate puppets pretending to be the leaders of not only their countries but also the human civilisation.
Look deeply and you’ll see that the children being killed in Yemen are actually victims of the same corporate machine that kills children in Thar. Feel deeply and you’ll realise that the human soul has no boundaries.