Four views: Pakistan nukes in Taliban hands

by Ahmar Mustikhan | July 4, 2009 at 10:18 pm

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If at the turn of last century it wasthe spectre of communism haunting Europe, today it is nuclear weapons in the hands of Islamic fundamentalists. The possibility of Pakistan nuclear weapons going intoTaliban hands is remote, but can not be ruled out entirely.

At least four prominent intellectuals, including Ahmed Rashid who confronted Pakistan army in the mountains of Baluchistan 1973-77 and is author of the recently-published Descent Into Chaos, give divergent views on Pakistan's 100 nuclear warheads going into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists.

Rashid, whose books' fans includes President Barrack Obama, has had an interesting personal history -- he is one of the few people from the dominant Punjabis, along with publisher Najam Sethi, who took up arms against his own blood-and-bone in solidarity with the Baluch people.

FRESH out of Cambridge University in the late 1960s, and steeped in the era’s favorites — Marx, Mao and Che — Ahmed Rashid took off for the hills of Baluchistan, a dry, tough patch of western Pakistan. He stayed for 10 years.

He was a guerrilla fighter and political organizer, and with a couple of like-minded Pakistani pals, led peasants seeking autonomy against the Pakistani Army. He emerged, after bouts of hepatitis, malaria and lost teeth, not exactly disillusioned but defeated, he recalled recently from the comfort of his study overlooking a garden of palms.

Other than Rashid and Sethi, those who romanticised about a Che Guevra-style revolution in Baluchistan in those days include Sindh notable Mir Mohammed Ali Talpur, Geo Television president Imran Aslam, independent analyst Rashed Rahman, journalist Asad Rahman and Mohammed Bhabha.

Collectively, the group followed the ideals of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, but was called London group as most of them had studied in London. One of the members, Dulip [Johnny] Dass was abducted and killed by Pakistani intelligence sleuths and his body has not been found to this day.

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