The Punjab Home Department has issued a high-alert to the security institutions over an assassination threat to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from Indian intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). According to a circular issued by the provincial Home Department here on Saturday, RAW has weaved a plan to assassinate PM Nawaz Sharif while a number of other prominent personalities in Pakistan are also in RAW’s cross-hairs. In view of the latest threat arising from RAW, the circular carries strict orders for the law enforcing departments to take all necessary measures to ensure fool-proof security of the PM and others. PM Nawaz Sharif’s special assistant Musadik Malik said that it was a conspiracy but ‘we know how to protect our Prime Minister’.
Ties between India and Pakistan are at lowest ebb of the history. The army chiefs of both sides have not only threatened each other but both the sides are also increasing their nuclear strength rapidly. India-Pakistan relations are, by their very nature, adversarial. This is rooted in widely divergent but deeply entrenched historical and national narratives. Each side has a different view of why partition took place, how the Kashmir dispute erupted, or why the wars of 1965 and 1971 were fought. Even liberal Pakistanis believe that cross-border terrorism is explicable, if not justifiable, because of an asymmetric threat from India. Such competing narratives can be reconciled only over a long period of patient engagement in which historical fact is separated from its politically generated distortions.
Few months ago a Pakistani officials claimed that Pakistan is ready to use nuclear weapons against India. Khawaja Asif’s statement about Pakistan’s willingness to use nuclear weapons is in line with Islamabad’s long-standing nuclear doctrine. In contrast to India and China, which both maintain no first use nuclear doctrines, Pakistan has always maintained that it could resort to nuclear weapons to blunt a conventional attack from India. Pakistan has backed up its rhetoric by creating an operational nuclear force capable of making good on its threats. For example, when Indian officials began discussing a Cold Start doctrine—in which Indian forces would make quick and limited incursions into Pakistan in response to Islamabad-supported terrorist attacks in India—Pakistan began developing tactical nuclear weapons to thwart such attacks.
Now if RAW’s plan to assassinate Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif succeeds, it would certainly kick off another war between hostile neighbors that would end to the use of nuclear weapons and turning the entire region into ashes. Therefore India must not lose its nerves and control its intelligence agency from such a nincompoop act.
pk.shafaqna.com
