Pakistan’s 33 year old Foreign Minister, Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari did something before the eyes of domestic and international media that raised alarm bells about the state of his health.
The Foreign Minister of Iran, H.E Hossein Amir Abdollahian is in Pakistan for bilateral talks on regional issues. While at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, both he and his host Bilawal jointly planted a tree in the foreign office garden, as per tradition. After the tree was planted with the help of shovel jointly held by both the foreign dignitary and his host, and jointly watered with a green watering can, Bilawal Bhutto and his Irani counterpart Hossein Abdollahian walked into the building together, facing dozens of cameras. While walking, Bilawal Bhutto started stretching his left hand as though it had gone numb and he was trying to resuscitate blood circulation in the limb.
The media, while playing the shot, showed Bilawal’s movement again and again, raising silent yet obvious alarm bells. Pakistan is currently in the throes of hybrid war waged by hostile foreign intelligence agencies in whose strategic thinking Pakistan is only part of Great Game. One of the fundamental goals of hybrid war is to deprive the target state of effective existing and potential leadership while engineering circumstances to steer and keep enemy agents into position of power. This is the time when leaders who are looking out for their country’s interest successfully are typically at risk because they are targeted in myriad of under-cover ways.
Already, Pakistan’s military institution, which has in the past steered the country politically also when civil leadership has reached fatal deadlocks, (in all but one instance – that of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who was ousted upon reaching compromise with restive opposition) is being vilified through social media operatives, many of who are based inside Pakistan but are on hostile foreign intelligence agencies’ pay roll.
Social media is a new tool of aggrandizement of big powers, utilized in furtherance of their economic, political and military designs. As an instigative tool of opinion mobilization, aimed at isolating and weakening the target, social media is a new and all pervasive, unbridled, 24/7 phenomenon in big power military strategy. Because of its sudden rise and all pervasive popularity, global collective security regime has not yet come up with conventions and international legal norms to regulate this all pervasive tool of political aggrandizement and military assault.
Meantime, Pakistan serves as the most powerful example of how social media is deployed to wage info war against a smaller nation-state with limited means of countering it. Pakistani military has stayed out of politics for decades, yet it is being maligned by social media networks for “political machinations,” “nefarious ambitions” and much more by way of unsubstantiated propaganda. Lies are spewed on hear-say basis by electronic media about Pakistan’s corps commanders to achieve ratings. One of the former military generals and former ruler of Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf, has already been killed while forced into self-imposed exile abroad and while judicial proceedings in his defense were unduly delayed at home. Pervez Musharref ruled Pakistan successfully for 9 years and founded a nation-wide political party after retirement. He was ousted during NATO operation in Afghanistan not by a mass uprising but by a limited lawyer’s movement. Musharref’s under-cover murder during the time he was made to live abroad in a small apartment building in open access urban hub (obviously a security threat given his strategic importance) is described as “inexplicably acquired unique medical illness” which he battled for three years and to which he finally succumbed during his stay abroad.
Musharref’s death spelled the end of one potential leader with interest and experience in governing Pakistan. In hybrid war, all potentially effective leadership is a target of the enemy. Currently, Pakistan’s former leader Nawaz Sharif is also living in self-imposed exile abroad because of convictions against him at home, but Sharif was more resourceful and instead of living in a small attached apartment, he bought the entire row of attached apartments in an upscale and secure community in London to create safer living conditions for himself. After he retires, a military leader loses all power he enjoyed while in military service and can not return to office, while a political leader continues to enjoy the support of his party including financial and can come back in office if he wishes. Needless to mention, despite living abroad, Nawaz Sharif is still alive but shouldn’t count on it as hybrid war against Pakistan gathers further momentum. Unlike Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s sons, Nawaz Sharif’s sons are devoid of political charisma so they are not likely to be target of hostile foreign intelligence agencies with secret plans for Pakistan. His daughter Mariam, on the other hand, is a crowd puller. Nawaz Sharif is wise in ensuring she lives inside Pakistan.
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has performed well while handling his first high profile appointment as Minister of Foreign Affairs. He has not made any faux pas despite his young age, unlike Rahul Rajiv Gandhi in India, who suffered some embarrassing moments during political activities he was made to face while he too was very young. Bilawal’s life is potentially most at risk as Pakistan fights intense hybrid war waged against it by multiple foreign military forces and their domestic agents.
I already tweeted several months ago that Bilawal Bhutto’s security should be tightened, but security is not limited to guards on physical duty. It is a sophisticated practice requiring multiple checks at myriad levels, including innovative medical examination and investigation, preempting the onset of unique and/or life-threatening diseases and nipping same in the bud. Any Pakistani leader who can potentially build consensus and is capably projecting Pakistan’s interests abroad and capable of mobilizing masses at home is a potential target in hybrid warfare of Pakistan’s foreign enemy/ies . His life should not be taken for granted in Pakistan’s current circumstances. Henry Kissinger’s famous statement is relevant here. ‘Just because I am paranoid, does not mean I have no real enemies.”
Pakistan is in the eye of the storm of great power diplomatic maneuvers in the region. In an age when political assassinations are no longer done through the barrel of gun but through biological and medical means, debilitating illness among its leaders or death among its important personalities can become the most decisive factor in success of enemy maneuvers against Pakistan. Hugo Chavez was wisely thinking out loud when he asked if the US was giving ‘them’ cancer while talking about the rising rate of anti US Latin American leaders succumbing to the disease one after the other, including Chavez himself. If Chavez is right, we should rest assured US is not the only state doing this. Modern ordinance factories do not produce explosives only. Parts of military ordinance factories in rich industrialized countries comprise of labs that are experimenting with producing virus and engineering life threatening illness in enemy state’s critically significant personalities, among other innovations.
Illness and its debilitating impacts, untimely demise of a politically significant person and its impact on regional and global events are dealt with in a piece by Steve Coll in the Yorker. Readers of this piece are encouraged to read the same at link below. https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/woodrow-wilsons-case-of-the-flu-and-how-pandemics-change-history
Pakistan is a country whose founding leader hid from all and sundry the fact that he was dying of cancer. War time US President Roosevelt hid the fact throughout World War 11 that he was dying. Historically, Even before hybrid warfare reached its current diabolical levels, leaders have been covering up their ailments to prevent the impact such revelations would make on events they are trying to shape.
Bilawal, indeed all of Pakistan’s political leadership should watch out. Pakistan’s corps commanders, both living and retired, should watch out. Medical security against invasive pathogens at personal and mass levels are part of national security plans of a modern state. We are more than modern. We are nuclear.
Zeenia Satti 