A LESSON from East Pakistan debacle is that relying on phantom succour like America’s Seventh Fleet was a mistake. Self-reliant Germany fought, city after city, even after Hitler’s suicide. Today, we are cornered like a post-World War country!

The country under a ‘psychopath’ like Hitler found ingenious solutions to all its politico-economic and military problems. National cohesion submerged petty-minded avarice. Crime vanished, and esprit de corps flourished. They manufactured aircraft wings in chicken-feed basements, learnt how to safely dead drop an airplane, refined tank warfare, hooked guns behind tanks to reduced manpower, and littered the seas with U-boats.

Unless the Indian air force chief is just a swaggering braggart, we can’t treat his outbursts as delirium shocks. IAF aircraft appear to have been equipped with Geiger-like instruments to pick up radiation signatures and target our nukes. Emboldened by Operation Neptune Spear, Indian or Israeli planes may fly from Aeini or Farkhor airbases (Tajikistan) across Afghanistan to our throats. The US may cyber-jam our air navigation. They may render our runways and motorways unserviceable. Let us hope the visualised possibilities are just a nightmare.

A.J. Malik
Rawalpindi

Published in Dawn, November 23rd, 2017