Daily Times

The cusp of history is a narrow ledge high above the steep mountainside with a small foothold for a very fortunate few to make a lasting name for themselves. As a rule, some earn fame and the others lasting shame, depending upon which side of the history one happens to be. Muhammad Ali Jinnah was one man who turned this cusp into a defining moment by nearly singlehandedly creating Pakistan from the jaws of a devouring Hindu-British political combine. Then there were those, who opposed him to their lasting regret, both within Pakistan and India. They are not only disliked themselves but their next generations also face a popular aversion. People have a short memory but a deeper and longer-lasting consciousness, which keeps reminding them of those who did a good turn in their time of need and despair or abandoned them to the wolves. That is the nature of the people in our part of the world.The other noteworthy part of our popular psyche is an appreciation for chivalry and large-heartedness. We fondly remember Sultan Jalalud Din Khawarzum Shah’s last gallant stand against Chegiz’s horde on the banks of River Indus, his refusal to surrender when surrounded and his plunge into the raging river, hundreds of feet below (where Attock bridge now is). The superbly brave man survived to fight another day. We despise arrogant, petty-minded and morally miser; a case in point is the US. Field Marshal Manic Shaw was the architect of our defeat in the 71 war. That aside, we still appreciate his warrior grace and high mindedness. Hardly a victorious commander ever praises a fallen foe, he did in the highest tradition of warfare. He too appeared at the cusp of history so did General Bipin Rawat but what a dismal disappointment.Reverting to lesser mortals or rather those accidentally present when history was being made. Just as the elephants wrestle and the rabbits hang around in the bushes close by does not mean they share the laurels. We had a similar bunch of Indian RAW agent supervisors in Afghanistan busy executing terror attacks inside Pakistan while Pakistan Army was engaged in of one the most successful and outstanding counter-terrorism battles in modern history in FATA.

Afghanistan had long been a secure marshalling area for Indian saboteurs and the fulcrum of terrorism against Pakistan.

There were a number of these field operatives in Afghanistan looking after their sub-sectors across the border and allied tasks like Govinda Patnaik, Ajoy Mistry and Venu Madhav Dongara but of these, one character that was particularly wicked and involved in one of the most heart-wrenching terror attacks inside Pakistan was Appaji Angara. A resident of Andhra Pardesh, stationed in Kabul disguised as a software engineer in a financial company. He was a frequent visitor to Indian Consulate Jalalabad and our border with Afghanistan’s Nangarhar Province, which appeared to be the area of his intelligence beat. These were the noteworthy senior RAW terror field operatives along with their teams working against Pakistan from Afghanistan with complete impunity and in full view and support of NDS. Of these, Angara was the deadliest and the most heartless, which we will see in a moment. He was the mastermind behind Army Public School Peshawar attack on December 16, 2014, using Jamat ul Ahrar (JuA), a splinter group of the TTP. This massacred over 120 students, mostly at point-blank range and their teachers, of which one female teacher was burnt alive before her students. It was during this slaughter of the lambs that a class 2/3 student bumped into a terrorist in the corridor and innocently asked him if he had seen his brother. He was dispatched after him with a smile and a single bullet through his forehead.    After the attack, he celebrated success the same evening in Indian Consulate Jalalabad with his Mohmand coordinator, who was an Afghan MP and the Consulate staff. This Afghan MP was intercepted passing instructions from his device to the terrorists during the attack. Appaji was also actively involved in bombing the Warsak colony in Peshawar on September 2, 2016, and the horrific Lahore Mall Road terror strike on February 13, 2017, in collaboration with TTP fugitives sheltered in bases around Lalpura in Nangarhar. All these attacks were planned and coordinated in Afghanistan under close supervision of the dirty duo: NDS and RAW with the Ashraf Ghani regime’s full knowledge and tacit approval. By then, our intelligence tentacles had penetrated the fugitive TTP inner circle and were hunting for them. Fearing the imminent danger of capture, Angara was hurriedly evacuated out of Afghanistan in January 2019 whereas his equally vicious colleague, Govinda Patnaik, had left two months earlier. Both are wanted by the law and Counter-Terrorism Departments (CTD) of KP, Punjab and Balochistan.     Govinda was disguised as President of the Phoenix Consulting Services in Kabul. The company was a subsidiary of Fluentgrid and supposedly working to provide capacity building projects albeit as a cover for their terror agenda. That helped him move freely in most of Afghanistan, directing terror operations inside Pakistan particularly in Balochistan. He was RAW’s conduit and cut out for contacts with Baloch militants and was able to lure them into Afghanistan to link up with TTP terrorists holed up in late  Razzaq Achakzai’s Aino Mena camp, Qandahar, which was a dream come true for his chief mentor, Ajit Doval. He had brought in Daesh as the third partner. This evil alliance created a serious operational stretch upon the Pakistan Army, which quickly overcame this unfavourable operational environment by rapidly raising a large number of new border battalions, including a whole new FC headquarters and border fencing. His tally of brutality overtakes in the scale of mayhem and destruction in Balochistan, that of Angara’s, but not in the depth of pure savagery. Govinda’s crowning strike was the planning and execution of a bombing attack in Mastung Balochistan in July 2018 in which Siraj Raisani and 160 others were killed. Pakistan started to move against RAW’s terror network across our western border, on multiple tracks. In November 2019, it proposed Appaji and Govinda for listing as UN global terrorists in AlQaeda /ASIL Sanctions Committee, which, as expected, were blocked by the US (the country who was reportedly prepared to list late General Hamid Gul, one of Pakistan’s well regarded DG ISI, as UN global terrorist). The US talk of principles, ethics and lasting friendly relations sounds so hollow and deceives none. In a series of premeditated incidents, a year or so earlier, the US had decided to embarrass Pakistan by arranging to kill Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, Afghan Taliban leader, near Noshki after tracking him from Tehran. A drone strike turned him and his double cabin truck into charcoal, but miraculously, his passport and ID card were unscathed as proof. Seeing the net tighten, India repatriated her star agents saboteurs from Afghanistan in quick succession by November 2019. thanks to the Ashraf Ghani regime’s close cooperation with RAW and biting obstinacy, they narrowly escaped being nabbed. Not that the informed world does not know, but after these specifics, it becomes clearer that Afghanistan had long been a secure marshalling area for Indian saboteurs and the fulcrum of terrorism against Pakistan. Successive Afghan governments sheltered, supported and trained Pushtoon, Baloch and other anti-Pakistan terrorists/dissidents in the vain hope of destabilising the country. There are still a large number of fugitive TTP, Daesh, LeJ Alami and Baloch terrorists hiding in that country, which it is hoped the new Taliban government in Kabul will not allow operating against Pakistan. Meanwhile, Pakistan is determined to bring to book Appaji Angara, Govinda, Doval and whoever it may be. Pakistan will get them. They can run but cannot hide.

The writer can be reached at clay.potter@hotmail.com