Mr. Qutubuddin Aziz former Pakistani diplomat and journalist, who recently paid 6-week visit to the UK and the Gulf region, has disclosed that according to well-informed Arab diplomatic sources abroad, India’s Foreign and Defence Minister Jaswant Singh is wooing the Bush Administration to engage India as a kind of naval policeman in the Gulf under American aegis to help protect both Indian and American interests in the oil-rich Arab Gulf region. The Pentagon is reportedly cool to Indian wooing.

According to Mr. Qutubuddin Aziz, this is one of the many proposals the Indian Government is trying to sell to the Bush Administration in order to give a boost to Indo-American economic and military cooperation and the lifting of certain sanctions against India imposed by the USA after India’s May 1998 nuclear blasts in the Pokhran desert near Sindh. Mr. Aziz said that Mr. Jaswant Singh, who along with L.K. Advani and Oma Bharti, are the anti-Pakistan hawks in the Vajpayee cabinet in New Delhi, spewed venom against Pakistan on Kashmir and Afghanistan during his April 5 meeting with the US Secretary of State General Colin Powell in Washington D.C. He tried to mobilise US support for the Ahmed Shah Masood renegade faction in Panjsher in Afghanistan against the Taleban Government.

Mr. Aziz disclosed that according to well-informed sources in London the planning for Ahmed Shah Masood’s visit to address the European Parliament at Strasbourg in France in April was done by senior Indian and Russian security officials during their enclave in Moscow last February. France, which hosts UNESCO in Paris and had during the Soviet-Afghan war given money and arms to the anti-Soviet Afghan fighters, including Ahmed Shah Masood, was angered by the Taleban’s destruction of the Buddha statues in Bamiyan and readily agreed to welcome him as the “Vice-President” of the defunct Afghan State headed by Rabbani which has no control over 95 per cent of Afghanistan ruled by the Taleban. Indian and Russian secret service personnel played a key role in Ahmed Shah Masood’s Strasbourg charade in which his outpourings against Pakistan were more vicious and mendacious than his abuses for the Taleban. Ahmed Shah Masood told the EU leaders that he is planning a big offensive against the Taleban in the next few months. Unofficial reports in London indicated that more than 2000 Indian military and civil personnel are based in special encampments in Masood’s Panjsher Valley hideout and also inside the Russian-controlled Tajikistan border areas.

The London-based Jane’s Defence weekly, which is considered a prestigious military information journal in the West, had reported late in march this year that a Russian military force was stationed in the Panjshir Valley to help Ahmed Shah Masood in his war against the Taleban. Informed sources say that these Russian military personnel are mostly veterans of the Soviet war against Afghanistan and help in the distribution and use of Russian-supplied war material, especially missiles, rockets, high-altitude planes and heavy artillery. Masood’s battle casualties are being treated in Indian and Russian military hospitals in Panjsher and Tajikistan or flown to Russian or India. According to Jane’s weekly, the Indian military personnel based in Panjsher have provided high altitude warfare equipment to Ahmed Shah Masood and long-range artillery to hit Kabul. Indian pilots wearing Panjsheri uniforms fly combat and reconnaissance missions for Ahmed Shah Masood over Taleban territory and give aerial directions to his fighters. Indian pilots are scared to fly Russian-supplied helicopters outside Panjsher valley because of the Taleban sharpshooters and long-range artillery. Ahmed Shah Masood’s worst defeat this year was in February when his forces, backed by Indians and Russians, grabbed the stronghold of Bamiyan city for three days but hurriedly withdrew in disarray when the Taleban launched a fierce counter attack. By and large, the people in Bamiyan province hate Ahmed Shah Masood’s forces because of their extortion and because they are the tools of the infidels – the Russians and Indians. This matter was discussed last February in a meeting of top Indian and Russian military and security officers in Moscow. Ahmed Shah Masood’s agents told this meeting that they need more money and more heavy artillery and ammunition against the Taleban. The Russians called Masood’s men cowards who were scared to death if they were asked to fight outside their Panjesher sanctuary. It seems the Pushtu-speaking population under Taleban control hates the Panjsheris and Masood’s commanders find it difficult to replace their battle casualties quickly.