			Foreign Correspondent

		      Inside Track On World News
	    By International Syndicated Columnist & Broadcaster
		 Eric Margolis <emargolis@lglobal.com>

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General of The Shadows

Eric Margolis
Tuesday May 21

One of west Asia's more controversial - some even say, 
notorious-  personalities came to my office for a
long, fascinating  talk this week.  .

Lt. General Hamid Gul (ret.) is a short, trim, intense man
with a prominent nose, military bearing, and piercing, hawk-
like eyes.  Gul says he is merely a private citizen leading
a middle-class pressure group whose aim is to bring  better
government to his deeply-troubled, native Pakistan.

Back in 1987-1989, however, Gen. Gul was Director General of
ISI, Pakistan's crack intelligence service. In the trade,
ISI is considered the most effective, professional  spy
outfit in Asia.  I knew Gul's predecessors and successors,
but had never, until this week, met the general of the
shadows.

Gen. Gul ran ISI's war against the Soviet Union in
Afghanistan during the mid-1980's. As this column has
previously recounted,  Pakistani leader Zia ul-Haq and his
beloved `ISI boys,' were as much responsible as the heroic
Afghan mujihadin for the USSR's defeat in Afghanistan, and
the Soviet Empire's subsequent collapse. 

After the war,  Gen. Gul and many senior ISI officers were
retired under American pressure.  They were considered too
militantly Islamic, and accused of meddling in politics. 
Zia's dream of a powerful Islamic Pakistan leading Muslim
Central Asia clashed with Washington's new world order. The
US and Russia made a deal over Afghanistan. Zia died in a
mysterious plane crash.  Gul and his boys were ousted. 

Since then, Gen. Gul has been a thorn in the side of the
Bhutto government, which, he charges was put into power by
the US. Bhutto supporters dismiss the peppery general as a
disgruntled Islamic hard-liner. Nevertheless, the spy-
chief's observations are intriguing. 

Pakistan, Gul told me, `is heading towards revolution or
civil war.' 

`Today there is no platform for the forces of change in
Pakistan,'  The political parties represent only the
interests of the ruling elite, notably Pakistan's feudal
landlords, who pay almost no taxes.  `Nothing works in
Pakistan, not the government, not the courts.'

`We have an elected government,' observes Gul, `but not a
representative one.'  Public outrage over Pakistan's massive
corruption and faltering economy has no other means of
expression than violence.  Only the army keeps the shaky
peace today.  Pakistan is a `volcano.' If it erupts,
extremist Islamic groups - `mad mullahs'-
as Gul calls them, could seize power.

This week, a new Hindu chauvinist government took power in
India, headed by a respected,  moderate prime minister, Atal
Vajpayee. Still, the  Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) remains
dominated by extremists who advocate an aggressive nuclear
policy, breaking up Pakistan, crushing the Kashmiri
independence movement, and `cracking down' on India's 120
million Muslim minority. 

The BJP strongly advocates India's rapid development to
superpower status, and Indian hegemony over West Asia.
India's massive buildup of offensive arms in recent years -
including aircraft carriers and submarines - and its secret
nuclear arms programs, support the BJP goal.  According to
Gul, and to CIA, India currently has 65 nuclear weapons, and
can build another 100.

Gul calls India's quest to form a great Hindu Raj, `brown
imperialism.'  India, says Gul,  is building its power-
projection capabilities in anticipation that an 
increasingly isolationist US will withdraw from the Mideast.
and Indian Ocean.  India, he predicts, will rush in to fill
this vacuum, taking control of Mideast oil.  

India will not risk a war today with Pakistan in spite of
rising tensions over strife-torn Kashmir, predicts Gul.
India cannot win a decisive victory over Pakistan. A
military failure will hasten what the general predicts is
India's inevitable disintegration into six smaller nations. 

Which, he observes with a twinkle, would be better for the
long-term stability of west Asia.  Today, the Indian
colossus India overawes and frightens all its smaller
neighbors except for rival China.

The US, says Gul, has failed in its goal of containing and
then crushing Iran. Teheran has forged solid links with
China and Russia, circumventing the US anti-Iran campaign
which, Gul claims, is motivated by Israel. The general
insists Israel is determined to crush Pakistan, the world's
only other `ideological state.'

Washington is fuelling the civil war in Afghanistan, Gul
asserts. `The US is afraid that free elections there will
produce an Islamic government.'  The US and Russia are
collaborating to ensure this does not happen.  Gul should
know,  He spent three years trying to end the Afghan civil
war.  

Gul adds, `By allowing Afghanistan to burn, the US is
actually helping Iran.'  Indeed. This month, Iran opened a
rail line with great fanfare linking landlocked Central Asia
to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas.   The shorter, more
economical route, via Pakistan's port of Karachi, is blocked
by the war in Afghanistan, and civil strife in the port
city.   

Gen. Gul is off to Washington, to see a few old comrades in
arms from better days when Pakistan was a key US ally. 
Today, he is officially unwelcome in Clinton's Washington. 
So quickly does American forget its friends.

I bid the `retired' general farewell. I expect to see him
back in action soon. The Great Game in Asia is resuming in
earnest. The shadow warriors are need anew.

copyright Eric Margolis 1996

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