Vienna:
Stating Pakistan is “massively misusing religion,” breeding jihadism, Military aviation analyst and historian Tom Cooper said he does not expect the situation to change.
Cooper, while talking to ANI, said that the religion-based terrorism has spread to Nigeria and the Philippines.
“They (Pakistan) are massively misusing religion in particular, creating de facto breeding jihadism, financing, organising, commanding jihadism, through the history from Nigeria in West Africa to the Philippines in the Pacific. So, well in this regards, nothing is going to change. I do not expect anything to change,” he said.
Cooper said that Pakistan is plagued by military dictatorship.
“The relationship between Pakistani military and civilian leadership was never good. There are several coups and the country was subjected to military dictatorship through much of its history. So this issue is never going to be sorted out. The armed forces in Pakistan have their own aims,” he said.
Cooper said that Indian intelligence has precisely monitored its targets and activities at Pakistani nuclear bases.
“I find this commentary by the Indian defence minister of interest and of importance because it appears to be making clear that India, through its intelligence services to be monitoring, activities at the Pakistani nuclear facilities. That India is an excellent picture about what is going on, going on over there,” he said.
He added that the concerns of Pakistan’s unreliability with regards to nuclear arms should have been flagged almost two decades ago.
“It it’s such a good picture that towards the end of fighting, it ended actually after India hit the two entrances to one of Pakistani underground facilities suspected or assumed to be a nuclear weapon storage facility. When he now says that Pakistan’s ability to handle nuclear weapons is questionable. On one side, this is nothing new. We, have heard such concerns should be given by nuclear scientists and not just few of them, only 20 years ago or even more,” he said.
Cooper told ANI that India was vigilant on Pakistan’s activities.
“It is just a confirmation that the situation in this regards hasn’t improved on one side or the other side that India is careful, carefully monitoring what the Pakistan is doing at their nuclear facilities. So it is also a confirmation for this dominance or freedom of operation of Indian armed forces well inside Pakistan because it means India has probably has satellites in orbit, probably long range. UAE is orbiting specific facilities inside Pakistan and Pakistan can’t do anything against that,” he said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
