and i thank you enormously for talking to a cap it was very enlightened lightning and feeling is it and you have information that is very important not only with the united states of america but the world but the people of the united states are contemplating and  very day to having to do with the south asia and so forth and in the audience welcome welcome very much to conversation a great honor to welcome to the program major general a nice med by he was and he's retired after the pakistan army major general would be a two star general that's very high in the ranking system he's also here on the title page e night in asia he's been with the united nations department of peacekeeping operations he's retired from that now and he has a number of other hats that he has worn i'm going to maybe just go through them quickly here and they'll come up during the lower thirds of the program because he's had a wide variety of experience really important experience with the u n and other very apropos of the time he has been he was the i'm going to he was the x chief he is the x chief of staff to the president of pakistan a major responsibility he was also ex vice chief of the general staff of the pakistan army very very relevant he was also ex deputy special representative of the secretary general of four of the u n for east timor again very very important development that occurred more recently there he's also on the ex and u n chief military observer in georgia and that's georgia in the south of that in the caucuses not in the united states but he's also ex chief of staff on the u n mission in somalia and one last ex director of change management director of policy evaluation and training i presume that's for the united nations peacekeeping force so their resume is very very impressive and general welcome very much to conversations i wonder if you could we're going to not to talk about and it's very timely but could you share your own background please borden raised a bit educated we're talking about the military experience in pakistan but could you share your york knowing more about pakistan and knowing more about the region that i come from also it's going to be put up on you tube and it's going to be streamed to the world so there may be people beyond new york that it could benefit as well i just mentioned that yeah wonderful yeah about myself i'm sixty two years of age i was born in february not in forty seven in a place called not a while pakistan i have had all my education in pakistan i have a bachelor's degree in economics from the university of the punjab and i have a master's degree in wall studies from side to islam university in islamabad is that comparable to the war college here and you know what colleges separate ok see ok this is civilian education i see ok right but the second degree that i spoke of me i mean i was in the army already when i got my master's i see i hadn't done it before joining the army because we joined the army at a young age which i did at and and then you know two countries and the independence of your country's major event in terms of population shift and so forth particular in that part of the region are not in the world so you were born right into a very volatile period of time yes and you had to do that war college to get to that's a two star general that's a very high order of all right yes the war college you don't get to be a general right or you know you don't become if you want stajan the same as here in the united states yeah yeah and there's some camaraderie between the military people of the world is that we're in a sense doctors get together a conference of military people that are general staff a general level of the military force in iran to work i think in touch with one another and form a kind of community ever vocabulary the yeah i understand otherwise you know every profession has its own jargon and yes sort of special the cavalry and when it is people who don't belong to that profession then you do find that sometimes it's difficult for them mission that that i would not say that that was a failure but the mission that was that went through a lot of trouble time and difficulties absolutely understand you were you were part of the pakistan army you were one star general in the pakistan army and then you were working with you from in that capacity as a pakistan general officer with the u n agency whenever there is war and violence un is supposed to play a role and therefore in many places the united nations deploys a peacekeeping operation now how does a guy who does the u n have an ability to raise military presence or not the u n being a thing of sovereign nations how does that work or do you see the rich how how does the writ run in terms of military capability of the un itself as an institution the un when the un needs to deploy a peacekeeping operation somewhere the un requests its member states to provide troops for that ok and member states depending on their own interests and their own policy and it only laws then  those who are willing to provide troops for that mission you know convey that they communicate that to the united nations and the united nations and agrees and that country agrees and the security council agrees and everyone everybody agrees then those cease fire between the parties to the conflict whether the parties to the conflict are internal or external so that there's a cease fire and that the cease fire can be watched and that gradually a a resolution can be found politically to the problem that's what peacekeeping broadly does is a security council particularly relevant in terms of those kind of things are voted were visibly let's say the general assembly or the relationship of the way the united nations is structured to be the security council particularly important in terms of those peacekeeping or military activity and named in the name of the united nations it is the security council  mandate a peacekeeping operation ok unless the security council fails to do it the general assembly will have no role in it but if the security council is not able to for for political reasons security council to consider all such matters with regard to global peace and security and if they pass a resolution to deploy a united nations peacekeeping operation only then that operation can be deployed considering mr mcchrystal saying i know mr obama is very concerned with what's to happen in afghanistan which is very much cheek by jowl with pakistan but back to pakistan again if we could the military  pakistan was formed for one hundred forty seven and i wonder if we understand if you feel we in united states or the waterworld understand significantly enough what the focus of the military and political responsibility of the pakistan leadership element is around the issue of kashmir that that's something and also a strategic sense that they have a they have to keep a very careful eye on a major power to their to their west india and that that's very much a part of the thinking of the political leadership of pakistan particularly vexing to them is the problem of kashmir i wonder if we might be worth our addressing that for a moment or two because it seems to me very much a part of the thinking of the people of pakistan at the level of governmental or military responsibility kashmir yes as you say it is of course part of the thinking of the government in the military but let me expand that a little bit it is like it is the part of thinking of every pakistani ok thank you and you and it's important to know that because  in today's words perhaps we would have called it ethnic cleansing and things like that when you had that time yeah the international community and the laws international not as active as it is today so a lot of that information probably didn't even get to writing but of course it was it was one of the worst i would say  it going to be wars of lying going to be drawn into people with it was to be for there were three of the provinces i think that had some question when the boundaries were being drawn and one of them was kashmir yeah and let me let me come today you know you come to  it's worth it i mean if you're in terms of the conscience of the pakistan nation and to the degree pakistan is tied up we have a lot of brothers that are up over into afghanistan the very area that the united states and the world's very are muslims and in very large part which is called the northern areas modest on again about ninety five percent people there too are muslims are muslims even today demanding or i think kashmir but pakistan not only believes actually there historical evidence that indian forces actually only moved into kashmir a day before the night before he actually signed the document and therefore it claim based on the principle on which india was divided into pakistan and india and when it is said there should be a plebiscite yes you are sad people which is never been observed no which is never happened and and let me also say this when when council and having accepted the resolutions of the council which of course wanted a plebiscite held in kashmir that plebiscite has never been held and ind after some time not immediately of course immediately they did accept that they will do it but it never happened and now of course they claim that those resolutions are not valid anymore and so on so that's the main i guess maybe the pattern or the take away from that is that there are strong feelings in terms of the people of pakistan visit india that we should be aware of how much that influences the consciousness of the pakistan nation and the indian leadership and the indian much bigger country of course and i would say that in perhaps in people who live in eastern india and people who live in southern india i mean or have the same kind of acute feelings for kashmir as the people who live in northwestern india  might have yeah because i think in northwest india again a lot of people not just the not just the government not just the political leadership not just the military believe that they have  do you have been fed on that they've been fed on that for a long time people in pakistan have been fed on that we've had three wars major wars with india you know over the thing and kashmir seems to be often a bone of contention that gives th but you're right absolutely but again that's part i that's part in particular part of the military in terms of then you're being part of the military of pakistan and that's it and then also i wonder if you could share within those military circles or within the leadership you were chief of staff for mr musharraf that's a very important position that you held and so forth the feeling of the military there is far as the ties and the relationship with the with the war stand or with afghanistan looking from the pakistani perspective yes as we were already talking because of kashmir pakistan and india have had a confrontational relationship exactly more often than they in the eighty's in terms we should get straight mujahideen is a freedom fighter yes and they were freedom fighters and we've talked to you i think in the you were you addressed the film charlie wilson's war yes shows sort of what the situation heartland land power sea power that kind of thing and the invasion of afghanistan we're seeing very very within that dialectic of the of the russians they had not yet imploded as they were to do in one thousand nine hundred nine but we finally got support for the mujahedeen who were fighting the russian fighting the russian occupation of afghanistan and got them some weapons that were able to shoot down the helicopters they had been able to fire stinger as a random they got a stinger missiles and that kind of thing and they fought against the soviet and we were on their side to do that they were moved you had been fighting for change because they were fighting our major  but the taliban is the taliban correctly they were part of the merger merger doing fighters against the soviet union they were conflated together that they were feared fighters against the soviet union we were given  major support in order to fight that fight and so they were our ally in a very real sense and then there was the taleban is the taliban can float conflated with the past june which is a major nation that a forty million people that goes across the whole border who are the taleban and who are the al qaida elements within was in afghanistan with say there's a lap over into how important it is and then maybe we could try and weave that in with the recommendations that have been made by general mcchrystal sidney mcchrystal as to the american effort that has been brought more recently to afghanistan and over very carefully as you and i speak what's the attitude of the united states to be in that very volatile part of the world ok a number of interrelated yes yes first of all  yeah around ninety six or ninety seven maybe ninety six perhaps so when he went there and by the way at that time the world was not in any way alarmed about you know taliban however bent osama was there and the taliban government was there in afghanistan osama bin laden was helping them with money but most of the money that he was giving them w billions in for weapons they got into their hands ended up in the hands of dean but we couldn't follow up with trying to help that country develop infrastructure schools and progress and so forth and he said we messed up the thing and it's true we just left conflate that with taliban and mark are incorrect in that no that's not right ok it's important to get majority of it why didn't the taliban have such an attitude toward women yeah let me say that that's a major are they against women ok you know it is unfortunate that the taliban perpetrated such policies against women  i would say rather primitive people it's a cultural thing it's a cultural thing and you know the tribal areas of pakistan and  century only yeah i mean in the in the understanding and thinking so so you have to understand it like that i was so their policies about women were wrong and let me tell you when was that's not islam no it has nothing to do with people conflate it with islam and they will try to say that's what islam is trying to do they get large and one of the things i'm talking about you've got al qaeda you've got front funding and then there is among one point four billion muslims in the world that's a major one quarter of the world population there is animist among large segments of that if i may against the western influence that is represented by the western legitimate powers so for there is there is a strong animus among a lot of people against the neo colonial attitude iraq other kinds of things that we've done and there's strong support so that there would be support from some of the islamic quarters of the world for the people who are giving united states grief as it were because they see people who are in league with us there that we are a major problem in terms of the work so they're there mr huntington's clash of civilizations and so what does have some basis in reality that there is a large segment of humanity that they're not united islam but they're a major force and there's a great deal of animist directed at the so called colonial neo colonial attitude of the united states of america and they're very much against occupation and we begin to look like an occupier like the soviet union bringing values that are not in keeping with islam and so that's part of the overall context if i'm not mistaken yes had to but before we talk of that animus i just want to say something about t would and they are allowed to allowed women doctors and women nurses only to go to the hospitals all i'm trying to say is yeah just on was trying to engage the taliban in order to in the hope that we will be able to moderate their attitude right reason is that a lot of muslim people around the world think that the united states uses double standards when dealing with global problems i think there's no way our action we know there were no but i want to make a point where there is a question of muslims and non muslims radical only and particularly in the middle east ok fine you know middle east is perhaps the the most important factor of the situation in the middle east and the relationship between israel and palestinians that still is on the road and yes it is perhaps the most important issue that causes many muslims do to see to look at the play and we used george cannon's x article and that and we used to have the western sea bass powers and so over in england and had the heartland and we had a thing with the soviet union we had the calm minister ideology we had a land based soviet union that was a threat that seems to have gone away in any way since one thousand eight hundred nine and it seems to me that sense of the western powers which are walking the world in big league boots led by the united states of america neo colonial they've got forces in one hundred thirty countries around the world and they've got a sense of their own historical legitimacy and so forth but they now have as an enemy in order to have a dialectic against which you can get your military budgets o forth is om and it partly comes out of the can of the situation in israel because we are completely in support of israel again and what we're doing to the palestinians but other examples of that and so the modern dialectic that we're fighting against becomes conflated with islamic in the minds of some people who are trying to manipulate the american or legitimate powers as it were seen in terms of the way the world is set up the problem is this bomb then they come and knock down our buildings that  and yeah and also that they do not have a system we just had a meltdown of an economy they have a system that's based on historical way of the and the whole world is set up where you have a lease running things and most of the people are not well served the masses of the people so we don't have in an injustice terms real democracy yet we may need it the future requires it and the leading systems that we have that are running the world do not have a system adequate to what the future requires in terms of bringing our technological capability to serve all the people rather than just you know leading elements within each of the political entities around the world our vision is not adequate what the future requires that we're asking the world to accept as historically live so there's a  movement in the consciousness of the world that we need something new and liberating and it's not being provided by the so called neo colonial american experiences either economically or politically ok we are we're getting we're taking our discussion into right so there's a big change in the air and the current leadership calling themselves a legitimate like the regime in europe thought they were legitimate seventeen eighty nine but there were people who knew something new is coming and needed and what's new and needed on a planetary know that at this moment and like i said you know i'm happy you were saying that and i didn't have to say that no no no but i think a lot of the world would see that at a certain level don't you yeah perhaps yeah perhaps a lot of the world because they're defending the status quo in the status quo is in able to bring to justice and why widely dispersed capability to the mass of the people rather than just a few who run everything in the various political countries which has been the history of the world capability that is not being characteristic of history in terms of being able to provide for everybody in a way that we haven't been able to through the advancement of science and tech and that's new and we also have weapons of destruction that are unprecedented in terms of the capability if we to go so you're going to go in and take a weapon system so you can go steal the grain from somebody else for your own tribe that kind of thing that's been going on for your own national interest and that's the weapons i believe are species least so we're very concerned about that yeah i believe they are if you take in german or for and we only got a couple minutes left because they were back to pakistan in a certain sense pakistan is now a nuclear country and it happened when they blew let me say that i think it is it is immature or for anybody to think that weapons of mass destruction like nuclear weapons can be used by pakistan or india against each other  just because they have a confrontational atmosphere between the two countries for a long time i think people and countries who have such weapons also have enough sense of responsibility and they do understand the consequences of use of these weapons people in pakistan those maybe a nuclear holocaust that takes place just because there are weapons with india and pakistan remember barbara tuchman's guns of august never knowing that it takes place understandable and rational terms but i know you're not talking about rationality when you're talking about a nuclear holocaust you're talking about irrational yes but we do believe that people people who have their finger on the trigger more often than not would be rational people and not irrational woman hope wouldn't you know isn't it because the weapons are so peacekeeping but at at it is sort of a much larger and higher plane relationship between india and pakistan that is what needs to be done india and pakistan need to normalize relations that is what needs to be done   and india pakistan relations can not normalize unless the kashmir issue is that is all of no k and they're not i mean these are my an indication that they're interested in doing that they've got all kinds of hundreds of thousands of troops up i why this thing is in the in the sort of political psyche of of people in that region that ok the country might break up but what i'm saying is that in today's world where there is international law where there is the sort of nation state arrangement where there's a global order i don't think countries break up that easily you know the international community also plays a retired general major general in the pakistan army peacekeeper and talking about the issues that are so much on the world