Every Indian Prime Minister hands over to his successor the secrets of the state— sensitive projects directly supervised by the country’s highest office. In 1996, Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao, for instance, handed over the files relating to the testing of nuclear weapons to his successor, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

A similar system possibly exists in Pakistan’s highest office — the army chief’s office in GHQ, Rawalpindi with every army chief bequeathing to his successor, files on the nuclear weapons programme and contingency plans on overthrowing the civilian establishment. The guidebook on external relations, I suspect, must be just a slip of paper — “figure out what the US wants, and deliver.”

This is what every Pakistani dictator has done for over half a century. In 1971,

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