Mayank Chhaya Daily

No longer deniable

Zahid Hussain, Mathew Rosenberg and Peter Wonacott have reported in the Wall Street Journal today that Pakistan’s own investigation has established “substantive links” between the 10 Mumbai terror attackers and the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

Zarar Shah, a top LeT commander arrested by Pakistan, has reportedly confessed to his group’s involvement in the attack. “He is singing,” is how a security official quoted by the WSJ describes Shah’s confession. (I love taking such remarks literally—imagine Zarar Shah actually singing his confession in a police lock-up with his interrogators providing the chorus. But I digress.)

Shah’s confession seems to bear out broadly everything that Indian interrogators have attributed to the lone surviving attacker Mohammad Ajmal Amir Qasab’s account of the events.

Is it still possible for Pakistan to officially deny that the attack was planned and mounted from Pakistani soil and by a Pakistani group? It is always possible to deny anything even in the face of undeniable evidence. In the past couple of days there has been a clearly perceptible shift in Pakistan’s approach to the crisis. From complete stonewalling to the disclosure about Shah’s confession represents an extraordinary turnaround. I am curious to know what has caused this shift and, more crucially, for what tactical purpose the interregnum was used behind the curtain of denials.

It is a highly encouraging sign that bits and pieces are coming out in the media suggesting that not everyone in the Pakistani establishment is afflicted by denial. The Mumbai attacks offered Pakistan a great opportunity to purge its security and intelligence institutions of those sympathetic to the cause espoused by the jihadists. The only way an enduring democratic society in Pakistan can strike roots is by sharply demarcating boundaries between the civil society and the military with a clear definition of who is subservient to whom.

Israeli attacks and South Asia

Looking at the latest rounds of Israeli pounding from the prism of India-Pakistan relations throws up some plausible theories.

In a sense the Israeli strikes against Hamas targets in Gaza have significantly reduced prospects of a conflict in South Asia. While there is no geopolitical law that prevents many conflagrations to go on simultaneously around the world, something tells me that the sharpness of the rhetoric between India and Pakistan has suddenly been blunted. The latest example and perhaps the most consequential example of this are comments by Pakistan’s army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. He has emphasized the need to “de-escalate and avoid conflict” with India.

The fact that Kayani’s remarks came during his meeting with visiting Chinese vice-foreign minister He Yafei give them particular weight. He was sent by Beijing with the specific purpose of diffusing tensions between India and Pakistan. If there is one country whose counsel Pakistan’s military would still pay attention to it is China. There is no way Pakistan can afford to displease its giant neighbor to its north even as it is needling another giant neighbor to its east. Unlike India, Pakistan has no emotional baggage of the past riding its back since 1947 in its relations with China. It is a strictly utilitarian and guilt-free association. That distance gives Pakistan a sense of comfort with China. Of course, Beijing has its own geostrategic reasons to keep Pakistan in check.

Whether or not anyone explicitly acknowledges it either in India or Pakistan the violence between Israel and Palestine is viewed as a reminder by the two South Asian neighbors what their own future could look like were they to persist with the level of animus and distrust that got heightened after the Mumbai attacks. It is tempting for many hawks in India to applaud Israel’s “no non-sense” brutality in retaliation against similar brutality from the other side. The point to remember is that since 1967 Six-Day War we have seen numerous such tactical military escalations but they have not resolved anything. It is not my place to offer a solution to this conflict but it is commonsense to say that killing people from time to time on either side does not seem to work.

Prime Minister/President Asif Ali Zardari

(The story has since been dimissed as "ridiculous and baseless" by President Zardari's office)

Something very oddly familiar seems to be going on in Islamabad. The wire service IANS’s Pakistan correspondent Mohammad Najeeb reports that President Asif Ali Zardari could well become the prime minister of the country and install his father as the country’s president.

In doing so, the story goes, Zardari is expected to transfer all presidential powers to the prime minister’s office by annulling the constitutional amendments brought in by former President Pervez Musharraf to concentrate all powers in his office. Not that Zardari distrusts his own father Hakim Ali Zardari but you cannot be blamed for reaching that inference. However, in Pakistan’s permanently daggers-drawn politics it is better to have your father as your replacement than a real rival.

If Zardari carries out the plan, the country’s current Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani will be obviously replaced. Going by what Najeeb writes Zardari and Gilani do not see eye to eye and things have reached a point where "Gilani has plainly refused to obey Zardari's orders, saying everything would be done on merit," according to a leader of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).

Cynical deal-making is the creed of politics everywhere in the world but in South Asia it is practiced with unvarnished greed and ambition. Everything else, including the welfare of the country politicians seek to rule, is incidental to their own personal power and in many cases brazen aggrandizement. It was clear to anyone who knows Pakistan’s politics that in the immediate aftermath of former prime minister and his wife Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, Zardari would move quickly to capture power. He ought to have known that his eventual objective should be to become the country’s prime minister because that is where all the political action is. Although the office of the president of Pakistan remains a decisive power center, Zardari is known to be a deeply political animal who likes to be in the thick of things.

One does not know whether and when he will be able to effect this dramatic shift (IANS says likely by March next year) but the very fact that it has crossed Zardari’s mind shows that the issue of where he should be is not settled. 

Return to reasonableness

Reasonableness has returned to Pakistan’s official response to the question of whether Mohammad Ajmal Amir Qasab, the lone surviving Mumbai attacker, is a Pakistani.

Islamabad now says it will provide Qasab legal assistance if they can establish that he is indeed from Pakistan. A senior Pakistani official has been quoted the IANS wire as saying, "Yes, we will provide him legal aid if he's a Pakistani and we are allowed consular access to him."

It is baffling why Pakistan could not have taken this position soon after it was disclosed by India that Qasab had sought consular access to the Pakistani mission in New Delhi. No one is suggesting that merely agreeing to afford him consular access is tantamount to admission that he is Pakistani origin but it is a start. It is obviously better than whipping war hysteria and claim to redeploy troops from the Afghan border to the Indian border.

The “information” on Qasab as Pakistan calls it and “evidence” as India calls it was routed to Pakistan via the US. "Yes, we have received information like the confession by Qasab and a record of his conversation with people in Pakistan," the official said.  One can smell incredulity in his expression ‘information like the confession’. You can tell that he does not believe for a second in the veracity of what India calls the confession.

I agree that such cases are never watertight but given that India has also furnished phone intercepts and logs about contacts between the terrorists and their handlers/trainers in Pakistan the case appears far more credible than what Pakistan would like the world to believe.

This is a promising opening in the eventual resolution of the stand-off that is causing palpitations in Western capitals. But then India-Pakistan relations have a great history of letting hopes down.

Mohammad Rafi, Sonu Nigam and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

 

To think that the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) would team up with Sonu Nigam for a concert titled Rafi Resurrected in London and perform songs such as “Hum tumse juda hoke mar jayenge ro ro ke” sounds absurdly improbable. That’s exactly what happened recently in London. The 1965 song was composed by the underrated Usha Khanna and written by Asad Bhopali.

The concert to commemorate Mohammad Rafi, widely regarded as the greatest male playback singer of India (there are equal numbers who accord that status to Kishore Kumar but that’s that), was broadcast on Sony television. The CBSO musicians did an exceptional job of internalizing the spirit of the wide variety of songs that Nigam sang.  The songs lend themselves so well to western orchestration even though the mood of most was anything but.

For instance, the 1967 song ‘Patthar ke sanam tujhe humne’  composed by Laxmikant Pyarelal and written by the always outstanding Majrooh Sultanpuri is hard to picture in a western orchestral situation. But then there is the 1968 ‘Kaun hai jo sapnon mei aya’ from ‘Jhuk Gaya Asman’, composed by Shankar Jaikishan and written by Hasrat Jaipuri that lends itself so well. I found the 1949 classic ‘Suhani raat dhal chuki’ composed by the great Naushad for the movie ‘Dulari’ and written by Shakeel Badayuni particularly arresting. Try the 1975 Punjabi number ‘Main jatt yamla pagla’ from ‘Pratigya’ composed by Laxmikant Pyarelal and written by Anand Bakshi. You would think it practically impossible to render that number in a symphonic framework. Think again.

I also loved the 1963 song 'Yaad na jaye' from 'Dil ek mandir' composed by Shankar Jaikishan and written by the master Shailendra.

The showstopper has to be "Tum jo mil gaye ho' from 'Hanste Zakhm' (1973) composed by the unputdownable Madan Mohan with lyrics by the great Kaifi Azmi.

For sheer variety check out these links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2cckhYq_2E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH-cHVFbpkM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlrm8OjEGlY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlrm8OjEGlY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuHRtP3ZDXY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rRPLQTqYvw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNzfybpt2_s

Leverage civilizational affinities

For India and Pakistan there is a moral there somewhere in the latest Israeli strikes on Hamas targets in Gaza that killed 195 Palestinians. That’s what the future would look like pretty soon were Pakistan to continue its patronage of terror groups and India to launch retaliatory strikes. It is a war without an end. People would keep dying on both sides in a perpetual cycle of violence. For some it might satisfy their blood lust but it will never resolve the core issues that tear apart the neighbors.

If Pakistan wants to be taken seriously as a nation-state in control of its own destiny it has to engage in national introspection. Six decades may not be a long time in the life of a nation but they are certainly enough to have at least formed clearly defined contours of a civil society which has begun to address its existential problems with maturity. On that front and many others Pakistan has clearly failed its own people with criminal nonchalance. No one is suggesting that India has solved its million problems. Far from it. But at least it has shown a trajectory of progress and promise which has given it remarkable international weight and credibility.

Rather than leveraging their civilizational affinities the two remain trapped into a street brawl. India has significantly disengaged itself from that bracketed context with Pakistan. Pakistan has not. 

Pakistan's not-so-subtle message to Obama

The following analysis appeared worldwide on the IANS wire yesterday.

By Mayank Chhaya

Away from Chicago’s intensely cold winter and vacationing in the salubrious climes of his birth state of Hawaii President-elect Barack Obama is being delivered a not-so-subtle message by Pakistan.

The reported movement of Pakistani troops from the country’s northwest to its border with India may well be aimed at telling the incoming president that Islamabad will make its own independent decisions. This could be particularly triggered by Obama’s well known position that Pakistan ought to take strong action against the Al Qaeda-Taliban combine, failing which the US might consider doing so itself.

Raising the bugbear of an impending Indian attack is the only way Pakistan can at least nominally justify redeploying its troops from the northwest to the east. To that extent India’s officially stated position that all options, including a military one, are on the table in the aftermath of the November 26 Mumbai terror attacks in case Pakistan chooses not to act against terrorist groups based there, may have played into this design.

As early as August, 2007 Obama had said, “If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.” The statement was then seen, as it is now, as a significant departure from President George Bush’s policy of not attacking targets inside Pakistan. In effect, Obama had said that the US would act with or without Pakistani approval in case Islamabad did not or could not.

In some sense the troop redeployment barely three weeks before Obama’s inauguration must be seen as Pakistan indirectly reminding him that it still pursues policies it considers its sovereign right. Without building up war hysteria Pakistan would have found it practically impossible to significantly disengage its troops from the Afghan border. It was not surprising that Islamabad seized the first opportunity that India might be considering a military option, which has been denied by no less a person than Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself.

The timing of the Pakistani decision falls within that peculiarly transitory period when the outgoing president no longer has the bully pulpit and the incoming one would be reluctant to appear to be acting before his time. Of course, back channels between Washington, Islamabad and New Delhi must have lighted in the aftermath of the troop movement.

The redeployment has the potential of seriously undermining the US war on terror in Afghanistan and by implication inside Pakistani border areas in the region where both the Taliban and Al Qaeda are known to have a free run. It is possible that some in the US might see the latest Pakistani move as upping the ante with the specific objective of strengthening its bargaining position vis-à-vis the incoming Obama administration.

It s not entirely clear in Washington what the extent of the redeployment might be, although a figure of 20,000 has been heard in some media reports. U.S. military and intelligence officials had not yet determined if there is any truth to the reports and if so how much.

Although it is not likely to be stated in so many words by anyone in the Obama team but between the two India is automatically expected to be the responsible party and therefore exercise restraint. There could be a sense in the team that New Delhi may not want to present Obama with a highly dangerous challenge by launching surgical strikes against Pakistani targets even before he takes office. 

Stop gratuitous posturing

Gratuitous posturing is the name of the game in Pakistan and to an extent in India these days. Reports of war hysteria building up are coming in rapidly. Islamabad has suspended leave for its army personnel and is planning to move some of its troops from the Afghanistan border to the Indian border in anticipation of surgical strikes by New Delhi.

Surgical strikes by their very nature are surprise strikes. No intelligent country builds up a crescendo towards such strikes. What’s the point of advertising impending strikes when their entire purpose is to catch your target by complete surprise? But that is putting too fine a print on the broader issue of war hysteria that Pakistan in particular appears to have been gripped by.

This is happening in notwithstanding Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s clear statement that no one wants war. At some level one cannot fully blame Islamabad for reacting the way it is because India is showing some signs of stirring up the pot, the latest being a meeting between the prime minister and the country’s three armed forces chiefs over their “preparedness.” It is not every day that the four men discuss the armed forces’ preparedness unless they are trying to send a signal to the neighbor. New Delhi is certainly letting it be known that it is deeply unhappy at the stonewalling by Pakistan in the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks. The bone of contention is whether Mohammad Ajmal Amir Qasab, the lone surviving attacker, is from Pakistan.

After making some polite and friendly noises Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has changed his position saying, “We will defend the country till the last drop of our blood.” A bit dramatic, considering there are no serious signs from the Indian side yet.

All this is feeding what appears to be a larger plan to ease up military pressure on the Taliban-Al Qaeda combine on the Afghan border. It would be a serious mistake for India to offer Pakistan the opportunity to do what it would otherwise find nearly impossible to do. Without a threat of war from India, Pakistan will have no justifiable reason to go slow on the Afghan border. 

Afghan solution: Warlords with hard-ons

A hard-on lasting four hours or more is exactly what Afghan warlords needed. The Washington Post’s Jobby Warrick has a terrific story today on how the CIA is plying Afghan warlords with Viagra as an incentive to be on America’s side.

It is hard to decide where to start on this story. The first most obvious question is whom do these warlords call in case their erection lasts for more than four hours? Do they call the CIA officers who supplied the pill? Or do they just wait till it subsides whenever it does? Or do they call Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahari to brag? It is a good thing that some of these men have four wives.

Have these warlords been warned that there are side effects to pleasure? They are listed as headache, facial flushing and upset stomach. I am not even going into the challenge of balancing an upset stomach with full arousal.

Apparently the Company is careful to ensure that Viagra is given to older warlords whose appetite might be dwindling amid a pile of all those bazookas. They are permanently surrounded penile symbols and often forget which is their own and which is from Russia or America.

In a country where guns are often a manifestation of male libido, it is a great idea to pump up warlords with Viagra. It seems some of the warlords who received the pill performed their tasks for the CIA much better than before. A satisfied warlord is all that we need to resolve the Afghan problem.

Read the WaPo story here.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/25/AR2008122500931.html?hpid=topnews

Check Captain's Log Stardate 26112008 for Qasab

(A decrypted version of Qasab's galactic ID)

Either India is lying or Pakistan is lying about the nationality of Ajmal Amir Qasab, the lone surviving Mumbai attacker.  There is a third possibility. He is an alien from outer space. I am surprised that Indian investigators have not considered that Qasab may well be a part of a grand alien invasion of Earth.

Once you accept that Qasab is not terrestrial, everything falls into place. It is clear that Qasab has no parents. If he did, they would have owned him up no matter where they were. Since no one has come forward one can safely assume that he just dropped from the skies that fateful November 26 night.

Rehman Malik, the Pakistan Prime Minister's Adviser on Interior Affairs, should be taken at his word when he says Pakistan has “thoroughly” checked its National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) and found no mention of Qasab. NADRA is world famous for its comprehensiveness and accuracy.  With that out of the way who can blame Pakistan for not providing Qasab with consular access in India?

India should track down his galactic coordinates and summon someone from the Federation to explain the intrusion. It is surprising that Qasab has not been beamed back to his mother ship yet. Perhaps even the Blue Delta QXvIC 0101 Galactic Force of the Federation has disowned him as a renegade.

I see only one way to resolve this baffling cosmic mystery. Ask William Shatner aka Captain Kirk if he came across any entry referring Ajmal Amir Qasab in his log on any star date.