South Asia Daily

Does India need more anarchy in Pakistan?

Pakistani investigators say India’s external espionage agency Research and Analysis Wing, better known by its charmingly sinister acronym RAW, has plans to assassinate the country’s freshly reinstated Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. They also say that RAW is collaborating with Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud to hit targets in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. The RAW’s motivation: create anarchy in Pakistan.

Let’s accept all of these assertions at their face value for the sake of argument. Let’s also disregard that they amount to saying that India wants more anarchy in Pakistan than there already is because of its own internal sociological fault lines. Let’s also ignore that India has everything to lose by creating in its immediate neighbor a failed nuclear armed fundamentalist Islamic state. I know all this is a great deal to overlook for the sake of argument. Nevertheless, let’s do it.

The notion that anarchy in Pakistan is an end in itself that the RAW wants is so fantastic that it is amusing. I hold no brief for the Indian or any espionage agencies. Their existence is a testimony to how profoundly distrustful human race is of its own. That is a larger philosophical debate which is as superfluous as it is beyond the scope of this post.

IANS reports quote The News as saying the following:

"Our agencies have intercepted a RAW plan to hit Rawalpindi and Islamabad by using terrorist elements within Pakistan," The News Friday quoted an official as saying.

An intelligence report shared with the newspaper by an interior ministry official "reveals" that Chaudhry's life "is in danger as RAW wants to target him to cause anarchy in Pakistan", it added.

According to the intelligence report, at least 20 Uzbek terrorists dispatched by Mehsud "have already reportedly reached Islamabad" and "would play a key role in this operation".

They are divided in groups and each group has been assigned a different attack plan, the report said.

"The terrorists may try to capture important buildings like the Pakistan Secretariat blocks, TV stations, police training centres and foreign chains of schools," the intelligence report said.

"This time, the attacks could be conducted at four or five places simultaneously in various areas of the twin-cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Vigilance is required to counter and curb attacks or terrorist acts planned by the extremists," the report added.

If true this is a remarkable piece of intelligence gathering. But to me its undoing lies in the specificity of its details. It seems almost as if the whole plot is orchestrated with the full knowledge of the Pakistani intelligence which may let it unfold if only to eventually accuse the RAW. It is impossible to say what really goes on behind such complex and intricate plotting and intelligence gathering. It is not as outrageous as it sounds that the RAW or, for that matter any intelligence agency, particularly Pakistan’s own Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), would be involved in such acts.

The reason I find this claim by Pakistani investigators questionable is because it is inherently self-defeating for India to push the country any further into chaos than it already is. If the plot flows from a purely misanthropic motivation, then it is a different story altogether. In that case we have much more to be worried about.

Admission at last

In what can only described as a seminal shift Pakistan has for the first time admitted that the Mumbai terror attacks were partly planned on its soil.

"This is an individual act, act of individuals or non-state actors. Their purpose is to create terror for their own motives. These motives need to be determined. Both India and Pakistan need to work it out,” Interior Minister Rehman Malik said, adding, "A part of the conspiracy has been done in Pakistan.”

While the admission is remarkable in itself, it is impossible to say whether it would lead to a fundamental review and reform of the way terrorism and terror groups are treated in Pakistan. It is vitally important that India applauds Pakistan for showing the strength to admit to the terror attack’s Pakistani origin.

Going by Malik’s comments about the full scope of the investigation it appears that the Pakistani response has been much more than window dressing. Whether the Pakistani establishment is driven by expediency or genuine concern for its own stability, Islamabad has at least managed to emerge from a state of denial about the Mumbai attacks.

Of course, Malik has taken care to see that his comments in no way mean that any elements of the Pakistani state were involved in the planning and execution of the attacks. It is well known that the Pakistani intelligence had fostered the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the group widely believed to be behind the attacks. The LeT is now being viewed by the western intelligence agencies as second only to Al-Qaeda in its ability to launch attacks on Western targets.

It would be unrealistic to expect any Pakistani leader to make a connection between the intelligence agencies and the LeT. From New Delhi’s standpoint it is crucial that Islamabad takes the investigation of those behind the Mumbai attacks to its logical end. This offers a great opportunity to purge the system of those whose aims are clearly in conflict with those of Pakistan’s civil society.

While it is always possible that out of reasons of expediency the Pakistani state has decided to throw the Mumbai attackers under the bus but it would help not to take a cynical view of the admission. Given the way the establishment is structured and run, even this admission must have come after a great deal of ferment.

‘LeT represents threat to global security second only to Al Qaeda’

The Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the prime suspect behind the Mumbai terror attacks, “represents a threat to regional and global security second only to al-Qaeda”, respected Indian American expert Ashley J. Tellis has said in a Congressional testimony.

“ Although LeT is linked in popular perceptions mainly to the terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir, the operations and ideology of this group transcend the violence directed at the Indian state,” Tellis, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said in his testimony to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

“Being an Ahl-e Hadith adherent of Sunni Wahabism, LeT seeks to establish a universal Islamic Caliphate with a special emphasis on realizing that dream through the gradual recovery of all lands that were once under Muslim rule,” he said. This strategic objective had made the LeT an ally of Al-Qaeda, according to Tellis.

The prepared testimony titled “Lessons from Mumbai” said, “The LeT’s initial focus on Afghanistan is significant because it refutes the common misapprehension—assiduously fostered since the early 1990s—that the group has always been a part of the indigenous Kashmiri insurgency. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Tellis asserts that the LeT has been since its inception composed of Pakistani Punjabis. That coupled with its flexible ideology “is precisely what made it so attractive to the ISI to begin with, because it could be controlled and directed far more effectively by its Punjabi dominated sponsor, the Pakistan Army, than any local Kashmiri resistance group.”

In Tellis’s words the LeT comes across as a highly organized and efficient outfit. “Unlike many of the other indigenous terrorist groups in South Asia whose command and control structures are casual and often disorganized, LeT’s organizational structure is hierarchic and precise, reflecting its purposefulness. Modeled on a military system, LeT is led by a core leadership centered on the amir, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, and his deputies, who oversee different aspects of its functional and charitable operations,” he said.

In the specific context of India, he said the country “has unfortunately become the “sponge” that protects us all. India’s very proximity to Pakistan, which has developed into the epicenter of global terrorism during the last thirty years, has resulted in New Delhi absorbing most of the blows unleashed by those terrorist groups that treat it as a common enemy along with Israel, the United States, and the West more generally.

He was critical of India’s response to the many terror strikes in the past few years. “To the chagrin of its citizens, India has also turned out to be a terribly soft state neither able to prevent many of the terrorist acts that have confronted it over the years nor capable of retaliating effectively against either its terrorist adversaries or their state sponsors in Pakistan.”

On the question of Kashmir Tellis seemed to be challenging the view among some in the Obama administration that the resolution of the Kashmir problem may deprive Pakistan the excuse to continue to pursue policies of supporting terrorist groups. “The existence of unresolved problems, such as the dispute over Jammu and Kashmir, has also provided both Pakistani institutions and their terrorist clients with the excuses necessary to bleed India to “death by a thousand cuts,” he said.

“But these unsettled disputes remain only excuses: not that they should not be addressed by New Delhi seriously and with alacrity, there is no assurance that a satisfactory resolution of these problems will conclusively eliminate the threat of terrorism facing India and the West more generally’” Tellis said.

He argued that the LeT’s objectives “go way beyond Kashmir.” “They seek to destroy what is perhaps the most successful example of a thriving democracy in the non-Western world, one that has prospered despite the presence of crushing poverty, incredible diversity, and a relatively short history of self-rule. India’s existence as a secular and liberal democratic state that protects political rights and personal freedoms—despite all its failures and imperfections—thus remains a threat to groups such as LeT, with their narrow, blighted, and destructive worldviews, as well as to praetorian, anti-democratic, institutions such as the Pakistan Army and the ISI (Inter Services Intelligence),’ he said.

Change of heart on Kashmir?

Dawn of Pakistan reports that Islamabad has scuppered a parliamentary resolution calling on the Obama administration to include Kashmir in the mandate of special US envoy Richard Holbrooke.

“The Foreign Office and a federal minister have scuttled a move for adoption of a resolution in the National Assembly asking US President Barack Obama to appoint an envoy on Kashmir or include the settlement of the dispute in the mandate of the US envoy on Afghanistan and Pakistan,” the paper reported Sunday.

“A top official of the Foreign Office blocked the move by setting aside a joint resolution approved by members from both the sides of the aisle, and came out with another version, excluding the call for sending a US envoy on Kashmir,” it added.

Instead the government has proposed a diluted version of the resolution which says,  “This house underscores the importance of peaceful and just resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute. We expect the international community to play its due role in the early resolution of this longstanding dispute. And in this context expresses confidence that the new US administration will, as stated by President Obama, give priority to this issue.”

The development has significant implications for India-Pakistan relations. It is not immediately clear what prompted the government to tone down the resolution but it is not altogether unlikely that New Delhi’s unhappiness over including Kashmir in Holbrooke’s mandate could have played a role. Going by the traditional Pakistani approach, it would have liked Kashmir come under a sharper international scrutiny that was bound to have happened had President Obama incorporated the dispute in his envoy’s agenda. It is hard to read Pakistan’s motivations in not pushing for Kashmir’s inclusion to the extent one would have expected.

One way to look at it is that Pakistan is conscious about the long-term effects of such an inclusion on bilateral ties. The aftermath of the November 26 terror attacks on Mumbai and Pakistan’s reluctance to cooperate have considerably slowed down the momentum towards normalizing relations with India. Pushing Kashmir onto Holbrooke’s plan would have soured relations even more.

It is tempting to read a change of heart here but then one has been let down in the past.

Pakistan drying up

In a grim reminder of the worsening governance, Pakistan is being told that it has petroleum reserves to last only six days. This in a country that sees itself as an important member of the exclusive nuclear weapons club.

Geo TV quoted Petroleum Ministry Additional Secretary G.A. Sabri as saying, "We are currently importing petroleum products based on 10 days' inventory keeping in view the dollar constraints."

The “dollar constraints” are a reference dwindling foreign exchange reserves. One hopes that there are people in Pakistan’s ruling elite as well as intelligentsia who realize these are all troublesome indicators of not having focused on nation building in the last six decades but instead letting various state institutions run amuck with their own little fiefdoms that often conflicted with the overall well being the of the state as a whole.

A wide variety terror groups that Pakistani intelligence patronized and promoted over the decades have also played a highly damaging role in setting the country back. It is undeniable that in comparison India has managed its political, economic, military and intelligence institutions extraordinarily well.

There is clear recognition in India that Pakistan’s stability as a nation-state is fundamental to its own future. In 1991 India was down to $5.8 billion foreign exchange reserves, enough for barely a few weeks’ imports. Rather than sliding into political and economic chaos the country’s successive leaderships went about systematically rebuilding its strengths. Today they are in the range of $280 billion after touching a high of $309 billion about a year ago.

Owning up Qasab

The lone surviving Mumbai attacker Mohammad Ajmal Amir Qasab is not a stateless phantom after all. Pakistan has finally owned up that he is indeed a Pakistani national. Viewed from the prism of assertive denials since the attacks, this ought to be regarded as a hugely significant development fraught with long-term consequences.

"We have received information from the competent authority that he's a Pakistani," foreign office spokesman Muhammad Sadiq told the New Delhi-based wire service IANS. Then forswearing any possible obligation towards its own citizens Sadiq said Pakistan will not provide any legal aid to him. "He has done a heinous crime and cannot be provided any sort of help," he said. That is a bit of a dampener but in the larger scheme of things it is important that Pakistan has at least owned him up.

There is a distinct possibility that India will now pursue the origin of the nine other attackers who were killed during the siege. There have been enough hints dropped that all ten were from Pakistan but there is no clear word on that yet. Going by the chain of events and the chronology pieced together by Indian investigators it makes sense that Qasab was part of a group of people who arrived by sea to Mumbai. It is important that the origin of the other nine is quickly established if only to strengthen the argument that it was a carefully plotted operation begun and directed by elements in Pakistan.

I can understand Pakistan’s eagerness to put as much distance between the attacker and Islamabad but to the extent that they were Pakistani national the country has clear obligations under the international law. To say that since Qasab committed heinous crime and hence is not worthy of any official involvement is disingenuous.

With this admission one safely argue that Pakistan’s quick dismissal of the dossier provided by India no longer holds ground. If Qasab is now accepted to be a Pakistani national, then it follows that a lot of what is contained in the dossier is also credible.

Soda, shaving cream and terror

Somini Sengupta of The New York Times has a very interesting story based on the details contained in the dossier that India has provided to Pakistan about the Mumbai attacks. Going by the NYT report the dossier tries hard to establish irrefutable links between the attackers and their handlers in Pakistan.

To some extent the NYT story addresses my misgivings about the quality of the dossier. However, it appears to have weak spots, which are perfectly understandable given the nature of the attacks, which a country in pathological denial mode is bound to exploit. There are references, for instances, to a bottle of Mountain Dew soda manufactured in Pakistan which was among the materials found on a trawler used by the terrorists. “It contains photographs of materials found on the fishing trawler, from a bottle of Mountain Dew soda packaged in Karachi to pistols that bore the markings of a gun manufacturer in Peshawar to a Pakistani-made matchbox, detergent powder, and shaving cream, called “Touchme,” the story says.

Pakistan is entirely capable of countering this saying these items could have been planted by Indian investigators. If they can disown a full grown individual like Mohammad Ajmal Amir Qasab, dismissing a bottle of Mountain Dew or a matchbox would be ridiculously easy.

Read the story here.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/world/asia/07india.html?hp

Price of democracy

 

No one, least of all New Delhi, should be surprised that Islamabad has dismissed the dossier containing Mumbai evidence as merely information. It baffles me why any reasonably intelligent person would think that Pakistan would own up any of the players in the Mumbai attacks. It has been Pakistan’s state policy to brazen out of such accusations.

Having said that, I have this niggling feeling that India may not have furnished a carefully laid out dossier which would not only compel the generally incredulous Pakistani establishment but even rise to the level of evidence admissible in a court of law. Not having seen the dossier, it would be unfair to express misgivings about it. But I am merely wondering aloud on the basis of India’s past record. It is not for a lack of substance that India’s case goes by default. It is generally a matter of style and the way such information is packaged that tends to undermine it.

For a state whose natural reflex action is denial, India has to be even more fastidious in what it presents to Pakistan. At a time when the country’s is cornered from many different directions and is as close to it has ever been to being a failed state, one can hardly expect it rulers to admit that some of their people may have orchestrated the latest strike. If the Pakistani nation-state was a person, he or she would be showing all signs of passive aggressive behavior. It is no longer possible to explain it as an occasional behavioral trait. It now appears to be pathological. Fortunately, Pakistan is not an individual and still has some institutional corrective ability.

India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has mounted an extraordinary attack on Pakistan calling it a “fragile” and “irresponsible” government which has used terrorism as a state policy. This is by far the most explicit condemnation from a generally reticent political figure. Whether it resolves into something more dramatic, say for instance surgical military strikes against targets in Pakistan, is an open question. It is tempting to deride the comments as an example of impotent rage that India has been known to express; potent rage being military strikes of the kind Israel is currently carrying out in Gaza.

At some level, from a short-term perspective, it might make sense for India to mete out some matching punishment to those elements that carried out the Mumbai attacks. The only problem with surgical strikes as a device to raise the stakes against such future attacks is that they do not really end anything. The Israel-Gaza conflict is yet another illustration, if any more illustrations were needed, of the futility of wars. The only way one can rationalize limited military strikes from time to time as a necessary evil is to convince oneself that they are a price democracies must pay to defend the principle of democracy.

I am not sure if any political leadership can tell its people that in order for them to remain a democracy in the face of the odds as heavy as India is facing they would have to be ready to pay a recurring price in blood and treasure. There is no permanent solution to terror other than fundamentally reforming entire societies, a task which seems beyond the capacity of most countries in the world.

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.