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Back from the brink
After sabre-rattling, India sidesteps Pak army trap to start a warThe dying year could have ended in a nuclear war. Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari picked up his phone and thought he heard Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee threatening him, as loan recovery agents do. A scared Zardari alerted Pakistan's air defence, and told US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice what he had done. Had Zardari alerted his strategic nuclear command (Pakistan believes in first use), Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, too, would have. One miscalculation could have led to one of them pressing the launch button. Anyway, the comic episode demonstrated to the world how fragile Pakistan's politico-military higher command is, and how immature its leaders are. They did not even seem to know that foreign ministers normally call up their counterparts. Even if Mukherjee wanted to speak to Zardari, he would have first informed the diplomatic missions and checked if the president was willing to take his call. Naturally, Mukherjee was more amused than livid when he was told of the episode. While niceties of diplomacy were lost on Pakistani leaders, India deliberately shed nuances of diplomacy. Minister of State for External Affairs E. Ahmed read the charge-sheet in plain English at the United Nations Security Council: "A group of 10 terrorists from the global terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Toiba reached Mumbai in the evening of November 26, 2008. The group divided themselves into four smaller groups and proceeded to pre-selected targets, which included a café and two major hotels…. The attack was conducted like a commando operation indicating that the perpetrators had received professional training.... Nine terrorists were killed by our security forces while one of them was apprehended. His interrogation has revealed that they were trained in Pakistan and were launched from a ship from Karachi." No statement could have been more straight, putting the blame squarely on Pakistan. Ahmed then rattled the sabre: "India will act to safeguard and protect its people from such heinous attacks.... The Charter of the United Nations and provisions of international law, including the right of self-defence, give us the framework to fulfil these responsibilities." By now Washington put pressure on Islamabad to act against terror groups and rogue ISI elements, while Moscow advised Delhi to exercise caution. "Do not yield to provocation, is our advice," said Russian Ambassador Vyacheslav Trubnikov. Islamabad saw an opportunity in heeding Washington's advice. By arresting Lashkar and Jaish-e-Mohammad commanders, it thought it could effectively deflect attention from its army and ISI who had given the terrorists "professional training" as Ahmed had alleged. Delhi saw through the game and said it was "not satisfied". As Parliament debated the issue, indications from South Block were that India might move to cancel the dialogue process, while holding out the threat of surgical strikes on terror camps. In fact, a quick assessment made in the war room in South Block revealed that most targets were within India's artillery (45km) or Prithvi (250km) range. "We can inflict punishment without crossing the border or LoC," said an Army officer. All the same, India's attempt was not to fall into the trap set by the ISI and the Pak army, who wanted to enter into some sort of a truce with the insurgents on the Afghan border and move east. Interestingly, an all-party meeting held in Islamabad after the Indian sabre-rattling took note of a report that quoted an army official that the problems between Pakistan and the Taliban were based on "miscommunication and misunderstanding" and that Taliban leaders like Baitullah Mahsud and Jalaluddin Haqqani were great Pakistani patriots who would fight alongside the army against India. The politico-strategic logic was simple: If the Taliban were Pakistan's boy-scouts, why kill them at the instance of the Americans who have a problem with them in Afghanistan? Pakistan could leave that war to the US, and move 80,000 soldiers from the Afghan border to the east to confront India. The Pak army had other problems, too, in the west. Nearly 2,000 soldiers had died in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas war in which 80,000 heavily armed troops are facing 3.5 million people. More alarmingly, since the locals are mostly Pushtuns, there is grumbling among the Pushtun elements within the army itself. The army brass had to post out several battalion commanders (colonels) for having openly spoken out in favour of the Pushtun cause. Nearly one-fourth of the army consists of Pushtuns, with Pushtun officers consisting of 15 to 22 per cent in most units. Indian agencies are now convinced that the ISI had timed the attack also to influence the Obama team's Afghanistan-Pakistan policy, which is yet to be formulated. "The US does not know how to exit from Afghanistan," said an intelligence analyst in Delhi. "Islamabad is trying to tell Washington that both Afghanistan and Pakistan's western frontiers can be managed if a moderate, Pakistan-friendly Taliban is allowed to take control of Afghanistan. That would leave the US free to wage its global war on al Qaeda." Many in the Obama team are willing to have a negotiated settlement with the Taliban elements. Recently, The Washington Post reported, "Obama is open to supporting discussions between the Afghan government and 'reconcilable' elements of the Taliban, a nascent effort of which the state department [under George Bush] has been fairly dismissive." The Zardari establishment in Islamabad has reportedly been telling the Obama team that a substantial portion of the Taliban is "more opportunistic than ideologically committed". Apparently, sensing the mood of the new administration, General David McKiernan, commander of NATO and US troops in Afghanistan, recently said that the idea of "reconciliation, I think, is appropriate, and we'll be there to provide support within our mandate." If Obama is willing to do business with a Pakistan-controlled, 'moderate' Taliban, there is no need for the Pakistani army to be fighting a human-costly war on its western border. The danger for India in this approach is that, Islamabad, while seeking what is called a 'regional approach' to the Afghanistan issue would also like to drag the Kashmir issue into it. Already, pro-Pakistan think tanks in the United States believe that a world-innocent Obama could be brought around to this line of thinking, which even envisages formation of a 'control group' to address not only the Pakistan-Afghanistan problems but also Kashmir. Already, Islamabad and its backers in Beijing have raised the issue of Kashmir in the context of the Mumbai attacks. For India, the only way to keep Kashmir a bilateral issue is to continue talking. After all, that is what politicians, taking in a lot of vitriol of late, are good at. Posted by: john frum 2008-12-14 |
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