MANIPAL, India, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- Since the
terror attacks on Mumbai five days ago, Indian security sources have promoted
evidence that the attackers were trained by elements of the Pakistani military.
While the field training took place at a
camp run by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency near Muzaffarabad in
Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, fluency in the handling of ordnance was taught at
another ISI safe house on the outskirts of Karachi.
Pakistan has done little to create
deniability about these connections or earlier links discovered by U.S.
intelligence agencies between the ISI and the July 7 bombing of the Indian
Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Many analysts see the top priority of
Pakistani intelligence as reversing India's path toward social stability and
economic growth. Still, why were so many telltale clues left behind in these
attacks that enraged the Indian public and made the world aware that India is
among the softest terrorist targets of the major democracies?
The hope of those who planned last week's
attack was that India would respond to the attacks the way it did to the attack
on its Parliament in 2001 -- by mobilizing troops on the Pakistan border and
creating an expectation that a full-scale, conventional India-Pakistan war was
imminent. At that time Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee's unwise decision to
"bluff" the Pakistanis into cooperating with India by the threat of
war boomeranged on New Delhi. Foreign missions evacuated their nationals in a
panic and business confidence plunged.
Even at that time, it was known to policymakers in most major capitals that India was bluffing, and that the genial Vajpayee would never actually go to war. Yet they participated in the hysteria, especially the United States, where there is a thriving industry of so-called conflict-resolution specialists whose declared mission is to stop India and Pakistan from going to war with each other.
Even at that time, it was known to policymakers in most major capitals that India was bluffing, and that the genial Vajpayee would never actually go to war. Yet they participated in the hysteria, especially the United States, where there is a thriving industry of so-called conflict-resolution specialists whose declared mission is to stop India and Pakistan from going to war with each other.
Both countries are aware that a war would
be suicidal for Pakistan and severely damaging for India. So the specialists
will be able to toast their imagined success in keeping the peace, thereby
securing more funding from their less-informed patrons.
Those within the military establishment
in Pakistan who enabled the Mumbai operation are now waiting for the government
of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to go the way of Vajpayee and send
additional Indian troops to the border. In anticipation of such a move, they
already have frozen selected deployments of reinforcements to the Federally
Administered Tribal Areas -- the frontier region of Pakistan that has become
the new home of al-Qaida -- and issued provisional orders for sending
additional forces and equipment to the border with India.
The reason is simple: Having no desire to
eliminate al-Qaida, these military commanders are seeking to use the
"threat from India" as an excuse for inaction on the western
frontier. They will seek to explain their patent unwillingness to engage the
terrorists by pointing to the need to bolster defenses against an Indian
attack.
Unfortunately for them, this time around
there is zero chance of India repeating the mistake of 2001, which was to
mobilize when it was clear that war was never going to be an option. Also,
intelligence agencies worldwide have better reach into the Pakistan military
than previously.
In reality, the next war involving Indian
and Pakistani troops is likely to be both sides acting together to take out the
jihadis. But this will have to await a cleansing of the pro-jihadi elements
from the officer corps of the Pakistani army, a necessary process that the
present army chief is resisting.
Those Western commentators and analysts
cultivated by the Pakistani army have begun churning out analyses speaking of
"heightened tensions" between India and Pakistan. Foolishly, U.S.
President George W. Bush has fanned the flames of such inspired speculation by
inserting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice into the region, rather than
adopting an attitude of "business as usual." Rice, in desperate need
of some -- any -- perceived diplomatic success, can be expected to follow the
playbook of the South Asia crisis management specialists by hinting at
substantive tensions that do not in fact exist, at least on the Indian side.
Aware that both Pakistani President Asif
Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani are blameless with regard to
the Mumbai attacks, the Indian government of Manmohan Singh has been careful
not to place any blame on the civilian leadership in Pakistan.
The Mumbai attack was a Pakistani
military operation, in which even the navy was involved, as reported by India
Today. The civilian government had no role in it, nor was it informed of the
planning and execution of the attack.
By continuing to regard the present
Pakistani military as part of the solution to the problem of global terrorism
rather than as a principal target, the United States and its NATO allies are
creating the conditions that will allow jihadis to breed in the region in
sufficient numbers to be able to launch attacks against targets in the United
States and Europe.
The civilian administration in Pakistan,
led by Zardari, needs assistance to secure control over the military. Next the
jihadi elements must be purged from the Pakistan officer corps if the country
is to be rescued from the jihadist nightmare into which it has fallen,
undoubtedly due to major policy errors of the Western powers since the 1980s.
Recent statements by U.S. President-elect
Barack Obama reveal a dangerous incomprehension about ground realities in the
region. No solution is possible over Kashmir or other pending India-Pakistan
issues until the Pakistani military comes under civilian control and is
cleansed of the jihadi elements that control much of its officer corps.
Those who planned the Mumbai attacks to
create an alibi for their refusal to take out al-Qaida in the tribal regions
will be disappointed. This time India will not fall into the trap laid by the
Pakistani military by sending additional troops to the border and creating war
hysteria that would divert attention away from the ongoing campaign against
al-Qaida.
-(Professor M.D. Nalapat is vice chair of
the Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO peace chair and professor of
geopolitics at Manipal University.)
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