Singh changes the pitch with Pakistan by cricket diplomacy (The National)

M.D. Nalapat

India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was born in what would become Pakistan in 1947, which is perhaps why he has so often sought accommodation with his western neighbour. In recent years, Mr Singh has quietly overcome scepticism in India's home and external affairs ministries, not to mention the intelligence agencies, who see the hand of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency behind every act of violence.

But even Mr Singh could not overcome the public's hostility after the Mumbai attacks in 2008, which New Delhi blamed on Pakistani military auxiliaries.

When both countries qualified for the semi-finals of the Cricket World Cup 2011, it took less than a day for the Indian prime minister to decide to use the event to cool temperatures on both sides. He invited Pakistan's president and prime minister to attend the match last Wednesday in the small town of Mohali, and Prime Minister Youssef Raza Gilani accepted.

Although the invitation has been depicted as an impulsive decision, Mr Singh had been looking for a way past the deadlock for the past two years. Economics ranks first and second in Mr Singh's affections, with politics following in a distant third. For years, he has striven for closer economic ties between India and Pakistan to build mutual prosperity but also strengthen the peace constituencies on both sides.

Just before the match, a meeting of the two countries' home secretaries in New Delhi dispelled considerable scepticism. The talks saw a significant change in the tone of discussions, with both sides foregoing the temptation to grandstand in front of the media. In New Delhi, the visit cooled suspicions that Pakistan's civilian leadership were complicit in the Mumbai attacks.

Corruption creating chaos in India (PO)

M D Nalapat

Especially since the 1971 defeat of the Pakistan Army in the east, the ISI has been seeking to weaken - and if possible destroy - the Indian State. The organisatioin has been funding, training and equipping multiple sources in India and abroad in furtherance of this objective. However, it has thus far had very little success, mainly because India is too big and too un-coordinated to suffer serious damage from the kind of tactics that the ISI specialises in. However, over the years, an enemy of the Indian people has emerged that is proving to be a potent threat to the future of the Indian Union. This is the shameless, uncontrolled greed of those at the apex of the political system in India.

Any visitor to the numerous discos of the 5-star hotels of Delhi will spot there a crowd of youths whose common factor is hedonism and access to cash. In selected discos can be recognized the sons and daughters of top politicians, officials and businesspersons, all having a wonderful time. This Community of Hedonists acts as a bridge between their parents, seeing to it that an opposition leader - for instance - avoids targeting the family of a ruling party VVIP. The daughters of businesspersons mix and mingle with the sons of high officials, and vice-versa, thereby helping to create a bond between the parents that ensures quick and reliable - if expensive - service for the businessperson at the hands of the official. Of course, the Intelligence Bureau stays far away from such dance halls and the farmhouses known to be the haunts of the fun-loving offspring of India’s elite.This, despite the fact that several foreign agencies and missions send attractive males and females to such locations,to ensnare the children of VVIPs.So loyal is Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram to his boss Sonia Gandhi,that he has converted the Intelligence Bureau into a personal detective agency designed to protect the First Family of India. Rather than focus on threats to the people and to the state,Chidambaram has reconfigured the IB to meet threats to the primacy of the ruliong family. Because this columnist is a critic of VVIPs (and has been so for four decades in journalism), not only the telephones of himself and his spouse,but informed friends claim that even that of his chauffeur are being monitored - clandestinely and illegally - by the IB.

Video: Prof. Nalapat on Insurgency (Part 1)

Pakistan's moment of truth (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Founded as it was by a bacon-friendly, whiskey-drinking Muhammad Ali Jinnah, by the end of the 1950s – once almost all non-Muslims had been driven out of Pakistan – the country remained only loosely tethered to the lifestyle encouraged by the ulema, the body of Koranic scholars that has appeared as the indispensable intermediary between believers and God in the Islamic world.

Led by officers trained under the British, the Pakistan army in particular remained secular, although it had used religion in 1947-48 to try and pry loose Kashmir from India, the country to which its maharaja had acceded.

All this changed with Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s fateful appointment of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq as chief of army staff, superseding seven officers, all of whom were better qualified for the job. Bhutto chose Zia on the basis of the fawning missives he used to receive from the general, and the deferential – indeed cringing -- manner in which Zia introduced Bhutto to his men during a prime ministerial visit in 1975.

Such suppleness of spine convinced Bhutto that in Zia he would have a servile henchman. Instead, a year later, the general displaced Bhutto in a coup and executed him shortly thereafter.

Zia, at that time the only Wahabbi general in the Pakistan army, swiftly introduced changes in the institution to bring it in sync with the extreme philosophy of Ibn Wahhab, whose toxic creed had been backed by first the United Kingdom and subsequently the United States as a counter first to Turks, then Arab nationalists and finally, the Soviets. Zia aligned his country firmly with other Wahabbi states, and began to fill the officer ranks of the army with recruits from the numerous Islamic seminaries, or madrassas, that had begun to proliferate in Pakistan during the 1960s.

Losing Minds and Hearts in Iraq (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — India has been at the business end of jihadi-funded insurgency since 1981, the year in which Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) began to organize a "Khalistan" movement that would in a couple of years launch a terror campaign in India's Punjab State. Although local members of the Sikh community declined to come on board, enough funds were raised from ethnic Sikhs in the United States and Canada to provide the funding for a vicious struggle that lasted till the mid-1990s.

The Khalistan movement blended seamlessly with the other jihadist operation in Kashmir, an insurgency set off by those who returned to the Indian-held part of the state after receiving training in Pakistan from 1982 to 1988. It is still smoldering, and has thus far cost 73,000 lives, mostly in the killings of Muslims by Wahabbis.

In 1989 the USSR was defeated in Afghanistan and the ISI transferred its attention to Kashmir. Unfortunately for them, New Delhi proved a tougher proposition than Moscow, the reason being the manner in which the security forces conducted anti-jihadist operations. Given their low level of financial resources, these had perforce to depend on the "software" of psychological warfare against the jihadis, placing emphasis on changing of mindsets and preventing of unity between those disaffected with Indian rule.

In contrast, the United States has thrown into battle in Iraq a (usually wasted) flood of material resources, with far less success than the Indian armed forces have shown in Kashmir, where the jihadis have been beaten to the ground and are now desperately clutching at diplomacy to rescue themselves from the pit they have been pushed into.