Revenge is a dish best served cold

Some Indians believe that November 26 is India’s Nine-Eleven. And, following from that, argue that India should respond just as the United States did — by making war on the country responsible for sheltering the terrorists. This sounds logical, and even reasonable, for something so horrendous as the Mumbai massacre deserves condign punishment, and hasn’t Barack Obama said that a sovereign nation like India has the right to protect itself?
The flaw in the argument is what realpolitik is all about. The US as a preponderant military power, with a blessed geography, can go half way around the world and make war on two countries, not just one, without facing any direct retribution. The wars have cost the US a great deal of money, but the loss of the lives of some 5,000 soldiers is hardly proportional to the death and destruction that has visited Iraq and Afghanistan.
India is not in that position. An air strike at a camp in Azad Kashmir is likely to be met by a retaliatory strike in Jammu & Kashmir. You bomb Muridke, and the Pakistanis are likely to hit an equivalent target in India. A ground attack on one part of the border could be met with by a counter thrust on another. In other words, there is no way in which we can give Pakistan a bloody nose without getting somewhat bloodied ourselves.
So, any war would become a slug-fest and the UN would soon step in. The international sympathy and support for India would melt away and the Mumbai massacre would mutate into an “Indo-Pakistani” problem. At this point, someone could append a clause to a UN resolution saying that not only must there be a ceasefire, but steps taken to settle the J&K dispute.

Capacity

Put simply, the US has the capacity to exercise military power and block any retaliation, military or diplomatic, whereas India does not. There is little value in using the military option, unless you can be sure that it is the bad guys who get the chastisement, not the chastiser. As of now only the most foolhardy military commander will offer such an assurance vis-à-vis Pakistan.
This is uncomfortable logic, but there it is. Its primary lessons come from the 2001-2002 near-war with Pakistan. India mobilized some 700,000 troops to teach Pakistan a lesson in the wake of the attack on the Parliament House. Islamabad mobilized its own army and used the opportunity to crack down on sectarian groups, even while permitting the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba to relocate in Azad Kashmir.
Later in 2002, on May 14, there was yet another attack, this time provocatively targeting the families of military personnel at the Kaluchak cantonment near Jammu. As many as 31 people, mostly families of jawans, were killed in the massacre carried out by three terrorists who had come from Pakistan.

The Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus (aka Victoria Terminus) where most of the people were killed by two terrorists including Ajmal Kasab.

Despite an army ready to go to war, India did nothing. The reason was clear — there was no guarantee of a clear military outcome in our favour.
The reason why we cannot behave militarily as the Americans can is not only because we confront a nuclear-armed country, but also because India does not have the military capacity to carry out a military attack on Pakistan which will be free of the risk of retaliation.

Coalition

As President Pervez Musharraf put it in an interview to the Christian Science Monitor in September 2002 after the threat of war had passed “… my military judgment was that they [Indians] would not attack us… It was based on the deterrence of our conventional forces. The force levels that we maintain, in the army, navy, air force is of a level which deters aggression. Militarily…there is a certain ratio required for an offensive force to succeed. The ratios that we maintain are far above that — far above what a defensive force requires to defend itself....”
Even taking into account the Musharrafian bluster, there is more than a grain of truth in this assertion. The only way in which India could have overcome the tyranny of numbers is to have had much greater mobility and fire-power. But that is not the case. India’s armed forces follow archaic organizational principles and doctrines that do not allow them to combine their army, air force and navy to fight a single, integrated battle where all three services combine to deliver a single punch.
As it is, the army does not have adequate mobile artillery or real-time information systems to conduct long-range precision strikes. Our Air Force disdains supporting the army, and is, in any case, not geared for deep-penetration ground attacks of the kind the US and Israel specialize in.
It is an uncomfortable fact that Pakistan has fine-tuned a strategy of hitting us using proxies, even while holding out the threat of nuclear retaliation were we to use our military to hit back. The challenge for India is to craft another kind of strategy — one that understands that political authority in Pakistan is fragmented, and that while there are many elements that wish to live in peace with India, there are some that are determined to prevent this from happening. So, there is a need for a nuanced policy that encourages the former and isolates the latter. One way to do this is to take advantage of the international climate and build a global coalition to isolate the jehadi forces in Pakistan, even while encouraging those forces in Pakistan who are for peaceful co-existence.
The prospects for building such a coalition are very good. No country in the world, probably not even China, is comfortable with what is happening in Pakistan. This is the reason why they did not stand in the way of the UN Security Council putting the Jamaat-ud-dawa and Hafiz Mohammed Sayeed on a list of people and institutions associated with the Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
India and the world needs to investigate and analyse the Mumbai attacks thoroughly and act in a manner that will effectively prevent another attack, as well as ensure the dismantling of the jehadi infrastructure in Pakistan. This inevitably leads to the need to do something about the corporate culture of the Pakistan Army.

Beneficiary

The question to ask is: Who is the principal beneficiary of the Mumbai attack? It is not Asif Zardari or Geelani, or, notwithstanding the conspiracy theorists, the US, Israel or Hindu chauvinists. It is that part of the Pakistan Army which remains open to the jehadi temptation.
For the past year and more, these forces have been down in the dumps. They have been compelled to fight a deeply unpopular war against the Pakistani Taliban in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. Going by the 2001 book, a massive terrorist attack on Mumbai ought to have provoked India into launching a limited military strike in Pakistan.
In such circumstances, the Pakistan Army could have ended their anti-Taliban campaign and marched off to counter the Indian challenge. They would once again have become heroes in the eyes of the public, and the US would have found it difficult to question the decision. A subsidiary consequence of this would have been an end to Asif Zaradari’s peace rhetoric relating to India.
Because generals usually learn to fight the last war better, the Pakistani plot has failed. India has not reacted militarily. The Pakistan Army must continue its war in the west, and at the same time face increasing international opprobrium and pressure with regard to their proxy warriors. The game has just begun, but with patience and fortitude, we can yet prevail. Revenge, as they say, is a dish best served cold.
This article was first published in Mail Today December 18, 2008

Civil society movement is the last hope for Pakistan

To say that Pakistan is in dire straits is to state the obvious. Extremists stalk the land and the writ of the state does not run on chunks of strategic territory in Balochistan, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the North West Frontier Province.
While its army seems to be biding its time in the barracks, its civil society is in despair over the antics of its politicians who are unable to move forward from their historic achievement of having replaced a military dictator through largely peaceful means. But like all events that are too close to be viewed accurately, there is another side to this.
This is in the achievement of the Pakistani civil society and mainstream political parties in successfully replacing a brazen and mendacious military dictator through entirely peaceful means. Their pressure achieved the impossible — a coalition of rivals, the Pakistan People’s Party and the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz)— to form the government. Now they must ensure that these parties find some way of ensuring that their rivalry does not provide another opportunity for the army to intervene in the affairs of the country.

Narrative

Ever since General Pervez Musharraf seized power in 1999, we have been presented with two discourses — that the general is the best means of saving Pakistan from itself. Given the Taliban in Afghanistan and the undercurrents of jihadi violence in Pakistan, the only person who could deliver was the man who had the only functioning instrumentality — the army — under his control. In that sense he was good for the US, and from 2004 onwards he also became good for India. He was the man who preached “enlightened moderation” and had the guts to articulate a non-traditional solution for the Jammu and Kashmir dispute and the person who was able to order a ceasefire along the Line of Control.
The second discourse, the one that demanded the rule of law, accountability and democracy was seen as a dangerously unstable development that could lead to the mullahs gaining control of the country and its nuclear weapons. So it was not surprising that the US ignored Musharraf’s refusal to doff his uniform as promised in 2004 and remained unconvinced by the evidence that he was playing fast and loose with them in relation to the Taliban thereafter. The Americans more or less remained silent through 2007 when he dismissed the Chief Justice of Pakistan and later declared Emergency. They ignored the lawyers movement which captured the imagination of the country’s civil society. Musharraf remained their stable ally in the war against terror and their hope for a moderate Pakistan.
Now both those story lines have come to an end and a new one must be started. The only problem is that it refuses to get going. Yet its outline is visible. In the past six months the Pakistani civil society has created a massive movement that has managed to oust a mendacious dictator without a general breakdown or strife. This movement has been largely secular and one of its great achievements has been to marginalise the mullah parties of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal. At the end of the day, a nation’s character depends on the resolve of its citizens and Pakistanis have shown that they are as determined as any people to seize their destiny and shape it on their own future as a democratic and secular state.
This is the problem that Asif Zardari confronts as he makes his move to become the President of the country. The powerful upsurge that overthrew Musharraf was in great measure shaped by the civil society movement demanding the reinstatement of Chief Justice Ifthikar Muhammad Chaudhary. Without his reinstatement, the restoration of democracy will not be quite complete. Yet Zardari knows that he confronts a great hazard in reinstating a Chief Justice who may have been removed by Musharraf for his maverick ways, but whose removal has transformed the Pakistani judiciary and civil society and steeled their demand for a reinstatement of the rule of law and accountability.

Equations

The new equations shaping up in Pakistan seem to have excited a great deal of interest. The report that US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Richard Boucher has rebuked US Ambassador to the United Nations, the Afghan-American Zalmay Khalilzad, is one manifestation of the situation. A day later comes the news that the White House has backed Mr. Khalilzad, who has had impressive credentials as a Bush administration insider.
Memories tend to be short and people have probably forgotten that the return of the Bhuttos to Pakistan was negotiated by the United States. This involved Musharraf invoking the National Reconciliation Ordinance through which the Zardari-Bhutto financial peccadilloes were overlooked. So with the departure of Musharraf, the US is no doubt hoping that the erstwhile consort of Benazir Bhutto will be their point man in the region.
The US needs to worry about the fate of its war in Afghanistan, just as India has to worry about Kashmir and the terrorist offensive emanating from forces within Pakistan. The elements in the equation are the same. Some call them rogue agents, others say they are within the Inter Services Intelligence itself. I would argue that they are what is today termed as the “deep establishment”— an informal network of military leaders, politicians, bureaucrats and intellectuals. All of them are Pakistani patriots who see destabilising neighbours as a means of shaping and protecting their own country’s shaky identity.

Reconciliation

In all this, one figure stands out — Mr. Nawaz Sharif. His estrangement with the Army seems to be quite deep considering how close he came to the guillotine in 1999. His alienation from his erstwhile allies, the Jamaat-e-Islami, ensures that he is isolated in the present set-up. His present predicament does not brook easy answers. Having been outmaneuvered by Zardari who has his own man as governor in Punjab where the PML(N) runs a minority government, he does not have too many options at this juncture. On the other hand the PPP has managed to retain the loyalty of the Mohajir Quami Movement and Awami National Party which are supporting its presidential candidate Asif Zardari.
The task of the civilian set up is not easy. The 2008 election outcome in the National Assembly and the Provinces do not give much room to either the PPP or the PML(N). Even then, their political quarrels are only the side-show in a country which is in the throes of severe internal strife and is already witnessing a flight of capital and surging inflation.
In the 1990s, the PML and the PPP ran alternate governments. Both used the opportunity of being in power to undermine the other side. The net gainer from their conflict was the army which then kept them out of power from 1999 to February 2008.
The Pakistan Army is lying low because, first, they have lost a great deal of credibility with the people of the country. Second, they need to conserve their energies to deal with the challenges to Pakistan’s internal security, given what virtually seems to be a Pakhtun uprising on their western border. And third, they are aware that each time a general takes charge, it becomes that much more difficult to hold on to it. Like their South Asian cousins, the Indians, Pakistanis, too, seem to have developed a taste for democracy.
This article was first published by Mail Today August 28, 2008

The time is ripe for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to travel to Pakistan

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has achieved a lot in his four years as prime minister. The country has witnessed an average growth rate of 8.6 per cent, probably the highest in its post-independence history, his government has passed several landmark legislations—the Right to Information Act, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and the Forest Rights Act. He has negotiated a path-breaking international agreement that will end the technology and nuclear materials embargo on India. There has been no incidence of mass violence, such as that in Gujarat in 2002 during the rule of the NDA. Neither has there been any major security lapse like the Kargil incursion during its watch. With the massive loan waiver and pay commission handout, the UPA government at first signaled that it was set for general elections, but now is seems that they are likely to take place on schedule in 2009.
So, the PM has one full year in office remaining. What should he do? The legislative impulse has run dry, so he can dole out more sops, but with inflation around, that would be a Sisyphean labour. He can brood about the Indo-US nuclear deal and how the Left has blocked his efforts to further liberalise the economy. Or he can travel to Pakistan.
A visit by an Indian Prime Minister has been overdue by at least two years. This is a most opportune moment for such a visit. There is parliamentary majority, if not consensus at home, to ensure that any forward movement with Pakistan will not get gridlocked, as in the case of the nuclear deal. That the new elected government in Pakistan, too, is ready to do business with India from the point where President Pervez Musharraf left off, points to a significant measure of consensus there as well.
There is a new government and a new mood in Islamabad. It comes at the end of an intense phase of political turmoil, one in which India did not figure as a villain. The process has weakened the baleful influence of the Pakistan army in relation to India and shifted the equilibrium against fundamentalist forces in the country. Because of this, the government does not feel it necessary to tailor their political suit to the army's cloth. Time and again, civilian leaders felt compelled to adopt postures at the behest of the army, or with a view of keeping on the right side of the generals. The situation has now changed to the point where the civilians feel compelled to maintain a healthy distance from the army.

Sir Creek

But what really makes for a compelling case for a prime ministerial visit now is the remarkable fact that though Pakistan was wracked by intense political turmoil in the past year, the India-Pakistan peace process— begun in January 2004—maintained its momentum. Through last year the fourth round of the composite dialogue continued apace. There were important gains on the Sir Creek issue, forward movement in opening up air services between the two countries as well as cross-border movement of people and trade.Through traffic at Wagah has increased trade volumes enormously.In May, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee will go to Pakistan to wrap up the fourth round of dialogue and set the stage for the fifth.
The two sides now need a fresh impetus to resolve their larger problems. Such a push can only be accomplished at a summit level meeting. There are two issues that can reach closure almost immediately— Siachen and Sir Creek.
The tenth round of talks on Sir Creek were held in Islamabad in May 2007. They were based on a joint survey of the area that took place earlier that year. During the ninth round, in December 2006, Pakistan had already agreed to settle the maritime boundary using the internationally accepted “equidistance method”.
These are major developments, since it means that the two countries are now dealing with a common set of data which could make it easier to determine a mutually acceptable baseline point—the last point where the land boundary ends and the maritime boundary begins. This, in turn, will be the key to working out a mutually acceptable maritime boundary, the lack of which leads to hundreds of fishermen of either side being arrested by the authorities on both sides. But the issue has gained salience because there are expectations that the sea bed contains gas and oil reserves which neither side can exploit till the boundary is fixed. There is another reason why Sir Creek needs quick settlement. The UN Convention on Law of the Seas deadline ends in 2009, and if the two countries cannot submit a joint document certifying their maritime boundary, they will not get the opportunity to extend this boundary from the current 370 to 650 kms under a UN plan.

Siachen

Agreements in 1989 and 1992 would have created a zone of disengagement in the Siachen region. But the process has been stuck because Pakistan does not want to authenticate the positions their forces occupy. Afraid of a Kargil-like move where Pakistanis disputed the Line of Control in Kashmir— even though its coordinates were jointly determined by surveyors of both sides— India has been balking. The Pakistanis can be persuaded to accept the Sir Creek model and accept a joint survey to authenticate the positions of the two sides. The Pakistanis were not willing to authenticate the positions earlier because contrary to their claims, their army held no positions on the glacier. With the architect of Kargil in the dog-house, India can move to settle the Siachen issue without fear of Pakistan reneging.

Kashmir

On the Mother of all Issues—Kashmir—too, there has been movement, albeit more subtle.The recent visit and meetings of Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah with the new Pakistani leadership indicates how times have changed. Equally significant have been the remarks of PPP leader Asif Zardari that the issue could perhaps be placed on the back burner. Kashmir no longer sells well in domestic Pakistani politics.
Yet, this should not lull India into any sense of complacency. New Delhi needs to continue a serious and substantive engagement with Pakistan and the Kashmiri parties to resolve the problem once and for all. Though the UPA government has done a lot in this area, much more needs to be done to reach a closure on this debilitating issue. Unfortunately, when negotiations with Islamabad slowed down in 2007, New Delhi perceptibly slackened its efforts towards a settlement with the Kashmiri parties. This was needless and short-sighted.
The bottom line today is that the India-Pakistan situation offers a tailor-made opportunity for a breakthrough. One that will not be based on some quick calculation of electoral gain or any personal "place in the history books" syndrome, but solid and patient diplomacy going back four years and an earnest desire for peace on both sides of the border.

This article was first published in Mail Today April 10, 2008