The long war demands a changed approach

A week is a long time in a crisis. Last week I wrote about how war should not be our first response and that the India-Pakistan military balance was such that there could be no useful outcome from the use of force. I had argued that if we set out to give Pakistan a bloody nose, we could be bloodied too.
There were three assumptions behind my reasoning. The first was that the government of Pakistan, including its armed forces, were sincere when they said they were appalled by the Mumbai massacre and that they would do everything to help us to get to the bottom of the issue. The second, flowing from the first, was that Mr Zardari and his government were one with India in delivering a bloody nose to the terrorists and non-state actors operating in Pakistan. The third was that India was not keen on any option that could involve some loss to itself.
A week later, it seems that all three of my assumptions were wrong. Pakistan has decided to brazen it out. After having gone through the motions of proscribing the Jamaat-ud-dawa (because of the UN Security Council decision and not to oblige India, as their Minister of Defence insists), the enthusiasm to aid India has vanished. It has been replaced by a systematic and organized campaign of barracking, whose goal seems to be to protect those involved in the attacks by raising the spectre of war.
India’s Prime Minister correctly noted on Tuesday that “the issue is not war, it is terror and territory in Pakistan being used to promote, aid and abet terror here.” Significantly, the PM noted that “non-state actors were practicing terrorism, aided and abetted by state establishments.” To me it appears he is saying that the Lashkar were aided by the Pakistan Army’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate.

Dynamics

This seems to have a startling confirmation from across the border in Pakistan. One of the most telling responses has been from the real boss of Pakistan — General Pervez Ashfaq Kayani. In the past month, neither he nor the Pakistani military establishment has uttered a single word regretting the Mumbai massacre. The ISI, which has been mentioned as a co-conspirator, reports to General Kayani. The general could have taken the opportunity to tell the world that since the ISI was mentioned, he had personally looked at the records and could assure everyone that his organization was in no way involved in the horrific event.
But he has said nothing to that effect. Instead, he has blustered about how Pakistan was prepared for war and that the Pakistani armed forces would mount “an equal response within minutes” if India carried out any kind of strike. This seems to be the behaviour of a cornered guilty party, rather than that of one who has nothing on his or his institution’s conscience.




So, the government in New Delhi is faced with little option but to contemplate a chastisement strategy that could cost India some. But the mood in the country is such that the government would pay a higher price for doing nothing. In other words, it has the public backing for the use of any measure that would send a message to Pakistan that enough is enough.
In my article, I had expressed my hypothesis that the attack had been initiated by elements in the Pakistan army. I still think this is correct. At its lowest point in history, and faced with a debilitating war against people of their own ilk, the ISI came up with the terrible strategy of attacking India and provoking an Indian response. Two months ago, Asif Zardari and his civilian government were riding high; today they have tamely lined up behind Kayani and are hiding behind the national flag.
There is an important subsidiary reason why the international community needs to take the Mumbai massacre very seriously. Terrorist organisations have an internal dynamic. These are dependent on successful operations which enable them to expand their area of influence and boost recruitment. It is important to disrupt this process either by unearthing underground cells by arrest, choking funds, or by military action that targets their overground infrastructure like camps.
If India does not react adequately to the Mumbai strikes, the Lashkar will be tempted to step its attacks up to a higher and presumably more horrifying level. The logic here is that after being formally banned in Pakistan in January 2002, the ISI relocated Lashkar camps to Azad Kashmir. Simultaneously, it began to use its Bangladeshi proxies and other assets to create the “Indian Mujahideen” who would be Indian recruits, using local material to make bombs, but under the command and control of the ISI.

Mumbai

But the serial bombing campaign across Indian cities in the past few years has not yielded much return. There have been no communal riots or signs that India has been seriously hurt economically. Besides their ability to plant the bombs, the IM achieved little in terms of jihadi goals.
This could have been the trigger for the Mumbai attack. And as the logic goes, Mumbai has united rather than disunited the nation, and so there is a need to press home the idea of an even more intense strike. India needs to break these dynamics, and it can do so with the help of the government of Pakistan and the international community.

Pathology

But if this help is not forthcoming, it must go it alone. The price of failure will be an even higher intensity of attacks and could well culminate in the use of nuclear weapons as well. Don’t forget, these are supposed to be in the custody of the Pakistan Army.
A month after the Mumbai strike, we have the strange situation where Pakistan has seized the mantle of victimhood. The issue, according to its leaders, is not that of a terrorist strike struck at a premier metropolis of a neighbour, killing nearly 200 people, injuring hundreds and terrorizing thousands, whose origins are in Pakistan, but that that neighbour is now allegedly threatening military action against Pakistan.
There is a strange pathology at work here and New Delhi needs to carefully feel its way towards a response. But being careful does not necessarily mean that it should be indecisive. It should not to be pushed to military action, but it should not rule it out either.
The issue should be seen from the perspective of the outcome. At present there is nothing more important than ending the dynamic of terrorist violence in the country. One part of this requires an internal response in terms of institutions, doctrines and action. The other part is external.
India has been found wanting in both because it has so far seen terrorist attacks as episodic distractions. The unfortunate reality is that we are in the midst of a long war which requires changed strategies and tactics. The sooner we begin to act on this realisation, the better.
This article appeared in Mail Today December 26, 2008

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

Seven things we should not do to help the Islamic Republic of Pakistan

The general elections may be around the corner, but Pakistan continues to careen dangerously out of control. Specific incidents and events are not the issue, but the totality of developments that have been taking place, beginning last year.
A convenient date would be March 9, 2007, the fateful day on which President Pervez Musharraf began his ill-advised campaign to edge out Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry from the country’s Supreme Court. This enraged the community of lawyers, who have since led the civil protest movement against Musharraf.
Parallel to this, the general also managed to botch up the Lal Masjid situation. The mosque, located near the ISI headquarters in Islamabad, had a reputation for radicalism since the time of Zia ul Haq. It had links with the North West Frontier Province because it drew a number of its students from there. The mosque was used by radicals who railed against Musharraf’s US policy and even called for his assassination, yet he failed to act against it. In early 2007, students of the mosque’s two madarsas — one for men and the other for women — began to enforce a puritanical law in parts of Islamabad. They shut down video shops and assaulted people they said were involved in immoral activities.
Finally in July 2007, Musharraf sent in the army. A bitter clash took place, leaving scores dead. While the senior imam of the mosque was captured, his younger brother Abdul Rashid Ghazi was killed. The army action led to the breakdown of a truce between the Pakistan army and anti-government tribesmen in North and South Waziristan, and a spate of suicide bombings aimed at Pakistani army personnel, and even the ISI.
Musharraf’s meltdown has led to a great deal of nervousness across the world. Concerns over the safety of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal have been voiced in the US and India. But New Delhi has few options beyond tailing the US. For the present the Pakistan army remains a strong force and is unlikely to take kindly to any Indian intervention. Yet there are things that India can do to help Pakistan. But first New Delhi must understand that there are things it must not do to help Islamabad.

First, see Pakistan as a basket case. It is easy when you are up in South Asia, to see the other as down and out. It was just the other day, in the early 1990s, when in their arrogance of having helped the US win the jehad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, Islamabad thought India could be brought low by supporting separatist movements. In the wake of the 1989 elections, India was indeed in bad shape, its polity shot to hell, separatist movements taking roots in key states like Punjab and its economy in a shambles. The ISI could have been excused for thinking that one more push would have India come apart. But it did not. So, let’s be clear that Pakistan is not about to keel over, just as India was not at that time.

Second, New Delhi must not delay its internal negotiations with Kashmiri parties on the issue of autonomy or whatever. In the past year, while Musharraf has grappled with the judiciary and the mullahs, the India-Pakistan talks have maintained their formal continuity. But there has been little forward movement. But there is one element in which India does not need to involve Pakistan — the issue of internal democracy in Jammu & Kashmir. Addressing the second round table meet on Kashmir in May 2006, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had said that the first task was to see “what are those political institutions and arrangements which can strengthen the relationship between the Centre and the state.” In line with this he had set up a working group under former Justice Saghir Ahmad to come up with a report on the issue of autonomy or self-rule. Though four other working groups on issues relating to economy and cross-border trade have finished their reports, little or nothing has been heard about the workings of the autonomy group.

Third, India must not demand that the US and other countries accept Indian primacy in South Asia. This is a mug’s game. Indian primacy cannot be got by request or grant. It is an existential fact. Anyone who tries to deny it — like Pakistan has in the past 60 years — has had his head buried firmly in the sand.

Fourth, India must not pander to Pakistan's sense of entitlement on Kashmir or Afghanistan. Islamabad has no locus standi in J&K and we must deal with it as such. There are issues that have arisen in the wake of the Pakistan-engineered tribal invasion in 1947 — the creation of Azad Kashmir, the UN resolutions and the no-man's land status of the Northern Areas — that need to be worked out through negotiations, but not the status of the state.
In normal times — and you can count the period 1947-1979 as “normal” in the context of Pakistan-Afghanistan affairs — the relationship between the two was positively chilly. New Delhi need not insert itself into the equation to deny Pakistan what it did not have in the first place — a pliant Afghanistan. Pakistan’s ability to “manage” Afghanistan of the Taliban era was strictly limited. Islamabad is learning now that the seemingly barbarian Taliban were shrewder than the ISI thought. Instead of Pakistan getting strategic depth, it is the Taliban which has obtained it in the NWFP, Balochistan and Swat at the expense of the Pakistani central authority.

Fifth, we must not encourage fissiparous trends in Pakistan. In other words, do unto Islamabad what Islamabad has been doing to us. As long as Pakistan remains together even in a tattered form, there is hope that it can be repaired. But if it falls apart like Yugoslavia, there will be little chance of putting it back together again. To say that such a development would be counter-productive would be to make an understatement.

Sixth, New Delhi must not privilege the Pakistan Army over the mainstream political parties and civil society in the country. It is one thing to deal with the army when it wields power, it is quite another thing to be happy about it. India's strategic position must always be that the final settlement on anything will have to be with a democratically elected government. India’s relations with Musharraf have been quite proper, and they should continue to be so as long as he is the head of the government. But New Delhi needs to clearly put across the message that while it deals with the army, it does so at sufferance, and not because it thinks that the army is the only viable political institution in the country, because it is not. Fortunately, Musharraf’s own actions have brought this message home to Pakistan far more effectively than through anything that India could have done.

Seventh, we must not give up on Pakistan. It is tempting to say “The hell with you”, redouble the border fence, strengthen the army and maintain bare minimum relations with our western neighbour. This is not an option. While we need not worry about millions streaming across the border from a failed state, we need to understand that “shining” or “incredible” India will not be going anywhere if its neighbours, in this case Pakistan, do not go with it. A Great Power does not have the option of turning its back on failing neighbours.

In the meantime, the new army chief in Pakistan can take six steps to set things right: Get the president to resign, restore the Supreme Court and higher judiciary, set up a neutral caretaker government, get all-party consent for a neutral commission and then hold the elections.

The article was published in Mail Today February 12, 2008