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 It has been replaced by a systematic and organized campaign of barracking, whose goal seems to be to protect those involved in the attacks by raising the spectre of war.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

The Americans are caught between a rock and a hard place in Pakistan

Islamabad: Even as mainstream political forces “liberated” by the recent elections seek to stabilise the polity, Pakistan lurches towards newer crises. Inflationary pressures, manifest in the skyrocketing prices of atta, and power shortages, could lead to mass protests. But the more fundamental problem seems to be arising in the relationship of the country with the United States and what is called the global war on terror.
Pakistan has been a lead partner of the US in that war. It has received massive military and economic aid, some $10.5 billion in the last seven years, that has helped its armed forces to modernise themselves. But the current problems arise out of the Pakistani decision to negotiate a settlement with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan — a loose conglomeration of tribal insurgents spread from Swat to South Waziristan — who have been fighting the government for the last couple of years.
Since the new government came to power in February, an informal ceasefire has been in place. There have been several reports of agreements between the Pakistani government officials, who run the Federally Administered Tribal Areas from Islamabad, and the local insurgents. Though the newly elected Awami National Party of Asfandyar Ali Khan is committed to negotiating a settlement with the insurgents, and is attempting to do so in Swat, reports suggest that they have been kept out of the negotiations in the FATA area. Even now the negotiations are precariously poised. While Rehman Malik, the internal security adviser to Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani, is close to a deal with the Mehsud tribesmen in North Waziristan, there are no signs as yet of any arrangement with the more problematic Baitullah Mehsud whose base in South Waziristan was overwhelmed by the Pakistan Army in January.
The situation in parts of the Bajaur Agency and Darra Adam Khel remains tense. Last week's US air strike at Damdola village led to the death of eleven people, some of them militants. Given the limited ground forces, the US and NATO tend to use air power which leads to a lot of collateral casualties, which in turn feeds into the already high-levels of anti-American feelings in the area.
After two months of uneasy silence, the US has finally spoken. In a written testimony to a US congressional panel on Tuesday, Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said that Islamabad had not consulted the US on the issue and Washington had learnt of them from the media and had as a consequence expressed concerns about the negotiations to the Pakistani leaders. On the same day, Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dafadar Spanta criticised what he said was Pakistan's policy of “appeasing” the Taliban. Recalling the failed peace deal of 2006 that led to increased attacks across the border on Afghanistan, he said that Islamabad's current course was “wrong and dangerous policy”.

Failure

Depite claimed successes, in July 2007, the US National Intelligence Estimate on “The Terrorist Threat to the US Homeland” noted that the task of securing the FATA area, a key goal of the US intervention, had not been completed. Indeed, the Al Qaeda had actually “protected or regenerated key elements of its homeland attack capability”. All this had happened despite the fact that the US had supplied some $10.5 billion worth of security and economic aid to Pakistan as well as some $1 billion per annum as reimbursement that accounts for 96 per cent of the costs incurred by Islamabad in the FATA.
To top this, in April 2008, the US Government Accountability Office issued a report, “Combating terrorism”, which noted that the US still lacked a comprehensive plan to destroy the terrorist threat, especially its safe haven in Pakistan's FATA. The GAO pointed out that a comprehensive plan had been mooted by the US National Strategy to Combat Terrorism in 2003; it had been called for by the Nine Eleven Commission and the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004 passed thereafter by the Congress. Yet, neither the National Security Council, nor the National Counterterrorism Center nor other branches of government “have a plan that includes all elements of national power — diplomatic, military, intelligence, development assistance, economic and law enforcement support.”

Pakistan

The criticism is not that the state department, the Pentagon, the CIA or USAID don't have plans, but there is no comprehensive strategy in place. As of now it is not clear as to whether Pakistan has such a plan either, though it has fought the tribal uprising. But one thing is clear, Pakistan still views the situation through strategic and geopolitical lenses. They view terrorist groups operating against India as a useful instrument of prosecuting their subconventional war against India. These are the same calculations that make up Islamabad's strategy with regard to the Taliban. India's role in Afghanistan, the possibility of a US/NATO pullout from Afghanistan are issues that Islamabad is carefully weighing. This dual policy was, after all, shaped by Musharraf as commander-in-chief and President of the country.
Perhaps the most negative aspect of the US dependence on Musharraf has been the extent to which the US has lost the battle of hearts and minds in Pakistan itself. The US now confronts a paradoxical situation where civil society in Pakistan is keen to prosecute the battle against radicals at home, but do not see the US as an ally of any kind in the process. Indeed, they are profoundly suspicious of US motives and actions. As of now, the Pakistan army under Pervez Ashfaq Kayani has declared its intentions to steer clear from politics. Musharraf has lost a great deal of prestige and faces the real prospect of having his powers trimmed drastically.
There is a great desire in the Pakistani establishment to negotiate a settlement with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan leaders. They hope that the process of dialogue will halt the relentless march of the fundamentalists who have expanded from their original base in South Waziristan up north beyond Bajaur into Swat. In the past five years, the very nature of the FATA leadership has changed. The old tribal leaders who functioned in an autonomous fashion have been replaced by a younger leadership that openly acknowledges its links to the Taliban. They have proved themselves to be adept fighters and tacticians. Since 2004, they have used the tactic of ceasefires to consolidate their own hold and expand the area of their operations. This is the issue which Afghanistan and the US are raising, especially after the experience of the previous ceasefire in 2006 that led to a spike in attacks in Afghanistan.

Ties

By May 2008, it was clear that the relationship is at a breakdown point with Pakistan and the US no longer on the same plane with regard to the war on terrorism. The US is particularly exercised about reports that the latest ceasefire between the Pakistani forces and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan leader Baitullah Mehsud is no longer conditioned on the latter stopping attacks on Afghanistan, or ending the presence of foreigners — Uzbeks, Chechens or Arabs — in their midst. This would actually indicate an unraveling of US policy in Pakistan whose primary aim was to end the sanctuary that the Al Qaeda got in the region. According to reports, Owari Ghani, the governor of North-West Frontier Province, who is also Musharraf's representative for FATA, told US officials that “Pakistan will take care of its own problems, you take care of Afghanistan on your side”. He is being assisted in the process by Rehman Malik who is the internal security adviser to Prime Minister Gillani. The US is clearly caught between a rock and a hard place.
This article appeared first in Mail Today May 23, 2008