China behaviour at the NSG and other matters

The record will show, that China is the last country in the world that can afford to talk about nuclear non-proliferation. The Chinese have been arguably the most irresponsible power when it comes to nuclear weapons. The US refused to share weapons secrets with the UK, or France. Russia refused weapons knowhow to China. But for its part, China gave Pakistan a nuclear weapons design and even tested the weapon made by the Pakistanis. That designed, now refined and miniaturised, is available in digitized form and has been circulated to every known rogue state in the world courtesy the Khan network.

As far as India is concerned, China couldn’t have done us more harm. As Islamabad has repeatedly emphasized, India is the only destination for Pakistani nuclear weapons.

The Chinese behaviour at the Nuclear Suppliers Group meeting in Vienna last week were characteristic. Through the whole issue of the Indo-US nuclear deal, they played a low-key role, assuring India repeatedly that they would not stand in the way of India getting an NSG go-ahead for civil nuclear cooperation. But when in the August 21-22 meeting it became clear that there would be opposition from some small but rich, white countries the Chinese sensed opportunity. Even then, their opposition was subtle, first in the form of a commentary in the official People’s Daily on September 1. See Siddharth Varadarajan’s blog for an unofficial translation.

Then, during the meeting itself, the Chinese stuck to their official line that the NSG must balance proliferation concerns and promotion of civil nuclear trade. But in the several bilateral meetings between Indian leaders and their Chinese counterparts like President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao in the past year or so, the Indians came away with the impression that the Chinese would adopt at least a neutral attitude to the Indian project.

But, according to insiders, on September 5, the Chinese started raising all manner of petty issues along with the more substantial ones raised by the so-called white knights—Austria, New Zealand, Ireland—knowing fully well that time was of the essence and delay would doom the deal.

In other words, the Chinese wanted the white knights to be the cat’s paw for their own real desire of denying India the civil nuclear deal. But they over-reached and the result has been some loss of face as India has publicly called them to task. The Prime Minister and External Affairs Minister pointedly refused to name China as one of the countries that facilitated the deal during his meetings with Yang Jiechi, the Chinese Foreign Minister in New Delhi on September 8. The National Security Adviser had very publicly expressed his “disappointment” with China on TV on Saturday 6.

For his part, the Chinese foreign minister told the Indian media on September 8

“I am surprised by these reports. Facts speak louder than words. China has always worked responsibly towards consensus both in the International Atomic Energy Agency and the NSG.”

In itself, this is a minor episode, especially since the NSG waiver did come through, but it tells us a great deal of China’s real attitude towards India which is one of seeing us as a pesky second-rung country, no matter what they may say publicly.

History

After defeating us in the border war of 1962, the Chinese have adopted a policy of not confronting India directly. Instead they have invested in our neighbours, principally Pakistan, to keep us in check. Given the almost primal Pakistani hostility towards India, this policy has worked very well. This has enabled Beijing to normalize ties with New Delhi and even develop important bilateral ties, even while having ensuring that India remains locked into a hostile strategic relationship with Pakistan.

China has been Pakistan’s “all weather friend” since the 1960s. The first instance of the usefulness of this friendship came when after initiating hostilities with India in 1965 Pakistan found itself floundering as India attacked across several fronts along the international border in Punjab and Rajasthan. They ran to Beijing which issued a series of ultimatums on India and even mobilized its forces for war, compelling New Delhi to accept a UN mandated ceasefire when it was on the verge of comprehensively defeating Pakistan.

In 1971, Indian diplomacy, war preparations and the deepness of the Pakistani morass in Bangladesh prevented Beijing from intervening.

During the Kargil war, too, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif rushed to Beijing for help. Only when China refused to intervene, that he called up his friend Bill Clinton and got the US to pull that hot chestnut our of the fire.

Why China can't afford to talk on non-proliferation issues

In the latest issue of Physics Today, Thomas C. Reed, a former American nuclear weapons designer and cabinet official, has told a most remarkable story . It is about how the Chinese deliberately cultivated and provided information on its nuclear weapons programme to a senior technical intelligence official of the US nuclear weapons programme. This officer Danny Stillman and his team were allowed to travel to China and visit some of the most secret Chinese nuclear weapons facilities and given access to its scientists. While Reed’s article is really about the Chinese nuclear tests between 1964-1996, what is important from our point of view are two bits of information given to Stillman.

In 1982 China’s premier Deng Xiaoping began the transfer of nuclear weapons technology to Pakistan…. Those transfers included blueprints for the ultrasimple CHIC-4 design using highly enriched uranium, first tested by China in 1966.”.

"A Pakistani derivative of CHIC-4 apparently was tested in China on May 26, 1990."

In other words, not only did China provide the design, but it actually tested a Pakistani fabricated device.

Reed’s revelations come on the heels of the reports about how Chinese weapon designs given to Pakistan have subsequently been updated and given to Libya, North Korea, Iran and perhaps other countries. According to Peter Grier “Did rogue network leak nuclear bomb design?” the Christian Science Monitor June 18, 2008,

“An infamous atomic smuggler may have had blueprints for a compact, sophisticated nuclear warhead, and that could mean that the world's proliferation problem is even worse than many experts had thought.

US officials have long declared the nuclear technology ring run by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan to be shattered. But revelations that a digitized bomb design turned up on the computer of an associate of Mr. Khan's show that US and UN investigators may not yet know everything Khan did, despite the fact that he has been under house arrest in Pakistan for years....”

“US and UN investigators have long known that the Khan network sold to Libya a nearly complete set of blueprints and instruction manuals for a relatively basic nuclear warhead of Chinese design.”

As Joby Warrick and Peter Slevin revealed in a story “Libyan Arms Designs Traced Back to China: Pakistanis Resold Chinese-Provided Plans” in Washington Post in February 2004

“Investigators have discovered that the nuclear weapons designs obtained by Libya through a Pakistani smuggling network originated in China, exposing yet another link in a chain of proliferation that stretched across the Middle East and Asia, according to government officials and arms experts.

The bomb designs and other papers turned over by Libya have yielded dramatic evidence of China's long-suspected role in transferring nuclear know-how to Pakistan in the early 1980s, they said. The Chinese designs were later resold to Libya by a Pakistani-led trading network that is now the focus of an expanding international probe, added the officials and experts, who are based in the United States and Europe."

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

Spies are also human beings

The story of Kashmir Singh cannot fail to stir the heart of every Indian. Here is a man, convicted for spying, who spent 35 long years entombed on the death row in Pakistan. Singh says he was not a spy; that does not matter. Even if he was one, he was a pawn in a larger game that routinely has dozens of agents crossing the border, or the Line of Control in Kashmir, to gather low level military intelligence. Their task is to update what is called the enemy’s “order of battle”— the location of armoured or infantry units, artillery batteries, air force squadrons and cantonments — the pieces of a real life chessboard.
In the world of blacks and whites, espionage occupies a grey area. Those who spy for our country are considered heroes, while the ones who spy on us are reviled as the lowest of the low. In the old days, and that means till World War I and II, spies were routinely executed after a trial of sorts by military tribunals. With India and Pakistan stumbling towards peace and the perceptible decline of hostility towards each other, it’s perhaps time that some humane principles were introduced into this primeval gladiator pit as well.

Pawns

Spying was considered a distasteful, if necessary, part of the contest between nations. However, an interesting twist was brought on by the enormous threat of global destruction that came with the emergence of arsenals of nuclear weapon-tipped missiles. Early arms control treaties between the US and USSR worked with the assumption that both sides would keep track of compliance by the other through, what were called national technical means — spy satellites, electronic and other kinds of surveillance. The idea was to provide assurance that no one side was sneaking ahead with a technology that could undermine the peace brought on by the capabilities of mutually assured destruction. In our era, for the big powers at least, the spy was recast as a regulator.
The problem is that both India and Pakistan treat spies like Kashmir Singh as expendable pawns. Most of them are recruited from villages of Punjab — Pakistani and Indian — and belong to the lower strata. Being pawns, they are simply ignored when arrested. So casual is the approach towards them that neither country ever acknowledges their existence and therefore shows no interest in assisting those arrested, or rehabilitating those who have served their time after conviction.
In September 2005, in the wake of the Sarabjit Singh case, several former field agents organised a gathering under the leadership of Vasdev Sharma, a former spy, who had spent eight long years in Pakistani jails. They complained that despite their suffering, no one bothered about their families or recognised their services after their release. Spies of an even earlier generation like Kishori Lal and Gulzar Masih, too, complained of indifference of officials after their release from Pakistani jails in 1974 in the wake of the 1971 Simla Agreement. They also revealed that in 1968 three Indians — Kapur Chand, Gurcharan Singh and Sham Sunder had been hanged in Sialkot jail.
Surinder Kumar, an Indian spy who returned home in 2006 after serving 15 years in Pakistani jails, told The Tribune that Balbir Singh, who was arrested in 1989 on spying charges was hanged in Sahiwal Jail in 1997, perhaps the last Indian spy to be so punished. Kumar said that the Punjab High Court in Pakistan had upheld the death sentence for Kirpal Singh, of Gurdaspur, on the charges of spying. Kirpal Singh is in Kot Lakhpat jail in Lahore and apparently has an appeal pending with the Pakistan Supreme Court.
Kumar’s story is perhaps typical. He was in the Indian Army from 1970 to 1978 and was persuaded by the intelligence agencies to serve as a spy with the promise that his family would be looked after if he was caught. This brave man went to Pakistan five times and stayed there for a total of about five years. But in 1992 he was caught in Khiara village in the Narowal district of Pakistan and went through the familiar routine of torture and incarceration.

Knights

The treatment to these pawns contrasts sharply with upper class suspects. Each country has hinted at having high level informants in the other, but no one has offered any conclusive proof. In her book My Feudal Lord, Tehmina Durrani, accused her ex-husband Ghulam Mustafa Khar of being in the pay of the R&AW. Last year, Gauhar Ayub, the son of Field Marshal Ayub Khan, claimed that a high level Indian military officer (he virtually hinted it was Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw) had provided Pakistan Indian battle plans in the 1950s.
An Indian R&AW officer has claimed that a high-level mole had tipped off New Delhi of Pakistan Air Force’s plan for a surprise attack on December 3, 1971, an action that led to the outbreak of the third India-Pakistan war. Jaswant Singh has claimed that a high-level mole in the Prime Minister’s Office had tipped off the US in 1995 and blocked India’s plans to test nuclear weapons. Till now, at least, no high-level person has been tried for espionage by either side. It is entirely possible that such people have been detected and forcibly retired or side-tracked because neither side wanted to be embarrassed by a revelation of betrayal at a high level.
While there does appear to be a clear record of Indian nationals hanged for espionage in Pakistan, no one accused of spying for Pakistan has been executed in India, at least in recent decades. This is in keeping with India’s generally relaxed attitude towards spying and betrayal. Spying has not been a hanging offence in India for quite some time now. Leave alone spies, India is uncommonly lenient with traitors as well. This is best evidenced by the way the government handled the case of R&AW official Rabinder Singh who was allowed to get away, or of the Larkins brothers — one a Major General and the other an Air Vice Marshal — who got ridiculously light sentence for selling military secrets to the US. There have been other important traitors, too, who have been allowed to live their normal lives.

Chessboard

It would be difficult to persuade countries not to punish spies, leave alone treat them leniently. But there is no reason why they should be denied due process and humane treatment. By definition war is a barbaric thing, but that has not detracted from the efforts of the world community to make it, howsoever much of an oxymoron it may sound, humane. The Geneva Conventions ban the use of certain kind of munitions and other conventions prohibit the use of chemical weapons. The campaign against land mines is an effort to expand the prohibition to a new and significant area.
India and Pakistan can also perhaps explore another option —exchanging spies. During the Cold War, some top level operatives were exchanged. Colonel Rudolf Abel, a Soviet sleeper agent arrested in 1957, was exchanged for Francis Gary Powers who was shot down in a U-2 in 1960. Gordon Lonsdale aka Konon Molody, a Soviet sleeper in UK, was exchanged for Greville Wynne, a British spy caught in Moscow. The fate reserved for traitors, however, has been different. In the Soviet Union they were, like Oleg Penkovsky, almost always executed, while in the US, people like Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, have been sentenced to terms of imprisonment that will ensure that they are never free.
The quality of an intelligence service is best brought out by the effort it makes to retrieve its agents. The Russians have excelled in this — getting spies back through exchange, or, in the case of George Blake, springing them from jail. The Americans and British, too, managed to get back some of their own, and also made enormous efforts to get Soviet traitors out of the erstwhile USSR. The Israelis have not given up on lobbying the US to release Jonathan Pollard, one of their agents. Abandoning spies and leaving their families to fend for themselves does not speak too highly of the professionalism of the Indian intelligence services.
This article was first published in Mail Today March 5

Pakistan elections

We must take the outcome of the poll in Pakistan in the context of its inauspicious beginnings, principally the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. In that perspective, the outcome of the elections in Pakistan has been a pleasant surprise. There were no horrific suicide attacks, considering the situation, the polling was peaceful, there were no visible signs of rigging. Voter turnout was low, but that was to be expected given the fear of violence, and, more important, the past experience of vote fraud. The big surprise of the election was that it defied prognostications that it would be rigged against the opposition. One major factor was the heroic role of the Pakistani media especially the visual media which showed its clout and value for the first time in this election.

I disagree with people who think that the verdict was a major blow to Musharraf. After all, given the events of the past year, he would have to be remarkably sanguine to think he could actually pull off a victory. Indeed, given the circumstances, the King’s party, the Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam) has done remarkably well. Indeed, the outcome as it is—requiring the Pakistan People’s Party and the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) to cobble together a coalition is the best Musharraf could have hoped, and he has got it. PPP as the largest party will lead the coalition anyway, but also because it is the only party to have a presence in all of Pakistan’s provinces.

Musharraf’s great advantage will be that the control of the PPP rests in the hands of the somewhat shady Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto. In his first and rambling press conference, Zardari has signaled that his agenda is not the removal of the general.

According to Dawn, “Mr Zardari parried several questions on issues like reinstatement of deposed judges, possible impeachment of President Musharraf and the party’s nominee for the office of the prime minister.”

After all, don't forget that Benazir had returned to Pakistan as part of a deal through which she would provide legitimacy to the general's crumbling regime, in exchange for the waiver of corruption charges against her and Zardari. Benazir may be gone, but the deal remains. My hunch is that even though large sections of his party men are deeply suspicious of the general’s inability to protect their beloved leader, Zardari will carry the day.

Though his performance has been spectacular, considering where he has come from, Nawaz Sharif lacks the numbers. But he has a clear agenda, one that understands that the election outcome is only the beginning of the battle for democracy in Pakistan. He wants the restoration of the 60-odd judges who were forced out of office by Musharraf in November. He is also seeking the removal of a amendments that make a mockery of the country’s 1973 constitution. Above all, Sharif who has clearly matured in his exile, also understands that the country needs to set clear limits for its army. It is too late to make the army apolitical as in India. But there could be mutually agreed institutional arrangements such as the ones that obtain in Turkey. Nawaz, too, has come back through some kind of a deal. Though not a direct one, but one operating through the Saudis.

The showing of the Awami National Party in the North West Frontier Province has been outstanding . They have bearded the mullahs in their own dens. They have given the lie to the belief that all Pakhtuns want is war. As Afsandyar Wali Khan, the leader of the party has pointed out, the Pakhtuns want “talim” or education, and everything else associated with development. The victory of the party could begin the process of getting back the allegiance of those who have been misguided into thinking that jehad is the only answer to their problems.

The outcomes in Punjab, Sindh, and NWFP suggest that governments there will have to be in the form of coalitions. This is not a bad thing, because it will help kick-start the process of reconciliation. The PPP, as the party which has a presence in all three states will have special responsibility since it will also run the national government.

That other stakeholder

This said, we need to point out that the elections only related part of the stakeholders of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. There is another part, some say the larger, that wields power that was not up for arbitration through an election. In the coming months, the attitude of this party, the Pakistan army, will be the key to the restoration of democracy in Pakistan. At present, the army has adopted a low profile because its reputation has sunk along with its erstwhile chief Pervez Musharraf. But though the army has delinked itself from Musharraf, it is unlikely to allow the politicians to bully him either. All said and done he is one of theirs and everything he did had the sanction of the Corps Commanders Conference, Pakistan's other parliament.

There are some habits which will take time and effort to overcome. In some areas—nuclear weapons and support to terrorism—only the attitude of the Pakistan army matters. There is an abundant record to show that civilian prime ministers and presidents were denied any information on these issues, even when they formally held power.

So, all said and done, Pakistan has made a good beginning, but it still has a long way to go before it becomes a “normal” state.

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

Bush's system-destructive years provide a clean slate for an American renewal

The democratic world seems to be coming up with a magic figure for the tenure of a high office. It is approximately eight years. Margaret Thatcher exceeded it by three years and had to be pushed out of office, as was Tony Blair who was two years over par. The Americans, whose love for organisation is well known, have institutionalised it to two 4-year terms for their president.
But the pushing process begins early; ask George W Bush. Till two years ago he could do no wrong. He led his country into an extraordinary adventure in Iraq and they voted him back to power in 2004 with a greater majority. He used the fiscal surpluses he inherited to pursue the conservatives’ favourite agenda — tax cuts — even after defence expenditure soared. He systematically undermined American civil liberties and the people seemed not to care.
Bush has already been condemned to the prison specially reserved for democratic politicians — irrelevance. Tony Blair is there, as are V.P. Singh, Inder Gujral and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Politics is a cruel profession. It takes a protagonist to unprecedented heights and then, without fear or favour, lets go of them. You can be a dictator like Stalin or a Mao, feared and adored in their lifetimes, but getting their comeuppance in history.
The high, and the let down, for politicians in the democratic system may not be as dramatic, but it must nevertheless be painful. In the United States, the process usually begins with a president’s last state of the union address. Last year around this time, when Bush delivered the address, the economy was doing well and the war badly. Poor Dubya, he got slammed for the war and little praise for the economy. This time, the war in Iraq is doing well and the economy on the brink of recession, and no one is talking about the war.

Iraq

He was a Teflon president till last November when his party lost its majority in the US Congress because of the war in Iraq. Given the iron control that the neocons retained on the system, it is more than likely that in the coming years the Bush “legacy” will be more about discovering the ways and means through which the President damaged and devalued the system, rather than the touted achievements. Last week, the Center of Public Integrity went through the process of counting the lies of his administration on the issue of Weapons of Mass Destruction and concluded that it had lied on a grand total of 935 occasions in the run-up to the Iraq war.
Bush has sought to strike an uncharacteristically non-confrontationist tone in his latest state of the union address, hoping perhaps to use the next 51 weeks that he had to salvage something of a legacy. But his thrust still seems to be the “what’s in it for me” approach. Take the war in Iraq. Violence may be down, but anyone who believes that the addition of 20,000 soldiers changed things around in Iraq is living in cloud cuckoo land. The change has come by the creation of the 80,000 strong Sunni militia paid $300 per month by the US to police the Sunni-majority areas. As for the Shias, they run the government and are biding their time for Uncle Sam’s departure. What will happen to this militia when the US leaves, no doubt after Bush is well settled at his ranch in Crawford, Tx? No one knows. But one thing is clear, neither the Iraqi army, nor the national police are capable of providing security for the country that has been torn apart by a war of George W. Bush’s making.

Afghanistan

Typically, Bush has sought to use this last opportunity to push for institutionalising his tax cuts. The cuts, heavily weighted in favour of the rich, are supposed to produce a budget surplus by 2012 — the end of the next president’s first term. But the predictions do not take into account the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that currently cost some $200 billion per annum.
The US president has simply papered over the huge problems confronting the war in Afghanistan. They are not just those connected to fighting the resurgent Taliban and the deteriorating situation in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province. They are related to the quarrels within the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and its partners on the way the Afghan mission should be prosecuted, and the contribution of the nations involved. As it is, only the British, Canadians and Dutch, along with the Americans, permit their troops to fight. The others focus on “reconstruction”. Yet if there was a single issue that was to define the Bush Administration it was the “war on terror”; but the struggle in Afghanistan indicates that it is far from being won, leave alone fought with any degree of effectiveness.
The problem for Bush, and for the rest of the world, is that the American voter has moved on and is focusing on the coming presidential poll. As of now the election is wide open. We are not sure as to who would be the Democratic and Republican candidates, and circumstances could actually take the race to the summer when the delegates elected at the primaries will formally vote for their respective candidate in party conventions. Predicting what way the election will play out is even more confounding because different outcomes could be suggested with different pairs of contestants.
But certain consequences of the Bush presidency are becoming evident. According to the Economist, “the proportion of Americans who think their country should be active in the world is the lowest it has been since the early 1990s.” This is bad news. Someone recently pointed out that we have reached an era where when America sneezes the world does not catch a cold. But if the turbulence in the world economy is anything to go by, the sneeze still has the ability to generate the shivers.
But the bigger problem the world will face from an isolationist America is that of managing the world system. In an alternative world, Bush should have led the world to an era where the United Nations could fulfill its mandate of maintaining world peace and directed the efforts to combat climate change. But that and other possibilities were wantonly destroyed by Bush’s policies.
Countries like India need to reflect on a US that is less attentive to Afghanistan and Pakistan. A facile view can be that with the big bad Americans back in their own country things will work just fine. But that is simply not true. There may be 25 NATO allies and 15 partner countries involved in Afghanistan. But more than half of the 53,000 troops there are American, as is the overwhelming portion of the air and naval effort.

Renewal

The US has been an interfering busy-body ever since they became the world’s hegemonistic power. But when it comes to crises — be it in Burma, Kenya, Darfur or Pakistan —the world looks to the US for leadership. The contrast with the rising role of China cannot be more marked. Beijing’s amoral approach to foreign policy has encouraged the proliferation of nuclear weapons to Pakistan and compelled countries like India to upturn its pro-democracy foreign policy in Burma.
Every election in a democratic country shifts its political paradigm. George Bush’s system-destructive tenure may actually be setting the stage for his successor to reconstruct the US on a new basis. That seems to be the sentiment that is propelling the once implausible candidacy of Barack Obama. The change of drivers has begun in the US, the old is virtually gone, but we do not yet know who will be the new driver, or his, or her’s, chosen direction.
This article appeared in Mail Today January 30, 2008

The Chinese are not ten feet tall

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s first visit to China comes amidst a welter of scare stories about Chinese “incursions” into Indian territory and how its rapidly developing infrastructure in Tibet poses a threat to India. But there is another, more astonishing side which scarcely makes it to the headlines: Sino-Indian trade that totaled $5 billion in 2003, has touched $34 billion (January-November 2007).
This could not have come without the development of another relationship, not across the inhospitable Himalayan border, but the seas, between Indian and Chinese enterprises, entrepreneurs and managers. Since the 2003 visit of Prime Minister Vajpayee to Beijing, the bandwidth of Sino-Indian relations has broadened and, to change metaphors, while it is possible to see them as a glass half empty, it would be more correct to view it as one half full.

Border

Blaming the Chinese for doing something we have fallen behind on — building roads and investing in communications and other services in the difficult mountain regions — is, to say the least, perverse. India has had similar plans on the books since the mid-1960s, but most are decades behind in implementation. The Chinese rightly saw their Tibet railway as a prestige project and completed it ahead of schedule; India’s Kashmir rail project, is probably a decade from completion.
As for the incursions, the issue is more complex. Indo Tibetan Border Police chief V.K. Joshi said in October that the Chinese had made some 140 incursions into Indian territory all across the Indo-Tibet border, but none were serious. “Their perception of the Line of [Actual] Control could be different from ours...,” was his simple and straightforward explanation. The 4056-km India-Tibet border is not an international border in the legal sense. It is a Line of Actual Control which is itself not clearly defined, unlike, say, the Line of Control with Pakistan in Jammu & Kashmir. Its ambiguity is best brought out by the Chinese formulation that in the east it “approximates the illegal McMahon Line” but it is not the line, as defined by the 1914 treaty. There are also important differences in the Sikkim-Bhutan-India trijunction.
In the west the situation has been much more fluid. The Chinese themselves have presented various versions of the LAC. One was affirmed as the “correct” line in December 1959, there was another put forward in 1960, and finally there were the positions that the Chinese occupied during the October-November 1962 border war; at each stage occupying more and more of territory that India claimed as its own.
The border is important. As long as it is not settled, it can be used to quickly ratchet up tension. There is a certain symmetry in Indian and Chinese claims which could aid its settlement. The Chinese hold what they claim in the western sector, India holds what it claims in the eastern sector. Both contest what the other side holds — New Delhi says China’s control of Aksai Chin is illegal and Beijing disputes India’s control of what is now Arunachal Pradesh. A dispassionate look at history will show that both established control over the disputed territories they hold in the 1950s. Major R ‘Bob’ Khating took control of Tawang, the most significant town in the North East Frontier Agency, in February 1951; the Chinese, too, began building their road and consolidating their hold over Aksai Chin in this period.
The 2005 agreement on political parameters and guiding principles for the India-China boundary question has outlined the only basis on which the two countries can resolve their dispute — on a largely “as is where is” basis. Yet, movement is painfully slow. There was a time in 2003 when there were expectations that there would be quick movement. That was the time when the Vajpayee government expected it would be voted back to power. Since then, though there is agreement on the principles, there has been no significant movement. The reason seems to be that the Chinese are not sure whether this is the moment to settle.

Power

So, they have raised the issue of the Tawang tract. In May 2007 Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi told his Indian counterpart Pranab Mukherjee at a meeting in Hamburg that the presence of settled populations in regions under dispute would not affect China’s claims on those regions. Yang’s statement appears to undermine the crucial Article VII of the guiding principles that says: “In reaching a boundary settlement, the two sides shall safeguard settled populations in border areas.”
Relations between India and China would have been complex even if there had been no border dispute. But to see the Chinese as being aggressive, or hell-bent on domination, is to court enmity, a luxury that India cannot afford. Both countries have known strengths and weaknesses vis-à-vis each other. If China has the advantage of easier lines of communication on the Tibetan plateau, the region is also thousands of kilometres away from its core territory, as compared to a couple of hundred on the Indian side. The Chinese have never quite gained the loyalty of the Tibetans and worry about the impact of the Dalai Lama and the exiles in India. But India also knows that it suffers from a strategic disadvantage since the Indian heartland is so close to Chinese air and missile power in Tibet.
But this military talk is itself archaic. In 1962, the hapless Indian brigade ordered to capture Thag La had no idea what lay behind the ridge. Today Lhasa is open to Indian tourists and richer pilgrims en route to Mansarover. The Nathu La route has been opened up and traders travel all the way to Lhasa. In addition electronic and photo reconnaissance provides India a detailed picture of the PLA deployments. A Chinese surprise attack is simply out of the question. Indian military strength is substantial and it possesses the means of nuclear reprisal.

Change

So the Chinese “threat” has migrated to Pakistan, Burma, Bangladesh and various Indian neighbours. But, here, too, there is a tendency to overstate Chinese strengths and understate its weaknesses. A look at the map will reveal that almost all of Beijing’s oil supplies have to pass through India’s territorial waters, a jugular if ever there was one. Geography ensures that China can never be a threat to India in the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean region, in the same measure that India cannot really threaten China in the South China Sea. So there is no real basis of confrontation at the maritime level either. Actually, given their internal demands, what both need and seek is stability, not just regional, but global.
China has in the past, and continues at present, to play an irresponsible role in aiding Pakistan’s nuclear and missile programme and its actions have harmed Indian security immeasurably. But the same could be said of our history with our new friend, the US. History, in any case, should not determine future policy. It can provide a perspective, but should not hold a veto.
Anyway, in the Sino-Indian context, a great deal of what the future holds will be determined in Beijing, rather than in New Delhi. The very dynamism of its economy is bringing it to the point where it cannot postpone political reform for much longer. Such a development could have a wide-ranging impact on China’s internal relations with regions like Tibet and Xinjiang, as well as its neighbours like India. Our task is to stay the course and offer China a relationship of friendship and cooperation, without being deferential or defensive on any issue.
The article was published in Mail Today January 9, 2008

2008 Could Be the Year of the Suicide Bomber in India

For the past twenty five years, almost as if in keeping with our millennia old history, India’s major security threat has come from the north-west. We are not talking about the Pakistan armed forces, which are a given, in the India-Pakistan context. The problem has seen the Pakistan army’s proxy war against India using a powerful mix of religious fanaticism and simpler incentives like money. We have dealt with successive waves of terrorists, each with more skills than the previous. We may now be standing at the cusp of an even more terrible future. The coming year could see India confronted with suicide bombers.

The attack on the CRPF camp in Rampur is only a warning of things to come. It points to the depth of the roots that the jehadis have been able to establish in India’s Muslim population. Till now, cells with extensions reaching out to Jammu & Kashmir and Bangladesh have conducted strikes using improvised explosive devices. Launching an attack on an armed police camp would have involved much more sophisticated planning and logistics—identifying and checking out the target, sheltering the attackers, providing the weapons and conveying them to the launch site.

History

While suicide attacks have a history going back to the first century AD, modern suicide terrorism began on October 23, 1983 when two massive explosions destroyed the barracks of the American and French contingents of a peace keeping force in Beirut. Both attacks were carried out by Hizbollah members who drove trucks loaded with explosives into the compound before setting off the bombs and killing themselves as well. Though this tactic was thereafter employed against US and Israeli targets in the region, it was not a “Muslim” thing. Between 1980-2000, the Liberation of Tigers of Tamil Eelam launched as many as 168 suicide strikes in India and Sri Lanka. The Hizbollah actually were a distinct number two with 52 attacks, with the Kurdistan Workers Party at number three with 15 attacks. The Palestinian groups—the Islamic Jihad and the Hamas— used the weapon sparingly at the time. .
Another watershed was Nine- Eleven, itself the most devastating suicide attack till now. About 400 suicide bombings have shaken Iraq since the U.S. invasion in 2003, and suicide now plays a role in two out of every three insurgent bombings. In Afghanistan, too, the suicide bombings have come in the wake of the Iraq experience, with the first attack directed against German forces in June 2003.
The first suicide attack in Pakistan took place when, in 1995, an Egyptian bomber rammed his explosives-laden truck into his country’s embassy in Islamabad. In the following years, such attacks were few and far between, though always deadly when they occurred. In 2007 the number of attacks went up sharply to an estimated 65 attacks that have taken the lives of nearly 1000 people.

Psychology

These are not the suicide terrorism of the Islamic Jihad and Hamas, born out of a sense of helplessness in front of relentless Israeli power. This is a weapon of choice, used well before the others are even employed. But unlike the inanimate gun or lump of explosive, this weapon has to be shaped with great care. But once you have the methodology, you can mass-produce it. Many of the Pakistani bombers are unemployed, illiterate, and poor. They are easy prey to their “handlers” who convince them that not only are such attacks religiously sanctioned, but that in carrying them out, they will be fighting the kafirs of the west who are killing Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places. According to reports in Pakistan, about a dozen master handlers or motivators have emerged in the NWFP to train people identify and train people to carry out such attacks. Many of these are local imams or madarsah teachers who should know that suicide does not have any sanction in Islam. But the people they are targeting are either semi-literate, or young and impressionable. These “handlers” are proficient in human psychology and will use emotional crises, such as the death of a near and dear, to push a potential recruit to make a commitment to the “cause.” Once identified, the recruit is isolated and provided “spiritual training” to make him feel that he is one of the chosen. Once the person is fully brainwashed, he may be assigned any task—driving a truck bomb at an army convoy, blowing himself up to kill a target, launch fedayeen attack on police or army checkposts.
Suicide attacks are an attractive tactic for terrorist groups. That the attacker is expected to die ensures that he or she is not captured, tortured and made to disclose the larger conspiracy. It also minimizes the effort the group needs to put in to plan the getaway of an attacker.
So far, only Israel has been able to reduce the number of suicide attacks. They have done this by ensuring physical separation of the Palestinian and Israeli populations and harsh measures such as destroying the houses of people involved in such attacks. In a multi-religious and multi-ethnic democracy like India such tactics will not be either feasible or desirable. But these need not be the only tactics. Suicide terrorism can be challenged by disrupting its organisational chain—the recruiters, handlers, bomb-makers, the safe-houses. In addition, there is need to make police and security personnel across the country aware of the need to build their camps and establishments with the presumption that they, too, could be targeted.
In the past few years, attacks in Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Varanasi and elsewhere have shown that terrorist cells have struck local roots. Terrorist strategy run by faceless leaders and organizers has become much more sophisticated. Because terror strikes are followed by often mindless repression, gross violation of the rule of law and due process, an army of new recruits is always available.
Unfortunately, India’s battle is being fought tactically, rather than in pursuit of an established strategy. The country’s security forces have won many tactical engagements. But, as Sun Tzu famously said, “Tactics without strategy, is the noise before defeat.” Insulated in their security cocoons the political and bureaucratic establishment do not realize that their tactical war against terrorism is merely pushing terrorists towards an escalating cycle of attacks.

Strategy

So what is the strategy that we must follow ? Clearly it must be a mix of the political, economic and social. But most important, it requires consensus between those like the BJP which believes that only harsh repression will yield results and others, including many in the Congress who feel that unless the root causes of poverty and alienation of the minority community are addressed, nothing will change. Both the Congress and the BJP have in the past contributed to the climate in which terrorism is flourishing by ignoring issues like the 1984 Sikh massacre in Delhi, the Babri Masjid demolition and the 2002 Gujarat killings. Good strategy requires an acknowledgment, even an implicit one, that this is a problem. Only then can the mainstream parties work out a set of consensual policies which may range from measures for the uplift of poor Muslims, more effective legislation to tackle terrorism, as well as the creation of a federal instrumentality to combat it.

This article appeared in Mail Today January 2, 2008

American Pie

Many questions and some answers on the Indo-American engagement. This article appeared in Mint, July 5, 2007



The Fourth of July is a good day to meditate on the role of the US in the world, especially its relationship with India. In recent days and weeks, there has been a lot of chatter on this issue, first with Condoleezza Rice’s call for India to abandon non-alignment, and then with the visit of the USS Nimitz to Chennai. The protest in Chennai over the arrival of a nuclear-powered, and possibly nuclear-armed, ship is bizarre. India, too, has nuclear weapons, has operated a nuclear-powered submarine, and hopes to operate several more, DRDO (Defence Research & Development Organisation) and DAE (department of atomic energy) willing, in the next few decades.

As a matter of policy, India does not reveal the location of its nuclear weapons. But for all you know, one of the locations could be in Chennai, maybe near Poes Garden. Considering that the huge Kalpakkam nuclear complex is within Chernobyl-distance of Chennai, the anti-nuclear aspect of the protest is ludicrous. On the other hand, if the protest is merely anti-American, well that’s not a problem. We are a democracy, after all.

In a recent review-essay in Washington Post, professor Joseph Nye ( thanks to 3quarksdaily) has pointed out about the US that “the centrality of values in our national myths has long led to oscillation between realism and idealism in our foreign policies”. More than shared ethnicity or common descent, the US is a nation that has been created by ideology and its identity is shaped by a set of values that it seeks to universalize. We are all familiar with America’s desire to reform and indeed remake the world in its own image in the Wilsonian tradition. We also know that in practice, America has undermined democracy, cosseted dictators, tortured prisoners and so on.

Yet, while we rightly criticize the US for Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib or secret renditions, we would be wise to take a modest approach. Our own prisons contain hundreds and thousands of people who are yet to be tried. Where the inmates of Abu Ghraib were humiliated and psychologically tortured, hundreds of “anti-national elements” have faced brutal physical torture in our detention centres. There has been no accounting for thousands who have “disappeared”—many illegally executed by our security forces. Indeed, custodial torture is the norm, rather than exception in the Indian police system.

This is no excuse for American behaviour in their war on terrorism. But howsoever many the warts that have showed up on America’s face, the US has played a sterling role in putting human rights observance on the global agenda and pressured many brutal regimes to clean up their act. To paraphrase Nye, America’s self-image may have been based on a generous measure of self-deception, but its insistence that they are based on immutable values of liberty, equality, justice, tolerance have also pushed the world down the road to moral progress.

India, too, is a nation that is based on values rather than a common ethnicity, religion or culture. The original preamble that constituted India as a sovereign democratic republic spelled out these—justice, liberty, equality of status and opportunity and fraternity. Later, under the somewhat sordid circumstances of the Emergency, “secularism” and “socialism” were added. While the former was a prescient insertion, considering the direction that national polity was to take in the ensuing decades, the latter was a spurious genuflection to the poor electorate.

What kind of relations can these two, somewhat similar countries have? For most of the past 60 years, the US followed a policy of what Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph termed “off-shore balancing” of India by supporting Pakistan, and on one occasion China, to prevent India from assuming the regional role to which its size, population and capabilities entitled it.

Beginning with the second Clinton administration and coinciding with India’s economic rise, the US has sought to change course. The US offer to resume civil nuclear cooperation with India is only one manifestation of its desire to enlist India as an ally in the Asian region. In 2006, US officials openly spoke of the need to assist India to become a great power. Yet, the American blandishments come with a caveat. It’s clear from the perspectives emerging from the American strategic community that the US wants India to “bandwagon” with it, rather than become an autonomous strategic actor. The American perspective on non-alignment is one indicator of this. Another is its opposition to India’s dealings with Iran. Looked at anyway, India should be on friendly terms with the world’s second largest oil exporter and the holder of the world’s second largest reserves of natural gas. But what the US is saying is that India must tailor its policies to Washington’s global agenda and perspective, whatever be its own national interests. As for non-alignment, Condi’s comment was not inaccurate. Non-alignment will matter less and less in our current global trajectory. But till we get to that hightable—as an economic giant and permanent member of the UN Security Council—it’s not a bad idea to hang on to a property in which we have invested a lot. The somewhat incoherent 120-member body is both a lever and a hedge in our period of transition.

Because we live in an imperfect world, India and the US will continue to pursue policies shaped by their values, as well as narrow national interest. But, if, to use an old-fashioned imagery, history is a linear unfolding of the march to progress, then we can possibly think of a future where the two concepts will converge.

Book Review: Ayesha Siddiqa's great book on Pakistan's military economy

It is not every day that an author is forced to flee her country because of a scholarly book. But then neither is Pakistan is your usual country, nor is Ayesha Siddiqa's book dealing with a common subject. The political and administrative role of the Pakistani Army and its influence on Pakistan is no secret. Except, arguably, for the first decade of independence, the army has been a major force in Pakistan's polity , with its chiefs directly ruling the country for more than 32 of the last 60 years. What Siddiqa tells us is the Pakistani Army's economic spread. And what a spread it has become.

If a Supreme Court Chief Justice could be peremptorily dismissed because he posed a challenge to Pervez Musharraf 's plan to have himself reelected by defunct assemblies, it is not surprising that an independent scholar's book has been construed as a red rag in front of a bull.

Military Inc. is not a journalistic book. Siddiqa, a former Director of Naval Research in the Pakistani Navy, is a serious scholar, perhaps one of the best on South Asian militaries. Her first book, Pakistan's Arms Procurement and Military Build-up, 1979-99, published in 2001 has looked at the issue through the prism of Pakistan's polity dominated as , it is by a praetorian elite, and is an absolute must for any analyst of South Asian security issues.

She has led off her latest work with an extensive explication of the concept of ‘Milbus' - a neologism from combining military and business - or the "tribute drawn primarily by the officer cadre... from public and private sectors to individuals, primarily through the use of the military's influence". By definition, says Siddiqa, this is the armed forces' internal economy, which is hidden from public view. Milbus is also prevalent in countries other than Pakistan, like Indonesia and Turkey Even . China's People's Liberation Army had an extensive Milbus prior to the decision to modernise it in the mid-1990s.

Siddiqa's description of the growth of the Pakistan's Milbus is in a sense also a history of contemporary Pakistan. She has outlined the legal and extra-legal methods adopted by the Pakistani Army to develop its corporate profile and protect it against any civilian encroachment. The military is now into everything from fertiliser and sugar factories to the agro-industry banks, , insurance, transportation and cargo handling. The Milbus expanded in the Zia years (1979-1988) by providing rural and urban land to service personnel, setting up cooperatives for their benefit and allowing their subsidiaries to expand into any and every civilian sector.

Take urban land. As a point of reference Siddiqa reveals that Musharraf owns eight properties, including a 2,000 sq yard plot in Karachi, a 1,200 sq yard plot in Rawalpindi, a 900 sq yard plot in Peshawar, 50 acres of land in Bhawalpur, a 600 sq yard plot in another part of Rawalpindi, a 1,200 sq yard plot in Gwadar and a farm house in Islamabad. Not bad for the son of a refugee from Delhi. The more important point being that these have been acquired legally through processes open to any Pakistani military officer.

While such salacious details are interesting, the more important issues relating to Milbus is the cost Pakistan pays for it, and the more baleful consequences of keeping it up and running. Siddiqa has shown that by using financial data from audit reports, the military's commercial ventures such as the Army Welfare Trust, the Fauji Foundation and the Frontier Works Organisation are indeed inefficient and have needed many a government bail-out, whether the government of the day was civilian or military.

The enormous power and perks enjoyed by the armed forces make them an attractive career move - in contrast to the situation, say, in India. In that sense Milbus does benefit Pakistan by attracting high-quality officers recruits for its officer cadre. But the country's polity pays the more serious price.

Siddiqa has shown that Milbus consolidated itself during the regime of Zia ul Haq when the army made common cause with religious fundamentalists to consolidate its hold over the State and society. But she leaves open the question as to whether the rise of religious extremism and xenophobia in Pakistan in the past decade should be seen as part of the cost to be paid for Milbus, or whether there is a more direct link between the consolidation of the military corporate elite and the rise of religious extremism.

Ayesha Siddiqa, Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy Pluto Press £ 19.99, pp 292

Martial Artist

Despite his failings, Pakistan's leader Pervez Musharraf remains part of the solution, not the problem. The article was first published in Hindustan Times March 21, 2007

Events seem to have unexpectedly shown up the growing faultlines in Pakistan’s polity.

In the last year, President Pervez Musharraf’s government has faced significant setbacks in Waziristan and Balochistan, but images of unrest and upheaval in Islamabad and Lahore last week have brought up long suppressed questions: just how fragile is the General’s hold on power? What is the best way of handling him, or a situation arising from his ‘unplanned’ removal?

Pakistan’s neighbours, and indeed the world community, have important stakes in its stability, security and prosperity. They are vitally interested in the ability, or otherwise, of its government to contain and eliminate powerful forces of Islamic radicalism that pose a global threat. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s reported confession reveals that the 9/11 conspiracy was masterminded from Pakistan and several of the July 2005 London bombers had Pakistani links. As for India, it says it has a mountain of evidence of Pakistani complicity, some of it official, in scores of acts of terrorism in the country.

Our short answer to the first question is that Musharraf’s regime is reasonably sound and will remain so as long as the Pakistan army, the self-appointed custodian of the Pakistani State, remains solidly behind him. It may, however, be compelled to change its shape and become more overtly military. The regime only appears fragile because we are witnessing the collapse of the democratic façade around an essentially military government. After ousting elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Musharraf used various political devices to construct this house of cards. Since countries of the West and India felt it was in their interest to deal with the General, he faced little international scrutiny or criticism.

But the true nature of the regime has always been evident and has notable landmarks — the sacking of Supreme Court Chief Justice Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui for not backing the coup in 1999, the unceremonious ouster in June 2001 of President Rafiq Tarrar so that the General could occupy that office, the over-the-top April 2002 referendum, where an alleged 97 per cent voters endorsed his rule, the dismissal of Supreme Court judges who voted against his usurpation and now, the rendering of another Chief Justice “non-functional”.

So far, the General has sailed close to the legal wind — he had the Supreme Court (after purges) endorse the coup, held a referendum to underline it and got the National Assembly to pass a constitutional amendment to legalise it. But in seeking another five-year term, without shedding his uniform, Musharraf is being impelled to move on a different path. He is not sure whether the National and Provincial Assemblies that will be thrown up by the elections later this year will again endorse his presidency, so he is seeking a mandate from the outgoing ones. Being elected twice by a single set of assemblies does appear to be gratuitously illegal, and anticipating a challenge, he acted against Chief Justice Chaudhry in advance.

None of this is much of a surprise, or occasion for shock, for the average Pakistani. But the outside world, which for its own reasons upheld the pretence that it was dealing with a democratic government, is now beginning to comprehend that the emperor indeed has no clothes. But this does not really bother the governments that Pakistan is dealing with, including those of India and the US. What concerns them is Pakistan’s failure to contain and eliminate the rising militancy along its western borders and to check fundamentalist groups operating within. Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is on record this week saying, “If these forces are not stopped in 2007, they are going to try to take on the State of Pakistan itself.”

The problem is more complex than just the alleged military incapacity of the Pakistan army. Support for Islamic militants in Afghanistan and Kashmir has had, and continues to have, an important link with the army. After 9/11, Musharraf undertook a U-turn on supporting the Taliban and in January 2002 and 2004, he pledged to crack down on terrorist groups targeting India. Washington has repeatedly acknowledged the role Islamabad has played in hunting down al-Qaeda leaders. India cannot ignore that since November 2003, a very useful ceasefire is in place along the Line of Control and infiltration into Kashmir is markedly down.

Yet in both Washington and New Delhi, there remains a sense of frustration at the General’s zig-zag approach to combating radicalism. Alarm bells have begun ringing ever since it appeared that the Taliban, allegedly headquartered in Pakistan, are back in business. Facing the spectre of a civil war in Waziristan and Balochistan, Pakistan professes to be chary of pressing these regions harder for fear of a blowback. But the reasons for the Pakistani failure go beyond its alleged inability to militarily act against the Taliban, or crack down in Waziristan. It lies in the unchanged world view of significant sections of the Pakistani establishment who still see, what they call, ‘sub-conventional’ warfare as a means of checking India, and maintaining Afghanistan as a depth area towards this end. So the problem is that the Pakistan army has no real strategy to combat Islamic radicals and, as Sun Tzu has pointed out, “tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat”. This defeat will be in no one’s interests, least of all India.

So, how do we handle the Musharraf situation? Instead of focusing only on immediate deliverables like military aid or solutions to India-Pakistan disputes, there is need to maintain a longer view on projects such as the systematic dismantling of the Pakistani jehadi machine, its ISI connections, radical madrasas, fund-raising charities and so on. This action can be best accomplished by a Pakistani government, be it military or otherwise, rather than any outside force. But there is no reason why concerted international pressure cannot be maintained to keep Pakistan on the straight and narrow path.

A second goal must be the restoration of democracy in Pakistan. Last May, the two exiled leaders, Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, met in London and signed a ‘charter for democracy’ ahead of the 2007 elections. But it will take much more than a charter to set things right in Pakistan. Restoring democracy is not just a matter of getting Musharraf and the army to stand aside and restore the 1973 Constitution. The army, Bhutto and Sharif need to collectively work out ways to recapture the space that has been surrendered to the extremists because of their three-way quarrel. There are some straws in this wind in Bhutto’s refusal to commit her party to exploit the current anger against Chaudhry’s dismissal.

India’s role in all this is perhaps most complex. Indians need to overcome their Schadenfreude because the radicalisation of Pakistan cannot but have the most negative fallout here. Recent terrorist attacks indicate that pockets of extremists, inspired and aided, by their Pakistani counterparts, have taken root in some Indian Muslim communities.

In these projects, the General can be an ally, without necessarily requiring pressure or appeasement. But most certainly, we need to perceive him being part of the solution, rather than as the problem. Sounds simple, but it is not.

Terror's Twisted Turn

An attack on a train in the Indian heartland, killing mainly Pakistani passengers traveling to Lahore is a sign that terrorism is mutating into a more virulent form. This article was published in Hindustan Times February 19, 2007

On September 11, 2006, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared that “Pakistan is also a victim of terrorism”, that terrorism was a threat to both nations and, thus, made it incumbent on them to work together to tackle the issue.

Immediately, a minor firestorm erupted in New Delhi. The BJP’s spokesman, Ravi Shankar Prasad, described the statement as “disturbing, worrisome and untimely”.

Whether or not the PM was conscious that he was speaking on the fifth anniversary of 9/11 is not clear. He was en route to Brazil and thereafter would go to Cuba and meet President Pervez Musharraf on the sidelines of the NAM summit.

Singh acknowledged that “As far as the past is concerned, Pakistan-sponsored terrorism has certainly been a fact of life.” But he pointed out that when former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and President Musharraf signed the joint statement in 2004, “[it] was in a way tacit recognition of ground realities and their solemn agreement to move forward in the reverse direction”.

The significance of his remarks became apparent in Havana where the PM and the Pakistani President agreed to “put in place an India-Pakistan anti-terrorism institutional mechanism to identify and implement counter-terrorism initiatives and investigations”. This formulation was seen as a major development. It represented the distance moved by the two sides since the joint statement of January 2004. At the time, the onus had been on Pakistan to ensure that no part of “territory under its control” would be used for terrorist acts against India.

The Havana decision was denounced even more strongly, with a clutch of former diplomats and intelligence officials joining the BJP in terming the move as tantamount to a sellout. Yet, five months later, the logic of this arrangement is tragically apparent. The Samjhauta Express may have been an Indian train, and Sunday’s attack on it took place on Indian soil. But those who carried it out knew that the bulk of the victims would be Pakistani nationals, and Muslims. This is as clear a declaration of war on both countries by the as-yet-unnamed groups of terrorists as any. This had better be understood.

The incident has brought out three points. First, terrorists will not hesitate to attack any target, be it Pakistani, Indian, Hindu or Muslim, to achieve their aim of preventing normalisation of India-Pakistan ties. The Samjhauta Express attack is a continuation of tactics witnessed in Malegaon,when on September 8, terrorists, including a Pakistani national, triggered bombs at a Muslim congregation on the occasion of Shab-e-Barat that killed 37 people.

Second, terrorists remain a step ahead of the authorities in planning and executing their horrendous acts. While in the cases of Malegaon and the Mumbai train blasts, the police have caught a number of suspects, they are yet to lay their hands on any significant masterminds.

Third, terrorists have now attained a great deal of sophistication in choosing their targets and weapons. At first sight, the difference between the Samjhauta attack, and that on Mumbai’s local trains was in the sophistication of the devices used in the latter strike. However, the attackers knew what they wanted, not so much a blast, but a fire which would spread in a speeding train and achieve the end of killing people. And they achieved it by placing bottles of an inflammable liquid with a simple pipe bomb linked to a timer.

Critics of the government’s strategy of working with Pakistani counterparts have not quite kept pace with the changing dynamics of terrorist violence in its epicentre, Pakistan, or the impact on the neighbouring regions of Afghanistan, Iran, India and Bangladesh. As Singh pointed out, Pakistan has certainly played a major role in lighting the fires of terrorism in the region. There is enough evidence in the writings of courageous Pakistani journalists, which suggest that elements of the Pakistani system continue to support some groups in the name of the freedom struggle in Kashmir. Yet, fact is that Pakistan is itself teetering on a slippery slope.

Of late, there have been a spate of suicide bomber attacks in and around Islamabad. On January 26, a terrorist killed himself and a security guard at a hotel where the Indian High Commissioner was to host a reception. On February 6, a suicide attacker blew himself up in the car park of Islamabad airport, injuring 10 people. Nine days later, on February 17, two suicide bombers blew themselves up in a Quetta court, killing 17 people and wounding 37.

Ever since 9/11, the draconian US-led counter-terrorist operations have led to the mutation of Pakistani terrorist groups. Older ones like the Jaish-e-Mohammed and Harkat-e-jihad-e-Islami have gone underground and newer ones like the Jundullah have emerged with deep links to the al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Pakistan’s biggest failure has been its inability to control the Waziristan region. American officials now say that al-Qaeda and the Taliban have been able to re-establish significant control over their worldwide network and create a new infrastructure of training camps in this tribal region. Over the past year, insurgent tactics from Iraq have migrated to Afghanistan, where suicide bombings have increased five-fold and roadside bomb attacks have doubled. Last Sunday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry charged that on February 16 Sunni terrorists with Pakistani links had struck at the south-eastern city of Zahedan — through which logistical aid to Afghanistan is routed.

At first sight, the simplest thing would be to pressure Musharraf to attack the camps in Waziristan and elsewhere. Washington is afraid that strikes on camps, leading to civilian casualties would weaken not just his position, but also that of the Pakistan army, already battered by its de facto retreat from Waziristan last year. New Delhi is aware of the pressures on the General and would work with him rather than pillory him. The Iranians, too, have declared that they would seek to work with Pakistan to contain the problem.

In recent testimony to a Congressional committee, Ryan Crocker, US ambassador to Pakistan, acknowledged that Pakistan’s ability to address the terrorist challenge is limited. The Pakistan army has suffered substantial casualties in taking on the Taliban and Waziri tribals; Pakistani society has been battered by the continuing sectarian strife.

India’s calculation, as that of the US and other nations, has to be based on whether the situation will improve or deteriorate were Musharraf to leave. This has to be an entirely pragmatic calculation, devoid of any sentimentality, or for that matter ill-feelings about his role in Kargil, or past Pakistani support of terrorism. Yet, there are things Musharraf can and must do — get the democratic opposition in Pakistan on-board and resist the temptation to retain the ‘freedom fighter’ option in Kashmir.

Just last week, it was announced that the first meeting of the new Indo-Pakistani anti-terror mechanism will take place in Islamabad on March 6. External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee has said that the mandate of the mechanism would be to consider counter-terrorism measures and regular and timely sharing of information.

Whatever this may mean, it’s clear that we need more cooperation rather than less. Till now the terrorists have been one step ahead of those who are seeking to check them. The countries of the region need to dramatically reduce their trust deficit in each other and enhance their efforts of tackling a phenomena which constitutes nothing less than an existential threat to them.