China is India's Most Important Challenge

There has been a blithe assumption, based on the official dialogue and sharp increase in trade turnover, that the rise of India and China will be peaceful and will not destabilise either the region, or the world. But there has been increasing evidence of truculence in the ties between the two Asian giants.


Exhibit A is Beijing’s March effort — unsuccessful as it turned out to be — to block a $2.9 billion loan to India at the Asian Development Bank because part of the loan would be used for flood development projects in Arunachal Pradesh, a province claimed in entirety by China.
Exhibit B is India’s June 8 announcement that it would deploy two additional mountain divisions in the region and the publicised stationing of advanced Sukhoi 30 MKI fighters at Tezpur. Exhibit C is somewhat more difficult to pin down. It is China’s efforts to use the civil wars in Nepal and Sri Lanka to develop relationships that are aimed at displacing New Delhi as the most influential South Asian power.

Taunts
On June 11, Global Times, the world affairs daily of the Communist Party of China, editorialised against what it said were “unwise military moves” in Arunachal and described India’s alleged military build-up there as “dangerous.” It said that India should consider whether or not it could afford “the consequences of a potential confrontation with China.” The editorial had an unpleasant taunting tone and spoke of Beijing’s friends in the South Asian region —Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal — implying their less than friendly attitude towards India.
The editorial also frontally confronted the issue of India’s friendship with the US as based on a desire to “balance” China’s rise. It declared, “Indian politicians these days seem to think their country would be doing China a huge favour simply by not joining the ‘ring around China’ established by the US and Japan”.
Not many Indians know that Indian military activity in Arunachal — leave aside for the moment the issue of the Chinese claim — is based on the fact that we are playing catch up. Indian military construction plans are decades behind schedule. More important, most of the forces that are supposed to be facing China, are actually involved in counter-insurgency duties in the plains of Assam.




In 1993, India and China signed a path-breaking agreement on maintaining tranquility along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). The key portion of the agreement was a decision to define the location of the LAC precisely on maps. The LAC as it exists is a notional line which both sides observe. Since it overlaps in some areas, there was need to define it to prevent inadvertent confrontation. The idea was that once a mutually acceptable line was created, the two sides could thin out their forces on the border on the basis of “mutual and equal security”. Mind you, this was without prejudice to their respective claims on the border. The aim of the exercise was precisely what it stated — to maintain peace and tranquility on the LAC.
The agreement was never quite implemented. The two sides have exchanged maps of the least disputed central sector with a view to arriving at a commonly acceptable LAC, but they have not yet done so for the other two “difficult” sectors. Worse, as is often its wont, New Delhi took the agreement at face value. Caught up with insurgencies and rebellions in Jammu & Kashmir and Assam, it began thinning its forces in Arunachal. The thinning was supposed to be part of a carefully worked out protocol, but New Delhi decided it could live with the risk.
In the years thereafter, Beijing put in a vast infrastructural development effort in Tibet and constructed a network of highways, railways, airbases and military cantonments. By 2004 New Delhi realised it had to respond to these capabilities, even if there was no imminent threat. So, in the recent years, India is trying to shore up its defences by raising additional forces (actually it is not clear whether these would be additional, or they would be scavenged back from the bloated divisions in Jammu & Kashmir) and deploying some effective air power in the region. The announcement that 2 divisions would be raised was actually made first in 2006 and the June 2009 announcement was just a
restatement.

Settlement
The military confidence building process between India and China, manifested in the 1993 agreement and its companion 1996 agreement, led to an even more path-breaking 2005 agreement that actually set down the political parameters and guidelines that should underlie the boundary settlement. At the time, it appeared that the two countries would settle their vexed boundary dispute within a matter of a year
or two.
But strangely, that did not happen. And we are none the wiser as to why, except that we know that the block has been applied in Beijing and not New Delhi. Some officials say that the Chinese were miffed by what they saw as India’s efforts to “encircle” China by tying up with Japan, Australia and the United States. Others say that inner party dissension in Beijing has led to a progressive hardening of Beijing’s attitude towards New Delhi. Because the two countries had advanced so far down the road towards resolving their more complex border problem, the hiatus appears greater than it probably is. But as of now there is no answer as to what should be done.
There should be no doubt that China is India’s greatest single challenge. The Global Times editorial may have reflected the views of only some top Chinese officials, but even so, it does tell us something of how an important segment of Chinese officialdom is thinking.

Response
The Chinese challenge is not just military, though we must not neglect its military aspects. The challenge, as the Global Times editorial put it, is basically developmental because the Chinese “miracle” makes it appear so much more attractive than us. There are many who say that China’s economic might rests on shaky foundations. But that is little comfort. The persistence of deep pockets of poverty, the poor health-care and educational system in India makes us appear weaker than we probably are as compared to China.
This matters to our neighbourhood and gives rise to the Chinese geopolitical challenge in our own neighbourhood with Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar and, of course, Pakistan. Despite our geographical advantages, China is able to unbalance us in our own region.
In today’s world, meeting a challenge should not give rise to a confrontation, though there is no need to shy away from one, if it is forced on you. India should compete with China, in the development field, as well as for diplomatic influence, even while retaining an effective military deterrent capability, both nuclear and conventional.
But we can also cooperate in many areas — peacekeeping, controlling the prices of commodities and natural resources, ensuring a level playing field in the world trading system, etc.
We must think through our relations with China in a coherent and calm manner. A strong and confident India is the best response to Beijing’s bluster. India has its inherent strengths, some of which are becoming apparent by the day.
The article appeared in Mail Today July 1, 2009

Why it is so difficult to fight India's Taliban

Have you wondered why Pakistan finds it so difficult to confront and fight the Taliban? The answer is reasonably simple. Pakistan is a state as its constitution notes, “wherein the Muslims shall be enabled to order their lives ... in accordance with the teachings and requirements of Islam as set out in the Holy Quran and Sunnah.”
So when you have a group saying that they are trying to create a society where the Shariat is enforced, there is confusion in the minds of the people. Their methods are wrong, but surely what they are fighting for is just, goes the refrain.
This is the kind of confusion which many Indians face on the issue of fighting Naxalism or Maoism. Our Constitution says we are among other things, a “socialist republic”; the Congress party is wedded to a “socialistic pattern of society”, as indeed are a number of other parties.
So when you have a group of people who say they are fighting for a socialist revolution, there is perplexity which persuades celebrities and intellectuals like Aparna Sen and Mahasweta Devi to support extremism and university professors to rise to their defence in the name of human rights.

Threat
According to Home Ministry figures, Maoists killed 100 security force personnel and 466 civilians in 2004, the year in which the UPA government first came to power. Last year, 2008, the tally had gone up sharply to 231 security force personnel and 490 civilians. The civilians killed, often through kangaroo-court sanctioned executions, are not the rich or “class enemies” but those who happen to be “richer” and better educated among the dirt poor and illiterate population amidst which the Maoists operate. Their executions are designed to terrorise the people in the area.
Historically, India dealt with communism in a sophisticated manner. The Congress, which dominated the polity till 1967, fought the communists politically, but did not hesitate, when required, to fight them militarily.
This was a time when countries like the US blundered into fighting national movements in Asia in the name of fighting communism.
The Congress incorporated a great deal of socialist rhetoric, if not substance, into its working. Central planning, a la Soviet Union, was introduced in 1951; the Congress insisted that it was committed to creating a “socialistic pattern of society” after the Avadi Congress of 1956. But the same party’s government ruthlessly suppressed the armed uprising of the communists in Telengana. When a communist government was elected in Kerala in 1957, the Congress used CIA funds to overthrow it. In the 1970s the Congress-led government crushed the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) or the Naxalite revolt in West Bengal with great brutality.




Over the years the success of the policy was in seeing various factions of the Communist Party abandoning armed struggle and agreeing to participate in the country’s parliamentary democracy system. The last major faction that did so is the CPI(ML)Liberation led by Dipankar Bhattacharya.
But over the years as the Congress party lost its political pre-eminence, the effectiveness of the strategy and tactics of managing left-wing extremism began to decline. The result is that an enormous swathe of the country —some say 40 per cent of its land area — stretching from northern Tamil Nadu to north Bihar has been allowed to fall under the sway of a vigorous Communist Party of India (Maoist) which is said to have just 20,000 full-time cadre.
Governments have periodically tried to deal with the new Naxalite challenge. In 2006, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh took notice of the rising depredations of the left extremists and summoned the second meeting of the standing committee of chief ministers from six of the affected states — Bihar, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra — to New Delhi to discuss the issue. In his address Singh pointed out that the naxalite movement was now characterised by superior army style operations, better coordination and trained cadres, and had the ability to mount large-scale frontal assaults on defended targets. He declared Naxalism to be the “single biggest security challenge ever faced by our country.”

Consolidation
As a result of this meeting, a two-pronged strategy stressing development and security schemes was set in motion. A plan was made to enhance the connectivity of the Maoist affected areas and money was allotted to create critical infrastructure in the region. The states affected were provided additional money for security and a large force of Special Police Officers was raised. They were given Central forces and a decision was taken to create 10 commando battalions of the CRPF. In addition, 20 counter-insurgency schools were planned to train the
local police.
Yet, as the second UPA government takes office, it is clear that the situation has not changed. The Naxals have consolidated their hold in many areas and expanded it to others. Lalgarh in West Bengal is just one example. Early this year when there was yet another meeting, another state was included to the original six — West Bengal.
The Union government still lacks a strategy of dealing with the Maoists. In part because of the confusion we spoke of which convinces people that measures like the Forest Rights Act of 2006, more schools, health-care centres and good roads will fix the problem.
On the other hand, there are ham-handed attempts, such as that of arming local people through the Salwa Judum to take on the Naxals. This may be necessary when the state has its back to the wall — as in Jammu & Kashmir in 1992-93 — but it is unconscionable when the state has not yet effectively deployed its own uniformed personnel.

Command
A serious battle against the Maoists requires, first and foremost, a unified command. Wars are won by generals and not standing committees, even if they are of chief ministers. The present battle is scattered between the seven affected states. If you mount pressure in one, the Maoists escape to the other. Invariably they show better coordination and cooperation than is exercised by the union government and the seven chief ministers and their bureaucracies.
The Union government and the states should sit down and appoint a single commander for the affected zone and place all the forces and resources there under his command. This may require special legislation, but so be it. Only when the Maoist- controlled battlefield is seen as a single theatre can the threat be effectively thwarted.
But an even tougher battle has to be fought within the intellectual sphere of the country to convince the people that the Maoists are indeed a fundamental threat to the republic, and that they are not heroes by any measure. They are neither “socialist” nor “socialistic”, nor “romantic” but simply power-hungry thugs for whom extremism is a way of life. Neither are they the valid representatives of the poor and deprived.
There was once a certain romance attached to the idea of being a left-wing revolutionary in the 1960s. But that was before we knew what Pol Pot or Mao did to their own
countrymen.
India needs to get over its confusion about the Maoist path and begin to fight them tooth and nail.
This article appeared first in Mail Today June 26, 2009

A Changed Pakistan

In the last two years that the composite dialogue remained more or less suspended, Pakistan has changed. Unfortunately, for the worse. Its civilian government lacks authority, its sectarian and sub-national problems have deepend. Continuing the old dialogue now would be an exercise in futility

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Yekaterinburg meeting with Pakistan President Asif Zardari has set the stage for the resumption of the paused composite dialogue between New Delhi and Islamabad. Pakistan is uncommonly keen on restarting the talks which cover a number of outstanding issues, as well as Kashmir and terrorism. India is of two minds on this, but seems to be getting ready to agree.
Actually the composite dialogue has become obsolete to the India-Pakistan dynamic. In part this irrelevance is a result of its success, but in greater measure a result of the dramatic, and sadly negative, changes taking place within Pakistan.
The composite dialogue got its name from the outcome of a set of negotiations between India and Pakistan in the mid-1990s. New Delhi wanted Islamabad to discuss the end of cross-border terrorism, while the latter insisted that nothing could be done without movement on Jammu & Kashmir. In 1998 when talks resumed after the Indo-Pak nuclear tests, it was decided to take up these issues and lump the other outstanding subjects held-over from the 1980s —Siachen, Wullar Barrage and so on —under the rubric of what began to be called “composite dialogue.”
The period 2004-2007 saw the most intense and rewarding phase of this dialogue. India and Pakistan have more or less resolved the Siachen and Sir Creek disputes. But, because of the larger gridlock arising out of the Mumbai attack and the political meltdown in Pakistan, the two sides are not able to declare their success and move ahead.


The talks have also aided in opening up the India-Pakistan border, both across the Line of Control in Kashmir, as well as the international border. Even on Jammu & Kashmir, the two countries had arrived at a formulation that India could live with. But on terrorism, there remained a tentativeness which has manifested itself in the manner in which Islamabad has dealt with the Mumbai episode.
The question now is whether Pakistan can move ahead because the man with whom we were on the verge of finalising the formula, Pervez Musharraf, has been ejected from Pakistani polity.

Patriotism
There are two issues of immediate concern. First, is it worthwhile to discuss the Kashmir issue with the Pakistan government? Mr Zardari has displayed a positive approach towards relations with India. But his authority in Pakistan rests on very shaky foundations indeed. Mr Nawaz Sharif is already being spoken of as the most popular politician in the country. The Pakistan Army has given no indication that they are for a continuation of Musharraf’s initiatives with India.
Second, will continuing the dialogue help in the project of getting Pakistan to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure? There is every indication that it won’t. The infrastructure came up to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan and later to push the GHQ’s policy of strategic depth in Afghanistan vis-à-vis New Delhi, as well as the policy of bleeding India through proxy war. But today it has taken on a life of its own and parts of it have gone rogue.
The United States, and, somewhat more reluctantly, Pakistan, may convince the world that the Pakhtun Taliban is the main threat to the world via the al Qaeda, but India has to focus sharply on terror groups that have arisen from the radicalisation of Punjab, such as the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba. When there were rumours of a possible Indian strike after 26/11, Lashkar leaders including Hafiz Saeed declared they would fight alongside the Pakistan Army against India. That was expected of an organisation which was set up by the Inter Services Intelligence.
Somewhat surprising was the outpouring of patriotism from Tehreek Taliban Pakistan leader Baitullah Mehsud, Maulana Fazlullah of Swat, top TTP figures like Faqir Mohammed and Maulvi Omar, as well as other Taliban commanders who are today fighting the Pakistan Army in the NWFP. Such feelings, no doubt, create a sense of ambivalence in the minds of many Pakistani military officials: Pakistan has to be foolish not to use their enthusiasm and manpower to fight the ‘big’ Satan — India.

Sectarianism
The issue, however, is just what does patriotism mean in Pakistan? When the chips are down it could well be confined to Sunni Punjabis. The Taliban with their larger Pakhtun loyalties are suspect. Other emerging faultlines question the very basic founding idea of Pakistan, Islam. This is evident from the rising tide of sectarianism. The recent assassination of Mufti Sarfraz Naeemi by a suicide-bomber in Jamia Naeemi in Lahore was not because he had condemned suicide bombing as “unIslamic”, but because he was probably the most influential scholar of the Ahle Sunnat or Barelvi school in Pakistan.
It is no secret that the Barelvis and the militant Deobandis have been on a confrontation course ever since General Zia-ul-Haq sought to privilege the Deboandi Sunnis above all other sects in Pakistan. As the Daily Times of Pakistan has put it, “The hardness of the Deobandi school of thought springs also from non-acceptance of the Shia community as true Muslims. One bone of contention between the Barelvis and Deobandis is that the former don’t apostatise the Shias.”
The attack on the Shias have been a feature of Pakistani polity since the 1990s. Shias have been killed at prayer, during religious observances and even during funerals. But in recent years, the Barelvis who represent the grass-roots religious tradition of Islam in South Asia, have been attacked as well. In 2006, a Barelvi congregration in Karachi was attacked during Id-e-Milad un Nabi by a suicide bomber resulting in the death of 57 and injuries to 100.
The ideological battle is being fought out by maulanas in Pakistan’s Punjab backed by suicide bombers and gunmen. In this battle, the joker in the pack is the Jamaat-ud-Dawa with its fanatical army, the Lashkar-e-Tayebba. This organisation owes allegiance to the Ahle Hadis school, which is a replica of the Wahabi school of Saudi Arabia. Hafiz Sayeed is right when he terms the Jamaat a charity grouping, which it is. But its sinew comes from the Lashkar.



The banned Jamaat’s charity prowess has become a byword in Pakistan. It beat the state in providing relief and rehabilitation after the 2005 earthquake in the Pakistan-held areas of Kashmir. It has been active in providing relief to people displaced by the Swat operation. The Wahabi Saudis are a major source of funds for the Jammat/Lashkar, but Hafiz Sayeed also gets money through the zakat, of wealthy Pakistanis as well as money through the donation of hides on Bakrid.
The Army has begun to battle the Pakhtun Taliban, but when will it go down the wire and take on the Sunni Punjabi extremists of the Deobandi and Ahle Hadis persuasion? This is the question that we need to ask ourselves before rushing in for talks.

Sub-nationalism
There are other faultlines widening in Pakistan — Sindhi, Pakhtun, and Baloch nationalism against the domineering Punjabis has not dimmed. The Pakistan army continues to fight a low-level insurgency in Balochistan, even as it takes up the gun against the Pakhtun Pakistani Taliban. In recent months, there have been reports of posters appearing in parts of the NWFP calling for a greater Pakhtunistan.
In the past two years in which the composite dialogue has run out of steam, the situation in Pakistan has deteriorated qualitatively. Only the US defibrillator has kept the system alive. Though there have been signs of hope — the civil society movement against Musharraf — the situation is grim. This is what has put the whole composite dialogue process into question.
The issue is not that India should not resolve its problems with Pakistan through dialogue, but whether we have an interlocutor state which we can dialogue with. An inelegant way of putting it, but there it is.
This appeared first in Mail Today June 18, 2009

Time to hit reboot button on Pakistan

The old policies are broken, we need new ones. But first we must get our strategic approach right. Should India follow a policy of 'selective engagement' or 'flexible containment ' with regard to Pakistan ?


New Delhi’s policy towards Pakistan is once again at a cross-roads. The momentum of the Musharraf years is broken. It has been replaced by the same truculent demanding, and even threatening, tone that preceded the 2004-2007 period. In the eight months that the government has been in the election mode, a great deal has changed. Pakistan has a new civilian government, its internal security has deteriorated, its military has for all public purposes withdrawn into a shell.
What will the second coming of the United Progressive Alliance government mean in terms of policy towards Pakistan? Should it be ‘selective engagement’— or its darker flipside, ‘flexible containment’?
The rise of the Taliban in Pakistan has altered the terms of the world’s approach to Islamabad. Suddenly there is a feeling that we could well be on the threshold of something even more serious than we witnessed in the dark days after Nine-Eleven. From being a somewhat indulgent partner, the US has become a demanding patron. The Americans are being driven by the increased danger to their position in Afghanistan, a threat made possible by the consolidation of the Taliban and its allies in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan. To counter this, the US has formulated a complex war plan that demands that Pakistan do more — far more — than they have been doing till now.




This demand has been heaven sent for a country which is expert at playing the US for a sucker. In the past eight years, Pakistan received $10 billion from the US, at least $6 billion as reimbursement for operations in the NWFP. But there is little to show for it. Former President Musharraf insists that Pakistan need provide no accounting for how this money has been spent.
But that is no secret. Some of it has been skimmed off for personal gain, but a large proportion has been spent to strengthen the Pakistan military against an adversary which has shown little inclination to act against them even when Pakistan-backed terrorists have inflicted great pain on it.

Engagement

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has reiterated, almost pro forma, the Indian demand that Pakistan dismantle the infrastructure supporting terrorism and act against the perpetrators of the Mumbai carnage. A number of voices in Pakistan, and this country, suggest that India must help out Islamabad by resuming the composite dialogue. They argue that such an action will help shore up the credentials of the civilian government in Islamabad at a time when it is being buffeted by the Taliban insurgency, as well as the rising tide of religious extremism and violence in other parts of the country.
Other voices, too, suggest that unless there is some reconciliation between India and Pakistan on Kashmir, Islamabad will not assist any move to stabilise Afghanistan. There are even darker suggestions, repeated most recently by the President of Pakistan himself, that unless the world supported the civilian government, there was every chance that Pakistani nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of the Taliban.
The UPA-II sees itself as a new government with new policies. Perhaps the time has come for it to rethink its Pakistan policy anew. Since 1990, governments have sought to deal with Pakistan in a defensive mode of ‘selective engagement’. They have talked to Islamabad on all outstanding issues — Siachen, Wullar barrage, Indus waters, nuclear and conventional military confidence building and, of course, Jammu & Kashmir, even while Pakistan carried on a massive covert war against us.

Power

The high-points, of what one official calls the “magnificent doggedness” of Indian policy, were the military confidence building measures of the early 1990s, the November 2003 ceasefire on the Line of Control and Siachen, the January 6, 2004 agreement to push the composite dialogue, the agreement to create a South Asian Free Trade Area on the same day. The low points have been the Bombay blasts of 1993, the IC 814 hijack, the Parliament attack of 2001, the Mumbai carnage of 2008 and the numerous bomb attacks whose footprints lead to Islamabad. In such a matrix it is difficult to see what, if anything, India has gained.
Since 2007, the beginning of the decline of Pervez Musharraf — simultaneously our great tormentor and good interlocutor — India has been left with the uncomfortable feeling that we are alone on the dialogue table. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and President Asif Zardari are all sound and fury signifying nothing. They cannot provide depth to the conversation that came from having a President who was also commander-in-chief, and thus carried the authority of the men who really wield power in Pakistan — the Pakistan Army’s Corps Commanders’ conference.
For the better or the worse, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani has chosen to keep off politics in the formal sense. There is no doubt that he continues to wield the traditional authority that the army chief does in Pakistan. But he has chosen not to get directly involved in dealing with India or the US.
Everything that is wrong with India’s Pakistan policy is best summed up by the way in which Islamabad has dealt with the Mumbai carnage. From the outset Pakistan has been in denial over the role of the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba in the attack. It has acted against some of those involved, but this action has been fitful. Given the general reluctance to act on the issue, it is too much to expect that the Pakistani prosecutors will come up with an iron-clad case to convict a Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi or Zarrar Shah, let alone Hafiz Saeed. To expect cooperation on a case involving the LeT is to go against everything we, and indeed anti-terrorist officials anywhere, know about the relationship between the Pakistani intelligence services and the outfit.
There will be suggestions that it is to India’s advantage to deal with a civilian government, and that only through helping shore up this government and civil society can there be real reconciliation between the two countries. Perhaps it is true. But in the short-term in which policy outcomes are sought, this places an impossible burden on New Delhi to not only negotiate with Pakistan, but also work overtime to ensure that our counterpart remains a viable interlocutor. India is a large and resilient country, but its stamina is finite.

Containment

In these circumstances, New Delhi can go through the formalities of a dialogue. But it will be shadow dialogue with interlocutors who cannot deliver. On the other hand, India has to deal with the real possibility that those who carried out the Mumbai attack are planning something even more horrific to achieve what they failed to the last time. As it is there are disturbing signs of heightened activities of terror groups against India in J&K and elsewhere. New Delhi had been lax in policing its frontiers and coastline. But Mumbai has at last persuaded the government to urgently institute defensive measures to prevent another attack.
Second, we need to sharply enhance our capabilities to deter the Pakistan armed forces from their cost-free policy of using terrorist proxies against India. Despite public commitments, the Indian military has not yet been able to seal that space between all-out nuclear conflict and a conventional war that the Pakistan Army has used to bleed India. The way out is not more of the same and acquiring bigger and better weapons, but transforming the way our military works.
In other words, by comprehensively out-thinking and outflanking our adversary through a new policy of ‘flexible containment’.
This article appeared in Mail Today June 10, 2009

The challenge of dealing with Hafiz Muhammad Saeed

The release of Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, founder of the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, and currently the chief of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, has raised a fire-storm in India. The release was ordered by a three-judge bench of the Lahore High Court.
India should not take it so hard. In April the Pakistan Supreme Court gave bail to Maulana Abdul Aziz who was in jail pending trial for abetment to murder, kidnap, and incitement relating to the Lal Masjid siege in 2007. What the two cases tell us is what we already know. Pakistan’s government, judiciary and even the military are weak and confused. Their discriminatory faculties are dulled and this results in bad judgment and poor execution of policy.
Saeed was placed under house arrest shortly after the JuD was declared a terrorist entity on December 10, 2008, and added to the UN Security Council resolution 1267 list as being another name for the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba which had been part of the list since May 2005. The UN Security Council action itself took place in the wake of the deadly attack on Mumbai on November 26 killing some 170 people. A little before Saeed’s detention, LeT functionaries Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, Zarrar Shah, Abu al-Qama, Hammad Amin Sadiq and Shahid Jameel Riaz were also arrested.

Judges

Media reports had suggested that the Punjab government prosecutors had presented in camera evidence to the court bench about Saeed’s relationship to the al Qaeda. That the court nevertheless released him suggests that the evidence was not very compelling. The court did not give any reason for his release and leaks to the media, mainly by his defence counsel, suggest that the release was ordered on the formal ground that Saeed was not informed of the charges leading to his arrest within the stipulated
15 days.
The extent of the Pakistani official complicity in his release is unclear. But suffice to say, that if the government wanted to keep him behind bars (a technicality since his own residence was a deemed sub-jail), they would have. Countries like Pakistan (and India) are not known for being sticklers for due process, and there are no dearth of examples of people kept behind bars without bail, on the flimsiest of pretexts, with the help of colonial legislation.




The lower judiciary in India, for example, tends to follow the executive’s lead on matters relating to national security and in the case of Pakistan, the problem is even more severe considering that its Supreme Court has periodically underwritten its military’s intervention in the affairs of the country under the dubious “doctrine of necessity.”
A major reason for the Lahore court’s actions are the links between the Pakistan Army and militant jehadi organisations in Pakistan. The Lashkar in particular, has had deep links with the Pakistani military and its Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate. Indeed, many intelligence officials in India, and now the US, believe that the LeT was actually set up by the ISI, and hence its India focus, despite its global rhetoric. Though formally a pan-Islamist, Saeed is a fanatically patriotic Pakistani.
The Lashkar/Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a Wahabist plant in a subcontinent where Deobandi and Barelvi Islam flourish, has links with the al Qaeda as well, and receives a great deal of funding from Saudi Arabia. Within Pakistan, the Lashkar seems to be moving towards gaining a status akin to the Hezbollah in Lebanon, where charity and community services flourish along with military capability.

Crimes

The Lahore court’s lenient approach can also be explained by Pakistan’s prevailing politico-religious culture which is badly affected by sectarianism where violence against “the other” is often condoned in the name of “true faith.” It began with attacks and proscription of the Ahmediya sect, and went on to create an almost irreparable breach between the Shia and Sunni communities in the country. Now, the militant Deobandis and Wahabis are trying to overwhelm the numerically larger populace of fellow Sunni Barelvis. In such a climate, incitement to jehad against kafirs, Americans and Hindus is unlikely to even be counted as a misdemeanour.
The quandaries in arresting and trying Saeed are manifest in the entire democratic world’s fight against terrorism. It is one thing to capture a terrorist. It is quite another to actually give him a free and fair trial within the bounds of the law of evidence of most modern states. This is the reason many of them were compelled to pass legislation that made the task of trying terrorists a little easier by short-circuiting certain legal rights that the accused normally get. Even this is not enough, and the United States still feels the compulsion of trying many of the terrorists in Guantanamo by military tribunals.
This is also the problem India has in seeking the arrest and trial of Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar. Actually Azhar did not commit any terrorist acts in India. He was arrested within two weeks of his arrival in February 1993. At the time the pudgy and distinctly unmilitary Azhar was secretary-general of the Harkat-ul-Ansar, and editor of its magazine. He was more of an organiser and motivator, than a fighter. The main charge against him was illegal entry, and that, too, on a false passport. All the charges against him were dropped when India was compelled to release him in exchange for the passengers of the IC814 that had been hijacked to Kandahar, by a gang led by his brother.
Subsequently he formed Jaish-e-Mohammed, and this group carried out several terrorist acts against India. But even if Pakistan were to hand over Azhar, it would be tough for India to find the evidence to convict him.
People like Azhar and Saeed are not seen posing with AK-47s, storing explosives and giving directions to militants to carry out attacks. Their greater contribution is to provide organisational and leadership skills upon which some of the deadlier terrorist organisations of the world have come up. You can go through Saeed’s public writings and speeches and you will not get anything more than the activities of a fund-raiser, organiser, motivator and ideologue.
Most of the speeches are about the necessity of jehad. Such a message has resonance in Pakistan where many in the religious, but impoverished and illiterate, populace are willing to accept this half-baked version of Islam, especially when the message comes packed with charitable and social services provided by the Jammat-ud-Dawa’s top-quality volunteers.

Judgment

As of now, people like Saeed and Azhar cannot be touched, especially in the present enervated condition of Pakistan’s political, administrative and military institutions. But change is afoot, forced by the events in Swat. The Army would have liked things to stay the way they were, but events such as the Taliban’s ambitious moves into the Malakand division and its frenzied terror attacks in Lahore, have forced the Army’s hand. The battle is now likely to expand into the Federally Administered Tribal Areas as well.
The process of combating the Taliban can bring the security forces into direct confrontation with the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, the Jaish-e-Mohammed and other religious militias. This in turn could create conditions in which the evidence, which is not available today, to convict these terrorist “generals” is made available.
Most of Saeed and Azhar’s activities have been within Pakistan, and Pakistani authorities, especially the ISI, will have mountains of evidence, surveillance audio and video-tapes, as well as individual testimony, to convict them even under Pakistani law.
But we cannot get the ISI to turn over that evidence, or get the Pakistani courts to act on it, unless there is a transformation in the ISI and the army’s approach to the security of their country.
The road ahead is long and there will be no easy short-cuts to our goal.
This piece appeared in Mail Today June 4, 2009

The UPA must not fail on security reform this time

The first United Progressive Alliance government’s most substantive failure was in the area of security. Its most obvious manifestation was in the horrific Mumbai attack last November, but there were equally worrying signs in the poor handling of the Naxal problem, or the management of the country’s defence portfolio.
Mumbai happened. The Naxal issue was left to fester. As for defence, the armed forces were simply not ready to act against Pakistan in the aftermath of 26/11.
The Mumbai terror attack did bring the UPA-I government back on to the track. But since only a few months were left of its tenure, all it could do was to take some urgent measures — which it did — and hope for the best.
P. Chidambaram’s appointment as Union Home Minister for the UPA-II government is a good sign. The tough measures that UPA-I was finally compelled to adopt after 26/11 will continue. Mr Chidambaram may have his faults, but the lack of decisiveness is not one of them. And the one thing that the humongous Home Ministry desperately requires is leadership.

Intelligence
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of A.K. Antony who returns as the Union Defence Minister. Saint Antony’s honesty is an important attribute for a ministry which has been dogged by huge scandals and which is likely to issue some high-value equipment contracts in the coming years.
But our defence management does not require honesty alone. We need a political leader who will undertake drastic and decisive reforms that ensure that we have efficient, battle-ready forces at all times and against all adversaries.
The biggest danger that the country confronts in the coming period is the threat of another Mumbai-type terrorist attack. Knowing how the terrorists operate, it is more than certain that the next attack will not be anything like the last.
Mumbai has initiated action on one front at least. Under the new maritime security plan, the Navy is now the “designated authority” for overall maritime security. The most important task, one that will take years to accomplish, is to be able to knit together all the elements that constitute the maritime security system — the Coast Guard, state marine police forces, the state and central intelligence organisations.
Besides ships and boats, the system will require a comprehensive infrastructure of air, sea and land-based radar and data management systems that track every ship and boat in our waters.
The reform of our intelligence system is long overdue. The Research & Analysis Wing and the Intelligence Bureau have successfully deflected the effort to reform them by the National Democratic Alliance government. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should not waste any time in undertaking a deep restructuring of the intelligence system.
The system is in dire need of modernisation. The IB must be prodded to abandon its colonial-era task of spying on political parties. By now it should be clear to all that this benefits no one but the intelligence bureaucracies.
There is need to make the R&AW more productive, get the National Technical Research Office going and set up new institutions to exploit internet and space-based systems. The most difficult and important task is to knit together all the elements of the intelligence system — IB, R&AW, NTRO, the Financial Intelligence Unit, the Narcotics Control Bureau and the state intelligence agencies.
There is also need to address our weaknesses in foreign languages and international studies programmes which result in poor utilisation of hard-earned intelligence data.
The way forward in defence has been laid out partially by the NDA’s Group of Ministers proposals which had been given Cabinet approval. The UPA-I’s failure to appoint a Chief of Defence Staff has blocked all efforts towards integrating the armed forces. This integration is vital if we are to exploit the Revolution in Military Affairs which, in our times, means the fusing of sensors to obtain total information on the adversary and the ability to employ the most effective and appropriate force to neutralise him, regardless of whether the weapon “belongs” to the army, navy or air force.

Defence
India will spend some Rs 170,000 crore on its defence forces this year. This roughly comes to the entire sum the Union government will spend on Health (Rs 18,808 crore), Home Affairs (Rs 38,601 crore), Rural Development (Rs 62,615 crore), Roads (Rs 19,764 crore) and Human Resource Development (Rs 41,978 crore).
The country with the highest rate of infant mortality and malnutrition in the world cannot, or should not, be able to afford this. But the issue is not the size of the expenditure, but its efficacy.
Twice in recent times — in the wake of the Parliament attack in December 2001 and after Mumbai last November — the government needed to use coercive diplomacy with Pakistan. But it soon realised that its principal instrumentality of coercion — our armed forces — were simply not up to the task.
This is not to argue that the government should have attacked Pakistan. What the government did need was the option of the efficacious use of force. Here it is not enough to say, well, our Air Force was ready to go. The government would have been irresponsible if it sent in the IAF for a so-called surgical strike without being prepared for a wider conflict in which case, as it turned out, our army was not quite prepared.
In all this we have not even factored in China. In a recent statement the Air Force chief Fali Major declared, “We know very little about the actual capabilities of China, their combat edge or how professional their military is.” This is a pathetic admission of our weakness. It echoes the defeatist talk that was common in the early 1960s when Chinese and Indian forces began to face-off across the Himalayas.
Clearly India desperately needs to do something about its defence management system. But there are no indications that it hopes to do something about it. In UPA-I, neither the National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan nor Mr A.K. Antony showed any inclination to touch the subject of the reform of the armed forces and the intelligence services.

Leadership
Unfortunately, this work can only be done by people like them, the political class. Left to themselves the defence bureaucracy — civilian and uniformed — will do nothing about it because they have it good anyway. When disaster struck, as it did in Namka Chu in 1962, and in Mumbai in 2008, jawans, policemen and civilians died, but it is the political class that was held accountable.
UPA-II is in a grace period. The electorate did not buy the BJP’s critique of the UPA-I on security because it was patently self-serving, coming as it did, from a party with a longer list of failures.
But the people may not be so forgiving the next time. Especially if it appeared that the UPA had been wilfully negligent.
manoj.joshi
This appeared in Mail Today May 28, 2009