Slain Soldiers and the Afghan-end Game

Four inter-related incidents happened in the course of this eventful week. First, a Pakistan army border commando force ambushed an Indian Army patrol on Indian soil, very near the border in Kashmir  and killed 5 soldiers. Then the government did a flip-flop over pinning responsibility on who exactly did the slayings – the Pakistan Army or irregulars dressed in Pakistan Army uniforms.  A first day statement by defence minister A.K.Antony drafted by the National Security Advisor suggested it was by unknown assailants dressed in Pak Army fatigues. The uproar  that followed forced the government to eat its own words and go back to the original press release issued by the Army which blamed the Pakistan Army’s border action team.

4 Bihar regiment martyrs being brought back

Then came two contrary messages from across the border – terror group Lashkar e Toiba chief Hafeez Saeed in a pre-Eid rally at Karachi threatened more attacks on India and followed it up by tweeting on Eid day : “time is near when those oppressed in Kashmir, Palestine and Burma will celebrate Eid in the air of freedom”. On the other hand, the Pakistan Prime Minister’s special envoy to India, Shahryar Khan in an interview in London blamed Pakistani extremists for the Kashmir killings and said Saeed needs to be checked.

Before Saeed unleashed his terror threat,  India’s hawkish television anchors and former generals had of course unleashed their own verbal `jihad’ demanding a fitting response to Pakistan’s perfidy. While India’s peaceniks launched a counter `love jhad’ going blue in the face reminding everyone of Gandhi’s famous line : `an eye for an eye would  make this world  blind’.  The hawks who were joined by the opposition BJP had a point – Pakistani soldiers had beheaded an Indian soldier ambushed on patrol earlier this year and prime minister Manmohan Singh had then promised a `robust’ response  – no one could see that response on the ground. And then came this killing followed by  a flip-flop.

The argument which came from many in the defence community was - An armyman is mentally readied to die defending his country in war. However, is he expected to become a martyr even when the country is ostensibly at peace? In that case should we accept this `phony’ peace?

In the din of this televised battle no one sought to probe the whys of the story – why did the Pakistan Army chose to do what it did at this stage? Why did the Manmohan Singh government act as it did in the face of strong provocation in an election year, knowing fully well that such a stance could boomerang on its face?

Despite misgivings on our peaceniks part and denials by the Pakistan government who would like to blame `non-state actors’ for the mischief, it should not be doubted that what happened at the border was the doing of the Pakistan Army. For there is no way anything like this can happen without the Pakistan Army sanctioning it. The Kashmir border is one of the most heavily fortified and militarized borders in the world, with concrete bunkers and artillery  batteries abounding. Nearly a lakh Pakistani troop – regular 10 corps as well as the paramilitary Northern Light Infantry are stationed along it or behind it.

Line of Control on the Kashmir front
 

The `Kashmiri militants’/`terrorists’ (mostly recruited from the Punjab and Multan  by organisations like the Lashkar-e-Toiba) who are regularly pushed through that border, crawl across thickly forested `No-man’s land’ while regular Pakistani troops give them covering fire.  They are never allowed to wear Pakistani Army fatigues as that would defeat the denials Pakistan always trots out when challenged on this unique `cold war’.

Why then did the Pakistan Army which really runs the country’s foreign and defence policy regardless of whoever is the civilian prime minister, do this at this time of the year? Especially when Pakistan’s economy is nearly crippled, it desperately needs electricity and gas from India and is under intense international pressure to be friendlier towards its larger neighbour.

The answer perhaps  lies in the Afghan end-game.  The US, with whom the Pakistanis have reluctantly and unwillingly agreed to be partners in the fight against terror, wants Pakistan to keep its troops focused on the Afghan border and its own tribal areas in the North-West, giving protection to the American lines of communications as they pull out. But if  Pakistan guards these lines, it is also expected to see to it that the Taliban which it has been sponsoring does not snipe at the retreating Yanks and/or walk into the spaces vacated by the Americans in Afghanistan.

It pays Pakistani interests if its’ Army can excuse itself from the second part of the task allotted to it, by being `forced’ to withdraw part of the troops posted on its western border on to the Indian border.  The Taliban can then either battle its way to Kabul or threaten the Karzai regime sufficiently to agree to share effective power with it. Talks being held with Taliban to share power, have as yet from the Taliban point of view, yielded nothing much more than just the respectability which comes when an insurgent group is invited for talks by any ruling power.

If the Americans can be `stampeded’, that is forced to quicken their pull-out from Afghanistan and persuaded by mounting casualties not to leave any forces behind to support the Karzai regime, so much better for Pakistan, which wants to use Afghanistan as its strategic backyard. If in the process of `quicker’ withdrawl, the US forces leave behind heavy artillery and equipment, it could prove a boon for the resource starved Pakistani Army.

India which is USA’s unmentioned `other’ ally in the war against terror,  of course does not want to give Pakistan any excuse to pull troops away from the Afghan border and is also under considerable pressure from its new-found Super-power ally to keep the peace with Pakistan, so that the pull-out goes on undisturbed.

This would explain Dr Singh silence on the issue and the flip-flop by his defence minister, who many have sarcastically dubbed `St Antony'. There was perhaps a conscious attempt to give Pakistan a way out from the embarrassment  and uproar caused by the sneak attack.

However all this leads on to another set of questions  – does helping out USA pull out quietly from Afghanistan help India? What will Pakistan do once the Americans have pulled out, leaving  it in the undisputed position of being the strongest military force in all Pashtun speaking lands (which includes  most of Afghanistan and Pashtun speaking provinces and tribal territories in Pakistan)? Will India’s huge investments in Afghanistan remain safe after the Americans pull-out ? (attacks have been mounting on Indian diplomatic posts in Afghanistan as well on Indian built roadways and other ventures by Pakistani supported terror networks) How will all this impact India’s Kashmir region? Or for that matter the terror attacks that India regularly faces from across the border? Can it really count on the Nawaz Sharief government to have the strength or the real desire to reign in Pakistan’s hawks who demand that it feeds terrorists into Kashmir and even to attack targets in Indian cities using `non state actors’ ?

To be concluded

Kasab and The Terror Trail

Mumbai's Taj Hotel Under Attack  26/11

India has hung the infamous Kasab, sole survivor of a terrorist guerrilla team which attacked and held to ransom two 5-star hotels and a Jewish centre at Mumbai on 26^th November 2008, slaughtering more than 150 Indians and foreigners. Will that act of capital punishment, end terror strikes against India?

Even when the news that Kasab, the symbol of the dastardly attack on one of India’s most lived  and loved mega-cities, was being hung  flashed on television screens, I doubted we would have any  such luck in resolving the terror threat from across the border.

Sure enough, soon afterwards, the Pakistani Taliban and Lashkar-e-Toiba, the terror organisation to which Ajmal Kasab owed  his indoctrination and training vowed to hit India and Indians back.

Pakistan Taliban has spun out of the control of its creator – the Pakistani spy agency – ISI. However, Lashkar and its new avatar Jamat ud Dawa remain tied to the spymasters who see them as valuable assets to be used against India and Afghanistan, two nations, Pakistan has traditionally considered its enemies.   

Though a few liberal newspapers in Pakistan have called out for action against the masterminds behind 26/11, the threats made this week by Pakistani terror groups have not been condoned by the Pakistani state. Which seems to indicate that the threats may have the tacit support of sections of the Pakistani establishment, if not the blessings of the state machinery as a whole.  The logic for this is convulated and hard to understand, but it exists. More on that later.

India’s borders with Pakistan, despite fencing off of large chunks remain porous; Its coasts, vulnerable to landings on lonely beaches by small craft piloted by teams of the kind which attacked Mumbai.

The country’s borders with Nepal are totally open and those with neighbouring Bangladesh far less secure than the western one. The trails which terror sellers could take are many.  Indians could also be targeted abroad or on the high seas. At particular risk, would be Indian investments in Afghanistan, which Pakistan resents intensely as it considers this mountainous highland to be its strategic backyard where it hopes to impose its will in the future.   

Indian strategic thinker and former additional secretary in the cabinet secretariat, B Raman in a clinically analytical blog, too seems to feel that the threat would be highest for Indian establishments in Afghanistan and lists LeT, the Haqqani network, the Taliban and the Hizbe Islami as groups whch have the ground capability to launch those attacks.




US leadership watch live footage from the Osama raid

To deal with such probabilities, the Indian state needs to think out responses which will stifle terror. The American, Israeli and Russian state responses to terror perhaps hold lessons from which could learn.

The policy paradigm for these responses are the same, though the exact modus operandi differs. That policy, simply stated, is to attack and diminish the capability of groups which can threaten the countries concerned. The methods differ –  covert operations in some cases, huge state led responses across borders in others.  

With Pakistan shielding its terror groups by using nuclear blackmail – threatening nuclear strikes if India attacks terror camps in Pakistan, there are just two options. The best option remains covert, deniable attacks to finish off these camps. The other, albeit risky option, is to ignore the nuclear bluff, for it is a bluff, and to go in for limited military operations.

The second kind of operation,  will have to be met by Pakistan with some kind of official retaliation, which could escalate and is hence one which should be taken as a last resort. The first, will be grudged, but can hardly be met by official, overt military retaliation. Pakistan understands this kind of covert response, for it has come up with its own covert war against India and Afghanistan, using home grown terror groups, to avoid direct confrontation by denying all that happened.




Indian soldiers celebrate taking back a hill in Kargil ranges

When Pakistani Frontier corps soldiers dug into India’s then unguarded Kargil hills in 1999 and built bunkers from where they lobbed artillery fire onto a main arterial road connecting Ladakh with the rest of India, Pakistan simply denied they were its men. Indian soldiers eventually stormed those bunkers and killed the Gilgit tribal soldiers manning the `nests’. The bodies with their identity cards were offered to Pakistan, which  refused them, denying responsibility ! Though later, Pakistani leaders and generals gloated on their success in launching the sneak attack. 
   
When Kasab and his mates attacked Mumbai, again Pakistan denied they were Pakistanis. When confronted by telephone taps which showed they were being controlled out of Pakistan by men like LeT chief Hafiz Saeed and ISI officers, Pakistan officially claimed these were non-state actors who acted without the knowledge of the Pakistani state! The logic for such attacks is however, more difficult to understand.

Former Pakistani dictator Gen. Pervez Musharaf was recently in India, to address a gathering organised by a Delhi-based media group. He remained unfazed by questions on Pakistan’s attack on Kargil peaks in Kashmir and seemed to indicate that it was merely a tit for tat response for India’s involvement in the independence of Bangladesh!

What that comment revealed, was the mindset of the Pakistani establishment. It is still seeking revenge against India for perceived insults without either (i) introspection into either their role in Bangladesh or (ii) realisation of the high price being paid for the hatred of India which the Pakistani ruling elite nurses.


Indian troops being welcomed by Bangladeshis

Pakistan as a nation, especially its leadership, suffers from amnesia when it comes to Bangladesh. It forgets that Indian troops were forced to intervene in a messy civil war because Pakistani soldiers carried out one of the biggest genocides in the history of mankind – killing some 2 million of their own citizens and raping 200,000 helpless civilian women. The reign of terror which the army, to which Gen Musharaf belonged,  let loose on the civilian population of what was then East Pakistan, forced some 10 million Pakistani citizens to seek refuge in India. If India had not intervened, more millions would have perished. More millions would have been pushed into India to live as penniless refugees.

Yet, the Pakistani leadership instead of introspecting on its crimes, blames India for its “loss” and still demands revenge. Kargil and Mumbai 26/11 are seen as “revenge”.

Hans Kiessling, German researcher working for the Munich based Hanns-Seidel-Foundation estimates that ISI has an annual budget of about $ 300-400 million. The budget for the entire state of Pakistan is $ 39 billion, nearly $ 6 billion or a sixth of that budget is spent on its armed forces.

This extraordinarily high proportion of budget spent on defence is because Pakistan keeps needling India and Afghanistan with sneak attacks and consequently fears retaliation.
 
Pakistan has since the 1950s also tried to fund and arm small rebel groups such as the Naga within India, at great cost to itself.  Pakistan’s spy agency also spend huge sums to try undermine the Indian economy by pushing narcotics and spurious India currency. This massive spending on trying to undermine the Indian state translates into that much less left for Pakistan to spend on its own citizens.

The costs are obvious – deteriorating law and order has already turned Pakistan’s largest city,  Karachi, once touted along with Beirut as the `Paris of the East’, into being one of the world’s most dangerous cities; lack of investment has made Pakistan the slowest growing nation in South Asia; lack of spending on healthcare, education, sanitation and other civic amenities has meant Pakistan has kept slipping every year on the human development index. With little money to spend on the mainstream regions of Pakistan, marginal areas on the border – Balochistan, Gilgit have received even less funds, leading to a sense of deprivation which has fuelled separatism there.   
    
This brings one to consider whether India’s reaction, covert or overt, will actually bring some kind of closure to Pakistan’s export of terror. It may not, till Pakistan changes fundamentally and starts believing as does a section of its intellectual elite, that peace and friendship with its neighbours is the only way forward.

But in the interim, covert action designed to diminish the capability of Pakistani groups to launch against Indian interests, should deter the Pakistani ruling elite and the terror groups it has spawned. In this world of outsourcing, even covert wars can be outsourced. There are quite a few   groups within Pakistan who are struggling against that nation. India's work could be easily outsourced to them in return for training, arms and funding.

The lesson that has to be driven across is that even covert actions begets retaliatory actions and those with more money and men, which India does have, usually win in the end.