India, Pakistan, and God's geostrategic will

[Hulk]

The Hindu : Opinion / Lead : India, Pakistan, and God's geostrategic will

“God 's acts are never irrational,” wrote
Ziauddin Najam, commander of a Pakistani
strategic forces division, in a 2008 essay: an
essay remarkable for both the Major-
General's unwavering belief in a divine
project and his evident loss of faith in the
doctrinal credo that the nation's nuclear
weapons would ensure its survival.
“Pakistan was created on the night of the
27th Ramadan”, the General went on, “and
is [therefore] there to stay forever: we
must have faith in it.”
Major- General Najam's despairing words
could help an extraordinary effort to bring
about a rapprochement in India's fraught
relationship with Pakistan — an effort
more than one commentator has dismissed
as a consequence of Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh's own theology of
regional peace.
Last week, after Foreign Ministers Hina
Rabbani Khar and S.M. Krishna met in the
Maldives, the leaders let it be known that
the “trust deficit between the two countries
is shrinking.” Pakistan's Interior Minister,
Rahman Malik, called for the hanging of
the incarcerated 26/11 assault team
member Muhammad Ajmal Kasab — a
man he once insisted was not from his
country.
Dr. Singh later addressed his critics at
home: “I did discuss with Prime Minister
[Yusaf Raza] Gilani whether the Pakistan
Army is fully on board to carry forward the
peace process. The sense I got was that
after a long time, Pakistan's armed forces
are fully on board.”
The claim, if true, is remarkable. New Delhi
and Islamabad made multiple attempts to
revive their fraught relationship since
26/ 11, but each floundered in the face of
continued Pakistani military support for
anti- India jihadists and unwillingness to
act against the perpetrators of the Mumbai
carnage, the Lashkar-e -Taiba .
Evidence that any of this has changed is
thin — but there is some reason to believe
that the Pakistan army, behind its bluster,
is weaker than ever and, therefore,
desperate to secure its eastern flank at a
time it appears besieged from all sides.
For weeks now, Pakistan has been seeking
to demonstrate its commitment to peace:
the release of an Indian helicopter that
strayed across the Line of Control and the
tentative movement on opening trade
across the border are among the signs of a
thaw.
It is also clear, though, that Pakistan's
military isn't about to turn on its Islamist
proxies. Even though a judicial commission
is scheduled to visit Mumbai to record the
testimony required for the prosecution of
26/ 11 suspects being tried in a Lahore
court, there is plenty of evidence that
Islamabad continues to harbour terrorists
— among them, men directly involved in
the attack.
Sajid Mir, Lashkar commander who crafted
the assault plan, has been reported by both
the United States and India's intelligence
services as operating out of his family
home near the Garrison Club in Lahore;
Pakistan's Federal Investigations Agency
hasn't yet got around to paying him a visit.
Muzammil Bhat, who trained the assault
team, is claimed by Pakistan to be a
fugitive, though two journalists who went
looking for the terror commander in
Muzaffarabad located him without great
effort. Zaki-ur -Rahman Lakhvi, sole senior
Lashkar operative held for his alleged role
in the attacks, has continued to
communicate with his organisation from
prison. Pakistan hasn't, tellingly, even
sought to question David Headley,
Pakistani-American jihadist who has
provided the investigators with a detailed
insider account of the attacks — including
the role of the Inter-Services Intelligence in
directing them.
Back in December 2008, Pakistan's envoy to
the United Nations, Abdullah Haroon,
promised that his country would proscribe
the Lashkar's parent organisation, the
Jamaat-ud- Dawa; the government lists
released earlier this year, like those before
them, do not mention the organisation.
Even the U.S . is dismayed by Pakistan's
conduct: in a recent testimony to Congress,
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voiced
concern at Pakistan's “continuing failure,
in our view, to fulfil all of the requirements
necessary for prosecution related to the
Mumbai attacks.”
India's policy establishment has long
argued that Pakistan's conduct of the 26/ 11
case would be a litmus test of its military's
strategic intentions. So what has led New
Delhi to change course?
Pakistan's hard-nosed generals do not
likely share Dr. Singh's almost religious
beliefs about the need for peace in South
Asia. Their bottom line, though, is likely
this: beset with an Islamist insurgency that
has undermined both its internal
cohesiveness and legitimacy as a guardian
of the Pakistani state, the army just cannot
sustain a future crisis with India.
In 2010, things seemed quite different:
Pakistan's Army Chief Parvez Kayani
bluntly told journalists that the country's
relationship with India “will not change in
any significant way until the Kashmir issue
and water disputes are resolved.” The
proclamation came in the wake of a
reversal of his predecessor's decision to
temper jihadist operations against India. In
2008, soon after General Kayani took office,
the ISI authorised a murderous attack on
India's diplomatic mission in Kabul. The
Lashkar's infiltration across the LoC in
Jammu and Kashmir surged. Later that
year, it became clear from Headley's
testimony that the ISI Directorate provided
direct support for the Mumbai attack.
This aggressive posture marked a
substantial change in Pakistan's strategic
thought. In a thoughtful 2002 paper,
scholar George Perkovich cast light on Gen.
Musharraf's reappraisal of the Pakistani
military strategy on India. Lieutenant-
General Moinuddin Haider, who served as
Interior Minister under President
Musharraf, told Dr. Perkovich that he
argued that the long- term costs of
continuing to back jihadists would be
higher than the potential losses from
taking them on. “I was the sole voice
initially,” Gen. Haider recalled, “saying ‘Mr.
President, your economic plan will not
work, people will not invest, if you don't
get rid of extremists'.”
Gen. Haider gathered allies — among them
the former intelligence chief, Lieutenant-
General Javed Ashraf Qazi. “We must not
be afraid,” General Qazi said in the wake of
the 2001- 2002 India-Pakistan military
crisis, “of admitting that the Jaish was
involved in the deaths of thousands of
innocent Kashmiris, bombing the Indian
Parliament, [the journalist] Daniel Pearl's
murder and even attempts on President
Musharraf's life.”
Gen. Musharraf listened: in the wake of the
2001- 2002 military crisis with India, which
imposed crippling costs on Pakistan's
economy, he presided over a steady scaling
back of support for the jihad in Jammu and
Kashmir, and gradually cut back the
backing for terrorist attacks elsewhere in
India.
From Major- General Najam's article, we
have some sense of how these new policies
were seen by his commanders. “Pakistan's
complete turnaround from its earlier
policy,” Gen. Najam wrote in the 2008 issue
of theGreen Book , the army's premier
internal platform for doctrinal and geo-
strategic debate, “brought the state into a
direct clash with a sizeable segment of its
society, particularly those religious zealots
who had gained considerable clout and
power through exploitation of religious
sentiments. Also sympathetic to these
religious extremists were those deprived
elements of society who for long had been
denied economic and educational
opportunities”.
Looking back, 26/11 was General Kayani's
Kargil — an audacious attempt to rebuild
legitimacy with the religious right-wing
and consolidate his position within
Pakistan's armed forces, all by advertising
his commitment to their core anti- India
concerns. Kargil, though, backfired — and
so did 26/ 11. Like Gen. Musharraf, Gen.
Kayani found the Pakistan armed forces'
covert support to the jihadists exposed in
public — and the country under pressure.
For two years, Gen. Kayani was able to
weather the 26/11 storm: the U.S . was
willing to go easy on Pakistan, in return for
its cooperation, however fitful, in the war
against the jihadists in Afghanistan. The
problem, Gen. Najam pointed out, was that
a “sizeable segment of Pakistani society,
rightly or wrongly, perceives Pakistan as
serving [the] U.S . interest at the cost of [its]
own people.” “Pakistan today,” he
concluded, “finds itself in an ironic
position: the more it provides support to
GWOT [the Global War on Terror], the
greater [the] reaction [that] develops in its
society.”
In evermore desperate efforts to manage
that reaction, Gen. Kayani sought deals
with the jihadists acting against the
Pakistani state; backed anti- U.S . jihadists in
Afghanistan in an effort to secure leverage
against those targeting his forces; and
deepened his relationship with the anti-
India groups like the Lashkar and the Jaish-
e- Muhammad in an effort to befriend
Islamists.
Like most trapeze acts, this one proved
impossible to sustain. Following the May 2
raid that claimed Osama bin Laden's life, ISI
chief Shuja Pasha angrily told Pakistani
legislators: “At every difficult moment in
our history, the United States has let us
down. This fear that we can't live without
the United States is wrong.”
Pakistan can, however, only live with so
many enemies at once — and that is
precisely the strategy opportunity Indian
policymakers are seeking to benefit from.
Home Minister P. Chidambaram warned
Pakistan in the months after 26/11 “not to
play any more games.” “If they carry out
any more attacks on India,” he said, “they
will not only be defeated, but we will also
retaliate with the force of a
sledgehammer.” The truth is that the blows
will have terrible costs for India also —
costs that no sensible policymaker believes
should be used to compel Pakistan to
deliver justice on 26/11 . The worst case
scenario before the Prime Minister is that
his peace gamble, like those before it, fails:
but that would leave India exactly where it
was the day before Ms Khar and Mr.
Krishna met in the Maldives.
Pakistan's peace cheque is post-dated , and
issued on a bank in dubious health — but
with else nothing in hand, New Delhi has
little to lose by accepting the promise that
is being held out.

 

[Free Soul]

Please Sir, the format of the initial post makes it impossible to read.

I have always found your posts to be concise and candid (at least the ones i noticed). It would be nice if a thread starter makes a case, takes major points from the article and gives his opinion and if necessary posses some questions.

A copy and paste makes it quite hard to read through the sea of text and the reader looses interest quite easily.

 

[DRaisinHerald]

So...uh... who's gonna be bothered to read that block of text?