CE Week #15: “End of the Line for Islamabad”
If the Mumbai attacks were India’s 9/11, then it has responded quite differently than the United States did in the weeks following that horrible event. Much of the debate among Indians has looked inward, focusing on their government’s lack of preparedness, poor intelligence and bungling response to the attack. Senior Indian officials have resigned, some evidence links the terrorists to the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, but the Indian government has not rushed to war. Even the Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party, traditionally ultrahawkish, is advocating “coercive diplomacy,” calling on the world community to insist that Pakistan implement its U.N. treaty obligations to fight terrorism. India is showing restraint for some wise reasons—the two nations are nuclear-armed and a military strike would only inflame Pakistani nationalism. But a democratic government, approaching an election season, can only remain restrained if its restraint yields something. If not, South Asia—and that includes Afghanistan—is going to get a lot more unstable.
Some have argued that India should use its intelligence and air power to go after some of Lashkar’s camps in the borderlands of Kashmir. But one would not need spies and airplanes to find the head of Lashkar, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed. He lives and works in Lahore. Of course, Lashkar was banned by the Pakistani government in 2002, but Saeed now runs its “charitable” arm, Jamaat-ul-Dawa, a large and growing force in the country. The problem with Islamic militant groups in Pakistan is not that they are hard to find but rather that they are in plain sight. The Pakistani government has never made a fundamental decision to turn its back on the culture of jihad.
When one speaks of the Pakistani government, it’s necessary to be precise. The elected, civilian government appears to be something of an innocent bystander in this affair. Initially, President Asif Ali Zardari denounced the terrorists and offered full assistance to Indian investigators. His prime minister offered to send the head of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency to New Delhi to help. Then, after the Army weighed in, the offer was withdrawn. Zardari’s statements became more evasive and defensive. If anyone wondered who actually ran the country, it soon became clear.
Whether the Pakistani military was involved in the Mumbai attacks remains unclear. The Indians certainly think so. “The attackers were trained in four places in Pakistan by men with titles like colonel and major. They used communication channels that are known ISI channels. All this can’t happen without the knowledge of the military,” one Indian official told me. They’re not alone in their suspicions. “This was a three-stage amphibious operation. [The attackers] maintained radio silence, launched diversionary attacks to pull the first responders out of the way, knew their way around the hotels, were equipped with cryptographic communications, credit cards, false IDs,” says David Kilcullen, a counter-insurgency expert who has advised Gen. David Petraeus. “It looks more like a classical special forces or commando operation than a terrorist one. No group linked to Al Qaeda and certainly not Lashkar has ever mounted a maritime attack of this complexity.” Which would be worse: if the Pakistani military knew about this operation in advance, or if they didn’t?
The situation in South Asia is very complicated. But one thing is clear. All roads lead through Rawalpindi, the headquarters of the Pakistani military. For decades it has sponsored militant groups like Lashkar and the Taliban as a low-cost strategy to bleed India and influence Afghanistan. It now faces a choice. Unless Pakistan changes how it conceives of its interests and strategy, the country will remain an unstable place, distrusted by all its neighbors. Even the Chinese, longtime allies, have begun worrying about the spread of Islamic extremism. Pakistan needs to take a civilian, not a military, view of its national interest, one in which good relations with India lead to trade, economic growth and stability. Of course, in such a world Pakistan wouldn’t need a military that swallows up a quarter of the government’s budget and rules the country like a privileged elite.
The one country that could do more than any other to change the military’s mind-set is America. For India to bomb some Lashkar training camps would be to attack the symptoms, not the source of the rot—and would only fuel sympathy for the militants among ordinary Pakistanis. To the contrary, what the world needs is for Pakistan to decide on its own that its prospects are diminished by tolerance of such groups. American diplomacy has been fast and effective so far. But we must keep the pressure on Islamabad, and get countries like China and Saudi Arabia involved as well. President-elect Barack Obama has proposed aid to Pakistan that has sensible conditions attached, meant to help modernize the country.
America also has much to lose if things fall apart in South Asia. If tensions between India and Pakistan rise, distracting the Pakistani military from the jihadists in its tribal areas, it will lead to much greater instability in Afghanistan and a freer hand for the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Washington, too, needs to see results.
It would be so nice if Pakistan would just declare war or just completely stop what they are doing. But I completely agree with the US that they say that the attack was definitely run by the Pakistani military, for there is no way that an assault that complex could come from just a bunch of terrorists getting together. If we do choose to pick the side of Pakistan, our trade could be destroyed with India, and also hurt our relationship with China, pulling us into another world war if China does finally make an advance on us. (Which makes me think – I bet they would stop having a birth limit, so they could have maximum people to fight… That is very scary, especially at an exponential growth rate…) But anyways, I can also see that by choosing the side of India, a very well supported ally, we close off the doors to our ambitions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sooooo, I feel that we should just not get involved in either side of this… I can understand that might kick us out from both the Pakistans and the Indians, but I’m sure we could talk something out.
Connection – We talk about how politicians say a lot, while actually saying nothing. They hide behind the walls of ambiguity, and try to please everyone. Well I feel we should do the same on a national level for this situation. Gain support from both sides while actually doing nothing. That way, neither side will draw us in to this war that we don’t want to fight.
I am very impressed with India’s reaction. Not many years ago it seems like India would have been quick to declare war on Pakistan. If Pakistan is moving away from the funding of such groups it will be a slow one. People don’t like change, lets be realistic. The evidence is everywhere; it took 150 years after the freedom of slaves for the first black president to be elected. It took over a hundred years of women fighting for them finally to gain the right to vote, and this is in the most prominent Democracy of the world, the beacon of freedom. Pakistan is not so Democratic. There hate for India may be dying, but it is not dead and won’t be for some time. It may be quite a while before they are totally shunned by the government and people alike. The author is correct though. Things need to happen to promote progress, such as increased trade. A giant leap of progress has occurred though; India and Pakistan are not currently at war. Connection: Honeymoon period, this will be a great chance for Obama to make himself look good, perhaps by helping them create a great negotiation. Maybe he can even make great strides with a trade agreement. In any case a great opportunity has arisen.
I think that Pakistan should not have withdrawn the offer to the Indian government to analyze the attacks from within Pakistan. The withdrawal of the offer says more than the offer itself. Helping Indian intelligence in finding a resolution to this problem would have given Pakistan a more favorable image to other powerful countries by portraying themselves as “tough of terror”. But with the withdrawal of the support offered to India, they show that they are tolerant, if not supportive, of the terrorism in their country. “There is usually nothing wrong with compromise in a situation, but compromising yourself in a situation is another story completely…” (Immortal Technique, “The Poverty of Philosophy”), the government of Pakistan conformed to the views of the terrorists within in retracting their offer to the Indian government, which may predict a pattern of conceding to terrorist powers in the country. With that trend in mind, this forces other surrounding countries, and powerful nations like the United States, to take a stand against Pakistan, and the indifference to, or support of, terrorism that they have displayed.
Connection: Public policy. This decision made by the Indian government is an example of a course of action taken by the government, in which will set the tone of their policy on terror. The government of India has shown that it would like to diplomatically resolve issues in which they are involved in regarding terror, not taking direct action until they are certain of the source and can take appropriate action in reaction to the incident.
In Response to Dave,
In a dream world Dave, all problems would be solved and the whole conflict would dissolve and we would all peacefully coexist. Well we all know that is never going to happen (or probably never will). I don’t think it would be ideal for Pakistan to declare war either. It might speed up the process so a resolution could be achieved sooner, but it would more than likely leave complete destruction in its wake. Plus the United States would be forced into choosing a side which is potentially hazardous. I honestly can’t see us picking a side. Neutrality would be wisest because we need both Pakistan and India as allies for different reasons (and we wouldn’t want one of them to nuke us). Dave I agree with your final statement. We should not get involved. Stay neutral. Let them work it out. Plus the Middle East has so many other problems as well and if we got involved in every conflict that one of our allies had, we would be in a world of hurt.
Dave I enjoyed you comment about how is we went to war with Pakistan, it would also involve China and that would decrease their birth limit.