India's soft response to the Mumbai
bombings By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - Talks between India and
Pakistan that were expected to take place this
week have become a casualty of the July 11 serial
bomb blasts on seven suburban trains in Mumbai.
While India has only postponed - not canceled -
the third round of the foreign-secretary-level
talks, it has warned Islamabad that the peace
process could end if the terrorist attacks
continue.
On Saturday, Indian Foreign
Secretary Shyam Saran said the peace process with
Pakistan could be carried forward only if
Islamabad implemented its assurance made in the
January 6, 2004, India-Pakistan statement on not
allowing its soil to be used for anti-India
terrorist operations. While clarifying that "India
is for peace with Pakistan", he pointed out that
the terrorist attacks "undermine public opinion
and put a question mark over the entire process".
Pakistan has described the postponement of
the talks as a
negative development. "The
linkage between the postponement and the terrorist
attacks in Mumbai is incongruous and a bit out of
place," Pakistani Foreign Secretary Riaz Muhammad
Khan said on Monday.
The sudden chill that
has gripped India-Pakistan relations after the
Mumbai blasts has brought back memories of the
frostbitten bilateral interaction that followed
the terrorist attack on India's parliament
building on December 13, 2001. That attack, which
was carried out by the Jaish-e-Mohammed, a
jihadist outfit that is backed by the Pakistani
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), pushed India to
cut diplomatic ties with Pakistan, as well as
sever road, rail and air links with that country.
India also deployed its security forces along its
border with Pakistan. The two nuclear-armed rivals
were on the brink of war; their armed forces were
locked in eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation along
their border for about 10 months.
This
time around, India neither rushed to blame
Pakistan for the blasts in Mumbai, nor has it sent
its troops to the border as it did in 2001. But a
familiar war of words between the two neighbors
has been set in motion.
It was Pakistani
Prime Minister Khurshid Kasuri's comments to
Reuters in Washington in the aftermath of the
blasts that provided the immediate spark for the
exchange of angry rhetoric. In his remarks, Kasuri
seemed to link the blasts with India's failure to
resolve disputes with Pakistan. This provoked
India to describe as "appalling" Kasuri's linking
of terrorist attacks "to the so-called lack of
resolution of disputes between India and
Pakistan".
Three days after the blasts,
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, while
refraining from naming Pakistan, spoke of "terror
modules being supported, inspired and instigated
by elements across the border".
Investigations are on in India to
determine who carried out the blasts and to
identify the masterminds behind them. It appears
that the bombs were placed by activists of the
Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) but
that the explosives and the expertise were
provided by the Lashkar-e-Toiba, a terrorist
outfit based in Pakistan. On Saturday, a group by
the name Laskar-e-Qahhar, believed to be a front
of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, claimed responsibility for
the Mumbai blasts.
Few in India believe
that Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf
has cracked down seriously on anti-India
terrorists. He might have come down on Shi'ite and
Sunni sectarian outfits, but such groups as
Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed are allowed
to operate openly on Pakistani soil - that is the
widely held perception in India. And although
infiltration across the Line of Control has fallen
steadily since 2001, this is attributed to India's
fencing of the LoC rather than any dramatic
about-turn in Pakistan's policy of pushing
militants into Jammu and Kashmir.
There
has been some annoyance in India with the present
government's soft approach to tackling terrorism
and toward Pakistan. The government's response to
terrorist attacks over the past year has been
mild. Every terrorist attack that occurred over
the past year saw the government issuing a
statement that "the peace process will not be
affected". While this did not evoke much of a
reaction up to now, there are voices now demanding
that New Delhi deal with Islamabad more sternly.
Sections within the opposition Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP), which that headed the
coalition government during the 2001-02 downturn
in India-Pakistan relations, are calling on the
government to adopt a "hot pursuit" strategy
(where Indian security forces would chase
terrorist into their camps in Pakistan) to deal
with Pakistan-backed terrorism. Others in the
party are saying that they want the peace process,
which the BJP-led government started in 2004, to
continue but want Islamabad to deliver on its
commitments under the agreement. Whether the hawks
in the BJP will push for more extreme positions in
the coming days remains to be seen.
And
then there are those who are looking toward Israel
for ideas and inspiration. An editorial in The
Pioneer, an English-language daily from Delhi,
compares Israel's "tough and unambiguous measures"
- the ongoing bombing and blockade of Lebanon to
deal with Hezbollah - with the "pusillanimity and
squeamishness" of the Indian government. "It is
nobody's suggestion that the government should
immediately begin bombing terrorist camps across
the Line of Control," the editorial says, going on
to argue that this, however, is "a compelling and
perhaps inevitable option". B Raman, former
head of counter-terrorism at India's external
intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis
Wing (RAW), has called for a return to the
pre-1996 policy of "talk, talk, hit, hit" where
the political leadership and officials "continued
meeting and talking to their Pakistani
counterparts, whether there was any useful outcome
or not" but "gave a free hand to their
intelligence agencies to do whatever they felt was
necessary to hurt Pakistan covertly for its use of
terrorism against India".
"The time has
come," he said, to "talk, talk, bite, bite."
Even strong proponents of the peace
process with Pakistan are questioning the benefits
of persisting with talks. Noted analyst C Raja
Mohan argued: "If Musharraf is not willing or is
unable to deliver an end to cross-border
terrorism, the [Indian] government can only
conclude that it is no longer possible to do
business with him."
Sumit Ganguly,
director of the India Studies Program at Indiana
University in the US, argued that India "should do
far more than merely defer the 'composite
dialogue'. Instead, it needs to embark on a
relentless campaign to isolate Pakistan
diplomatically and to reveal the Musharraf
regime's organic ties to the jihadi terror
network." He suggested that India "dramatically
downgrade its diplomatic presence in Islamabad
[and] end all ongoing cultural exchanges". It
should launch a "sophisticated, orchestrated and
sustained diplomatic campaign on a global basis
that uses information available in the public
domain to depict the Pakistani state as an
incubator of terror".
Besides, India
should "bluntly press the US, the UK and the
members of the European Community to exert
tangible pressure on the Musharraf regime. If
necessary, India should be willing to place
ongoing cooperative ventures with these states at
some risk unless they prove willing to listen and
act on India's vital concerns as regards
Pakistan's feckless promotion of terror. Delhi
cannot remain satisfied with pious and anodyne
expressions of concern and sympathy from the
West."
While hot pursuit and surgical
strikes seem robust options that will produce
quick results, they might not be as rewarding as
hardliners imagine. Those who advocate "tough and
unambiguous measures" like those adopted by Israel
ignore the fact that these haven't worked to
secure Israel against violent attacks. And even if
they were successful, such tactics would not work
in India's case since India does not enjoy the
overwhelming military superiority that Israel does
with its neighbors. Besides, India's adoption of
such tactics would not have US endorsement that
Israel enjoys.
As for deployment of troops
as in 2002, this might have worked to push
Musharraf to promise action against terrorist
outfits, but it did not prompt him to dismantle
the infrastructure of terror in his country.
Besides, the financial cost of such deployment far
outweighed the concrete gains made from this
strategy.
If the threat of military action
did not work, would suspending the composite
dialogue help? Some analysts are pointing out that
suspending or ending the dialogue is not only
unlikely to push Pakistan to turn off the terror
tap, but also it would undermine the gains India
has made from the peace process. The
confidence-building measures that are in place
today might not have brought a change of heart or
attitude in the Pakistan-based terrorist groups or
their handlers in the ISI, but they have built a
strong constituency for peace among ordinary
Pakistanis.
This is a step in the right
direction. With regard to Kashmir, "the two sides
have begun to articulate a common approach that
acknowledges that borders cannot be redrawn",
Siddharth Varadarajan pointed out in The Hindu.
None of the confidence measures threaten India's
security. By withdrawing them or ending the
dialogue, India will lose the small gains it is
making.
Although there is a sense of
helplessness among decision-makers in India, they
do feel it is in a better position today than in
2001-02, especially with regard to getting the US
to understand India's concerns. In 2001-02, the US
administration was still starry-eyed about the
Musharraf government's commitment to fighting
terrorism. Today, it seems to have woken up
somewhat to what Musharraf has actually done or
not done to fight terrorism. Ministry of External
Affairs officials are hoping that the US will be
more receptive to India's suggestions this time
around to pressure Musharraf more on the issue
than it did in 2001-02.
These officials
also say that a deployment of troops along the
border is likely to be even more effective today.
With the security situation in Afghanistan
deteriorating, the US will not want Pakistan to
shift troops from the Afghan border to the border
with India. "This is a card that India will not
hesitate to use if the US does not get its major
non-NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] ally
to act on India's concerns," an External Affairs
source told Asia Times Online.
For now,
India seems to be keeping its options open. It has
deferred the talks, not closed the door on the
dialogue option. On Sunday, en route to the Group
of Eight summit, Manmohan outlined a strategy that
left the option of conditional engagement with
Pakistan open even as India mobilized
international pressure on Pakistan to stop
cross-border terrorism. He reminded the Pakistani
government of its commitment made in January 2004
that Pakistani territory would not be utilized for
promoting, aiding, abetting and encouraging
terrorist acts directed at India and called on the
government to back this commitment with action on
the ground.
Unlike in 2001-02, when India
rushed to flex its muscles against Pakistan and
ended up using all its cards in the beginning,
today it seems to be using a calibrated approach.
More confused than in 2001, perhaps. And certainly
more cautious.
Sudha
Ramachandran is an independent
journalist/researcher based in Bangalore.
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