Delhi anxious over Islamabad's
troubles By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - Pakistan's Operation Silence
at the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad last
week has revived memories in India of a similar
operation named Operation Bluestar that India
carried out in the Golden Temple in Amritsar more
than two decades ago. But the Lal Masjid operation
has stirred more than just memories: it has
stirred New Delhi's interest.
The man that
the government of President General Pervez
Musharraf called on to engage in talks with the
Lal Masjid clerics
ahead of Operation Silence
was Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil, who figures in
the list of India's most wanted terrorists. This
is a list that India has repeatedly forwarded to
Islamabad, asking for the men's extradition to
India, only to be told by Pakistan that it has no
information of their whereabouts.
Khalil,
the head of the outlawed Harkat-ul Mujahideen, has
close ties with the Taliban and al-Qaeda and is
one of the signatories of Osama bin Laden's 1998
fatwa calling on Muslims worldwide to "wage
jihad against Jews and the Crusaders". A close
aide of the Lal Masjid's second-top cleric, Abdul
Rashid Ghazi, who was killed in the military
operation on the mosque, Khalil was seen arriving
at the mosque in the same car as the head of the
government's negotiating team, former prime
minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain.
Khalil
has been put under protective custody since the
operation on the Lal Masjid. India, which has
refrained from issuing an official statement in
response to the operation, has not raised the
Khalil issue yet, at least through the media. An
official told Asia Times Online that India is
looking into the matter and will raise it "through
the appropriate channels".
Indians have
been watching developments in Islamabad with a
sense of deja vu. Twenty-two years ago, the Indian
Army stormed the Golden Temple in Amritsar -
Sikhism's most revered shrine - to flush out Sikh
militants holed up there. In Pakistan, the
fortification of the Lal Masjid happened under the
nose of the Musharraf government and with the
encouragement of sections in the Inter-Services
Intelligence. So too in India the fortification of
the Golden Temple by militants happened even as
the government looked on silently. And then in
June 1984, prime minister Indira Gandhi ordered
the army to rid the temple of the militants.
Operation Bluestar resulted in the death
of scores of militants, including their leader
Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, and caused extensive
damage to the shrine. It deepened Sikh alienation
from the Indian state, provoked the assassination
of prime minister Gandhi four months later, and
fueled the Sikh secessionist movement for another
decade at least.
Will the fallout of
Operation Silence be similar to that of Operation
Bluestar? Far worse, seems to be the verdict of
informed opinion in India.
An Indian
intelligence official said that while Operation
Bluestar's impact was limited to within India's
borders, that of Operation Silence will be far
more serious. It will impact "not just Musharraf
and Pakistan but also the neighborhood and
beyond", he said.
The confrontation
between the Musharraf government and the radicals
will increase, he said, as Operation Silence has
stirred up a hornets' nest. "There is likely to be
much movement of militants within Pakistan and
between Pakistan and its neighbors," said the
intelligence official.
This will mean that
India and Afghanistan will have more militants
entering their territory. Infiltration through the
Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir has been pretty
low over the past year. But Indian security forces
are not taking any chances. With the security
situation in Pakistan deteriorating, security
along the LoC has been tightened.
Indian
analysts are of the view that the Musharraf
government took the right step - albeit long
overdue - in launching the military operation.
"Given the situation in Pakistan, an army
operation to clear the mosque was necessary," said
Smruti Pattanaik, research fellow at the New
Delhi-based Institute for Defense Studies and
Analyses. The military operations have resulted in
the death of many, but "had the militants been
allowed to roam free, they would have posed a
greater threat to Pakistan both in terms of
security and human lives", she told Asia Times
Online.
Unlike their counterparts in
Pakistan, Muslim religious organizations in India
have supported the move.
"The Lal Masjid
had become a center of militant activities. The
mosque's clerics were directly challenging the
country's authority and they had to face what they
faced," Jamiat-Ulema Hind spokesman Abdul Hammed
Nomani said. But the "military could have
continued to surround the mosque for a longer
period, which would have compelled the militants
holed up to surrender", he said.
According
to the intelligence official, the decision to
storm the mosque "had more to it than meets the
eye". Ghazi had reached agreement with the
government to lay down arms. Yet the government
opted for military operations.
"He and his
aides had to be silenced," the official said.
"Obviously, the Musharraf government feared that
they would spill the beans to the media and the
world regarding the real relationship between the
mullahs and the military."
Few in India
are impressed with Musharraf's speech after
Operation Silence where he promised to eliminate
extremism and militancy from "every corner" of
Pakistan. Officials and analysts say he is
unlikely to carry it forward. The crackdown on the
radicals in the Lal Masjid was "a limited
operation", Pattanaik said, adding that it was
carried out not because Musharraf believed that
this was necessary but under pressure from the
Chinese.
Intelligence officials warn that
Operation Silence will ignite Islamic radicals
across Pakistan and that this will deepen the
serious problems Musharraf is already facing. Over
the past year or so, India has been in a dilemma
over the dialogue it has been engaging in with
Pakistan. With the political scenario in Pakistan
turning murkier by the day and Musharraf's
position at its shakiest since he came to power in
1999, whether India should continue to deal with
the general is a question that is being discussed
here.
Pakistan's opposition parties have
been calling on India to refrain from negotiating
with Musharraf. Last year, former premier Benazir
Bhutto said in a speech at a conclave in Delhi
that any deal with the military government would
not be acceptable to a democratically elected
government in Pakistan. Other Pakistani opposition
leaders too have echoed this view.
In
India, the main opposition party, the Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP), has called for a suspension of
the dialogue process until normalcy returns in
Pakistan. Some analysts have said that should
Musharraf fall, there is no assurance that his
successor will accept deals his regime made with
India.
But Pattanaik said the
India-Pakistan dialogue process today is "much
more institutionalized. It has nothing to do with
political regimes. In India, a Congress-led
government is carrying forward the dialogue
started during the period when a BJP-led
government was at the helm."
And in
Pakistan, "the military has an institutional
approach to India-Pakistan relations. Musharraf
cannot change the course if he doesn't have the
support of the army. There may be differences of
opinion within the army, but the Pakistan Army has
acted as an organized force and has an
institutional approach to the talks rather than
individual approach. The talks must continue," she
argued.
The bilateral dialogue has slowed
noticeably over the past year. As Musharraf
focuses his attention on protecting his position
and India on waiting for the air to clear, the
process, while unlikely to be suspended, could
lose more momentum.
Sudha
Ramachandran is an independent
journalist/researcher based in Bangalore.
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