Page 1 of 2 The hottest place in the world
By Chan Akya
During the recently concluded American elections, vice president-elect Joe
Biden made the widely criticized point that president-elect Barack Obama would
be tested very soon after ascending to the job. It appears from recent events
that his particular prophesy has been fulfilled, and rather earlier than even
he had imagined, namely, even before Obama takes on the job of president. It
may be no exaggeration to point out that much like September 11, 2001, charted
the course of the George W Bush administration, the Mumbai massacre on
Thanksgiving 2008 could well chart the course of the Obama presidency.
Firm evidence with respect to the participation of Pakistani government agents
in the latest terrorist outrage in Mumbai that left nearly 200 people dead is
still unavailable as I write this article; however, the apparent presence of a
naval vessel carrying
the terrorists to the city's shore as well as the targeting of patently Western
and Jewish people in Mumbai points outside the pattern of terrorism that Mumbai
has witnessed thus far; namely that of killing locals in mass numbers through
the use of explosive devices planted on taxis and trains. I return to the
failures of the Indian government in the second half of this article, after
first dealing with the immediate consequences for Pakistan should the
involvement of its citizens be proven over the near term.
There is a second possibility that I discussed with my Asia Times Online
colleague Spengler, namely that the attacks on Mumbai were a response to the
anti-piracy actions of the Indian navy that resulted in the sinking of a Somali
pirate mother ship last week. The mother ship was a Thai fishing trawler that
the pirates had seized a short while before. It is not much of a secret that
Somali pirates are well aligned with al-Qaeda for their training and weapons;
it is also possible that an important al-Qaeda functionary was killed in the
Indian attack.
Based on the complicated set of facts in front of us, it seems logical for now
to conclude that the Mumbai operations were the product of meticulous planning
and action taken almost exclusively by non-locals to prevent the risk of
information leaking to Indian police if locals had been taken into confidence.
The most logical source of such people would be the Islamic terrorist continuum
operating under the auspices of al-Qaeda and loosely aligned with renegade
elements of the Pakistani government itself, namely the Inter-Services
Intelligence or ISI; the notorious state-within-state.
Much as everyone discusses the carnage in Mumbai, I cannot escape the feeling
that execution was hurried along; the use of even a slightly larger force with
more deadly weapons could well have created a multiplication of damage and
casualties in Mumbai. That suggests that the operation was executed
prematurely: precisely what one should expect if planners had somehow suspected
being exposed and their carefully planned actions aborted entirely. It is for
this reason that I suspect the Pakistani government’s actions against the ISI
as the primary trigger for this terrorist attack.
This was coming, and obviously so
From a longer-term perspective, it shocks me that more Western agencies
including the US and UK governments do not take full cognizance of the size of
the challenge in Pakistan. US neo-conservatives for example highlight Iran as
the major threat to the planet, despite the fact that its 60 million people are
relatively well-off, demographically in decline and most importantly a Shi'ite
people surrounded by inimical Sunni groups.
In contrast, Pakistan is a country possessing nuclear weapons and hosting over
150 million people skewed towards the young. Its share of young, unemployed and
restless people with a penchant for religious extremism since the early 1980s
has steadily risen to the point where calling the country the leading breeding
center for terrorism globally wouldn’t be too far-fetched. All of these factors
have led to the undermining of civilian government, while the country's elite
slide into accommodation with religious fanatics from al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
A few weeks back, I wrote an article (Triangulating
an Asian conflict Asia Times Online, September 6, 2008 ) that discussed
the potential for Pakistan slipping deeply into the Taliban sphere of
operations, in turn imperiling its neighbors, including most urgently India and
less probably China over the longer term. What looked like a thesis has now
come fully into the realm of probability.
The article’s main thrust was explained in the last part:
Thus, the
indomitable force of Islamic fundamentalism that emerges from Pakistan will
have to confront the immovable objects of Han and Hindu resurgence. It is well
likely that the first course of action will be against the well known enemy of
India rather than the scarier opponent in China, but that is a relatively minor
detail in that it only applies over the relative near term.
Of
course, the primary thrust of that article was not so much the existence of
these threats, but the regional media's casual disregard for the security
situation with column inches being devoted instead to the wardrobe choices of
the Republican vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin. In that article, I
juxtaposed the emerging Taliban threat to Pakistan in the context of its
worsening economic fundamentals, even as the resurgence of Hindu nationalism
made the idea of rapprochement unattainable.
One of the key changes ushered in by President Asif Ali Zardari was the
broadening of ties with India, leaving out for now the thorny issue of Kashmir
but focusing instead on improving trade and infrastructure while making a
common cause against Islamic terrorists. This made sense not only because
Zardari owed his ascent to the assassination of his wife, former premier
Benazir Bhutto, but also because sidelining the army by achieving peace with
India would help to secure his own future.
Proceeding in that vein, and acting finally on a key recommendation by the US
government that had been made as early as 2006, earlier last week it emerged
that the "political" wing of the ISI had been disbanded. Now of course, much of
the ISI isn't supposed to exist in the first place, therefore one uses ground
contacts to determine just how serious such changes actually are; in this case
it appears that the government's action was seen as a stinging slap on the face
of the ISI by effectively rendering the organization captive to the policies
and actions of the government in power rather than being determined by its own
senior cadre of advisors and agents as had been done previously.
In effect, disbanding the political wing of the ISI was seen as a move for the
Pakistani government to take direct charge of ISI activities, and stop being
hostage to the machinations of the ISI itself. In the past, the political wing
of the ISI was thought to be responsible for the removal of Benazir Bhutto, the
trial by fire of Nawaz Sharif, the removal of president General Pervez
Musharraf and most recently the assassination of Benazir Bhutto herself. It was
for this reason that the ISI took great pains to ensure that her death was
blamed on an accident (head hitting the door handle) rather than an assassin's
bullets because the difference is the one between martyrdom and destiny.
(The existence of such a political organization that in effect polices the
government on behalf of a sinister group of senior insiders is something of a
puzzle in democracies across the Western world but is a matter of resigned
acceptance in many countries including Russia and most communist countries
including China and Vietnam. Across the Islamic world such political wings are
active in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran under the guise of the
religious police.)
For all intent and purposes it appears that the operations against targets in
Mumbai were planned months in advance for execution at an appropriate time; the
direct action of the Pakistani government against the ISI may have provided
just such a trigger. It is also possible that the anger of al-Qaeda at India
for the loss of a pirate mother ship in the past two weeks was a factor in
pushing the action.
Whatever the reason for the "Go" command, the more disturbing elements are the
implications for the Pakistani government itself. It is unlikely that the
governments of the US, UK, Israel and India will take the involvement of agents
within the Pakistani government in the Mumbai bombings lightly. However, that
anger is beside the point because it is not clear to me that the Pakistani
government can actually survive any course of action against these embedded
agents.
With its credibility badly damaged in the eyes of the world, the government
will have to rush towards a compromise position with the very people it sought
to dislodge, namely forces friendly to Islamic terrorism within the agencies of
the government including the army and the ISI. In return for promises of going
easy, the government would get nominal visibility in future plans.
Then-president Musharraf came to a similar arrangement in the months following
9/11 and US actions against Afghanistan. In return for face-saving bans on
terrorist outfits that gathered funds and hired Pakistanis for their
operations, he allowed the outfits to expand their soft programs, including
Islamic education, pushing back women's rights and broadening the run of the
Taliban in border areas with Afghanistan. This worked for a reasonable period
of time until finally the US government lost patience with the foot-dragging on
operations against al-Qaeda/Taliban fighters nesting within Pakistan. That in
turn caused the Americans to act against Musharraf, and bring in Bhutto, albeit
with unimaginable consequences for the latter.
In all this, there was also a history lesson that was completely missed, namely
the events of 1999 when then prime minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, proposed
peace; this led his then head of the army Musharraf and a handful of top
officers to plot the onset of a war with India by using irregular units of the
Pakistani army in the guise of Islamic militants that attacked a forward Indian
army unit in Kashmir; the resulting battle led not only to a threat of a
nuclear strike by Pakistan but also eventually to the replacement of Sharif by
Musharraf, after Sharif was forced to settle for peace by the US and other
countries for the illegal actions of the army.
What is different this time around is that instead of the army being at
loggerheads with the government, a small group within the ISI appears to have
achieved the ability to destabilize both the government and the Pakistani army.
For security experts, this was an obvious conclusion to reach when Musharraf
was pushed out of power, and when Zardari started his peacemaking routine with
India. My discomfort stems from the fact that no one in power across the US and
India saw it coming.
To any dispassionate observer, it is easy to conclude that Pakistan is now a
failed state on the lines of Somalia and Afghanistan where the government writ
runs only in limited areas while everywhere else in the country is dominated by
warlords. The only national institution in Pakistan is its army, although the
push against Musharraf and the actions of the Taliban against specific army
units point to cracks within that could well result in
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