Asia Times: Too good an opportunity to miss


	December 22, 2001	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Too good an opportunity to miss
By Sultan Shahin

NEW DELHI - There is a growing feeling among ruling Hindu fundamentalist circles that an opportunity such as the present one to strike against Pakistan may not come again.

Proponents of tough action against Pakistan that they have always been, they have been pilloried time and again during their years in power for having missed similar opportunities during the Kargil war in 1998 and later when the United States and then Israel showed the way to deal with terrorism.

The refrain is: If the US can bombard Afghanistan for months without showing any clinching evidence against the Taliban for the September 11 attack against America, why can't India do the same against Pakistan in respect of the December 13 attack by terrorists, suspected of having Pakistan links, on the Indian parliament in New Delhi? They resent the US asking for evidence of Pakistani complicity in the attack or asking India to work together with Pakistan - itself a terrorist state in India's estimations - in tackling terrorism.

US President George W Bush's blocking of Lashkar-e-Taiba's funds (one of the groups believed to be tied to the attacks on parliament) and US Ambassador Robert D Blackwill giving a sumptuous dinner to the Members of Parliament from the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) that leads the coalition government, may not be able to placate the hawks.

With only a couple of months left before parties plunge into campaign mode in three crucial states - Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Uttaranchal - where Assembly elections are due before March 2002, partisan political considerations alone have come to guide the positions of parties across the spectrum, says South India's leading newspaper The Hindu. For example, it goes on, "the debate on the bill replacing POTO [the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance] is colored heavily by concerns relating to the elections in Uttar Pradesh, the debate over deletions in history texts [particularly portions about Guru Tegh Bahadur] is influenced by considerations about the poll atmosphere in Punjab. Rhetoric rather than reason is on the rise and parties and their leaders refuse to bother about the adverse impact of all these on civil society.

"It is in this context," adds the newspaper editorial, "that there is ample cause for concern over the revival of the Ayodhya [the town where a mosque was demolished in 1992] rhetoric by the Hindutva [Hindu fundamentalist] brigade. The setting of a deadline by the VHP [Vishwa Hindu Parishad - World Hindu Congress] and the manner in which its leaders have gone about whipping up the temple issue is indeed a development that the BJP leaders cannot feign ignorance about. Instead, the VHP and its other associates from the Sangh Parivar [the extended Hindu fundamentalist family] have resorted to this new agenda only to aid the BJP in the coming elections."

A war with Pakistan at this point, preferably a few weeks before elections, will wipe the BJP slate clean of all allegations of corruption and mis-governance as did the last war in Kargil before the last elections which had helped a defeated BJP come back to power. It is this realization that has made the leader of opposition, Sonia Gandhi, backtrack from her unconditional support to any action the government would like to take against Pakistan and go ballistic within 24 hours of assuming a posture of utter reasonableness.

The winter session of the parliament ended on a note of harmony never seen before. Opposing a government's war-like posture can be suicidal for opposition parties. So they didn't. But a realization has soon dawned upon the main opposition Congress party that letting the government go scot-free on the serious charges of corruption in the purchase of coffins at the time of the last war in Kargil in 1998, as well as on the issue of security lapse in the attack of parliament, would also be suicidal.

Sonia Gandhi has therefore pulled up the government for its "inadequacies" on all fronts. She went to the extent of describing Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee as a "weak" premier and said that people were now "longing for the return of a responsible and secular government", which she thinks Congress can provide.

Addressing the Congress parliamentary party, Gandhi said on Thursday, "It is inexplicable that the prime minister should be so weak as to admit back to his Council of Ministers persons [referring to Defense Minister George Fernandes] who had been so discredited that he himself had asked them to leave. They have not been cleared. Indeed, the judicial process, in some cases, and commissions of enquiry, in other cases, are far from completing their work."

Continuing to maintain her focus on corruption, she said, "Equally shocking is that this government played with the honor and sentiments of this country in the Kargil War. The CAG [Comptroller and Auditor General] report is conclusive and damning. Even in buying coffins for our martyrs, this government has not been above-board. And instead of making a clean breast of its mistakes, the government has sought to hide its weaknesses behind a smoke screen of technicalities." Gandhi said that Congress was willing to discuss both the issues in the House, but "the government was adamant, knowing its misdeeds would stand revealed if there were a discussion that it procrastinated".

She said that such tactics might have saved the government from being exposed in parliament, but these misdeeds will continue to haunt it and lower it in the esteem of the people. About the terrorist strikes on parliament, Gandhi said it is distressing that the government showed itself so ill-prepared for the attack, notwithstanding advance Intelligence. She said, "It was the failure of intelligence which led to the tragedy of Kargil. It is again the failure to act upon available intelligence which lies at the root of the attack on parliament."

In contrast, only a day earlier, she had said, "The Congress would back the government in its efforts to track down and bring to justice terrorists who are threatening the nation's integrity today," Sonia said, participating in the special discussion in the Lok Sabha on the terrorist attack. The need of the hour for the government and all political parties, she said, was to rise above partisan considerations. In an apparent reference to the government's move to introduce the anti-terrorism bill replacing the POTO, Sonia said, "This is also the time for all concerned to desist from raising contentious issues that divide our plural society."

Meanwhile, both India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars since independence in 1947, accused each other of seeking to build up troops along the border - a charge made often during times of tension and dismissed often as routine troop rotation. Indian Army Chief General S Padmanabhan said that India had responded in an "appropriate" manner to a build-up of Pakistani troops. He did not specify where on the border, nor give further details of any Indian troop movements. "There is a build-up on the other side. They have moved in certain forces. Certain forces which should have gone back have not gone back," he told reporters on the sidelines of a seminar.

In Islamabad, top spokesman Major-General Rashid Qureshi dismissed the Indian reports. "There is no build-up at all," he told Reuters. "It is possible that in order to justify their own build-up they might be shifting the blame onto Pakistan," he said. Indian police said Indian and Pakistani troops also exchanged small arms and mortar fire overnight along the ceasefire line dividing Kashmir, though the situation was calm on Wednesday.

Earlier, in his first statement to parliament since the December 13 attack that killed 14 people, including the five assailants, Vajpayee said that he would build a consensus before any retaliation. "We have shown a lot of restraint. We are trying to use diplomacy as a weapon, but other options are open and we will consider them carefully before taking any decision," he said in a firm speech that lasted almost 35 minutes, marked by occasional restrained applause.

While the BJP may be interested in retaliatory strikes, even if they lead to war, as all other diversionary tactics have failed, the common people, despite the massive media projection, are not interested in a war that they know will only aggravate their economic miseries. If anything, they are disappointed that the terrorist strike did not succeed in what Home Minister L K Advani called its attempt to "wipe out the entire political class".

This cynicism emanates from the disgust Indian people felt for their entire political class, particularly the hyper-nationalist BJP, when they learnt from the CAG report that someone in the defense ministry made money out of a contract to buy coffins for the soldiers who died in Kargil. This issue was being debated in the parliament just before the terrorist strike. All talk of retaliatory strikes and limited wars and the possibility of nuclear war being freely debated in television channels and the newspapers have not been able to divert people's attention from the issue of corruption in coffins. This, indeed, is why opposition leaders such as Gandhi are feeling constrained to revive the issue despite all talk of an impending war.

The depth of popular anger can be gauged from the comments of a pro-establishment columnist such as Tavleen Singh in the recent issue of the largest-circulated Indian magazine, India Today. "Coffins that should have cost [UD]$172 a piece were bought for $2,500 each from a shady American supplier who had earlier supplied them at the lower price. What makes this repugnant deal even uglier is that the $337,500 paid for the coffins in March 2000 was a complete waste of taxpayer's money since they were never used."

Quoting from the CAG report, The Times of India said last week that the entire lot of caskets was subsequently rejected during inspection on grounds of being overweight and welded. These had been kept in stock as of June 2000.

Singh continues, "If the ministry has in its ranks people shameless enough to make money out of coffins then the mind boggles at how much they must make out of weapons procurement. But a time could come when no journalist will dare investigate financial irregularities in the ministry because, if the hounding of Shankar Sharma [investor of website Tehelka.com that unearthed corruption in defense deals] is anything to go by, the ministry has no hesitation in using mafia tactics to prevent them from prying into its affairs ... the Sharmas have watched in helpless silence as their lives have been destroyed - 16 of their 17 offices were forced to close down, they were prevented from traveling abroad and their properties have been attached ... all this because they dared to invest in Tehelka."

Incidentally, Sharma is the whizkid, who, along with his wife Devina Mehra, set up a company called First Global which was so good at its job that it became the first Indian company to be listed on NASDAQ and other international stock exchanges.

Many common people have little sympathy for the parliamentarians who came under attack on December 13. Instead they feel for the police constables who "foolishly" laid down their lives in their defense. A common comment on the streets and in the offices in Delhi is, "Now the wives of these constables who are being described today as heroes will be running from pillar to post looking for a job. What good is such heroism that only destroys your family's life and honor?"

This sympathy is reflected in sections of the media as well. The largest Indian newspaper The Times of India, for instance, points out, "The country pays peanuts for men and women whose job it is to face bullets. A constable of the Delhi Police guarding a Member of Parliament gets a measly monthly salary of 6,000 rupees [$120] or a little more as the years pass. In contrast, an MP gets a salary of 12,000 rupees and expenses which add up to at least 24,000 rupees, as also free water, electricity and travel. In addition, they get three telephones with 100,000 calls free in a year. In contrast, 70 percent of constables and other lower-rung officials have no housing, do duties of 14 hours in a day against the stipulated eight hours and conduct investigations on shoestring daily expenses."

Meanwhile, the pros and cons of a war with Pakistan are also engaging the attention of India's defense experts. Comments from two of them sum up the situation. Making war sound almost inevitable is C Raja Mohan of The Hindu. "India is now confronted with the possibility that its restraint in the face of nuclear escalation is taken as a fundamental weakness. India must deal with the possible assessment in Pakistan that its nuclear capability has foreclosed all conventional military options in responding to cross-border terrorism. If nuclear weapons have blunted India's responses, Islamabad might believe it is free to conduct a long-term proxy war against India. This view in New Delhi cannot be dismissed as a worst-case profile of Pakistan's policy. It represents a rational assessment of Pakistan's behavior since the late 1980s. It is by no means accidental that cross-border terrorism has increased with the introduction of nuclear weapons into the subcontinent.

"After the Kargil war, India realized the importance of regaining strategic space between low intensity conflict and a full-scale nuclear war. Recognizing that wars will be imposed on it in spite of the restraint, India began to debate conventional military options under the concept of a 'limited war'. India could no longer rule out the prospect of a conventional war with Pakistan under the nuclear shadow. But the idea of a limited war remains problematic. Limited military operations could indeed be undertaken; but no planner can promise they will not escalate to a higher level."

On the other hand, there is Air Commodore (retired) Jasjit Singh, former director of a semi-government think tank, the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, who thinks that striking Pakistan means walking into the jihadi trap. He wrote in the Indian Express, "The question which everyone is asking is what should we do. Anger and frustration push in the direction of responding with force across borders. Raising the cost of terrorism to Pakistan has been a euphemism for military response for some time. This has obviously found more followers after last Thursday. Hot pursuit and cross-border attacks are seriously being debated, possibly taking the cue from US actions. We certainly have the sovereign right to attack the source of terrorism. The question, however, is one of following the best strategy.

"The central objective of the attack on parliament has been to incite a strong reaction from India, preferably with the use of force. To that extent, any use of force [except in defense against terrorists] would amount to falling into the jihadi trap. Use of force across the border would almost inevitably invite Pakistani use of force and lead to escalation. If we use Special Forces for surgical attacks, Pakistan could do the same and we would have started a low-intensity conflict. The fundamental question would be: will such action stop cross-border terrorism?

"Objective analysis would indicate that the answer is no; and terrorism might actually get a boost as a consequence of such policy. Talking of attacking training camps ignores what constitutes such a camp. The US did hit one in Afghanistan in 1998, but that did not stop terrorist acts against it."

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