India’s Dilemma: Help Pakistan stay together or help it to self-destruct?

War on Terror

12 Jan 2009, NewAgeIslam.Com

India's Dilemma: Help Pakistan stay together or help it to self-destruct?

The United States is eager to keep Pakistan from becoming a failed nuclear state and so are we. The last thing we want is for Pakistan to start coming apart because it would bring a swift end to our dream of becoming a developed country by the middle of this century. We have our own Muslim problem and we will not get any closer to dealing with it if armies of crazed religious fanatics start pouring across our borders to 'save Islam'. If Pakistan shows signs of falling to pieces it would be in our interest to help it stay together. The Talibanisation that creeps slowly towards Islamabad from the West is as much a danger to us as it is to Pakistan but what are we to do about it? - Tavleen Singh   Help Pakistan TO SELF-DESTRUCT: India will have to fight its own war against Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. In essence, that would entail lending Pakistan a helping hand to stay embroiled in growing problems at home, with the hope that an ungovernable state that now is a threat to regional and international security would self-destruct. -- Brahma Chellaney  ------------------    The Pakistan problem Tavleen Singh Posted: Jan 11, 2009 at 0139 hrs IST http://www.indianexpress.com/news/the-pakistan-problem/409362/0 So where do we go from here? How do we deal with our Pakistan problem? The short answer to that question is, nobody knows. We can assert, as our Ministers of Defence and External Affairs do ad nauseam these days, that the only way for relations to improve is for Pakistan to hand over the men responsible for what happened in Mumbai but we know this is not going to happen. That they have finally accepted Ajmal Kasab as one of their own is amazing enough since it amounts to admitting that there is 'proof' of Pakistani involvement. We know that there is more than enough proof.   We know that the Lashkar-e-Toiba is virtually a division of the Pakistani Army and that the terrorists who came to Mumbai could only have done what they did if they had the training of military commandos. We know who trained them and what we did not know Kasab has told us. We know that the reason why Mumbai was attacked was because the Pakistani Army is desperate to find a reason to move troops from the Western border to the East without the Americans charging them with reneging on their promise to eliminate Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.   This promise has been paid for in advance. The administration of George W. Bush has paid Pakistan more than $12 billion since 9/11. More money will come if Pakistan can prove that it is serious about fighting the jihadi groups who shelter along its Western border. But, it is not simple for the Pakistani Army to persuade its soldiers to kill men who till yesterday were their brothers in arms. And, let us not fool ourselves into believing that the 'rogue' elements in the army and the 'rogue' ISI do these bad things. The Pakistani Army is a cohesive whole. If there are rogue elements, it is in the ranks of the jihadi groups, some of whom got disenchanted with General Pervez Musharraf and tried more than once to bump him off. The Lashkar-e-Toiba, we must remember, is not one of them. It has never been responsible for terrorist acts in Pakistan. So, let us not fool ourselves into thinking any of our wanted criminals is going to be extradited. If we want to try them in India we will have to go and get them ourselves.   Is this possible? No. Our covert agencies are rusty and out of practice. So then? Can we go to war? Maybe. But, it is no solution because all that will happen is that the jihadis will fight alongside the Pakistani Army and we will give ourselves a bad name with the new American President who we hope will come up with a policy in South Asia that is better than the one Bush followed. We need Barack Obama to realise that our interests are the same when it comes to Pakistan. As is our problem.   The United States is eager to keep Pakistan from becoming a failed nuclear state and so are we. The last thing we want is for Pakistan to start coming apart because it would bring a swift end to our dream of becoming a developed country by the middle of this century. We have our own Muslim problem and we will not get any closer to dealing with it if armies of crazed religious fanatics start pouring across our borders to 'save Islam'. If Pakistan shows signs of falling to pieces it would be in our interest to help it stay together. The Talibanisation that creeps slowly towards Islamabad from the West is as much a danger to us as it is to Pakistan but what are we to do about it?   When a civilian Government came to power a year ago after Benazir Bhutto's horrible murder, there was a small hope of renewal and change. That hope has died because the attack on Mumbai made it abundantly clear that Asif Ali Zardari has about as much power as the Mayor of Mumbai. The men who control Pakistan are the men who control the army and the ISI and there does not seem to be any possibility of us being able to persuade them to start behaving. Only the United States can do this because it is the United States that pays Pakistan's bills. Meanwhile, let us take comfort from what Secretary of State, Richard Boucher, said in Delhi last week: "I would say the United States and India are both determined to make sure we find out who did this, how it was done and how to make sure it does not happen again. We're determined to see this threat—to Indians, Americans, the whole world, including Pakistan—of terrorism eliminated." --- Strategic Imperative: Help Pakistan TO SELF-DESTRUCT Brahma Chellaney http://covert.co.in/brahma.htm It is not a question whether terrorism will consume Pakistan. The reality is that fundamentalism, extremism and militarism are already beginning to eat into the vitals of Pakistan, to the extent that it has become a de facto failed nation by Westphalian standards, with the tail [the military establishment] wagging the dog [the state] and with military-reared terror groups and the Taliban operating with impunity. The country's President, with no control over the national-security apparatus, can be excused for making conflicting and confusing statements since the Mumbai terrorist assaults, for he is little more than the mayor of Islamabad, albeit with the pomp and pageantry befitting a head of state. But the military establishment still fomenting terrorism across Pakistan's borders with India and Afghanistan can hardly be excused. In fact, it is incumbent on the international community to bring that institution to heel or risk the further spread of the scourge of terrorism. It is the terrorist sanctuaries deep inside Pakistan, not just on its borders, that threaten world security, with Al Qaeda-linked groups, the Taliban and international drug runners enjoying a comfy relationship with the "state within the state" — the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence [ISI]. For India, the options are narrow yet clear. When the seat of official power and the seat of real power are far apart in a rotting state plagued by Government atrophy, no effective action can be expected against military-nurtured groups fomenting terrorism against India unless the latter is willing to inflict pain on the real wielders of authority in Pakistan and show beyond doubt that the costs of continuing complicity in transnational terror are unbearably high for them. India also has to go beyond seeking the extradition of 42 terrorist fugitives holed up in Pakistan and launch an international diplomatic campaign to get Pakistan's Army Chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, and the ISI head, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, indicted in The Hague for war crimes. Given the communications intercepts that link the Mumbai attackers to Pakistan-based masterminds and ISI handlers, Pasha's name ought to be added to the Indian list of terrorist figures in Pakistan. Pasha cannot feign ignorance about his own agency's aid to the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba figures who masterminded the Mumbai assaults.   THE UNITED STATES is not going to help India pull the chestnuts out of the Pakistan-kindled terrorism fire. Indeed, the Barack Obama administration's planned strategy to nearly double the US forces in Afghanistan by summer and then use the "surge" as a show of force to negotiate with the Taliban is a short-sighted approach that wishes to repeat the past mistakes of US policy in giving greater primacy to politically expedient considerations than to long-term interests. Even if the Obama administration managed to bring down violence in Afghanistan by cutting deals with the Taliban and other local chieftains — in the manner the US military has bought over Sunni tribal chiefs in Iraq after the "surge" there — such short-term success would keep the Taliban intact as a fighting force, with active ties to the Pakistani military. Such a tactical gain would exact serious costs on regional and international security. For the promotion of its narrow interests, the US, regrettably, continues to prop up the Pakistani military through generous aid and weapon transfers, instead of helping empower the civilian Government in Islamabad. Had it supported the bold move of President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani last July to bring the ISI under the control of the Interior Ministry, civilian oversight would have been established over a key terror-rearing instrument. But by not backing the Government, it allowed the Army to frustrate the attempt to bring the ISI under civilian control. The Army, similarly, has refused to hand over control of Pakistan's nuclear assets to the civilian Government. All this has happened despite Gen. Kayani's professed intent to move the Army away from politics to its core functions. Against this background, India will have to fight its own war against Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. In essence, that would entail lending Pakistan a helping hand to stay embroiled in growing problems at home, with the hope that an ungovernable state that now is a threat to regional and international security would self-destruct. http://newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1110