Tricks to learn from Pakistan

Pakistan may be a failed state politically and socially. But it is demonstrably successful militarily and diplomatically. More successful than India, if you want to rub it in, for they have achieved what they set out to achieve. We have not.

Different types of dictators ruled Pakistan. All of them had one immutable objective: Make the world recognise Pakistan as a hyphenated equal of the unequally bigger ( in size, population, economy) India. Pakistan has achieved that objective - in the early days with the connivance of Britain which was an interested party in the India-Pakistan confrontation in the UN over Kashmir, and subsequently with the help of China which ensured that, as soon as India exploded a nuclear device, Pakistan did too.
The smartness with which Pakistan plays the diplomatic game is best reflected in the mileage it gains vis a vis America, and the mileage we do not gain. In the Cold War era, it was simple: Pakistan just joined the American bloc while India ploughed the non-alignment path and thereby incurred America's wrath.

More recently the game has been subtler. Yet, otherwise bankrupt establishments like Pervez Musharaff's and Ali Zardari's have been playing it very cleverly. A US-Israeli strike against Pakistan's nuclear assets was widely speculated after America expressed fears of the Pakistani bombs falling into Taliban's hands. Suddenly the Pakistan Government joined the American side and genuinely went to war against the Taliban. Domestically it was a risk, but it won America's appreciation.

America's appreciation meant that Pakistan's real game - making India run around in circles - could be played on Pakistan's terms. Consider, for example, the toing and froing Pakistan has been doing with great relish over the Mumbai terror attack. And consider America's all-words-and-no-action reactions to it.

More pointed from America's policy perspectives was the fact, revealed by the New York Times, that Pakistan had been illegally modifying anti-ship missiles and maritime surveillance aircraft for attacks on India. The US Government lodged a formal protest and Pakistan formally denied the charge. That, for all practical purposes, was that.

As India fumed in its characteristically vegetarian style, Musharaff rubbed salt into the wound saying publicly that arms provided by America to fight Islamic terrorists were instead used to bolster defence against India. Forget his subsequent retraction under pressure, for he was speaking the truth when he said he was "proud he did it for Pakistan". America said it took Musharaff's disclosure seriously. That, presumably, was that.

This is the same America that made such a fuss about the end-user clause in its nuclear deal with India. Unlike India, Pakistan uses the clause as a joke. Which seems all right with the US. Last March the Obama administration was reportedly considering increasing developmental aid to Pakistan three times ( current rate $ 450 m. a year) and boosting military aid as well (currently $ 300 m. a year).

Obviously, Pakistan knows how to manipulate American yardsticks to its advantage and how to get away with it. Can we imagine a Manmohan Singh or an A.B.Vajpayee signing the end-user agreement as America wants and then twisting it " proudly for India".
Adding insult to injury, India paid nearly Rs 13 crores in three years to Barber Griffith and Rogers, a Washington lobbying company, to get the nuclear deal passed by the US Congress. Pakistan also must be employing lobbyists in Washington. But they get in return what they want. We get what the Americans want. As a bonus we also get American travel advisories asking its citizens to stay away from India. Now we know why Ali Zardari is always plastered cheek to cheek with a grin hearty and toothy at once.

Manmohan deserves Nishaan-e-Pakistan

Viewed from the perspective of India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s latest peace overture to a recalcitrant Pakistan seems bewildering and a trifle misplaced. How, it is being legitimately asked, can you repose trust in a Pakistan that is unwilling to own up to its misdemeanours and, indeed, is content with the mollycoddling of extremist and terrorist forces? Just because Atal Bihari Vajpayee too was guilty of a similar misjudgement doesn’t necessarily justify its persistence.

Yet, it is important to realise that India’s desperate desire to give its difficult neighbour the benefit of doubt is not an isolated move prompted by some weakness of the national character. Pakistan, which was worsted after the 9/11 attacks and the Anglo-American ‘war on terror’, is on the verge of recovering lost ground and scoring a major foreign policy triumph. This is not because the Manmohan Singh regime is weak and supine. That is only a small part of the problem. The real advantage for Pakistan lies in the fact that an economically devastated West has lost the political resolve to persist with the war in Afghanistan. It is looking for ways to extricate itself from what is generally being regarded as a no-win situation. What India is doing is creating the conditions for an ignominious Anglo-American retreat from Afghanistan. Being nice to Pakistan is a part of India’s facilitation process.

The extent to which defeatism has overwhelmed the West is most evident in the hysterical British reaction to the death of 22 of its soldiers last month. The July toll may seem small by Indian standards — the Maoists have killed more policemen and para-military forces in Chhattisgarh in the same time frame — but in British eyes this is unacceptable. From the perspective of other European participants in the multi-national force it is even more so. The only German soldier who killed a Taliban insurgent had to be flown back home for trauma therapy and the legendary Luftwaffe has ceased all night operations because it is seen as too risky.

There was a naive belief in some European capitals that involvement in Afghanistan actually meant overseeing good works by social workers in the Provincial Reconstruction Teams. The soldiers, it was assumed, would keep a benign eye on things as earnest young do-gooders helped Afghans rebuild schools, practice gender equality and climb up the Human Development Index. When that romantic dream turned into a nightmare amid the harsh realities of Afghanistan, the inclination of European civil society has been to cut losses and run back home.

The Afghan war is without question an unpopular war. The Americans may want more boots on the ground and a few targeted operations, including the one with the menacing name Operation Panther’s Claw, but this is widely seen as a face-saving precursor to departure. Maybe the bases in Baghran and Kandahar may remain, but for all intents and purposes, the war on terror is drawing to a close without any sign of victory.

For Pakistan, this is fantastic news and it is doing its utmost to hasten the departure of the international forces. Having carefully helped the Taliban regroup after the debacle of 2001 and continue its low-intensity guerrilla war, Pakistan is now intent on projecting itself as the proverbial poacher-turned-gamekeeper. It has implored the West to outsource the pacification of Pushtuns to it. After all, no one is said to know the forbidding terrain around the Durand Line better than Pakistan. In return, Pakistan wants the West to create the conditions for its ‘approved’ intervention in Afghanistan.

Ideally, Pakistan has two demands. First, it wants the West to guarantee that the shift of military might from the eastern front with India to the western front will not involve India taking advantage of the situation. Second, Pakistan wants the West to realise that it would be difficult to manage the internal fallout of training its guns on the Taliban unless there is some ideological compensation, such as some recognition of Pakistan’s role in Kashmir. As of now, the West has merely impressed upon India the need to free Pakistani forces in the east so that it can join the main battle in the west. For India, this has meant lowering the temperature on Pakistan-sponsored terrorism directed against India. As of now, the West hasn’t really arm-twisted India on the Kashmir issue. But that is only a matter of time. New Delhi has already demonstrated its inclination to crawl when asked to bend.

The coming months are going to be crucial for Afghanistan. On the face of it, President Hamid Karzai seems set for a clear victory in next month’s presidential election. However, it is clear that both Pakistan and the so-called civil society groups in the West are betting on his ex-World Bank rival Ashraf Ghani as a wholesome alternative to Karzai. Ghani has the support of the anti-Karzai Pushtuns but lacks the incumbent’s ability to garner the votes of the minority communities linked to the erstwhile Northern Alliance.

The presidential election isn’t likely to be entirely free and fair. Given the troubled state of Afghanistan, it can hardly be so. Moreover, the democratic culture hasn’t really taken roots in Afghanistan. Any result that favours Karzai is likely to be strongly disputed by the Ghani camp and the scepticism is certain to be fuelled by both Pakistan and Western Governments anxious to leave Afghanistan to god and Pakistan. It is a possible man-made crisis over the election results that may well set the stage for Pakistan’s formal re-acquisition of its lost ‘strategic depth’.

By refusing to play hard ball in Egypt last month, Manmohan Singh thought he was trying to help the West get its act together in Pakistan. The consequences of his generosity may well be Pakistan’s victory in Afghanistan. The Indian Prime Minister deserves a Nishaan-e-Pakistan award.

Best fuel for india's growth

Goldman Sachs, the investment bank that did not collapse in the rout of 2008, has once again produced a report on India which says India could grow 40 times bigger than it is today by 2050. It is indeed hard to imagine this, but perhaps the suave new Human Resource Development Minister, Mr Kapil Sibal, might not find it so.

There are 10 challenges outlined in the new Goldman Sachs report — things that need reforming to make this potential become a reality. The key points are all weighty, and include one on education reform.

In 2009, the surprising thing is that India’s secondary education Budget is the lowest among all emerging market countries, let alone among BRIC nations. This, even as the National Knowledge Commission wants to increase the percentage of 18 to 24-year-olds educated up to university level from the present pathetic seven per cent to a modest 15 per cent. Of course, this means huge absolute numbers in a population of at least 1.1 billion.

To strengthen higher education, the National Knowledge Commission has proposed an increase in the number of universities from 350 today to 1,500 by 2016. The target, we can be sure, is unlikely to be met.

Even if this target were to be met, the corrupt practice of charging ‘capitation fees’ in private medical and engineering colleges, the confusion over AICTE recognition, and the bottleneck of hardly any new universities set up by the Government since independence, tell a sad story about the state of higher education in our country.

This is compounded by dismal quality issues across the educational spectrum and then there is the hot potato of land, which needs to be acquired at market rate if the setting up of a new university campus is not to become a source of controversy and strife.

But assuming these hurdles can be overcome with enlightened handling, we don’t seem to know very much about quality in secondary or higher education. The IITs and IIMs are collaborations, but they are ridiculously short on seats and no amount of hiding behind the merit argument can actually justify the shocking shortage.

So, in the main, all we can provide is education that resembles the processing of herds through the rickety gates of higher learning, and that, too, for those who score in the nineties in their school board examination. Or those who get degrees by never going to college.

In this global age, what we have is clearly a much-degraded form of higher education that turns out graduates who cannot think or innovate. So, as we stand, more of the same will not meet the needs of our future.

And education reform is, after all, just one of the 10 issues that Goldman Sachs has outlined. But judging from our track record, it may be necessary, and practical, to import quality in the form of good foreign universities encouraged to open branches in this country on a FDI basis.

This may also help us meet a part of the National Knowledge Commission’s target by 2016 in a qualitative manner. At present, not even one Indian university features even in the ‘Global 300’! China has six universities that feature in the list of top 300, and all of them are collaborations with Western universities.

Indeed, despite our shortcomings, we have much to thank Goldman Sachs for. It is because it was a Goldman Sachs economist of Irish extraction, Mr Jim O’Neill, who coined the term ‘BRIC’ in 2001. Suddenly India was included alongside Brazil, Russia and China as the shape of the future power structure. This has, over the last eight years, changed the perception of India’s potential.

Gradually the term has gained traction and though very different in themselves, the BRIC countries have decided to pull together of late. There is even a new hotline being put in place between India and China at the highest levels of Government.

Earlier this month, BRIC was referred to, half in jest, as “The Gang of Four” by a commentator on the BBC as its leaders were photographed executing a four-way handshake at Yekaterinburg in Russia. The BBC commentator may have inadvertently upped the ante because BRIC discussed some weighty matters at the Yekaterinburg Summit on June 15-16 without waiting for permission from, or participation by, the West.

Matters such as BRIC ambitions on developing an alternative global reserve currency beyond the US dollar came up for discussion. After all, China has lent the US over $1 trillion and is very concerned about the declining value of the US currency. India, Russia and Brazil have also parked some of their dollar holdings in US treasuries, and are also worried, if not to the same extent.

BRIC also wants a greater say in the disbursement of global development funds via the IMF and the World Bank, to reflect the shifting balance of power.

And perhaps, there was some unintended symbolism at work beyond the ‘gang’ remark, because these deliberations took place at Yekaterinburg. And it was Yekaterinburg too that saw the end of one era and the consolidation of another. For it was there that Tsar Nicholas II and his entire family were executed by the Bolsheviks on the night of July 16, 1918.

Contemporary symbolism was equally evident not just because of BRIC piggybacking on the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit at Yekaterinburg. The SCO even gave President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, fresh from a controversial election victory, a forum to fire a vituperous, if predictable, broadside against the US and ‘Western imperialism’.

These are still early days for big ticket Indian reform, even though it has been nearly 20 years since 1991. But even at our slow pace, the world has seen us implement a large part of the Golden Quadrilateral roads project, and surge on to an impressive telecom revolution. They, on their part, don’t think we will fail to reform our education systems as well. What we probably need is a booster dose of self confidence and policy dynamism of our own, to get it going.

Policy needs to be changed

In diplomacy, messages are often not direct or straightforward. Sometimes lessons from one theatre have relevance for another. The belligerence of North Korean dictator Kim Jong II over the past few weeks is a sobering reminder of how things can go wrong if a paramount power decides to speak softly without waving a big stick.

On May 25, Pyongyang tested a nuclear device. A North Korean ship is currently on the high seas, apparently carrying an illegal cargo of missiles and other weaponry to Burma. On July 4, Independence Day in the United States, Mr Kim has promised to fire a missile in the direction of Hawaii.

The expected range of the Taepodong-2 is 6,500 km and Hawaii is just over 7,000 km from the launch site. Chances of the missile entering American waters/territory are small, but it will travel over Japan. On the whole, it will be the most serious infraction in the US’s Pacific region since Pearl Harbour.

It is ironical the North Korean leader’s muscle-flexing has taken place only months after a new and supposedly conciliatory resident arrived at the White House. After all, US President Barack Obama’s team made effusive noises about the conduct of foreign policy that would be different from President George W Bush’s sledgehammer, “with us or against us”, approach.

How did North Korea behave in the Bush years? As far back as 2002, Mr Bush named the Pyongyang regime as part of the “Axis of Evil”. In 2003, Pyongyang withdrew from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and in 2006 tested a nuclear device. The then American President pushed for economic sanctions and used China — the one country with influence on Mr Kim — to bring North Korea to the negotiating table.

North Korea did not give up its clandestine mission. Nevertheless, it checked itself. There were no overt displays of aggression. Mr Kim agreed to shut down some nuclear facilities. He recognised that in Mr Bush he had an implacable foe, one who would hit back and hit back hard if provoked.

Six months after the Republican President left Washington, DC, the North Korean megalomaniac has triggered an East Asian crisis. He has reneged on his promise to close nuclear installations and reverted to Bomb-making.

What does this tell us about Mr Kim and about political adventurism in general? The North Koreans have indicated they don’t think much of the Obama crowd, they see America’s resolve as weakening. They have also paid a left-handed compliment to Mr Bush —acknowledging he put the fear of god into them.

There are three implications to the crisis. First, it will give others ideas. Teheran has already more or less rebuffed Mr Obama’s offer of talks. In backing the wrong horse in the recent election — and misreading the mood of the Iranian people — the US State Department didn’t help its cause.

Of course, domestic unrest in Iran is at its most potent in some 30 years and this will allow the Americans to claim the moral high ground. However, it will amount to a tactical rather than strategic advantage. In the larger reckoning, Mr Obama cannot talk his way out of trouble on the Iranian front.

In the battle against Osama bin Laden and the international army of Islamists, Mr Obama has not backed down, but he has occasionally sent ambivalent signals. His speech in Cairo earlier this month pandered to the sort of negativism and overdone self-pity that is the staple of Al Qaeda apologists.

Perhaps Mr Obama was only using the polite phrases to set the stage for stern decisions. That remains a prospect for the future. For the moment, the Cairo speech can only be seen in isolation, and can get very qualified applause.

Second, Mr Obama is being put to test. He came into office with limited experience and with the reputation of being a foreign policy lightweight. To be fair, Mr Bush too had very little international exposure in January 2001, but was backed by a formidable Republican machine.

In contrast, Mr Obama’s original foreign policy advisers — some of whom he has despatched to relatively inconsequential posts in the United Nations — were the liberal extreme of his country’s strategic affairs establishment. Mr Obama campaigned on a theme that promised to end wars, not take the US further into conflict, work within multilateral systems, be cautious rather than impulsive.

All of that sounds nice — until one is faced with a first-rate, real-life crisis. If North Korea indeed gets a missile close enough to Hawaii, Mr Obama will encounter media frenzy. What will he do?

In a sense, this could lead to a microcosmic examination of the theory which holds that, if a 9/11-style attack were to repeat itself in his presidency, Mr Obama will be obliged to strike back with greater lethality than Mr Bush. His political and personal background will make it difficult for him to do otherwise, lest the public see him as ‘weak’.

Third, Afghanistan or Pakistan, North Korea or Iran, even India or China: The more Mr Obama tries to distance himself from the Bush template, the closer he moves towards it.

Mr Obama’s broader strategy for the war on terrorism is no different from the one Mr Bush set out. His easy touch has not worked with North Korea and Iran and sooner or later tough measures will be called for to tackle two nuclear programmes that America and its allies — in two separate parts of Asia — see as non-negotiable. For all the early camaraderie with Beijing and neglect of New Delhi, recent interactions between the Obama team and Indian interlocutors suggest the honeymoon with China is going to be short-lived.

Different global environments call for different modes of diplomacy. After 9/11, Mr Bush correctly calculated the world was headed for a Hobbesian interlude. Maverick actors — dictators like Kim, freelance commanders like bin Laden, mobster institutions like the Pakistani Army — would need to be treated with a mix of straight talk and unvarnished power projection.

That realism was a critical element of the Bush doctrine. It remains the former President’s most abiding foreign policy legacy. Mr Obama can paint it in another colour, give it a new name; ultimately, he has to embrace it.

Pak: A failed State with a crashing future

As is often said, Pakistan is a failed State. This is an understatement if one bothers to check with reality. The powers that be in Pakistan are living under a make-believe utopia. True, they have delivered a shock by attacking Mumbai, killing around 200 people, many of them being very important persons. But there is no doubt that India is a bigger and better military power with credible nuclear and missile armaments. It has been tested on ground on as many as four times, and on all the four occasions the war was initiated by Pakistan. But everytime, Pakistan was defeated by India decisively. In Kargil, though Pakistan was in an advantageous position, the brave jawans of India still defeated Pakistan capturing peak after peak. However, the US managed a honourable retreat for Pakistan.

The military masters of Pakistan still weave the dream of capturing India by 2020. A map has been circulated in Pakistan’s Army to boost the morale of their jawans, which shows areas of UP, Haryana, Punjab, Himachal, and J&K as part of the target area to be annexed by 2012. It also shows Mumbai as Muslimabad and, perhaps, the Capital with half of Karnataka, Andhra and half of coastal Maharashtra to be annexed by 2020. The secret paper demarcates most of south India as disputed territory. This map has somehow reached to one RC Ganju, an expert on Kashmir and Pakistan.

Someone must be dreaming and weaving utopia. After all, the e-mail that was circulated by the terrorists before Delhi blasts were clear in their aims and objectives of disintegration of India and its Islamisation. This is clearly a lunatic thinking.

Let us come to the country where such people can manage to attain high ranks in the army and the Government. In fact, today Pakistan is standing at a more dangerous point of its history than it was in 1971 and it is not because of India. The perception created in Pakistan is that India is its biggest enemy. But, as a matter of fact, India has acted as a biggest unifier of Pakistan. The Pak army is not only Punjabiased, but is also Islamised. Islamisation of the army has created more problems than solving it. It has destroyed the civil society to a great extent, barring two States.

The Baluch are struggling for their basic rights. Whosoever of them happens to meet an Indian, requests him to liberate them from Pakistan. They scream that they do not want to live under the clutches of brute Pakistanis. The FATA area of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), from where Taliban launched several attacks on Soviets in Afghanistan, is practically under Taliban’s control. More and more areas of NWFP has gone under Taliban’s control. U.S. wants Pak army to create a pressure in that area, but Pakistan is moving its army from there under the cover of engaging India on the eastern borders. Pak army today is factionalised and, to some extent, demoralised.

So far as the economy of Pakistan is concerned, all the indices have particularly bottomed out. Foreign currency reserves are hardly sufficient for a few weeks. Industrialisation has a bleak outlook. The military elite have sucked all the vitals of whatever economic wealth it possessed. It is living on artificial respiration from IMF, courtesy the US. It cannot fight India without Arab money and without China’s or US help. All these helps operating together are almost impossible. Terror machines at the hands of private individuals and seminaries are enormous. Moreover, people, especially the younger generation, are angered against US and, therefore, against its own Government. Society and the Government are the victims of their own terror factories. Today, in most areas, these terror factories are not under the control of Pakistan Government.

The attack on Mumbai has isolated Pakistan. Almost all countries, including many Muslim countries, have condemned Pakistan for the Mumbai terrorist attack. Pakistan lost all credibility. All its responses carry no weight in International affairs. In Pakistan today, there are said to be one crore eight lakh unlicensed weapons, that too sophisticated ones. There are over ten lacs young people being trained in extremist universities. What is more dangerous is that more than half of them are unemployed and angry. They can do anything and kill anybody, just for money. Therefore, there is abundance of human supply in the Fidayeen market.

Many scholars of international repute like Stephen P Cohen say that today there is no country other than Pakistan, that is more dangerous. It has everything that Osama-bin-Laden could have asked for: “political instability, crusted radical Islamists, abundance of angry young western recruits, secluded training areas, access to state-of-the-art electronic technology, regular air service to west and security services, which do not always work as they are supposed to (Newsweek January, 2008).”

It needs no expert to conclude that Pakistan has a bloody past and the future of a crashing plane, whenever it happens

Cause for concern

Australia has enjoyed the image of a peaceful, laid-back multicultural democracy, one that has welcomed foreign students to pursue their studies in a developed and congenial academic environment. Sadly, that image has soured somewhat, with the recent attacks on Indian students and others. There have been allegations of racism and accusations that the Australian police were not doing enough to prevent such incidents. The boorish attacks, most of them occurring in the State of Victoria, have caused understandable concern in India. Unfortunately, they have also sparked over-the-top nationalist outrage, with effigies of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd burnt in New Delhi, Bollywood declaring that no films would be shot Down Under, and Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray demanding punitive measures against Australian cricketers participating in the Indian Premier League. What emerges when the facts are analysed dispassionately is that not every assault involving an Indian has been of a racial nature. According to the Victoria police, of the 36,765 victims of robbery and assault in 2007-08, 24,000 were Caucasian. It is also reasonable to assume that Indian students constitute a soft target for assailants; a sizeable number of them work late-night shifts to finance their studies and can afford to live only in less-secure neighbourhoods.

But what is equally clear is that those in Australia who deny the existence of curry-bashing and make out that virtually every attack on Indian students is opportunistic rather than racist are engaging in a cover-up. The Victoria Police Commission has admitted that there were 1,447 cases in which Indians were victims of robbery and assault in 2007-08 (compared with 1,083 instances in 2006-07). Pointing out that its students have also been attacked in recent years, a concerned Chinese government has called for better protection for international students in Australia. Together, the Chinese (130,000) and Indians (97,000) comprise about 40 per cent of the country’s foreign student population. Mr. Rudd’s conversation with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his setting up of a task force to deal with the issue of violence against foreign students suggest that Canberra is earnest about containing the malaise. International education is one of Australia’s top foreign exchange earners ($11.4 billion in 2007-08). What the federal and relevant State governments must do to preserve the image of Australia as an attractive value-for-money educational destination and a tolerant and enlightened multicultural society is to get less defensive about the attacks and more effective in providing a secure environment for foreign students.

Pakistan must go Sri lankan way

The Greek saying “money is the sinew of war” is proving true in Pakistan as its armed forces have mobilised an all-round assault against the Taliban. However, it appears more to be an eyewash than anything concrete. With the promise of billions of American dollars as civilian and military aid, Pakistan has told the US Administration that it has begun a massive anti-Taliban offensive. Incidentally, it is after two earlier failed attempts that Islamabad had to once again assure US President Barack Obama that its forces are indeed marching forward to dislodge the jihadis from the areas held by them.

According to the Pakistan military sources, the Taliban and its allies had around 5,000 fighters in the Swat Valley. Over the last few years some of the most feared jihadi organisations have opened offices in Swat, a halfway point in a militant transit route running between Indian Kashmir and eastern Afghanistan. How far Pakistan is serious about wiping out the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the region cannot be ascertained as media and international rescue and relief operations are not allowed within the war zone, and one has to depend on the claims made by the Pakistani Army.

Notwithstanding financial assistance, US Central Command Chief General David Patreaus has warned Pakistan that it will be forced to act if the country is not able to take concrete action against the Taliban. On the other hand, the deteriorating situation in the war zone has forced Mr Obama to comment that the civilian Government in Pakistan is fragile and ill-equipped to handle the crisis on the ground.

It is undoubtedly because of the Pakistani Army’s patronage that the Taliban has gained so much in strength. For media consumption the Pakistani Army says that more than 800 Taliban fighters have been killed by its forces. Yet there is no trace of the bodies. This fact has been confirmed by war correspondents representing national and international newspapers.

The Pakistani Government has demonstrated a lack of capacity and will to fight the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Islamabad needs to learn from Sri Lanka, if it is serious at all about exterminating terrorism from its soil. No quarter should be spared in the fight against the jihadis. Only a take-no-prisoners attitude can win this war for Pakistan.

ISI & The role of Pakistan in "war on terror"

Much is now being made of the 'indigenisation' of Islamist extremism and terrorism in India as purportedly opposed to the earlier Pakistan-backed terrorist activities. It is crucial, at this juncture, to scotch emerging misconceptions on this count. Islamist terrorism in India has always had an Indian face -- but has overwhelmingly been engineered and directed from Pakistan, and nothing has changed in this scenario. Going back to the March 1993 serial explosions in Mumbai, which killed 257 people and left 713 injured, and were executed by the Dawood Ibrahim gang, for instance, it is useful to recall that nearly 1,800 kg of RDX and a large number of detonators and small arms had been smuggled from Pakistan through India's west coast prior to the bombings. The operation was coordinated by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, and Ibrahim and a number of his gang members have since lived under state protection in Karachi.

Similarly, Al Ummah, which was responsible for a series of 19 explosions in February 1998, which left 50 people dead in the Coimbatore district of Tamil Nadu, and which had established a wide network of extremist organisations across south India, was also aided by Pakistan, with a considerable flow of funds from Pakistan-based terror groups, often through the Gulf. The Deendar Anjuman, headed by Zia-ul-Hassan, which orchestrated a series of 13 explosions in churches in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Goa between May and July 2000, was, again, bankrolled by the ISI.

The then Union Minister for Home Affairs had stated in Parliament that investigators had established linkages between the Deendar Anjuman and Pakistan's covert intelligence agency. Hassan himself was based at Peshawar in Pakistan, where the sect was established under the name of Anjuman Hizbullah, and he is said to have floated a militant group, the Jamaat-e-Hizb-ul-Mujahiddeen in Pakistan, in order to 'capture India and spread Islam'.

It is entirely within this paradigm that the evolution of Students Islamic Movement of India as a terrorist group is located. Absent the support and involvement of Pakistan's covert agencies and an enduring partnership with a range of Pakistan-based or backed terrorist groups, SIMI may have had an amateur flirtation with terrorism, an impulse that would quickly have been exhausted with a handful of low-grade and at least occasionally accidental bomb blasts. Instead, its leadership and cadre have had a long apprenticeship alongside Pakistani terrorist groups operating in Jammu & Kashmir, and several of the more promising candidates have crossed the border to secure 'advanced training' on Pakistani soil or in Bangladesh.

The control centre of SIMI has, for some time now, been based in Pakistan. Operational command in a number of major attacks, including the Samjhauta Express bombing of February 18, 2007, and the two serial attacks in Hyderabad in May and August 2007, was known to have been exercised by Mohammed Shahid aka Bilal. Bilal was reported to have been shot in Karachi in September 2007, and, while Indian intelligence sources remain sceptical, no confirmed sighting has subsequently been reported. Operational control thereafter has shifted to the Lahore-based second-in-command, Mohammad Amjad.

I have repeatedly emphasised the fact that Pakistan's ISI -- as an organ of the country's military and political establishment -- has been, and remains, the principal source of the impetus, the infrastructure and the organisational networks of what is inaccurately called 'Islamist' terrorism across the world. An overwhelming proportion of so-called 'Islamist' terrorism is, in fact, simply 'ISI terrorism'.

While the Indian establishment remains unusually coy about this reality -- with fitful and often quickly qualified exception -- some measure of satisfaction may now be derived from a growing American recognition of Pakistan's pernicious role as an abiding source of Islamist terrorism. Had this recognition come in the first weeks after 9/11, that could have saved thousands of lives, most significantly in Afghanistan and India, but also in Europe and across Asia.

Nevertheless, Western commentators and Governments are now increasingly acknowledging Pakistan's duplicity in the 'global war on terror', the proclivity to act as an 'on-and-off ally of Washington'. While providing fitful cooperation in US anti-terrorism efforts, The Washington Times notes, "in other ways, Pakistan aids and abets terror. US officials say that Pakistan's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence... was behind the recent bombing of India's Embassy in Kabul. And the Pakistani Government's refusal to confront Al Qaeda has helped create a de facto safe haven for the group and its allies in locations like the Federally Administered Tribal Areas region of Pakistan".

US Intelligence officials, The Washington Times notes further, compare "Al Qaeda's operational and organisational advantages in the FATA to those it enjoyed in Afghanistan prior to September 11", and warn that "Al Qaeda was training and positioning its operatives to carry out attacks in the West, probably including the United States".

These disclosures coincide with reports that President George W Bush had secretly approved orders in July 2008, allowing American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani Government. US Forces have executed numerous missile attacks from unmanned Predator drones on Pakistani soil in the past, but the September 3, 2008, attack by NATO and US ground troops at a Taliban-Al Qaeda stronghold in South Waziristan was the first instance in which troops had participated. The incident has already been followed by drone attacks on September 9 on a seminary run by Jalaluddin Haqqani, in which 20 people, including some senior Al Qaeda operatives, were killed; and on September 12 at Tul Khel in North Waziristan, in which an Al Badr Mujahideen commander was targeted. Haqqani, it is significant, was known to have engineered the attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul, using a LeT suicide cadre Hamza Shakoor, a Pakistani from Gujranwala district, on behalf of the ISI.

The increasing frequency of US-NATO attacks -- manned or unmanned -- into Pakistani territory, and the Bush Administration's approval of Special Operations into Pakistan without prior sanction from Islamabad, has reconfirmed the country's status as a safe haven for Islamist terrorists and an area of growing anxiety for the world. There is, however, still very little understanding of how heavy and sustained the Pakistani footprint has been in Islamist terrorist activities across the globe. The enormity of this 'footprint' is, for instance, reflected in the long succession of terrorist incidents, arrests and seizures, separately, in India, the US and Europe, in which a Pakistani link has been suspected or confirmed.

Awatansh Tripathi

Why the future belong to india

'The future belongs to india, not china'...this is a much debated topic throughout the whole world and a lot of confusions too.Now if we realy want to know the final conclusion we must go back before the recession.....now at this time(before recession) india is having a growth rate of 8% on an avg. and china 10%. i know its quite a difference.
Now many of you will ask if we grow by 10% we will save almost 20yrs and thats a generation and we can uplift millions into middle class in this generation only...well i agree with you...but dont you think we had waited for almost 3000yrs for this position so why not 20yrs more in an indian way, well i know many eyebrows will raise now and i wont argue for this and many of you will even say me i am against progress....but i again say why dont we do in an indian way?

I know that the cost of democracy is the price the poor pay in the delay of their entry into the middle class.I did not elaborate the 'Indian way' but it must include taking a holiday on half a dozen New Year's Days! It is easy to get mesmerized by China's amazing progress and feel frustrated by India's chaotic democracy,but do we really want to gain 2% more on cost of democracy?Think...

In referring to the 'Indian way',I mean that a nation must be true to itself. Democracy comes easily to us because India has historically 'accumulated' its diverse groups who retain their distinctiveness while identifying themselves as Indian.
China has 'assimilated' its people into a common, homogeneous Confucian society. China is a melting pot in which differences disappear while India is a salad bowl in which the constituents retain their identity. Hence, China has always been governed by a hierarchical, centralized state - a tradition that has carried into the present era of reform communism. China resembles a business corporation today. Each mayor and party secretary has objectives relating to investment, output and growth, which are aligned to national goals. Those who exceed their goals rise quickly. The main problem in running a country as a business is that many people get left out.

India, on the other hand, can only manage itself by accommodating vocal and varied interest groups in its salad bowl. This leads to a million negotiations daily and we call this system 'democracy'. It slows us down - we take five years to build a highway versus one in China. Those who are disgruntled go to court. But our politicians are forced to worry about abuses of human rights, whereas my search on Google on 'human rights abuses in China' yielded 47.8 million entries in 13 seconds! Democracies have a safety valve - it allows the disgruntled to let off steam before slowly co-opting them.

Both India and China have accepted the capitalist road to prosperity. But capitalism is more comfortable in a democracy, which fosters entrepreneurs naturally. A state enterprise can never be as innovative or nimble and this is why the Chinese envy some of our private companies. Democracy respects property rights. As both nations urbanize, peasants in India are able to sell or borrow against their land, but the Chinese peasants are at the mercy of local party bosses. Because India has the rule of law, entrepreneurs can enforce contracts. If someone takes away your property in China, you have no recourse. Hence, it is the party bosses who are accumulating wealth in China. The rule of law slows us down but it also protects us (and our environment, as the NGOs have discovered).

We take freedom for granted in India but it was not always so. When General Reginald Dyer opened fire in 1919 in Jallianwala Bagh, killing 379 people, Indians realised they could only have dignity when they were free from British rule. The massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989, where 300 students were killed, was China's Jallianwala Bagh. China today may have become richer than India but the poorest Chinese yearns for the same freedom.

Because the Indian state is inefficient, millions of entrepreneurs have stepped into the vacuum. When government schools fail, people start private schools in the slums, and the result is millions of 'slumdog millionaires'. You cannot do this in China. Our free society forces us to solve our own problems, making us self-reliant. Hence, the Indian way is likely to be more enduring because the people have scripted India's success while China's state has crafted its success. This worries China's leaders who ask, if India can become the world's second fastest economy despite the state, what will happen when the Indian state begins to perform? India's path may be slower but it is surer, and the Indian way of life is also more likely to survive. This is why when I am reborn I would prefer it to be in India.

Awatansh Tripathi.