A schizophrenic Government

It’s perplexing how suddenly and rapidly India has slipped into schizophrenia in recent months. Take the perennial issue of Pakistan to begin with. At one level, the Government is believed to have gently nudged organisers of IPL to keep Pakistani cricketers out of the high-profile event.

Opinion is divided on whether this was appropriate on the sponsors’ part, many saying that our diplomatic and security issues with Islamabad should not have spilled over into the playing field, while others believe you can hug each other on the cricketing arena while the Pakistani Establishment holds a gun at New Delhi’s head. But having left the IPL organisers to face a barrage of criticism from cricket lovers for this stealthy decision, the Government itself is getting ready to resume the dialogue with Pakistan, ignoring Islamabad’s victorious smirks. If this is not schizophrenia, I don’t know what else it can be called.

Why do we want to talk to Pakistan at this juncture? Frankly it baffles me. After suspending the dialogue after the heinous 26/11 events admittedly plotted and directed from Pakistani soil and executed by Pakistani nationals who sneaked into India, the Government firmly declared not to talk till Islamabad showed concrete and visible progress in proceeding against the masterminds. In the interim came the shameful Sharm-el-Sheikh episode, demonstrating yet again Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s inability to stand firm. India capitulated without apparent reason and even agreed to include Balochistan in the Joint Statement.

Probably taken aback by the intensity of the furore at home in its aftermath, New Delhi appeared to steel its resolve not to talk to our Western neighbour, till progress happened on 26/11 culprits. The deliberately slipshod manner in which Pakistan went about prosecuting Jamaat-ud-Dawa bosses, exposed Islamabad’s duplicity once more although proof was hardly required for its two-faced policy.

Pakistan succeeded in its gamble of tiring India out, assured in the belief that Washington would put enormous pressure on New Delhi to initiate talks again, making the Government desperate enough to clutch at straws to resume the dialogue. Hence the plaintive cries heard last week from Home Minister P Chidambaram urging Pakistan to show some movement on 26/11, howsoever small, so that India could revise its stand. No gesture was forthcoming. Pakistan Prime Minister triumphantly responded by saying that India had been pressured into talking again and categorically declared that these would not be mere “talks about talks”, and nothing short of the resumption of the Composite Dialogue would cajole Islamabad back to the negotiating table. Having put out the second cheek to be soundly slapped even as bruises on the first cheek were still smarting, India has little option except to again genuflect at the altar of Pakistani high-handedness.

Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani has also made it clear that he expects “substantial progress” on Kashmir as and when the dialogue resumes. This is a line clearly dictated by Washington too. President Obama’s team has been consistent in pushing India to concede ground on Kashmir so that, according to them, Islamabad can focus on Afghanistan without worrying about India and also mollify domestic opinion. It is a measure of the US State Department’s naivette that it thinks Pakistan will agree to settle Kashmir with India once and for all. The fact is that Islamabad, irrespective of who controls the reins of power, will never want to part with the biggest, low-cost weapon in its armoury. In the last few weeks, it has demonstrated its ability to raise the temperature of militancy in the Valley, while India has been pushed into going ahead with its stupid, defeatist policy of withdrawing 30,000 troops from the troubled State. Taking full advantage of Indian pusillanimity, militants have infiltrated the Valley in large numbers and provoked a series of incidents. A wily ISI, remote-controlling separatist outfits, are said to have placed vast sums at the disposal of jihadi outfits to engineer regular pelting of Indian security forces with stones in order to disorient and demoralise them and, perhaps, force them into retaliation. Almost every other day separatists successfully organise massive street protests against counter-insurgency operations, raising the pitch against routine patrolling or questioning of suspects.

There is a clear pattern in this plan of action. Pakistan is working on two fronts, one inside the Valley and one at the diplomatic level. They have achieved their first aim that of pressuring India to pull out sizeable number of troops to create a killing field conducive to the militants. Now, with the US rapping India on its knuckles, they hope to accomplish the second aim of dragging India to the negotiating table like a penitent child. I hope that Parliament’s Budget Session will witness uproarious scenes on this capitulation. It must be made categorically clear to the Government that there is no need for any talks with Pakistan in the foreseeable future; that public opinion here will not brook bartering away Jammu & Kashmir under US pressure or otherwise; and that the nation’s interest cannot be sacrificed for Manmohan Singh to pursue his elusive dream for a Nobel Peace Prize. One of his predecessors led India into disaster after disaster vis-à-vis Pakistan and China in the hope of being recognised and feted as a harbinger of world peace.

Even as the Prime Minister embarks on this dangerous and self-demeaning policy one of his party colleagues has been busy cultivating terror sympathisers back home. In yet another bizarre instance of schizophrenia, a top office-bearer of the ruling party went on to merrily attack his own Government over the Batla House encounter, which had resulted in the martyrdom of policeman Mohan Chand Sharma, decorated posthumously with a gallantry medal. Digvijay Singh, Congress general-secretary and former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, committed outrage on the nation’s sentiment by going to Azamgarh to visit the family and friends of terror suspects in the Batla House shootout and had the audacity of declaring the encounter as “fake”.

It does not help to try and back out from the assertion made at a public meeting by later claiming that all he wanted was a “speedy trial”, because TV cameras captured his original remark. Instead of taking disciplinary action against the redoubtable Mr Singh, his party has mildly sought merely to distance itself from him, saying this was his personal opinion.

It is clear that the Congress Party, in a mad scramble to garner a section of Muslim votes (fortunately most Muslims do not share Mr Singh’s assessment), will stoop at nothing to nurture a vote bank. But then, why blame him alone? His party’s heir apparent, buoyed by a fawning media, has been on a rampage against his opponents in Maharashtra, blissfully overlooking that, in the first place, it was his party’s Government that proposed a 15-year-domicile rule for awarding taxi licences in Mumbai thereby reinforcing the Shiv Sena-MNS brand of regional chauvinism!

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.

India’s tryst with trust but verify

The Pakistanis must be laughing their guts out listening to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s borrowed formulation that we must adopt a “trust but verify” approach to our relations with their country. First of all, there is nothing original about this formulation because it was said by somebody else in some other context. Second, “trust but verify”, as everyone knows, was an afterthought. Mr Singh shockingly committed himself at Sharm el-Sheikh to trusting and talking to Pakistan without any kind of verification. Unable to bear the political heat on his return, he was compelled to do a bit of a somersault.

But, what Mr Singh has not realised is that without sounding so ponderous, many of his predecessors — Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Mrs Indira Gandhi and Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, to name a few — have preached the ‘trust but verify’ principle. As the history of the sub-continent shows, politicians only ‘trust’. They do not ‘verify’. That is done by our armed forces and our soldiers and hapless civilians lay down their lives in the process.

Here, in brief, is the saga of ‘trust but verify’:

August 1947: At its inauguration, Pakistan’s founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah declares that this new country wants to live in peace with India. The Indian political leadership ‘trusts’ him.

October 1947: Over 5,000 heavily armed tribesmen intrude into Kashmir. The Indian Army moves in and while driving the intruders out, ‘verifies’ their credentials. It finds that they are recruited and armed by the Pakistani Army.

However, Pakistan denies the charge. But some time later its Foreign Minister tells the UN that all forces fighting on the ‘Azad Kashmir’ side are “under the over-all command and tactical direction of the Pakistan Army”. This is our first tryst with this great principle — trust but verify.

December 1947: Having trusted Pakistan and verified that it was up to no good, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru flies to Lahore for a meeting with his Pakistani counterpart Liaquat Ali Khan.

India gets no guarantees from Pakistan but the business of “trusting” Pakistan begins afresh.

1958: The Prime Ministers of the two countries sign a pact which says pending settlement of disputes, “there should be no disturbance of the status-quo by force”.

1959: This year sees another joint statement in which the leaders of the two countries resolve “to solve border disputes by negotiation”.

August 1965: The Pakistani Army despatches hundreds of infiltrators into Jammu & Kashmir, but disclaims responsibility. However, UN observers ‘verify’ that armed Pakistanis have crossed the ceasefire line from the Pakistani side. A full scale war erupts.

The Indian Army captures several strategic positions on the Pakistani side, including the Haji Pir bulge and the Tithwal Pass. As the war progresses, Home Minister YB Chavan informs the Lok Sabha on September 6, 1965 that the armed infiltrators were regular and irregular soldiers of the Pakistani Army but Pakistan however has assumed “a posture of innocence”. The war ends with a UN-sponsored ceasefire. However, despite this betrayal, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri signs a truce with Ayub Khan at Tashkent and returns to Pakistan all the major gains of the war.

The Tashkent Agreement says both countries will “abjure force” and will ensure “non-interference” in each other’s internal affairs. So, consequent to ‘verification’, we are once again convinced that Pakistan has betrayed our trust. But, what do we do? On the advice of the Soviet Union, we again start trusting Pakistan and hope it will “abjure force”. The then Foreign Minister of Pakistan, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, pooh-poohs the agreement but our Foreign Minister, Sardar Swaran Singh, tells the Lok Sabha on February 16, 1966 that the agreement will help in “stabilising peace between our two countries”.

1971: Pakistan gets back its swagger and wages yet another war on India. This conflict is brought about by the flood of 10 million refugees into India following the crackdown by Pakistan’s military dictator Yahya Khan. The war culminates in the dismemberment of Pakistan, the creation of Bangladesh and the return of these refugees to their homeland.

The conflict ends with the Pakistani Army surrendering on December 17, 1971. Apart from losing its eastern wing, Pakistan loses 5,000 square miles of territory in the west and over 93,000 of its soldiers become prisoners of war. Following the war, Bhutto replaces Yahya Khan as President and the West steps up pressure for yet another “peace accord”. This leads to the Shimla Accord of July 1972.

Under this agreement, the two countries once again agree to settle differences “by peaceful means”. The agreement also says both sides will respect the Line of Control and refrain from use of force in violation of this line. Bhutto gets back the lost territory in the west and the POWs. Thus, from India’s point of view, the biggest ‘achievement’ in Shimla is Pakistan’s so-called commitment to bilateralism. This is touted as a major achievement and we get back to the business of trusting Pakistan all over again.

Bhutto, however, sings a different tune. Pakistan will shed its blood to support “the liberation war” launched by the Kashmiris, he says. Yet, Sardar Swaran Singh claims in the Rajya Sabha on July 31, 1972 that this accord is the “first step towards establishing durable peace on the sub-continent”.

February 1999: It is now Prime Minister Vajpayee’s turn to ‘trust’ Pakistan. He undertakes a dramatic bus journey to Lahore and signs an agreement with Nawaz Sharif which expresses sentiments similar to those in the Tashkent and Shimla accords.

May 1999: The Indian Army ‘verifies’ and finds large scale intrusion of Pakistani troops into Kargil. Hundreds of Indian soldiers lay down their lives as they drive out the intruders.

December 1999: Terrorists hijack an Indian Airlines flight IC 814 to Kandahar. We ‘verify’ that the terrorists are Pakistanis.

2001: Mr Vajpayee once again “trusts” Gen Musharraf and invites him for talks to Agra.

December 2001: Terrorists attack our Parliament House. We ‘verify’ and inform the world that the perpetrators of this daring assault on our democratic institution are Pakistanis.

2004: Mr Vajpayee again visits Lahore and signs yet another joint declaration. Once again, Gen Musharraf promises that “he will not permit any territory under Pakistan’s control to be used to support terrorism in any manner”. We trust him.

November 26, 2008: Pakistani terrorists mount a sea-borne attack on Mumbai, killing and maiming hundreds of people. We 'verify' that this horrendous assault was planned and executed with the blessings of the Pakistani establishment.

July 2009: It is now Prime Minister Singh’s turn to ‘trust’ Pakistan. Action against terrorists by Pakistan need not be linked to the dialogue process, he says, but later modifies this. “Trust but verify” is our motto he says! So, the political leadership is now back to ‘trusting’ Pakistan. Civilians beware!

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.

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

A bogus war on Taliban

Pakistan’s offensive, involving severe fighting and heavy casualties, which has reportedly cleared the Swat Valley, Buner and Lower Dir and other tribal areas of Taliban fighters, has been regarded as an indication of Islamabad’s determination to wipe out fundamentalist Islamist terrorism from its soil. Is that so? What does it mean for India?

The trouble is that the Pakistani Army’s claims of success lack adequate independent corroboration. A report by Dexter Filkin in the New York Times of May 8, stated that there was no way of verifying the claims by the Pakistani military’s chief spokesman, Maj Gen Athar Abbas, as newspersons and most outsiders had been blocked from the areas. It further quoted a woman in a refugee camp in Mardan as stating, “The Army and the Taliban are not killing each other — they are friends. They are only killing civilians. When civilians are killed, the Government claims they have killed a bunch of terrorists.”

A report by Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah, published in the New York Times of May 19, about urban guerrilla warfare confronting Pakistani Army as it closed in on Mingora, quotes a statement by the military as claiming that it had started clearing houses in Kanju, a village in the outskirts of Mingora, and residents who had left Kanju described a mounting civilian death toll. It then added, “The Pakistani Army has closed Swat to outsiders and essentially ordered residents to leave. The authorities have also mostly barred journalists from entering the area, making it difficult to verify what is happening.”

Unverified claims by the military are difficult to accept at face value given the latter’s — and the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate’s — close ties with the Taliban. As it has been known for a long time, and as Pakistan’s President, Mr Asif Ali Zardari admitted recently, the ISI and the CIA jointly created the Taliban in 1994. According to a report by Elisabeth Bumiller in the New York Times of April 1, Ms Michelle A Flournoy, Under Secretary of Defence for Policy, acknowledged before the US Senate Armed Services Committee, the US Administration’s concern about a wing of the ISI, which American intelligence officers said was providing money and military assistance to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Under sharp questioning by Sen John McCain, she said that she thought the ISI or at least parts of the latter — were “certainly a problem to be dealt with”.

One has doubtless seen television news clips of the Pakistani Army directing artillery fire and rockets. But at whom? A report by Carlotta Gall and Elisabeth Bumiller in the New York Times of April 28, stated, “After strong criticism here and abroad over its inaction, the Pakistani military deployed fighter jets and helicopter gunships to flush out hundreds of Taliban militants who overran the strategic district of Buner last week.” The Taliban, however, had started retreating from Buner on April 24 under orders from its leader in Swat, Maulana Fazlullah.

According to television channels, the order followed a meeting between Taliban leaders Qari Muhammad Khan and Muslim Khan and the Commissioner of the Malakand division, Syed Muhammad Javed, in the presence of Maulvi Sufi Mohammad, the founder of Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Sharia-e Mohammadi (Movement for the Establishment of Islamic Law) who acted as an intermediary. Further, television channels showed dozens of militants, masked and heavily-armed, driving away in pick-up trucks and minibuses. Muslim Khan, the Taliban spokesman, said on April 25 that all militants who had come from Swat had withdrawn and that only local Taliban fighters from Buner remained in the area. He, however, did not mention how many had left and how many remained. Yet heavy fighting was reported from Buner district on May 6. Surely, “local Taliban” alone could not have held out for so long!

Clearly, there is more in the whole thing than meets the eye. Pakistani leaders, of course, have been talking stridently. Asked to clarify Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s statement that the objective of the north-western operations was “to eliminate the militants and terrorists”, Mr Zardari told a television channel during his state visit to the US in early May, “This means clearing out the area of the miscreants and bringing life to normalcy.” Asked if “eliminate” meant “killing them all”, he replied, “That’s what it means.” But then not all of Mr Zardari’s and Mr Gilani’s statements can be taken at face value. Besides, the Army can overrule both. After the terrorist attack on Mumbai on November 26 last year, they promised to send the ISI’s Director-General, Lt Gen Ahmad Shuja Pasha, to Delhi to help in the investigations. Mr Zardari finally admitted in an interview with NBC news on May 10 what had been known from very beginning — that the Army did not let him send Lt Gen Pasha!

Clearly, it is too early to say how successful the Pakistani Army’s offensive has been and how far the Army will go in dealing with the Taliban and the Al Qaeda. It is one thing to clear Swat, Buner, Lower Dir and Shangli districts of militants, and quite another to wipe out the Taliban headed by Mullah Omar and the Al Qaeda headed by Osama bin Laden. With both untouched, Taliban militants retreating in the face of the Pakistani Army’s offensive will be sheltered in their strongholds in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas just as the Taliban and Al Qaeda elements fleeing from Afghanistan in the face of the US and the Northern Alliance’s offensive in November 2001 had been sheltered by organisations like Lashkar-e-Tayyeba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, courtesy the ISI.

They will return when the going is good again. For it is one thing to drive the Taliban out and another to hold the territory thus cleared. Has Pakistan the political will to do that? Finally, the offensive does not mean that Pakistan would also act against the LeT and the JeM which it has created to stage terrorist strikes against India. Indeed, the release of Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, head of the LeT and mastermind of the attack on Mumbai on the ground of there being “insufficient” evidence against him, clearly indicates that Pakistan’s sptonsorship of cross-border terrorism against this country will continue.

Chinese threat looms large: Govt must wake up

Throughout history, there have been numerous rulers with the ambition to lord over the entire world or at least a large chunk of it. The Second World War happened due to the over-riding ambition of Adolf Hitler. Thereafter, Soviet Union nourished the ambition to have global ideological sway over the world through its puppet Governments. We all know the end. Today, USA nurtures the same ambition. George W Bush attacked Iraq without any valid reason to control its oil resources as if all the world reserves must belong to the US. Imagine the brutal force of Robert Gates, Defence Secretary of US Administration, frightening Pakistan President Musharraf to be an ally to fight against terror or perish into stone age. That it suited Pakistan, is another matter.

Today, the emergence of China as a world power at par with the US, carries a global threat. Being a neighbour, India should be the most worried country. India has not yet gotten over the humiliation of the 1962 War. The first Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, actually lost vigour and ego.

Ultimately, he did not survive this jolt. He underestimated Chinese designs and diplomacy in spite of timely warning from Sardar Patel explaining expansionist ambitions of the Chinese. Similar thoughts were expressed by Dr Mukherjee, Mr Malkani and Prof NG Ranga. In fact, KM Munshi wrote that China's has an aggressive history. Whenever she was strong, it tried to include many countries in its empire.

Recently, The History of China published by the Chinese Government contains a map showing Chinese territory, which includes Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, Ladakh and NEFA (50,000 square miles area). The map also includes Burma, Malay, Thailand, North and South Vietnam, Combodia and chunks of Soviet Siberia, Mangolia, Tajikistan and Khirurgiia. The book declares to bring back every territory. Some think that by-and-large status-quo would prevail in the world order but if one looks at the world's geo-political map of past 500 years, with an interval of 50 years, the map changes drastically. Those who do not think beyond get shocked when international boundaries change.

Nearly 5 months back Defence Minister, AK Antony told that "with China developing anti-satellite missiles, lasers and other space capabilities, India has no option but to be fully prepared for Star Wars in future." Army Chief added that Space War was increasingly becoming the ultimate high ground to dominate war in the future. I can quote dozens of such warnings. China has positioned its nuclear submarines in Gwadar naval base at Baluchistan and more than half a dozen naval bases of Suludao, Quingdao, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Hongkong and others. We have naval bases but inferior submarines at Mumbai, Goa, Kochi, Port Blair and Vishakhapatnam. China has developed observatory towers from where they can watch our movement at Sriharikota and other centres. They have also prepared metal roads till the nearest points of India, Nepal and Sikkim borders. Their missiles in Tibet are targeted towards all Indian cities. Even US targets are included.

It must be noted that the Defence Budget of China viz-a-viz India is atleast double. According to Pentagon's assessment, China's military build up poses a direct threat to India as well as Taiwan, Japan and Russia. China has infiltrated 75 millions 'Hans' to Manchuria, 7 millions to Sinkiang, 8.5 millions to inner Mangolia and 7.5 millions into Tibet. Chinese leadership has always followed the war strategy of their master Sun Tzu. Mao was particularly influenced by him. Sun Tzu has said, "to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence, it consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." This is what China is doing to India through Pakistan. They are aligning with Sri Lanka to develop its war machine. They are also trapping Bangladesh. In Nepal, their mysterious diplomacy has succeeded.

The Defence Ministry's annual report, stated that 50-60 cities are targeted from Greater Tibet. Just this week, Chinese troops entered Sikkim by nearly two kms. Similar happenings have been occurring in Tawang area of Arunachal Pradesh but our Defence Ministry has not taken a serious note and said they are local skirmishes. The Government minimises the seriousness of all these threats.

Our security challenges are multi-fold and include Islamic terrorism in J&K and elsewhere, Bangladeshi infiltration, Left-wing extremism, troubled neighbouring States, insurgency in north-east and Chinese military push.

There are experts in India who feel that there is no immediate threat from China, as its priority is to develop its economy. But this opinion stands discounted by ground realities.

Pakistan an overview:Zardari,gilani,sharif,army ;making mockery of democracy

Pakistan is today in a tailspin. Extremists and terrorists have captured significant portions of the country's western border areas. Political brinkmanship is pushing the rest of the country into turmoil. Streets of Punjab are witnessing the return of unrest and violence. Pakistan is seething, simmering and slowly disintegrating from its edges. A reluctant and bruised Army is waiting at the doorsteps. There are strong apprehensions of a coup, barely a year after the last military regime exited.

With events overtaking hopes with such a dizzying speed, predicting the immediate future of Pakistan will be like writing on sand. Few assumptions can, however, be made, both for the short and long term, without being swept away by the turbulent events which are likely to intensify in the days ahead.

One thing is sure: President Asif Ali Zardari's days are numbered. An outsider in Pakistan's politics, the February 2008 elections offered him the unique chance of turning the country's face towards a democratic future after nine years of military rule. He blew it within six months of his election. As President he chose confrontation over reconciliation with his political opponents. Though there are attempts to persuade Zardari to compromise with his political opponents, the Sharif brothers, and some kind of rapprochement might be brokered, it will be of the most temporary kind. Both the opponents have gone too far down the road to turn the clock back to March 2008 when they decided to jettison their traditional rivalries and form a coalition in Islamabad.

Zardari, by his sheer dumb-ass attitude, has created enemies within his own party. The most vocal has been the man he picked up from obscurity to be the Prime Minister, Yousaf Raza Gillani. An anti-Zardari feeling within the party had been gathering storm ever since the President brusquely sidelined all the Benazir Bhutto loyalists, relying more on his friends and associates to run the party and the government. With Zardari committing hara-kiri, the anti-Zardari group has rallied behind Gillani, giving this political lightweight enough scope to speak out against the President in public.

If events turn out in favour of Gillani against Zardari, it would be the second blow for the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), the only political party in Pakistan with support bases across all provinces which has stood up, despite its feudal hierarchy and functioning, against the complete military takeover of the country's political process. The first was the brutal assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the mantle of leadership falling in the laps of Zardari, a corrupt manipulator whose survival instincts have so far been a shade better than a cockroach.

PPP has far remained a vanguard of democracy in Pakistan. Zardari has rendered the party its fatal wound and irrespective of events, the party would witness a break-up in the months ahead. It is today rudderless; Gillani is not a charismatic leader and most important he is not a Bhutto. Zardari, a victim of his own cunning, has shown no commitment or ability to keep his party united and strong. There are other leaders in the party, some with the capability, and character, to lead the party but most of them are provincial leaders and do not have the charisma of a Benazir to gather the demoralised flock to present a unified front against the party opponents, and the Army.

Another certainty is the street power of the middle-class in Pakistan. This is a new phenomenon and is likely to gather momentum as the country struggles with its past follies. In 2007, when lawyers and others came out on the streets after President Pervez Musharraf sacked the Supreme Court Chief Justice, many thought it to be a short-lived phenomenon. When the street protests brought down the once-powerful Musharraf to his knees within months, it was quite clear that people had won over the military. The present round of street protests has naturally raised the spectre of a repeat of 2007, which is not exactly against Zardari alone but, must remember, is built on the demand for the restoration of the judiciary. This has far too deeper ramifications than merely political.

For one, Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary was sacked in March 2007 because he was trying to put the Army on the defensive about several people, many of them strong opponents of Musharraf and his policies, who were made to disappear in the guise of War on Terror. Chaudhary was browbeaten and sacked in the presence of the present Army Chief, General Ashfaq Kayani. The street protests that ran like wild fire ended in the resignation of Musharraf. It was one of the most serious blows to the supremacy of the Army in Pakistan's history. Kayani is well aware that street protests this time around would only make the Army's position more unstable in a country where at least some sections of the people are showing signs of `military fatigue`. This does not augur well for the Army which has ruled the country on and off during the past six decades.

Therefore, it has made the Army's proclivity to remove civilian leaders and take over the reigns quite a difficult task under the present circumstances. Kayani knows that a coup at this time would invite a massive public wrath, and this time not only would the lawyers be out on the streets but others too. So a coup in the immediate future is not in sight.

What is therefore likely to happen in Pakistan is to somehow keep the present civilian government in place with or without Zardari (he has already been given a deadline to clean up the act or get out), to restore Punjab to the Sharif brothers or at least to their party and return to the western frontier where the Taliban and its allies have been knocking at the gates for the last two years. Gillani has cleverly positioned himself to take over from Zardari and the Army sees no threat from Gillani as the head of the State. The Sharif brothers too have declared that they would support Gillani. There are, however, several `buts and ifs` to such a proposition. An anonymous bullet, for instance, can unsettle this equation.

What should be more worrying to India is that peace and stability in Pakistan can never be taken for granted. There are too many negatives at work in the country. Ironically, the street protests, which many consider a sign of the unravelling of Pakistan, indicate a glimmer of possibility of people's voice finally getting heard. This is bad for the Army, but good for the country. It is too early to be optimistic. There are too many vested interests within and outside the country which, unlike India, would rather see Pakistan in turmoil.

Awatansh Tripathi

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