The Mumbai Attacks: Pakistan-India ties: time to tread carefully; time to jointly confront extremism and terrorism in the region...

Pak-India ties: time to tread carefully

The Mumbai standoff with the terrorists went into its third day on Friday with remnants of the attackers ensconced in the buildings they had occupied along with hostages, including symbolically the Nariman House Jewish centre. The death tally had gone up to 125 with 9 foreigners killed too. India is jolted and commentators are calling it India’s 9/11, the same way Pakistan called the attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad Pakistan’s 9/11. In the middle of this the Indian prime minister, in a nation-wide address, said that “neighbouring nations would have to face a cost if they allowed their territory to be used to launch attacks on India”, a thinly veiled reference to Pakistan. This shows the domestic pressure he has to face, especially from the BJP and other rightwing groups who have already accused his government of being soft on the Muslims. But the statement does threaten to throw a spanner in the works of the normalisation process. For its part Pakistan has already condemned the attacks and warned that “jumping to a conclusion” won’t help either side.

It is clear that Pakistan has not “allowed” its territory to be used by Al Qaeda. In fact, it is under attack from Al Qaeda and its many affiliate groups. The last time Al Qaeda attacked inside Pakistan was when an Arab suicide-bomber blew up the Danish embassy in June this year. In September, another suicide attack destroyed the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad amid comment that it could have also targeted the Americans staying there. In Pakistan speculation was widespread about the involvement of “foreign” elements, but finally the case was cracked when on November 22, 2008 an arrested Pakistani confessed in a court that the plan to attack the Marriott had been hatched inside Afghanistan in a province used earlier by Al Qaeda for the Danish embassy blast.

The Indian prime minister’s phrase “allowed their territory to be used” brings India into the category where the US leads by holding Pakistan accountable for its lack of sovereign hold over its own territory. Pakistan’s territory was used for the 9/11 action, and today the main bone of contention are the cross-border raids being carried out from Pakistani territory against the NATO forces in Afghanistan. But India should be careful about joining this club as it would take away the option of “cooperating” with the present government in Islamabad on the rising tide of terror in the two countries.

Very thin evidence linking speed boats — and at least two “captured” Pakistani cargo ships going to Karachi off the coast of Indian Gujarat — to the terrorists positioned in the hotels in Mumbai threatens to produce a new bilateral crisis. Pakistan has issued statements from the president and the prime minister in a tone that clearly indicates sympathy and collaboration. President Zardari who took the risk of crossing the traditional nuclear “red line” by offering not to exercise its “first use” option will be put on the backfoot if hostile rhetoric now rising in India takes over. As Indian commentators speculated about Lashkar-e-Tayba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, Karachi in Pakistan was experiencing a deadly standoff between the police and what is known as Afghani Gang in Sohrab Goth, the latter liberally using hand grenades. There are reports of Talibanisation in Karachi that have divided instead of uniting the political forces there.

Pakistan faces the spread of Taliban and Al Qaeda elements southwards into the settled areas as CIA drones operate in the Tribal Areas. There is insurgency in Balochistan which is steadily killing persons suspected of being against Baloch nationalism. Equally there is the calamity of an earthquake in the province which Pakistan is finding it difficult to tackle. Relations with the US are tense over the drone attacks and Pakistan needs cooperation with its regional neighbours to avoid becoming isolated while its economy needs to be helped out of its current trough of depression. Above all, it needs understanding from India while it stands ready to share intelligence with it on the latest Mumbai bombing.

Recent events have not helped. India has been accusing Pakistan’s intelligence of having attacked the Indian embassy in Kabul with a suicide-bomber while Pakistan has alleged Indian hand in the Balochistan insurgency and even terrorism emanating from the Tribal Areas. This has been a blind continuation of allegations that began in 2001 when the Indian parliament was attacked, triggering Indian troop deployment along the border with Pakistan. This kind of “jurisprudence” is being pulled out again to explain the latest attack. “Analysis” emanating from the West about the Mumbai attack having the signature of Al Qaeda in combination with some Pakistani Islamic group has not helped either.

Pakistan needs to activate friendly diplomacy instead of “replying” to the allegations being made by upset Indians over the media. The past may have been problematic but the present clearly shows both countries afflicted by the same disease. Both need to cooperate and must stop their “proxy” war in Afghanistan. The cue for this must come from the friendly statements made earlier by President Zardari, expressing Pakistan’s willingness to move rapidly on a course of normalisation with India. (Daily Times, 29 Nov 2008)
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Keep the record straight, Mr. Haroon-ur-Rashid. In defence of Bacha Khan - By Dr. Haider Lashari

In response to the disinformation campaign against ANP, PPP and other left-wing parties by the supporters of Mullah and Military in Pakistan.



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India 'not a threat to Pakistan' [President Zardari drops a bomb on the unholy Mullah-ISI alliance in Pakistan

By Barbara Plett (BBC News, Islamabad) Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari says India has never been a threat to Pakistan, and that militants in Indian-administered Kashmir are terrorists. The unorthodox views run counter to those held by Pakistan's military, which views India as a threat.

Pakistan's powerful military has long-defined India as an existential threat, and in the past it has given covert backing to the militants in Kashmir. Mr Zardari's comments thus mark a radical break with the past.


You dropped a bomb on me...
We were in motion, felt like an ocean,
You were the "girl" for me,
You were the first explosion, turned out to be corrosion,
You were the first for me,
But you turned me out, baby

You dropped a bomb on me, baby,
You dropped a bomb on me (Whoa...whoa...oh...oh...baby)
You dropped a bomb on me, baby,
You dropped a bomb on me (I won’t forget what you done to me (Mullah and ISI), babe)...
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Pakistan opts out of isolationism, Zardari's address at the UN

President Asif Ali Zardari’s address at the General Assembly of the United Nations on Thursday has to be rated as a good speech that fairly expressed Pakistan’s point of view on the problem of terrorism while avoiding the kind of isolationism that exuded from the speech of his Iranian counterpart, Mr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Mr Zardari sounded a firm and persuasive note to the United States and NATO-ISAF forces in Afghanistan while committing Pakistan to the war against terror and to interdiction of cross-border attacks from inside Pakistan.

Understandably, there was detailed reference to the assassination of his wife, Ms Benazir Bhutto, and to her “doctrine of reconciliation” between the West and the Islamic world, which he joined with another grand economic gesture after the Second World War in the shape of America’s Marshall Plan. While he asked the UN Secretary General to initiate a UN inquiry into her death, he clearly linked her killing to Al Qaeda: “If Al Qaeda and the Taliban believed that by silencing Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, they were silencing her message, they were very wrong”.

He couched his appeal for economic cooperation in the same words as were used by President Bush while addressing Pakistan after 9/11: “The question I ask the world’s leaders in this august chamber is whether you will stand with us, just as we stand for the entire civilised world on the frontlines of this epic struggle of the new millennium?” Then he made the most important pitch as a representative of the people of Pakistan: “Yes, this is our war, but we need international support — moral, political and economic”.

The burden of his message was: this is not your war alone; it is also Pakistan’s war, but Pakistan will not fight it alone or come under pressure from policy made against the interests of Pakistan: “We must all fight this epic battle together as allies and partners. But just as we will not let Pakistan’s territory to be used by terrorists for attacks against our people and our neighbours, we cannot allow our territory and our sovereignty to be violated by our friends”.

On the sidelines of the United Nations’ session, Mr Zardari also met the prime minister of India, Mr Manmohan Singh, with whose government the ongoing bilateral dialogue for normalisation was disrupted after the suicide-bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul. The body language of the two was positive and Mr Zardari made an appropriate reference to India in his UN speech too: “We will continue the composite dialogue with India so that our outstanding disputes are resolved. Whether it is the core issue of Jammu and Kashmir, or cooperation on water resources, India and Pakistan must accommodate each other’s concerns and interests; we must respect and work with each other to peacefully resolve our problems and build South Asia into a common market of trade and technology”.

It is deplorable that after the Indo-Pak joint statement on the opening of four trade routes, some people have tried to create the impression that this would be a bad departure from Pakistan’s “historic position” since India has not relented on the issue of Kashmir. In fact, it is time for sensible departures from bad policies in the past that have laid us low. So it is quite clear that there are powerful elements inside the state that oppose “reconciliation” more than they oppose terrorism and may in fact be counting on terrorism and such people in and out of the media to bring about a change in Pakistan to their liking. These vested interests must be resisted.

In response to Mr Zardari’s initiatives, the US is making efforts to stage a high-level international conference of European, Asian and Gulf Arab countries to debate “common strategies” to help Pakistan defeat the terrorism threat. It is expected that Pakistan will help the G8 countries arrive at a package of economic assistance that will tide Pakistan over its problems of coping with the global price hikes and internal market downturn. The United States has to step forward in this regard and give the lead.

Robert M Hathaway, the director of the Asia Programme at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, wrote thus last week: “As it currently stands, US trade policy actually discriminates against Pakistan. US tariffs on Pakistani textiles are far steeper than on similar goods from other countries...Each container of exported towels puts 500 Pakistani men and women to work. Yet, textile exports from literally dozens of developing countries around the world face lower US tariffs than do Pakistani textiles. The least we could do is to level the playing field for Pakistani goods”. Right you are, Mr Hathaway!

Pakistan would dive into a most dangerous isolationism if the swelling domestic opinion against American cross-border attacks were to become decisive. The world needs a nuclear-armed Pakistan to be part of the global effort against Al Qaeda. And Pakistan needs to avoid the Taliban like the plague and not fall into the trench of isolation without the economic cushion needed to break this fall. President Zardari has put Pakistan’s case clearly in a spirit of cooperation. This is a foreign policy posture that has more chances of success than any other approach divorced from reality. (Daily Times)
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