Acting on the Mumbai dossier - By Praful Bidwai

Saturday, January 10, 2009 (The News)

Six weeks after the Mumbai attacks, the Indian government is still groping for a strategy to get Pakistan to crack down on Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and other extremists. The Pakistani government has finally admitted that Amir Ajmal is a Pakistani national--but only after unfairly sacking National Security Adviser Mahmud Ali Durrani for saying just that. Yet, important sections of Pakistan's establishment continue to deny that the attacks were masterminded from Pakistan, which must bring their perpetrators to justice. And while the likelihood of a military conflict has receded, it has certainly not disappeared. South Asia still stands close to the precipice. The irony of India's strategic confusion is that it's playing its diplomatic cards badly vis-à-vis Pakistan, just when it has collected high-quality evidence of the LeT's role in the Mumbai attacks. Its 69-page dossier contains vital details of real-time Nov 26-29 conversations between the assailants and Pakistan-based top-level LeT operators. Thus, a day after India officially presented the dossier to Pakistan, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh repeatedly accused it of using "terrorism as an instrument of state policy." He treated Pakistan as a homogeneous entity, charged it with "whipping up war hysteria" and blamed its "fragile" government, presumably including the civilian government, for the neighbourhood's "uncertain security environment": the "more fragile a government, the more it tends to act in an irresponsible fashion." This runs counter to the rationale of the India-Pakistan peace process and the Joint Anti-Terrorism Mechanism active since March 2007. It also makes nonsense of New Delhi's considered view, expressed in many briefings, that Pakistan's civilian government is keen on friendly relations with India and on acting against jihadi terrorists, and needs to be supported. Singh adduced no evidence to prove the Pakistani government's active involvement in the Mumbai attacks. His charges were based on a general political assessment, surmise or inference, similar to that drawn by Home Minister P Chidambaram--namely, "in a crime of this size and scale, I will presume that it was state-assisted, until the contrary is proved. I will draw an adverse inference…" Such inference fits past patterns in which the ISI diabolically instigated terrorist violence in Kashmir and Afghanistan while practising "plausible deniability." It may well hold true of Mumbai too, although there are persuasive hypotheses that suggest that the ISI's role may be confined to logistical support. However, the assessment must be specifically established in Mumbai's case. Singh levelled a serious charge based on a surmise unsupported by solid proof. This speaks of serious policy incoherence. If India's objective, as Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon put it, is to get Pakistan to further investigate the LeT's role in planning and executing the operation, then it's counterproductive to point fingers at Pakistan in ways which would put up even the civilian government back. If the goal is to discredit Pakistan, then it's pointless to share the dossier with it. This incoherence is partly explained by New Delhi's frustration with Pakistan's stonewalling tactics and attempt to divert international attention from Mumbai to the dangers of an India-Pakistan war. But this response isn't mature. The world still remains focused on Mumbai, not least because of the terrorists' ruthlessness and use of guns in public places. Again, India has publicly made demands upon Pakistan to surrender between 25 and 42 extremists, including recent fugitives and Khalistani terrorists of the 1980s--without having a legal forum enforce these, for instance through an extradition treaty. The Mumbai attacks are an ideal case for the International Criminal Court. But India and Pakistan have refused to sign the ICC's Rome Treaty on narrowly nationalist grounds. India can also evoke the 1987 SAARC Anti-Terrorism Convention, but hasn't. Pakistani leaders obtusely deny that the Mumbai attacks were directed from Pakistan and, more broadly, that the country bears responsibility for India's security. Even a cursory look at the dossier should reveal rich, unimpeachable evidence, including Global Positioning System and satellite-telephone signatures; transcripts of conversations between the attackers and their handlers; arms with Pakistani markings; virtual phone numbers generated over the Internet; and the associated money trails. This evidence is strong enough to bear legal scrutiny in any civilised country. The whole world knows that it's the LeT's self-proclaimed goal to attack civilians in countries like India and undermine their governments. Indeed, that's the purpose for which it was created. But how does India convince/pressure Pakistan to act against the LeT and dismantle the jihadi/secret agency infrastructure? Theoretically, there are four ways: armed coercion, mediation through the United States, persuasive bilateral diplomacy, and multilateral intervention through the United Nations Security Council. The first option must be ruled out altogether: it's fraught with the danger of a Nuclear Holocaust. India's conventional superiority over Pakistan isn't great enough for Islamabad to want to avert war, leave alone yield to India's demands. Besides, it would play straight into the hands of Al-Qaeda-Taliban, which wants an India-Pakistan conflict so that Pakistani troops can be moved away from the Afghanistan border, relieving pressure on them and allowing them to overrun a region that has become the epicentre of global terrorism. India is investing heavily, but unwisely, into the second option--virtually outsourcing to the US its own responsibility to engage with Pakistan, in the belief that Washington would somehow persuade/force Islamabad to act against jihadi extremists. This assumes that Washington has such exceptional strategic proximity with India that it'll turn against or discipline Pakistan. However, going by experience, Washington can act in ways that breed/promote terrorism, as it did in Afghanistan in the 1980s. The US may not even be an honest broker between India and Pakistan. Apart from the imbalance and myopia typical of US policy, there's a huge risk in greater US involvement in this region. President-elect Barrack Obama plans to intensify the Afghanistan war by doubling the number of US troops. This will increase the United States' dependence on the Pakistani Army, and downgrade India's anti-terrorist concerns. The wisest approach for India is bilateral diplomacy combined with a Security Council-centred multilateral strategy. Post-Mumbai, India and Pakistan have only conducted "megaphone diplomacy." India should have used Track-II approaches and quietly engaged Pakistani officials, sharing with them, and confronting them with, evidence against the LeT. But the Singh government has behaved as if Track-II can only work in peacetime, not during crises. Various crises, including the Vietnam War and the US-USSR détente of the 1970s, show that Track-II is useful in emergencies too. Many of our senior officials, including the just-sacked National Security Adviser Durrani, and India's special envoy on Kashmir, Satinder Lambah, are Track-II veterans, who can still be drafted to produce results. India should approach the Security Council under a slew of resolutions, from 1373 to 1566, which cast a duty on all states to act against terrorists, refuse to harbour them, and inform one another about their activities. Failure to do so can invite sanctions. If Pakistan fails to act, India can demand "smart sanctions" which don't hurt the masses, such as suspension of military aid, travel bans on state functionaries, and monitoring of progress of actions against terrorist groups. Creative diplomacy is the need of the hour. Indian and Pakistani civil-society groups have taken welcome initiatives to show it's both possible and necessary. The least our governments can do is to follow them. The writer, a former newspaper editor, is a researcher and peace and human-rights activist based in Delhi. Email: prafulbidwai1@yahoo.co.in

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Indian military retaliation would play straight into LeT’s hands. - Praful Bidwai

There is no military option

by Praful Bidwai

Ultimately, it wasn’t superior firepower, sophisticated interception methods or commando training that explains how one of the Mumbai attackers was arrested alive. The key to that feat lies in the great courage shown by the city’s policemen in overpowering Mohammed Ajmal Amir Iman (Kasab) with nothing more than lathis after his accomplice Abu Ismail was killed.

Assistant sub-Inspector Tukaram Ombale held on to the barrel of Kasab’s gun even as he took a burst of fire and pounced on the man, allowing his colleagues to arrest him. Ombale died, but his bravery ensured that a key participant in the attack would live to tell the tale.

Kasab’s arrest is unique in the annals of anti-terrorist operations anywhere. His interrogation has produced invaluable evidence about the preparation for and execution of the attack.

Kasab must be tried scrupulously fairly and with full respect for his right to legal defence. A lawyer of unimpeachable competence must be drafted to defend him. His conviction cannot be a foregone conclusion merely because of the attack’s barbarity. His guilt must be proved on the highest norms of criminal law.

After Kasab’s disclosures to the police, there can be little doubt that Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba carried out the attack after putting recruits through rigorous training and ideological-political indoctrination for almost a year. The Pakistani media has since verified Kasab’s home address, and interviewed his father in Faridkot village in Punjab’s Okara district. The international community has confirmed the LeT’s involvement through the ban imposed on its sister organisation, Jamaat-ud-Daawa, by the United Nations Security Council under Resolution 1267.

The LeT isn’t just another jehadi group. It has had a special relationship with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency. Unlike other groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammed, which are Deobandi, the LeT is Salafist and doesn’t believe in fighting governments in Islamic countries. The LeT doesn’t actively oppose the army’s anti-Taliban-Al-Qaeda operations at the Afghanistan border.

It’s not clear if the ISI or its “rogue” elements logistically supported the Mumbai attack. But it’s reasonably plain that the attackers’ main motive was to provoke a military response from India, which would cause a troops build-up at Pakistan’s eastern border. This would create a rationale for redeploying Pakistani troops from the western border—where they face considerable pressure from US-Pakistan operations—to the Indian border. This would allow Al Qaeda-Taliban fighters to regroup and overrun large swathes of Afghanistan and Pakistan

Secondarily, the attackers’ motive was to increase disaffection among Indian Muslims and provoke a backlash—to further help extremism. Mercifully, this hasn’t happened—despite the Sangh Parivar. The attacks have triggered unprecedented Hindu-Muslim unity and a spirited condemnation of terrorism by an overwhelming majority of India’s Muslim organisations.

Indian military retaliation would play straight into LeT’s hands. This would further destabilise Pakistan, which is already in a precarious condition, to the point of unravelling its state—with disastrous consequences for the whole region. The Indian government has acted with restraint and used diplomatic, not military, means to deal with the crisis. On December 11, Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee underscored this approach. In response to a demand for attacking Pakistan, he said: “That is not the point….I am making it quite clear that that is not the solution. Let us be very clear and frank that that is no solution.”

The meaning of the military option, advocated stridently by hawkish “strategic experts” and by Bharatiya Janata Party MPs like Arun Shourie should be plain. Shourie wants India to target Pakistan’s vital installations and keep Pakistan “preoccupied”, presumably through covert action, with its “own problems in Balochistan, in Gilgit, Baltistan”, etc. He said: “Not an eye for an eye; but for an eye, both eyes. For a tooth, (the) whole jaw.”

This is an insane prescription. Any India-Pakistan conflict is liable to escalate into nuclear war. In Nuclear Armageddon, there are no winners—only mega-deaths.

Even a limited nuclear exchange will kill millions of civilians in both countries. The economic and environmental damage will set us back by decades. A single Hiroshima/Nagasaki-type bomb will kill 8 to 20 lakh people in a big city. India and Pakistan both have scores of such bombs, indeed even more powerful ones.

In every conceivable war-gaming scenario—and many credible ones exist —, an India-Pakistan conflict has one inevitable outcome: full-scale war, in which Pakistan won’t hesitate to use nuclear weapons if it fears loss of territory. This will invite nuclear retaliation from India, with consequences too horrifying even to contemplate.

No leader has the moral right or political mandate to sacrifice millions of civilians. Only extremists with apocalyptic visions like RSS chief KS Sudarshan believe nuclear war is acceptable.

He recently told an interviewer: “Whenever the demons (Asuri powers) start dominating this planet, there is no way other than war…I know it will not stop there. It will be a nuclear war and a large number of people will perish. But … let me say with confidence that after this destruction, a new world will emerge, which will be very good, free from evil and terrorism.”

It’s dangerous to imagine that the threat of war can compel Pakistan into acting decisively against extremist groups. Indeed, Pakistan will respond with even greater bellicosity.

The idea of “surgical strikes” against terrorist training camps is equally harebrained. LeT camps are makeshift affairs, and poor candidate-targets for strikes. Any strike, however “limited”, will invite armed conflict. Pakistan isn’t Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, which the US could attack without fear of resistance because it crippled all military communications. Even covert action, which will require the creation of a new monster—”India’s own ISI”—will trigger escalation.

But there are alternatives. Manmohan Singh outlined a two-pronged approach: galvanising international opinion for effective action against terrorism, and persisting with diplomatic pressure on Pakistan. Domestically, he promised reform of internal security arrangements. US and UK pressure has already led to a ban on JuD. But India must develop a broader multilateral approach to avert getting drawn into Washington’s parochial plans for the region.

The best strategy would be to press Pakistan through UN Security Council Resolution 1373, under which sanctions can be imposed on a state that fails to “deny safe haven to those who finance, plan, support, or commit terrorist acts…” and violates its duty to “refrain from providing … support… to entities or persons involved in terrorist acts…”.

Bilaterally, India can achieve much by sharing evidence of the LeT’s role in the Mumbai attacks with Pakistan, and acting demonstrably to defuse suspicions about its covert operations in Balochistan and Afghanistan.

While revamping India’s internal security system, the Singh government should have followed the advice of Chief Justice KG Balakrishnan against using “questionable methods such as permitting indefinite detention of terror suspects…coercive interrogation techniques and the denial of the right to fair trial”, and his plea for “substantive due process”.

Regrettably, it has done the very opposite by having a law passed which replicates all the obnoxious provisions, including detention without charges for 180 days, of the discredited Prevention of Terrorism Act—except for making police confessions admissible as evidence. The National Investigative Agency Act too has flaws, including overcentralisation of powers, and their illegitimate extension to areas affected by insurgency and Left-wing extremism. These Acts must be undone.

The writer, a former newspaper editor, is a researcher and peace and human-rights activist based in Delhi. Email: prafulbidwai1@yahoo.co.in

Friday, December 26, 2008 (The News)
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