Dateline Srinagar: Pakistan conundrum hangs over Kashmir poll success

Why did the authors of Mumbai not try to disrupt the voting?...





30 December 2008
The Hindu
Pakistan conundrum hangs over Kashmir poll success
Why did the authors of Mumbai not try to disrupt the voting?

Siddharth Varadarajan

Srinagar: If the principal reason for a high voter turnout during the
recent assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir was the absence of
militant violence, to what extent was Pakistan responsible for
ensuring that extremist groups operating from its territory did not
disrupt the polls? The question is important because this
"non-interference" -- for which no less a person than Farooq Abdullah,
leader of the victorious National Conference, publicly thanked
Islamabad on Sunday -- seems to be at variance with New Delhi's
understanding of what Pakistani policy vis-à-vis India is in the wake
of last month's dramatic terrorist attack on Mumbai.

Though the Indian government has been careful to blame only "elements
from Pakistan" for the Mumbai incidents, senior officials have spoken
freely off the record about their belief that the November 26-28
terrorist operation could not have been launched without the knowledge
of the Inter-Services Intelligence and the top military leadership in
Rawalpindi. To be sure, Indian officials do not believe the ISI's
motives were Kashmir-centric. Instead, their view is that the
Pakistani military establishment wanted to trigger a military and
diplomatic crisis that would allow it to honorably disengage from the
American-led war on the Taliban and burnish its fraying credentials as
the defenders of national honour. And, in the long term, many Indian
officials believe, the Pakistani army would like to unsettle the
prospects for peace with India so as to fend off internal political
demands for a reorientation of the military towards a more 'normal'
relationship with civilian authority.

But if these motives propelled the ISI to either mount or at best turn
a blind eye to the Mumbai plot, why did the same agency -- which
essentially manages Rawalpindi's links with militant groups active in
Jammu and Kashmir -- not seek to disrupt the assembly elections? Dr.
Abdullah summed up the prevailing assessment here when he told
reporters, "I think Pakistan did put pressure on [the militants] that
they should not do anything to affect the elections". What makes this
policy of "non-interference" even more counter-intuitive is that it
came at a time when U.S. President-elect Barack Obama and his South
Asian advisors have given ample indication of their desire to play a
"mediatory" role between Pakistan and India on the Kashmir issue. A
low turnout, which is what a spurt in militant violence would have
accomplished, might well have placed the Indian government on the
backfoot. It would have also allowed the separatist political
leadership in the valley to claim a victory and more credibly
establish their continuing relevance. Why would the ISI, which was
prepared to authorize so audacious a terrorist outrage as Mumbai as a
means of reminding the world that South Asia remains "a nuclear
flashpoint", pass up the opportunity to heighten international
interest in the "core issue" bedeviling bilateral relations with
India?

One answer may be that militant groups and their handlers in Pakistan
suspected the international community would not have been particularly
bothered by a low voter turnout. If the world's tolerance for militant
violence has fallen dramatically post 9/11, recent shifts in the
global balance of power have also made the world more understanding of
India's position in Kashmir. The killing of more than 50 unarmed
Kashmiri protestors by security forces during the land transfer
agitation in the valley this summer, for example, generated little or
no criticism around the world. Under the circumstances, then, using
militancy to disrupt the polling might not have yielded much of a
payoff.

In this context, it is noteworthy that no attempt was made by either
the terrorists who attacked Mumbai or the authors of the email
claiming responsibility (the so-called 'Mujahideen Hyderabad Dakkan')
to highlight the Kashmir issue. It is almost as if the planners had
realised the futility of trying to secure a tactical advantage within
the narrow battleground of Kashmir and had decided to move towards a
strategy of broadening the terrain of potential conflict. The world
may well have lost interest in the "Kashmir issue" as far as the
grievances of a section of its people are concerned but it is still
alive to the danger of a war between India and Pakistan, whatever the
trigger. And the Mumbai attacks were tailor-made to create the
impression of imminent war. Thanks to a deft disinformation campaign
by the Pakistani military, some less-than-careful and even loose
remarks by ministers and officials on the Indian side and a media that
has discussed war scenarios ad nauseam for the past three weeks, the
world is getting increasingly panicky about the danger of war. No
amount of militant violence in Kashmir during the elections could have
produced the same result.

Many observers in Kashmir believe, however, that the conundrum has
another answer. That the absence of violence was the result of
Pakistan's active cooperation with an Indian request made several
months earlier, and that the Mumbai attacks were orchestrated by
Pakistan-based terrorists without the involvement of the ISI.
According to this narrative, the motive of Mumbai was to disrupt an
emerging back-channel understanding between the two countries and
increase tension to the point where some of the military pressure
being brought to bear on the Taliban and al-Qaeda on the
Pakistan-Afghanistan border might be relieved.

Whatever the truth, the fact is that Pakistan's decision to lay off
the assembly elections for its own reasons has been an unexpected
bonus for the Indian government. It has created a more favourable
terrain for New Delhi to pursue a solution to the Kashmir problem,
both in its domestic manifestation and in terms of its bilateral
context. Provided, of course, the two countries are able successfully
to ride out the present crisis by acting decisively against the
terrorists responsible for Mumbai.

Dateline Srinagar: Kashmir verdict presents opportunity, but some dangers too

Both separatists and Centre need to rethink strategy...

29 December 2008
The Hindu
NEWS ANALYSIS

Kashmir verdict presents opportunity, but some dangers too
Both separatists and Centre need to rethink strategy

Siddharth Varadarajan

Srinagar: If the huge increase in voter turnout in the assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir is being seen as more decisive a ‘verdict’ than the specific apportioning of seats between the contending parties, this is because the electorate chose not to pay heed to the separatist call for a poll boycott. But a setback for the separatists need not automatically mean the ‘Kashmir issue’ or ‘masla-e-Kashmir’ has been robbed of its salience.
Indeed, if the separatist leadership is still in denial – some more than others – about the turnout, those in charge of Kashmir policy in New Delhi would be committing a gross error in assuming they can go back to business as usual.

“Yes, we’ve had a setback”, Sajjad Lone, a moderate in the Hurriyat camp, acknowledged. The movement made a mistake in not delinking the demand for ‘azadi’ from people’s day to day issues, he told The Hindu in an interview on Saturday. “Our problem is that we had stigmatized elections. Had we not done so, nobody would be accusing us of having failed to read what was on the mind of people”. Other separatist leaders are not so introspective. Syed Ali Shah Geelani says the boycott call made by the Hurriyat was not wrong. And he insists, contrary to media reports, that the turnout figures were artificially inflated by bogus voting and “invisible pressure” by the security forces.

Mr. Geelani’s claim that the Hurriyat’s boycott strategy would have succeeded if this pressure had not been there is ridiculed by independent observers. “The Jamaat-e-Islami is in complete denial”, said Tahir Mohiudin, editor of the weekly Chattan, referring to the organization to which the hardline Hurriyat leader belongs. “Just as Pakistan is not willing to accept Ajmal Amir ‘Kasab’, they are not willing to accept that people actually voted”.

For rural residents, who one’s MLA is really matters because often he or she is the most important conduit for ensuring civic amenities and development works come to one’s area. In towns and cities like Srinagar this is not the case, which explains, at least in part, why secessionist sentiments do not get leavened or tempered by such concerns at election time and the majority chose to stay away from the polls.

According to Mr. Mohiudin, the single most important factor behind the increase in turnout this year was the near absence of militant violence. Another factor was the huge number of candidates taking part. In some constituencies, the number of contestants was as high as 27, including several that had the backing of their own villages. This created a vibrant atmosphere, with rallies and door-to-door campaigning increasing voter interest. But none of this would have been possible without the decline in militant violence, he said.

In an interview to The Hindu, Mr. Geelani alleged that some of the huge increase in the number of candidates was engineered by the “agencies”. Though he offered no proof, it does seem as if the “soft power” of the Indian political establishment did play a role. Parties like the Forward Bloc, Samata and Lok Janashakti, which have never forayed into the valley, fielded candidates with reasonably well-funded campaigns. But even if this factor helped with the turnout, it is a measure of the changed situation on the ground that parties looking for candidates faced an embarrassment of choice this time around. In the past, potential contestants were few and far between given the risks involved in campaigning.

Security officials acknowledge the fact that militant organizations like the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba made no attempt to disrupt the elections this time, unlike in 1996 and even 2002. But they say the reason for this was a certain complacency in the separatist political camp following the massive pro-azadi protests which convulsed the valley over the summer. “I think [they] assumed people were not going to vote and that there was no point in getting the militants involved”, said a security official who asked not to be identified. And by the time they realized people were voting, it was too late to do anything about it, he said, adding that the security forces were vigilant and had the upper hand.

Mr. Mohiudin disputed the suggestion that militants were not in a position to disrupt the elections if they really wanted to. “The Director General of Police said recently that there are still 800 militants active in Kashmir. Given the large number of candidates, even 50 militants would have been enough to disrupt things”. The Kashmiri street believes the absence of violence was the result of a backdoor agreement between India and Pakistan but Mr. Mohiudin put it down to the realization by militants, especially the HM, whose cadre is largely Kashmiri, that the international climate had turned against the use of violence and that there was little sense in using force to keep the turnout low when the international legitimacy of the elections would likely remain unaffected.

For separatist leaders like Mr. Lone with the semblance of a popular base in north Kashmir, these elections are forcing a rethink of strategy. “The grammar of our movement has remained unchanged since 1989”, he said. “How long can we run a movement with the same slogans and tactics”. Some in the separatist camp are now toying with the idea of fielding proxy candidates in the Lok Sabha elections next year with a view to defeating mainstream parties like the National Conference and Peoples Democratic Party. This strategy is ridiculed by hardliners as immature and by independent observers as impractical. But it is clear that some churning is likely to happen in the Hurriyat conference over this issue.

In convincing ordinary people in the valley that there was value in casting a vote, the Indian establishment has recovered some of the ground it lost over the past two decades. Though this verdict would have been even more robust if it had been accomplished without resort to questionable steps like placing separatist leaders under house arrest during the campaign, the reaction of Hurriyat leaders like Mr. Lone and Mirwaiz Omar Farooq makes it clear the APHC was genuinely out of synch with popular sentiment.

And yet, the alienation and the equally toxic mistrust between the Valley and Jammu remain as major problems that will have to be resolved through careful handling. The elections of 2008 may well be a watershed but the turnout witnessed is still less than what was seen in 1987, when more than 70 per cent of the electorate came out to vote. 1987 was a watershed election because that is where the downward slide in the state all began. The results were rigged and played a major role in fuelling the insurgency which followed. Security officials now are more than willing to concede that India scored a massive own goal that year. Had the pro-secessionist Muslim United Front been allowed to win the seats they were winning, they would, by most assessments, have got around 13-14 seats. “I don’t think that would have been the end of the world”, one official told the Hindu on condition of anonymity.

In their approach to the elections, it is apparent that people in the valley made a distinction between the ‘masla-e-kashmir’, or the problem of Kashmir, and ‘kashmiriyon ke masail’, or the problems of Kashmiris. The latter need immediate redressal through the political process. It is possible the former could also be addressed through the normal political process but only after people regain their confidence in the robustness and democratic nature of the system, including its ability to exercise control over the security forces. To that extent, we are back to 1987, when people decided to trust the process. In 1987, that trust was betrayed at the polling station itself. That has not happened this time and observers here hope it won’t happen later once the new government takes charge. “The Centre has no coherent strategy. They are only reactive”, said Mr. Mohiudin. “Now that the elections have been a huge success, I hope the old mindset doesn’t come back. It is very easy to say ‘people have voted against the separatists and for India’, and that all we need to do is throw funds at the new set up’. I think this would be a big blunder on New Delhi’s part”.

The approach Mr. Mohiudin favours is one where the Centre continues to engage with the separatists, now that the latter have been chastened to a certain extent, in a process that fully involves the mainstream parties of the state as well. The elections have made the resolution of the ‘Kashmir issue’ a little more easy, but it would be a mistake to assume the issue itself has now been voted away.

My two cents on media and jingoism on CNN-IBN

I was on CNN-IBN's Face the Nation show last night with Sagarika Ghose for a discussion on the role of the Indian and Pakistani media in fanning jingoism between the two countries in the aftermath of the Mumbai terrorist attacks. The other panelists were Hamid Mir from Geo TV in Pakistan, who spoke a lot of sense, and Tarun Vijay of the BJP and former editor of the RSS rag 'Organiser', who spoke a lot of (non)sense.

My quotable quote from the CNN-IBN account:

The “story” after the Mumbai terror attacks has been harmed because of the lack of professionalism among Indian journalists, said Varadarajan.

“The Government of India accused elements from Pakistan (for the terror attacks). That phrase was chosen because the Government realised it was dealing with multiple Pakistans. When you collapse that Government phrase and use a headline that says ‘Pakistan responsible’ you allow all these Pakistans to merge together and allow the army there to take advantage and rally everyone under its banner. That is what has happened.”

Anyhow, judge the whole thing for yourself. The video links are here, annoyingly split into five parts, and the channel's own account of the exchange can be read here.

Everybody loves a good conspiracy

Minority Affairs minister Antulay’s cynicism has done more to harm the Malegaon probe than the terrorists who killed Hemant Karkare and his colleagues...

23 December 2008
The Hindu

Everybody loves a good conspiracy

Siddharth Varadarajan

Amidst the bizarre conspiracy theories swirling around the subcontinent in the wake of last month’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai, I would like to offer one of my own: Minority Affairs Minister A.R. Antulay is a secret agent of the sangh parivar. The reason I say this is because he is doing his utmost to ensure the involvement of Hindutva activists in the Malegaon blasts is not fully probed and that the fight against terrorism is converted into a communal issue.

Consider the facts. After the unfortunate killing of Hemant Karkare, Vijay Salaskar and Ashok Kamte by terrorists on November 26, it is natural for citizens to fear that the anti-terrorist squad’s probe into the Malegaon case might flounder and perhaps even get buried. After all, a major part of the recent breakthrough in the case was seen as due to the personal dedication of Karkare. The fact that the ATS has been temporarily handed over to K.P. Raghuvanshi — who headed the agency before and had supervised the arrest of Muslim youths soon after the 2006 Malegaon blasts — does little to inspire confidence that the links between Hindutva extremists and terrorism will be comprehensively probed.

Anyone who knows the ways of Mumbai, Maharashtra and the Indian police will tell you, therefore, that there is a serious risk of Malegaon going off the rails. As a former chief minister, Mr. Antulay knows this only too well. Yet he chose not to point this out in a blunt and forceful manner. As a Union minister and senior leader of the ruling party in Maharashtra, Mr. Antulay was even in a position to ensure the Malegaon probe was entrusted to the hands of an upright officer of his own choosing. Curiously, he did nothing of the sort. Instead of helping to focus political attention on the need for the Hindutva terror plot at Malegaon to be followed on a priority basis and using his ministerial clout to ensure this was done, he erected a pathetic smokescreen whose ultimate outcome will be to let the Malegaon accused get away scot-free.

History is full of events and actions which generate consequences and benefits that are unforeseen or unintended by those who participate in or even author them. But if we try and ascribe a causal relationship to events based purely on who benefits and who loses, we would end up with ridiculous results. Asif Ali Zardari endorsed Benazir Bhutto’s decision to return to Pakistan. She went, got assassinated and now Mr. Zardari is the President of Pakistan. Since he has ‘benefited’ from her death, does that mean he had her killed? The Bush administration used the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as an excuse to unleash not one but two invasions. The administration was also incompetent in not reading the intelligence warnings of an impending terrorist attack. But that does not mean the administration was responsible for staging the attack in the first place. The Narendra Modi administration cynically used the Godhra incident to unleash communal violence against innocent Muslims across Gujarat in 2002. But that does not mean the BJP scripted the death of 58 train passengers at Godhra that day.

For several weeks prior to his death, Hemant Karkare was under fire from senior leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party for his investigation into the involvement of Hindu extremists in terrorist acts. By some accounts, he was upset by the attacks on him and felt his integrity as a police officer was being questioned. When he heard of a terrorist incident taking place in the heart of a city, is it not possible that this officer felt an urge to clear his name from this unfair accusation of partisanship and rushed to the spot throwing caution to the wind? If this is so, the BJP and its kindred organisations share a wider culpability in his death, even if the men who shot him dead were from the Lashkar-e-Taiba. Certainly, they have benefited from his death. But to jump from there to arguing they might have killed him is totally absurd.

From the wealth of information that is now available about the Mumbai attack, including from eyewitnesses, it is evident that the men who killed Karkare and his colleagues were the same men who shot up the railway station, the Leopold Café and Cama hospital before taking up their final positions at Nariman House and the Taj and Oberoi-Trident hotels. For men on a death mission, south Bombay presented what American military planners called a ‘target rich environment.’ The particular chain of events gave them Karkare and his men as an added bonus. If Mr. Antulay was not insinuating that the 10 terrorists were closet Hindutva agents, he is, at the very least, implying that a small group of well-placed Hindutva plotters were alert enough to take opportunistic advantage of the mayhem which had unfolded in order to take out the ATS leadership. Given the narrow band of time and the fact that one of the actual shooters — Ajmal Amir Iman — is now in custody, this scenario is totally implausible. Any man of even moderate intelligence would hesitate to raise such a scenario. Mr. Antulay has been blessed with intelligence far greater than that of the average man. If he insists on raising this obfuscating question, one can only conclude that his game is not as straightforward as it seems.

Now that Mr. Antulay has offered his resignation, the Congress high command should accept it forthwith. Any hesitation or dithering will send a wrong signal to the world, to Pakistan and to India’s Muslim masses whose insecurities and fears are already being preyed upon by opportunistic politicians, parties and newspaper editors, especially the Urdu press. At the same time, the Central and Maharashtra governments also need to send a strong message to all those who have misgivings about the fate of the Malegaon probe that there is no way the events in Mumbai or the death of Karkare and his colleagues will be allowed to compromise the probe into the Malegaon bomb conspiracy and the wider network of Hindutva terror that might lie behind it.

In canceling cricket tour, a mix of objectives

Decision prompted by security and political concerns following Mumbai terrorist attacks...

19 December 2008
The Hindu

NEWS ANALYSIS

In canceling cricket tour, a mix of objectives

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: The Government decision to advise the BCCI to cancel next January’s Indian cricket tour of Pakistan was prompted as much by concerns about the security of the team as by a wider set of political concerns following the terrorist attacks in Mumbai last month.

Coming in the wake of External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s statement about the peace process being in “pause” mode and Islamabad’s continuing denials about the Pakistani origin of the Mumbai attackers, the freeze in cricketing contact was in some sense inevitable. The only question is whether it will trigger a fresh round of recrimination between the two countries, or mark an upper limit to the current escalation before the bilateral relationship slips into a holding pattern pending the takeover by Barack Obama as the President of the United States next month.

In the absence of a statement by the Ministry of External Affairs on the cancellation, the December 12 statement by Union Sports Minister M.S. Gill can be taken as a reasonably good proxy for the official thinking behind the decision. “Is it possible for one team to arrive in Mumbai and indulge in mass murder, and have another team go and play cricket in the winter afternoon sun at Lahore, immediately after,” he asked reporters last week.
Public sentiment

The choice of words — including the unfortunate use of the word “team” to describe the 10 terrorists who killed nearly 180 people in the city — were obviously Mr. Gill’s own. But his sentiments clearly reflected the political assessment within the ruling Congress of the way the public mood in the country had turned.

In bowing to supposed public sentiment, however, officials here concede that India runs the risk of helping hardline elements within the Pakistani military and establishment generate a siege mentality within their country.

Helped in part by Indian media accounts of Mumbai which transformed official claims about the responsibility of “elements from Pakistan” into outright accusations against “Pakistan,” the Pakistani military has successfully rallied an otherwise sceptical public around itself. Scare stories about threatening phone calls, Indian troop mobilisation and air space violations have all been used to generate the feeling inside Pakistan that an Indian air strike or some form of military action is inevitable. And against this backdrop, the cancellation of the cricket tour is likely to be interpreted as Indian punitive action against the whole of Pakistani society for a crime committed by so-called ‘non-state actors.’

Broadly speaking, the Indian policy dilemma is the following: How to tell the Pakistani establishment there can be no “business as usual” so long as the activities of terrorist organisations continue, without at the same time undermining the influence of the small liberal constituencies which have come up within Pakistan thanks to greater people-to-people contact.

Indian officials say they are aware of the need to give the civilian government in Pakistan greater political space and to not allow the Pakistani military to present itself as the natural leader of a nation under siege. They also concede that public statements like that made by Mr. Gill are grist to the hardline mill across the border. “But there is simply no appetite in India — and I suspect even in Pakistan — for cricket to be played at this time,” said an official.

Officials also said the security element was not to be taken lightly. In the wake of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai conducted by “elements from Pakistan,” it was entirely possible that the Indian team could be targeted while on tour. Even in the absence of Mumbai, the vulnerability of foreigners in high-profile, well-protected locations was underlined by the devastating terrorist strike on the Marriot hotel in Islamabad earlier this year.

India fears repeat of ‘revolving door’ crackdown

House arrest of jihadis seen as tactic to buy time till pressure blows over...

10 December 2008
The Hindu

India fears repeat of ‘revolving door’ crackdown

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: As the Pakistani ‘crackdown’ on jihadi groups enters its third day, Indian officials greeted the news of the house arrest of Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar with scepticism, noting that previous bouts of detention had done little to deter the extremist leader from planning and organising violent attacks against India.

Mr. Azhar, who was released by the Indian government in 2000 following the hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight to Kandahar, was first placed under house arrest by the Pakistani authorities in January 2002 in the wake of the December 2001 terrorist attack on Parliament. “He may not have stirred out of his house in Bahawalpur after that,” a former intelligence official who closely followed the matter at the time told The Hindu, “but he was constantly in touch with his people. The front door was shut but the back door was open all the time.”

The farce of his arrest came to an end later that year when a Lahore court found that the authorities had not provided valid grounds for his continued detention. In a stroke of unintended, or perhaps intended, irony, the JeM chief walked free one day before the first anniversary of the Parliament attack. A month earlier, the Lashkar-e-Taiba head, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, had also been set free.

Indian officials say that this time around, they are determined not to allow Pakistan to use temporary detentions as an easy way of buying time till the international pressure which has built up following last month’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai dissipates.

The challenge facing New Delhi is to keep Pakistan and the international community guessing about what its next steps will be and to allow as much ambiguity as is needed to keep the U.S. and other friendly powers involved in putting pressure on Islamabad. But if the Indian authorities allow their rhetoric to get out of hand, they could well find themselves at the receiving end of international pressure as Washington frets about compromising its anti-Taliban operations on the western side of Pakistan.

It is perhaps not a coincidence that the past 48 hours have seen spectacular and even unprecedented attacks on the supply lines of the U.S.-led military coalition, with the Taliban destroying as many as 160 transport platforms in and around Peshawar.

At the end of the day, Indian officials remain wary of the extent to which the Bush administration — or indeed the incoming Obama administration — would be prepared to take the fight against terrorism to the Pakistani military and its Inter-Services Intelligence. As part of the process of managing the post-Musharraf transition, Washington had expressed a high degree of confidence in the anti-jihadi credentials of Pakistan’s Army chief, Ashfaq Kayani, and the man he picked as head of the ISI, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha in place of Lt. Gen. Nadeem Taj. “I don’t think they are going to admit they made a mistake now,” an official said.

When Indian officials informally aired their understanding that the LeT had mounted the Mumbai attacks with the knowledge of the ISI, they found their U.S. counterparts in a state of denial. After all, it was barely weeks since Lt. Gen Shuja Pasha had visited Washington to help coordinate the ongoing coalition efforts against the Taliban in the FATA region of Pakistan. According to David Ignatius, the well-informed columnist of the Washington Post, every one seemed to come away from that meeting smiling. After all, thanks to a secret understanding put in place by Generals Kayani and Shuja Pasha, the U.S. Army was scoring rare successes in its operations such as the killing of Khalid Habib, al-Qaeda’s deputy chief of operations.

Just as India believes the ISI has an interest in preserving its long-term interest in jihadi groups even if their activities sometimes get out of hand, Indian officials say the Pentagon has an interest in preserving the structure and role of the ISI despite the latter going off and doing its own thing from time to time.

What the civil society and fledgling democracy of Pakistan need is for the ISI and military to be forced to break their connections with jihadi politics and terrorism once and for all. Recent statements by President Asif Ali Zardari suggest Pakistan’s civilian leaders know full well the link between the attacks in Mumbai and the agenda of those who do not want democracy in Pakistan to flourish. Indian officials say they are aware of the negative consequences any escalation will have on the domestic balance of forces across the border. By merely talking about the possibility of an Indian attack, the Pakistani military has managed to get public opinion within the country to rally around its leading role. But what India fears is that once the world moves on to other issues, the arrests that Pakistan has made will go the same way as the earlier detention orders.

India in ‘wait and watch’ mode to Pakistan arrests

'Let's see if they have actually been locked up. Or simply moved from one state guest house to another..."

9 December 2008
The Hindu

India in ‘wait and watch’ mode to Pakistan arrests

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: India on Monday reacted cautiously to reports from Pakistan that security agencies there had taken into custody senior Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives wanted in connection with the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Though Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) — the publicity wing of the Pakistani armed forces — on Monday formally noted that an “intelligence-led operation against banned militant outfits and organisations” is under way and that “arrest and investigations are on,” Indian officials told The Hindu that the nature of the action being taken was still not clear. According to Pakistani newspapers, LeT commanders Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi and Zarar Shah are among those arrested, though no official in that country has been willing to confirm this on record.

“We don’t know if they have really been arrested, nor do we know what being arrested actually means. For example, are they really being locked up or merely being transferred from one state guest house to another,” an official said.

The officials also cautioned against reading too much into Pakistan’s reply to India’s December 1 demarche in which New Delhi had asked Islamabad to take “strong action” against those responsible for the Mumbai attacks.

In its reply on Monday, Pakistan essentially reiterated what it has been saying publicly over the past five days, the officials said, including an assurance that it would not allow its territory to be used to stage terrorist strikes against its neighbours and an offer of a joint investigation.

India, the officials said, was less interested in assurances and wanted Pakistan to act decisively against terrorist groups operating on its territory.

The officials dismissed the emphasis being placed on the extradition of Masood Azhar, Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon and the ‘list of 20 most wanted fugitives’ as media speculation, and reiterated that India had made a number of specific, well-focussed demands which it was not prudent to speak about in public.

Lashkar-e-Tayyaba - Recent bibligography

In the wake of the November 26-28 terror attacks on Mumbai, there have been some excellent news accounts, most of them, actually, in the non-Indian press, about the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, the group Indian investigators say was responsible for the incident.

Ayesha Nasir and Praveen Menon, "The making of a terrorist, The National, Abu Dhabi (December 8, 2008)

Geeta Anand, Matthew Rosenberg, Siobhan Gorman and Susan Schmidt, "Alleged Terrorist Group Steers Young Men to Fight", Wall Street Journal, December 8, 2008

Eric Schmittt, Mark Mazzetti and Jane Perlez, "Pakistan’s Spies Aided Group Tied to Mumbai Siege", New York Times, December 8, 2008.

Patrick Cockburn, "Schooling of a mountain jihadist: Former Lashkar-e-Toiba militants in Lahore tell Patrick Cockburn how students are indoctrinated by a 'charity'", The Independent, December 6, 2008.

Faridkot, Pakistan, the hometown of Ajmal...

Today's Observer has a fascinating account by Saeed Shah of his visit to the home of Mohammed Ajmal Amir Iman (a.k.a. Ajmal Kassab or Ajmal Kasai) in village Faridkot near Okara, Pakistan.

Ajmal is the man the Mumbai police have in their custody after having arrested him in the midst of the November 26 terrorist strike on the city.

As the BBC Urdu website photograph I include here makes clear, the village and the lane near Ajmal's house is swarming with outsiders who look a LOT like the kind of agents from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence I am familiar with (having been followed by men like them several times during visits to Islamabad) especially the round guy with dark glasses and the other chap in a pullover and salwar-kameez .... [The full set of eight photographs can be seen here and the BBC Urdu account of the village can be accessed here.]

For my money, the Observer story would appear to settle the issue of Ajmal's origins once and for all:

The mayor said there had been no local police investigation, suggesting that the authorities did not view this place with suspicion. But, over time, inconsistencies in the villagers' accounts heightened suspicion that this was the place. 'He [Amir] has lived here for a few years,' said one villager, Mohammad Taj. 'He has three sons and three daughters.'

Noor Ahmed, a local farmer, said: 'Amir had a stall he pushed around, sometimes here, sometimes elsewhere. He was a meek man, he wasn't particularly religious. He just made ends meet and didn't quarrel with anyone.'

Still the picture was confusing. While sometimes confirming that Amir did live in the village, and had a son called Ajmal, on other occasions locals claimed to know nothing.

Finally one villager confirmed what was going on: 'You're being given misinformation. We've all known from the first day [of the news of the terrorist attack] that it was him, Ajmal Amir Kasab. His mother started crying when she saw his picture on the television.'

Attempts to meet Amir, the father, however, were not to be successful. Villagers eventually told us that he and his wife, Noor, had been mysteriously spirited away earlier in the week.

‘Pakistani Army wants diversion from Afghan war’

“Disconnect” between Pakistan government and the Army over how Islamabad should react... America has levers of influence but will not necessarily do what suits India...

5 December 2008
The Hindu

‘Pakistani Army wants diversion from Afghan war’

Siddharth Varadarajan

NEW DELHI: Keenly aware of the Pakistani military’s desire to generate tension on the Indo-Pak border, India is calibrating its response to the proof it has gathered linking the Inter-Services Intelligence to the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai so as to avoid the political and diplomatic trap that has been laid for it, authoritative sources claimed here on Thursday.

Giving an account of the diplomatic contacts India had with the civilian leadership of Pakistan in the aftermath of the attacks, the sources said it became quickly apparent that there was a major “disconnect” between the civilian government and the Army over how Islamabad should react to Indian calls for action against the perpetrators.

In the Indian account, the picture that emerges is one of the Pakistani military using the Mumbai incident to pursue multiple goals such as diverting attention from the disastrous war the United States has made it wage near the Afghan border, reviving its sagging reputation as the custodian of Pakistan’s national interest and re-establishing its status vis-a-vis President Asif Ali Zardari and the civilian government as the final arbiter of official Pakistani policy on relations with India.

As the attacks unfolded on the night of November 26, it became clear this was coming out of Pakistan, the sources said. The pieces fit too well for this to be slapped together on the spur of the moment. “It was a pretty complicated plot that was not put together by chance. Even the hijacking of an Indian vessel was most probably not a chance occurrence. We are still investigating this but it could be that [the ‘Kuber’] was used by smugglers who were merely told there would be contraband involved.”

On Friday, when Pakistan’s civilian leaders were in touch with India, they did not seek to contest the Indian claim that the attackers had come from Pakistan. “[Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood] Qureshi had been telling us for some time that the Director-General of the ISI and the head of our Research & Analysis Wing should meet to discuss the terrorism issue and when this incident happened, he went public,” the sources said. External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee telephoned Mr. Qureshi. “The EAM spoke from a written note. He did not say the Government of Pakistan was involved. But he identified the Lashkar-e-Taiba and said India expected Pakistan to take action. Qureshi said that Pakistan would act once it had seen the evidence.”

The DG ISI fiasco

In their telephone calls to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, President Zardari and Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani noted that their government had already suggested a DG level meeting between the ISI and the R&AW. “So they said, let’s do this meeting and let’s have a joint investigation,” the sources said. On his part, Dr. Singh said India would investigate matters on its own side but that once this was done, Pakistan could send the DG ISI over to see the evidence.

India was surprised when Pakistan later went public about this, the sources said, putting out not one but two press releases. Later that night, however, the Army chief forced the government to rescind the decision. The Indian side was told at 2 a.m. on Saturday that Pakistan was sending its army chief’s plane later that morning to pick up Mr. Qureshi, who was still in India, and taken by surprise by the summons he received.

It was precisely at this time, the sources said, that stories began appearing in Pakistani newspapers like the Frontier Post and Pakistan Observer that Mr. Mukherjee had been peremptory and rude in his telephone call. And then Geo TV ran a story about troops being moved to the border.

‘Military hysteria’

“It was clear to us that the Pakistan Army was trying to create a sense of military hysteria.”

According to the Indian sources, the military in Pakistan appears to be acting out of three motivations. First, they wish to divert international concern away from the Mumbai attacks and the role of Pakistan-based terrorists towards a more general concern about India-Pakistan tension.

Second, they wanted to send a message to India that “you can talk all you like to Zardari and the civilian government but nothing will change.”

The third reason, the sources said, was that the Pakistan army “needs a way out of the unpopular war it is fighting under U.S. pressure in FATA and Wana. They really have a problem and need a diversion. Thanks to the war on terror and the Musharraf legacy, for the first time in the history of Pakistan, the army is unpopular inside the country. They are in trouble.” India was determined to take these broad motivations into account as it crafted its response to Pakistan, the sources said. “We believe the civilian government is not involved. And it could be that the ultimate aim of this entire exercise could also be for the military in Pakistan to take power again in the name of dealing with an India crisis.” Though this would not happen overnight, the sources said this “would be the wrong outcome for [India] and so we are not going to [help them escalate].”

India’s goals were narrowly focused on getting the Jamaat-ud-Dawa — the parent organisation of the LeT — banned as a terror organisation and its leader, Hafiz Saeed, dealt with. It was significant that unlike other groups such as the Jaish-e-Mohammed, the LeT had never attacked Pakistan establishment targets. “So the relations between the LeT and the ISI are very intimate,” the sources added.

American role

While the U.S. had shared crucial intelligence with India, the sources said no one should overestimate what Washington was likely to do. They said U.S. Joint Chief of staff Admiral Mike Mullen had delivered a tougher message to Islamabad than even Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “Don’t argue with me, he told them when they denied responsibility,” the sources said, “I have the proof.” “At the same time, this is an administration that worked with and invested in [Pakistan army chief] Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. So you can’t expect them to admit they were wrong to have faith in him.”

India had no intention of sharing the evidence it had with the Pakistani side, the sources said.

“We will leave it to the Americans to show them any proof they want.” Dr. Rice had been told during her visit to New Delhi on Wednesday that America had levers of influence over Pakistan which India didn’t. “So please use them,” we told her.

Even though American citizens had been killed in the Mumbai attacks, the sources said India “can’t expect the U.S. to do what suits us.” The Americans, they said, would play this for what suits them — to say, “OK, little boys, don’t fight, we’ll help you sort things out.”

India has ‘proof of ISI involvement’

But it is also wary of walking into trap of escalating hostility ...
5 Decmber 2008
The Hindu

India has ‘proof of ISI involvement’

But it is also wary of walking into trap of escalating hostility

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: India has proof of the involvement of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency in last week’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai but will not level a public accusation because the ensuing tension in bilateral relations would play into the hands of those responsible for the incidents, authoritative sources claimed here on Thursday.

Asked for the sort of proof linking the ISI to the attacks, the sources said investigators had “the names of the handlers and trainers, the locations where the training was held, and some of their communication through Voice over Internet Protocol have addresses that have been used by known ISI people before.”

The sources also clarified that contrary to media reports in India and Pakistan, the demarche which was handed over to the Pakistani side earlier this week did not contain the list of 20 most wanted terrorists that had first been given to Islamabad in 2000. Once the media started saying India was demanding the immediate handing over of the 20 fugitives, of course, the Government could hardly contradict these reports since their return has been a long-standing Indian demand, the sources added.

The demarche made only a pro forma reference to the return of unnamed fugitives but was otherwise exclusively focused on the Lashkar-e-Taiba and its leader Hafiz Saeed, whom New Delhi regards as the perpetrators of the Mumbai terror strikes.

The sources said that India did not believe the civilian government in Pakistan was involved in the incidents. Asked about the Pakistani Army chief’s potential role, they said it would be surprising if the ISI were able to operate without the military leadership’s knowledge.

Describing Pakistan as a country with a fragmented power structure, the sources said India’s response to what has happened in Mumbai could not be the same as in December 2001, when a terrorist attack on Parliament triggered the offensive deployment of troops on the border and the suspension or downgrading of transport and diplomatic links. “Then, we were dealing with one Pakistan. There was Musharraf and that was it. Today, the situation is different.”

The Pakistani Army would very much like a military crisis on the border with India because that would relieve the pressures it was facing on the Afghan front. “Our dilemma is that we don’t want to play their game — we want them to continue being engaged in the fight against terrorism in the west because that’s also our war. But we can’t give them a pass either. The perpetrators have to be fixed.”

It was because of this complexity, the sources added, that India’s public response has been very limited. in

India’s Pakistan problem is Pakistan’s problem too

If politics and emotion do not dictate India’s response, the terrorist strikes in Mumbai could be a catalyst for ending the Pakistani military’s fatal patronage of jihadi groups...





3 December 2008
The Hindu

India’s Pakistan problem is Pakistan’s problem too

Siddharth Varadarajan

In the charged atmosphere generated by the dangerous currents of domestic politics and media-induced panic, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is finding himself under tremendous pressure to respond decisively to initial evidence that ‘elements in Pakistan’ were responsible for last week’s terrorist outrage in Mumbai.

What the government has said and done so far has been measured and correct. It has been mindful of the responsibility and restraint with which the world expects India to conduct itself. And it has reflected the reality that Pakistan today is a country and polity and society that is more at war with itself than with any other adversary, real or imagined. And yet, with elections around the corner and the ruling Congress party under attack for its inept management of internal security, the danger of politically-induced overreach always remains.

External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee got off to a sober and dignified start last week when he told his Pakistani counterpart that the elements responsible for the carnage did not want a “leap forward” in relations between India and Pakistan and were hence acting against Islamabad’s interests as well. And on Monday, India issued a demarche to Pakistan in which it said it expected “strong action” against those responsible for the attacks, “whosoever they may be.”

But with TV channels declaring “enough is enough” and calling for the start of a “real war” on terror, the government finds itself increasingly on the back foot. Over the weekend, there was wild speculation about a punitive troop build-up by India along the Pakistan border, the suspension of the dialogue process, the snapping of air and bus links and even, most improbably, the termination by India of the ceasefire along the Line of Control that has saved hundreds of soldiers’ lives on this side since it was first put in place more than five years ago. Placed alongside this rich menu of macho “options,” Monday’s demarche has been attacked by critics as too timid. And predictably, the Opposition has gone for the jugular with at least one senior BJP leader irresponsibly demanding action by India similar to what the United States did after 9/11 — that is, war.

Too early

It is too early to say how these demands for an immediate and decisive response to what happened in Mumbai will affect relations with Pakistan. One would have thought the futility of offensive troop deployments and the suspension or downgrading of normal transport and diplomatic relations — methods the BJP-led Vajpayee government unsuccessfully tried after the terrorist attack on Parliament in December 2001 — would be apparent by now. And despite the new ‘cold start’ doctrine of the Indian Army, all proponents of ‘limited war’ and ‘surgical strikes’ on terrorist camps are silent on how an eventual conventional escalation can be avoided. “We don’t have too many options but it is not as if we have zero options either,” a senior Indian official told The Hindu. A firm message delivered quietly is often more effective than loud declarations or threats. “But as the political and media pressure mounts, it becomes harder for us to exercise those options.”

The executioners of the terrorist attack on Pakistan, of course, would like nothing better than for India to get trapped into an aggressive, and preferably, military response. For they are looking for a way to kill the peace process and shift the focus of international attention back to the Indo-Pakistan border, thereby relieving the military pressure that both the jihadi groups and the Pakistani military are facing on the Afghan side.

In a pre-emptive information strike, the Director-General of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency held an off-the-record briefing on Saturday to warn of a possible Indian troop build-up. The real aim of the briefing, of course, was to threaten the redeployment of Pakistani forces from the border areas of Afghanistan — where they have suffered heavy casualties in the U.S.-led war against the Taliban and the al-Qaeda — to the Line of Control. At least one Indian news channel leapt into the fray with an “exclusive” on troop mobilisations, following which both President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime MinisterYusuf Raza Gilani phoned up U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Dr. Rice, in turn, called New Delhi, only to be told that the story had no factual basis. But Washington’s appetite for mediation in an area of the world that western wire services love to describe as a “nuclear flashpoint” was whetted enough for her to schedule an emergency visit to India.

With Dr. Rice headed this way now, the Indian side is gently seeking to up the ante with Mr. Mukherjee making guarded but ambiguous statements about India being prepared to take all steps necessary to protect its sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Indian intention is obviously to get the Americans to read the riot act to GHQ in Rawalpindi, where the real decisions on matters of “deep policy” are still taken despite the restoration of civilian rule. The only problem with this strategy is that it raises domestic expectations in India of tough action if the Pakistani side fails to deliver. And given the complex balance of forces in Pakistan with the civilian government trying to assert itself vis-À-vis the military, whatever tough action India takes is likely to strengthen the hands of the military establishment. An establishment that will cite renewed tension with India as a reason for not liquidating the strategic investment it has made in jihadi groups over the past three decades.

Taking on the Lashkar

In the quest for a stern and fitting response, all options, including casually-bandied about military ones like ‘surgical strikes,’ flounder on a simple fact: the only force capable of defeating terrorist groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Jaish-e-Mohammed, the al-Qaeda and the Taliban which operate from Pakistani soil is the Pakistani state itself. And the Pakistani state needs to take up this task urgently if it is to avoid imploding or becoming the next target in Washington’s ongoing ‘war on terror’.

Here it is essential that India provides to Pakistan and to the international community as comprehensive and compelling a dossier as it can assemble proving its contention that ‘elements in Pakistan’ were responsible for what happened in Mumbai.

Thanks to the providential arrest of a terrorist in Mumbai and his subsequent interrogation, the police are asserting with a considerable degree of confidence that the LeT planned and orchestrated the attacks that took the lives of more than 180 people. Apart from the confession of Ajmal Amir Iman, Indian intelligence agencies say they have communications intercepts and satellite phone call records linking the attackers to handlers in Pakistan.

By itself, the Indian charge need not discomfit the Pakistani authorities since it is clear that ‘elements in Pakistan’ have perpetrated dozens of terrorist strikes inside their own country. Whether the terrorists who attacked Mumbai belong to a group that has attacked Pakistani targets or had handlers with links to elements within the Pakistani military establishment, there is enough evidence to suggest that it is impossible for GHQ in Rawalpindi to firewall the two. The brutal murder of Daniel Pearl showed the ease with which a ‘Kashmir-inspired’ terrorist like Omar Saeed Sheikh could make the al-Qaeda’s agenda his own. And the deliberate targeting of U.S. and British citizens and Jews in the Mumbai attacks should be a further reminder to Washington of the danger of allowing groups like LeT any breathing space.

Rather than threatening a ‘limited war,’ surgical strikes or a suspension of the peace process, the logic of this metastatis is the most compelling argument India can marshal in its quest for the international community to insist that the Pakistani military make a final break with jihadi groups. The war that was launched in Mumbai will only end when the Pakistani military is compelled by the world and its own people to end its war on its own society. India can help this process by finding ways to help tilt the balance of power further in the direction of the civilian government. At the very least, it should do nothing that will tilt things the other way.

Dead men can also tell tales

2 December 2008
The Hindu

Dead men can also tell tales

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: Investigators have managed to piece together what they know about the planning and execution of last week’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai from the interrogation of the only perpetrator to be captured alive, Mohammad Ajmal Amir Iman. Based largely on his revelations, the police say they have established the Pakistani origins of the plot as well as of the terrorists who came ashore on board a rubber dinghy last Wednesday night.

Iman was caught red-handed in front of dozens of witnesses and a grainy video has since surfaced of his dramatic arrest. He has since reportedly confessed to being a member of the Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Though the capturing alive of a terrorist in the midst of a major attack is a rare first for law enforcement in India or indeed elsewhere in the world in recent years, the bodies of the nine terrorists shot dead may also yield valuable clues to police investigators.

Fingerprints

First, their fingerprints can be matched with any prints recovered from the dinghy as well as from the ‘Kuber,’ the fishing trawler the terrorists reportedly hijacked for use as a ‘mother ship’ for their final operation.

This could establish whether all the nine came in through this route or were already present in the city before. Fingerprint analysis may also help ascertain whether the dinghy had additional passengers who are still unaccounted for.

Second, DNA samples from the nine must be preserved to help their eventual identification, if the investigation is ever able to progress to a stage where relatives of the slain men come forward to claim their bodies or are identified through some other means like a cash reward.

Third, the fingerprints and DNA of the nine could also be run against national and international databases to see if they match with existing records. Given the highly-trained manner in which the attackers conducted themselves, it is possible they might have been involved in other terrorist crimes elsewhere in India or the region such as Pakistan or Afghanistan.

Use of photos

Fourth, using photographs (or artists in case the terrorists were shot in the face or head), good quality pictures of the faces of the nine men should be widely circulated in Mumbai, Gujarat and elsewhere and the public invited to provide any information they might have. If any of the nine spent time in the city before, it is possible somebody may remember seeing them. This may help the police unravel any wider associations the terrorists might have or, at a minimum, come to a better understanding of the planning that went into the plot.

One of the weaknesses of the Delhi Police investigation into the Parliament attack case of December 2001 was that little or no effort was made to solicit the help of the public in fixing the identity and movements of the five terrorists who were shot dead that day. As a result, relatively little is known about the wider conspiracy and its actual participants, especially since it turns out two of the four persons originally convicted of aiding and abetting that attack were exonerated by the higher courts and a third convicted only of a lesser offence.

Finally, there is no reason advertisements cannot be placed in the Urdu press in Pakistan with the mug shots of the nine dead men published singly or as a group, inviting readers to get in touch with the Indian embassy in Islamabad or Interpol. There could also be some other point of contact established with or without the knowledge and approval of the Pakistani authorities in Dubai, perhaps, with a cash inducement for information that proves eventually to be accurate. In particular, the families of the nine men should be induced to come forward and claim their bodies.

It is on their willingness to cooperate with this and other concrete steps based on leads from the interrogation of Iman and communications intercepts that the assurances of President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani should be measured.