Admiral Noman Bashir muddies Mumbai probe waters

Domestic political turmoil will add to choppiness of India policy ...







28 February 2009
The Hindu

Admiral Noman Bashir muddies Mumbai probe waters

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: There are two ways of interpreting Friday’s claim by Pakistani naval chief Noman Bashir that Ajmal Amir Iman ‘Kasab’ – the lone surviving gunman from last November’s terrorist attack on Mumbai – did not use the “sea route” to arrive in India.

The statement is astonishing mostly because it runs totally counter to what the government of Pakistan formally put out in a press conference held by its Interior Adviser Rehman Malik on February 1. At the time, Mr. Malik not only acknowledged that a part of the Mumbai terror conspiracy had been hatched in Pakistan but also confirmed the use of the “sea route” and provided details about the use of boats by the terrorists that India was not even aware of.

The first and most benign explanation for this flip-flop is that the admiral is seeking to deflect any criticism of the Pakistani Navy and Coast Guard for having failed to detect or stop the terrorists from launching their attack on Mumbai. His observation that the Indian Navy was “10 times bigger” than Pakistan’s and that the Pakistanis could not be blamed for failing to prevent the attack when the Indians themselves proved unable to do so suggests the Navy Chief was not contesting the reality of the sea voyage so much as protecting his service from the charge of incompetence or even collusion.

A second – and more ominous — possibility could be that the Pakistani military is taking advantage of the political turmoil into which the country has now plunged following the do-or-die struggle between President Asif Ali Zardari and Opposition leader Nawaz Sharif to flex its own muscles.

With Army Chief Ashfaq Kayani on a visit to the United States – where he was inducted into the U.S. Army’s ‘Hall of Fame’ at a ceremony in Fort Leavenworth on Thursday – the military establishment may have decided the first salvo against civilian authority was best fired by the least conspicuous service, the Navy.

While it will not be easy for the military establishment to revert to the earlier policy of denial which it imposed on the civilian government of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in the first few weeks following the Mumbai attacks, slowing down the pace and intensity of the Federal Investigation Agency’s probe into the plotters would not be so difficult. As it is, India and Pakistan are now entering uncharted legal territory. Trying a conspiracy case in two separate venues is difficult at the best of times. When prosecutors on both sides distrust each other, it is not hard to imagine the case getting stuck in ‘procedural’ and judicial delays of one kind or another.

That President Zardari and the military have not always seen eye to eye on the Mumbai incident was demonstrated by earlier flip-flops on the question of whether the chief of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency should visit Delhi, the nationality of ‘Kasab,’ and the authenticity of the investigative leads India provided in its dossier to Pakistan last month.

In the end, however, the President was able to have his way. Pakistan’s acknowledgment of the fact that its soil had been used to stage the Mumbai attack marked a potential watershed in the bilateral relationship, even if some of the ‘30 questions’ it posed to India suggested an unhealthy degree of scepticism about the broad facts of the case.

Mr. Zardari’s decision to sack the special public prosecutor handling the case against the Mumbai co-conspirators after he said that Pakistan wanted ‘Kasab’ to be extradited from India is a further sign of his intention to avoid complicating bilateral relations with unhelpful and impolitic demands. And yet, it is clear that the imperative of domestic political survival will weaken his hands as far as policy towards India is concerned.

With the Pakistan People’s Party and Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) now locked in mortal combat, Mr. Sharif will end up strengthening his relations with Islamist parties and groups. On his part, Mr. Zardari must perforce embrace the PML (Q), the erstwhile King’s party and favourite of the military establishment. Both of these new equations will further reduce the political space that is available in Pakistan for a frontal assault on the Lashkar-e-Taiba and other jihadi organisations.

Scary: Taliban, ours and theirs

Exhibit #1:
From The Hindu on February 19:

Register FIR against Renuka: Mangalore court

Staff Correspondent

MANGALORE: A court here on Wednesday directed the Mangalore rural police to register a first information report against Union Minister of State for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury. The directive from the Judicial Magistrate First Class (third court) came in the case filed on Monday by Mayor Ganesh Hosbettu against her. ..

Ms. Chowdhury reportedly made a remark, in the wake of the growing vigilante attacks in the region against women, that “Mangalore has been Talibanised.”

A case has been filed under Sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups), 153B (making assertions prejudicial to national integration) and 505 (making statements conducing to public mischief) of the IPC.

Just in case you've forgotten what this is all about, Manu Sharma and Sunil Prabhu remind us on NDTV,

Fifteen-year-old Ashwini committed suicide because she felt humiliated. But the men who caught and thrashed her and her Muslim friend haven't been arrested yet.

In the Mangalore pub attack earlier, right wing Hindu activists thrashed women publically. The men from Sri Ram Sene were bailed out within a week.

So when Mangalore's reputation is under attack what do the authorities do? The Mayor presses charges against a Union Minister for calling the developments Talibanisation.

Thrilled with the court's indulgence, counsel for the Mangalore mayor had this to say: "Renuka Chowdhry has done an offence by misusing criminal incidents and tried to outrage the criminal feelings, religious feelings and even caused defamation to the entire city of Mangalore. The judgement is a historical judgement whereby the court has directed the police to register an FIR against her."

IMHO, the Indian law enforcement and judicial system is really sick.

Exhibit #2:

Pervez Hoodbhoy in the 'Saudi-asation of Pakistan' reminds us just how serious a threat the Taliban and their kindred organisations pose to his country :

The common belief in Pakistan is that Islamic radicalism is a problem only in FATA, and that madrassas are the only institutions serving as jihad factories. This is a serious misconception. Extremism is breeding at a ferocious rate in public and private schools within Pakistan’s towns and cities. Left unchallenged, this education will produce a generation incapable of co-existing with anyone except strictly their own kind. The mindset it creates may eventually lead to Pakistan’s demise as a nation state...

A full-scale war is being fought in FATA, Swat and other “wild” areas of Pakistan,
resulting in thousands of deaths... But, perhaps paradoxically, in spite of the
fact that the dead bodies and shattered lives are almost all Muslim ones, few
Pakistanis speak out against these atrocities. Nor do they approve of the army
operation against the cruel perpetrators of these acts because they believe that
they are Islamic warriors fighting for Islam and against American occupation.
Political leaders like Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan have no words of solace for
those who have suffered at the hands of Islamic extremists. Their tears are
reserved exclusively for the victims of Predator drones, even if they are those
who committed grave crimes against their own people. Terrorism, by definition,
is an act only the Americans can commit...

For three decades, deep tectonic forces have been silently tearing Pakistan away from the Indian subcontinent and driving it towards the Arabian peninsula. This continental drift is not physical but cultural, driven by a belief that Pakistan must
exchange its South Asian identity for an Arab-Muslim one. Grain by grain, the
desert sands of Saudi Arabia are replacing the rich soil that had nurtured a
magnificent Muslim culture in India for a thousand years.

Sahitya Akademi award for Iftikhar Gilani

When the Indian intelligence agencies tried to frame Iftikhar Gilani on a bogus charge of violating the Official Secrets Act six years ago, they never reckoned on the brave Kashmiri journalist's ability to strike back with his pen. The book which emerged from his ordeal, My Days in Prison, is a classic parable of modern India, an account of his malicious prosecution and incarceration in Tihar told with detachment and even humour. The Urdu translation of the book, Tihar Kay Shab-o-Roz, has now won the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Translation Prize 2008 for Urdu. Congratulations, my friend! I am sure the Rs. 20,000 award will come in handy...

[You can read my introduction to Iftikhar's book here.]

Hear me on India-Pakistan relations @ Yale

Any readers of my blog in New Haven interested in what I have to say on India-Pakistan relations in the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks are welcome to attend two public events on this topic at Yale University this week.

My public lecture as a Poynter media fellow is on February 17 at 4:30 pm in the Henry Luce Hall auditorium at 34 Hillhouse Avenue.

I will give a different version of this talk focusing on Obama's Afghanistan and Pakistan policy one February 19 at 4 pm at a 'Master's Tea' event at Silliman College.

Both events are free and open to the public.

Mediation is already a reality

In the context of the differing statements on Pakistani cooperation made by NSA M.K. Narayanan and External Affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee, I wrote about the real possibility that the exchange of information between New Delhi and Islamabad was being handled by their intelligence agencies, through the mediation of the Americans:

One clue to resolving this factual dissonance might lie in Mr.
Mukherjee's use of the phrase 'official communication' when he said
Pakistan was yet to respond to India. According to a report on Tuesday
in the Pakistani newspaper, Dawn, India was channeling its
communication to Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency through the
U.S. FBI, whose investigators are also probing the Mumbai case. If
Pakistan was also routing its queries on the Indian dossier through
the FBI, the external affairs minister would be correct in saying
India had received no official word from Pakistan, but only in a
strictly literal sense. Or it could also mean the Indian intelligence
agencies – which report to the NSA – are handling the probe and any
technical queries springing from it on their own steam without
reference to the MEA.

Well, the Washington Post reports today that this is exactly what is going on:

In the aftermath of the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the CIA orchestrated back-channel intelligence exchanges between India and Pakistan, allowing the two former enemies to quietly share highly sensitive evidence while the Americans served as neutral arbiters, according to U.S. and foreign government sources familiar with the arrangement.

The exchanges, which began days after the deadly assault in late November, gradually helped the two sides overcome mutual suspicions and paved the way for Islamabad's announcement last week acknowledging that some of the planning for the attack had occurred on Pakistani soil, the sources said.

Time for India to think of carrots too, not just sticks

Now that the Mumbai terror probe has crossed the hurdle of Pakistani denial, India must shed its distrust...

13 February 2009
The Hindu

NEWS ANALYSIS
Time for India to think of carrots too, not just sticks

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: Ever since India handed over a dossier of investigative leads on the Mumbai terrorist attacks to Pakistan last month, officials here have been preparing themselves for the worst case scenario of Islamabad stonewalling or blocking the probe. What the Indian side did not really prepare itself for was a response of the kind it received on Thursday, with Pakistan’s Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik, not only acknowledging that terrorists had used Karachi and Pakistan to plan and launch the November 26-29 attacks in Mumbai but also providing additional details about some of the players and their modus operandi.

After expecting the worst, New Delhi today finds itself having to fashion a response to a Pakistani investigative effort that the entire world is likely to judge as serious and effective. So far, the Indian side had been thinking only in terms of the coercive diplomatic steps it could take in response to Islamabad’s lack of cooperation. Now that Pakistan has demonstrated more than a modest measure of cooperation, India will have to also evaluate the carrots, if any, it is prepared to offer to ensure the progress that has been made continues, and the planners of Mumbai are brought to book.

Simply put, Thursday’s press conference by Mr. Malik was the first time the Pakistani state has ever publicly acknowledged that specific individuals and organisations based on its territory were actively involved in staging a terrorist attack on India. The Indian side had been fruitlessly pressing its case on “cross-border terrorism” since the days of the Khalistan movement in the 1980s before Pervez Musharraf, who was Pakistan’s President at the time, agreed in January 2004 not to allow his country’s soil to be used by anti-India terrorists. But that was a general commitment which did not require the Pakistani establishment to swallow the bitter pill of specific liability.

What has happened, therefore, is a dramatic reversal of Islamabad’s long-standing policy of denial and its significance ought not to be minimised in any way. Having acknowledged the role of the Lashkar-e-Taiba and its commanders, Pakistan has also now essentially committed itself to proceeding against them. The international political cost to the establishment of turning back from here has risen dramatically and one can only imagine that the delay in the “finalisation” of the report was largely on this account.

In order for this positive turn to be consolidated, the Manmohan Singh government should resist the temptation to gloat or to pick quick holes in what the Pakistani investigation into Mumbai has revealed.

That this is indeed how India intends to proceed for the moment is apparent from the positive statement issued by the Ministry of External Affairs on Thursday evening.

Though there is no reason to assume the details unearthed by Pakistan are genuine, the opposite assumption would also be incorrect. Indian investigators should be given time to examine the Pakistani response, especially the 30 queries Mr. Malik said Islamabad’s investigators have, and a constructive approach should be adopted to the issue of sharing further information and evidence.

India’s response should be communicated directly to Pakistan rather than through piecemeal or even misleading leaks to the media. In the interim, a moratorium on hostile rhetoric and accusatory statements is urgently required. In particular, New Delhi seriously needs to examine what political purpose is served by repeatedly saying some official agencies in Pakistan “must have” been involved in the Mumbai attacks.

Even if this suspicion were well founded, one has to ask whether public accusations will help or hinder the course of the investigation India wants Pakistan to conduct. It defies reason to imagine that Pakistani investigators will ever allow the Mumbai trail to lead to the ISI or elements of the intelligence agency. But even if it doesn’t, a probe that goes half way can still do some damage to the interests of those elements in the Pakistani military establishment who look at terrorism as a force multiplier.

If Mr. Malik’s remarks are taken at face value, it is clear that the Mumbai plot may be far more complex than what Indian investigators have imagined so far. There may be red herrings in the Pakistani investigation too but, prima facie, there is no reason to rule out the possibility that the conspirators operated out of more than one location.

In the immediate aftermath of Mumbai, Pakistan’s offer of a joint investigation into the incident was rejected by India because of its unhappy experience with the joint-anti-terror mechanism. And then Islamabad’s refusal to acknowledge the citizenship of Ajmal ‘Kasab’ — the gunman captured alive on November 26 — made the Indians even more sceptical about Pakistan’s intentions. A corner was turned when Islamabad acknowledged ‘Kasab.’ And what we have seen over the past month is the bare bones of a joint investigation in all but name.

Indeed, at his press conference, Mr. Malik confirmed something National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan had said in an interview earlier this month – that Pakistani investigators had been in touch with their Indian counterparts with follow-up queries to the Indian dossier. Though the MEA sought to deny the existence of these exchanges, this constructive process is now clearly into its third iteration.

The ICC should prosecute Israeli leaders for Gaza

With Palestine accepting the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction, Israel should realise there is a price to pay for committing war crimes...







9 February 2009
The Hindu

ICC should prosecute Israeli leaders for Gaza
With Palestine accepting the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction, Israel should realise there is a price to pay for committing war crimes

Siddharth Varadarajan

Six years after it was established and a week after the first trial of an alleged war criminal Thomas Lubanga from DR Congo began with much fanfare, the International Criminal Court is confronting a serious existential question. Will it be a tribunal where only black and brown men are to be prosecuted? Or will criminals from the ‘civilised’ western world also be arraigned before it? The question is not a philosophical or merely moral one. Earlier this month, Pr esident Mahmoud Abbas of Palestine wrote to the ICC accepting its jurisdiction over crimes committed on his country’s territory. What this means is that Israel’s leaders and military commanders could ultimately be prosecuted for war crimes committed by the Israeli armed forces during their savage attack on the people of Gaza from December 27, 2008 to January 18, 2009.

Israel’s aggression led to the death of 1,300 Palestinians, most of them non-combatants. Children alone accounted for nearly a third of the victims. International human rights groups have accused Tel Aviv of committing serious war crimes by using weapons like white phosphorous in the midst of civilians, targeting civilian buildings and infrastructure, and preventing humanitarian aid and medical relief from reaching the victims. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, has called for an independent investigation and even President Barack Obama’s representative at the U.N., Susan Rice, said last month that Washington “expects Israel will meet its international obligations to investigate” these allegations.

In response to mounting pressure, Israel has said, laughably, that it will conduct an internal probe. But after getting free pass from the world all these years, Tel Aviv is feeling rattled. Israeli military commanders involved in Operation Cast Lead have been advised against travelling abroad, especially to Europe, where universal jurisdiction norms have already led to the opening of a criminal case in Spain stemming from an earlier war crime in the Gaza. Media censorship has also been invoked to ban journalists from naming Israeli officers involved in the war lest they be linked to specific war crimes and prosecuted abroad.

Apart from the piecemeal and politically difficult use of universal jurisdiction, there are two ways of holding Israeli leaders and commanders legally responsible for war crimes committed in Gaza. The U.N. General Assembly can establish an International Criminal Tribunal for Israel (ICTI) under powers granted to it by Article 22 of the U.N. Charter. The ICTI’s mandate would be more or less similar to the ad hoc courts established by the Security Council in the 1990s to deal with war crimes in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Alternatively, an already established tribunal like the ICC could handle the matter.

Unlike the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which deals with disputes between states, the ICC is a court where individuals are brought to book. The court has jurisdiction over serious cases which occur on the territory of a state party or where the accused individual is a citizen of a state party. The UNSC also has the power to send a case to the ICC, something it did in 2005 when the Darfur matter was referred to prosecutors despite Sudan not accepting the court’s mandate.

But with Palestine now accepting the ICC’s jurisdiction, individuals from any country, including Israel, could be prosecuted for war crimes committed within Palestinian territory regardless of whether their own country has ratified the court’s statutes or not. Though 108 countries have joined the ICC, key states like Israel, the United States, India and China remain outside the tent. While this protects their citizens from potential arraignment at The Hague for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed on their own soil, there is no immunity if war crimes are committed on the territory of a state accepting ICC jurisdiction. It is on this basis that President Abbas has asked the court to open an investigation into Israeli crimes in Gaza during its recent aggression.

ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has said an investigation will only be launched once the legal question of jurisdiction is settled. “It is the territorial state that has to make a reference to the court. They are making an argument that the Palestinian Authority is, in reality, that state,” he was quoted by The Times as saying. On their part, Israeli officials say that since Palestine is not a “state,” President Abbas’ submission is legally worthless.

The international law of recognition is complex but the existence of Palestine as a state and nation with the same rights of self-determination and sovereignty as other nations cannot be disputed. The State of Palestine was proclaimed on November 15, 1988 by the Palestine National Council in its ‘Algiers Declaration.’ Following this proclamation, dozens of countries, including India, China and Russia extended formal diplomatic recognition to it. And on December 15, 1988, the U.N. General Assembly voted to adopt Resolution 43/177 acknowledging the proclamation and granting the new state observer status. As Professor Francis A. Boyle has argued, the UNGA’s recognition of the new state of Palestine “is constitutive, definitive and universally determinative.” In December 2003, when the ICJ invited written submissions from states for its advisory opinion on the legality of the wall Israel was building in occupied Palestinian territory, it wrote to Palestine as well.

Of course, international recognition for Palestine did not then and does not now mean its state enjoys the attributes of independence. But the primary reason for this is that Palestine is under military occupation by Israel, an occupation that the U.N. and the world recognise to be illegal. Today, Palestine exists, its people and territory exist, and the capacity of its state to enter into international relations is attested to by the formal diplomatic relations more than 100 countries have established with it.

The 20th century is full of examples of states continuing to exist despite their territory being occupied. The Nazi conquest of Poland or France, for example, led to the establishment of governments-in-exile that were no more legitimate than what the Palestinian people, through their struggle for self-determination, gave rise to. Following the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian authority returned from exile to discharge its functions under conditions of occupation in the hope that a negotiated transition to an end to the Israeli occupation would be possible. But the fact of military occupation can never extinguish the rights of a people to statehood, a right recognised by the League of Nations for the Palestinians as far back as 1919.

Wilful flouting

As an occupying power, Israel has certain obligations under international law and international humanitarian law, obligations it has been wilfully flouting especially by seizing land for settling its own citizens. In 2005, it effected a withdrawal of its citizens and soldiers from Gaza while maintaining full and effective control over all entry and exit points. At the time, Tel Aviv unilaterally asserted it had “ended” its occupation of Gaza and would no longer be responsible for the well-being of its people as the occupying power. This cynical and astonishing claim was subsequently upheld in 2008 by the Israeli High Court of Justice in the Gabber case.

By withdrawing from Gaza, Israel sought to rid itself of its obligations as an occupying power under the Geneva Conventions and as a belligerent occupant under the 1907 Hague Convention. And now, by claiming that Palestine is “not a state,” it wants to escape liability from the one international instrument that can pin responsibility on its leaders for their wanton violations of the laws of war, namely the ICC.

Why should the Palestinians be denied the protection of an international court expressly set up to provide justice to those who have no other forum to turn to, especially when their internationally recognised authority voluntarily submits its territory to its jurisdiction? If occupation extinguishes a state’s right to international protection, this would make a mockery of international law and of the ICC’s raison d’etre. Tomorrow, if Ethiopia occupies Eritrea and commits war crimes, will the vanquished Eritrean national authority not have the right to assign jurisdiction to the ICC to investigate crimes committed by the occupying power? Even if there is still a dispute with Israel over the precise frontiers of the West Bank, Israel has itself officially and legally washed its hands of the Gaza Strip. There can be no dispute over the right of the Palestinian Authority to ask the ICC to investigate war crimes committed there.

The Palestinian referral will not establish a precedent for other aggrieved peoples to “refer” themselves to the ICC and undermine the sovereignty of states. There is, today, no country other than Palestine which claims to speak for the people of Gaza. The ICC must take up the investigation of Israeli war crimes there with utmost urgency. Its credibility is at stake.

If the prosecutor is unwilling to act, the UNSC should refer the case to him. The question President Obama needs to ask is this: If the court is competent to try Sudanese officials for Darfur, why shouldn’t it be asked to look at Israel’s actions in Gaza as well? Of course, the reality is that the U.S. will likely block any such attempt at the Security Council. Which is why the proposal for the General Assembly to set up an ICTI should also be energetically pushed by the international community.

Narayanan's (sound) bite, Obama's bark

PMO in damage control mode after the National Security Adviser is judged to have put his foot in it...








5 February 2009
The Hindu

Quotes taken out of context have given a distorted view: Narayanan
National Security Adviser clarifies remark that Obama was “barking up the wrong tree”

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: In a case of one man’s (sound) bite being worse than another’s bark, National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan has rushed to clarify that his remarks about the new American President “barking up the wrong tree” on Kashmir were really aimed at underlining the “high expectation India had from the Obama administration.” And that “selective quotes taken out of context have tended to give a distorted idea of what was actually said” by him.

The canine metaphor used by Mr. Narayanan in an interview on Monday to CNBC TV 18 was reproduced widely in the international media under headlines like ‘India warns Obama over Kashmir.’ According to South Block sources, a formal clarification was issued by the Prime Minister’s Office after the Ministry of External Affairs concluded the NSA’s remarks were likely to hinder rather than help the process of establishing a good political rapport with President Barack H. Obama and his incoming foreign policy team.

In the interview, Mr. Narayanan had said “references made by President Obama which seem to suggest that there is some kind of link with settlement on the Pakistan’s western border and the Kashmir issue certainly have caused concern. I think we are in a nascent state. I do think that we could make President Obama understand, if he does nurse any such view, that he is barking up the wrong tree.”

He was answering a question about the link Mr. Obama made between his fight with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda and a solution to Kashmir.

MEA officials told The Hindu that when the Obama administration had already met India’s concerns by limiting the remit of its special representative for South Asia, Richard Holbrooke, to just Afghanistan and Pakistan, there was no need for any public airing of doubts, nervousness or apprehension by New Delhi.

In damage control mode, the PMO statement said Mr. Narayanan “has clarified that references made in the course of an interview by him to Karan Thapar were answers to specific questions put by the interviewer.” The statement “further clarified” that the “underlying theme of the reply to the question on Indo-U.S. relations was the high expectation India had from the Obama Administration with a hope being expressed that it would be possible for India to make the new Administration appreciate India’s positions and views on the region, including Kashmir.”

Describing Kashmir as “one of the quieter and safe places in this part of the world,” Mr. Narayanan had said in his interview that it was possible that “elements, perhaps in the administration” were “harping back to the pre-2000 area.”

The PMO statement said the reference by the NSA to the internal situation in Pakistan “and the role of former President Musharraf” had also been made “in the context of specific questions put by the interviewer.”

Mr. Narayanan was asked whether Pakistan had become a more difficult and complicated country since President Musharraf’s resignation. Answering yes, the NSA said it had been possible for India “to do business with him.” A “great deal was achieved in terms of trying to arrive at the modus vivendi on some of our most difficult issues and questions,” he said.

In his clarification, Mr. Narayanan said “selective quotes taken out of context from the detailed answers have tended to give a distorted idea of what was actually said.”

Significantly, the PMO clarification did not refer to Mr. Narayanan’s assertion that Pakistan had “reverted” to India with queries on the Mumbai probe, a claim External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee refuted on Tuesday.

A Common Enemy

Taking action against the perpetrators of the terrorist attack in Mumbai is in Pakistan’s interest too. (my article in the December 2008 issue of the Pakistani magazine, Newsline)...

December 2008
Newsline
A Common Enemy

Taking action against the perpetrators of the terrorist attack in Mumbai is in Pakistan’s interest too.

From Siddharth Varadarajan in New Delhi

The Indian government’s accusation that “elements from Pakistan” were behind the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai has generated a curious and unhelpful response from the media on both sides of the border. Though New Delhi has made this charge often in the past, what made the claim especially credible this time was that it was based on the arrest of one of the terrorists and his subsequent interrogation. In India, however, the carefully-worded official phrase which allowed for a distinction to be made between individuals, organisations and the state quickly got reduced, in the telling and retelling by television stations, to simply “Pakistan.” And across the border, Pakistani commentators and, subsequently even officials, tended categorically to rule out the possibility of any of the perpetrators being Pakistani nationals, as if “elements from Pakistan” are not capable of staging terrorist acts. “I very much doubt, Larry,” President Asif Ali Zardari told CNN’s Larry King, “that [the captured terrorist Ajmal Amir Iman] he’s a Pakistani.

Lost in the fog of media-induced hysteria, then, was the simple fact that the perpetrators of this heinous crime were enemies of both India and Pakistan and that the attack which they staged in Mumbai was aimed at derailing the peace process between the two countries, and tilting the balance of power within Pakistan’s emerging democracy away from elected civilians and back towards the shadowy security establishment.

What the government of India 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.

But with Indian 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. Barely had the shooting in Mumbai ended when 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, i.e. war.

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 troops’ 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 arm-chair proponents of ‘limited war’ and ‘surgical strikes’ on terrorist camps are silent on how an eventual conventional escalation can be avoided.

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-Pak 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 as the Mumbai incidents ended 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 US-led war against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda -– to the Line of Control. At least one Indian news channel then leapt into the fray with an “exclusive” on troop mobilisations, following which both President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani phoned up US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Dr. Rice, in turn, called New Delhi, only to be told 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 and Pakistan.

Once Dr. Rice said she was coming, the Indian side sought to up the ante with Mr. Mukherjee making guarded but ambiguous statements about being prepared to use all the means at the state’s disposal to protect its sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Indian intention was 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 inside India of tough action if the Pakistani side fails to deliver. And, given the complex balance of forces inside 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.

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-Tayyaba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Al-Qaeda and Taliban who 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’. President-elect Barack Obama was quite candid about this during the campaign.

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 from Pakistan’ were responsible for what happened in Mumbai.

Thanks to the providential arrest of Iman, the police are asserting with a considerable degree of confidence that the LeT (or Jamaat-ud-Dawa as it is now known) planned and orchestrated the attacks that took the lives of more than 180 people. Apart from Iman’s confession, Indian intelligence agencies say they have communications intercepts and satellite phone call records linking the attackers to handlers in Pakistan. One of the handlers, it is claimed, is an LeT commander who goes by various aliases, including ‘Muzammil’.

Another piece of evidence is surely the statement emailed to a number of TV stations as the attack unfolded. Titled ‘Reality, not warning’, the statement is written in the Devanagari script in a curious mixture of Hindi and Urdu and is so riddled with spelling mistakes that it is clear its authors lacked the basic knowledge of a native Hindi speaker. The statement is signed ‘Mujahideen Hyderabad Dakkan’, with the ‘Dakkan’ qualifier suggesting the non-Indian and presumably Pakistani provenance of its authors since ‘Hyderabad Dakkan’ is the name regularly used in Pakistan to distinguish the south Indian city from its less famous namesake in Sindh.

In a telephone interview by one of the terrorists to India TV in the midst of the standoff, the attackers used the same name to describe their group, thereby ending any doubts about the link between the email and the terror strike. One of the only identifiable goals the statement mentions is the “return of Muslim states” to Muslim rule, again a familiar slogan of Pakistan-based Islamist revanchists like the LeT. In an interview to me in Islamabad in 2000, LeT chief Hafiz Mohammed Saeed said his group’s goal was the ‘liberation’ of not just Kashmir but all those regions of India that once were ruled by Muslims. In contrast, radicalised Indian Muslim groups like the Students Islamic Movement of India tend to speak of bringing India into an ‘international Islamic order.’

Based on a simple textual analysis of the statement itself, it is reasonable to conclude that the authors of the email were most likely Pakistanis, who were keen to pass themselves off as Indians. Taken together with police claims about Iman’s confession and other pieces of evidence such as the arrival of the terrorists from the sea, the Indian government’s claim that the Mumbai incidents were perpetrated by ‘elements in Pakistan’ seems reasonably well-founded.

By itself, this charge need not alarm 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, such as the Marriot, or military cantonments and personnel or had handlers with links to individuals within the Pakistani military establishment, there is enough evidence to suggest 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 the US 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 and further in the direction of the civilian government. At the very least, it should do nothing that will tilt the balance the other way.

Unlike the Mumbai blasts of 1993, when the world didn’t care about India’s accusations about a Pakistani hand, and the military stand-off of 2001-2, when the world panicked at India’s response to the terrorist attack on Parliament, Islamabad, this time is likely to find itself under considerable international pressure to shut down all jihadi groups, including the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba. In the interest of improved relations with India and the world, and in the interest of excising the cancer that has eaten away at the innards of its own society and polity, the Pakistani political and military establishment needs to act decisively and urgently to ensure that the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks are brought to justice.

The author is the Strategic Affairs editor of The Hindu, India’s leading English-language newspaper. He is based in New Delhi.

Pranab, NSA sing different tunes on Pakistan investigation

Is India playing 'good cop, bad cop' or is the official dissonance on Pakistan's probe into the Mumbai attacks the result of confusion in the highest ranks of government...


4 February 2009
The Hindu

Pranab, NSA sing different tunes on Pakistan investigation

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: Two days after National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan
said Pakistan had "reverted to us and asked a number of questions" on
the Mumbai terrorist attacks dossier, External Affairs minister Pranab
Mukherjee reiterated that India had received no "official
communication" from Islamabad "about the progress of the
investigations conducted by them" into the November 26-29 events.

Asked on Tuesday about Mr. Narayanan's assertions to the contrary, the
minister said, "That he has stated in his own way." India had been
informed by Pakistan about the receipt of the dossier, he said, but
"thereafter" there had been no word. Earlier, on Saturday, Mr.
Mukherjee had stressed the same point. "I would like to underline that
we have so far not received any official Pakistani response to the
Indian dossier or official information on the outcome of their
investigations. These are awaited", a formal statement issued by him
said.

Apart from disagreeing with each other on a point of fact, the
government's top two officials dealing with Pakistan also appeared to
differ in their assessment of the seriousness with which the Pakistani
authorities are investigating the matter,

"Certainly they appear to be taking things seriously and at least they
are proceeding in a manner that one would expect an investigative
agency to proceed, asking queries and not taking everything that is
given at face value", Mr. Narayanan told CNN-IBN on Saturday. "So as
far as we are concerned, we believe that Pakistan is making an attempt
to arrive at the truth", he said, adding, "Whether after all this,
they would still accept the truth that will kind of hit them in the
face, that I don't know."

In contrast, by repeatedly saying that Pakistan had not yet responded
when two interim sets of questions had been received and when
Islamabad itself had said it was going to hand over the results of its
preliminary investigation soon, Mr. Mukherjee has painted a picture of
non-cooperation from the Pakistani side that is at variance with Mr.
Narayanan's more generous characterization. [The world press has noted the NSA's assessment that Pakistan was taking the probe 'seriously'].

On Tuesday, South Block officials scrambled to reconcile these two
viewpoints, with some suggesting the minister and NSA were playing a
'bad cop, good cop' routine. Multiple assessments keep Pakistan
guessing about what India's next move would be and could encourage
more cooperation from the Pakistani authorities in the terrorist
investigation, they said. In this telling, Mr. Mukherjee was
reiterating New Delhi's traditionally negative expectations while Mr.
Narayanan's comments were aimed at signaling to Islamabad that there
could be a positive pay-off to genuine cooperation.

But even so, officials had no explanation for why India would seek to
confuse its own public on the question of whether there has been any
interim official response from Pakistan to the Mumbai dossier or not.

"The factual position is what the minister has said", a senior foreign
office official told The Hindu on condition of anonymity. "The MEA
statement on Saturday is categorical". Asked about Mr. Narayanan's
comments, the official claimed he had "not seen" the interview.

One clue to resolving this factual dissonance might lie in Mr.
Mukherjee's use of the phrase 'official communication' when he said
Pakistan was yet to respond to India. According to a report on Tuesday
in the Pakistani newspaper, Dawn, India was channeling its
communication to Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency through the
U.S. FBI, whose investigators are also probing the Mumbai case. If
Pakistan was also routing its queries on the Indian dossier through
the FBI, the external affairs minister would be correct in saying
India had received no official word from Pakistan, but only in a
strictly literal sense. Or it could also mean the Indian intelligence
agencies – which report to the NSA – are handling the probe and any
technical queries springing from it on their own steam without
reference to the MEA.

However, an MEA official termed as "far-fetched' all reports that
India was communicating with Pakistan through the FBI. "We communicate
directly, and that is what we did when we handed over the dossier.
Since then, we have heard nothing".

Asked why Mr. Mukherjee was saying every day that India had not yet
received Pakistan's findings into the Mumbai probe when the Pakistani
side itself had said it was still finalizing it, South Block officials
said the minister was barracked by TV cameras outside his office and
the only question they had was about the dossier. "Until Pakistan
actually sends its reply, I'm afraid this media silly season will
continue".

According to Dawn, FIA investigators are "closing in" on a "Bangladesh
connection" to the Mumbai attacks and suspect the involvement of the
Harkat-ul-Jihad-Islami Bangladesh (HUJI-B) as well as people in Dubai
and elements in India and are likely to "build the case for regional
anti-terror cooperation". "The keenly awaited report is likely to say
that the Mumbai attack was the handiwork of an 'international network
of Muslim fundamentalists' present in South Asia and spreading all the
way to Middle East", the newspaper said. Asked for his assessment of
the news report, a senior Indian official said it wouldn't surprise
him if the FIA were to conclude the planning for Mumbai was by an
international network which just happened to be "everywhere but
Pakistan".