India Running Out of Options?

By M H Ahssan

Imagine your pocket has been picked. You see the young pickpocket running away but can't chase him down with a sprained ankle. There's a constable on the other side of the road but he's got a potbelly and you've heard that he is mixed up with criminals. Just then a police officer you know is driving past.

Seeing you're crying yourself silly, he stops and listens to you sympathetically. "I've been summoned by the boss,'' he tells you. "If I find the chor on my way, I'll catch him and get back your purse,'' he adds helpfully. Meanwhile, the constable on the other side has vanished.

It's a wretched situation. You can see the thief and yet can't do anything about it. You only have a number of non-options and this leaves you virtually paralyzed. You curse your luck that the purse contains the month's salary. Now magnify this crime a hundred times over.

It's not just that you've lost your money. It's matter of your life and security. The killer has already mowed down hundreds and is coming towards you. You may have ways of stopping him but each option will come with scary side effects. You face the same paralysis-inducing dilemma, leading to a sense of helplessness.

That's really the predicament of the government in the wake of the Mumbai carnage-- it knows the killers, knows where they were trained, who were the trainers, their links with sections of the ISI, and much more. Yet it doesn't know what to do next.
Let's get into the full story, pieced together after talking to people who are in the thick of it.

The government feels the attack this time was meticulously planned, with the help of top intelligence inputs and professional support. It thinks that it's unlikely the Indian fishing trawler Kuber was hijacked. A well-planned attack mission like this would not depend on the off-chance of hijacking a boat for its success. Rather, the Indian crew of the boat were probably mixed up in smuggling and got sucked into this deadly game. And paid with their lives.

The government knows the attack originated from Pakistan. In fact, the Pakistan government doesn't deny this. Even now when Asif Ali Zardari is telling Larry King that the attackers are "stateless people'', he isn't saying they are not Pakistanis. Earlier, foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who was in India when the attack took place, told the media he was willing to send the ISI chief for a joint probe, signalling that he believed the attackers were Pakistanis.

When Manmohan Singh called up Zardari and Pakistan PM Gilani, both said the ISI director general Shuja Pasha would be sent to India to help out with the investigations. But by evening, the picture had changed. An ISI spokesman sounded very iffy about Pasha's visit. "Let the government tell us and we'll see,'' he said.

In short, the ISI was telling the civilian government to get off. Meanwhile, the Pakistan army sounded a warning about an Indian military build-up along the border. Newspapers close to the army, like 'Pakistan Observer' and 'Frontier Post', and TV channel Geo, played up this alleged build-up. Suddenly, the popular mood was turning-- from a sense of outrage at the Mumbai killings to alarm about a possible Indian attack.

Pak army planning a comeback?: The Pakistan army sounded a warning about an Indian military build-up along the border. Why did the Pakistan army do this? First, to deflect attention from the Mumbai attack into which the ISI was being dragged into (ISI and the army are very close after Pakistan army chief Kayani hand-picked Lt Gen Pasha as the ISI boss). Second, it was signalling to the world that the civilian government didn’t matter; what mattered was the army.

The third reason is that it saw in the situation an opportunity to recoup the morale of its soldiers. The US-pressed “war on terror’’ on Pakistan’s western front is believed to have badly sapped the army’s morale. Many of the soldiers don’t believe in it — there were as many as 900 desertions last year.

Fourthly, it reckons that by playing the India card, it could win back some of its lost credibility and authority among the people. Musharraf ’s last months had badly dented the army’s standing in Pakistani society and the “war on terror’’ has eroded its popularity. With Zardari & Co seen as soft on India, the army was now sensing an opportunity of staging a comeback.

In fact, one estimate in New Delhi is that the Mumbai carnage, and the expected backlash from India, is aimed at a larger goal— to set the scene for an army coup. Top officials, however, discount the possibility— at least for now, although they don’t discount that the army is pushing to carve out its independent space and a bigger stake.

That’s where India’s dilemma comes in. If it were to flex its muscle, mass its soldiers along the border and tell Islamabad that it means business— as many people, incensed with the repeated terrorist attacks, would like the government to do— it could be playing into the Pakistan army’s hand.

New Delhi knows that the Americans have more levers on Pakistan than it has. But it doesn’t know how much pressure the US was willing to exert on Islamabad. While there is an overlap of interest with India now (six American were, after all, killed in the attack), US’s bigger interest is in forcing Pakistan’s hand in the fight against al Qaida and the Taliban.

So, when Condoleezza Rice came over on Wednesday, she said all the right words but, in concrete terms, promised to press Pakistan on one thing ^ to ask for a ban on Lashkar-e-Taiba’s political wing, Jamaatud-Dawa.

The Dawa is not an underground organization like Lashkar, although it recruits people for terror, as it did with captured Mumbai attacker, Ajmal Amir Kasav.