CALL OUT THE NIA!
Ishrat Jahan died in an ‘encounter’, her life claimed by encounter specialist DG Vanzara, a DIG of the Gujarat Police now in jail for the killing in yet another ‘encounter’ of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and his wife Kausarbi. In the Sohrabuddin case, a superintendent of police of the intelligence bureau and an officer of the Rajasthan cadre were also involved. The Ishrat Jahan case recently hit the headlines because of the courageous report of Metropolitan Magistrate, SP Tamang. Of consequence is the supposed motive of the police officers involved, that of seeking promotions based on their performance against ‘terrorists’. This apparently understandable motive anchored in human greed serves only to paper over a grimmer reality.
Those killed were billed as members of the terror outfit Lashkar e Tayyaba out to assassinate the chief minister of Gujarat. This is a plausible construct in light of the strained communal relations in Gujarat post the carnage of 2002 and sustained propaganda on the suspect nationalist credentials of the minority. The terror connection serves to justify ‘encounters’ in the public mind, creating heroes of ‘specialists’. However, this serves to eclipse a divergent construct. Such encounters, and media hype surrounding them, have instead served to create and project an image of a minority with external linkages. When seen in the light of the various bombings of questionable origin across the country culminating in 2008, the political project appears to have been for creating and sustaining an image of a ‘fifth column’ in India’s midst. The hoped for fallout was likely as not to influence perceptions and craft an electoral majority nationally out of denominational majority. It’s a political project that has deeper roots not only in compromised state structures, which by now describes the state of the Gujarat police accurately, but also in formations that claim a cultural rather than political agenda.
While the RK Raghavan led Supreme Court appointed Special Investigation Team would likely throw up more light on this angle as it culminates by end this year, the National Investigation Agency, set up with considerable fanfare in wake of 26/11, should be put to work on this case. What requires probing is the manner the intelligence bureau advisory on terror has been taken by the Gujarat police as rationale for the killings of Ishrat Jahan and three others. Filed by an under secretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs on August 6 before the Gujarat High Court, the affidavit confirms that Ishrat Jahan, Pranesh Pillai alias Javed Shaikh, Amjad Ali Rana and Zeeshan Johar as terrorists linked with Lashkar-e-Taiba. The affidavit was filed on a plea by Ishrat’s mother for a CBI probe. The Times of India reports that an IPS officer, Rajinder Kumar, of the Gujarat cadre, once the state IB chief between 2002 and 2005 and now an Intelligence Bureau joint director, was responsible for most of the intelligence inputs on Gujarat encounters. Thus emerges a questionable connection stretching from Maharashtra, from where the abductions for the fake encounters took place, through Gujarat where these were executed to New Delhi where the rationale was apparently manufactured. This is a fit case for the NIA to earn its credentials, set a precedent and lay out its own standards for itself.
The NIA was created in December last through the NIA Act. It was meant to enable the Center to act in cased of national import through the inclusion of a schedule of central acts covering offences against the state, terrorism, atomic energy, anti-hijacking, weapons of mass destruction etc. Since ‘terrorism’, of which the ‘encounters’ and bombings are part, acquired a nation wide footprint, it requires a central agency to probe. With revelations of Hindu terror groups, such as an army intelligence officer led Abhinav Bharat involved in terror, and linkages in right wing subverted police and intelligence apparatus in concerned states, there is a case for central intervention for investigation and outing of the truth. Some states having rightly raised objections based on constitutional issues as center-state relations and the lack of consultations prior to the NIA Act being rushed through has led to the Home Minister promising a revisit to the Act. However, objections could have suspect motives such as restricting scope for additional scrutiny of the center so as to constrict the possibility of unpalatable revelations. The increases the immediacy with which New Delhi must take the checks and balances introduced to their logical conclusion.
Another long pending measure is warranted to be progressed using this juncture as opportunity, that of police reforms. It appears from the pattern discerned here that sections of the police stand compromised through infiltration of majoritarian sympathisers. Their placement in key positions and unprofessional actions now constitute a threat to the secular character of the state. Core values being threatened thereby, they are an existential security threat. Underway is virtually an ongoing coup in slow motion from within, one that can be speeded up in case the political constellation at Delhi is right once again in future. Police reforms, mandated by the Supreme Court in response to the PIL of former DGP, Shri Prakash Singh, require progressing and monitoring by the MHA. A professionalisaton of the police could set back this agenda, to the extent it exists, besides being a project worth pursuing on its own merits.
India is a veritable conglomeration of minorities along differing axes as ethnicity, persuasion etc. The difficulty of creating a majority based on shared primordial affinities has not dissuaded its activists. Their project requires creation of an ‘Other’ to succeed. They have managed partially to control the discourse through ‘black propaganda’, by succeeding in attribution of all terrorist incidents as minority perpetrated. This has political utility for such forces in marginalising the minority even while elevating their political agenda as the only way a culturally-defined nation can safeguard and cope with the externally-inspired internally-abetted aggression. Therefore, the Ishrat Jahan case has wider ramifications. Clearly, attribution of comparatively innocent self-interest of the involved police officers in these killings would be to obfuscate the political connection and context of these crimes.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Emulating the US
The proceedings of the CCS are appropriately not in the open domain. Only its decisions, where required, are made known to the public, as was done in case of its endorsement of India’s nuclear doctrine in January 2003. However, the recent washing of dirty linen in public by those in the CCS during the NDA’s first term over the Kandahar hijack episode bespeaks of lack of institutionalisation of national security decision making at the apex level. This is of a piece with India’s amorphous strategic culture. While matters are likely to have improved in the decade since owing to the National Security Council and its secretariat having firmed in, there is a case for bringing greater formality into the proceedings of bodies such as the CCS, the NSC and the Political Council of the NCA.
These three bodies, having virtually identical membership, are vested with decision making responsibility in the national security sphere. Since the system has not let India down so far, there is no cause for unwarranted alarm. However, this is no reason not to constantly improve it. It would then be able to cope with the demands it may be faced with in future. Two scenarios buttress this point. In the first, there could be difficulty in case there is a weak minority government in power, as was being apprehended in the run up to the elections only a hundred days ago. Representatives of various fractious parties without a national profile could in such a circumstance be taking decisions that, while within their responsibility, could be outside of their ken. The second is in formulation of India’s response in case of breakdown in deterrence. Whatever the decision arrived it, in the aftermath of the resulting nuclear exchange India would require an explanation of the rationale. Since life would not be the same again, accountability would require to be apportioned. For doing this adequately there is need to institute procedures now.
Learning from the US experience is in order. Three aspects stand out. One is that those charged with policy and decision making can be held directly responsible. Replication would do away with the proverbial ‘kitchen cabinets’ that have characterised the Indian system, at least till the late eighties. So much so that such informal bodies virtually crafted India’s nuclear trajectory till the Shakti tests. Reforms would minimise the baleful influence of unaccountable lobbies, such as that exercised by parent ideological formations on political parties. The recent stewardship by the RSS of a troubled BJP indicates that there is more to exercise of constitutional authority than meets the eye.
Second, is the manner the US maintains records. Not only is the historical record is enriched by perspectives of players, for instance Nixon’s take on Indira Gandhi in 1971; but, more importantly, they can be held accountable. The latter may not be required so much in case of wrong decisions, but more so in case of mal-intent. Perversely, it is taken as an ‘achievement’ that there are no written records of India’s transition to becoming a nuclear power!
And lastly, the release of these records into public domain. This would help not so much with building the sense of history that Indians reputedly sorely lack, but with keeping a check on leaders. For instance, prospective Prime Minister’s would not be emboldened with impunity into fudging their role in national decision making that’s gone wrong for some reason! While such deliberations are understandably kept out of the remit of the Right to Information Act, perhaps thirty years on these could be made public as done elsewhere. This would help researchers understand the compulsions and analysts to recommend improvements in the approach to security. Presently, relying on whistle blowing, such as happened recently over the hydrogen bomb ‘fizzle’, bespeaks of much ground yet to be traversed for India to acquire a credible, functional and accountable system.
It is interesting to speculate on why India’s national security system is both impervious and underdeveloped. Answering the question, ‘Who benefits?’ could provide the clue. One answer this question would not throw up is the legislative. Legislative accountability of the executive could do with emulating the US, even though theirs is a Presidential system. While parliamentary committees do perform, US style congressional hearings help. This would lend balance in a system which otherwise lends itself to competing constituencies pulling in wilful ways. A recent example is the manner a section of scientists have expressed an interest in further nuclear tests. Taking a call on whether India needs a thermonuclear based deterrent is not within their ambit; yet the controversy.
The recent remarks of the Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee on the developments in Pakistani nuclear deterrent underlines that India is in a dangerous neighbourhood. It is also an aspiring great power. Both require continuous evolution of its national security system. The gravamen of the otherwise discrete controversies over this month, is that the Indian system is still a work in progress.
Words - 831
The proceedings of the CCS are appropriately not in the open domain. Only its decisions, where required, are made known to the public, as was done in case of its endorsement of India’s nuclear doctrine in January 2003. However, the recent washing of dirty linen in public by those in the CCS during the NDA’s first term over the Kandahar hijack episode bespeaks of lack of institutionalisation of national security decision making at the apex level. This is of a piece with India’s amorphous strategic culture. While matters are likely to have improved in the decade since owing to the National Security Council and its secretariat having firmed in, there is a case for bringing greater formality into the proceedings of bodies such as the CCS, the NSC and the Political Council of the NCA.
These three bodies, having virtually identical membership, are vested with decision making responsibility in the national security sphere. Since the system has not let India down so far, there is no cause for unwarranted alarm. However, this is no reason not to constantly improve it. It would then be able to cope with the demands it may be faced with in future. Two scenarios buttress this point. In the first, there could be difficulty in case there is a weak minority government in power, as was being apprehended in the run up to the elections only a hundred days ago. Representatives of various fractious parties without a national profile could in such a circumstance be taking decisions that, while within their responsibility, could be outside of their ken. The second is in formulation of India’s response in case of breakdown in deterrence. Whatever the decision arrived it, in the aftermath of the resulting nuclear exchange India would require an explanation of the rationale. Since life would not be the same again, accountability would require to be apportioned. For doing this adequately there is need to institute procedures now.
Learning from the US experience is in order. Three aspects stand out. One is that those charged with policy and decision making can be held directly responsible. Replication would do away with the proverbial ‘kitchen cabinets’ that have characterised the Indian system, at least till the late eighties. So much so that such informal bodies virtually crafted India’s nuclear trajectory till the Shakti tests. Reforms would minimise the baleful influence of unaccountable lobbies, such as that exercised by parent ideological formations on political parties. The recent stewardship by the RSS of a troubled BJP indicates that there is more to exercise of constitutional authority than meets the eye.
Second, is the manner the US maintains records. Not only is the historical record is enriched by perspectives of players, for instance Nixon’s take on Indira Gandhi in 1971; but, more importantly, they can be held accountable. The latter may not be required so much in case of wrong decisions, but more so in case of mal-intent. Perversely, it is taken as an ‘achievement’ that there are no written records of India’s transition to becoming a nuclear power!
And lastly, the release of these records into public domain. This would help not so much with building the sense of history that Indians reputedly sorely lack, but with keeping a check on leaders. For instance, prospective Prime Minister’s would not be emboldened with impunity into fudging their role in national decision making that’s gone wrong for some reason! While such deliberations are understandably kept out of the remit of the Right to Information Act, perhaps thirty years on these could be made public as done elsewhere. This would help researchers understand the compulsions and analysts to recommend improvements in the approach to security. Presently, relying on whistle blowing, such as happened recently over the hydrogen bomb ‘fizzle’, bespeaks of much ground yet to be traversed for India to acquire a credible, functional and accountable system.
It is interesting to speculate on why India’s national security system is both impervious and underdeveloped. Answering the question, ‘Who benefits?’ could provide the clue. One answer this question would not throw up is the legislative. Legislative accountability of the executive could do with emulating the US, even though theirs is a Presidential system. While parliamentary committees do perform, US style congressional hearings help. This would lend balance in a system which otherwise lends itself to competing constituencies pulling in wilful ways. A recent example is the manner a section of scientists have expressed an interest in further nuclear tests. Taking a call on whether India needs a thermonuclear based deterrent is not within their ambit; yet the controversy.
The recent remarks of the Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee on the developments in Pakistani nuclear deterrent underlines that India is in a dangerous neighbourhood. It is also an aspiring great power. Both require continuous evolution of its national security system. The gravamen of the otherwise discrete controversies over this month, is that the Indian system is still a work in progress.
Words - 831
Yet another nuclear controversy
Earlier in end May at the end of a book release function, India’s Army chief, when quizzed on developments in Pakistan’s nuclear capability recounted in the US Congressional Research Service report, remarked, "They require a certain minimum amount (nuclear capability), but ... Pakistan's attempts to increase the number of its nuclear weapons is a matter of serious concern." Yet again when accosted by the press, this time during his visit to the army's Artificial Limb Centre in Pune, for his opinion on the Federation of Atomic Scientists reporting on Pakistan increasing its warhead haul to 70-90, he said, "There is a difference between having a degree deterrence, which is required for protection, and going beyond that. If the news reports of (Pakistan) having 70 to 90 atomic bombs are correct, then I think they are going well beyond the requirement of deterrence."
A report comments that ‘Kapoor's implied suggestion that India could have to revisit its no-first use policy’. Quoting the hyper-realist duo of the think tank, Center for Policy Research, it gives out Brahma Chellaney’s take that there is need to review India’s “deterrence posture”; while the other analyst, Bharat Karnad, is reported as saying ‘no-first-use is not a substantive declaration’.
The report revisits the recent controversy over the thermonuclear test in the Shakti series having turned out a ‘fizzle’ maintaining ‘that the Indian nuclear arsenal needs refurbishing, if not the need to carry out more tests, to maintain its nuclear programme’s cutting edge.’ Thus we can see that favourite hobby horses of players in the nuclear field have been hitched to the Chief’s remarks, though the Chief himself has not implied anything of the sort.
Since this time round he was speaking in his new capacity as Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee, his remarks acquire a greater degree of significance. The Chairman in the Indian system oversees its Strategic Forces Command, responsible for the nuclear arsenal. Understanding the General is necessary in order to dispel the spin self-interested forces with a nuclear agenda are using the media for.
On both occasions, the Chief was engaged in a function unrelated to the nuclear issue. The earlier remark can be taken as his preliminary observation. Charged with safe-custody of India’s national security, he cannot be expected to say that nuclear developments in India’s neighbourhood are not of concern! However, the second time round, he would be voicing India’s considered take.
Firstly, India cannot second guess Pakistan. Since the numbers India possesses is not known, Pakistan would require making an educated guess and reacting accordingly. Therefore, its figure need not necessarily coincide with India’s expectation. Both countries consider the ‘minimum’ of their ‘credible minimum deterrence’ to be a dynamic, security situation related, number. Secondly, this perhaps brings out India’s purpose. The Chief had earlier said, "I think the world community should put the kind of pressure which is required on Pakistan to cap the enhancement of their nuclear capability.” The context this time is that Pakistan has in the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament, that is considering introducing the Fissile Material Cut Off Treaty, stalled talks by citing national security. Which means there is an incipient arms race on in the region.
This can be attributed to India pegging its numbers by clubbing Pakistan and China together as a twin front problem. The resulting numbers can be perceived by Pakistan as conferring on India an ability for a disarming first strike. Thus the movement upwards in Pakistan’s stocks has rightly been taken as an attempt to gain a stabilising second strike capability. Given that India is buttressing its second strike capability by the recent launch of the INS Arihant, there could be no objections to Pakistan doing likewise, particularly since on both occasions the higher end was pegged at 90 warhead. Doing so, as the Chief has done, only serves to hyphenate India to Pakistan yet again, and secondly allows the forces wishing India to proceed down the arms race route to take advantage of his voiced concern.
The suggestion that increase in Pakistan’s arsenal requires reconsideration of India’s NFU pledge is untenable. Since by reaching 90 warheads or thereabouts, Pakistan still does not gain first strike capability, there is no cause to revisit the pledge. Rescinding it carries the danger of what Schelling called ‘the reciprocal fear of a surprise attack’ or an avoidable tendency toward pre-emption. This is not a theoretical possibility in the India-Pakistan dyad given the mutual vulnerabilities and fears they harbour. While India wishes to use the conventional plane to react to Pakistan’s proxy war, even if in a limited way, Pakistan, feels a need to use the nuclear card to stall the same. This reliance on the nuclear capability is heightened in the situation as obtains at present in which its Army is contending with the Taliban, if reluctantly, even while the threat exists of India reacting conventionally in face of another 26/11.
The timing of the other controversy over whether India needs to test again is suggestive. India had earlier been prepared to accede to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. In the event the treaty had been stalled by the US Senate not ratifying it. With the possibility of the US championing it once again after a decade long hiatus, forces in India preferring that India maintain its option to test are exerting themselves. Their scientific position is that India does not have the requisite computing power to go ahead with arsenal development without testing. Even if this is true with respect to the hydrogen bomb, deterrence is not necessarily a function of a thermonuclear capability when merely a fission or boosted fission based arsenal can serve the same purpose adequately. H Bombs on the other hand lend themselves to city-busting, a prospect best avoided if deterrence were ever to break down. Thermonuclear weapons have other advantages, such as ‘more bang for the buck’ and being lighter payloads easier to deliver. This technological advance led to the doctrines that eventuated in the MAD arsenals of the superpowers. There is no call to replicate the cold war experience in Southern Asia.
Thus, while every development in the nuclear plane is indeed a cause for concern, the manner such concerns are appropriated by interested constituencies and the way these manipulate the media, has been starkly witnessed in the latest nuclear episode. Their inner motives require to be revealed so that public opinion exercises a check over politicians, who neither know nor care enough to ward off such pressures.
Words - 1081
Earlier in end May at the end of a book release function, India’s Army chief, when quizzed on developments in Pakistan’s nuclear capability recounted in the US Congressional Research Service report, remarked, "They require a certain minimum amount (nuclear capability), but ... Pakistan's attempts to increase the number of its nuclear weapons is a matter of serious concern." Yet again when accosted by the press, this time during his visit to the army's Artificial Limb Centre in Pune, for his opinion on the Federation of Atomic Scientists reporting on Pakistan increasing its warhead haul to 70-90, he said, "There is a difference between having a degree deterrence, which is required for protection, and going beyond that. If the news reports of (Pakistan) having 70 to 90 atomic bombs are correct, then I think they are going well beyond the requirement of deterrence."
A report comments that ‘Kapoor's implied suggestion that India could have to revisit its no-first use policy’. Quoting the hyper-realist duo of the think tank, Center for Policy Research, it gives out Brahma Chellaney’s take that there is need to review India’s “deterrence posture”; while the other analyst, Bharat Karnad, is reported as saying ‘no-first-use is not a substantive declaration’.
The report revisits the recent controversy over the thermonuclear test in the Shakti series having turned out a ‘fizzle’ maintaining ‘that the Indian nuclear arsenal needs refurbishing, if not the need to carry out more tests, to maintain its nuclear programme’s cutting edge.’ Thus we can see that favourite hobby horses of players in the nuclear field have been hitched to the Chief’s remarks, though the Chief himself has not implied anything of the sort.
Since this time round he was speaking in his new capacity as Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee, his remarks acquire a greater degree of significance. The Chairman in the Indian system oversees its Strategic Forces Command, responsible for the nuclear arsenal. Understanding the General is necessary in order to dispel the spin self-interested forces with a nuclear agenda are using the media for.
On both occasions, the Chief was engaged in a function unrelated to the nuclear issue. The earlier remark can be taken as his preliminary observation. Charged with safe-custody of India’s national security, he cannot be expected to say that nuclear developments in India’s neighbourhood are not of concern! However, the second time round, he would be voicing India’s considered take.
Firstly, India cannot second guess Pakistan. Since the numbers India possesses is not known, Pakistan would require making an educated guess and reacting accordingly. Therefore, its figure need not necessarily coincide with India’s expectation. Both countries consider the ‘minimum’ of their ‘credible minimum deterrence’ to be a dynamic, security situation related, number. Secondly, this perhaps brings out India’s purpose. The Chief had earlier said, "I think the world community should put the kind of pressure which is required on Pakistan to cap the enhancement of their nuclear capability.” The context this time is that Pakistan has in the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament, that is considering introducing the Fissile Material Cut Off Treaty, stalled talks by citing national security. Which means there is an incipient arms race on in the region.
This can be attributed to India pegging its numbers by clubbing Pakistan and China together as a twin front problem. The resulting numbers can be perceived by Pakistan as conferring on India an ability for a disarming first strike. Thus the movement upwards in Pakistan’s stocks has rightly been taken as an attempt to gain a stabilising second strike capability. Given that India is buttressing its second strike capability by the recent launch of the INS Arihant, there could be no objections to Pakistan doing likewise, particularly since on both occasions the higher end was pegged at 90 warhead. Doing so, as the Chief has done, only serves to hyphenate India to Pakistan yet again, and secondly allows the forces wishing India to proceed down the arms race route to take advantage of his voiced concern.
The suggestion that increase in Pakistan’s arsenal requires reconsideration of India’s NFU pledge is untenable. Since by reaching 90 warheads or thereabouts, Pakistan still does not gain first strike capability, there is no cause to revisit the pledge. Rescinding it carries the danger of what Schelling called ‘the reciprocal fear of a surprise attack’ or an avoidable tendency toward pre-emption. This is not a theoretical possibility in the India-Pakistan dyad given the mutual vulnerabilities and fears they harbour. While India wishes to use the conventional plane to react to Pakistan’s proxy war, even if in a limited way, Pakistan, feels a need to use the nuclear card to stall the same. This reliance on the nuclear capability is heightened in the situation as obtains at present in which its Army is contending with the Taliban, if reluctantly, even while the threat exists of India reacting conventionally in face of another 26/11.
The timing of the other controversy over whether India needs to test again is suggestive. India had earlier been prepared to accede to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. In the event the treaty had been stalled by the US Senate not ratifying it. With the possibility of the US championing it once again after a decade long hiatus, forces in India preferring that India maintain its option to test are exerting themselves. Their scientific position is that India does not have the requisite computing power to go ahead with arsenal development without testing. Even if this is true with respect to the hydrogen bomb, deterrence is not necessarily a function of a thermonuclear capability when merely a fission or boosted fission based arsenal can serve the same purpose adequately. H Bombs on the other hand lend themselves to city-busting, a prospect best avoided if deterrence were ever to break down. Thermonuclear weapons have other advantages, such as ‘more bang for the buck’ and being lighter payloads easier to deliver. This technological advance led to the doctrines that eventuated in the MAD arsenals of the superpowers. There is no call to replicate the cold war experience in Southern Asia.
Thus, while every development in the nuclear plane is indeed a cause for concern, the manner such concerns are appropriated by interested constituencies and the way these manipulate the media, has been starkly witnessed in the latest nuclear episode. Their inner motives require to be revealed so that public opinion exercises a check over politicians, who neither know nor care enough to ward off such pressures.
Words - 1081
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Stopping Nuclear War
Also see - http://www.indiatogether.org/2009/aug/fah-peaceship.htm
The direction of likely nuclear developments has been summarised in a top article in a leading daily recently (http://m.timesofindia.com/PDATOI/articleshow/4864321.cms). The occasion was launch of the nuclear submarine, INS Arihant. The laundry list includes at least two more nuclear submarines, though the eventual figure is ten. Three air craft carriers including the Gorshkov yet to fetch up from its Black Sea port. Nuclear tipped submarine lauched missiles of a greater range than the present 700 km of the K 15 experimental missile. Missiles of the IRBM class, Agni III and Agni V and ICBM Surya, to target the eastern seaboard of China and beyond have been recommended. The missiles are to be MIRV’d, that is fitted with multiple independently targeted warheads. To enable targeting spy satellites for all weather 24x7 cover. Missile defences are to be built up, in collaboration with the US and Israel. With three decades of missile and two decades of nuclear development, accuracy of missile delivery and variegated warheads are surely already a reality. To protect these developments, the article recommends staying out of the CTBT, that is in the news once again, and participation in the FMCT negotiations, since the interim decade before their culmination would gain India adequate fissile material to join in. In all it devotes one and a half lines to the disarmament question, indicating the writer’s inclination. That there has been no follow up top article on the contrary, tragically implies this is an unchallenged position.
The whole gamut is likely to be in place in a decade, though each of these pieces is in place to a limited degree now. Navigating the interim is as fraught as the possible situation tens years on. Though exaggerated, reports are of a threat to Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. The threat of a future 26/11 continues to loom, witness the controversy over security surrounding the international badminton championship in Hyderabad. The rhetoric in respect of China had a spike to coincide with the thirteenth meeting between the two special interlocutors in Delhi in early August. While an Indian hyper-realist predicted Chinese invasion in 2012, a Chinese website countered with its take on a Chinese assisted disintegration of India. If this is bad enough, consider what India’s nuclear preparation that peak in about a decade imply. It is apparent that a pessimist view is taken of the long term, for which presumably the nuclear trajectory is to prepare us to meet.
Advances in the missile and nuclear fields are played up in the media and have votaries in the strategic community. The argument is that this helps deter adversaries keeping a close watch as also reassure all that India’s defences are on course. This has political dividend and keeps the technological momentum going. It builds a constituency behind the developments, enabling their continued funding and legitimacy over time. They would then become irreversible, for it would take a lot of explaining and political capital to slow or turn these round. The expectation is that these developments would make for deterrence not only of nuclear weapons use against India, but also war itself. They would enable India to match up to China, helping in negotiations from a position of equality. This would help resolve the border dispute. It would place India in the big league, enabling it to fulfil its ‘responsibilities’ as a great power with a reach from Aden to the Malaccas. Pakistan is ignored in this discourse, so much so that in a farewell address in Delhi the outgoing Chairman of India’s Chief’s of Staff Committee failed to mention Pakistan at all in his prepared speech.
It should not take a nuclear war for these developments to be challenged. Even if the technological momentum is not reversible, the technology need not be operationalised. A critique would help lend balance to the debate in the public domain. The usual arguments against such a course can first be dispensed with, since the developments are evidence of their failure already. That it is economically prohibitive enterprise is countered by the argument that an India, growing at nine per cent can afford it. That deterrence can fail is undercut by the logic that this is not reason enough not to try. That it results in militarization of India and its otherwise resolvable disputes is met with the argument that passivism of Mother India is what led to her subjugation for the past millennium. That India’s priorities should be internal security and development is countered by saying that defence and development are complementary. That India’s militarised approach would result in a security dilemma for its neighbours is demolished by maintaining that India is the one that is reactive to a security dilemma imposed on it by its implacable neighbours. The vision of mushroom clouds over the country does not hold attention since it is taken as fiction. Arguing that India cannot cope best indicated by incompetent municipal response to monsoon showers is negated by pointing to the National Disaster Management Authority and the battalions under it. Thus, there is no way nay-sayers can get an argument in, even edgeways.
But arguing against the nuclear enclave and its retainers amounts to a national service. Lets take a scenario ten years on. China has built up infrastructure in Tibet to an extent that it could transport troops onto the plateau in short order. Newspaper reports already have it of an exercise underway in China to test precisely this ability. This has led to India’s recent emphasis on border infrastructure. Over the next half decade or so, India would be at a disadvantage. However, the scenario is situated a further half decade down. By then the two regional adversaries are expected to face off over strategic space and leadership in Asia. India’s economy, population numbers and its relationship with the US would be the drivers of its challenge of China. That the border is to be unresolved till India gets round to gaining parity with China, enables it to serve as a flashpoint. Consider the case in which despite equal military capabilities, due to some or other operational level move, one of the two states is losing. In case of India, this would have a direct impact on the North East, as indeed it did in 1962. In case of China, the impact would be on its hold over Tibet, that is already increasingly tenuous. Though both states subscribe to the No First Use, its not impossible that the loser could countenance using nuclear weapons to get out of a tight spot. This may be in the tactical mode in the battlefield or at a higher level in greater depth to stem reinforcements routes into the theatre. The consequences for escalation are stark. Neither state, contending then for super power status, would back down. A nuclear war would jeopardise effort of the preceding four decades of growth. The only gainer it appears would be the US, with both its challengers in self destruct mode.
A study in the context of an India-Pakistan conflict by the National Resources Defence Council in the US has it that sixty million casualties could result in a nuclear war in case fifteen cities are targeted. This would be equally true in an India-China context too. The nuclear trajectory of India closely parallels that of the states in the Cold War. There is no guarantee that the next Cold War, one between India and China, would remain cold. Good sense would be in not acquiring a capability for national suicide. Even as the nuclear enclave has acquired a power difficult to dislodge, building up a peace movement of equal weight is the only way ahead.
Also see - http://www.indiatogether.org/2009/aug/fah-peaceship.htm
The direction of likely nuclear developments has been summarised in a top article in a leading daily recently (http://m.timesofindia.com/PDATOI/articleshow/4864321.cms). The occasion was launch of the nuclear submarine, INS Arihant. The laundry list includes at least two more nuclear submarines, though the eventual figure is ten. Three air craft carriers including the Gorshkov yet to fetch up from its Black Sea port. Nuclear tipped submarine lauched missiles of a greater range than the present 700 km of the K 15 experimental missile. Missiles of the IRBM class, Agni III and Agni V and ICBM Surya, to target the eastern seaboard of China and beyond have been recommended. The missiles are to be MIRV’d, that is fitted with multiple independently targeted warheads. To enable targeting spy satellites for all weather 24x7 cover. Missile defences are to be built up, in collaboration with the US and Israel. With three decades of missile and two decades of nuclear development, accuracy of missile delivery and variegated warheads are surely already a reality. To protect these developments, the article recommends staying out of the CTBT, that is in the news once again, and participation in the FMCT negotiations, since the interim decade before their culmination would gain India adequate fissile material to join in. In all it devotes one and a half lines to the disarmament question, indicating the writer’s inclination. That there has been no follow up top article on the contrary, tragically implies this is an unchallenged position.
The whole gamut is likely to be in place in a decade, though each of these pieces is in place to a limited degree now. Navigating the interim is as fraught as the possible situation tens years on. Though exaggerated, reports are of a threat to Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. The threat of a future 26/11 continues to loom, witness the controversy over security surrounding the international badminton championship in Hyderabad. The rhetoric in respect of China had a spike to coincide with the thirteenth meeting between the two special interlocutors in Delhi in early August. While an Indian hyper-realist predicted Chinese invasion in 2012, a Chinese website countered with its take on a Chinese assisted disintegration of India. If this is bad enough, consider what India’s nuclear preparation that peak in about a decade imply. It is apparent that a pessimist view is taken of the long term, for which presumably the nuclear trajectory is to prepare us to meet.
Advances in the missile and nuclear fields are played up in the media and have votaries in the strategic community. The argument is that this helps deter adversaries keeping a close watch as also reassure all that India’s defences are on course. This has political dividend and keeps the technological momentum going. It builds a constituency behind the developments, enabling their continued funding and legitimacy over time. They would then become irreversible, for it would take a lot of explaining and political capital to slow or turn these round. The expectation is that these developments would make for deterrence not only of nuclear weapons use against India, but also war itself. They would enable India to match up to China, helping in negotiations from a position of equality. This would help resolve the border dispute. It would place India in the big league, enabling it to fulfil its ‘responsibilities’ as a great power with a reach from Aden to the Malaccas. Pakistan is ignored in this discourse, so much so that in a farewell address in Delhi the outgoing Chairman of India’s Chief’s of Staff Committee failed to mention Pakistan at all in his prepared speech.
It should not take a nuclear war for these developments to be challenged. Even if the technological momentum is not reversible, the technology need not be operationalised. A critique would help lend balance to the debate in the public domain. The usual arguments against such a course can first be dispensed with, since the developments are evidence of their failure already. That it is economically prohibitive enterprise is countered by the argument that an India, growing at nine per cent can afford it. That deterrence can fail is undercut by the logic that this is not reason enough not to try. That it results in militarization of India and its otherwise resolvable disputes is met with the argument that passivism of Mother India is what led to her subjugation for the past millennium. That India’s priorities should be internal security and development is countered by saying that defence and development are complementary. That India’s militarised approach would result in a security dilemma for its neighbours is demolished by maintaining that India is the one that is reactive to a security dilemma imposed on it by its implacable neighbours. The vision of mushroom clouds over the country does not hold attention since it is taken as fiction. Arguing that India cannot cope best indicated by incompetent municipal response to monsoon showers is negated by pointing to the National Disaster Management Authority and the battalions under it. Thus, there is no way nay-sayers can get an argument in, even edgeways.
But arguing against the nuclear enclave and its retainers amounts to a national service. Lets take a scenario ten years on. China has built up infrastructure in Tibet to an extent that it could transport troops onto the plateau in short order. Newspaper reports already have it of an exercise underway in China to test precisely this ability. This has led to India’s recent emphasis on border infrastructure. Over the next half decade or so, India would be at a disadvantage. However, the scenario is situated a further half decade down. By then the two regional adversaries are expected to face off over strategic space and leadership in Asia. India’s economy, population numbers and its relationship with the US would be the drivers of its challenge of China. That the border is to be unresolved till India gets round to gaining parity with China, enables it to serve as a flashpoint. Consider the case in which despite equal military capabilities, due to some or other operational level move, one of the two states is losing. In case of India, this would have a direct impact on the North East, as indeed it did in 1962. In case of China, the impact would be on its hold over Tibet, that is already increasingly tenuous. Though both states subscribe to the No First Use, its not impossible that the loser could countenance using nuclear weapons to get out of a tight spot. This may be in the tactical mode in the battlefield or at a higher level in greater depth to stem reinforcements routes into the theatre. The consequences for escalation are stark. Neither state, contending then for super power status, would back down. A nuclear war would jeopardise effort of the preceding four decades of growth. The only gainer it appears would be the US, with both its challengers in self destruct mode.
A study in the context of an India-Pakistan conflict by the National Resources Defence Council in the US has it that sixty million casualties could result in a nuclear war in case fifteen cities are targeted. This would be equally true in an India-China context too. The nuclear trajectory of India closely parallels that of the states in the Cold War. There is no guarantee that the next Cold War, one between India and China, would remain cold. Good sense would be in not acquiring a capability for national suicide. Even as the nuclear enclave has acquired a power difficult to dislodge, building up a peace movement of equal weight is the only way ahead.
Sunday, August 09, 2009
http://www.indiatogether.org/2008/feb/fah-deter.htm
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Successful deterrence? Hardly.
29 February 2008 - It is being argued in scholarly circles that despite the crises that have periodically punctuated the recent history of the subcontinen, there has been no war owing to successful operation of the 'nuclear deterrence' principle. Knowing that the other side too has the ultimate weapon, neither side has resorted to war to settle its political differences or to gain military advantage due to the fear of the war escalating to the nuclear level. This is seen as a continuing successful case of nuclear deterrence in South Asia.
The problem with such reasoning is that is legitimises nuclearisation into perpetuity. Redefining peace as merely the absence of war is troubling, for nuclear weapons remain an existential threat not only to the other side as deterrence theory asserts, but also to possessors. Even so, to those who argue that deterrence has dissuaded political heads from choosing war as an option, we should point out that deterrence remains untested in war.
In wake of Operation Parakram - the year long military stand-off of 2002 - arguments echoing international relations theorist Kenneth Waltz's formulation in favour of nuclear proliferation, that 'more may be better', appear to be gaining ground by default. Sumit Ganguly, an influential presence on the scholarly beat with his ten books on the strategic scene in South Asia, in a co-authored work with Devin Hagerty, Fearful Symmetry: India-Pakistan crisis in the shadow of nuclear weapons (Seattle, Univerity of Washington Press, 2004), contends that the crises have not turned into conflicts on account of three factors: one is the operation of conventional deterrence; next is the peace-making role played by the US; and lastly is the successful operation of nuclear deterrence.
A refutation of this view is in order, for the simple reason that crises have in fact often not turned into conflicts for reasons other than nuclear deterrence. The crisis of the pre-nuclear era, that of the 'fourth round' of 1984 and 'the war that never was' of 1987, to use the catchy titles of the knowledgeable Ravi Rikhye's idiosyncratic books, are not considered here. In 1990 too, India shifted troops from its North East to cope in Kashmir, as also to respond to Pakistan's reply to India's Exercise Brasstacks called Exercise Zarb-e-Momin. Such manouevres signal war clouds, evident from the example of Egypt, which launched the Yom Kippur war of 1973 under the guise of going in for military exercises. Thus war, not being an option, cannot be said to have been deterred by the existence of nuclear weapons, which both states by then are now known to have had only a screw's turn away.
In 1998, the intervening period between Pokhran and Chagai, witnessed considerable rhetoric on part of India principally to goad Pakistan into testing, and thereby legitimising India's tests and deflecting the ensuing international criticism. Discussion of the possibility of preemptive action by India was academic, as the tests by Pakistan were more a demonstration of capability, it reportedly having used the Chinese test site at Lop Nor earlier to acquire the capability.
Non-wars without the need for deterrence
The role of nuclear weapons in the two major events post-nuclearisation requires more careful refutation. Pakistan chose the site of its Kargil adventure with care. This is attributed to its desire to limit India's reaction, cognizant that the scale of the reaction would determine the nature of the subsequent conflict, which could assume nuclear proportions. If we are to remove nuclear weapons from the equation, it would yet be proven that Pakistan would still have chosen the same site for its intrusion.
See for balance article - http://www.indiatogether.org/2008/feb/fah-deter.htm
The extended crisis of 2001-02 too requires further probing, for there is more to the issue of the Parliament attack than the popular narrative lets on (see 13 Dec: The strange case of the attack on the Indian parliament, published by Penguin Books in 2006). But even with a plausible casus belli, India did not go to war, and this is taken as Indian prudence brought on, amongst other factors, by presence of nuclear weapons. But what is more likely is that economic and strategic interests in India deflected any possibility of a war, and no further 'deterrence' was needed to dissuade it from one. In Pakistan too, there was no question of contemplating war, for it was by then fully immersed in the Global War on Terror.
Conclusion
Once each crisis is put into perspective, the role of nuclear deterrence becomes self-evidently a fallacy. Unfortunately, the nuclear deterrence argument is gaining ground, and one expects to see more of this in future, thereby increasing nuclear dangers. Arguments on their utility have therefore to be relentlessly exposed, lest the dangers continue to mount.
The plain fact is that most of the thought exercises about deterrence are way off the mark; there are any number of other reasons that can fully explain why India and Pakistan have not moved to a point of open conflict, and the possession of nuclear weapons is only incidental. Still, they are always looked at as more important than is the reality, because this fits nicely with the 'seminar circuit', which is happy to discuss nuclear weapons if only for the simple reason that, like the Himalayas, 'they are there'! ⊕
Firdaus Ahmed
29 Feb 2008
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Successful deterrence? Hardly.
29 February 2008 - It is being argued in scholarly circles that despite the crises that have periodically punctuated the recent history of the subcontinen, there has been no war owing to successful operation of the 'nuclear deterrence' principle. Knowing that the other side too has the ultimate weapon, neither side has resorted to war to settle its political differences or to gain military advantage due to the fear of the war escalating to the nuclear level. This is seen as a continuing successful case of nuclear deterrence in South Asia.
The problem with such reasoning is that is legitimises nuclearisation into perpetuity. Redefining peace as merely the absence of war is troubling, for nuclear weapons remain an existential threat not only to the other side as deterrence theory asserts, but also to possessors. Even so, to those who argue that deterrence has dissuaded political heads from choosing war as an option, we should point out that deterrence remains untested in war.
In wake of Operation Parakram - the year long military stand-off of 2002 - arguments echoing international relations theorist Kenneth Waltz's formulation in favour of nuclear proliferation, that 'more may be better', appear to be gaining ground by default. Sumit Ganguly, an influential presence on the scholarly beat with his ten books on the strategic scene in South Asia, in a co-authored work with Devin Hagerty, Fearful Symmetry: India-Pakistan crisis in the shadow of nuclear weapons (Seattle, Univerity of Washington Press, 2004), contends that the crises have not turned into conflicts on account of three factors: one is the operation of conventional deterrence; next is the peace-making role played by the US; and lastly is the successful operation of nuclear deterrence.
A refutation of this view is in order, for the simple reason that crises have in fact often not turned into conflicts for reasons other than nuclear deterrence. The crisis of the pre-nuclear era, that of the 'fourth round' of 1984 and 'the war that never was' of 1987, to use the catchy titles of the knowledgeable Ravi Rikhye's idiosyncratic books, are not considered here. In 1990 too, India shifted troops from its North East to cope in Kashmir, as also to respond to Pakistan's reply to India's Exercise Brasstacks called Exercise Zarb-e-Momin. Such manouevres signal war clouds, evident from the example of Egypt, which launched the Yom Kippur war of 1973 under the guise of going in for military exercises. Thus war, not being an option, cannot be said to have been deterred by the existence of nuclear weapons, which both states by then are now known to have had only a screw's turn away.
In 1998, the intervening period between Pokhran and Chagai, witnessed considerable rhetoric on part of India principally to goad Pakistan into testing, and thereby legitimising India's tests and deflecting the ensuing international criticism. Discussion of the possibility of preemptive action by India was academic, as the tests by Pakistan were more a demonstration of capability, it reportedly having used the Chinese test site at Lop Nor earlier to acquire the capability.
Non-wars without the need for deterrence
The role of nuclear weapons in the two major events post-nuclearisation requires more careful refutation. Pakistan chose the site of its Kargil adventure with care. This is attributed to its desire to limit India's reaction, cognizant that the scale of the reaction would determine the nature of the subsequent conflict, which could assume nuclear proportions. If we are to remove nuclear weapons from the equation, it would yet be proven that Pakistan would still have chosen the same site for its intrusion.
See for balance article - http://www.indiatogether.org/2008/feb/fah-deter.htm
The extended crisis of 2001-02 too requires further probing, for there is more to the issue of the Parliament attack than the popular narrative lets on (see 13 Dec: The strange case of the attack on the Indian parliament, published by Penguin Books in 2006). But even with a plausible casus belli, India did not go to war, and this is taken as Indian prudence brought on, amongst other factors, by presence of nuclear weapons. But what is more likely is that economic and strategic interests in India deflected any possibility of a war, and no further 'deterrence' was needed to dissuade it from one. In Pakistan too, there was no question of contemplating war, for it was by then fully immersed in the Global War on Terror.
Conclusion
Once each crisis is put into perspective, the role of nuclear deterrence becomes self-evidently a fallacy. Unfortunately, the nuclear deterrence argument is gaining ground, and one expects to see more of this in future, thereby increasing nuclear dangers. Arguments on their utility have therefore to be relentlessly exposed, lest the dangers continue to mount.
The plain fact is that most of the thought exercises about deterrence are way off the mark; there are any number of other reasons that can fully explain why India and Pakistan have not moved to a point of open conflict, and the possession of nuclear weapons is only incidental. Still, they are always looked at as more important than is the reality, because this fits nicely with the 'seminar circuit', which is happy to discuss nuclear weapons if only for the simple reason that, like the Himalayas, 'they are there'! ⊕
Firdaus Ahmed
29 Feb 2008
10 YEARS LATER
Making Kargil serve a purpose
27 July 2009 - A tenth anniversary has its limitations. It's too early to know what really happened, for protagonists are usually still around purveying their end of the story. For instance, Musharraf in his autobiography still continues with the line that the intruders were Mujahedeen, while we know that they were soldiers of the Northern Light Infantry. This was then a paramilitary outfit with soldiers largely recruited from the Northern Areas in Pakistani occupation. As a reward for its showing at Kargil, the NLI has since been absorbed into the Army as a 'regiment'.
Likewise, on the Indian side, celebrations to mark the tenth anniversary highlight the military victory, whereas the role of the Americans who prevailed on the Pakistanis to pack up and leave is glossed over. Thus, even while acknowledging the victory as a great martial feat, it bears recounting that had the Pakistanis not left under American tutelage, the war could have expanded beyond its Limited War dimensions. With both states having gone nuclear the previous summer, the outcome of such a war could have been grave.
During the Kargil War, the two states had not got their nuclear act together. India was surprised by the Pakistani reading of the nuclear era in its launching of Operation Badr. India had for its part launched the bus to Lahore. Pakistan, in turn, was surprised by the ferocity of Indian reaction, one that threatened to expand the scope of the border war. During the war, Bruce Riedel reports of Clinton telling the visiting Nawaz Sharif of the Army's nuclear preparations back home. Raj Chengappa, a journalist with access to the nuclear establishment, maintains that India upped its nuclear alert status to Level 3.
Little has changed
Ever since, both states have apparently given themselves the mechanisms to avoid making such errors in strategic thinking. The National Security Council in both states was nascent then. India's was then in its first year, while that of Pakistan though half-a-decade old was of little significance. Soon after the war, Pakistan's National Command Authority was set up in February 2000, while India's Nuclear Command Authority followed three years later in wake of Operation Parakram. Can these mechanisms and the learning since be taken as adequate to play the game differently?
Ever since the US weighed in on the Indian side at Kargil, a closer relationship between the two has developed.
Pakistan's Army - that had called the shots under Musharraf at Kargil despite there being a civil authority in place - remains in control of Pakistan's security and nuclear policy. Musharraf's back channel agenda and 'out-of-the-box' thinking were credible only to the extent he had the capacity to carry the Army along. The Army is presently engaged in riding out the pressure on it to do more against the Taliban without compromising on its earlier strategy of using extremists for strategic purposes.
India has not managed to bring the troubles in Kashmir to a close. Even though India is at a self-congratulatory moment, having conducted two credible elections in Kashmir, the potential for trouble remains. Pakistan has not dismantled the infrastructure of terror, nor has India made any noteworthy political intervention. Governance initiatives, admittedly imaginative, are nonetheless poor substitutes. In effect, little has changed since Kargil.
Instead, a near war in 2001-02 and a major crisis, 26/11, have occurred since. India has exercised restraint. Nuclear optimists argue that this restraint is due to the nuclear deterrence. Pessimists claim that the fact that crises keep recurring and have the potential for escalation indicates otherwise. To them any consideration of the context needs to factor in American presence and, post 9/11, heightened interest in the region. India has only temporarily been persuaded by the US that Pakistan will stay the course in the global war against terror. Allowing it an alibi through a distraction on the eastern front would debilitate the international effort. It would make the Pakistani state vulnerable to extremists.
However, it is possible to argue that Pakistan is not unaware of the impact of US presence. In trying to influence it through jihadi attacks claimed as renegade action, it hopes the US would prevail on India to concede ground on Kashmir. Its limited success has been in keeping India at bay. Withdraw the American factor and the story since Kargil would have been different.
See for balance article - http://www.indiatogether.org/2009/jul/fah-kargil.htm
The Indian investment is one of longer term importance for the US, directed at the rising power likely to challenge its global position, China. Already, hyper-realist opinion-makers claim China may seek to divert the attention of its citizens from its economy-related internal troubles by attacking India in the near term. The former Air Chief while departing on pension - a moment when there is least reason to be reticent - opined that China is a 'greater threat' than Pakistan. General JJ Singh, Governor in Arunachal Pradesh, has stated that a build up of 60,000 troops in the border state is required.
As at Kargil, India could blunder into another border war and there is also no guarantee that this would stay limited as then. It would make better sense to acknowledge the primary requirement of the nuclear age and get into a meaningful huddle with both antagonists. Only a strategic dialogue in a standing forum can help avert dangers and alleviate conditions that give rise to such dangers. Only by setting this up can we truly honour the martyrs of Kargil; else they will have died in vain. ⊕
Firdaus Ahmed
27 Jul 2009
Making Kargil serve a purpose
27 July 2009 - A tenth anniversary has its limitations. It's too early to know what really happened, for protagonists are usually still around purveying their end of the story. For instance, Musharraf in his autobiography still continues with the line that the intruders were Mujahedeen, while we know that they were soldiers of the Northern Light Infantry. This was then a paramilitary outfit with soldiers largely recruited from the Northern Areas in Pakistani occupation. As a reward for its showing at Kargil, the NLI has since been absorbed into the Army as a 'regiment'.
Likewise, on the Indian side, celebrations to mark the tenth anniversary highlight the military victory, whereas the role of the Americans who prevailed on the Pakistanis to pack up and leave is glossed over. Thus, even while acknowledging the victory as a great martial feat, it bears recounting that had the Pakistanis not left under American tutelage, the war could have expanded beyond its Limited War dimensions. With both states having gone nuclear the previous summer, the outcome of such a war could have been grave.
During the Kargil War, the two states had not got their nuclear act together. India was surprised by the Pakistani reading of the nuclear era in its launching of Operation Badr. India had for its part launched the bus to Lahore. Pakistan, in turn, was surprised by the ferocity of Indian reaction, one that threatened to expand the scope of the border war. During the war, Bruce Riedel reports of Clinton telling the visiting Nawaz Sharif of the Army's nuclear preparations back home. Raj Chengappa, a journalist with access to the nuclear establishment, maintains that India upped its nuclear alert status to Level 3.
Little has changed
Ever since, both states have apparently given themselves the mechanisms to avoid making such errors in strategic thinking. The National Security Council in both states was nascent then. India's was then in its first year, while that of Pakistan though half-a-decade old was of little significance. Soon after the war, Pakistan's National Command Authority was set up in February 2000, while India's Nuclear Command Authority followed three years later in wake of Operation Parakram. Can these mechanisms and the learning since be taken as adequate to play the game differently?
Ever since the US weighed in on the Indian side at Kargil, a closer relationship between the two has developed.
Pakistan's Army - that had called the shots under Musharraf at Kargil despite there being a civil authority in place - remains in control of Pakistan's security and nuclear policy. Musharraf's back channel agenda and 'out-of-the-box' thinking were credible only to the extent he had the capacity to carry the Army along. The Army is presently engaged in riding out the pressure on it to do more against the Taliban without compromising on its earlier strategy of using extremists for strategic purposes.
India has not managed to bring the troubles in Kashmir to a close. Even though India is at a self-congratulatory moment, having conducted two credible elections in Kashmir, the potential for trouble remains. Pakistan has not dismantled the infrastructure of terror, nor has India made any noteworthy political intervention. Governance initiatives, admittedly imaginative, are nonetheless poor substitutes. In effect, little has changed since Kargil.
Instead, a near war in 2001-02 and a major crisis, 26/11, have occurred since. India has exercised restraint. Nuclear optimists argue that this restraint is due to the nuclear deterrence. Pessimists claim that the fact that crises keep recurring and have the potential for escalation indicates otherwise. To them any consideration of the context needs to factor in American presence and, post 9/11, heightened interest in the region. India has only temporarily been persuaded by the US that Pakistan will stay the course in the global war against terror. Allowing it an alibi through a distraction on the eastern front would debilitate the international effort. It would make the Pakistani state vulnerable to extremists.
However, it is possible to argue that Pakistan is not unaware of the impact of US presence. In trying to influence it through jihadi attacks claimed as renegade action, it hopes the US would prevail on India to concede ground on Kashmir. Its limited success has been in keeping India at bay. Withdraw the American factor and the story since Kargil would have been different.
See for balance article - http://www.indiatogether.org/2009/jul/fah-kargil.htm
The Indian investment is one of longer term importance for the US, directed at the rising power likely to challenge its global position, China. Already, hyper-realist opinion-makers claim China may seek to divert the attention of its citizens from its economy-related internal troubles by attacking India in the near term. The former Air Chief while departing on pension - a moment when there is least reason to be reticent - opined that China is a 'greater threat' than Pakistan. General JJ Singh, Governor in Arunachal Pradesh, has stated that a build up of 60,000 troops in the border state is required.
As at Kargil, India could blunder into another border war and there is also no guarantee that this would stay limited as then. It would make better sense to acknowledge the primary requirement of the nuclear age and get into a meaningful huddle with both antagonists. Only a strategic dialogue in a standing forum can help avert dangers and alleviate conditions that give rise to such dangers. Only by setting this up can we truly honour the martyrs of Kargil; else they will have died in vain. ⊕
Firdaus Ahmed
27 Jul 2009
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
Vignettes Of India's Security Culture
By Firdaus Ahmed
03 August, 2009
Countercurrents.org
The rape and murder of two young women in Shopian, the acceptance by the NHRC probe of the Delhi Police version of the Batla House encounter, the killing of a PLA member in custody in Manipur as evidenced by the photos published in Tehelka, and the furore over the mention of Baluchistan in the India-Pakistan Joint Statement tells us something of India’s strategic culture. This article seeks insight into India’s security culture through a snap shot of these four occurrences over the recent past.
That there was an attempted cover up in the Shopian incident implies that there was a ‘felt need’ for the same. Clearly then this was to protect the culprits, implying that the culprits are possibly known. There is no reason to resort to a cover up if there is nothing to be hidden. The unilateral additions made by the police to the report of Justice Jan that enquired into the case are reportedly slanderous about the deceased and their family. The portions disowned by the enquiring judge mention the ‘possibility’ of one of the deceased ‘developing some relation with others.’ The point of the investigation is to bring out who these alleged persons were, for they would have motive in murdering the victims to hide their association. That the police have signally failed to follow up only serves to prove there is a connection to the security apparatus that needs hiding. That the state machinery to include the Chief Minister has thereafter concentrated on the peripheral aspects, such as how much was conveyed up the reporting channel etc, has led to the need to apprehend the culprits being lost sight of. This only reinforces suspicions that the culprits were from the security forces or those having links with the security apparatus in the state, which since its partial outsourcing to the likes of the Ikhwan includes those in plain clothes. That the increasingly politicised debate has now gone back three years to the 2006 sex scandal bespeaks of the security culture in Srinagar.
As a final word on the Batla House encounter, the NHRC report states: ‘We are clearly of the opinion that having regard to the material placed before us, it cannot be said that there has been any violation of human rights by the action of the police party.’ It is quite obvious that any ‘material’ that was to be ‘placed’ before an enquiry could have been worked upon to give it the desired spin over the interim. Therefore, the enquiry was logically expected to go beyond the ‘material placed before us’. In failing to do this, it has set a precedent and devalued the credibility of the NHRC.
Other shortcomings have been pointed out by those following the case closely such as the Jamia Teachers Solidarity Group. However, even as the ‘material placed’ before the enquiry is reported as bringing out the group as carrying out a series of terrorist crimes, that the police party leader did not wear a bullet proof jacket while attempting to arrest them is explained away that the reason cannot be second guessed by the commission. The commission records that, ‘there is ample and sufficient material before us which leads to the irresistible conclusion that there was imminent danger to the life of members of the police party.’ All the more reason one would think warranting a bullet proof jacket.
The Indian Mujahedeen is described in the ‘material placed’ as a group ‘found to be involved in terrorist activities in different parts of the country for the last several years.’ It is fairly well known that the IM came into the limelight for the first time only last year with the blasts targeting the larger cities. This shortcoming in the ‘material placed’ has apparently not detracted from its credibility in the eyes of the commission. The commission refrains from dwelling on the issue of whether those killed were terrorists; yet explains police party actions as self defence. In case the commission was to play a mental game and take them as innocent for the sake of an intellectual exercise developing the scenario, then action as going in without a bullet proof jacket makes sense. Therefore, there was reason enough even from the ‘material placed’ for the commission to take a proactive route and go beyond the ‘material placed’ in its enquiry. That it failed to do so constitutes the evidence being marshalled in this article on the India’s security culture.
The Tehelka photo feature of the killing of alleged insurgent Chonghkhum Sanjit in Imphal by Manipuri police commandos is chilling in the extreme. That this was done in broad daylight speaks of a culture of impunity. In the logic of the security forces this display is perhaps explicable. The message to the insurgent underground watching is that there are no holds barred in the contest; a message that would no doubt be lapped up by the insurgents. The Punjab model is being played out in the North East. Those doing the killing appear Manipuri. One set of natives is set on another in a version of divide and rule. The nadir of this strategy has already been reached in the silent killings of relatives of ULFA insurgents in Assam. There is a subtext to the picture that has perhaps escaped the planners. In this the message to people is that the judge and executioner have been conflated. The implications are stark for the culture of protest that has been perfected in Manipur by the sacrifice of icons as Irom Sharmila and actions as the women who stripped to shame the Assam Rifles out of the Imphal Fort. Two inferences can be drawn from the pictures. One is that the state has lost control over its security apparatus. Worse is that this is a demonstration of the level of its control. The latter is most likely truer. It can be wagered that the enquiry that will no doubt follow, forced by the unrest presently on in Manipur, will not be able to trace those who ordered this. What happens in a provincial capital can only draw on what transpires in the national capital.
Lastly, is the contrived breast beating partially over the mention of Baluchistan in the Joint Statement emanating in Sharm es Sheikh. This also involved a march by opposition MPs led by the leader of the opposition to the Rashtrapati Bhawan. The Prime Minister has clarified on the floor of the Lok Sabha that he agreed to the mention knowing that ‘India’s hands are clean’. This is difficult to accept at face value; since, he – though honest - had earlier opined that Mr. Bush was a much ‘loved’ US President in India! The criticism was however not on this account but that Pakistan had managed to highlight its version on India’s intelligence managed covert role in the Baluchistan insurgency. In the security logic, it is entirely understandable for India to fuel Pakistan’s fires to sensitise it that it too lives in a glass house. Talking about the issue gives India a handle to bring this home to Pakistan and force a mutual winding down of this propensity of both states to interfere in each other’s internal affairs. But to insist that India ‘has nothing to hide’ either implies naivety or a loss of political control over India’s external intelligence agency. With the furore greeting the mention, it is unlikely that India would countenance talks on this issue, implying that the covert operations designed to hurt Pakistan in retribution for its well recorded proxy war in Kashmir will continue. This war by intelligence agencies would not be in the interest of either Baluchis or Kashmiris or indeed the other subcontinental nationalities, but is of a piece with the adults-only games played by states.
Clearly, India’s security is gravely threatened by insurgency and terrorism. India’s response as witnessed in the four cases does not recommend itself. It is no wonder then that India continues to be beset with problems of state consolidation. It is as yet a developing state still transiting through the state making and nation building stage. It would do well to recognise that it cannot skip the stage of national consolidation in its haste to becoming a great power.
By Firdaus Ahmed
03 August, 2009
Countercurrents.org
The rape and murder of two young women in Shopian, the acceptance by the NHRC probe of the Delhi Police version of the Batla House encounter, the killing of a PLA member in custody in Manipur as evidenced by the photos published in Tehelka, and the furore over the mention of Baluchistan in the India-Pakistan Joint Statement tells us something of India’s strategic culture. This article seeks insight into India’s security culture through a snap shot of these four occurrences over the recent past.
That there was an attempted cover up in the Shopian incident implies that there was a ‘felt need’ for the same. Clearly then this was to protect the culprits, implying that the culprits are possibly known. There is no reason to resort to a cover up if there is nothing to be hidden. The unilateral additions made by the police to the report of Justice Jan that enquired into the case are reportedly slanderous about the deceased and their family. The portions disowned by the enquiring judge mention the ‘possibility’ of one of the deceased ‘developing some relation with others.’ The point of the investigation is to bring out who these alleged persons were, for they would have motive in murdering the victims to hide their association. That the police have signally failed to follow up only serves to prove there is a connection to the security apparatus that needs hiding. That the state machinery to include the Chief Minister has thereafter concentrated on the peripheral aspects, such as how much was conveyed up the reporting channel etc, has led to the need to apprehend the culprits being lost sight of. This only reinforces suspicions that the culprits were from the security forces or those having links with the security apparatus in the state, which since its partial outsourcing to the likes of the Ikhwan includes those in plain clothes. That the increasingly politicised debate has now gone back three years to the 2006 sex scandal bespeaks of the security culture in Srinagar.
As a final word on the Batla House encounter, the NHRC report states: ‘We are clearly of the opinion that having regard to the material placed before us, it cannot be said that there has been any violation of human rights by the action of the police party.’ It is quite obvious that any ‘material’ that was to be ‘placed’ before an enquiry could have been worked upon to give it the desired spin over the interim. Therefore, the enquiry was logically expected to go beyond the ‘material placed before us’. In failing to do this, it has set a precedent and devalued the credibility of the NHRC.
Other shortcomings have been pointed out by those following the case closely such as the Jamia Teachers Solidarity Group. However, even as the ‘material placed’ before the enquiry is reported as bringing out the group as carrying out a series of terrorist crimes, that the police party leader did not wear a bullet proof jacket while attempting to arrest them is explained away that the reason cannot be second guessed by the commission. The commission records that, ‘there is ample and sufficient material before us which leads to the irresistible conclusion that there was imminent danger to the life of members of the police party.’ All the more reason one would think warranting a bullet proof jacket.
The Indian Mujahedeen is described in the ‘material placed’ as a group ‘found to be involved in terrorist activities in different parts of the country for the last several years.’ It is fairly well known that the IM came into the limelight for the first time only last year with the blasts targeting the larger cities. This shortcoming in the ‘material placed’ has apparently not detracted from its credibility in the eyes of the commission. The commission refrains from dwelling on the issue of whether those killed were terrorists; yet explains police party actions as self defence. In case the commission was to play a mental game and take them as innocent for the sake of an intellectual exercise developing the scenario, then action as going in without a bullet proof jacket makes sense. Therefore, there was reason enough even from the ‘material placed’ for the commission to take a proactive route and go beyond the ‘material placed’ in its enquiry. That it failed to do so constitutes the evidence being marshalled in this article on the India’s security culture.
The Tehelka photo feature of the killing of alleged insurgent Chonghkhum Sanjit in Imphal by Manipuri police commandos is chilling in the extreme. That this was done in broad daylight speaks of a culture of impunity. In the logic of the security forces this display is perhaps explicable. The message to the insurgent underground watching is that there are no holds barred in the contest; a message that would no doubt be lapped up by the insurgents. The Punjab model is being played out in the North East. Those doing the killing appear Manipuri. One set of natives is set on another in a version of divide and rule. The nadir of this strategy has already been reached in the silent killings of relatives of ULFA insurgents in Assam. There is a subtext to the picture that has perhaps escaped the planners. In this the message to people is that the judge and executioner have been conflated. The implications are stark for the culture of protest that has been perfected in Manipur by the sacrifice of icons as Irom Sharmila and actions as the women who stripped to shame the Assam Rifles out of the Imphal Fort. Two inferences can be drawn from the pictures. One is that the state has lost control over its security apparatus. Worse is that this is a demonstration of the level of its control. The latter is most likely truer. It can be wagered that the enquiry that will no doubt follow, forced by the unrest presently on in Manipur, will not be able to trace those who ordered this. What happens in a provincial capital can only draw on what transpires in the national capital.
Lastly, is the contrived breast beating partially over the mention of Baluchistan in the Joint Statement emanating in Sharm es Sheikh. This also involved a march by opposition MPs led by the leader of the opposition to the Rashtrapati Bhawan. The Prime Minister has clarified on the floor of the Lok Sabha that he agreed to the mention knowing that ‘India’s hands are clean’. This is difficult to accept at face value; since, he – though honest - had earlier opined that Mr. Bush was a much ‘loved’ US President in India! The criticism was however not on this account but that Pakistan had managed to highlight its version on India’s intelligence managed covert role in the Baluchistan insurgency. In the security logic, it is entirely understandable for India to fuel Pakistan’s fires to sensitise it that it too lives in a glass house. Talking about the issue gives India a handle to bring this home to Pakistan and force a mutual winding down of this propensity of both states to interfere in each other’s internal affairs. But to insist that India ‘has nothing to hide’ either implies naivety or a loss of political control over India’s external intelligence agency. With the furore greeting the mention, it is unlikely that India would countenance talks on this issue, implying that the covert operations designed to hurt Pakistan in retribution for its well recorded proxy war in Kashmir will continue. This war by intelligence agencies would not be in the interest of either Baluchis or Kashmiris or indeed the other subcontinental nationalities, but is of a piece with the adults-only games played by states.
Clearly, India’s security is gravely threatened by insurgency and terrorism. India’s response as witnessed in the four cases does not recommend itself. It is no wonder then that India continues to be beset with problems of state consolidation. It is as yet a developing state still transiting through the state making and nation building stage. It would do well to recognise that it cannot skip the stage of national consolidation in its haste to becoming a great power.
Monday, July 27, 2009
10 YEARS LATER
Making Kargil serve a purpose
India has not managed to bring the troubles in Kashmir to a close. And Pakistan has not dismantled the infrastructure of terror. In effect, little has changed since Kargil, writes Firdaus Ahmed.
•
27 July 2009 - A tenth anniversary has its limitations. It's too early to know what really happened, for protagonists are usually still around purveying their end of the story. For instance, Musharraf in his autobiography still continues with the line that the intruders were Mujahedeen, while we know that they were soldiers of the Northern Light Infantry. This was then a paramilitary outfit with soldiers largely recruited from the Northern Areas in Pakistani occupation. As a reward for its showing at Kargil, the NLI has since been absorbed into the Army as a 'regiment'.
Likewise, on the Indian side, celebrations to mark the tenth anniversary highlight the military victory, whereas the role of the Americans who prevailed on the Pakistanis to pack up and leave is glossed over. Thus, even while acknowledging the victory as a great martial feat, it bears recounting that had the Pakistanis not left under American tutelage, the war could have expanded beyond its Limited War dimensions. With both states having gone nuclear the previous summer, the outcome of such a war could have been grave.
During the Kargil War, the two states had not got their nuclear act together. India was surprised by the Pakistani reading of the nuclear era in its launching of Operation Badr. India had for its part launched the bus to Lahore. Pakistan, in turn, was surprised by the ferocity of Indian reaction, one that threatened to expand the scope of the border war. During the war, Bruce Riedel reports of Clinton telling the visiting Nawaz Sharif of the Army's nuclear preparations back home. Raj Chengappa, a journalist with access to the nuclear establishment, maintains that India upped its nuclear alert status to Level 3.
Little has changed
Ever since, both states have apparently given themselves the mechanisms to avoid making such errors in strategic thinking. The National Security Council in both states was nascent then. India's was then in its first year, while that of Pakistan though half-a-decade old was of little significance. Soon after the war, Pakistan's National Command Authority was set up in February 2000, while India's Nuclear Command Authority followed three years later in wake of Operation Parakram. Can these mechanisms and the learning since be taken as adequate to play the game differently?
Ever since the US weighed in on the Indian side at Kargil, a closer relationship between the two has developed.
Pakistan's Army - that had called the shots under Musharraf at Kargil despite there being a civil authority in place - remains in control of Pakistan's security and nuclear policy. Musharraf's back channel agenda and 'out-of-the-box' thinking were credible only to the extent he had the capacity to carry the Army along. The Army is presently engaged in riding out the pressure on it to do more against the Taliban without compromising on its earlier strategy of using extremists for strategic purposes.
India has not managed to bring the troubles in Kashmir to a close. Even though India is at a self-congratulatory moment, having conducted two credible elections in Kashmir, the potential for trouble remains. Pakistan has not dismantled the infrastructure of terror, nor has India made any noteworthy political intervention. Governance initiatives, admittedly imaginative, are nonetheless poor substitutes. In effect, little has changed since Kargil.
Instead, a near war in 2001-02 and a major crisis, 26/11, have occurred since. India has exercised restraint. Nuclear optimists argue that this restraint is due to the nuclear deterrence. Pessimists claim that the fact that crises keep recurring and have the potential for escalation indicates otherwise. To them any consideration of the context needs to factor in American presence and, post 9/11, heightened interest in the region. India has only temporarily been persuaded by the US that Pakistan will stay the course in the global war against terror. Allowing it an alibi through a distraction on the eastern front would debilitate the international effort. It would make the Pakistani state vulnerable to extremists.
However, it is possible to argue that Pakistan is not unaware of the impact of US presence. In trying to influence it through jihadi attacks claimed as renegade action, it hopes the US would prevail on India to concede ground on Kashmir. Its limited success has been in keeping India at bay. Withdraw the American factor and the story since Kargil would have been different.
The US factor
The American commitment in Afghanistan has been extended by Obama. It would bear watching what happens after the presidential elections in Kabul in August. Once the US gains a position of military advantage over the Taliban, it would likely strike a deal with the willing Taliban and leave as early as it can without loss of face. This could be as early as Obama's bid for re-election. Thereafter India and Pakistan would be left more on their own, though not entirely. Firstly, the US would not entirely disengage this time round, and secondly, as at Kargil, its good offices are readily available in a crisis. Without the US as benefactor, Pakistan would likely get less provocative. India would however be less restrained. Nevertheless, with Pakistan less provocative, India may not require to be aggressive.
The counter argument is that Pakistan may gain from a trade-off between the US and the Pakistani military. According to this scenario, while the Pakistani Army enables a tidy exit of the US from the region, it is given something in return - such as strategic space in both Afghanistan and in Kashmir. Therefore, India must fend for itself. For this, India appears prepared.
Learning from the Kargil episode and the subsequent standoff, it has given itself an offensive war doctrine, Cold Start. To stymie Pakistan's nuclear challenge of an Indian conventional attack, India has acquired a second strike capability and given itself an expansive nuclear doctrine promising 'massive' punitive retaliation. Thus, the stage is set for a future minus the US. Being prepared reduces the incentive to negotiate with Pakistan or for political ministration in Kashmir. The growing power divergence between the two states would keep the outcome in India's favour.
There is a second dimension to the dangers ahead. Ever since the US weighed in on the Indian side at Kargil, a closer relationship between the two has developed. What began in the post Pokhran II dialogue to arrive at a mutual comprehension between Jaswant Singh and Strobe Talbott is to culminate in the Indian prime minister being the first state guest of the Obama administration in November this year.
The Indian investment is one of longer term importance for the US, directed at the rising power likely to challenge its global position, China. Already, hyper-realist opinion-makers claim China may seek to divert the attention of its citizens from its economy-related internal troubles by attacking India in the near term. The former Air Chief while departing on pension - a moment when there is least reason to be reticent - opined that China is a 'greater threat' than Pakistan. General JJ Singh, Governor in Arunachal Pradesh, has stated that a build up of 60,000 troops in the border state is required.
As at Kargil, India could blunder into another border war and there is also no guarantee that this would stay limited as then. It would make better sense to acknowledge the primary requirement of the nuclear age and get into a meaningful huddle with both antagonists. Only a strategic dialogue in a standing forum can help avert dangers and alleviate conditions that give rise to such dangers. Only by setting this up can we truly honour the martyrs of Kargil; else they will have died in vain.
Making Kargil serve a purpose
India has not managed to bring the troubles in Kashmir to a close. And Pakistan has not dismantled the infrastructure of terror. In effect, little has changed since Kargil, writes Firdaus Ahmed.
•
27 July 2009 - A tenth anniversary has its limitations. It's too early to know what really happened, for protagonists are usually still around purveying their end of the story. For instance, Musharraf in his autobiography still continues with the line that the intruders were Mujahedeen, while we know that they were soldiers of the Northern Light Infantry. This was then a paramilitary outfit with soldiers largely recruited from the Northern Areas in Pakistani occupation. As a reward for its showing at Kargil, the NLI has since been absorbed into the Army as a 'regiment'.
Likewise, on the Indian side, celebrations to mark the tenth anniversary highlight the military victory, whereas the role of the Americans who prevailed on the Pakistanis to pack up and leave is glossed over. Thus, even while acknowledging the victory as a great martial feat, it bears recounting that had the Pakistanis not left under American tutelage, the war could have expanded beyond its Limited War dimensions. With both states having gone nuclear the previous summer, the outcome of such a war could have been grave.
During the Kargil War, the two states had not got their nuclear act together. India was surprised by the Pakistani reading of the nuclear era in its launching of Operation Badr. India had for its part launched the bus to Lahore. Pakistan, in turn, was surprised by the ferocity of Indian reaction, one that threatened to expand the scope of the border war. During the war, Bruce Riedel reports of Clinton telling the visiting Nawaz Sharif of the Army's nuclear preparations back home. Raj Chengappa, a journalist with access to the nuclear establishment, maintains that India upped its nuclear alert status to Level 3.
Little has changed
Ever since, both states have apparently given themselves the mechanisms to avoid making such errors in strategic thinking. The National Security Council in both states was nascent then. India's was then in its first year, while that of Pakistan though half-a-decade old was of little significance. Soon after the war, Pakistan's National Command Authority was set up in February 2000, while India's Nuclear Command Authority followed three years later in wake of Operation Parakram. Can these mechanisms and the learning since be taken as adequate to play the game differently?
Ever since the US weighed in on the Indian side at Kargil, a closer relationship between the two has developed.
Pakistan's Army - that had called the shots under Musharraf at Kargil despite there being a civil authority in place - remains in control of Pakistan's security and nuclear policy. Musharraf's back channel agenda and 'out-of-the-box' thinking were credible only to the extent he had the capacity to carry the Army along. The Army is presently engaged in riding out the pressure on it to do more against the Taliban without compromising on its earlier strategy of using extremists for strategic purposes.
India has not managed to bring the troubles in Kashmir to a close. Even though India is at a self-congratulatory moment, having conducted two credible elections in Kashmir, the potential for trouble remains. Pakistan has not dismantled the infrastructure of terror, nor has India made any noteworthy political intervention. Governance initiatives, admittedly imaginative, are nonetheless poor substitutes. In effect, little has changed since Kargil.
Instead, a near war in 2001-02 and a major crisis, 26/11, have occurred since. India has exercised restraint. Nuclear optimists argue that this restraint is due to the nuclear deterrence. Pessimists claim that the fact that crises keep recurring and have the potential for escalation indicates otherwise. To them any consideration of the context needs to factor in American presence and, post 9/11, heightened interest in the region. India has only temporarily been persuaded by the US that Pakistan will stay the course in the global war against terror. Allowing it an alibi through a distraction on the eastern front would debilitate the international effort. It would make the Pakistani state vulnerable to extremists.
However, it is possible to argue that Pakistan is not unaware of the impact of US presence. In trying to influence it through jihadi attacks claimed as renegade action, it hopes the US would prevail on India to concede ground on Kashmir. Its limited success has been in keeping India at bay. Withdraw the American factor and the story since Kargil would have been different.
The US factor
The American commitment in Afghanistan has been extended by Obama. It would bear watching what happens after the presidential elections in Kabul in August. Once the US gains a position of military advantage over the Taliban, it would likely strike a deal with the willing Taliban and leave as early as it can without loss of face. This could be as early as Obama's bid for re-election. Thereafter India and Pakistan would be left more on their own, though not entirely. Firstly, the US would not entirely disengage this time round, and secondly, as at Kargil, its good offices are readily available in a crisis. Without the US as benefactor, Pakistan would likely get less provocative. India would however be less restrained. Nevertheless, with Pakistan less provocative, India may not require to be aggressive.
The counter argument is that Pakistan may gain from a trade-off between the US and the Pakistani military. According to this scenario, while the Pakistani Army enables a tidy exit of the US from the region, it is given something in return - such as strategic space in both Afghanistan and in Kashmir. Therefore, India must fend for itself. For this, India appears prepared.
Learning from the Kargil episode and the subsequent standoff, it has given itself an offensive war doctrine, Cold Start. To stymie Pakistan's nuclear challenge of an Indian conventional attack, India has acquired a second strike capability and given itself an expansive nuclear doctrine promising 'massive' punitive retaliation. Thus, the stage is set for a future minus the US. Being prepared reduces the incentive to negotiate with Pakistan or for political ministration in Kashmir. The growing power divergence between the two states would keep the outcome in India's favour.
There is a second dimension to the dangers ahead. Ever since the US weighed in on the Indian side at Kargil, a closer relationship between the two has developed. What began in the post Pokhran II dialogue to arrive at a mutual comprehension between Jaswant Singh and Strobe Talbott is to culminate in the Indian prime minister being the first state guest of the Obama administration in November this year.
The Indian investment is one of longer term importance for the US, directed at the rising power likely to challenge its global position, China. Already, hyper-realist opinion-makers claim China may seek to divert the attention of its citizens from its economy-related internal troubles by attacking India in the near term. The former Air Chief while departing on pension - a moment when there is least reason to be reticent - opined that China is a 'greater threat' than Pakistan. General JJ Singh, Governor in Arunachal Pradesh, has stated that a build up of 60,000 troops in the border state is required.
As at Kargil, India could blunder into another border war and there is also no guarantee that this would stay limited as then. It would make better sense to acknowledge the primary requirement of the nuclear age and get into a meaningful huddle with both antagonists. Only a strategic dialogue in a standing forum can help avert dangers and alleviate conditions that give rise to such dangers. Only by setting this up can we truly honour the martyrs of Kargil; else they will have died in vain.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
#2915, 25 July 2009
Kargil: Ten Years On
Firdaus Ahmed
Freelancer
e-mail: firdyahmed@yahoo.com
While crises under the nuclear overhang have punctuated South Asian security, Kargil was the first after the two states went overtly nuclear. It has since been followed by standoffs in 2001-02 and 2008. This has ignited a debate between nuclear optimists and nuclear pessimists. Optimists believe that nuclear weapons have that deterred war and where it did break out, like in Kargil, it remained localized. Pessimists see the potential of escalation in such crises and explain that the Kargil conflict remained limited due to American intervention. This underlines the continuing nuclear danger in South Asia, which acquires prominence in light of the strategic irrationality evident at Kargil. The Indians believed that advent of the nuclear era made war unthinkable and embarked on the Lahore process. The Pakistani military assessed that there was scope for a limited conventional conflict and launched Operation Badr. It obfuscated issues by claiming that the Line of Control was indistinct in the Kargil sector and that the operation was led by Kashmiri militants.
The Indians, buying into the Pakistani logic that there is a window for conventional conflict, have adopted a proactive conventional war doctrine, Cold Start. However, there is no debate on the contours of Limited War. This emphasizes the limitations in strategic thinking on both sides. This situation, described by Ashley Tellis as ‘ugly stability’ is likely to persist, a sense of ownership of the peace process is absent at the political level. Issues lending themselves to technical solutions, such as Siachen, Sir Creek, Baghliar and Tulbul projects, are held hostage to the larger vexed question of Kashmir. While confidence-building measures have expanded, the peace process – despite being accepted as ‘irreversible’ - continues to be vulnerable to negative forces. Thus, advances made since Kargil, while welcome, remain tenuous.
The problem of reading Pakistan correctly persists. Mistaking Nawaz Sharif’s position before Kargil as Pakistan’s, India misread the civil-military equations in Pakistan. India misread Musharraf twice over. Once at Agra and next by making the backchannel dialogue hostage to his term in office. There is much more scepticism for Zardari’s placatory statements like his acceptance that proxy war was promoted by Pakistan through ‘strategic assets’ who are more appropriately termed ‘terrorists’. Pakistan’s Army remains India’s foremost strategic problem. It has the backing of the US for its recently energized role against the Taliban. India is an interested bystander at best and a spoiler at the worst in the Af-Pak region, assuming that India wishes to do more on conflict resolution, fresh governments coming into office with Delhi and Srinagar.
Meanwhile, civil unrest continues in Kashmir over completely avoidable issues. Bringing back normalcy requires both political and governance initiatives. The political prong of normalization is taken as ‘done’ with the holding of elections. The Prime Minister’s Round Table working group on, “Strengthening Relations between the State and the Center,” has not even submitted a report. Thus, the situation has not changed materially since Kargil. The present preoccupation is over the withdrawal of the Central Reserve Police Force – foisted on the Valley by the Task Force on Internal Security.
Siachen was among the candidate causes of the Kargil conflict, but the issues continues to linger with Rs.30 million spent there a day. Militarization of Kargil and Ladhak is underway with the Ladhak Scouts, a paramilitary force under the Army, gaining the status of a regiment, which mirrors the case of Pakistan’s Northern Light Infantry comprising men from the Northern Areas.
The current call to militarize the disputed Arunachal border with China has echoes of Kargil. India continues with the military approach to its border problems even as indications from society are to the contrary. While the attraction of officership in the services gained temporarily in the aftermath of Kargil and the drop in popularity since was arrested temporarily, due to the coincidence between the economic slowdown outside the military and the Sixth Pay Commission largesse within, the state has been remiss in observing military proprieties. The highest dignitary at Sam Bahadur’s funeral was a Minister of State and the tenth anniversary of Pokhran II went unnoticed last year. Ceremonies can be dispensed with if lessons that are rehearsed at anniversaries are assimilated. The memory of the young martyrs at Kargil of both sides requires that both states exert themselves to reach strategic maturity. This is best achieved by avoiding shedding more blood. The reaction to the resumption of dialogue with Pakistan in India is an indication that lessons remain unlearned.
Kargil: Ten Years On
Firdaus Ahmed
Freelancer
e-mail: firdyahmed@yahoo.com
While crises under the nuclear overhang have punctuated South Asian security, Kargil was the first after the two states went overtly nuclear. It has since been followed by standoffs in 2001-02 and 2008. This has ignited a debate between nuclear optimists and nuclear pessimists. Optimists believe that nuclear weapons have that deterred war and where it did break out, like in Kargil, it remained localized. Pessimists see the potential of escalation in such crises and explain that the Kargil conflict remained limited due to American intervention. This underlines the continuing nuclear danger in South Asia, which acquires prominence in light of the strategic irrationality evident at Kargil. The Indians believed that advent of the nuclear era made war unthinkable and embarked on the Lahore process. The Pakistani military assessed that there was scope for a limited conventional conflict and launched Operation Badr. It obfuscated issues by claiming that the Line of Control was indistinct in the Kargil sector and that the operation was led by Kashmiri militants.
The Indians, buying into the Pakistani logic that there is a window for conventional conflict, have adopted a proactive conventional war doctrine, Cold Start. However, there is no debate on the contours of Limited War. This emphasizes the limitations in strategic thinking on both sides. This situation, described by Ashley Tellis as ‘ugly stability’ is likely to persist, a sense of ownership of the peace process is absent at the political level. Issues lending themselves to technical solutions, such as Siachen, Sir Creek, Baghliar and Tulbul projects, are held hostage to the larger vexed question of Kashmir. While confidence-building measures have expanded, the peace process – despite being accepted as ‘irreversible’ - continues to be vulnerable to negative forces. Thus, advances made since Kargil, while welcome, remain tenuous.
The problem of reading Pakistan correctly persists. Mistaking Nawaz Sharif’s position before Kargil as Pakistan’s, India misread the civil-military equations in Pakistan. India misread Musharraf twice over. Once at Agra and next by making the backchannel dialogue hostage to his term in office. There is much more scepticism for Zardari’s placatory statements like his acceptance that proxy war was promoted by Pakistan through ‘strategic assets’ who are more appropriately termed ‘terrorists’. Pakistan’s Army remains India’s foremost strategic problem. It has the backing of the US for its recently energized role against the Taliban. India is an interested bystander at best and a spoiler at the worst in the Af-Pak region, assuming that India wishes to do more on conflict resolution, fresh governments coming into office with Delhi and Srinagar.
Meanwhile, civil unrest continues in Kashmir over completely avoidable issues. Bringing back normalcy requires both political and governance initiatives. The political prong of normalization is taken as ‘done’ with the holding of elections. The Prime Minister’s Round Table working group on, “Strengthening Relations between the State and the Center,” has not even submitted a report. Thus, the situation has not changed materially since Kargil. The present preoccupation is over the withdrawal of the Central Reserve Police Force – foisted on the Valley by the Task Force on Internal Security.
Siachen was among the candidate causes of the Kargil conflict, but the issues continues to linger with Rs.30 million spent there a day. Militarization of Kargil and Ladhak is underway with the Ladhak Scouts, a paramilitary force under the Army, gaining the status of a regiment, which mirrors the case of Pakistan’s Northern Light Infantry comprising men from the Northern Areas.
The current call to militarize the disputed Arunachal border with China has echoes of Kargil. India continues with the military approach to its border problems even as indications from society are to the contrary. While the attraction of officership in the services gained temporarily in the aftermath of Kargil and the drop in popularity since was arrested temporarily, due to the coincidence between the economic slowdown outside the military and the Sixth Pay Commission largesse within, the state has been remiss in observing military proprieties. The highest dignitary at Sam Bahadur’s funeral was a Minister of State and the tenth anniversary of Pokhran II went unnoticed last year. Ceremonies can be dispensed with if lessons that are rehearsed at anniversaries are assimilated. The memory of the young martyrs at Kargil of both sides requires that both states exert themselves to reach strategic maturity. This is best achieved by avoiding shedding more blood. The reaction to the resumption of dialogue with Pakistan in India is an indication that lessons remain unlearned.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Troubling Aspects Of The Bomb Blasts
By Firdaus Ahmed
16 September, 2008
Countercurrents.org
If you have lost something on a dark night on a road lit by streetlights, it wouldn’t do if you only look for it under the light of the streetlights. This is what is currently happening with the bomb blast investigations. The usual suspects have been lined up – SIMI, HUJI, Lashkar e Tayyaba etc. There is no doubt that these outfits require to be under the scanner constantly. Investigations do serve the purpose of forcing these terrorist groups onto the backfoot. They also defuse any anger in the majority community that the provocative blasts and accompanying commentary in the form of incendiary emails is designed to stimulate. With investigation agencies seen as pursuing the perpetrators with vigour, any impulse of retaliation against the minority with mob frenzy is degraded. However, there are some troubling aspects, presently unnoticed, that need to be in the public discourse.
First is the choice of ‘al Arabi’ as the nom de guerre of the mastermind behind the emails. It can be expected that the person sending the emails is Muslim and is likely well versed with Islamic thinking. However, his choice of al Arabi is not the most apposite one. Wikipedia informs us Ibn al Arabi (July 28, 1165-November 10, 1240) was an Arab Sufi Muslim mystic and philosopher. Noted historian and Professor at Fletcher’s School of Law and Diplomacy at Tuft’s University, Ayesha Jalal, in her recently published book ‘Partisans of Allah’ says that because of his belief that the sacred was immanent in the world, he preached respect for other human beings irrespective of their specific religious traditions. His school of thought popularised his main ideas under the concept ‘wahdut al wujud’ – literally, ‘the unity of creation’, that perceived ‘Many as One, and One as Many’. This was in contrast with the opposed school ‘wahdut al shuhud’ (‘unity of appearances’), the adherents of which led by the known icon of fundamentalists, ibn Taymiyya, charged al Arabi of pantheism amounting to ‘shirk’ or the sin of association with God. His position was also attacked by Sirhandi, a medieval Islamic theologian who opposed Akbar’s policy of religious synthesis. He criticised al Arabi for rejecting the difference between Islam and infidelity (kufr) and thereby suggesting the status of infidels might be equivalent to that of believers.
Clearly, anyone so passionate as to let of bomb attacks in the name of religion would not subscribe to al Arabi’s vision. He would certainly not be using his name but would likely use that of his detractors. Therefore, the use of the al Arabi in the email id is a clue that investigation agencies need to look at. Deciding on the email id would not have been a job the perpetrators would have done without some thought since the public, who they wish to influence, would associate their deeds with this name. Clearly, not having been thought up by one who knows his Islam, it begs the question as to who else could have coined it.
Such an error has a notable precedence. The name ‘Al Faran’ of the terrorist group in Kashmir in the mid Nineties, that had held four foreigners hostage and later killed, turned out not to exist as a word in any language - Arabic or of Turkic origin. This put the incident into cloud, a suspicion reinforced by the extraordinary coincidence that the only foreigner who managed to escape was picked up by a helicopter of the Adviser to Governor then overhead the mountainous and forested fastness! While this episode may have been an intelligence operation by the state, the technique of influencing perceptions through action is not the provenance of the state alone. Non state actors are in it too as terrorism itself testifies.
Even the content of the email is worth attention. These are elaborate – the latest one being thirteen pages long - and virtually amount to a manifesto of hate. It has been commented by no less a terrorism watcher than the knowledgeable Praveen Swami that the writing is in the tradition of prose used in Lashkar propaganda pamphlets. This is a pointer to the origins of the email. Surely, then the originator would not then be operating under a mistaken email id. Instead, it brings to fore the possibility that the content of the email, though having a likeness to Islamist writings, could have been drafted by one familiar with these. This can be done by anyone literate and interested enough. Anyone in a creative writing class can replicate such an email after a few visit to the numerous hate sites of every community that exist on the world wide web.
Two other aspects of the emails provide us clues on the likelihood that they may have been designed to mislead. The first is from its previous email that preceded the Ahmedabad blasts. In it the terrorists refer to themselves as terrorists. This is not how terrorists would perceive themselves. They would instead believe themselves to be ghazis and would project themselves accordingly. In the same email, they have gone out of their way to warn off the likes of Lashkar from claiming the blasts and making it a point to mention that they have an indigenous origin. This is exactly how an impersonator group may like to wish the act to be perceived – one perpetrated by an Indian terrorist group. Therefore the selection of the name Indian Mujahedeen. Thus making the linkage explicit.
The second is that the email heralding the Delhi blasts included a reference for the first time to the two martyrs of the jihad against the Sikhs, Sayyid Ahmed Khan and Shah Ismail, in early eighteenth century. There is a whole chapter on these figures in Ayesha Jalal’s book that she launched in India only a month ago. These figures she considers important to development of ‘South Asian’ thinking on Jihad. They however do not figure in the Indian consciousness to the extent described by Jalal. For Jalal, whose origins are in Lahore, they are larger than life figures and therefore merit a chapter in her book. These historical personalities have suddenly found their into Indian milieu, though even Indian history students would find them hard to place. This means that the writers are not Indian Muslims. They could be from the land that takes them more seriously as inspiration. More likely, they have been alighted on by writers of the email in their hasty research to add authenticity to the email so as to make the linkage between the origin and a community more thorough. Since the book has just hit the stands with a splash, it has provided them the material needed, particularly as Jalal says that the duo are a motivation to jihadis who have their camps around the place of their martyrdom at Balakot near Kashmir in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan. Of course it could be countered that having trained at these camps the Indian Mujahedeen has also been influenced. But then the timing of their entry into an Indian consciousness does raise suspicion enough to include as a clue for investigation agencies to take seriously.
Therefore there is no need to restrict oneself to the usual suspects. There is a case for expansion of the list to include those with a motive. As any Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes' fan would know, possible motives guide investigation. While it is known that disaffected elements in minority have possible motives, such as revenge for perceived past wrongs, inciting majority reprisal etc., there is a case for widening of the list to include covert extremist groups in the majority community.
It does not require one to be overly cynical, but only worldly wise, to know that there exists a covert world. Political scientists studying communalism have revealed how riots were engineered in India in the Sixties through to the Eighties to influence elections. In such riots lasting a few days many people were killed and much property destroyed. Such riots are no longer occurring with their earlier frequency. What is happening now is the increased incidence of bomb blasts. There is no reason to presume that the ones who engineered riots in the earlier era would have any qualms in refraining from blasts. The only difference between blasts and riots is that the former is an incident restricted in time and space. Thus if political power is at stake there is enough incentive to resort to illegitimate methods. Utilitarian reasoning provides the legitimacy in that these are excusable in the ethical framework of ‘wider good for the wider number’. With elections due, there is no reason why a climate of insecurity would not have electoral dividend, especially with the preceding discourse already having created the conditions in which agents of the minority are solely taken as culprits by default. This amounts to no less than a ‘double whammy’!
That this is not overly far fetched is evident from the BJP leader Shrimati Swaraj stating confidently, in wake of the earlier set of blasts that occurred in BJP ruled states, that these could have been the handiwork of Congress agents! It of course does not need much political acumen to alight at who insecurity would serve to assist electorally, particularly with the incumbent riding high on a vote of confidence. It is possible that the central government is aware of some information that is too hot politically to handly; else by now it would have replaced its Home Minister for incompetence. That it has not done so is revealing. So is its case for a new federal agency to probe such cases, since it is possible that, among other reasons, such an agency is the dire need perhaps on account of some sections of state law appartuses being subverted or suborned.
Naivety is not an affordable luxury today for these are not innocent times. In the instant case, the imprint of non-state actors from far right extremist groups of the majority cannot be ruled out. Their showing in riots of the Nineties and in Gujarat shows that they would not be squeamish in resorting to the reprehensible tactics used, such as bombing hospitals to which casualties of their handiwork were evacuated to. Instead consider this: if the minority based terrorist group is to be maligned and by extension the minority, then the more revolting the act the better. In any case, if bombing is to be used as strategy, then there is unlikely to be any pulling of punches. Power over a billion citizens is a prize worth risking much for.
Obviously, there is little concrete evidence to back this. There wouldn’t be, would there; unless it is explicitly looked out for? Not much evidence that will pass the test in a court of law exists on who is behind the blasts despite close to six months of repeated bombings from Jaipur to Delhi. Does this blank not call for a wider arc of suspicion beyond the well worn eight hundred ‘sleeper cells’ thesis? Have questions competently raised by Teesta Setalvad and Ram Punyani on the Kanpur and Nanded blasts on accidental explosions in bomb-making sites of hindu extremist groups been adequately followed up? Can such suspicions continue anymore to be relegated as ‘conspiracy theories’ cooked up by irresponsible netizens?
The effort here has been to increase the arcs of the streetlights to widen the area of search. If investigation agencies are barking up the wrong tree then there is too great a price to be paid in keeping the street ill lit.
By Firdaus Ahmed
16 September, 2008
Countercurrents.org
If you have lost something on a dark night on a road lit by streetlights, it wouldn’t do if you only look for it under the light of the streetlights. This is what is currently happening with the bomb blast investigations. The usual suspects have been lined up – SIMI, HUJI, Lashkar e Tayyaba etc. There is no doubt that these outfits require to be under the scanner constantly. Investigations do serve the purpose of forcing these terrorist groups onto the backfoot. They also defuse any anger in the majority community that the provocative blasts and accompanying commentary in the form of incendiary emails is designed to stimulate. With investigation agencies seen as pursuing the perpetrators with vigour, any impulse of retaliation against the minority with mob frenzy is degraded. However, there are some troubling aspects, presently unnoticed, that need to be in the public discourse.
First is the choice of ‘al Arabi’ as the nom de guerre of the mastermind behind the emails. It can be expected that the person sending the emails is Muslim and is likely well versed with Islamic thinking. However, his choice of al Arabi is not the most apposite one. Wikipedia informs us Ibn al Arabi (July 28, 1165-November 10, 1240) was an Arab Sufi Muslim mystic and philosopher. Noted historian and Professor at Fletcher’s School of Law and Diplomacy at Tuft’s University, Ayesha Jalal, in her recently published book ‘Partisans of Allah’ says that because of his belief that the sacred was immanent in the world, he preached respect for other human beings irrespective of their specific religious traditions. His school of thought popularised his main ideas under the concept ‘wahdut al wujud’ – literally, ‘the unity of creation’, that perceived ‘Many as One, and One as Many’. This was in contrast with the opposed school ‘wahdut al shuhud’ (‘unity of appearances’), the adherents of which led by the known icon of fundamentalists, ibn Taymiyya, charged al Arabi of pantheism amounting to ‘shirk’ or the sin of association with God. His position was also attacked by Sirhandi, a medieval Islamic theologian who opposed Akbar’s policy of religious synthesis. He criticised al Arabi for rejecting the difference between Islam and infidelity (kufr) and thereby suggesting the status of infidels might be equivalent to that of believers.
Clearly, anyone so passionate as to let of bomb attacks in the name of religion would not subscribe to al Arabi’s vision. He would certainly not be using his name but would likely use that of his detractors. Therefore, the use of the al Arabi in the email id is a clue that investigation agencies need to look at. Deciding on the email id would not have been a job the perpetrators would have done without some thought since the public, who they wish to influence, would associate their deeds with this name. Clearly, not having been thought up by one who knows his Islam, it begs the question as to who else could have coined it.
Such an error has a notable precedence. The name ‘Al Faran’ of the terrorist group in Kashmir in the mid Nineties, that had held four foreigners hostage and later killed, turned out not to exist as a word in any language - Arabic or of Turkic origin. This put the incident into cloud, a suspicion reinforced by the extraordinary coincidence that the only foreigner who managed to escape was picked up by a helicopter of the Adviser to Governor then overhead the mountainous and forested fastness! While this episode may have been an intelligence operation by the state, the technique of influencing perceptions through action is not the provenance of the state alone. Non state actors are in it too as terrorism itself testifies.
Even the content of the email is worth attention. These are elaborate – the latest one being thirteen pages long - and virtually amount to a manifesto of hate. It has been commented by no less a terrorism watcher than the knowledgeable Praveen Swami that the writing is in the tradition of prose used in Lashkar propaganda pamphlets. This is a pointer to the origins of the email. Surely, then the originator would not then be operating under a mistaken email id. Instead, it brings to fore the possibility that the content of the email, though having a likeness to Islamist writings, could have been drafted by one familiar with these. This can be done by anyone literate and interested enough. Anyone in a creative writing class can replicate such an email after a few visit to the numerous hate sites of every community that exist on the world wide web.
Two other aspects of the emails provide us clues on the likelihood that they may have been designed to mislead. The first is from its previous email that preceded the Ahmedabad blasts. In it the terrorists refer to themselves as terrorists. This is not how terrorists would perceive themselves. They would instead believe themselves to be ghazis and would project themselves accordingly. In the same email, they have gone out of their way to warn off the likes of Lashkar from claiming the blasts and making it a point to mention that they have an indigenous origin. This is exactly how an impersonator group may like to wish the act to be perceived – one perpetrated by an Indian terrorist group. Therefore the selection of the name Indian Mujahedeen. Thus making the linkage explicit.
The second is that the email heralding the Delhi blasts included a reference for the first time to the two martyrs of the jihad against the Sikhs, Sayyid Ahmed Khan and Shah Ismail, in early eighteenth century. There is a whole chapter on these figures in Ayesha Jalal’s book that she launched in India only a month ago. These figures she considers important to development of ‘South Asian’ thinking on Jihad. They however do not figure in the Indian consciousness to the extent described by Jalal. For Jalal, whose origins are in Lahore, they are larger than life figures and therefore merit a chapter in her book. These historical personalities have suddenly found their into Indian milieu, though even Indian history students would find them hard to place. This means that the writers are not Indian Muslims. They could be from the land that takes them more seriously as inspiration. More likely, they have been alighted on by writers of the email in their hasty research to add authenticity to the email so as to make the linkage between the origin and a community more thorough. Since the book has just hit the stands with a splash, it has provided them the material needed, particularly as Jalal says that the duo are a motivation to jihadis who have their camps around the place of their martyrdom at Balakot near Kashmir in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan. Of course it could be countered that having trained at these camps the Indian Mujahedeen has also been influenced. But then the timing of their entry into an Indian consciousness does raise suspicion enough to include as a clue for investigation agencies to take seriously.
Therefore there is no need to restrict oneself to the usual suspects. There is a case for expansion of the list to include those with a motive. As any Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes' fan would know, possible motives guide investigation. While it is known that disaffected elements in minority have possible motives, such as revenge for perceived past wrongs, inciting majority reprisal etc., there is a case for widening of the list to include covert extremist groups in the majority community.
It does not require one to be overly cynical, but only worldly wise, to know that there exists a covert world. Political scientists studying communalism have revealed how riots were engineered in India in the Sixties through to the Eighties to influence elections. In such riots lasting a few days many people were killed and much property destroyed. Such riots are no longer occurring with their earlier frequency. What is happening now is the increased incidence of bomb blasts. There is no reason to presume that the ones who engineered riots in the earlier era would have any qualms in refraining from blasts. The only difference between blasts and riots is that the former is an incident restricted in time and space. Thus if political power is at stake there is enough incentive to resort to illegitimate methods. Utilitarian reasoning provides the legitimacy in that these are excusable in the ethical framework of ‘wider good for the wider number’. With elections due, there is no reason why a climate of insecurity would not have electoral dividend, especially with the preceding discourse already having created the conditions in which agents of the minority are solely taken as culprits by default. This amounts to no less than a ‘double whammy’!
That this is not overly far fetched is evident from the BJP leader Shrimati Swaraj stating confidently, in wake of the earlier set of blasts that occurred in BJP ruled states, that these could have been the handiwork of Congress agents! It of course does not need much political acumen to alight at who insecurity would serve to assist electorally, particularly with the incumbent riding high on a vote of confidence. It is possible that the central government is aware of some information that is too hot politically to handly; else by now it would have replaced its Home Minister for incompetence. That it has not done so is revealing. So is its case for a new federal agency to probe such cases, since it is possible that, among other reasons, such an agency is the dire need perhaps on account of some sections of state law appartuses being subverted or suborned.
Naivety is not an affordable luxury today for these are not innocent times. In the instant case, the imprint of non-state actors from far right extremist groups of the majority cannot be ruled out. Their showing in riots of the Nineties and in Gujarat shows that they would not be squeamish in resorting to the reprehensible tactics used, such as bombing hospitals to which casualties of their handiwork were evacuated to. Instead consider this: if the minority based terrorist group is to be maligned and by extension the minority, then the more revolting the act the better. In any case, if bombing is to be used as strategy, then there is unlikely to be any pulling of punches. Power over a billion citizens is a prize worth risking much for.
Obviously, there is little concrete evidence to back this. There wouldn’t be, would there; unless it is explicitly looked out for? Not much evidence that will pass the test in a court of law exists on who is behind the blasts despite close to six months of repeated bombings from Jaipur to Delhi. Does this blank not call for a wider arc of suspicion beyond the well worn eight hundred ‘sleeper cells’ thesis? Have questions competently raised by Teesta Setalvad and Ram Punyani on the Kanpur and Nanded blasts on accidental explosions in bomb-making sites of hindu extremist groups been adequately followed up? Can such suspicions continue anymore to be relegated as ‘conspiracy theories’ cooked up by irresponsible netizens?
The effort here has been to increase the arcs of the streetlights to widen the area of search. If investigation agencies are barking up the wrong tree then there is too great a price to be paid in keeping the street ill lit.
Making Strategic Sense Of Terror
By Firdaus Ahmed
16 August, 2008
Countercurrents.org
The ‘Indian Mujahedeen’ has spelt out its manifesto in the warning email apparently delivered five minutes prior to the Ahmedabad attacks at media offices and headquarters of investigation agencies. The email gives out clues as to the motivations, aims and strategy. But first a look at the two strands of commentary that the blasts have evoked.
The first is on management of counter terrorism. This perspective has it that Pakistan’s ISI has managed to create an Indian fifth column in the form of ‘sleeper cells’ in then minority community. These subscribe to radical Islamism as guiding philosophy. To them India is a land of infidels in which the supposed persecution of Muslims legitimizes ‘Jihad’ as a religion ordained response. The external global and inter-state contexts of GWOT and adversarial India-Pakistan relations respectively, manifest in India along the civilsational faultline that cleaves India. The prescription of the counter terrorism approach is transformation of India into a ‘hard state’ along the lines of Israel and the US with its homeland security driven agenda.
The second strand is a wider socio-political approach focusing on denying terrorists a legitimising cause. This involves understanding motivations, discerning the political context, highlighting policing excesses and suggesting long term measures to include preserving a secular polity, enlarging economic opportunities for the minority and reforming madrasa education. Commentary emanating from this perspective privileges internal causes such as the ascendance of rightist ideologies, incapacity of juridical and policing measures in curbing right wing violence and the deprivation-alienation linkage in forming the minority psyche. The prescription is in the state reclaiming its secular credentials and a professionalisation of its internal security and judicial mechanism.
It would appear that both highlight valid issues that should be pursued together. A proactive approach to internal security as advocated by the first strand is to deter future terror, downgrade impulse towards vigilantism and deprive the right wing the pressure point of India being a ‘soft state’. The long term approach is also necessary to address legitimate grievances, keep the state on even ideological keel and reduce the fertility of India’s internal space to manipulation from without.
A third perspective has not been explicitly articulated; but can be discerned from the subtext of the comments on the terror attacks originating from minority quarters. These unanimously and unambiguously condemn the terror purportedly perpetrated in their name. The call is for a concerted search for the terrorists and exemplary punishment. The subtext of suspicion of the origins of the so called ‘Indian Mujahedeen’ originates in incomprehension of the motives of the terrorists, given the strategic imbecility of both the terrorist acts and its justification as carried in the email.
An assessment of motives is in order. Even if revenge is ‘a dish best eaten cold’, revenge attacks six years since the pogrom in Gujarat brings into question the credibility of the motive. Why also target Banglalore and Jaipur in that case? If policing excesses, in follow-up of investigations of earlier terror attacks in Hyderabad and Mumbai, mentioned in the email, are factored in then the level of vengeance is wholly incommensurate and against the wrong targets. Vengeance attacks set the stage for an interminable cycle vengeance-provocation that could only lead to further marginalisation of the minority. They also edify the earlier misplaced formulation of ‘action-reaction’ heard in the wake of Godhra and other such hark back to history as reprisal now for acts in Babur’s time!
On stronger grounds as candidate motive is that these were to serve as a provocation for another pogrom against the minority. That these attacks have been in BJP ruled states and the email has incendiary references to the Hindu pantheon, the intention may have been for a minority targeting backlash that could be capitalised on by the group for legitimacy and penetration of the minority community. That there is no political front of the terror organisation that could take advantage of this detracts against this possibility. The obverse is that such a situation would only lead to continued ghettoisation of the minority and political ascendance of the majoritarian right wing, currently rudderless, in the run up to national elections.
The email also carries threat of future retribution in case minority communities’ rights are trampled. This appropriation of the protection function by this group does not carry the imprimatur of the wider community, undercuts ongoing efforts at ensuring the same through the liberal state and judicial intervention and has no possibility of substituting monopoly power of state agencies with respect to the function. In relation to the power and propensity to violence of right wing formations, the group miscalculates as to its relevance and potential. The liberal order, anchored in the constitutional order and a secular majority, is the only defence of minorities against right wing targeting and state culpability, to the extent there is, in the same.
The oft averred to ‘external factor’ requires interrogation. It is well acknowledged that India is off the radar screen of Arab-centric radical Islamism. The ‘ISI hand’ is a self-servingly exaggerated threat, predicated as it is on the potential of subversion of the minority; an expectation having well-spring in the contestable notion of nationalism that motherland and holyland need to be coextensive. It emerges that there is more to ‘Indian Mujahedeen’ than meets the media eye. The subtext of Indian Muslim wholesale condemnation of the group should provoke a closer scrutiny of its origins by investigation agencies.
Three suspicion raising pointers are necessary to record. One, in light of larger manpower requirement for the kind of attacks that took place, enormous coordination, considerable manpower and impunity would have been required to conduct these. Terrorist ‘sleeper cells’ having a cellular structure and already under watch of wary government agencies could not have been able to mount such a country-wide demonstration of their supposed power. Instead it is worth considering whether in this age of Information Warfare, a right wing conspiracy is not at root. The largescale movements - as seen from the routing of the two vehicles stolen from Navi Mumbai for placing of bombs in the hospitals in Ahmedabad and over two score bombs placed all over – indicate levels of impunity that cannot be commanded by minority elements in today’s India. This therefore could have origin in a right wing conspiracy with technical assistance from rogue elements of the Vanzara mould in a compromised state.
Two, casualties have been relatively less than earlier bomb blasts with the proverbial ISI hallmark. For an attack of this size, attendant vulnerability and likelihood of eventual exposure, the terrorist group would have had higher ambitions. Fewer casualties indicate an unaccountable ‘pulling of punches’, alien to the terrorist scheme. Also, the discovery of several unexploded bombs in Surat appears too pat by far. The terrorist group would not have run such high risks of exposure in operation and detection post-operation for infliction of the limited number of casualties actually felled. Therefore logically the needle of suspicion should point elsewhere to include those who could profit politically from the attacks. Such preparation was earlier detected in Nanded should arouse suspicion along this line.
Lastly, reflection on this very question. These blasts could only place terror, its origins and attempt at legitimacy in an ‘action-reaction’ logic irrevocably outside the pale. This would enable treating it as an act of ‘war’ and justify measures modelled on the ‘homeland security’ initiatives elsewhere. Bills on terrorism forwarded by some states, such as Gujarat, are pending President’s assent. Further, national elections are scheduled for next year and polarisation along communal lines may prove of electoral value to any political formation hoping to rely on the majority as a vote bank. The legitimising logic for such circles would be that ends justify the means and saving India by taking it over, through fair means or foul, is in their final analysis for the good of the country and its defining community.
There is therefore scope for expansion of the arc of suspicion beyond the usual confines in the aftermath of terror to include those not in the default lineup. While investigating agencies may like to take this on, it is a fit case for a Tehelka style exposure by intrepid investigative journalists.
By Firdaus Ahmed
16 August, 2008
Countercurrents.org
The ‘Indian Mujahedeen’ has spelt out its manifesto in the warning email apparently delivered five minutes prior to the Ahmedabad attacks at media offices and headquarters of investigation agencies. The email gives out clues as to the motivations, aims and strategy. But first a look at the two strands of commentary that the blasts have evoked.
The first is on management of counter terrorism. This perspective has it that Pakistan’s ISI has managed to create an Indian fifth column in the form of ‘sleeper cells’ in then minority community. These subscribe to radical Islamism as guiding philosophy. To them India is a land of infidels in which the supposed persecution of Muslims legitimizes ‘Jihad’ as a religion ordained response. The external global and inter-state contexts of GWOT and adversarial India-Pakistan relations respectively, manifest in India along the civilsational faultline that cleaves India. The prescription of the counter terrorism approach is transformation of India into a ‘hard state’ along the lines of Israel and the US with its homeland security driven agenda.
The second strand is a wider socio-political approach focusing on denying terrorists a legitimising cause. This involves understanding motivations, discerning the political context, highlighting policing excesses and suggesting long term measures to include preserving a secular polity, enlarging economic opportunities for the minority and reforming madrasa education. Commentary emanating from this perspective privileges internal causes such as the ascendance of rightist ideologies, incapacity of juridical and policing measures in curbing right wing violence and the deprivation-alienation linkage in forming the minority psyche. The prescription is in the state reclaiming its secular credentials and a professionalisation of its internal security and judicial mechanism.
It would appear that both highlight valid issues that should be pursued together. A proactive approach to internal security as advocated by the first strand is to deter future terror, downgrade impulse towards vigilantism and deprive the right wing the pressure point of India being a ‘soft state’. The long term approach is also necessary to address legitimate grievances, keep the state on even ideological keel and reduce the fertility of India’s internal space to manipulation from without.
A third perspective has not been explicitly articulated; but can be discerned from the subtext of the comments on the terror attacks originating from minority quarters. These unanimously and unambiguously condemn the terror purportedly perpetrated in their name. The call is for a concerted search for the terrorists and exemplary punishment. The subtext of suspicion of the origins of the so called ‘Indian Mujahedeen’ originates in incomprehension of the motives of the terrorists, given the strategic imbecility of both the terrorist acts and its justification as carried in the email.
An assessment of motives is in order. Even if revenge is ‘a dish best eaten cold’, revenge attacks six years since the pogrom in Gujarat brings into question the credibility of the motive. Why also target Banglalore and Jaipur in that case? If policing excesses, in follow-up of investigations of earlier terror attacks in Hyderabad and Mumbai, mentioned in the email, are factored in then the level of vengeance is wholly incommensurate and against the wrong targets. Vengeance attacks set the stage for an interminable cycle vengeance-provocation that could only lead to further marginalisation of the minority. They also edify the earlier misplaced formulation of ‘action-reaction’ heard in the wake of Godhra and other such hark back to history as reprisal now for acts in Babur’s time!
On stronger grounds as candidate motive is that these were to serve as a provocation for another pogrom against the minority. That these attacks have been in BJP ruled states and the email has incendiary references to the Hindu pantheon, the intention may have been for a minority targeting backlash that could be capitalised on by the group for legitimacy and penetration of the minority community. That there is no political front of the terror organisation that could take advantage of this detracts against this possibility. The obverse is that such a situation would only lead to continued ghettoisation of the minority and political ascendance of the majoritarian right wing, currently rudderless, in the run up to national elections.
The email also carries threat of future retribution in case minority communities’ rights are trampled. This appropriation of the protection function by this group does not carry the imprimatur of the wider community, undercuts ongoing efforts at ensuring the same through the liberal state and judicial intervention and has no possibility of substituting monopoly power of state agencies with respect to the function. In relation to the power and propensity to violence of right wing formations, the group miscalculates as to its relevance and potential. The liberal order, anchored in the constitutional order and a secular majority, is the only defence of minorities against right wing targeting and state culpability, to the extent there is, in the same.
The oft averred to ‘external factor’ requires interrogation. It is well acknowledged that India is off the radar screen of Arab-centric radical Islamism. The ‘ISI hand’ is a self-servingly exaggerated threat, predicated as it is on the potential of subversion of the minority; an expectation having well-spring in the contestable notion of nationalism that motherland and holyland need to be coextensive. It emerges that there is more to ‘Indian Mujahedeen’ than meets the media eye. The subtext of Indian Muslim wholesale condemnation of the group should provoke a closer scrutiny of its origins by investigation agencies.
Three suspicion raising pointers are necessary to record. One, in light of larger manpower requirement for the kind of attacks that took place, enormous coordination, considerable manpower and impunity would have been required to conduct these. Terrorist ‘sleeper cells’ having a cellular structure and already under watch of wary government agencies could not have been able to mount such a country-wide demonstration of their supposed power. Instead it is worth considering whether in this age of Information Warfare, a right wing conspiracy is not at root. The largescale movements - as seen from the routing of the two vehicles stolen from Navi Mumbai for placing of bombs in the hospitals in Ahmedabad and over two score bombs placed all over – indicate levels of impunity that cannot be commanded by minority elements in today’s India. This therefore could have origin in a right wing conspiracy with technical assistance from rogue elements of the Vanzara mould in a compromised state.
Two, casualties have been relatively less than earlier bomb blasts with the proverbial ISI hallmark. For an attack of this size, attendant vulnerability and likelihood of eventual exposure, the terrorist group would have had higher ambitions. Fewer casualties indicate an unaccountable ‘pulling of punches’, alien to the terrorist scheme. Also, the discovery of several unexploded bombs in Surat appears too pat by far. The terrorist group would not have run such high risks of exposure in operation and detection post-operation for infliction of the limited number of casualties actually felled. Therefore logically the needle of suspicion should point elsewhere to include those who could profit politically from the attacks. Such preparation was earlier detected in Nanded should arouse suspicion along this line.
Lastly, reflection on this very question. These blasts could only place terror, its origins and attempt at legitimacy in an ‘action-reaction’ logic irrevocably outside the pale. This would enable treating it as an act of ‘war’ and justify measures modelled on the ‘homeland security’ initiatives elsewhere. Bills on terrorism forwarded by some states, such as Gujarat, are pending President’s assent. Further, national elections are scheduled for next year and polarisation along communal lines may prove of electoral value to any political formation hoping to rely on the majority as a vote bank. The legitimising logic for such circles would be that ends justify the means and saving India by taking it over, through fair means or foul, is in their final analysis for the good of the country and its defining community.
There is therefore scope for expansion of the arc of suspicion beyond the usual confines in the aftermath of terror to include those not in the default lineup. While investigating agencies may like to take this on, it is a fit case for a Tehelka style exposure by intrepid investigative journalists.
Controlling The Men In Shadows
By Firdaus Ahmed
03 March, 2007
Countercurrents.org
That there is a ‘dirty tricks’ department in each state is not a figment of a radical’s imagination. Since such organizations require to be low profile by nature and calling, little evidence surfaces. Counter intuitively, democracies are no exception. Valid suspicion has arisen over the role of respective agencies of the two leading democracies of the world, the US and India, in creating an environment justifying the recourse to military means by the two states in the ‘national interest’.
In the USA, two prominent films have dared to question the media propagated and popularly accepted version of 9-11. These are ‘Loose Change’, that has since become one of the most watched internet documentaries, and Dave vonKleist’s ‘911 In Plane Site’. They have thereby undercut the rationale of export of democracy through military means that the US is currently engaged in. They marshal their evidence to try and prove that the conspiracy behind the attacks is not a theory, but a probability, and the conspiracy has not been one hatched by the Al Qaeda.
They make a persuasive case that the plane that is believed to have hit the Pentagon was actually a missile since there was no wreckage of a plane at the site seen in the pictures and media coverage of the aftermath. Of the plane that could not hit its intended target, the White House, but crashed in a Pensylvania field, there is again no convincing proof of wreckage found at the site. More interestingly, in their version, the planes that crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center were not quite passenger planes. Instead they go on to prove that the buildings were pulled down in a controlled demolition and did not fall as a result of the crashes. Further they cover the efforts at a cover up of the trail by the authorities, adding to suspicion that there was something to hide.
Finding a motive is not difficult from a viewing of subsequent actions of the US. The invasion by the US of Afghanistan and Iraq as part of the Global War on Terror has been critiqued by Chomsky et al as the US bid to control global energy resources and thereby usher in the neo-conservative’s vision of the New American Century. So as to overpower the isolationist streak in the US, those in power needed a Pearl Harbour equivalent attack to rally the nation in support of their intended wars. Now that these have run aground in appalling insurgencies and with Democrats eyeing the White House, more evidence substantiating the suspicion is will likely surface. Internal to the US, many privileges of freedom have been imposed on by homeland protection demands by the state’s security compulsions.
It is reasonable to assume that India is no stranger to the game. The Chattisingpora episode in which Sikhs were massacred in Kashmir has been competently probed by critical observers as Pankaj Mishra. There is also the case of five missing trekkers in Kashmir, abducted and killed by the Al Faran group. That the word ‘Faran’ does not exist in Arabic casts a baleful shadow over the theory of terrorist abduction.
More prominent has been the Parliament attack case. Arundhati Roy’s thirteen questions in a new book published by Penguin, ‘13 December, A Reader: The Strange Case of the Attack on the Indian Parliament’, arguing for clemency for the main accused in the Parliament attack case, Mohammad Afzal, are demanding of answers.
It bears examination as to the extent of political control over the group, its ideological inclination, composition and any checks and balances that exist within and over it. In the absence of information this can only be a theoretical effort. It is known that the National Security Council is the political body at the apex of the national security system. However, it is known that at least two of the Ministers on the Council, the then Foreign and Defence Ministers, were not in the loop on the decision on India going nuclear in 1998. Below this body is the Strategic Policy Group comprising bureaucrats. The members only have positional authority and little expertise on national security, and on this account are unlikely to be ones vested with the powers in question. Clearly the institutional setup is at variance with the reality. Absent the necessary knowledge on the inner workings, an appraisal of the underside of the system is a fair start point.
The anonymous minders of the nation’s security take the ‘hard decisions’. The core of the national security elite forms the ‘inside group’ that arrogates to itself ultimate power, the power to wage war and curtail lives and liberties in the national interest. The rationale is inevitably the larger common good, which the common man is unable to comprehend, and on that account need not be consulted. Those in this club of decision makers have an image of expertise which propels them into the inner circle. However it can be reckoned that their sense of social responsibility, democratic accountability and moral values which is germane to their contribution at this level of decision making, does not figure as criteria for induction into the apex of the system.
It is apparent that such core groups have acquired a vastly expanded power over lives of people and destinies of nations. Given the increasing cooperation between the two democracies including the Joint Working Group on Counter Terrorism and the India-US Defence Policy Group, India is likely to learn from its stronger partner strategies that may prove inappropriate for our part of the world and democratic status. There is therefore, at a minimum, a need to be alert to the possibility of subversion of the state from within, and, more widely, to ascertain if those vested with power without having to account for it have a sustainable ethical grid.
By Firdaus Ahmed
03 March, 2007
Countercurrents.org
That there is a ‘dirty tricks’ department in each state is not a figment of a radical’s imagination. Since such organizations require to be low profile by nature and calling, little evidence surfaces. Counter intuitively, democracies are no exception. Valid suspicion has arisen over the role of respective agencies of the two leading democracies of the world, the US and India, in creating an environment justifying the recourse to military means by the two states in the ‘national interest’.
In the USA, two prominent films have dared to question the media propagated and popularly accepted version of 9-11. These are ‘Loose Change’, that has since become one of the most watched internet documentaries, and Dave vonKleist’s ‘911 In Plane Site’. They have thereby undercut the rationale of export of democracy through military means that the US is currently engaged in. They marshal their evidence to try and prove that the conspiracy behind the attacks is not a theory, but a probability, and the conspiracy has not been one hatched by the Al Qaeda.
They make a persuasive case that the plane that is believed to have hit the Pentagon was actually a missile since there was no wreckage of a plane at the site seen in the pictures and media coverage of the aftermath. Of the plane that could not hit its intended target, the White House, but crashed in a Pensylvania field, there is again no convincing proof of wreckage found at the site. More interestingly, in their version, the planes that crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center were not quite passenger planes. Instead they go on to prove that the buildings were pulled down in a controlled demolition and did not fall as a result of the crashes. Further they cover the efforts at a cover up of the trail by the authorities, adding to suspicion that there was something to hide.
Finding a motive is not difficult from a viewing of subsequent actions of the US. The invasion by the US of Afghanistan and Iraq as part of the Global War on Terror has been critiqued by Chomsky et al as the US bid to control global energy resources and thereby usher in the neo-conservative’s vision of the New American Century. So as to overpower the isolationist streak in the US, those in power needed a Pearl Harbour equivalent attack to rally the nation in support of their intended wars. Now that these have run aground in appalling insurgencies and with Democrats eyeing the White House, more evidence substantiating the suspicion is will likely surface. Internal to the US, many privileges of freedom have been imposed on by homeland protection demands by the state’s security compulsions.
It is reasonable to assume that India is no stranger to the game. The Chattisingpora episode in which Sikhs were massacred in Kashmir has been competently probed by critical observers as Pankaj Mishra. There is also the case of five missing trekkers in Kashmir, abducted and killed by the Al Faran group. That the word ‘Faran’ does not exist in Arabic casts a baleful shadow over the theory of terrorist abduction.
More prominent has been the Parliament attack case. Arundhati Roy’s thirteen questions in a new book published by Penguin, ‘13 December, A Reader: The Strange Case of the Attack on the Indian Parliament’, arguing for clemency for the main accused in the Parliament attack case, Mohammad Afzal, are demanding of answers.
It bears examination as to the extent of political control over the group, its ideological inclination, composition and any checks and balances that exist within and over it. In the absence of information this can only be a theoretical effort. It is known that the National Security Council is the political body at the apex of the national security system. However, it is known that at least two of the Ministers on the Council, the then Foreign and Defence Ministers, were not in the loop on the decision on India going nuclear in 1998. Below this body is the Strategic Policy Group comprising bureaucrats. The members only have positional authority and little expertise on national security, and on this account are unlikely to be ones vested with the powers in question. Clearly the institutional setup is at variance with the reality. Absent the necessary knowledge on the inner workings, an appraisal of the underside of the system is a fair start point.
The anonymous minders of the nation’s security take the ‘hard decisions’. The core of the national security elite forms the ‘inside group’ that arrogates to itself ultimate power, the power to wage war and curtail lives and liberties in the national interest. The rationale is inevitably the larger common good, which the common man is unable to comprehend, and on that account need not be consulted. Those in this club of decision makers have an image of expertise which propels them into the inner circle. However it can be reckoned that their sense of social responsibility, democratic accountability and moral values which is germane to their contribution at this level of decision making, does not figure as criteria for induction into the apex of the system.
It is apparent that such core groups have acquired a vastly expanded power over lives of people and destinies of nations. Given the increasing cooperation between the two democracies including the Joint Working Group on Counter Terrorism and the India-US Defence Policy Group, India is likely to learn from its stronger partner strategies that may prove inappropriate for our part of the world and democratic status. There is therefore, at a minimum, a need to be alert to the possibility of subversion of the state from within, and, more widely, to ascertain if those vested with power without having to account for it have a sustainable ethical grid.
The Minority Perspective On The BJP Manifesto
By Firdaus Ahmed
10 April, 2009
Countercurrents.org
A party’s manifesto is not taken too seriously since the compulsions of power impact the promises in it considerably. In the coalition era, this is even more so. Therefore to assess the BJP’s position on security through its manifesto may be neither fair nor accurate. However, the exercise needs to be done if only to point out that the manifesto in its references to national security shows a remarkable insensitivity to minority concerns.
The very first reference to national security is on the Congress’ ‘abysmal failure to protect citizens from terrorism’. The verdict on counter measures is that ‘this is clearly not enough.’ Understandably the very first section after the Introduction is on national security. In this the first point is on terrorism. Unsurprisingly excluded from the list of terrorist activity in the Congress’ tenure is missing Malegaon. The overall impression is that the major instances of terror have been Muslim perpetrated, culminating in the 26/11 attacks by Pakistani terrorists.
Clearly, this bracketing of all terror instances is untenable as insufficient evidence exists of a minority linkage with the pattern of blasts in major cities last year. Since Malegaon investigations have not progressed adequately and the other possibilities with regard to BAD (Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Delhi) have been buried with the Batla House ‘encounter’. As intended by perpetrators other than the ‘usual suspects’, the trail has not been picked up. A canard thus takes on the status of a truth or ‘common sense’. It bears reflection as to why these attacks have mysteriously stopped since the Malegaon revelations. That the manifesto propagates the error as a given is explicable in light of the ideological orientation of the party. Having deliberately misperceived the problem, the solution can only be persistence in error.
The manifesto is keen that Afzal Guru hang. That this has not already happened, despite the strong incentive for the Congress to have wanted to profit from the action, indicates there is more to the Parliament attack case than meets the eye. Afzal Guru is perhaps an innocuous victim of a larger conspiracy which in media reports spread to the considerably autonomous ‘dirty tricks’ department of J&K police. Since invoking national security can help legitimize anything, one Indian less in keeping its secrets secure is really no big deal. That Afzal Guru lives bespeaks of substance to the book ’13 December: The strange case of the attack on the Indian Parliament’.
Illegal immigrants are seen as the unwitting foot soldiers of terror with their ‘vulnerability…exploited by the ISI and its jihadi front organisations as well as local terror cells to carry out bombings and provide logistical support to foreign terrorists (italics added).’ Securitisation of the problem of economic migration as an ‘internal security’ issue helps focus attention on the need for their eviction. Its yet another handle on the minority since the party intends to in ‘Launch a massive programme to detect, detain and deport illegal immigrants’ in its very first hundred days.
There is an element that has been missed in reflection on this issue thus far. It is the possibility of such a targeted drive arousing Bengali nationalism. Nationalism is multi dimensional with one or other identity facet coming to the fore. The break up of Pakistan in which religion was trumped by ethnicity is an example. The Bengali ethnic group is the largest on the subcontinent. Presently it is divided on lines of religion. It would be prudent to preserve the status quo from point of view of Hindu nationalism. That this possibility has not entered the discourse points to the religion tainted limitation of cultural nationalism.
More disturbing is that reference to a reversion to 2002, despite its lesson. The Manifesto states: ‘Coercive measures, including diplomacy, will be used to deal with countries which promote cross-border terrorism.’ This is accentuated in the linkage drawn between the global war on terror and internal security in its very next sentence: ‘India will engage with the world in the global war on terror while not compromising on its domestic interests, primarily protecting citizens from the ravages of terrorism.’ This portends a more proactive engagement with GWOT as it unfolds with greater potential for violence in wake of the Riedel-Holbrooke-Petraeus ‘Af-Pak’ strategy recently unveiled by President Obama. The contrived linkage with India’s internal security makes for a continuing overhang over India’s largest minority.
That peace would continue to prove elusive with Pakistan is a given if the manifesto were to guide its actions when in power. It maintains that, ‘There can be no ‘comprehensive dialogue’ for peace unless Pakistan…hands over to India individuals wanted for committing crimes on Indian soil.’ This eminently avoidable condition gives out the agenda of using Pakistan as the threatening other to deepen the roots of the BJP’s brand of majoritarian nationalism.
Security issues comprise the first 17 pages. Other issues are also given the by now mandatory ‘security’ tinge such as ‘food security’, ‘social security’ or ‘energy security’. The civilian led militarization of mother India is virtually complete.
In saying that ‘the BJP repudiates the division of Indian society along communal lines which has been fostered by the Congress and the Left in pursuit of their vote-bank politics’, the BJP attempts to obfuscate it’s resort to and greater success at the same game in attempting to make the denominational majority its vote bank. It has contradicted itself in stating that, ‘categorisation of communities as ‘minorities’ perpetuates notions of imagined discrimination and victimhood; it reinforces the perception of the ‘minority’ identity as separate from the national identity’ in a section title ‘Minority Communities’. This slip indicates that the defining reality of India is its being a symphony of minorities along differing dimensions. Forging of majorities therefore should not, and hopefully cannot, be on lines of religion as the BJP seeks. Its effort in this direction is laid bare from the last section of the manifesto detailing measures for ‘Preserving our Cultural Heritage’.
The manifesto indicates that secularism continues as an embattled concept. Giving secularism a fresh lease of life requires a judicious and informed exercise of the vote.
By Firdaus Ahmed
10 April, 2009
Countercurrents.org
A party’s manifesto is not taken too seriously since the compulsions of power impact the promises in it considerably. In the coalition era, this is even more so. Therefore to assess the BJP’s position on security through its manifesto may be neither fair nor accurate. However, the exercise needs to be done if only to point out that the manifesto in its references to national security shows a remarkable insensitivity to minority concerns.
The very first reference to national security is on the Congress’ ‘abysmal failure to protect citizens from terrorism’. The verdict on counter measures is that ‘this is clearly not enough.’ Understandably the very first section after the Introduction is on national security. In this the first point is on terrorism. Unsurprisingly excluded from the list of terrorist activity in the Congress’ tenure is missing Malegaon. The overall impression is that the major instances of terror have been Muslim perpetrated, culminating in the 26/11 attacks by Pakistani terrorists.
Clearly, this bracketing of all terror instances is untenable as insufficient evidence exists of a minority linkage with the pattern of blasts in major cities last year. Since Malegaon investigations have not progressed adequately and the other possibilities with regard to BAD (Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Delhi) have been buried with the Batla House ‘encounter’. As intended by perpetrators other than the ‘usual suspects’, the trail has not been picked up. A canard thus takes on the status of a truth or ‘common sense’. It bears reflection as to why these attacks have mysteriously stopped since the Malegaon revelations. That the manifesto propagates the error as a given is explicable in light of the ideological orientation of the party. Having deliberately misperceived the problem, the solution can only be persistence in error.
The manifesto is keen that Afzal Guru hang. That this has not already happened, despite the strong incentive for the Congress to have wanted to profit from the action, indicates there is more to the Parliament attack case than meets the eye. Afzal Guru is perhaps an innocuous victim of a larger conspiracy which in media reports spread to the considerably autonomous ‘dirty tricks’ department of J&K police. Since invoking national security can help legitimize anything, one Indian less in keeping its secrets secure is really no big deal. That Afzal Guru lives bespeaks of substance to the book ’13 December: The strange case of the attack on the Indian Parliament’.
Illegal immigrants are seen as the unwitting foot soldiers of terror with their ‘vulnerability…exploited by the ISI and its jihadi front organisations as well as local terror cells to carry out bombings and provide logistical support to foreign terrorists (italics added).’ Securitisation of the problem of economic migration as an ‘internal security’ issue helps focus attention on the need for their eviction. Its yet another handle on the minority since the party intends to in ‘Launch a massive programme to detect, detain and deport illegal immigrants’ in its very first hundred days.
There is an element that has been missed in reflection on this issue thus far. It is the possibility of such a targeted drive arousing Bengali nationalism. Nationalism is multi dimensional with one or other identity facet coming to the fore. The break up of Pakistan in which religion was trumped by ethnicity is an example. The Bengali ethnic group is the largest on the subcontinent. Presently it is divided on lines of religion. It would be prudent to preserve the status quo from point of view of Hindu nationalism. That this possibility has not entered the discourse points to the religion tainted limitation of cultural nationalism.
More disturbing is that reference to a reversion to 2002, despite its lesson. The Manifesto states: ‘Coercive measures, including diplomacy, will be used to deal with countries which promote cross-border terrorism.’ This is accentuated in the linkage drawn between the global war on terror and internal security in its very next sentence: ‘India will engage with the world in the global war on terror while not compromising on its domestic interests, primarily protecting citizens from the ravages of terrorism.’ This portends a more proactive engagement with GWOT as it unfolds with greater potential for violence in wake of the Riedel-Holbrooke-Petraeus ‘Af-Pak’ strategy recently unveiled by President Obama. The contrived linkage with India’s internal security makes for a continuing overhang over India’s largest minority.
That peace would continue to prove elusive with Pakistan is a given if the manifesto were to guide its actions when in power. It maintains that, ‘There can be no ‘comprehensive dialogue’ for peace unless Pakistan…hands over to India individuals wanted for committing crimes on Indian soil.’ This eminently avoidable condition gives out the agenda of using Pakistan as the threatening other to deepen the roots of the BJP’s brand of majoritarian nationalism.
Security issues comprise the first 17 pages. Other issues are also given the by now mandatory ‘security’ tinge such as ‘food security’, ‘social security’ or ‘energy security’. The civilian led militarization of mother India is virtually complete.
In saying that ‘the BJP repudiates the division of Indian society along communal lines which has been fostered by the Congress and the Left in pursuit of their vote-bank politics’, the BJP attempts to obfuscate it’s resort to and greater success at the same game in attempting to make the denominational majority its vote bank. It has contradicted itself in stating that, ‘categorisation of communities as ‘minorities’ perpetuates notions of imagined discrimination and victimhood; it reinforces the perception of the ‘minority’ identity as separate from the national identity’ in a section title ‘Minority Communities’. This slip indicates that the defining reality of India is its being a symphony of minorities along differing dimensions. Forging of majorities therefore should not, and hopefully cannot, be on lines of religion as the BJP seeks. Its effort in this direction is laid bare from the last section of the manifesto detailing measures for ‘Preserving our Cultural Heritage’.
The manifesto indicates that secularism continues as an embattled concept. Giving secularism a fresh lease of life requires a judicious and informed exercise of the vote.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Looking at China, missing Pakistan New developments in India's nuclear posture vis-a-vis China inevitably impact the Pakistani nuclear program as well. We must recognise this implicit risk in our attempts at military parity with China, writes Firdaus Ahmed. - India's Army Chief commented recently that vertical proliferation by Pakistan was a 'matter of concern'. In the zero-sum game that constitutes India-Pakistan relations, cornering Pakistan in any manner makes sense. Therefore, General Kapoor's negative view of Pakistan's expanding nuclear arsenal is understandable. But upon reflection, it should be clear that the increase in number of nuclear warheads, and the reported shift to plutonium-based weapons should not be a worry - at least for the moment.
The US Congressional Research Service report of 15 May 2009 has brought out that despite having an assessed 60 weapons, "Pakistan continues fissile material production for weapons, and is adding to its weapons production facilities and delivery vehicles". This has been explained as Pakistan's attempt at creating a second strike capability. If this contributes to nuclear stability by enhancing its deterrence against India, it may be a benign development. However, when taken in conjunction with India's own weaponisation, this could equally herald a nuclear arms race.
see for article - http://www.indiatogether.org/2009/jun/fah-trinuke.htm
International treaties
The FMCT and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) are back on the US agenda. President Obama, in his famous Prague speech of April this year, has even unfolded an ambitious disarmament agenda. Presently India is skeptical of these initiatives. It is not known whether India has managed to create the amount of fissile material necessary for the magic figure of warheads considered necessary. There would be thrust to keep the pressure off as long as possible so that India could create the necessary stocks to last it into the indefinite future.
India has promised to participate in the FMCT negotiations and would consider signing on to the CTBT - as indeed it once had seriously done in the late nineties before the treaty was up turned by the US Senate. Since neither of these would transpire any time soon, and the disarmament agenda having been already ruled out by Obama as unlikely in his lifetime, India is not pressured. The stocks created in the interim would be enough for its purposes of being reckoned as a power in league with China. The same logic applies to Pakistan, since it has declared it would follow India into the CTBT, FMCT and improbably indeed also into the Non-Proliferation Treaty!
With India focused on parity with China, the likelihood of an arms race with Pakistan receives less attention. But the nuclear dimension of the India-Pakistan dyad will likely spring a nasty surprise one day, in case any of the crises the two states periodically undergo turns into conflict. For citizens, the safest best would be pressuring the government towards championing the three treaties coming up for discussion in the international domain even while it opens up a meaningful strategic dialogue with Pakistan. This would combine India's current power status with the moral weight of the Nehruvian years at both the international and regional levels - a Great Power alright but with a difference. ⊕
Firdaus Ahmed 20 Jun 2009
The US Congressional Research Service report of 15 May 2009 has brought out that despite having an assessed 60 weapons, "Pakistan continues fissile material production for weapons, and is adding to its weapons production facilities and delivery vehicles". This has been explained as Pakistan's attempt at creating a second strike capability. If this contributes to nuclear stability by enhancing its deterrence against India, it may be a benign development. However, when taken in conjunction with India's own weaponisation, this could equally herald a nuclear arms race.
see for article - http://www.indiatogether.org/2009/jun/fah-trinuke.htm
International treaties
The FMCT and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) are back on the US agenda. President Obama, in his famous Prague speech of April this year, has even unfolded an ambitious disarmament agenda. Presently India is skeptical of these initiatives. It is not known whether India has managed to create the amount of fissile material necessary for the magic figure of warheads considered necessary. There would be thrust to keep the pressure off as long as possible so that India could create the necessary stocks to last it into the indefinite future.
India has promised to participate in the FMCT negotiations and would consider signing on to the CTBT - as indeed it once had seriously done in the late nineties before the treaty was up turned by the US Senate. Since neither of these would transpire any time soon, and the disarmament agenda having been already ruled out by Obama as unlikely in his lifetime, India is not pressured. The stocks created in the interim would be enough for its purposes of being reckoned as a power in league with China. The same logic applies to Pakistan, since it has declared it would follow India into the CTBT, FMCT and improbably indeed also into the Non-Proliferation Treaty!
With India focused on parity with China, the likelihood of an arms race with Pakistan receives less attention. But the nuclear dimension of the India-Pakistan dyad will likely spring a nasty surprise one day, in case any of the crises the two states periodically undergo turns into conflict. For citizens, the safest best would be pressuring the government towards championing the three treaties coming up for discussion in the international domain even while it opens up a meaningful strategic dialogue with Pakistan. This would combine India's current power status with the moral weight of the Nehruvian years at both the international and regional levels - a Great Power alright but with a difference. ⊕
Firdaus Ahmed 20 Jun 2009
Inward lens for incoming government The buzz on the global front should not distract us from pressing matters at home. This would also make our security agenda more human and less state-centric, writes Firdaus Ahmed. One can be forgiven for thinking we're in 1909, rather than 2009. Emerging powers, anticipatory alliances, a scramble for colonies, terrorism, arms races, a belief in short wars, a cult of the offensive, speedy mobilisation schedules, militarism, all awaiting the proverbial spark. Minus the grand scale of the run up to the Great War, there are similar ingredients in the current setting: the global war on terror accelerates, emerging powers India and China seek strategic space, recession continues, the footprint of terror remains, nuclear weaponisation and unrecognised arms races continue, and military thinking on quick-start and short wars is dominant. What makes the comparison even tidier is the short fuse to all this tinder.
The buzz on the global front - and the many threats attendant to it - should not, however, distract us from matters that need pressing attention within the country. On most 'international' issues India is only an observer. This is also true for the events in the immediate periphery including the portentous and lamentable happenings in Sri Lanka. Therefore, it would only be prudent to acknowledge the fires burning within the borders.
The next government
The agenda of the incoming Indian government will depend on its complexion and composition. If it is of the centre-right, it will be outward oriented, and if of the centre-left, inward focussed. That much seems certain. This bias will in turn determine the approach to the various raging and incipient problems. But there is no escaping both dimensions of security - internal and external - regardless of who takes the reins of power. Not only would the government have to tackle the growing left wing insurgency internally, but also engage with the expanding instability in Afghanistan-Pakistan, among other demanding concerns.
Liberalisation has buoyed west and south India, but wide swathes of the rest remain untended.
See for balance article - http://www.indiatogether.org/2009/may/fah-intfocus.htm
One other issue of internal-external dimension is that of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. The BJP manifesto promises 'Launch a massive programme to detect, detain and deport illegal immigrants' within a hundred days of coming to power. Clearly here is an explosive issue requiring application of thinkers outside of the narrow confines of the security establishment, to include media minders, Bengali intelligentsia and civil societies in effected states.
The other security issues are eminently in the domain of the internal, in particular left wing extremism. The latest multi-crore recruiting scam to surface from the cow-dust belt - on the recruitment for the COBRA (Commando Battalions for Resolute Action) battalions in specialised counter insurgency tasks in central India - indicates the flaws in the anti Naxal strategy. The dimensions of the scam, which has been going on since 2003, are still being unearthed. What is already clear is that the main force, the CRPF, designated for internal security tasks by the N N Vohra-led Task Force on Internal Security and approved by the Group of Ministers now stands compromised. The products of a corrupt system cannot be expected to take 'resolute action', but only to intrude on freedoms.
This has equal implications for the North East as well, where vulnerable and equally marginal communities are subject to incessant counter insurgency tactics of population control measures of state security agencies.
A singular focus on a developmental agenda for the Central as well as the North-eastern regions would help avert their future snowballing. Liberalisation has buoyed west and south India, but wide swathes of the rest remain untended. Developing these regions would alleviate India's Human Development Index standing of 132, given that theoretically insurgencies originate in a combination of two factors: lack of development and identity. Their sustenance in part by external intervention is not reason enough for treating them on par with genuine external issues by characterising them as proxy wars.
A greater focus on internal security issues would also likely have the effect of moving to a human security agenda instead of a state-centric one. This transition will not be easy, but there isn't any alternative, in the long run, and for this reason, even a right-of-centre government would need to engage with this reality at some point. Over the past decade, 'India Shining' has only given way to 'Jai Ho'. Electoral democracy is not enough; the masses need to be heard too in a democracy of substance. ⊕
12 May 2009
The buzz on the global front - and the many threats attendant to it - should not, however, distract us from matters that need pressing attention within the country. On most 'international' issues India is only an observer. This is also true for the events in the immediate periphery including the portentous and lamentable happenings in Sri Lanka. Therefore, it would only be prudent to acknowledge the fires burning within the borders.
The next government
The agenda of the incoming Indian government will depend on its complexion and composition. If it is of the centre-right, it will be outward oriented, and if of the centre-left, inward focussed. That much seems certain. This bias will in turn determine the approach to the various raging and incipient problems. But there is no escaping both dimensions of security - internal and external - regardless of who takes the reins of power. Not only would the government have to tackle the growing left wing insurgency internally, but also engage with the expanding instability in Afghanistan-Pakistan, among other demanding concerns.
Liberalisation has buoyed west and south India, but wide swathes of the rest remain untended.
See for balance article - http://www.indiatogether.org/2009/may/fah-intfocus.htm
One other issue of internal-external dimension is that of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. The BJP manifesto promises 'Launch a massive programme to detect, detain and deport illegal immigrants' within a hundred days of coming to power. Clearly here is an explosive issue requiring application of thinkers outside of the narrow confines of the security establishment, to include media minders, Bengali intelligentsia and civil societies in effected states.
The other security issues are eminently in the domain of the internal, in particular left wing extremism. The latest multi-crore recruiting scam to surface from the cow-dust belt - on the recruitment for the COBRA (Commando Battalions for Resolute Action) battalions in specialised counter insurgency tasks in central India - indicates the flaws in the anti Naxal strategy. The dimensions of the scam, which has been going on since 2003, are still being unearthed. What is already clear is that the main force, the CRPF, designated for internal security tasks by the N N Vohra-led Task Force on Internal Security and approved by the Group of Ministers now stands compromised. The products of a corrupt system cannot be expected to take 'resolute action', but only to intrude on freedoms.
This has equal implications for the North East as well, where vulnerable and equally marginal communities are subject to incessant counter insurgency tactics of population control measures of state security agencies.
A singular focus on a developmental agenda for the Central as well as the North-eastern regions would help avert their future snowballing. Liberalisation has buoyed west and south India, but wide swathes of the rest remain untended. Developing these regions would alleviate India's Human Development Index standing of 132, given that theoretically insurgencies originate in a combination of two factors: lack of development and identity. Their sustenance in part by external intervention is not reason enough for treating them on par with genuine external issues by characterising them as proxy wars.
A greater focus on internal security issues would also likely have the effect of moving to a human security agenda instead of a state-centric one. This transition will not be easy, but there isn't any alternative, in the long run, and for this reason, even a right-of-centre government would need to engage with this reality at some point. Over the past decade, 'India Shining' has only given way to 'Jai Ho'. Electoral democracy is not enough; the masses need to be heard too in a democracy of substance. ⊕
12 May 2009
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