Brahma Chellaney
Have
you noticed that the government of late is shying away from any
discussion on how to tackle cross-border terrorism. It is not
that the scourge has disappeared or even lessened as a security
problem. Terrorists trained, armed and sent across the border
by the Pakistani establishment continue to murder, maim and menace
the innocent. It is not if but when the next major terrorist attack
on a high-value Indian target would occur.
Have you also noted that India’s
terrorism problem is presently on the margins of the global war
on terror. In fact, India’s fight against terror is barely
acknowledged, with any terrorist attack in India being linked
to the Indo-Pakistan conflict than to terrorism. Indonesia and
the Philippines appear internationally to be bigger victims of
terror than India, a country that has lost tens of thousands of
citizens to terrorism.
And have you observed a subtle but
important US policy shift vis-à-vis India. Washington no
longer insists, as it did until the past summer, that Pakistan
‘permanently’ and ‘verifiably’ end cross-border
terrorism to facilitate consequential dialogue with India. Rather,
in a reversal of position, it now calls for ‘simultaneity’
-- India opening dialogue with Islamabad as America ‘in
parallel’ seeks to persuade its client regime there to cease
the export of terror.
India’s
declining international profile on the issue of terrorism, and
its own reluctance to discuss its remaining options vis-à-vis
Pakistan, reflect the disarray in its policy after it decided
to re-deploy military forces without achieving the objectives
for which they had been sent to the frontline. India’s Pakistan
policy today appears clueless and directionless despite General
Pervez Musharraf’s mounting political problems at home.
The 10-month long troop mobilization
‘ the longest ever by India in peacetime or in war, did
not achieve any primary objective. Mounting a full military threat
without having the political will to carry it through can only
be at the cost of one’s credibility at home and abroad.
India is still tallying the costs of Operation Parakram.
The mobilization helped realize only
secondary objectives. The most noteworthy was the change in the
international discourse. The US, the European Union and the Group
of Eight began openly acknowledging Pakistan’s export of
terror to India and urging Islamabad to put a ‘permanent
stop to terrorist activity’ and to clamp down on ‘cross-border
terrorism’, a term previously used only by New Delhi. While
India had reason to be pleased, it also became aware of the limits
of what could accrue to it as tangible security benefit from the
changed discourse. But no sooner India stopped brandishing the
threat of war than the international pressure on Pakistan eased
and a demand started being placed on India to open dialogue.
The demand that India open dialogue
with a recalcitrant sponsor of terror adds insult to injury. India
is too genial a nation and its officials are too polite to speak
bluntly like those who come to New Delhi hawking various wares.
Contrast the Indian caginess to call a spade a spade with Russian
President Vladimir Putin’s statement that he saw as ‘accomplices
of terrorists’ those urging him to sit down at the negotiating
table with Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov and that if they believed
in what they said, they should ‘enter into talks with Bin
Laden or Mullah Omar’. Putin draws international respect
precisely because he is not a wimp.
India’s problem is not only
that it relies too heavily on the US for help against cross-border
terrorism but also that it goes by the word of officials who are
outside President George W. Bush’s inner decision-making
team. That is the reason why India got suckered twice this year,
once in January and then post-Kaluchak, as is the belief at the
highest official level.
Whatever the top decision-makers
may feign or justify in public, they are sulking over being let
down and are deeply conscious that their avowed goals are nowhere
near realization. Obviously, the mobilization was not carried
out to hold a state election in Jammu and Kashmir, in what turned
out to be a blood-soaked poll process that left 800 people dead
and brought to power a politician who nearly 13 years earlier
had acted as a catalyst to the rise of a full-blown Kashmir insurgency
by trading five jailed terrorists for his abducted daughter’s
freedom.
US
policy, having secured Pakistani cooperation on Afghanistan, has
focused on propping up the Musharraf regime. In this situation,
Washington has been reluctant to hold Musharraf to his January
12 and June 6 pledges despite being fully aware of the continuing
flow of terror to India. As recently as November 14, the Washington
Times quoted a senior US official as saying that cross-border
infiltration ‘has increased in recent weeks’.
‘The problem in Kashmir,’
as US Ambassador Robert Blackwill has pithily put it, ‘is
cross-border terrorism. It’s virtually now, in my judgment,
entirely externally driven.’ Operation Parakram compelled
Musharraf to acknowledge Pakistan’s ties with terrorism
and to demonstrate that when he wants, he is able to exercise
control over terrorist elements. Cross-border terrorism dropped
sharply, even if only for a few weeks, when Musharraf made anti-terror
promises to avert an Indian military attack in January and June.
Operation
Parakram, however, failed to persuade Musharraf to lift his hand
from the spigot of terrorism and stop regulating its flow to India.
As The New York Times reported on September 20 after
interviewing three State-funded Pakistani militant organizations,
Musharraf’s regime had by late July allowed these groups
to resume cross-border infiltrations.
A
question to consider is whether India was duped by those it banked
on or got taken in by its own naivety, an enduring characteristic
of Indian foreign policy since Independence? Did India voluntarily
and eagerly walk up the garden path, or was it led up the garden
path by Musharraf’s main backer in Washington, Colin Powell,
and the latter’s deputy and best friend, Richard Armitage?
Powell’s sense of isolation in the Bush cabinet has been
so acute that, according to Bob Woodward’s new book, Bush
At War, he began seeking private time with the president
this year in an effort to bond. Today, those who come from Washington
peddling dialogue are officials whose names Bush may not even
know or remember.
India has to grow up as a Nation-State.
US policy-makers are not paid to look after India’s concerns.
Consistency and reliability, in any case, have never been virtues
in US foreign policy. Contrast the way Iraq’s links with
terror and weapons of mass destruction are being exaggerated by
Washington even as it downplays or hides from public view Pakistan’s
more patent and irrefutable terrorist and proliferation activities,
including covert nuclear and missile collaboration with North
Korea and China. But when the US is able to manage India’s
conduct through diplomatic means, why would it respect its concerns?
Indian
decision-makers should first stop running to the Americans every
time there is a major terrorist attack in this country. Second,
India should never do deals with terrorists or even negotiate
with terrorist groups. Had the Moscow theatre siege happened in
India, the terrorists would have won. Third, India should evolve
a resolute punitive strategy against terrorists and their sponsors.
The ambassador of a country that routinely avenges terrorist attacks
pointed out that India has never once retaliated. India has to
come of age.
The
writer is a well known Indian writer and analyst on security affairs
and is a known hawk. Courtesy
Hindustan Times
