Geopolitics

Pakistan: The Same Old Story - II
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By B Raman
Issue Book Excerpt: Mumbai 26/11 | Date : 14 Apr , 2011

He was also acting as the cut-out of Dawood Ibrahim for funding terrorist attacks in India and of Al Qaeda for using Pakistani jihadi cells in India for its operations.

Thus, during his career, Arif Qasmani had helped the LeT, the ISI, the TTP and the US State Department. He had helped the LeT in its operations in India. He had helped the ISI by acting as its cut-out with the LeT in order to maintain the deniability of the ISI’s use of the LeT against India. He had helped the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) in its operations against the Pakistan Army and the ISI. He had helped the US State Department by acting as an intermediary between it and the so-called good Taliban. He was also acting as the cut-out of Dawood Ibrahim for funding terrorist attacks in India and of Al Qaeda for using Pakistani jihadi cells in India for its operations. He was also associated with Khalid Khawaja, a retired officer of the Pakistan Air Force who had served in the ISI. Khawaja’s name first cropped up during the investigation into the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, the journalist of the Wall Street Journal, at Karachi in January–February, 2002. Information regarding his role in the Pearl’s case had alleged that it was he who had told the kidnappers that Pearl was Jewish.

It is surprising that a man with such a controversial background should be moving in and out of informal custody in Pakistan since August 2005 and at the same time assisting the LeT, Al Qaeda and the Taliban in their terrorist strikes, including the Mumbai attack of July, 2006, and the blast of February, 2007, in the Samjotha Express without ever being prosecuted under Pakistan’s Anti-Terrorism Act. The State Department had known about him at least since 2005, if not earlier. Why has it acted against him only in June, 2009?

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Why such lack of promptness in acting against the LeT? Even though the US and the European nations are increasingly concerned over the links of the LeT with Al Qaeda, its capability for acts of terrorism, which is second only to that of Al Qaeda and the presence of its sleeper cells among the Pakistani-origin Diaspora in many countries, they still look upon it as a looming and not an imminent threat to their nationals and interests. For them, the imminent threat is from Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Their present efforts are focused on making Pakistan act against the imminent threats while exercising only proforma pressure — to reassure India of their solidarity — on Pakistan to act against the LeT. As a result, Pakistan’s inaction against the LeT tends to be overlooked by the West so long as it is acting against the Taliban and helping the US in its actions against Al Qaeda.

One of the lessons of the post-World War history of State-Sponsored terrorism is that it never ends unless the guilty state is made to pay a prohibitive price.

Thus, India finds itself in an unenviable position. It is not in a position to make the US and the rest of the Western world act against Pakistan for its inaction against the LeT. At the same time, it is not in a position to act by itself because it has denied to itself a deniable retaliatory capability ever since the fatal decision taken by Inder Gujral, the then Prime Minister, in 1997 to wind up any retaliatory capability as a mark of unilateral gesture to Pakistan — despite remonstrations by senior officers of our security bureaucracy that Pakistan has never been known to appreciate and reciprocate such unilateral gestures. The Pakistani leaders — political or military — know the constraints on India and are taking full advantage of them to persist with their present policy of seeming to act against the LeT without actually acting against it.

The original mistake was committed by Gujral, AB Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh, who followed him, could have reversed it, but they chose not to lest they have problems in our relationship with the US.

One of the major problems faced by us in dealing with the LeT’s acts of terrorism in different parts of the country has been due to the failure of our political leadership and the Ministry of External Affairs to make it clear to the world through facts and figures — and not through rhetoric — that the LeT’s acts have a much larger agenda and have no longer much to do with the Kashmir issue. Unfortunately, Pakistan has once again almost succeeded in making the US and the UK look at the LeT activities and at 26/11 through the Kashmir prism.

The Mumbai terrorist strike — the attacks on Israelis and other Jewish people, the targeted killings of nationals of countries having troops in Afghanistan, attacks on Western businessmen, etc — clearly illustrated the global agenda of the LeT, but our political leadership and diplomacy failed to clearly draw attention to its much larger agenda. As a result, we are once again seeing references to the so-called linkages between the Kashmir issue and the LeT’s acts of terrorism. Pakistan has profited from our inaction or inept action.

Unfortunately, there has been no political will in India to make Pakistan and Bangladesh pay a heavy price for their sponsorship of terrorism against India.

We still do not have a coherent policy to deal with Pakistan, which has been a State-sponsor of terrorism in Indian territory and with Bangladesh which acts as a facilitator. Our approach to Pakistan’s sponsorship continues to be marked by the “kabhi garam, kabhi naram” (sometimes hard, sometimes soft) syndrome. One of the reasons why Indira Gandhi decided to support the independence movement in the then East Pakistan was because the ISI was giving sanctuaries to the terrorists and insurgents in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT).The creation of Bangladesh ended this sponsorship in 1971, but it was revived by the intelligence agencies of Pakistan and Bangladesh after the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rehman in 1975. We are still struggling to cope with it.

One of the lessons of the post-World War history of State-Sponsored terrorism is that it never ends unless the guilty state is made to pay a prohibitive price. STASI, the East German intelligence service, was behind much of the ideological terrorism in West Europe. The collapse of communism in East Germany and the end of STASI brought an end to this terrorism. The intelligence services of Libya and Syria were behind much of the West Asian terrorism and the Carlos group, then living in Damascus, played a role in helping ideological groups in West Europe. The US bombing of Libya in 1986, the strong US action against Syria, which was declared a State-sponsor of terrorism and against Sudan, where Carlos shifted from Damascus, and the prosecution and jailing, under US pressure, of two Libyan intelligence officers for their complicity in the bombing of a Pan Am plane off Lockerbie on the Irish coast in 1988 brought an end to state-sponsorship of terrorism by Libya and Sudan. Syria has stopped sponsoring terrorism against the US, but continues to do so against Israel.

There are any number of UN resolutions and international declarations declaring state-sponsored terrorism as amounting to indirect aggression against the victim state. Unfortunately, there has been no political will in India to make Pakistan and Bangladesh pay a heavy price for their sponsorship of terrorism against India. Once a firm decision based on a national consensus is taken that the time has come to make Pakistan and Bangladesh pay a price, the question as to which organization should do it and how will be sorted out. The problem is not that we don’t have an appropriate organization, but we don’t have the will to act against Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Mumbai_26_11_CoverWe must take action instead of depending on the US or other members of the international community to do so. Every country is interested in protecting the lives and property of only its own citizens. This is natural. It is the responsibility of the Government of India and the States to protect the lives and property of our nationals.

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The views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions or policies of the Indian Defence Review.

About the Author

B Raman

Former, Director, Institute for Topical Studies, Chennai & Additional Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat. He is the author of The Kaoboys of R&AW, A Terrorist State as a Frontline Ally,  INTELLIGENCE, PAST, PRESENT & FUTUREMumbai 26/11: A Day of Infamy and Terrorism: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.

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