Has terrorist Pakistan outwitted India?

Has Pakistan Outwitted India?

By Madhur Singh/New Delhi,  Jan. 07, 2009

Despite its outrage over last November’s Mumbai terror attacks that originated in Pakistan, India has been restrained in its response. Fears that the fallout from the massacre could spark a military confrontation between the hostile, nuclear-armed neighbors proved unfounded, and even India’s diplomatic efforts to shame and pressure Pakistan to act against militants operating from its soil have been viewed in India as timid and incoherent. Six weeks after the attacks, the issue has been bumped off the global diplomatic agenda by the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation in Gaza, and India’s options are shrinking. In the eyes of many in India, who take a dim view of Islamabad’s handling of cross-border terrorism, the game is going in Pakistan’s favor.

Within days of the attack, on December 1, India served two demarches — diplo-speak for a formal request for another country to act — demanding that Pakistan hand over suspects wanted in connection with the Mumbai raid and other crimes in India, and also that the Pakistani authorities dismantle terrorist organizations operating from its soil. Yet it has not resorted to other common tactics of diplomatic pressure such as recalling its own High Commissioner to Islamabad, taking trade measures, denying over-flight rights and so on. “There are a host of economic, political and diplomatic options short of war,” says security analyst Brahma Chellaney, “The government of India did not use any of those, and now its options are dwindling and anything it does only brings diminishing returns.” (See pictures of the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks)

India initially proceeded with caution, aware that a confrontation with Pakistan would advance the agenda of the militants without necessarily achieving much progress in countering terrorism in the region. Nor could the U.S. be expected to support India in any escalation. But having achieved only limited cooperation from Pakistan, New Delhi appears to be making a belated effort to press for more: On Monday, India summoned the Pakistani High Commissioner to New Delhi and handed him a dossier containing what it says is compelling evidence that Pakistani “elements” were involved in the attacks. At the same time, Indian foreign ministry officials began briefing foreign diplomats on the contents of the dossier. But the new initiative appears unlikely to prompt any change of direction on Pakistan’s part. A day after receiving the dossier, said to contain transcripts of the interrogation of Kasab, as well as of cell phone conversations conducted by the attackers in the course of their massacre, and other data from their phones. Islamabad coolly dismissed its significance, saying it contained no credible evidence.

Pakistan’s rebuff left India reiterating, through Defence Minister A.K. Antony, that it was “examining all possible available options”. But many analysts believe that the window of opportunity for military action in response to Mumbai has long been closed, and that by issuing empty threats, India is simply reducing its own credibility. “The military option, if it had to be used, would’ve been used within the first week of the attacks,” says Dipankar Banerjee, director of the New Delhi-based Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, “But India decided — correctly — that that option would have been counter-productive.” Banerjee, like many other analysts, says a military offensive early on would have been difficult to back up as India had no actionable evidence of Pakistani involvement at that stage.

“Even the option of surgical strikes to take out cells is over-hyped — India has no such precise intelligence to strike at clear, specific targets,” Banerjee says, “And if there were any collateral damage, Pakistan would paint itself as the victim.”

India’s latest diplomatic gambit appears to be based on the expectation of support from the U.S., which had urged restraint in response to the Mumbai terror. Home Minister P. Chidambaram intends to visit Washington soon with a copy of the dossier of evidence. The U.S. has certainly been quietly pressing Pakistan, via a steady stream of envoys to Islamabad, to act against militants on its territory. “But no country will fight your battle for you,” says Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research, “Just see the contrast between India’s response to Mumbai and Israel’s in Gaza.”

G. Parthasarathy, a former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan, adds, “We must remember that the U.S. is itself heavily dependent on Pakistan for logistics in Afghanistan. And if India really has evidence to link the ISI [Pakistan's military intelligence service] to the Mumbai attacks, the U.S. will not help us go down that path at all.” Parthasarathy, like many Indian security analysts, believes the U.S. continues to see the ISI and the Pakistani military as part of the solution rather than as part of the problem. The Lashkar-e-Toiba, the main jihadist outfit blamed by India for the Mumbai terror, was originally created with the help of the ISI to fight India in Kashmir, and many security experts believe it retains a degree of official patronage. Moreover, as the failed attempt by the current Pakistani government to bring the ISI under its control earlier this year demonstrated, the Pakistani intelligence agency remains virtually a law unto itself as long as the military holds a strong sway over the civilian government in Pakistan.

Many Indians had hoped the Mumbai attacks would have provided a tipping point in India’s — and the West’s — tolerance for Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. But until now, even India’s modest demands that suspects be extradited to India and terrorist infrastructure on Pakistani soil be dismantled might go unmet, despite the Pakistani authorities moves to close down some groups in response to a U.N. Security Council ruling. “Terrorist infrastructure will remain, there will be more attacks, history will keep repeating itself,” says Chellaney, “Soon we will return to the familiar cycle.”

If we were in Pakistan, our options for professional courses

If we were in Pakistan, our options for professional courses after Std. XII would be as follows :

JEE – Jehadic Entrance Examination

IIT – Islamic Institute of Terrorism

IIM – Institute of Infiltration Management

CAT – Career in Alqaida & Taliban

IAS – Iraq after Saddam

M Tech – Masters in Terror Technology

GATE – General Aptitude in Terror and Extremism

TOEFL – Test of Extremist Foreign Languages

GRE – Graduate in Relocation Extremism

MBBS – Master of Bomb Blasting Strategies

MBA – Master of Bombing Administration

Many reasons why Arab nations do not absorb the Palestinians and solve the Palestine problem

Israel’s problems are due to its enlightened founders
By Kevin Myers, January 07 2009

The death toll from Gaza is of course, shocking, dreadful, unspeakable;
though it does not compare with the death toll amongst Israelis if Hamas
had its way. Recurring in the current debate are allegations about the
terrible deeds Israelis did in 1948. But that is history. That some of
these wrongs done to Arabs might have been prompted by local Arab
support for the invading Arab armies is irrelevant. Historical
injustices were certainly done in the formation of the Israeli state.

However, far greater wrongs were inflicted in 1945 on the Poles of
Eastern Poland, and on the Germans of East Prussia, the Baltic and of
the Sudetenland. We can go back a further quarter of a century, and look
at the fate of the Christians of Anatolia, and the Turks of Crete and
Thessalonika, or even, at a far lesser level, of the Catholics of West
and North Belfast and the Protestants of Cork, who in different degrees
were dispossessed, murdered, and exiled.

What was the difference between all those expulsions, and the
expulsion — let us settle for the word — of some Arabs from what was
to become Israel? It is that the exiles found homes in the states to
which they had fled, and there they were allowed to work, and become
full and active citizens. Turkey absorbed the Greek Turks, Greece
absorbed Anatolia’s Orthodox Christians, impoverished post-war Germany
absorbed the millions of Balts, Sudetens and Prussians, the Free State
absorbed the Northerners, (even appointing one of them, Dan McKenna, the
head of the Army).

But not Israel’s neighbours. No, they herded their fellow Arabs (not
then known as Palestinians) from the former Ottoman province of
Palestine into displaced persons camps, and kept them there. Not for
months, but for decades, causing all kinds of political, cultural and
moral claustrophobia. It was in these camps that the modern notion of
“Palestinian” was born. And though we hear a lot about the walls between
Israel and Gaza and Israel and the West Bank, we don’t hear much about
the walls between those densely populated Arab territories, and the
neighbouring countries of Jordan and Egypt. Arab brotherhood becomes
mysteriously indistinct whenever it requires solid gestures, rather than
words.

The Israelis were told by the UN to leave Gaza. They left Gaza. Their
reward has been to have had thousands of missiles fired into half a
dozen of their cities from the territory they abandoned. And how many
demonstrations have the grisly cast of showbiz anti-Israelis mounted to
protest at these deliberate acts of indiscriminate terrorism? Let me ask
you another question, with a comparable answer: How many Jews are there
in Hamas?

Dear old Hamas, whose foot-soldiers are fed and supplied by EU and UN
humanitarian aid, and armed from across the border with Egypt (which,
naturally, is otherwise sealed to prevent Palestinians from leaving
Gaza). It is admirably honest on one issue: it is dedicated to the
destruction of Israel, and to the extermination of the Jewish infidels
in Palestine. So, the bombardment of Israel by Hamas terrorists is not a
temporary nuisance, but the first step of a genocidal strategy.

And whereas the overwhelming majority of Israelis would regret the
terrible slaughter of, say, the five Balousha sisters by an Israeli
bomb, Hamas would rejoice in a comparable massacre of five Jewish girls.
Moreover, I suspect I will win few friends by pointing out that the
Balousha family had initially left their home, right next to a
Hamas-controlled mosque, after the Israelis announced (as they often do,
to minimise civilian casualties) that all such mosques would be targets
for their bombers. But the girls’ father, Ibrahim, then decided to take
his chances back at home, where the sisters were killed by falling
rubble when the mosque was bombed, just as the Israelis said it would
be.

Such pathological and tragic fatalism in the face of an almost certain
outcome defies all rational analysis. However, it does make stunning
propaganda for the global anti-Israeli lobby. Moreover, all the
arguments about the “proportionality” of the Israeli response are
meaningless. Hamas can do what it likes, without serious rebuke or
protests from the western intelligentsia and assorted celebrities: it is
only when the Israelis reply to the insufferable provocation of
Hamas-missile attacks that we suddenly hear the endless recitation of
the P-word.

But ‘proportionality’ is a meaningless and largely theological concept:
what is a proportionate reply to 8,000 missiles being fired into the
defenceless civilian populations of so many Israeli cities?

Israel’s current problems exist because its founders largely behaved
like enlightened Jews, rather than as Communists and Nazis, or even as
earlier generations of Americans or Australians had done. The Israelis
didn’t expel all the defeated peoples from their lands, but instead, let
many stay. In other words, they didn’t seek the kind of outcome which
the Romans inflicted upon Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War.
And that’s the real point about that much-maligned thing, a Carthaginian
Peace. For one tended not to hear very much from the Carthaginian
Liberation Organisation thereafter.
kmyers@independent.ie

Photos/video of Mumbai Islamic terror attack

Mumbai Islamic terror attack photos

Part A

Part B

Part C

Part D

Video — Mumbai Terror attacks: Terrorists live footage of shooting