Posted on 11/30/2008 12:38:37 PM PST by sukhoi-30mki
US, India face Pak blackmail on terror
1 Dec 2008, 0054 hrs IST, Chidanand Rajghatta, TNN
WASHINGTON: The United States and India face tactics bordering on blackmail from a militarized Pakistan - where civilian control is still very dodgy - as they coordinate efforts to eliminate terrorism in the region, according to analysts and officials on both sides.
In what is turning out to be an elaborate chess game in the region, Islamabad on Saturday made its "Afghan move" to counter the US-India pincer, telling Washington that it will have to withdraw some 100,000 Pakistani troops posted on its western borders to fight the al-Qaida-Taliban and move them east to the Indian front if New Delhi makes any aggressive moves.
In Washington, Pakistan's ambassador to the US Hussain Haqqani said there is no movement of Pakistani troops right now, but if India makes any aggressive moves, "Pakistan will have no choice but to take appropriate measures."
Stripped of complexities, Pakistan is conveying the following message to the US: If you don't get India to back down, Pakistan will stop cooperating with US in the war against terror. Consequently, this also means Pakistan will use US dependence on its cooperation to wage a low-grade, asymmetric, terrorism-backed war against India.
Pakistan's withdrawal of troops from the Afghan front would obviously undermine the US/Nato battle in Afghanistan and allow breathing space for Taliban and al-Qaida. It would also ratchet up confrontation with India, which is at low ebb right now because Islamabad has been forced to engage on its western front and this minimizes Pakistan-backed infiltration into Kashmir, allowing India to tackle the insurgency in the state.
In fact, some experts surmise that the terror strike on Mumbai may have been aimed at precisely this - taking the pressure off Pakistan on its Afghan front, where it is getting a battering from US predators and causing a civilian uprising on its border, and allowing Islamabad to return to its traditional hostile posture against India on its eastern front.
The US-India-Pakistan tangle was the subject of intense debate among analysts on Sunday talk shows, with some analysts like former CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin expressing apprehension that al-Qaida could be achieving its objective of getting some relief through such proxy attacks.
Vexed US officials have been in constant communication with their Indian counterparts to deal with the complex situation arising from what both sides privately agree has become a chaotic country dominated by rogue elements from its military and intelligence services.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been speaking with India's External Affairs Minister regularly to get a sense of India's mood and moves, worried that any overtly aggressive response by New Delhi will undermine US effort in Afghanistan.
President Bush and President-elect Barack Obama have also spoken to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to show US support, but also to moderate Indian response. Both Washington and New Delhi are starting to realise that the Pakistani military still calls the shots in Islamabad behind the civilian façade, officials here concede privately.
The weakness of Pakistan's civilian leadership was fully exposed on Saturday when the country’s army chief once again overruled a civilian government decision - this time to send the Director General of its spy agency ISI to India to coordinate the investigation into the latest terror attack on Mumbai.
Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari explained it away saying there was a miscommunication and Islamabad only meant to send a ''Director'' and not Director-General, at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s request. But no one was fooled by the ''clarification'' -- the reversal of the earlier decision came after a midnight meeting Pakistan’s Army Chief Pervez Kiyani, a former ISI chief himself, had with Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani.
Pakistan’s threat about troop withdrawals from the Afghan front also followed the Zardari-Kiyani-Gilani meeting, leaving little doubt about the real power center in Islamabad despite the recent return to democratic rule.
The situation is made even more complex by the transition process in the US where President Bush is winding down from the White House and President-elect Obama is readying to take charge. Both sides have made the Pakistan problem a top priority as they coordinate response, tactics, and communication relating to developments in the region.
The latest attacks on Mumbai also threatens to torpedo Obama's stated objective of promoting good ties between New Delhi and Islamabad, so that Pakistan can focus its energy on the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan that are controlled by Islamic extremists.
But hardliners in Pakistan's military and strategic circles, who resent what they see as the country's civilian government doing Washington's bidding and fighting what they argue is a US war, are against this. The terror strike on Mumbai evidently has several objectives - one of them being to cause a rift between Washington and New Delhi and damage US-India ties.
While Pakistan's fledgling civilian government has made all the right moves and noises about cooperation with India, officials here reckon it is being continuously undermined by the hard-line military whose importance, and lavish funding, depends on keeping up a hostile posture against India.
Even in the political sphere, Pakistan's continued existence as a single entity is premised on enmity with India, the glue which keeps the country together. Some Pakistanis have suggested in recent months that take away animosity against India, then Pakistan's founding itself becomes questionable.
Already, many Pakistanis are starting to question the relevance of a country where more people are killed in intra-religious warfare between Shias and Sunnis than in Hindu-Muslim communal riots in India. Two of Pakistan's four territories are wracked by insurgencies, and the intelligence community's reading is that resurrecting the hostile posture against India is one way the hard-line elements in Pakistan hope to contain this domestic conflagration.
While Pakistan is playing its one desperate Afghan card, both India and US can separately bring Pakistan to its knees in no time. The US and its allies are dependent on Pakistan for supplies to its troops in Afghanistan, but they can also plug the economic plug on the country and cause it to collapse in no time. India controls Pakistan's lifeline and jugular with river waters that originate in India and flow into Pakistan.
But punishing Pakistan with this levers would also throw the country into absolute chaos and bring extremists elements to the fore leading to a Somalia kind of situation -- with nuclear weapons in the mix. This is the fear that Pakistan is exploiting to stay afloat and stave off sanctions from the west and punishment from India.
The solution, analysts say, is to get Pakistan's civilian leadership to exert control over its hard-line military and intelligence which functions on its own existential agenda.
This is easier said than done. America's foremost strategic guru Henry Kissinger told Fareed Zakaria's GPS program on CNN, which devoted an entire hour to the crisis, that Pakistan's civilian government had made good statements vis-à-vis ties with India,"but its capacity to implement them is questionable."
OK, it’s time gentlemen. We’ve waited just long enough. Let’s git’em!
> The latest attacks on Mumbai also threatens to torpedo Obama’s stated objective of promoting good ties between New Delhi and Islamabad, so that Pakistan can focus its energy on the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan that are controlled by Islamic extremists.
How disconcerting for His Excellency. He is to be thwarted in his stated intentions by the mere inconvenience of these recent attacks. Inconsiderate of the terrorists, to say the least. What to do? O, what to do?!!
Get whom, precisely? Pakistan? You must be joking.
In other words, this sounds too politically convenient to be a bunch of rogue disenfranchised Pakistani Utes who have their own agenda.
America’s foremost strategic guru Henry Kissinger
Kissinger?
Our foremost strategic thinker?
We are so screwed!
We should counter with an offer of invading the tribal regions while they withdraw their troops to the Indian border.
Which might be even better, because it would eliminate the need to pretend to oppose Al Qaeda and the Taliban when the Taliban are their prize offspring after all. Pakistan is like the gay guy who longs to come out of the closet and parade his true self for all to see. No more memorizing football scores, no reason any more to pretend at all.
It causes Pakistan great psychic pain to be the masterminds of the Taliban, protectors of Al Qaeda, purveyors of nuclear contraband to anyone with an open credit line, while still having to pretend to be shocked, shocked, at muslim terror, and haplessly dependent upon Washington's good cop to keep India's bad cop off their backs.
There are obviously adults in the government who understand the need to play the game wisely and well, that picking a fight with India could be the last thing some of them ever did. But others long to go out in a burst of radiated energy on the crazy chance that the world might get dragged into the abyss with them. Its a death cult, after all. It spawns nihilists, suicides and psychotics by the bushelbaskets full.
“Or a rift between Washington and Islamabad. “
was not supposed to be in italics... my mistake...
Clearly the ISI is up to their old tricks again, playing both sides against the middle while proclaiming their own innocence.
Their hands are bloody all the way up to their armpits. The latest attacks on Mumbai are just their latest duplicity.
Regards,
GtG
Yep. Crank up the B-52's and bomb the 'autonomous areas' out of existence.
You must be joking.
Nope.
L
Blackmail? Seems to me, if the Pakistanis move 100K troops to the Indian border the US could pretty much do what they want at the western border (well, thatis, before we all join hands and sing cumbaya on 1/20/9).
I don't think so. The longer we wait, the more carnage there will be. One would think that WWI and WWII would have made it clear that to wait is to magnify the murder and depravity. If Pakistan cannot or will not rein in the islamofacist then Pakistan must pay the price for if it does not, then the rest of the world will have to pay it.
> I don’t think so. The longer we wait, the more carnage there will be. One would think that WWI and WWII would have made it clear that to wait is to magnify the murder and depravity. If Pakistan cannot or will not rein in the islamofacist then Pakistan must pay the price for if it does not, then the rest of the world will have to pay it.
They have a very large and very good standing army, with plenty of reserves. And they are nuclear capable. They would be fighting on home turf, which is largely difficult terrain.
And they would be aided by just about every muslim in the world.
It has taken 7 years so far to sort out Iraq, and that is in relatively easy terrain compared to Pakistan.
Short of nuking them until they glow, precisely how do you propose to effect victory?
> Yep. Crank up the B-52’s and bomb the ‘autonomous areas’ out of existence.
Surely not you too, Lurker?
While the idea is appealing, surely you can see that it doesn’t really pass the feasibility test? Unless the actual objective is to go to war with every muslim in the world...
That situation already attains.
L
I would like you to go back and read your words and then tell me what did you post that is different from what people were saying when we invaded afghanistan?
It’s not impossible. It’s very possible. But our military will soon be commanded by a worthless commi. I don’t know if that’s a prudent thing to do to our military.
> That situation already attains.
The seething muslim masses in Indonesia have yet to engage. There are more muslims there than in the rest of the world combined.
If we (as in the Western World) are really intent in pi$$ing the muslim world off royally, then might as well get it over with and vaporize the Moon Rock in Mecca, glass over Medina, and help the Jews bulldoze the Dome of the Rock. No point being superficial about it, might as well do it properly and be thorough.
Rage Boy will doubtless have fits: all the better. From the look of his photo he’s about due for a seizure or a myocardial infraction anyway. Might as well give him a good reason to vapor-lock.
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