ANALYSIS-War-mongering militants stoke India, Pakistan crisis
01 Dec 2008 14:18:43 GMT Source: Reuters
By Simon Cameron-Moore ISLAMABAD, Dec 1 (Reuters) - The deadly Mumbai attacks aimed to push nuclear-armed India and Pakistan to the brink of war at a time when Islamabad was talking peace and U.S. and Pakistani forces were punishing al Qaeda and its allies, analysts said. "It happened at a time when a new civilian government in Pakistan was not just reaching out to India, it was undertaking some very meaningful steps," said Samina Ahmed, South Asia project director for the International Crisis Group (ICG). "For the jihadi groups and their backers in Pakistan this was probably a make or break moment," she said. What isn't clear is how deep any conspiracy goes in Pakistan. A crisis with India would play into the hands of sections of the Pakistani military and bureaucracy who are unhappy with a U.S. alliance which has resulted in Pakistani forces fighting their own people in the tribal border areas, analysts say. Creating trouble with India, according to analysts, would give Pakistan an excuse to get out of the unpopular U.S.-led "war on terrorism", or at least make the United States take notice of Pakistani security concerns about India and Afghanistan. With alarm bells ringing in Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is spearheading efforts to head off a conflict that would have repercussions far beyond the region. India has blamed "elements in Pakistan", and has as its prime suspect Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant group that analysts say was supported by Pakistan's intelligence agency in the past. Pakistan has asked for evidence, saying India shouldn't discount the possibility that the militants were homegrown. Moreover, Pakistan is also under siege from al Qaeda and its Islamist militant allies. Attacks on security forces, including the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency and politicians, have multiplied in the last two years. President Asif Ali Zardari's wife, two-time minister Benazir Bhutto, was killed a year ago, while a suicide truck bomb destroyed Islamabad's Marriott hotel in September, killing 55. NEED FOR COOL HEADS Zardari demonstrated his comparative dovishness by revealing a preference for a nuclear "no first use" pact with India days before the attacks on Mumbai. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government, however, is under pressure to act strongly and faces an election in 2009. Hawkish elements within the Indian establishment were itching for a more robust response to Pakistan, analysts say, and Singh would have to judge his actions finely. "I think they have to realise that Pakistan is under tremendous pressure from the United States and it's being hemmed in on both sides," said Thomas Withington, an independent defence consultant and research analyst at Kings College in London. "I think that's a calculation the Indian government will have to make," he said. Zardari, in an interview published in the Financial Times on Monday, warned that the militants could start a war, just as they did with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Pakistan is going through a fragile transition to democracy after more than eight years of military rule and the civilian leadership doesn't control the security apparatus, analysts say. The military's ISI has used jihadi groups like Lashkar to fight a proxy war against India in the disputed Kashmir region, they say. MUMBAI AN AL QAEDA DIVERSION? Though treated as long-term assests by Pakistani intelligence, analysts say, Lashkar and cohorts like Jaish-e-Mohammad have links to al Qaeda which strengthened after Pakistan embarked on a peace process with India in 2004. The question, they say, is whether the Mumbai plotters included people beyond fringe players who have maintained ties with jihadi groups. "As far as the state is concerned, the state institutions of the ISI and the army, I don't think they were involved," said Ahmed Rashid, author of "Descent into Chaos", which chronicles Pakistan's endless turmoil. There is a covert group of agents, Rashid said, who the military uses to sustain the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan in the hope of one day winning back influence in Kabul. "Elements of those could be involved," Rashid said. But he saw the attack as a clear attempt by al Qaeda and the Taliban to create a diversion, at a time when the Pakistan army and U.S. missile strikes have put their fighters under pressure. The 2001 attack on the Indian parliament by Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, which brought India and Pakistan to the brink of a fourth war since independence from Britain in 1947, was made for the same reasons, Rashid said. WORRYING PARALLELS When former army chief Pervez Musharraf was in charge, he took Pakistan into the peace process in 2004, but never got the breakthrough he needed to convince hawks that his no-war strategy was right. The hawks believe the war on terrorism has led them into a trap where they've been encircled. They point to India's friendship with President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, and suspected Indian and Afghan support for separatist groups in Pakistan's southwestern province of Baluchistan. They are also upset by the U.S. deal with India to support its civil nuclear power industry. ICG's Ahmed saw worrying parallels with events leading up to the overthrow of two earlier Pakistani prime ministers, Bhutto in 1990 and Nawaz Sharif in 1999, who tried making peace with India. Soon after a civilian government took power in Islamabad in March a series of provocations against India began, with clashes along the ceasefire line dividing Kashmir, and a suicide attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul that U.S. officials said was carried out by militants working with Pakistani agents. "Are we going to see a repeat of history?" asked Ahmed, adding she doubted whether the international community would stand by while civilian order was brought crashing down again. (Editing by Paul Tait)
A Kashmiri protester pushes a handcart to be used as a barricade to stop Indian policemen during an anti-poll protest in Srinagar November 21, 2008. India deployed thousands of troops in ...
