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India-Pakistan
Relentless Pressure
Early in the morning of
May 8, 2002, another dramatic and brutal incident of terrorist violence
in Pakistan resulted in the death of sixteen persons, including eleven
French nationals, at Karachi. This is the third terrorist incident this
year that has resulted in the death of Westerners residing or working
in Pakistan. Journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped on January 23 and,
almost a month later, his murder was confirmed after the recovery of
a gruesome video film of his execution. Again, on March 17, an American
diplomat’s wife and daughter, as well as three others, were killed in
a grenade attack on the Protestant International Church at Islamabad.
Interestingly, there has
been a sustained effort in various Western media and official – particularly
American – statements, to emphasize the immense ‘progress’ that has
been made under Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf’s campaign to curb
Islamist fundamentalists in his country, and bring an end to the export
of terrorism from Pakistani soil. American officials have, indeed, claimed
that infiltration into Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), and terrorist
activities there, have fallen dramatically over the past months – this
is a theme that has been pushed steadily since February this year, not
just by the Americans, but also, reportedly, by the United Nations Military
Observers Group in Indian and Pakistan (UNMOGIP). The facts on the ground,
however, would suggest that there is a deep and powerful strain of self-deception
in these perceptions.
In J&K the data shows
no significant signs of improvement in the months after 9/11. With 4,507
killed in J&K, year 2001 [Graph 1] was by far the worst in terms
of casualties since the beginning of the terrorist movement in 1989.
The last quarter of the year did, of course, see a decline (1187 killed)
from its earlier peak in July-September (1627 killed). But this would
be the ‘normal’ winter decline as a result of adverse operational conditions
and the freezing over of the mountain passes. Levels of violence remained
well above the January-March 2001 (696) and April-June 2001 (1092) levels.
Graph 1: Total Fatalities
in Jammu & Kashmir
These trends continued
into the year 2002. Fatalities in January-April 2002 remained well above
the January-April 2001 levels [Graph 2]. The only significant, though
transient, reversal occurred in February 2002, with 196 fatalities,
below the February 2001 level (251) at a time when exceptionally bad
weather conditions and heavy snowfall paralysed much of the State. The
adverse trends were quickly re-established in March, but it is the coming
summer – traditionally a time of escalation in J&K – that will more
clearly define the real trends of the covert war. Significantly, there
has been a steady rise in the number of foreign terrorists killed in
J&K over the years [Graph 3], and official sources disclose that
there has been no decline in infiltration in the current year as against
the corresponding period last year.
Graph 2: India –
Monthly Fatalities in J&K, January – April 2001-2002
Graph 3: Foreign
Militants killed in Jammu & Kashmir
Despite the absolute control
of the military in Pakistan and a harsh regime of laws implemented by
military courts, moreover, the internal situation there does not appear
to be moving towards greater stability or order – the only proclaimed
virtues of a military dictatorship. Apart from recurrent high profile
terrorist attacks, a steady stream of sectarian violence has already
claimed 84 lives this year, suggesting an uninterrupted continuity with
past trends (Graph 4).
Graph 4: Pakistan
– Fatalities in Sectarian Violence
There is, in fact, a great
churning in progress in South Asia, and it is in this context that the
violence in both Pakistan and in India – including the persisting communal
carnage in India’s Western State of Gujarat – is to be understood. Indeed,
the multiple and apparently diverse chains of events that have been
set in motion by 9/11 and the American campaign in Afghanistan will
have consequences far beyond the expectations and calculations of the
unimaginative and largely incompetent leadership of the two major rivals
in the region – though the structural correctives of a democratic system
in India may be better equipped to absorb the shocks of transformation
than the rigid, quasi-feudal military dictatorship in Pakistan.
The first element in the
current transformations is the fact that the network of containment
alliances that had been forged by the US in the region has been significantly
altered. While Pakistan’s ‘frontline state’ status in the Cold War equation
has been transformed into an ostensible ‘frontline state’ status in
the US war against terrorism, the similarities are specious. For one,
Pakistan’s role in creating, supporting and exporting terrorism is no
secret, and despite official American pronouncements and a desire to
see Musharraf succeed in restoring a measure of security and permanence
in the flux of the country’s turbulent politics, the American intelligence
community remains fully aware of the highly ambivalent role this state’s
agencies are still playing. No country – and this includes India – would
like to see Pakistan spiral into a ‘zone of chaos’ on the Afghan pattern.
There is, however, substantial scepticism and, indeed, pockets of growing
anger within the American strategic community against Pakistan’s continuing
ambivalence towards terrorism. Moreover, the simple equations of the
bipolar world have been completely substituted by complex inter-relationships,
and these include intensifying co-operation between India and the US
which excludes the possibilities of the unequivocal support that Pakistan
received even in its most excessive adventures in the past. The long
term trends in this context are still evolving, but the immediate future
will be characterised by increasing instability and jockeying for positions,
not only between India and Pakistan, but among a number of external
actors who seek an expanded role in the South Asian region.
Pakistan is caught in a
cleft stick on another plane. For decades, it has sought strength by
forging alliances with, and securing support from, the oil rich states
of West Asia. It has done this by projecting an ultra-Islamist identity,
by supporting extremist Islamist causes – including the Taliban in Afghanistan
– and by advertising its nuclear capabilities as a quest for the "Islamic
bomb". The volte face forced on it by the US, both on the
Taliban and on the activities of extremist Islamists within Pakistan,
however, have substantially eroded the credibility of this image and
identity, and with these, the guarantee of support from West Asia. Pakistan
has, consequently, been placed in a relationship of utter dependence
on American and allied powers – both militarily and economically – a
relationship that creates intolerable tensions within a political ideology
that has long built on sentiments of exclusionary religious identity,
Islamist dominance and an anti-West rhetoric. The situation is compounded
by a worsening economic profile and a failure of governance on at least
as many counts as could be attributed to the earlier ‘corrupt and incompetent’
administrations, and with one further disadvantage – the complete absence
of democratic legitimacy for the regime, and of rights and freedoms
for the people at large. The continuous military mobilisation along
the borders – which has already cost Pakistan over Rs. 16 billion since
December last – and the pressures of increased spending to match India’s
rising defence budget will deepen Pakistan’s financial crises. There
is, moreover, the underlying and grave threat of the presence of a large
Taliban – Al Qaeda diaspora on Pakistani soil, and of a number of indigenous
armed groupings that share their ideology and motivation.
The authoritarian regime
in Pakistan has successfully encouraged a measure of optimism and complacence
in the international community with regard to the internal situation
in the country, as well as on the involvement of its agencies and citizens
in international terrorism. Such complacence is misplaced, based as
it substantially is on the disruption of the feedback mechanism and
of the institutional constraints on government under martial law. Such
disruption, significantly, also undermines the regime’s own abilities
to assess the consequences of its policies and to introduce timely correctives.
Musharraf’s referendum – widely dismissed as a ‘farce’ by independent
Pakistani commentators – is evidence that the internal systems of reportage,
accounting and assessment have been suspended, and that the regime’s
projections of reality will tend to be widely distorted to confirm the
expectations of its leader, and can provide no accurate estimates of
the strength of the system. This, as has been demonstrated in the past,
is dangerous, and will feed the illusions both of the regime and its
foreign supporters as the base of resentment and potential violence
widens continuously. If Pakistan is to be saved, it must, consequently,
first be saved from its own delusions.
(Edited version
published in Pinkerton Global Intelligence Services, May 9, 2002.)
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