India's Moves and the Pakistani Puzzle

[JAISWAL]

India's Moves and the Pakistani Puzzle : Global Brief
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Pakistan's internal troubles and external behaviour point increasingly to the need for an increasingly muscular Indian posture
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When US President Barack Obama visited India in
November of last year, he made a point of
staying at one of the two luxury hotels that had
been attacked by terrorists two years earlier. The
Mumbai attacks of November 26th, 2008, for the
first time brought home to a global television
audience that India is a frontline state against
international terrorism. The carnage was notable
for its savagery, audacity, choice of targets and
duration. The attacks marked a tipping point, and
constitute India's own 9/11. They spawned a new
and frightening, frozen anger at a government
that is all bark and no bite. Indians were more
contemptuous of their own politicians than angry
at Pakistan. Eventually, unvented rage could
morph into rejection of democracy in India as
limp and corrupt.
Outsiders advised India against war with
Pakistan, but offered no realistic plan to destroy
the infrastructure of terrorism infesting Pakistan.
The world may hope for the best, but should be
prepared for the worst. Rising demands for a
more assertive regional posture by a nationalistic
and increasingly impatient citizenry are the
inevitable corollary of India's sharply higher global
profile.
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War clouds over the subcontinent will not
dissipate because of three key factors: changes in
the balance of considerations between no action
and some military response by India; India's
waning interest in a stable Pakistan; and the rogue
tendencies of Pakistan's notorious Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI). India's preference is for the
establishment of civilian supremacy over the
army and intelligence in Pakistan and
consolidation of the institutions of good
governance. Failing this, of necessity, India will
have to acquire the capability to attack and
destroy terrorist infrastructure and operatives
across the border. India, along with the
international community, will also have to
reconsider the balance of rewards and
punishment for Pakistan for its contradictory
roles in fighting versus fomenting terrorism.
Terrorists have attacked India repeatedly with
planning, training and financing based in Pakistan,
the military-intelligence-jihadist complex of which
has been lethally effective in outsourcing
terrorism as an instrument of state policy. India's
policy of off-shoring the response by appealing to
the nebulous 'international community' has been
ineffectual.
The murderers of 9/11 came out of the
mountainous caves of Afghanistan, where the
Taliban regime – an after-creation of the US and
Saudi-backed mujahideen against the Soviet-
installed regime, as well as of Pakistan's search
for strategic depth against arch-enemy India –
had nurtured them as a potent weapon against all
infidels. India's repeated warnings that the
epicentre of international terrorism had shifted
from the Middle East to Southwest Asia were
dismissed as self-serving rants.
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