The role Dawood, LeT can play in Indo-Pak peace

Oracle

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For bringing permanent Indo-Pak peace, the Obama administration must push Pakistan to hand over Lashkar-e-Tayiba terrorists responsible for the Mumbai attacks and underworld don Dawood Ibrahim to India, a former top White House official has said.

Besides helping the two countries pave the way for a constructive dialogue on Kashmir, the United State needs to disrupt the Lashkar's fundraising and planning, said Juan C Zarate, who was the deputy assistant to the US president and deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism from 2005 to 2009.


The focus should be on unearthing names and disrupting cells outside Pakistan that are tied to the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, which involves pressuring Islamabad for the names of westerners who may have trained at Lashkar," he wrote in an opinion piece in The Washington Post.

He said the Obama administration must push Pakistan to hand over LeT terrorists responsible for the Mumbai attacks and Dawood Ibrahim to India, in order to bring permanent peace between the two countries.


Currently a senior advisor at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think-tank, Zarate warned that LeT would try to derail the future Indo-Pak talks.

"The group does not want peace talks to resume, so it might act to derail progress. Elements of the group may see conflict with India as in their interest, especially after months of unrest in Kashmir. And the Pakistani government may not be able to control the monster it created," he wrote.


A war in South Asia would be disastrous, he said. In addition to the human devastation, it would destroy efforts to bring stability to the region and disrupt terrorist havens in western Pakistan, he said.

"Worse, the Pakistani government might be induced to make common cause with the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, launching a proxy fight against India. Such a war would also fuel even more destructive violent extremism within Pakistan," he wrote.

"In the worst-case scenario, an attack could lead to a nuclear war between India and Pakistan. India's superior conventional forces threaten Pakistan, and Islamabad could resort to nuclear weapons were a serious conflict to erupt," Zarate said.


Noting that LeT is a Frankenstein's monster of the Pakistani government's creation 20 years ago, Zarate said Lashkar holds the match that could spark a conflagration between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan. The US should be directing political and diplomatic capital to prevent such a conflagration.

The meeting between India and Pakistani officials in Bhutan this month -- their first high-level sit-down since last summer -- set the stage for restarting serious talks on the thorny issue of Kashmir, Zarate wrote.

"Washington has only so much time. Indian officials are increasingly dissatisfied with Pakistan's attempts to constrain the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and remain convinced that Pakistani intelligence supports the group," he wrote in the Post.

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Oracle

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This is the original article

An alarming South Asia powder keg

By Juan C. Zarate
Sunday, February 20, 2011


In 1914, a terrorist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo - unleashing geopolitical forces and World War I. Today, while the United States rightly worries about al-Qaeda targeting the homeland, the most dangerous threat may be another terrorist flash point on the horizon.

Lashkar-i-Taiba holds the match that could spark a conflagration between nuclear-armed historic rivals India and Pakistan. Lashkar-i-Taiba is a Frankenstein's monster of the Pakistani government's creation 20 years ago. It has diverse financial networks and well-trained and well-armed cadres that have struck Indian targets from Mumbai to Kabul. It collaborates with the witches' brew of terrorist groups in Pakistan, including al-Qaeda, and has demonstrated global jihadist ambitions. It is merely a matter of time before Lashkar-i-Taiba attacks again.

Significant terrorist attacks in India, against Parliament in 2001 and in Mumbai in 2008, brought India and Pakistan to the brink of war. The countries remain deeply distrustful of each other. Another major strike against Indian targets in today's tinderbox environment could lead to a broader, more devastating conflict.

The United States should be directing political and diplomatic capital to prevent such a conflagration. The meeting between Indian and Pakistani officials in Bhutan this month - their first high-level sit-down since last summer - set the stage for restarting serious talks on the thorny issue of Kashmir.

Washington has only so much time. Indian officials are increasingly dissatisfied with Pakistan's attempts to constrain Lashkar-i-Taiba and remain convinced that Pakistani intelligence supports the group. An Indian intelligence report concluded last year that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate was involved in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, and late last year the Indian government raised security levels in anticipation of strikes. India is unlikely to show restraint in the event of another attack.

Lashkar-i-Taiba may also feel emboldened since the assassination in early January of a moderate Punjabi governor muted Pakistani moderates and underscored the weakness of the government in Islamabad. The group does not want peace talks to resume, so it might act to derail progress. Elements of the group may see conflict with India as in their interest, especially after months of unrest in Kashmir. And the Pakistani government may not be able to control the monster it created.

A war in South Asia would be disastrous not just for the United States. In addition to the human devastation, it would destroy efforts to bring stability to the region and to disrupt terrorist havens in western Pakistan. Many of the 140,000 Pakistani troops fighting militants in the west would be redeployed east to battle Indian ground forces. This would effectively convert tribal areas bordering Afghanistan into a playing field for militants. Worse, the Pakistani government might be induced to make common cause with Lashkar-i-Taiba, launching a proxy fight against India. Such a war would also fuel even more destructive violent extremism within Pakistan.

In the worst-case scenario, an attack could lead to a nuclear war between India and Pakistan. India's superior conventional forces threaten Pakistan, and Islamabad could resort to nuclear weapons were a serious conflict to erupt. Indeed, The Post reported that Pakistan's nuclear weapons and capabilities are set to surpass those of India.

So what can the United States do to ratchet down tensions?

We need to build trust, confidence and consistent lines of communications between India and Pakistan. This begins by helping both parties pave the way for a constructive dialogue on the status of Kashmir. Steps toward progress would include pushing for real accountability of figures responsible for the 2008 Mumbai attacks and the handing over of wanted Lashkar-i-Taiba facilitators such as Indian crime lord Dawood Ibrahim.

The United States also needs to disrupt the terrorist group's fundraising and planning. The focus should be on unearthing names and disrupting cells outside Pakistan that are tied to Lashkar-i-Taiba, which involves pressuring Islamabad for the names of Westerners who may have trained at Lashkar-i-Taiba camps.

This is among the thorniest U.S. national security and counterterrorism problems. It requires officials to focus on imagining the "aftershocks" of a terrorist attack and act before the threat manifests - even as other national security issues such as unrest in the Middle East boil over. Yet without political attention, diplomatic capital and sustained preventative actions, a critical region could descend into chaos.

History shows that the actions of a small group of committed terrorists, such as the Black Hand in 1914 or al-Qaeda in 2001 - can spark broader wars. History could repeat itself with Lashkar-i-Taiba. Asymmetric threats that serve as flash points for broader geopolitical crises may be the greatest threat we face from terrorism.

The writer, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism from 2005 to 2009.

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Oracle

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/\/\/\ 5th Para, last line 'India is unlikely to show restraint in the event of another attack' - I see this coming from many reputed people in print media. Has the GoI put military strike(in case of a Mumbai like attack) on the table, and shared this information with the US & other Governments?

11th para, 'The United States also needs to disrupt the terrorist group's fundraising and planning. The focus should be on unearthing names and disrupting cells outside Pakistan that are tied to Lashkar-i-Taiba, which involves pressuring Islamabad for the names of Westerners who may have trained at Lashkar-i-Taiba camps.' - Isn't R&AW supposed to do that?
 

mayfair

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/\/\/\ 5th Para, last line 'India is unlikely to show restraint in the event of another attack' - I see this coming from many reputed people in print media. Has the GoI put military strike(in case of a Mumbai like attack) on the table, and shared this information with the US & other Governments?
Given the pusillanimous nature of those at the helm, it's difficult to fathom a response different from that following 26/11. Recent Naxal crisis is the proof of the pudding

11th para, 'The United States also needs to disrupt the terrorist group's fundraising and planning. The focus should be on unearthing names and disrupting cells outside Pakistan that are tied to Lashkar-i-Taiba, which involves pressuring Islamabad for the names of Westerners who may have trained at Lashkar-i-Taiba camps.' - Isn't R&AW supposed to do that?
R&AW IS supposed to do that and probably would have if they had the capability. Unfortunately, years of politicking and interference have rendered R&AW largely toothless. That Inder Kumar Gujral in 1997 decided to cap R&AW covert operations in Pakistan and allegedly handed over the details of R&AW assets in Pakistan to government there, does not help.
 

Oracle

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/\/\/\ I too have heard I.K.Gujral doing that. Btw, any idea what happened to those R&AW assets in Pakistan?
 

mayfair

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/\/\/\ I too have heard I.K.Gujral doing that. Btw, any idea what happened to those R&AW assets in Pakistan?
Dunno mate..either defunct or maybe most of them had the sense to go underground and become sleeper cells. It's hard to to tell if they have recovered from the blow.
 

Oracle

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Something interesting

Fighting Pakistan's 'informal war'

Back in 1947, as Pakistani irregulars battled in Jammu and Kashmir, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru laid out what remains the principal doctrinal challenge before New Delhi's security strategists.

India, Prime Minister Nehru said, was confronted not just with tribal irregulars, but "a well organised business with the backing of the State." As such, it had "in effect to deal with a State carrying out an informal war, but nevertheless a war."

Last week, infuriated by mounting evidence that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate organised the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan proposed a solution:. "I think we need to pay back in the same coin". "Talk-talk is better than fight-fight," Mr. Narayanan concluded, "but it hasn't worked so far."

Covert deterrence
No Indian official has ever used language that even approaches that deployed by the NSA — but more than a few in its covert services, including the former Intelligence Bureau chief, Ajit Doval, and his Research and Analysis Wing counterpart Vikram Sood, have long made a similar case.

Exactly what is it, though, that advocates of retaliation have in mind?

Put simply, they argue that India must have covert deterrent capabilities. If a Pakistan-based terrorist group carries out strikes against civilians in Mumbai, the argument goes, India must be able to assassinate its leaders and their financiers. While it makes no economic or strategic sense to start a potentially-catastrophic war to deter terrorism, covert tools can still be used to punish its sponsors.

Is this a workable idea? Critics of unleashing India's covert deterrence capabilities say such action will strip New Delhi of the moral high ground it has for long occupied. Advocates argue that India's high moral ground hasn't made its citizens' lives safer.

For the first decades after independence, India's covert capabilities were in the main defensive. By contrast, Pakistan's Intelligence Bureau — led by Qurban Ali, the senior-most Indian officer of its colonial predecessor — sponsored a series of offensive operations in Jammu and Kashmir. In line with imperial ideologues like General Francis Tucker, Mr. Ali believed that India's ethnic-religious faultlines made it unsustainable as a nation. Much of the Pakistan Intelligence Bureau's work was — and is — aimed at deepening these faultlines.

India's own covert capabilities only began to grow after its 1962 defeat by China. Aided by the United States, the newly-founded Research and Analysis Wing developed sophisticated signals intelligence and photo-reconnaissance capabilities.

RAW soon put the lessons it learned to use against Pakistan. According to the still-classified official history of the Bangladesh war records that, by November 1971, over 83,000 guerrillas of whom over 51,000 were operating in east Pakistan had been trained and armed by India. Establishment 22 — a force set up by the CIA to target China — carried out deep-penetration strikes against Pakistani prior to the onset of war, drawing them forward to the Bangladesh border and thus easing the way for India's eventual thrust to Dhaka.

India's decisive triumph in 1971 seemed to have rendered the need for an offensive covert capability against that country redundant. India withdrew support for Baloch guerrillas fighting the Pakistan army, and slashed its involvement with anti-Islamabad forces in Afghanistan.

But the wheel turned again, as wheels are wont to do. After the Soviet Union's intervention in Afghanistan, the regime of General Zia-ul-Haq acquired both the strategic influence and military resources needed to insulate itself against India's superior conventional military capabilities.

Pakistan's informal war resumed. By the mid-1980s, the ISI had initiated supplies of Afghan war-surplus military hardware to Khalistan terrorists in Punjab. Five years later, similar support was made available to jihad groups in Jammu and Kashmir. On two occasions, in 1987 and 1990, India threatened to go to war in retaliation; both times, the threat of a potentially-catastrophic war deterred its politicians.

Interesting, RAW and the ISI played a role in ensuring the informal war did not escalate into a full-blown one. After the 1987 crisis, RAW chief A.K. Verma and ISI Director-General Hamid Gul met to discuss limitations for Pakistan's support for Khalistan groups, a negotiation brokered by the then-Jordanian Crown Prince, Hasan bin-Talal, whose wife, Princess Sarvath, is of Pakistani origin. Later, in the wake of the 1990 crisis, the ISI ensured that jihad groups in Jammu and Kashmir did not gain access to anti-aircraft missiles, after India made clear that the shooting down of an aircraft would lead to a full-blown war

Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's regime did not, however, restrict itself to sending verbal signals to Islamabad. In the mid-1980s, RAW unleashed two covert groups, CIT-X and CIT-J, the first targeting Pakistan in general and the second directed at Khalistani groups. A low-grade but steady campaign of bombings in major Pakistani cities, notably Karachi and Lahore, followed. According to former RAW official and security analyst B. Raman, India's counter-campaign yielded results by making Pakistan's terror campaign "prohibitively costly."

For a variety of reasons, these operations proved short-lived. Prime Minister I.K. Gujral, who took over in 1997, shut down RAW's offensive operations on moral grounds, pointing to the end of the terrorist campaign in Punjab and the improved situation in Jammu and Kashmir. Earlier, Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao ended RAW's eastern operations earlier as part of his efforts to build bridges with China and Myanmar.

Successive covert services heads attempted to gain fresh authorisation for deterrent covert operations, but without success. After the 1999 Kargil war, key intelligence officers attempted to persuade Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to issue the necessary authorisations. "He didn't say a word," recalls one official present at the meeting, "not yes, not no." It is probable that Prime Minister Vajpayee had reason to regret that silence in 2001, when he was compelled to use the only weapon at India's disposal — the threat of full-blown war — to compel Pakistan to scale back the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir.

Indian politicians need to debate Mr. Narayanan's suggestions seriously, whether or not they see reason to eventually endorse them. So, too, do Pakistanis. If nothing else, the NSA's comments show just how deep frustration with the ISI's informal war runs in New Delhi. Pakistan has long feared a nightmarish future where a hostile India dams its water resources in Jammu and Kashmir and throws its weight behind irredentist forces. Each terror bombing against Indians, paradoxically, is bringing that nightmare one step closer to realisation.

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JBH22

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Rule of thumb in Indo-Pak relation there will never be normal relationship between these 2 countries at best we can expect a status quo and the India's political and military elite must be always be prepared for our religious neighbours backstabbing habit.
 

mattster

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The ineptitude of Indian political parties, and the combination of coalition politics translates into weak leaders who dont have the mandate to take tough national security decisions.

India should learn from Israel. The Israelis always find a covert way to get even with their enemies without going to war. The moral high-ground does not pay when dealing with countries like Pak.
 

Energon

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The ineptitude of Indian political parties, and the combination of coalition politics translates into weak leaders who dont have the mandate to take tough national security decisions.

India should learn from Israel. The Israelis always find a covert way to get even with their enemies without going to war. The moral high-ground does not pay when dealing with countries like Pak.
India is not Israel and there are no commonalities between the two conflicts. There is undoubtedly a high degree of paralysis and incompetency in the Indian establishment, however that has nothing to do with emulating Israel's actions. India needs to find its own solution based on their ground realities.

Furthermore if the Pakistani establishment remains obsessed with non existent conflicts at the expense real ones and do not mind sacrificing the fabric of their own society there is absolutely nothing anyone can do to change the situation. This pretty much holds true for any conflict in which one party is delusional, has nothing to lose and is willing to resort to self mutilation. No amount of coaxing, bribing or threatening by the US, India or the international community can elicit a change in perspective. This can only come from within.

The best anyone can do at this point is to insulate their own state and perhaps enforce some sort of a quarantine upon Pakistan (which will be terrible for many reasons but also the final alternative).
 

ajay_ijn

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India is not Israel and there are no commonalities between the two conflicts. There is undoubtedly a high degree of paralysis and incompetency in the Indian establishment, however that has nothing to do with emulating Israel's actions. India needs to find its own solution based on their ground realities.

Furthermore if the Pakistani establishment remains obsessed with non existent conflicts at the expense real ones and do not mind sacrificing the fabric of their own society there is absolutely nothing anyone can do to change the situation. This pretty much holds true for any conflict in which one party is delusional, has nothing to lose and is willing to resort to self mutilation. No amount of coaxing, bribing or threatening by the US, India or the international community can elicit a change in perspective. This can only come from within.

The best anyone can do at this point is to insulate their own state and perhaps enforce some sort of a quarantine upon Pakistan (which will be terrible for many reasons but also the final alternative).
more dangerous thing is fate of nuclear weapons if the country has Islamic revolution like in Iran overthrowing the govt and imposing a sharia-style taliban inspired administration
 

Tshering22

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^^ Let's face it; we are already having that done very unofficially. Mullahs control Pakistani streets rather than Zardari and this is because the PA/ISI is also mulla and encourages radicalization. Remember Kayani is adamantly against us and will continue doing so using USAID and Chinese help. We don't want any peace with Pakistan after so much pain. I don't want any peace with them. Let the underground war continue. Let's see who stands tall and who's reduced to ashes.

We've bled for 62 years at their hands and stood for peace; what did we get in return? Nothing. Time to set aside this stupid Gandhian weak policy and start considering a new fierce strategy. This can only happen if Congress and its poster-boy are removed from the Indian political structure and new and assertive youth fresh parties come up.
 

Energon

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^^ Let's face it; we are already having that done very unofficially. Mullahs control Pakistani streets rather than Zardari and this is because the PA/ISI is also mulla and encourages radicalization. Remember Kayani is adamantly against us and will continue doing so using USAID and Chinese help. We don't want any peace with Pakistan after so much pain. I don't want any peace with them. Let the underground war continue. Let's see who stands tall and who's reduced to ashes.

We've bled for 62 years at their hands and stood for peace; what did we get in return? Nothing. Time to set aside this stupid Gandhian weak policy and start considering a new fierce strategy. This can only happen if Congress and its poster-boy are removed from the Indian political structure and new and assertive youth fresh parties come up.
What do you suggest?
 

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