In the immediate aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, India’s response has been to look to the United States to lean on Pakistan, which it blames for spawning Islamist militancy across the region, rather than launching any military retaliation of its own. So after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s trip to India and Pakistan last week, have the Americans done enough for now?
According to Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper, Rice told Pakistan there was “irrefutable evidence” that elements within the country were involved in the Mumbai attacks. And it quotes unnamed sources as saying that behind-the-scenes she “pushed the Pakistani leaders to take care of the perpetrators, otherwise the U.S. will act”.
India’s Business Standard said the Indian government was pleased with the U.S. warning. “This is exactly what India wanted,” the newspaper said.
The Times of India, however, fretted the U.S. action against Pakistan appeared to be “turning tepid”, in public at least. It attributed the U.S. approach to the perceived need to avoid backing the civilian government led by President Asif Ali Zardari into a corner. (India has specifically not accused the Pakistan government of involvement in the Mumbai attacks, pointing instead to militant groups supported by Pakistan’s powerful spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI.) It also said the United States was wary of destabilising a partner on which it depends crucially as a transit route for supplies to Afghanistan, while also being hobbled by the change of administration in Washington.
So which way is the pendulum swinging — towards firm U.S. action that will allow Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to say he was right to put his faith in American diplomacy, or a lukewarm response that will either force India to act alone or leave its Congress-led government looking on in helpless frustration as it heads into a general election due by next May?
U.S. pressure has succeeded in pulling India and Pakistan back from the brink in the past. When fighting erupted between the two newly declared nuclear-armed powers in the Kargil war in 1999, U.S. President Bill Clinton persuaded then Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to pull Pakistani troops back. (Sharif paid a high price. Later in the year he was overthrown by then General Pervez Musharraf, a lesson unlikely to be lost on the current civilian government which is seen as wary of making too many concessions to India for fear of alienating the powerful Pakistan Army.)
Then after an attack on India’s parliament in December 2001 triggered the mobilisation of close to a million men along the two countries’ borders, the United States dived into another round of frantic diplomacy to persuade Pakistan to crack down on Kashmiri militant groups and the Indians to stand down. Much of that diplomacy went on behind-the-scenes, though for an interesting Pakistani view of how close the two countries came to war in 2002, here is a link to an article written in January that year by the current Pakistan High Commissioner to Britain.
So what are the prospects in the current crisis?
Unlike in previous years, the Americans have become much more forthright about the extent to which they are willing to support Indian assertions that the roots of Islamist militancy lie in Pakistan. When the Indians blamed the ISI for bombing its embassy in Kabul in July — a charge Pakistan denied — the Americans delivered by leaking reports of ISI involvement to U.S. newspapers, as I discussed in an earlier post.
After the Mumbai attacks, the New York Times has brushed off Pakistani denials of involvement with an op-ed boldly headlined The Pakistan Connection.
Bruce Riedel at the Brookings Institution has argued that “the most dangerous terrorist menace (to India) comes from groups with intimate connections to the global jihadist network centered around Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda and its allies in the Pakistani jihadist culture.” Exploring links between the ISI and militant groups he says it nurtured to fight India in Kashmir, he says that Zardari’s ability to get control of the ISI “is still very much in doubt.”
At the other side of the world, The Australian has challenged what it calls “The dangerous illusion of independent terrorists” — the misconceived notion, it says, that perpetrators of attacks are non-state actors operating beyond the control of governments. ”The radical increase in the lethality, range, political consequence and strategic influence of terrorists comes not from their being non-state actors at all. Instead it comes from their being sponsored by states,” it says. Then in language that could have come straight from the Indian government, it says: “Pakistan has for many years been a significant state sponsor of terrorism.”
All that sounds like the kind of response the Indian prime minister was looking for when he said that “We expect the world community to recognise that the territory of the neighbouring country has been used for perpetrating this crime.”
But how will it play inside Pakistan, where a weak civilian government is delicately balanced against a powerful army that has run the country for much of its life, and which in turn is battling militants on its border with Afghanistan? And what too will it mean for the ordinary people of Pakistan, caught in the middle?
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sorry, its not the kashmir problem now,
- Posted by patits the terror from pakistan , stupid
kashmiris are realising that thay are better of in a growing india than in a religion crazed pakistan
[...] on this blog, in the immediate aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, India’s response was to look to the United States to put pressure on Pakistan. It also appears to have won some support from Russia, whose officials [...]
- Posted by Webcastr News » Blog Archive » India - aiming for diplomatic encirclement of Pakistan?TO MS. MYRA MCDONALD:
Well, there you go again maam. Do you know HOW VERY difficult it is for our 2 nations to establish any credible milestone towards peace, and how LONG it takes for us to get there and then a few choice words from your varied and illustrious columns and in an instant we forget about ALL that protracted effort and pull out our swords! Only YOU would know if you’re contributing to peace in the Subcontinent. I would suggest - NOT.
HOW ABOUT you get to the ROOT of our mutual dissent? Confused aye?
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, and please pardon my borrowing a line from the 1st Clinton run, allow me to remind you - that it is INDEED:
THE KASHMIR PROBLEM STUPID!
Instead of posting your wonderful spark ready catalysts all over the web, do you suppose you could come to the root of our mutual anguish? (thanks a LOT Lord Montbatten, how can we ever forget you!)
In fact the sooner India, the world’s biggest democracy, shakes off it’s positive allergy to SERIOUSLY discussing this important issue fully and finally (remember reading about the Kashmiri PLEBISCITE Ms. Mcdonald?) the sooner that WHOLE region and by extension, the West can feel safer. Our courageous Musharraf and his multi one-way unanswered gestures (how unfortunate) may have left the scene, but our Indian friends PLEASE understand this:
Cosmetic and mere lip service CBM’s, stubbornly refusing to include a chorus of near impatient 3rd party mediators (US PRES. OBAMA being the latest) with the real hope that the issue will somehow be swept under the rug by the passage of time are a waste of both time and money. Ain’t going to happen, and neither is Pakistan going anyplace.
HEEEELLLLLOOOOO???? Is the Indian government listening?
There Ms. Mcdonald, let’s see if you can rattle your ever ready pen on that one. Or should we continue to put the cart before the horse?
- Posted by N. Javed[...] more so given how much attention has has been focused on what the United States has been doing to lean on Pakistan to curb militant groups blamed by India for the attacks on Mumbai. So what has been going on? Has [...]
- Posted by Webcastr News » Blog Archive » China, Pakistan and IndiaTo Umair,
Umair, you exemplify the delusional Pakistani mindset. Your suicidal “bring it on” comments look out of touch when Pakistan is being whipped mercilessly; militarily, economically & politically.
- Posted by NikhilI don’t see why Pakistan would support these so called ‘islamist’ militant organizations given the trouble it is itself facing in its own land by these very groups.
- Posted by muslim[...] more so given how much attention has has been focused on what the United States has been doing to lean on Pakistan to curb militant groups blamed by India for the attacks on Mumbai. So what has been going on? Has [...]
- Posted by China, Pakistan and India « Defencedebates’s WeblogAlan, US or Isreal do not have to be doing something like a terror attack in mumbai to get Indias support to wage a attack on pakistan..and Obama or anybody in US and Isreal know that verywell..dont open a another can of worms..
- Posted by omHow sure are you guys that Usa and Israel are not behind the recent attack on Mumbai? i assume they have been seeking for support to keep the so called “war on terror” everywhere. someone of you might heard what the elect-president Obama mentioned while in his campaign ‘attack on Pakistan, a terror feeder’. now they got stonger reason to wage another war. my friend has been to Agganistan and saw there things. it happened a lot that american troopers setting up the bomb attacks there, accusing some terrorists, for justifying their presence on the land. so here we go…
- Posted by AlanRightly pointed out by every one, India must act with Caution and at the right time, but this time India must not let it go without driving the whole affair to a logical end and making our dear neighbors understand well that this time the public is backing its leaders to take all necessary action to weed out the rats hiding in the hills of POK.
- Posted by Rajesh kapilaVijay..everybody is frustrated and angry..as you said our blood is not so cheap, which is more the reason why India should not act in anger and out of shear frustration..Am not saying India should just forget the whole thing and stay quite..but should strike but at the right time, when it causes maximum pain..
- Posted by OmTHIS LINK IS WORTH WATCHING
http://www.dawn.com/2008/12/05/cart.htm
- Posted by PeaceOm,
Whether it is Brain or Brawm, The dirty manipulation of enemy Politics has costed Indian Life.I do not think our bloods are so cheap that any body can come spill & go unscathed.Unless a strong response is made it may result in more indian bloods being spilled. We need to stand up with or without international support.It is not a trophy we are after,but about punishment for crimes committed on our nation we are after.
- Posted by VijayDevesh mishra.. India will definately act when its time to act.India is not yet a super power like US to act on its own when there are so many players in the region like pakistan. US did not act alone when it attacked afganistan..It took UN and NATO in to confidence. I call US a super power because the UN would be nothing with out the backing of US and its $$$..
- Posted by OmThis is not the time to show we have a spine but to show we have brain. There is no trophy that we can possibly win by hitting pakistan which is already half dead..and it would be a spoil sport to simply nullify the 8000 soldiers of UN fighting on afgan side of pakistan for 7 years..
I am unable to comprehend why an Indian Brain proves world over except inside his own country. Its nation which is full of talent yet its so weak that every time Pakistan SLAPS us we go and show the finger prints on our cheek to world community. This is sheer weakness of character. Why do we seek world’s affirmation that “yes you were hit hard”.
Why can’t we act on our own and prove that we also have spine. At one stage you send spaceship to moon and at the same stage you have the audacity to tell the world that some body is pulling your pants down. You compete with world super powers, have the capabilities of fighting pirates in (Somalia) a different part of the world, send IPKF to Srilanka to fight other country’s rebels, but when it comes to defending your own country you have to develop “world opinion”.
You piggy-back on US & ISRAEL to initiate action, you are so naive that why would they act, they have their own interest and their own game plans. Did US waited to after 9/11, NO, they were capable and did not bother or wait for a “yes”.
To summaries India is a powerless country, led by powerless and just BOASTS. Just think how many friends India has developed in the world, what to talk of world, see our neighborhood even a country like Bangladesh, NEPAL, Sri Lanka are there any friends. What sort of diplomacy we have ?
- Posted by Devesh MisraA NEW LEGAL FRAME WORK AND INSTRUMENTS OF JUSTICE ARE NEEDED TO DEAL WITH THE PRESENT DAY CRIMES LIKE TERRORISM,HIGHJACKING OF SHIPS,PROVIDING SAFE HAVENS TO CRIMINALS IN THE NAME OF DEFENCE OF RELIGION ETC.ETC.NEW WORKABLE SYSTEMS HAVE TO BE ROUTED THROUGH THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE.IN THE CASE OF TERRORIST ATTACK ON BOMBAY,INDIA SHOULD BE ASKED TO PRESENT THE CASE TO THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE WHICH IS EMPOWERED TO GIVE A RULING DEMANDING THE CRIMINALS TO BE TRIED BY THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE OR STATE WHERE THE CRIME WAS COMMITTED.THE ROGUE STATES SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO PROTECT CRIMINALITY IN THE NAME OF NATIONALISM AND PATRIOTISM
- Posted by J.P.GAJREEVijay,
If only it were so simple to hand power to a benign autocrat and everything would turn out all right. The fact is, if we cannot have scrupulous elected officials, neither will we have scrupulous autocrats or a scrupulous military. Power in the hands of a few is far more treacherous than that in the hands of many. An autocratic country like China is prospering in the eyes of the world, but I’m skeptical about placing power in the hands of a superman to ensure the wellbeing of the others.
On the other hand I agree with you that our leaders, regardless of political affiliation, have let us down abominably. They have played us quite well. I do not know your views on these things, but a large section of our intelligent middle-class are myopic about political leaders’ attempts to divide us by ethnicity, religion and other fault lines. They do it by means of controversy. How have we become so ignorant as to focus on issues like conversions in Orissa to justify killing when there are criminals to be apprehended? There is no shred of hope to be found in the online chatterati whose views are childish to say the least.
It is not surprising to find one section bemoaning terror by another, while justifying its own terror. Why do we feel the need to distinguish between criminal acts? It may be time to look at our own hearts and wonder if we have any prejudice in there that keeps us from being good citizens.
- Posted by VijaiUmair,
Agreed that we are a developing country or a country of thrash. Why should terrorist think of attacking us, we have been slaves earlier to British now we are bonded labors to Americans.I don’t feel ashamed about that because that is the karma of this country. Are you guys any better of than us honestly ???.
Vijai,
India may never be able to forge anything of its own. You have a president who is 80 years old & you also have a primeminister who is 73 years old & an opposition leader who is 80 years old. Even if you are a patriot & want to give your life for this country you still need to pay bribe, this is the ugly fact.
Your bureacracy & politician is completely anti science,they do not have any innovative programe which incorporates science & technology to counter terrorism.We just got to drift along & hope for next 10 years we pray to god that Americans & israelis continue to be our friends. If you want to change india ensure you kick all these idiotic politicians & hand the charge of this country to a benign autocrat or the military with a politboru similar to china.Democracy is a failure for countries like India, china,Pakistan,Bangladesh others.A country which produces 5000 doctorates every year cannot think of a manhattan project also.In war it is said a army of sheeps led by tigers win not a army of tigers led by sheeps.
- Posted by Vijay