Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reached out to Pakistan on Tuesday, saying he was ready to go “more than half way” if Islamabad cracked down on militants. Peace with Pakistan was in India’s “vital interest” he told parliament in a speech, presumably directed at those in the Indian strategic establishment who believe in a more muscular approach toward Pakistan especially after the Mumbai attacks.

So is Singh laying the ground for a slight thaw in ties?  Since he was re-elected with a stronger mandate, some kind of opening to Pakistan has been expected, given that it has been more than  six months since ties went into deep chill following the attacks in November. The feeling in New Delhi has been sooner than later it has to engage Pakistan.  You cannot change your neighbours, new foreign minister S.M.Krishna said soon after taking over and if that is the case, you can’t not talk to your neighbour indefinitely.

The Times of India said Krishna quoted President John F. Kennedy to his officers: “Never negotiate out of fear, but never fear to negotiate.”

Mansoor Ijaz, an American of Pakistan origin writing in the Washington Post, said Singh and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari should call for a peace summit this summer.  Singh and Zardari were two leaders who could make peace, he argued. The newly mandated Indian leader was now strong enough politically to risk a peace gamble; Zardari on the other hand  was an ideal candidate to reach out and make peace because he did not see India as an existential threat.  He also had a penchant for risk-taking, Ijaz said.

“India’s election results give it the political strength to offer such a plan. Pakistan’s myriad problems demand that it accept any reasonable offer at the table. The moment to secure durable peace in Kashmir is now,” he wrote.

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The world’s largest democracy chooses a new government in an election beginning on Thursday, and given the fires burning next door in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the men and women who will rule New Delhi over the next five years will doubtless exert influence over the course of events.

Indeed, with the pain and anger over  the Mumbai attacks of November still raw, the mood could hardly be tougher against Pakistan. Even shorn of the campaign rhetoric, the positions of both the ruling Congress and the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party on Pakistan begin from common ground. No dialogue with Islamabad until it “dismantles the infrastructure of terrorism”, both parties say in their manifestos.

Full texts of the documents of the two main parties are here and here.

New Delhi’s continued refusal to resume dialogue or indeed to expand other links such as trade has caught Pakistan between a rock and a hard place, according to this piece in 2point6billion.com, a website tracking developments mainly in China and India. While Islamabad has repeatedly called for resumption of dialogue since the attacks, Delhi has refused to comply until it is assured that Pakistan will prosecute all those involved in the planning and operations.

Delhi maintains that it holds information garnered from satellite, cellular and other communications devices captured at the scene that lead to specific individuals that Pakistan has as yet failed to apprehend. Islamabad denies the charge and says it is doing everything in its power to cooperate.

The result is that the noose has tightened around Pakistan, exacerbating its already dire financial situation. Trade between Pakistan and India, which had been growing and was forecast to hit US$10 billion by 2010, has dwindled to close to zero over the past few months, with Pakistan feeling the brunt of this economic demise, says the website. Islamabad has already had to apply for a US$7.6 billion loan from the IMF in February and garnered an additional US$2.8 billion in military aid from the Obama administration just two weeks ago. 

But is there a possibility that once India’s elections are out of the way, there might be a slight softening of positions? A new government will be under less pressure to be seen to be acting tough. Looking at the manifestos again, you do detect slight differences in the tone.

Here’s the BJP on Pakistan, true to its roots a touch more aggressive :

“”There can be no ‘comprehensive dialogue’ for peace unless Pakistan a) dismantles the terrorist infrastructure on territory under its control; b) actively engages in prosecuting terror elements and organisations; c) puts a permanent, verifiable end to its practice of using cross-border terrorism as an instrument of state policy; d) stops using the territory of third countries to launch terror attacks on India; and, e) hands over to India individuals wanted for committing crimes on Indian soil.”

The Congress on the other hand says dealing with “”terrorism aided and abetted from across our borders does not require a muscular foreign policy as advocated by the BJP.”"

Here is their plan:

“”But the Mumbai attacks have cast a long shadow on the on-going dialogue and engagement process. It is now entirely up to Pakistan to break the impasse by taking credible action against those responsible for the carnage in Mumbai. If it does so and dismantles the terrorist networks that operate from its soil, a Congress-led government will not be found wanting in its response. ”

Has the Congress, still the frontrunner in the election, left the door to dialogue slightly open?

The Pakistani state may be facing its most serious threat since its birth more than six decades ago, begging the question of who controls the militants who are expanding their influence across the country.

The question has arisen in the light of escalating violence inside Pakistan including the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team despite a call reported to have been made by the leader of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Mohammed Omar, urging Pakistani militants to stop fighting at home and instead focus on Afghanistan.

The Guardian reported that Mullah Omar said in a letter to the commanders of the Pakistani Taliban that: “Attacks on the Pakistani security forces and killing of fellow Muslims by the militants in the tribal areas and elsewhere in Pakistan is bringing a bad name to mujahedeen and harming the war against the U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.”

Pakistani journalist and author Ahmed Rashid wrote in the Globe and Mail that Mullah Omar also said in the letter that “If anybody really wants to wage jihad, he must fight the occupation forces inside Afghanistan.” The Taliban chief is presumably concerned about getting reinforcements in Afghanistan to offset the increase of U.S. forces in the country.

But his call seems to have been ignored as the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore showed. It was followed shortly after by the bombing of the mausoleum of a 17th century Pashto poet outside Peshawar.

  (more…)

Conspiracy theories have filled a void in Pakistan that opened up as soon as the dozen gunmen who attacked the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team made a leisurely getaway  without any apparent casualties after a 25 minute gun battle.

Since the attack on Tuesday, Pakistani authorities have yet to reveal where the investigation was going,  despite Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi saying “important  leads” had been established.

There has been finger pointing in the Pakistani media in various directions, but the sympathies of the indiviual reporter or media group have to be examined in every case. Only the conspiracy theorists have answers to who could have done it and why.
 
    WHO ARE THE SUSPECTS?
    Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani jihadi group blamed for the slaughter of nearly 170 people in Mumbai last November. There were some similiarities, but LeT hasn’t got any history of attacking inside Pakistan.

Maybe LeT fears the Pakistan government, having already arrested a handful of LeT members named in the Mumbai case, seriously aims to put it out of
business and wanted to send a warning, destabilise a Pakistani government it thinks is soft on India and Kashmir. Maybe it is worried the old  friends in Pakistani intelligence are abandoning them.

But the rationale for targetting Sri Lankan cricketers, in Lahore, a city where the LeT has moved easily in the past, is hard to see.

 Another Sunni militant group with far stronger ties to al Qaeda is Lashkar-e-Janghvi. Like LeT, LeJ is a Punjabi group.

But LeJ has provided footsoldiers for al Qaeda operations, and has been involved in spectacular attacks, most recently the  suicide truck boming of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad last September, which killed 55 people.

As the Daily Times notes, the involvement of LeJ, or another group in al Qaeda’s thrall makes sense on some levels. But the question of why the Sri  Lankans were targeted is hard to square unless the answer is that it could have been anybody. The attack has certainly achieved an  al Qaeda objective in terms of ruining Pakistan’s international image and undermining faith in the government.

 The Pakistani Taliban also have ties to al Qaeda and have been blamed for the assassination of former prime minister  Benazir Bhutto, though there’s a surfeit of conspiracy theories around her slaying too.

(more…)

India’s ruling Congress party thinks Pakistan is fast becoming the “Somalia of South Asia”. The attack on Sri Lankan cricketers in Lahore was the result of the state ceding its territory to the fundamentalists and Taliban of the world, a party spokesman said.

Strong words these, but are they going to come back to haunt India and the Congress itself ? Is this really just about Pakistan or is the fire, which many believe began when foreign forces moved into Afghanistan, already dangerously close to India?

If you saw TV images of the gunmen as they darted across a green in Lahore with their backpacks, aiming their assault weapons and taking cover behind trees,  you couldn’t help but think of the Mumbai assault when a similar band of attackers roamed the streets, hotels and a train station killing and maiming at will.

If it was Sri Lankan cricketers in Lahore on Tuesday, it could just as easily have been a foreign team in Amritsar, just over the border in India.  Amritsar is very near Lahore, writes former Indian ambassador M.K.Bhadrakumar, and it doesn’t really matter any more on which side of the border the attack took place. The grim reality is both are faced with the same threat and it won’t help India to pretend otherwise or sit tight while Pakistan unravels, he says.

“When the terrorists strike in broad daylight in the presence of tens of thousands people in a high security environment within earshot of Amritsar it naturally sends shock waves across India. It is no more relevant where they have struck — on this side or the other side of the Wagah border. The ground reality is that there is no such thing as absolute security anymore,” Bhadrakumar said.

India and Pakistan will survive or sink together, and it doesn’t really matter whether it is Pakistan or India that resembles Somalia.

Pakistan’s Dawn also touches on this, saying that perhaps the same group that attacked Mumbai struck on Tuesday in Pakistan’s cultural capital.

Lahore was a message to all of South Asia, Indian columnist Rajinder Puri writes, and it was up to governments to pay heed.  The men who carried out the attack on the Sri Lankan players weren’t merely attacking cricket, they were attacking culture. “The lifestyle of the vast majority of the people on the subcontinent is not acceptable to the enemy,’ he writes.

“Make no mistake. Neither the Afghans nor the Pathans are as a people sympathetic to the terror and repression unleashed by the pro-Al Qaeda Taliban. The people are simply forced into submission by the few gun-toting killers who are organized to terrorize the unorganized majority. The enemy will hit each nation and each region one by one until it attains victory.”

A few years ago Lal Krishna Advani, the leader of India’s Hindu nationalist party, talked about the cultural nationalism of South Asia, of the shared heritage, customs and perhaps obsessions like cricket. But it has been totally swamped by the bickering among governments of each country.

Perhaps it is time now to reverse course  and stop not just Pakistan’s descent into chaos but its immediate neighbours too ?

([Reuters pictures of a helicopter at Lahore's cricket ground after attack and Sri Lankan cricketer Thilan Thushara with his son upon his return home]

With Richard Holbrooke very much keeping his own counsel about his maiden visit to Pakistan, it’s been hard to assess quite how much change is to be expected from President Barack Obama’s new special envoy.

But a couple of early op-eds suggest that the change might be quite substantial. 

In the Indian Express, Indian analyst C. Raja Mohan writes that Islamabad’s  acknowledgement that at least part of the planning for last year’s Mumbai attacks could have taken place in Pakistan could be Holbrooke’s first success. “It will be difficult not to see the connection between Pakistan’s significant announcements on Mumbai and the U.S. Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke’s trip to the region this week and President Barack Obama’s call to (President Asif Ali) Zardari on Wednesday night,”  he says.

The crucial issue will be the extent to which Holbrooke can achieve the United States’ avowed aim of strengthening the civilian government in Pakistan, which many in India suspected of ceding much decision-making to the Pakistan Army after the Mumbai attacks. In admitting to a link to the Mumbai attacks, Raja Mohan says, Zardari appears to have taken a significant political risk.   

Picking up a similar theme, the New York Times quotes Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid as saying the high-profile visit by a civilian envoy could change the tone of the U.S. conversation with Pakistan (the traditional dominance of military-to-military contacts in the U.S. relationship with Pakistan has been criticised for enhancing the role of the Pakistan Army and undermining civilian governments.)

“This is a complete sea change in what Pakistan is used to,” the newspaper quotes him as saying. “There is a suspicion in the American establishment that the Pakistani Army has found it easier to pull the wool over the eyes of the American military. It will be harder to do that with the civilians.”

Given the multiple challenges facing Pakistan (this Indian website has a good round-up of the many cross-currents threatening to engulf the country), it’s perhaps a bit too tempting to hope for miracles from Holbrooke. But are we beginning to see signs of a real change in U.S. policy towards Pakistan? And if so, will it work, or turn out to be too little, too late?

Former President Pervez Musharraf was always one for the grand gesture. So it should come as no surprise that after a period of relative obscurity following his resignation in August last year, he will visit India as part of a series of lectures he plans to give worldwide.

In an interview with the BBC, Musharraf, who has just returned from a trip to the United States, said he was enjoying his retirement and had been invited to give lectures on Pakistan and the South Asian region around the world. “He said the first invitation he had accepted was from India, where he expected to speak at a conference in Delhi next month,” the BBC said.

“I love this life. I am relaxed and satisfied. And I am enjoying my lecture tours,” he told Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper. “Next month I am going to India for the same purpose. Let’s counter the Indians on their own home ground.”

India always had a rather ambiguous attitude to the Delhi-born former general. After blaming him for the 1999 Kargil war, it later began to see him as a man with whom it could make peace and it was under Musharraf that a formal India-Pakistan peace process was opened in 2004. By the time he resigned, as I noted in the post I wrote at the time , India was fretting that his departure could unleash tensions if it created a vacuum which could be exploited by Islamist militants.

So it will be interesting to see the kind of reception he is given in the sour atmosphere between India and Pakistan following last year’s Mumbai attacks. Interesting too to ask whether the worries expressed by Indian analysts about a rise in tension proved prescient, or if it was simply an accident of timing that the Mumbai attacks — which according to media reports could have taken up to a year to plan — happened just months after he quit.

(Reuters file photo of former president Pervez Musharraf)

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband may yet end up achieving the opposite of what he intended in India when he called for a resolution of the Kashmir dispute in the interests of regional security.

To some Indians, linking the attacks in Mumbai - which New Delhi says originated from Pakistan - to the issue of Kashmir is not just insensitive, it is also a wake-up call. The lesson they have drawn is this: for all the world’s sense of outrage over Mumbai, India will have to deal with Pakistan on its own, and not expect foreign powers to lean on its neighbour in the manner it wants.

Miliband’s visit was a “jarring reminder to India to stop off-shoring its Pakistan policy,” writes Indian security affairs analyst Brahma Chellaney in the Asian Age. He then goes on to call for a set of measures including a military option short of war to weaken Pakistan.

New Delhi has diplomatic options that it has not yet deployed, he argues. These include recalling the Indian High Commissioner to Islamabad or suspending peace talks, or disbanding a “farcical” joint anti-terrorism mechanism or halting state-assisted cultural and sporting links or invoking trade sanctions.

On the military front, he suggests offensive military deployments along the entire length of the border. This would be different from the 2002 all-out mobilisation for a war that nobody really believed would happen, following the parliament attack in Dec 2001. Such a strategy, Chellaney argues, would put keep Pakistan on tenterhooks as to which front would be chosen for a quick, sharp thrust. Pakistan would have to follow suit and that would put unbearable pressure on a state already in severe financial difficulties.

Plausible? Well, two months after the attacks, you would have to argue the appetite for such tough measures has reduced. . If you had to act, you were better off even in the eyes of your own people to have done it then, rather than now.

But this may well be a pointer to a stiffening mood in India as it heads into an election that could bring the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party into power. And then all bets would be off as to what would be India’s policy towards Pakistan.

Over the weekend, the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Lal Krishna Advani gathered a bunch of military chiefs, security analysts and party bosses, and the verdict from that meeting was India had been too soft on Pakistan.

“After Mumbai, any self-respecting government would have adopted a much more robust response which alone could compel Pakistan to not only bring to book those behind the incident but also to wind down the infrastructure of terror,” the BJP said in a statement. “Instead India adopted the mildest of response, not like an emerging global player.”

India, it says, has a range of “diplomatic, economic and other options” to force Pakistan to see reason and stop being a base for anti-India operations. Tough words, but then this is a party that said way back in 1998 it would weaponise India’s nuclear deterrent in its election manifesto and proceeded to do exactly that soon as it entered office.

Even some members of the Congress government are not above flexing muscles. Defence Minister A.K.Antony said New Delhi knew of the existence of more than 30 militant camps operating in Pakistan and that it was telling foreign nations these camps were not just a threat to India but to the world itself. Pakistan has said that it is already fighting militants on its own territory and that the accusations from India are unhelpful.

[Reuters photos of British Foreign Secretary David Miliband with Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Indian policemen standing guard in Kashmir]

Earlier this month, I wrote that the brief given to a South Asian envoy by President Barack Obama could prove to be the first test of the success of Indian diplomacy after the Mumbai attacks. At issue was whether the envoy would be asked to focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan or whether the brief would be extended to India, reflecting comments made by Obama during his election campaign that a resolution of the Kashmir dispute would ease tensions across the region.

That question has been resolved - publicly at least — with the appointment of Richard Holbrooke as Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. No mention of India or Kashmir.

India has long resisted overt outside interference in Kashmir and argued - with great vehemence since the Mumbai attacks - that tensions in South Asia were caused by Pakistan’s support for, or tolerance of, Islamist militants rather than the Kashmir dispute.  For India, a public reference to Kashmir following Mumbai would amount to endorsing what it calls cross-border terrorism.

So does that mean the end of the road for efforts to ease tensions in Kashmir? Analysts think not. Unlike British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who riled India this month by linking security in South Asia to Kashmir, the United States appears to have decided that by keeping quiet in public, it can achieve more in private.

In The Cable, Washington reporter Laura Rozen - who says India’s U.S. lobby worked hard to make sure there was no reference to India in Holbrooke’s brief - quotes Philip Zelikow, a former counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, as saying the omission might make things easier. “Leaving India out of the title actually opens up (Holbrooke’s) freedom to talk to them,” Zelikow says. In Pakistan’s Daily Times, columnist Ejaz Haider writes that “Obama will not overtly offend India by putting in place a special envoy for Afghanistan-Pakistan-India. But discerning analysts in New Delhi know the fine print.” Indian analyst Raja Mohan made a similar point when he wrote before Holbrooke’s appointment that, “although in deference to New Delhi’s objections, Obama might not name Kashmir as part of the special envoy’s mandate, reworking the India-Pakistan relationship will be an inevitable and important component of his initiative.”

And India may actually be less defensive about U.S. involvement in Kashmir than it was when Obama first raised the idea. It has since concluded elections in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, conducted in conditions of relative peace that many reckon would not have been possible without the active cooperation of Pakistan in restraining militants from disrupting the polls. 

There’s a window of opportunity there that Raja Mohan says should persuade India to embrace U.S. involvement in the region, but on its own terms. “India has no reason to deny that during the Kargil war with Pakistan in the summer of 1999, the military confrontation with Islamabad during 2001-02, and in the effort to pressure Pakistan after the Mumbai terror attacks, the US role has been a positive one.”

India’s terms, especially with a parliamentary election coming up in India, are likely to include a requirement that the United States avoids public involvement in Kashmir. Instead, Raja Mohan is quoted as saying in this article, it should help create the conditions in Pakistan for a resumption of back-channel diplomacy between India and Pakistan that before Mumbai was beginning to bear fruit.

The United States appears to have conceded the first point by quietly dropping public references to Kashmir following the Mumbai attacks. Can Holbrooke now pull off the much trickier task of working behind the scenes to reach private understandings to ease tensions in the region?

(Photo: U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at the State Department in Washington January 22, 2009. From left are Richard Holbrooke, envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Vice President Joe Biden, Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Mideast envoy George Mitchell/Kevin Lamarque)