By shifting the theatres of violence from J&K to elsewhere, Pakistan looks for greater 'deniability', while furthering the communal divide, but it not a radical departure or even as a nuanced reorientation of the ISI/jihadi agenda
Dr. Singh is believed to have specifically conveyed concerns over ISI involvement in the July 7 suicide attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul, with a message that the incident, along with cease-fire violations on the Line of Control (LoC) and increasing infiltration in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), had created "difficulties" in the relationship between the two countries.
Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, on his part, assured his Indian counterpart that Islamabad would independently investigate the embassy attack which killed 60 people, including four Indians.
The cease-fire violations coincide with the terrorist attacks on Indian targets at home and abroad. There have been serial bombings in India – in the western commercial hub ofAhmedabad, in Gujarat, on July 26, and in the southern IT/BPO centre of Bangalore, capital of Karnataka, on July 25, which left a cumulative total of approximately 56 people killed and 150 wounded. Earlier, the suicide bombing in Kabul on July 7 killed at least 60 people, including diplomat V. Venkateswara Rao and the military attaché Brigadier Ravi Datt Mehta.
With the security agencies currently investigating the bombings in Bangalore and Ahmedabad and the antecedents of the shadowy Indian Mujahideen (which claimed responsibility for the mayhem in Ahmedabad), definitive evidence is still elusive regarding the ISI’s possible role. There is, however, no such uncertainty over the ISI's involvement in the suicide bombing at the Indian Embassy in Kabul.
New Delhi stated, further, that the peace process was "under stress" after the Kabul Embassy bombing. India’s National Security Adviser, M. K. Narayanan, stated on July 12, "We not only suspect but we have a fair amount of intelligence (on the involvement of Pakistan)… We have no doubt that the ISI is behind this..."
In fact, increasing evidence reportedly indicates that Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) cadre Hamza Shakoor, a 22-year-old who hailed from Gujranwala in Pakistan’s Punjab province, drove the vehicle used to bomb the Embassy. Afghanistan has unequivocally blamed the attack on the ISI. To Pakistan’s acute embarrassment, reports indicate further that the ISI’s involvement has been substantially confirmed by USA’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), based on communication intercepts.
According to The New York Times (NYT), American intelligence agencies have concluded that the ISI helped plan the suicide bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul based on "intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack, the officials [of US] said, providing the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani intelligence officers are actively undermining American efforts to combat militants in the region."
Subsequent forensic investigations by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) have also reportedly established that the explosives used bore markings of the Pakistan Army Ordnance Factory. Further, NYT reported that "American officials also said there was new information showing that members of the Pakistani intelligence service were increasingly providing militants with details about the American campaign against them, in some cases allowing militants to avoid American missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas… The information linking the ISI to the bombing of the Indian Embassy was described in interviews by several American officials with knowledge of the intelligence. Some of the officials expressed anger that elements of Pakistan’s government seemed to be directly aiding violence in Afghanistan that had included attacks on American troops."
US intelligence believes that the embassy attack was probably orchestrated by militants loyal to JalaluddinHaqqani.
Islamabad hopes a crisis on the LoC will give it the pretext it needs to pull troops out of the North-West Frontier Province, a senior military official told The Hindu. It believes a crisis would compel the United States of America to pressure India to make concessions on Jammu and Kashmir, he said. According to the official, India’s decision not to use punitive force along the LoC was intended to avoid this outcome. Pakistan had thinned out its forces along its northern borders with India soon after the 2001-2002 military crisis, in support of United States of America-led anti-Taliban war in Afghanistan. However, Army chief General Pervez Ashfaq Kayani is believed to have decided to slash force commitments for the anti-Taliban campaign, and return troops to their traditional locations facing Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab.
And for the record, the jihad infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan occupied Kashmir is well in tact. However, commanders of the LeT are more cautious in their campaign of subversion – covert propaganda, hidden recruitment, training and exfiltration continue through a changed modus operandi, which has become sufficiently clandestine not to attract excessive media attention and affords Pakistan the option of denying thestate’s involvement in fostering terrorist activities.
The interrogation of Jameel Ahmed Awan aka Abu Zargam aka Dheeraj, a resident of Abottabad in Pakistan, who was arrested earlier in 2008, has revealed that the ideologues of the Ahl-e-Hadith sect continue to make provocative speeches laced with exhortation for jihad, particularly in areas where there is insignificant presence of security forces (SFs). Care is taken to switch off the microphone if such speeches are made in mosques and speeches made in city areas are far more temperate.
Sources indicate that the Gilani regime backs the ISI plan to disrupt the forthcoming elections in J&K. It was with the support of the newgovernment that LeT has recently opened two new training camps in Rawlakot and Kotli in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK). The outfit has reportedly created "an army of 200-250 militants" who are specially trained in carrying out attacks on political rallies, candidates and election booths. In addition to their own cadre, "the LeT was also ready to help some militants of Hizbul and Jaish to infiltrate under their banner to J&K to sabotage the elections".
These specially trained LeT cadres reportedly hail from Multan and Bahawalpur in Pakistan’s Punjab province and Rawlakot, Kotli and Bhimber in PoK, and have been selected after a long drawn process of trials.
While the primary target of the ISI-backed armies of mujahideen has been J&K, the post 9/11 era has gradually induced a parallel shift in strategy, with increasing terrorist incidents in various metropolitan areas in India. The intent and objectives of the ISI are increasingly apparent in a wide range of activities intended to provoke communal violence, engineer terrorist incidents, and recruit militants for a pan-Islamist jihad across India.
A shift in the pattern of violence from J&K to other centres "would offer Pakistan greater ‘deniability’, and enable it to argue that Indian Muslims have been pushed to a point of no return by the government’s ‘atrocities’. However, such a shift in strategies should not be perceived as a radical departure or even as a nuanced reorientation of the ISI/jihadi agenda. It lies entirely within the paradigm that has been sustained since the Zia-ul-Haq regime, and has progressively translated itself into the Islamist fundamentalist and terrorist movement in the region."
It is now clear that, whatever tactical restraint exercised by Pakistan for some time, has obviously disappeared. India, on the other hand, continues to exercise "adequate restraint" to prevent any runaway escalation of tensions, though Defence Minister A.K. Antony asserted that India is fully prepared to deal with any such instances "firmly".
The British Defence Academy report recommended that it was necessary to dismantle the ISI if the problem of Pakistan’s support to Islamist terrorism was to be resolved.
The Pakistani military establishment will oppose any move that could potentially reduce its powers, or the powers of the ISI. Given the architecture of Pakistan’s domestic politics and in the absence of sustained global pressure, a diminution of the ISI’s extraordinary powers and network cannot be expected in the proximate future. The shadowy ‘state within a state’, and its mandate of subversion and terror, will consequently continue to be a cause for serious global concern.
Kanchan Lakshman is Research Fellow, Institute for Conflict Management; Assistant Editor,Faultlines: Writings on Conflict & Resolution. Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal