Losing A New Game...

The notion of a Pakistani intelligence chief on Indiansoil, sharing evidence with his Indian counterparts in a joint operation againsta horrific attack in Mumbai was in the end too remarkable to be true.Recognizing that terrorist extremism is increasingly threatening internal andexternal security for both states, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and PresidentAsif Ali Zardari devised the best confidence-building measure in a generationwhen the Indian Prime Minister requested and Pakistan’s President assented tosend Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) head Ahmed Shuja Pasha toNew Delhi to assist in tracking down those responsible. But unable to come togrips with the thought of ‘enemy’ intelligence agencies sharing forces, andperhaps worried about their own political fortunes, hardliners in both countriesjointly snuffed out this visionary and unprecedented step. Both India andPakistan are poorer as a result.

Both leaders took a substantial risk in even suggesting thecollaboration, knowing the blowback that would accompany it. But they also bothrecognized the greater danger at hand, and the need to try something different.The Mumbai attack symbolised more than just a breakdown of Indian intelligence--itrepresented the failure of status quo law-and-order anti-terror policies inSouth Asia as a whole. This was a professional attack by trained forces whoprepared without government interference, and intended to maximize politicaldestabilization, fear, and international media exposure. The local police wereconfused, outmatched, and completely unprepared, but to expect any different isto create unrealistic expectations of (and force undue blame upon) citygatekeepers when the militants could have been stopped a year ago as theytrained.

Of course, the political blame game of who didn’t heed what warning andwho is tough enough on terror has already started. Many in India have alreadyfingered the Pakistan government during this contentious election season,pointing to evidence linking the ‘Deccan Mujahadeen’ terrorists to thebanned Pakistani group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). The truth, however, is morecomplicated. LeT operates within Pakistan with impunity, because the centralgovernment lacks the capacity, manpower, and perhaps even the will to stop them.LeT exploits this vacuum of power to plan and launch attacks in Afghanistan,Pakistan, and India, and is a threat to all states in the region. Pakistan nowowes a debt to both itself and its neighbours to bring this group to justice.

However, the Pakistani government’s fingerprints are closer to LeT thanmany are comfortable with, making swift retribution both problematic andinternally dangerous. The ISI has been rumoured to fund and train the LeT in thepast, and it is possible that at least one faction of the ISI is still doing sonow. And because the relationship between Pakistan’s civilian leadership andISI is strained at best, it may be doing so without the knowledge or permissionof Zardari himself. Further, the ISI may also be undergoing an internal powerstruggle between hardliners and pro-government forces within its own ranks,making it unwise to assume that any ISI support was sanctioned by either thegovernment or by ISI leadership until or unless when evidence proves otherwise .

To define any of the recent attacks in India (including as well therecent bombings in Delhi and Assam) as open and shut cases of state-sponsoredterror is both simplistic and misleading. Asymmetrical terror represents thepresent and future enemy of global anti-terror efforts. Groups inspired by easyaccess to arms and the achievements and ideology of al-Qaeda and others can overtime develop the capacity and expertise to inflict large-scale damage withoutthe need for extensive state backing. They can act with little direction fromany government, and learn from the experiences of others, perhaps even receiveclandestine training from friendly accomplices, and are then left to copycatsuccesses of the past while becoming increasingly beholden to nobody butthemselves.

However, it is the response which will define the historical significanceof last week’s events. Will Pakistan make a serious attempt to bring thoseresponsible for these attacks to justice? Will Indiauphold the rule of law, or hastily pass Patriot Act-style legislation thatencourages human rights violations without providing real security, thusrepeating the post 9/11 errors of the United States? Will Pakistan amass therequired political will and military muscle to counter other terrorist groupsharboring in its NWFP and FATA areas? Will India continue with tough talk whileignoring the overworked and undereducated police stations that could havethwarted these attacks? Will either country move beyond anti-terror militarysolutions at the national level to realize that security forces alone are notenough?

What is needed now from India and Pakistan is a visionary joint reply,recognizing that these common adversaries are strangling them both as they playthe same old zero-sum games of the past. What must be avoided at all costs is areversion to the same ‘tough on terror’ political rhetoric, saber-rattlingand increased militarization that pays only lip service to the chain of eventsthat led to this horrific attack. Full-scale war remains a low risk barringevidence of direct involvement from Zardari’s government, but until India andPakistan realize that they are on the same team in this battle, these attackswill become more brazen, more deadly, and worst of all more frequent. Reflectionupon how 60 years of blame and mistrust has led to nothing but death may yetre-open the door for cooperation, but we’re not holding our breaths.

NamrataGoswami is an Associate Research Fellow at the Institute for Defence Studiesand Analyses (IDSA), New Delhi. Jason Miklianis a Researcher with the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO)