The Jihadi Jaws

On April 1, 2009, a pilotless plane (Drone) of the USA's Central IntelligenceAgency (CIA)  attacked with a missile  the house of Hakimullah Mehsudin the  Khadezai area of the Orakzai Agency in the Federally-AdministeredTribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. Twelve persons were killed -- six of themfollowers of Hakimullah, who is the head of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)in the Orakzai Agency, which has no common border with Afghanistan, two womenand four other unidentified persons. Hakimullah himself, who was apparently oneof the targets, escaped unhurt and  warned of a retaliatory strike by theTaliban in Islamabad.

The retaliation through a suicide bomber came within three days. Late on theevening  of April 4,2009, a suicide bomber blew himself up in front of thebarracks of a company  of the Frontier Constabulary (FC) from theNorth-West Frontier Province (NWFP), which is deployed in Islamabad on  VIPsecurity duties. At least eight members of the FC were killed by the explosion.The FC consists almost entirely of Pashtuns recruited in the NWFP,  theFATA and the Pashtun majority areas of Balochistan. The FC has been in theforefront of the operations against the TTP in the Pashtun belt and one of theproposals initiated by the US Government provides for funding for upgrading theanti-terrorism capabilities of the FC.

The rapidity with which the TTP planned and carried out its threatened act ofretaliation speaks volumes of the number of suicide bombers at its disposal andtheir fierce motivation. It also speaks disturbingly of their  willingnessto die when called upon to strike by Baitullah Mehsud, the Amir of the TTP. Thebillions of dollars, which the US has already spent in the so-called war onterrorism, have not dented this motivation. It is doubtful  whether theadditional billions of dollars, which President Barack Obama proposes to spendfor giving assistance to Pakistan, will make any dent either. What one saw inIslamabad on April 4 was not an act of desperation. It was an act of defiance

Pakistan is in the process of being gobbled by a Frankenstein's Monster ofits own creation. To save Pakistan from being gobbled, it requires a leader oftremendous moral courage, who is prepared to admit the Himalayan folly of pastPakistani political and military leaders in creating this monster in the hope ofusing it to serve  the Pakistani agenda against India and in Afghanistanand has the courage to act against it and rid Pakistan of the effects of thisfolly. Such a leader Pakistan has not produced since its independence in 1947and it is unlikely to produce one  in the near and mid-term future.

Can Pakistan be saved despite itself from the jaws of this monster? That isthe question that President Barack Obama and his advisers should pose tothemselves and seek an answer. The recent statements and comments of Obamahimself and of his advisers and the Congressional testimonies of his officialsas well as of non-governmental US experts do not give cause for hope that theObama administration will be able to find a coherent strategy to put an end toterrorism emanating from the Af-Pak region. Conventional and naive beliefscontinue to come in the way of the formulation of such a strategy.

Such beliefs are responsible for the disturbing tendency of Obama'sadvisers--governmental as well as non-governmental-- to rationalise Pakistan'ssins  of commission and omission rather than confront them head-on and havethem eradicated by using the clout which the US still enjoys in Pakistan. Theseconventional and naive beliefs hold that somehow if Pakistan is assured of peaceon the Indo-Pakistan border and the dialogue process  between India andPakistan is resumed, the Pakistani army will concentrate better on its fightagainst terrorism and that this will be of benefit to the entire internationalcommunuity, including India.

The fallacy of this argument would be evident from the fact that betweenJanuary 2004, when Pervez Musharraf and Atal Behari Vajpayee, the then IndianPrime Minister, initiated the dialogue process, and November 26-29,2008, whenthis was discontinued after the terrorist attack in Mumbai by the PakistaniLashkar-e-Toiba (LET), the Neo Taliban staged its spectacular come-back inAfghanistan from sanctuaries in Pakistan, Pakistani-trained suicide bomberscarried out their attacks in London in July,2005, an attempt by another group ofsuspects of Pakistani origin to blow up a number of US-bound flights was foiledby the British police, a group of Pakistan-trained terrorists carried outsimultaneous explosions on suburban trains in Mumbai killing over 180 innocentcivilians in July,2006, a cell of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) wasunearthed by the Spanish Police in Barcelona, there was an Inter-ServicesIntelligence sponsored explosion outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul inJuly,2008, suicide terrorism in Pakistan shot up and the ISI and the PakistanArmy avoided acting against the terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistani territory.Plans for the Mumbai terrorist strike from November 26 to 29,2008, were alsodrawn up by the LET during this period and the training camps for theperpetrators were  organised in Pakistani territory. The JointCounter-Terrorism mechanism which Musharraf and Dr.Manmohan Singh agreed to setup in September 2006 proved to be a cosmetic exercise due to Pakistan'sunwillingness  to act against the anti-India terrorist infrastructure.

The significant lessening of tension on the Indo-Pakistan border during thisperiod facilitated by the cease-fire across the Line of Control in Jammu andKashmir (J&K) and the increase in people-to-people contacts between the twocountries did not lead to any change in Pakistan's policy of nursing terroristgroups in its territory and using them against India and Afghanistan. Equallyfallacious is the argument touted by the governmental and non-Governmentaladvisers of Obama that a reduction of Indian presence and activities inAfghanistan would give Pakistan a greater sense of security and encourage it toact more vigorously against terrorism emanating from its territory.

Indian presence and activities in Afghanistan ceased  after the fall ofthe Najibullah Government in April,1992. Between April 1992 and September 1996,when different Afghan Mujahideen groups were in power in Kabul and betweenSeptember 1996 and October 2001, when the ISI-sponsored Taliban was in power inKabul, there was no Indian activity in Afghanistan. There was no reason forPakistan to feel insecure during this period. And yet, the ISI kept meddling inthe internal affairs of Afghanistan, raised, trained and armed the Taliban in1994, helped it to capture power in Kabul in September,1996, allowed Osama binLaden to shift from the Sudan to Afghanistan in July,1996, and maintained closecontacts with Al Qaeda  in its sanctuaries in the Jalalabad-Kandaharregion. Between April 1992 and September 2001 was the time when there wasmaximum Pakistani interference in Afghanistan, which became a virtual Pakistanicolony. That was also the time when all the jihadi terrorist groups of the worldgravitated to the Af-Pak region, which became the Mecca of jihadi terroristgroups. To say that Pakistan's reluctance to act against terrorist groups in itsterritory is due to its feelings of insecurity vis-à-vis India shows a totallack of understanding of Pakistan.

Everytime the US makes an attempt to rationalise Pakistan's sins ofcommission and omission  under the pretext of its feelings of insecurityvis-à-vis India, it strengthens the belief of the Pakistanileadership--political as well as military-- that so far as India is concerned itcan do anything and get away with it. Many of the anti-US and anti-Westterrorist groups of today such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), theHarkat-ul-Mujahideen (HUM), the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) and the Jaish-e-Mohammad(JEM) started as anti-India terrorists trained and armed by the ISI yesterday.

Unless and until the governmental and non-governmental advisers of Obama ridtheir minds and policy-making of wrong ideas and pre-conceived notions aboutPakistan and its military-intelligence establishment, their so-called newstrategy is not going to succeed. The US through its Drone strikes may succeedin eliminating individual jihadi terrorist leaders such as Osama bin Laden,Ayman al-Zawahiri and Baitullah Mehsud, but the terrorist infrastructure set upby them in the tribal belt with the complicity of the ISI and the Pakistani Armywill continue to pose threats to peace and security in the world.

How to destroy those sanctuaries-- with the co-operation of Pakistan, ifforthcoming, or without its co-operation, if necessary? That  should be thestarting point of any new strategy. It is evident that no adviser of Obama isthinking on these lines. The entire strategy as it has come out is based on thepathetic assumption that somehow Pakistan can be coaxed into acting against theterrorists despite the bitter experience to the contrary since 9/11. Without aneffective coercive element, the strategy is unlikely to succeed.

B. Raman is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. ofIndia, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, the Institute For Topical Studies,Chennai.