Live threats from Pakistan

By Radhavinod Raju

General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani’s gesture of allowing the Indian Army’s helicopter with the two pilots to return to India hours after it strayed into Pakistan due to a technical snag in the Ladakh sector in October last was highly appreciated in India. It is believed that without the Pakistan Army’s clearance, the progress made in giving a positive push to commercial activities between the two countries would not have taken place. It was obvious that with a plummeting economy, and the United States placing severe restrictions on funds flow into Pakistan, the establishment, including the Pakistan Army bosses, would have realised the benefits of doing business with India. During a visit to the avalanche-hit Gyari on Pakistan’s side of the Siachen Glacier, just below it, which took 140 Pakistani lives including 129 soldiers of the Northern Light Infantry last month, General Kayani called for peaceful resolution of the Siachen Glacier dispute, and proposed that Pakistan spend less on defence and more on the development for the people. He is further reported to have said, “Peaceful coexistence between the two neighbours is very important so that everybody can concentrate on the well-being of the people.”

General Kayani’s change of heart vis-a-vis India has set many heads thinking — is this a tactic to help Pakistan get over its current problems, both internal with respect to the Pakistan Taliban’s attacks on the state, and the external problems with their chief patron, the US? Peaceniks on both sides of the border are happy with the latest developments, some of them calling for removing the trust deficit between the two countries.

When President Asif Ali Zardari, soon after taking over in September 2008, said that the issue of Kashmir should be left to later generations for sorting out, and called for closer economic ties between the two countries, there was severe criticism, which forced him to go into a shell. General Kayani is on record that his Army was India-centric. The suicide attack on the Indian embassy in July 2008, was a warning to India not to get too involved in Afghanistan — an operation credited to the ISI’s proxies, the Haqqani group of the Afghan Taliban. This was soon followed by Mumbai 26/11, when 10 heavily-armed terrorists held Mumbai to ransom for nearly 60 hours, killing 166 innocent persons. Zardari had offered to send the ISI chief, General Shuja Pasha to India, but was overruled by Kayani. Much later, disclosures of David Coleman Headley, an American of Pakistani origin, to the FBI while in their custody, and later to India’s investigators had revealed the roles of two serving ISI majors in the Mumbai attacks, though as usual Pakistan has denied this. Indian investigators possess enough evidence that would show the two majors, Iqbal and Sameer, were also involved in normal Army intelligence operations, clearly establishing them as serving Army officers. With such evidence it is clear that the Pakistan Army’s attitude towards India continues to be hostile.

The reluctance of the Pakistan government to bring the top planners of the 26/11 attacks, including Hafiz Saeed, to stand trial, and that even the trial against the second rung leaders of the LeT has hardly seen any movement, only compounds this complicated relationship. It is very well known that the LeT, and its patron, Hafiz Saeed, have close relations with the Army bosses in Rawalpindi, and have refrained from attacking the Pakistan Army, unlike the Pakistan Taliban. So while there are intellectuals and peaceniks on both sides of the border, now joined by the business communities calling for easier visa regimes and removing the trust deficit, Indian security agencies would continue to remain highly sceptical about these calls.

For the strategic community in India, the terrorist infrastructure created by the Pakistani Army to engage India in an unconventional, asymmetric war, and to take control of Afghanistan through the Afghan Taliban including the Haqqani group, after the withdrawal of US forces in 2014, continues to be a live threat. India has invested heavily in Afghanistan’s development, and has entered into a strategic partnership with the Afghan government, all of which would come under threat from the Afghan Taliban backed by Pakistan. Pakistan has consistently withstood international pressure for disbanding this infrastructure, giving different excuses — like no evidence against Hafiz Saeed for his involvement in 26/11, and that its forces are overstretched and cannot take on the Haqqani group in Pakistan’s bad-lands in Waziristan. The Americans have finally realised that while taking billions of dollars in aid from the US, Pakistan has continued to encourage the Haqqani group to target American soldiers and other interests in Afghanistan. While militant infiltration from across the border into Jammu & Kashmir has come down considerably, there are reliable reports of hundreds of trained militants waiting to cross over into India. As recently as a week back, the Indian Army thwarted attempts by militants to cross into India by eliminating six of them on the border in the Uri sector.

Thus there are important considerations of security that constrain India’s security managers from supporting moves to allow Pakistanis unbridled access to Indian businesses and investments in India’s economy, and to soften the visa regime. That cannot happen without Pakistan dismantling the terrorist infrastructure that has inflicted considerable damage on this country, and controlling terrorists like Hafiz Saeed from going around freely, pouring vitriolic against India. The question is whether General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, with his new found realisation of having good neighbourly relations with India, will allow this to happen? That indeed is the acid test. Or will that have to wait for the civilian government in Pakistan, which is keen to forge better ties with India, from gaining total control over Pakistan’s armed forces. Is this possible in Pakistan, which has been controlled by its Army for over half of its existence since Independence? Only the future can tell.

(Views expressed in the column are the author’s own) 

Radhavinod Raju is a former director general of the National Investigation Agency. 

E-mail: radhavinodraju@gmail.com 

New Indian Express

16th May 2012