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T

he Raymond Davis affair truly captures the current situation, predicament, of Pakistan like no other has done in the recent past. A perplexing incident that leaves more questions unanswered than it reveals. The shadowy operations that the Pakistani intelligence agencies undertake with their counterparts from the United States of America. The loss of Pakistani lives in circumstances that were as mysterious as they are avoidable. Then the whole drama about the legal status of Raymond Davis, diplomatic or otherwise. Passions heightened by the selectivity of media leaks that ranged from the conspiratorial to the bizarre. Vast public participation in the case as a daily dose of legalese, international relations and national security affairs. A last minute change of legal representatives for the victim families. And the closing chapter in which the acquittal happened by recourse to Shari’a law that has the country in a bind in any case. All of this finally ended with the flight out of Pakistan for Raymond Davis and family members of those that died from his gunfire.

All of this happened in the bright glare of media attention, but for the final closing chapter that was cloaked in a dramatic denouement that would have put even the most addicted conspiracy theorists to shame. There was a hype about the case that had the entire country riveted, even shutting out those that spoke for a different approach to relations with the greatest benefactor of Pakistan, the United States of America. The shrillness of the campaign to punish Raymond Davis was led by intelligence briefings and leaks to the media that bordered on being completely off the wall. Why a CIA contractor would want to take photographs of Pakistan army bunkers on the Indian border when better resolution images are available on US military satellites! This was amongst the more bizarre leaks that the Pakistani agencies indulged in. All the while raising hopes amongst the Pakistani public that their country was not going to succumb to the sustained pressure of the US to release a CIA contractor caught for murder. But all the while various organisations, institutions and families in Pakistan were quietly cutting a deal with powers in Washington.

Amongst the more fantastic allegations flying around web world is the one about the Director General of the ISI getting yet another extension on account of this deal. He was clearly in the picture as negotiations began to unravel a seriously vexing issue. As were the two main political parties in Pakistan, who joined hands with the army leadership in finding a way out of this maze. The judiciary were in the loop, of course. And a lawyer to do the final bidding with the families. None of this was in the know of the people of Pakistan, who had been fed on strange stories about Pakistani bunkers being compromised et al.

Since Shari’a law was used to arrive at a settlement even the highly vocal mullahs can’t say much about it. There were deals with various players, but for the people of Pakistan and that is the reality of that country today.

April 2011 Defence AND security alert

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publisher’s view

announcement

SHATHE SHATHYAM SAMACHARET: TIT FOR TAT!

I

s the Islamic Republic of Pakistan really a “pak” (pious) State as it was visualised by its progenitor Mohammad Ali Jinnah?

It was crafted out of India with a vision of establishing a much better nation-State, a haven for the Muslims of the sub-continent, but what the world is witnessing today is a mockery of all that is Islamic, humane and inclusive.

Vo l u m e 2 I s s u e 7 A p r i l 2 0 11 chairman shyam sunder publisher & ceo pawan agrawal editor-in-chief manvendra singh director shishir bhushan corporate consultant k j singh art consultant divya gupta central saint martins college of art & design, university of arts, london corporate communications monika kanchan ad-sales manish upadhyay representative J&K salil sharma creative vivek anand pant correspondent (europe) dominika cosic production dilshad & dabeer webmaster sundar rawat photographer subhash circulation & distribution vijay bhatia ranjeet system administrator vikas e-mail: (first name)@dsalert.org info: info@dsalert.org articles: articles@dsalert.org subscri ption: subscription@dsalert.org online edition: online@dsalert.org advertisement: advt@dsalert.org editorial & business office 4/19 asaf ali road new delhi-110002 (India) t: +91-011-23243999,23287999,9958382999 f: +91-11-23259666 e: info@dsalert.org www.dsalert.org

disclaimer all rights reserved. reproduction and translation in any language in whole or in part by any means without permission from Defence and Security Alert is prohibited. opinions expressed are those of the individual writers and do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher and / or editors. all disputes are subject to jurisdiction of delhi courts. defence and security alert is printed, published and owned by pawan agrawal and printed at graphic world, 1686, kucha dakhini rai, darya ganj, new delhi-110002 and published at 4/19 asaf ali road, new delhi (india). editor: manvendra singh.

What progress has Pakistan made in the last 64 years of its existence? Not much. In fact it stands (singularly alone among the comity of nations) on the brink of becoming a failed State.

Ominous clouds look down upon Pakistan menacingly and it has reached that stage of dark existence where everybody is looking for some silver lining.

All in vain. Right from its inception till date the scenario has been worsening by the day for one reason or the other. It has now reached a stage where there is little hope of any transformation or recovery at all.

Science And Technology In Internal Security

There is no significant development in any sector in the last six decades whether it is education or health, industry or business. There have been no new measures taken by any of the past or present governments for the welfare and well-being of the people in any manner.

The education and the health sectors are so weak and dogma ridden that they have been hijacked by the fundamentalists to create a new breed of Muslims who are bloodthirsty and bereft of the milk of human kindness that the Prophet (Peace be upon him) sought to create by his teachings.

As a consequence the only industry that has flourished in the past decades is that of terrorism which is thriving in Pakistan. All the previous governments and the present one have contributed by acts of commission and omission to the promotion of the business of terrorism which has now attained global proportions. It has become a multinational corporation in every sense of the term. All the politicians, defence personnel, bureaucrats and diplomats have become purveyors of the cult of terrorism as is seen in the manner in which they singly and collectively spring to the defence of the terrorist and try to justify the existence of this cult and his/her acts with such coinage as “Islamophobia” and “Muslim-baiters”.

Today, Pakistan and terrorism have become synonymous and innocent Muslims all over the world suffer the consequences of an image that has been superimposed on Islam for geopolitical, not spiritual, purposes. This state of affairs is a matter of great concern for the whole world as it is affecting everyone. The masterminds propagating the cult of violence and terrorism spend time and big money researching and developing the most potent devices and products like jihad, human bombs and terrorism which are being shipped to all parts of the world. And India being the neighbour and a peace loving country is affected the most. We have seen the conspiracies being hatched and implemented by Pakistan on many occasions and we are really disturbed because of this. Thousands of Indians have been sacrificed in the macabre mechanisations and ill-advised conceit relentlessly pursued

by Pakistan.

How long can India keep suffering and forgiving? How long can India wait for Pakistan to realise the futility of its self-destructive ambition? The time has come for India to act.

And act decisively. What are we waiting for? The most opportune time?Are we scared of the international community or we are scared that if we take strong steps against Pakistan then the Arab world is going to stop all oil supplies to India? Lets take a firm decision now otherwise these attacks on India will never stop.

We are witnessing what is going on in the Arab world. They themselves are in bad shape and we should not be scared of imagined consequences. India must not delay finding a permanent solution to the Pakistani menace. Whatever the cost. Lets not waste our energy, time and money on Pakistani nationals like Kasab or Pakistan-indoctrinated and motivated anti-nationals like Afzal Guru and make them pay for their crimes against our motherland.

Lets pray for the well-being of the State of Pakistan and its people but be prepared to annihilate its non-State actors and other perpetrators of crimes against India and peace loving Indians.

Jai Hind!

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ANNOUNCES MAY 2011 AS SPECIAL I S S U E O N

April 2011 Defence AND security alert

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contents PAKISTAN SPECIAL ISSUE April 2011

contents

Vo lume 2 Issue 7 April 2011

A R T I C L E S

Islamic nukes: global implications G. Parthasarathy

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Pak-US relations

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genealogy of an oligarchy

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the two-nation theory: an amorphous idea

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Pakistan 2020: possible scenarios

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the end of Jinnah’s dream?

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China’s Cuba?

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Prof. P. M. Kamath Brig. (Retd.) Gurmeet Kanwal Prof. Kalim Bahadur

Brig. (Retd.) Rahul K. Bhonsle Dr. Prem Shankar Jha

Maj. Gen. (Retd.) Dr. G. D. Bakshi

nukes: jihadi hand on trigger?

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radicalisation: global threat

40

ballistic missile capability

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military postures: perceptions and reality

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playing for strategic depth

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Pakistan's undoing: media the monster or ill-advised conceit?

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Dr. Harsh V. Pant

Maj. Gen. (Retd.) Afsir Karim Dr. Arvind Kumar

Cmde. (Retd.) Ranjit Rai Dr. Jagmohan Meher

Pak-China-N.Korea nexus

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Ram Rahim Pareshan!

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unending quest for parity

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straddling the crossroads

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global war on terror: role reversal

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fountainhead of terror: Russian equation

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Dr. Rajiv Nayan

Vice Admiral (Retd.) Barry Bharathan Dr. Tej Pratap Singh

Lt. Gen. (Retd.) O. P. Kaushik Dr. Rajendra Prasad Rohit K. Mishra

F E A T U R E S

defsec: product updates

64

fire safety tips

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Brig. (Retd.) Chitranjan Sawant

for online edition of Defence and Security Alert (DSA) log on to: www.dsalert.org

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Pakistan

TUMULTUOUS JOURNEY

Kargil has shown that there is space beneath the “nuclear overhang” for a limited war. But that episode also underscored that such a limited war places unacceptable restrictions on manoeuvre as a means to bring about a swift and successful culmination of a military campaign. This leaves India at a disadvantage in the face of both Pakistan and China’s attempts at “salami slicing” and “nibbling” of territory all along the Himalayas. It is also necessary to be abundantly clear that there have been freelance contacts between Pakistan’s nuclear scientists and military personnel with the masterminds of terrorism to coordinate and strategise their respective roles and, like Kargil illustrated, there is no sanctity of any written agreement and one will have to “play it by ear” if and when the crunch comes.

O

n January 19, 1972, in the immediate aftermath of his country’s humiliating defeat in the December 1971 Bangladesh conflict, then President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto convened a meeting in Multan attended by Pakistan’s top nuclear scientists and his close aides where he announced his decision to manufacture nuclear weapons, primarily to counteract India’s growing conventional capabilities. While explaining the rationale for Pakistan’s nuclear programme, Bhutto observed in his memoirs, written while in prison, that while the “Christian, Jewish and Hindu” civilisations had nuclear weapons capability it was the “Islamic civilisation” alone that did not possess nuclear weapons.

He asserted that he would be remembered as the man who had provided the “Islamic civilisation” with “full nuclear capability”.

Islamic bomb The supply of nuclear weapons technology by Dr. A. Q. Khan to Libya and Iran and his close links with Saudi Arabia are only one manifestation of the Islamist sentiments prevalent in the nuclear and military establishments in Pakistan. Bhutto’s views on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons contributing to the capabilities of the

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“Islamic civilisation” were shared by Pakistan’s leading nuclear scientist Sultan Bashiruddin Mehmood who, along with his colleague Chaudhri Abdul Majeed, was detained shortly after the terrorist strikes of 9/11.

They were both charged with helping the Al Qaeda to acquire nuclear and biological weapons capabilities.

Mehmood openly voiced support for the Taliban and publicly advocated the transfer of nuclear weapons to other Islamic nations. He described Pakistan’s nuclear capability as the property of the whole “Ummah” (Muslim community).

Two other Pakistan scientists Suleiman Asad and Al Mukhtar wanted for questioning about suspected links with Osama bin Laden disappeared after it was claimed that they had gone to Myanmar, bordering China.

Mehmood and Majeed are reported to have acknowledged that they had long discussions with Al Qaeda and Taliban officials during the course of visits to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

China factor There are now reports confirming that while already possessing around 100 nuclear weapons, predominantly based on enriched uranium, produced in its enrichment plant in Kahuta, Pakistan has constructed four plutonium based reactors in

April 2011 Defence AND security alert

G. Parthasarathy

Khushab. It has also constructed a reprocessing plant to obtain weapons grade plutonium in Khushab, with Chinese assistance. China’s assistance to Pakistan’s nuclear programme is extensively documented. The Director of the Wisconsin Project of Arms Control Gary Milhollin has commented: “If you subtract China’s help from the Pakistani nuclear programme, there is no Pakistani nuclear programme”.

There is evidence, including hints from Bhutto’s prison memoirs that suggest that China formally agreed to help Pakistan to develop nuclear weapons when the then Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto visited China in 1976.

By 1983 China supplied Pakistan with enough enriched uranium for around two weapons and the designs for a 25 kiloton bomb. Chinese support for the Pakistan programme is believed to have included a quid pro quo in the form of Pakistan providing China the designs of centrifuge enrichment plants. China’s assistance to Pakistan continued even after it acceded to the NPT. Interestingly, while the nuclear weapons designs supplied by Dr. A. Q. Khan to Libya were of a Chinese warhead tested in the 1960s, the nuclear warheads tested by Pakistan in 1998 were of a more modern design. Supplying Pakistan with facilities for manufacturing plutonium weapons is evidently a move by China

Islamic nukes: global implications to transfer lighter nuclear weapons and even thermonuclear capabilities to Pakistan.

Missiles too China’s strategic relationship with

Pakistan has not only included supplies and knowhow for enabling Pakistan to build weapons of mass destruction, but also the means of delivery for WMD. Shortly after the visit of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to China in December 1988, China

supplied Pakistan with M-11 missiles which it was claimed, had a range of less than 300 kilometres. This was followed by assistance to Pakistan to build M-9 missiles (Christened as Shaheen-1 by Pakistan) capable of carrying nuclear warheads up to an

April 2011 Defence AND security alert

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Pakistan

TUMULTUOUS JOURNEY

estimated range of 800 kilometres.

Indian observers have subsequently noted that the Shaheen-2 missile with a range of around 1,800 kilometres was a two stage extension of the Shaheen-1.

While the strategic objectives of the Sino-Pakistan nuclear and missile nexus are clearly understood in India, the approach of the United States and other countries to this relationship has only reinforced Indian determination to strengthen its nuclear and missile capabilities. Western commentators have acknowledged that even though the United States was aware of Chinese assistance to Pakistan’s nuclear programme in the 1980s, its strategic relationships with China and Pakistan designed to counter the Soviet Union, led to nuclear proliferation between these “strategic partners” being deliberately ignored.

For similar reasons, the Clinton Administration refused to take any meaningful action despite possessing information about China’s assistance to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and missile programmes in the 1990s.

Nuclear doctrines While Pakistan has not formally enunciated a nuclear doctrine, Lt. General Khalid Kidwai, the Head of the Strategic Planning Division of its National Command Authority told a team of physicists from Italy’s Landau Network in 2002 that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons were “aimed solely at India”. According to the report of the Landau team, Kidwai added that Pakistan would use nuclear weapons if India conquers a large part of Pakistan’s territory, or destroys a large part of Pakistan’s land and air forces. Kidwai also held out the possibility of use of nuclear weapons if India tries to “economically strangle” Pakistan or pushes it to political destabilisation.

In the immediate aftermath of Pakistan’s nuclear tests in May 1998, there was a tendency amongst political and diplomatic quarters in Pakistan to assume that India would be deterred from conventional crossborder responses if it was made out that Pakistan’s nuclear threshold was low.

General Kidwai’s elucidation, which came in the wake of serious tensions along Pakistan’s borders

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with India, was a realistic signal of the military’s views on the thresholds of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons strategy.

The belief that any conventional military response by India to terrorist provocations like the attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001 or on Mumbai in November 2008 would lead to nuclear escalation is, therefore, questionable.

India derived its nuclear weapons capabilities primarily from its plutonium based nuclear programme. Though India first tested what it called as a “nuclear device” in 1974, the decision to cross the nuclear threshold and assemble nuclear weapons was taken only around the end of 1988. Thus, both India and Pakistan had arsenals of nuclear weapons when the nuclear tests of May 1998 were carried out.

It has also now been established that China permitted the use of its territory for a nuclear test by Pakistan in 1990.

India’s nuclear doctrine, first officially enunciated on January 4, 2003 asserts that it intends to build and maintain a “credible, minimum deterrent”.

This deterrent is to be based on a “triad” of “aircraft, mobile landbased missiles and sea based assets”. While adopting a policy of “no first use”, the doctrine clarifies that its nuclear weapons will only be used in retaliation against a major attack on Indian territory or on Indian forces anywhere, in which nuclear weapons are used.

India also retains the right to use nuclear weapons in the event of major attacks on Indian territory, or on Indian forces anywhere, in which chemical or biological weapons are used. While Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine is explicitly “India specific”, the Indian nuclear doctrine has been enunciated in the context of the presence of nuclear weapons in its

April 2011 Defence AND security alert

entire surrounding neighbourhood.

Moreover, the development of India’s missile capabilities includes missiles with ranges presently extending to over 3,500 kilometres. These missiles are obviously not “Pakistan centric”.

Size of stockpiles The differences between India and Pakistan on their respective nuclear doctrines have naturally resulted in limitations on any bilateral agreements on the size of their respective arsenals. While Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine is entirely “India centric”, India’s nuclear strategy is

mutual confidence which now exists because of a better understanding of each other’s nuclear thresholds, both countries have cooperated in working out a series of nuclear CBMs, which commenced with a landmark agreement of non-attack on each other’s nuclear facilities signed on December 31, 1988. Following agreement reached during the Summit meeting in Lahore in February 1998 India and Pakistan have signed agreements on “Reducing the Risk from Accidents Relating to Nuclear Weapons” and “Pre-Notification of Flight Testing

from non-nuclear packages and that the warheads are stored separately from the delivery systems. India has also adopted similar precautions with regard to its nuclear deterrent.

India took the lead in cosponsoring a resolution in the UNGA in 1998 on “Reducing the Nuclear Danger” calling for the removal of warheads from missiles and the de-alerting of nuclear weapons systems. Pakistan and over a hundred non-nuclear weapons States supported this resolution that would have reduced the risk of accidental nuclear conflict worldwide. The P-5 nuclear weapon States were less than enthusiastic about supporting this resolution.

Security of nuclear weapons

not exclusively “Pakistan centric”. It has to cater for the challenges posed

by China’s nuclear capabilities also.

While concern has been voiced about strained relations between India and Pakistan leading to a nuclear conflict, India and Pakistan acknowledged on June 6, 2004 that “the nuclear capabilities of each other, which are based on their national security imperatives, constitute a factor for stability”. Apart from a degree of

of Ballistic Missiles”. There are, therefore, confidence building measures in place for seeing that tensions are not escalated because of misperceptions or misreading of developments on either side.

Discrete storage Pakistan has clarified that its nuclear weapons are not assembled and that the fissile cores are stored separately

There have been international concerns that given the growing religious radicalism in Pakistan, its nuclear weapons or nuclear materials could be transferred to radical Islamic or terrorist groups. Pakistani nuclear scientists have, after all, been known to have contacts with such groups and there has been growing radicalisation in the officer Corps and men of the Pakistan army. Concerns on this score cannot be ignored, though in recent days American politicians like Senator Joe Lieberman have voiced confidence that as things stand they are reasonably reassured of the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and materials. Military leaders like Lt. General Kidwai and other officers of the SPD have stressed that with American tutoring and funds they have implemented various technical precautions to guarantee the security of nuclear weapons. These measures include improved perimeter security, installation of electronic locks and security devices such as Permissive Action Links the SPD claims that it has also developed a personnel reliability programme, though given incidents where Pakistani leaders are killed by their chosen security guards, one can never be sure of the ideological predilections of individual officers and soldiers in the present day Pakistan army.

International environment Despite the measures that have been taken in Pakistan to ensure safety and security of the country’s nuclear arsenal and nuclear materials, international concerns about Pakistan’s nuclear

weapons and materials getting into the wrong hands have evidently led to countries like the US preparing for “worst case scenarios”.

The Americans are believed to have plans to “take out” Pakistan’s nuclear weapons should there be clear dangers of their falling into wrong hands because of internal strife in Pakistan.

Pakistan is believed to have dispersed its nuclear weapons and also deployed them in silos which would protect them from cruise missile attacks. Moreover, the Americans can never be sure that they have accounted for all nuclear weapons sites in Pakistan. The efficacy of any American pre-emptive strike on locations where Pakistani nuclear weapons are stored, therefore, cannot be taken for granted.

Given international concerns about the spread of fissile materials, the US and others have taken steps to seek commencement of negotiations for concluding an International Treaty banning the further production of fissile materials for weapons (FMCT). Pakistan has stalled progress in negotiating this Treaty. Its representative, Ambassador Zamir Akram claimed that the NSG waiver following the Indo-US Nuclear Deal will “further accentuate the asymmetry in fissile material stockpiles in the region to the detriment of Pakistan’s security interests”. Pakistan’s Nuclear Command Authority meeting on December 14, 2010 rejected what it said was any approach “prejudicial to its legitimate security interests”.

Pakistan’s opposition to the FMCT has only isolated it further in the eyes of the international community. But India will have to learn to live with the reality that it has an unstable and politically volatile neighbour across its western borders.

While we already have regular contacts with Pakistan between the Directors General of Military Operations and between the Air Operations Directorates, it would be worthwhile to have a greater dialogue not just with Pakistan, but also China on nuclear related issues. While China has thus far been averse to official discussions on nuclear issues, it has shown readiness to engage India and Pakistan in meetings on nuclear issues, between non-official experts.

The writer was Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan. He is presently Visiting Professor in the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, India.

April 2011 Defence AND security alert

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Pakistan

TUMULTUOUS JOURNEY

Today, more than ever, Pakistan’s geographical position is bringing in geopolitical dividends far beyond what it received in the Cold War years. The amazing aspect is not that the billions of dollars shovelled by the US into Pakistani coffers have grown exponentially but that it is happening in the teeth of unparalled Islamic fundamentalism baring its fangs both inside Pakistan and in neighbouring Afghanistan. The US-sponsored Global War On Terror appears to be in reverse gear, adding to the general perception that the US is a nation in decline.

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akistan’s relations with the United States are primarily India centric. This is true from the very moment of its creation by the British as a part of their well-tested policy of divide the communities in undivided India to rule over them. When their departure became inevitable from the Indian sub-continent in the post-World War II period, they divided India on communal lines to continue to have a say in South Asian regional politics - which they did enjoy initially and later a declining Britain allowed the US as its natural ally to exercise it as the leader of the Western World. This is clearly evident in undivided Pakistan when it sided with the US in its global pursuit of military alliances to counter the Soviet Union during the Cold War so as to get the US military assistance useful in its plans to wage wars against India.

Implacable hostility The fact of India-centric policy was unstated in the beginning, but became an open policy after a decade of its working in international relations.

It was only further strengthened after Sino-Indian border war of October 1962 that led Pakistan to work as a friend of China on the basis of age-old dictum of ‘enemy’s enemy is a friend’! There was close cooperation between the US-Pakistan and China which is well illustrated by the US seeking Pakistan’s cooperation in establishing secret contact with China in its pursuance of certain global policies towards confronting the Soviet Union.

This scenario of Indo-centric Pakistani policy became its National Interest since India acted as midwife in the birth of Bangladesh caused by Bengali break

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with the “Two-Nation” theory!

Containment On the other hand, the US interests have varied on the basis of its global agenda. During the entire period of Cold War, India was driven by the circumstances of Pakistan-USChina close relations to rely on the Soviet Union for support in the UN Security Council. US used Pakistan to contain India. Former US ambassador in India, Harry Barnes, when asked to narrate a single instance of US rushing to assist India, had cited US aid to India in the aftermath of Chinese aggression on Indian northern borders in October 1962. But even here, ultimately US assistance was limited to US$ 500 million because of Pakistani pressure exerted by the then military dictator, Ayub Khan, who threatened to fully switch his loyalty to China. In 1965 India-Pakistan war, US pretending a neutral stand continued to assist Pakistan with modern weapons.

However, once the US Cold War with the Soviet Union ended in December 1990, US got rid of its Cold War glasses and considered Pakistan as a liability. This statement has to be qualified by stating that while Republicans fully endorsed this sentiment, Democrats only partially.

This was clearly demonstrated by George T. W. Bush soon after the end of the Cold War. He refused to certify to the Congress in 1990 that Pakistan was not on its way to develop nuclear weapons as required by the Congressional laws - though in the previous years he had continued his predecessor’s practice of such

April 2011 Defence AND security alert

Prof. P. M. Kamath

certification! His administration also categorically stated in March 1990 that under changed circumstances plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir is unrealistic and the dispute be resolved bilaterally in accordance with the Shimla agreement!

Fundamental pattern However, when you look at the long spell of Pakistan-US relations from 1947 to the beginning of the 21st century, one interesting fact emerges, which calls for in-depth research. The fact is whenever the US has aimed to correct its closer relations with Pakistan, which often lent credence to the charge of being anti-Indian, a new crisis cropped up in the region forcing US to go back to Pakistan seeking its cooperation! Thus, Jimmy Carter in the 1970s tried this but a major global crisis in 1979 of the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, necessitated the US to establish closer military relations with Pakistan as it became a conduit to pump military aid to Mujahideen or freedom fighters waging a terrorist war against the Soviet Union.

Pendulum swings Again when George W. Bush in 2001 tried to distance US from Pakistan, with the intention to establish closer strategic relationship with India, there was a terrorist attack against the US economic power as represented by the World Trade Centre and politico-military power symbolised by the Pentagon on 9/11. The US, despite knowing that Pakistan is the epicentre of global terrorism, was forced to make Pakistan a frontline State in its war on

PAK-US RELATIONS international terrorism, since Taliban which ruled Afghanistan refused to hand over Al Qaeda supreme leader, Osama bin Laden to the US. Once again, geopolitical location of Pakistan helped it to come closer to the US.

Locational advantage Thus, Pakistan’s relations with the US since its birth have been a matter of

mutual convenience never based on any lasting principles. And the fundamental principle propelling to two together has been Pakistan’s geopolitical location.

Stephen Cohen, an American expert on Pakistan never gets tired of saying that US leans on Pakistan because of its geopolitical location. He adds further pepper to salt by stating that if that crucial territory was with India, it would have been critical to American

interest in Persian Gulf!

Global war on terrorism As stated earlier, George W. Bush was forced to cement an alliance with Pakistan, soon after 9/11 primarily to seek a launching pad against Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and capture Osama bin Laden, mastermind behind 9/11 attacks “alive or dead”. During

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The civilian government has not been able to improve respect for human rights in Pakistan.

Mullahs are setting the goal of orthodox Islamic rule as evident in killing of Punjab’s Governor SalmaanTaseer and Shabaz Bhatti, Islamabad’s minister for minority affairs for their criticism of controversial Blasphemy Law and support to a more liberal and tolerant society. Though the victims were members of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party, government has been impotent against those preaching religious intolerance. The US has neither condemned Pakistan’s move towards religious intolerance nor for its human rights violations! the eight years (2001-09) of Bush, the military General then ruling Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, often complained that the US administration was asking him to do more in tackling the problem created by Al Qaeda and Pak terrorists based in Pakistan. Michael Hayden, then Director, American Central Intelligence Agency, openly spoke of an active nexus between Al Qaeda and “various extremist and separatist groups.” But Musharraf often threw at the American officials facts of terrorists captured by the Pakistani army and handed over to the CIA whenever the US asked him “to do more” in war against terrorism. He would say that Pakistan had arrested 600 to 700 suspects and “20 to 25 senior leaders”. Musharraf also added that Pakistan has “lost 1,500 soldiers” and an equal number of civilians. In his memoir—In the Line of Fire - he adds: “We have earned bounties totalling millions of dollars” from the CIA for the service!

Mercenary attitude This goes to show the fact that Pakistan was acting to earn hard currency and not so much with a conviction that terrorism per se is a harmful phenomenon to be rooted out for the good of Pakistani society. Lack of that kind of conviction made it easy for Pakistan to pursue its real policy goal of using terrorism against India without any inhibitions!

This duality of approach to terrorism comes out more clearly during the Obama administration that was inaugurated in January 2009. This is not surprising as even after democratic facade being restored in Pakistan it is the army that calls the shots on crucial issues. Through out his election campaign, Obama had maintained that his administration would not hesitate to go ahead with unilateral strikes against targets inside Pakistan if it had actionable intelligence, even if Islamabad opposed it. This has been

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done by the US in the tribal areas. But impact of it seems to have been negative in the sense of contributing to an intensified extreme anti-Americanism and making Pakistani society lean more towards Islamic fundamentalism.

Terror hub However, Pakistan has continued to promote terrorism against India while cooperating with the US in combating terrorism against American interests, particularly in Afghanistan. But India is playing a supportive role by getting involved in the reconstruction of Afghan infrastructure at the grass-roots level. Pakistan initially tried to link its cooperation with the Obama administration by seeking to force India out. US too, after public vacillation on the utility of the Indian presence there, firmed up by admitting India’s positive role. That has led Pakistan to extend duality of encouraging pro-Pakistan Taliban factions as well as pro-Pakistan home grown terrorist groups like Lashker-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad to attack Indian interests in Afghanistan while also promoting similar attacks against the US interests in that country. More concretely that was the case when LeT led attacks on Indian Embassy medical staff in Kabul and pro-Pakistan Taliban faction led by Haqqani brothers attacked American convoys carrying supplies to US troops in Kabul. It shows the double game played by the Pakistani army.

It must be noted here that the Obama administration gave reasons to Pakistani army to cultivate Taliban faction which it considers as helpful to them as President Obama announced his intentions to withdraw troops by July 2011 because the war in Afghanistan is losing domestic support. Hence in the event of US withdrawal, in case Taliban is able to capture power in Afghanistan, Pakistan would like to have its hold consolidated in Afghanistan

April 2011 Defence AND security alert

not only because it is on their north-western border but also a friendly regime in Afghanistan can provide security-depth. Pakistan has been in search of it ever since the country lost its eastern wing to Bangladesh freedom movement in 1971 and particularly after it lost in the game of establishing a friendly and independent state of Khalistan in Indian state of Punjab.

Nuclear weapons and NPT

But this public condemnation of Pakistan as a great proliferator as against impeccable Indian record of adherence to the goals of non-proliferation in spite of its principled opposition to the NPT, helped George W. Bush to extend a unique civil nuclear deal. That made Pakistan to seek what is rewarded to India instead of opposing it!

Economic dependence During the entire period of the post Cold War, US dependence on Pakistan in its war against international terrorism was acknowledged by former CIA director, Michael Hayden when he said that Washington has “not had a better partner in the war on terrorism than Pakistan.” Pakistan has also become financially dependent on the US for economic and military aid.

During the cold war, Pakistan was an important player on American side. The US ignored Pakistan’s search for nuclear weapons and missiles technology. Then the US was interested in encircling India; hence the US effectively ignored Pakistan’s clandestine acquisition of nuclear technology. Whenever, China was reported to have provided nuclear and missile know how, US did impose proforma sanctions against China, but they were lifted since China’s clout began to increase in American calculations in the 1990s. The US used Pakistan to bring pressure on India to sign the nuclear non-proliferation Treaty. Pakistan had taken a position that it would sign it, if India signs it.

But Indian nuclear tests in May 1998 and subsequent Pakistan testing of nuclear weapons, the US was forced to change its policy towards India from containment to entertainment of the idea of making India a strategic partner!

According to one count it has gained from the US over US$ 44 billion in economic and military aid. President Obama has promised to provide US$ 1.5 billion every year in next five years!

Thus, Pakistan-US nuclear relations changed qualitatively in the 21st century under George W. Bush.

Bush administration discovered, clandestine underground nuclear black marketing enterprise run by Pakistan’s Father of Nuclear Bomb, Dr. A. Q. Khan. Is it ever possible that one nuclear scientist could run such an enterprise in a country which has been under military rule for most of its adult life? I put this question to an eminent nuclear non-proliferation expert who served in the Clinton administration.

He smiled and said, “It is convenient!”

There is an important difference, however, now in contrast to the Cold War era. Now, Pakistan has become far more assertive of its demonstration of independence in policy-making publicly than in the past. It used to be said that during the Cold War, US always had a veto power over appointments of Joint Secretary and above in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Today, Pakistan shows its defiance of US in public.

Nowhere is that as obvious as in the case of Raymond Davis, a CIA contract employee working in Pakistan arrested

for killing two ISI agents following him.

This has raked up a controversy by Pakistan refusing to accept American claim of diplomatic immunity of Davis and insisting on pitting him under trial for crime of murder.

Defiant Pakistan In conclusion, today the US faces a challenge to its global credibility in its relations with Pakistan. The Bush administration that made Pakistan a frontline State in its fight against international terrorism had stated many a times that a moderate, Islamic and democratic Republic is what they support in Pakistan. But increasingly in Pakistan today political power is shared between an elected democratic facade with a strong military and Islamic outfits.

The US has frowned on autocratic dictators in Middle East, for instance, like Mubarak in Egypt and Gaddafi in Libya, for violating human rights. But in Pakistan in every respect, human rights are being violated by the army in their tacit if not active support for Benazir Bhutto’s assassination during Musharraf’s regime (1999-2008) in 2007. The civilian government has not been able to improve respect for human rights in Pakistan. Mullahs are setting the goal of orthodox Islamic rule as evident in killing of Punjab’s governor Salmaan Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti, Islamabad’s minister for minority affairs for their criticism of controversial Blasphemy Law and support to a more liberal and tolerant society. Though the victims were members of the ruling Pakistan’s Peoples Party, government has been

impotent against those preaching religious intolerance. The US has neither condemned Pakistan’s moving towards religious intolerance nor for its human rights violations!

Another area of global concern ought to be Pakistan’s current policy of promotion and tolerance of terrorism while being a victim of self-promoted terrorism - and there is no doubt today that there are more terrorist attacks within Pakistan than Pakistan promoted attacks in India. However, the danger is: According to Global Futures Assessment Report, “By year 2015, Pakistan would be a failed State, ripe with civil war, bloodshed, inter-provincial rivalries and a struggle for control of its nuclear weapons and complete Talibanisation.” Under these alarming prospects, if the US creation of

Mujahideens to fight the Russians could bring terrorism to Jammu and Kashmir in 1989, US-Pak war against Taliban in Afghanistan since 2001 could strengthen terrorists’ will to attack Mumbai; will terrorists from a failed State not engulf entire India, from Kashmir right up to Kanyakumari? This scenario is likely to be worsened by the well-acknowledged fact of Pakistan accumulating nuclear weapons larger in quantity than those of India, raising its false confidence on a successful first strike!

The writer is former Professor of Politics, University of Mumbai and currently, Hon. Director, VPM’s Centre for International Studies, Mumbai. He is the author of 15 books; latest being India’s Policy of No First Use of Nuclear Weapons: Relevance to Peace and Security in South Asia.

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Pakistan

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Much as the rest of the world has a distinctly negative impression of the Pakistan army, the people (both politicians and others) have a love-hate relationship with their hatchet-arm. It is not for nothing that the Pakistan army Inter-Services Intelligence is the nucleus of Pakistan’s jihadist tendencies.

Every civilian politician from Qaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah down to current Head of State Asif Ali Zardari have depended on it at crucial moments of Pakistan’s turbulent history. The iconic Benazir Bhutto found great comfort in the “troika” arrangement in which the army played the puppet master from behind the scene. The Zardari - Gilani combine dare not repeal the Blasphemy Law till the army nods approval. Zardari’s early comments on Kashmir have met with stony silence in General HQ and every attempt to whitewash the terror-stained image of Pakistan has been stonewalled by the army be it India’s Mumbai carnage or America’s Times Square fizzler.

O

n October 12, 1999, the military jackboot had returned once again to crush Pakistan’s fledgling democracy and the hopes and dreams of its oppressed citizens.

The international community had wrung its hands in despair and watched helplessly as General Pervez Musharraf, the ‘Chief Executive’ and his hawkish senior colleagues set about

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systematically undermining and, in places, even dismantling the civilian administrative structures and placing in supervisory positions junior army officers to extend military governance down to the grass-roots levels. Bruised and battered into submission through a half-century of either direct military rule or the military’s watchful oversight over national affairs through a proxy civilian government, the people of Pakistan

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simply resigned themselves to their fate.

Genetic praetorianism The militarisation of the Pakistani polity began soon after independence.

A nation that chose to fight a war with its much larger and stronger neighbour even before finding its feet and consolidating its legally inherited territories and in the bargain gave a

genealogy of

an oligarchy major role to its army in national affairs, could not have hoped that the Generals would ever again be content to play golf in their manicured cantonments and leave the politicians alone to play their dirty games. Ever since the evolution of the floundering nation-State, Pakistan’s army has projected itself as the guardian of the nation’s ideological frontiers as well as its physical boundaries and the protector of Islam.

of “Basic Democracy” for Pakistan in which the people were allowed only a limited amount of participation.

Military officers received many favours and were given plum assignments.

Ayub’s 1962 Constitution provided that for 20 years, “the Ministry of Defence was to be entrusted to a person who had held a rank not lower than Lieutenant General (and equivalent in the Navy and Air Force)”.

Fixing the system

Ayub Khan’s ignominious handling of the 1965 war with India also led to the lengthening of the shadows for his army Chief, General Mohammad Musa (1958-66). Musa was followed by General Yahya Khan (1966-71) who retained the post of COAS despite being sworn as interim president in 1969 when Ayub Khan was finally forced to step down

General (later Field Marshal) Ayub Khan was for some time the Commander-in-Chief (1951-58) as well as the Minister of Defence (1954-58) before he finally overthrew the government and established Pakistan’s first military regime in 1958.

Ayub experimented with a system

Brig. (Retd.) Gurmeet Kanwal

after a popular people’s movement.

Yahya Khan’s fall from grace and power in the wake of Pakistan’s humiliating military defeat at India’s hands in 1971 and the birth of Bangladesh, led to the appointment of General Gul Hassan as the COAS (1971-72) by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who had taken over as the President and Chief Martial Law Administrator. Gul Hassan was, in turn, replaced within three months by General Tikka Khan (1972-76), better known as the butcher of Bangladesh.

To his credit, Tikka Khan kept himself scrupulously aloof from civil-political affairs.

Correctives Zulfikar Ali Bhutto tried to rein in the unbridled power enjoyed by the military. In May 1976, he issued a White

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Pakistan

TUMULTUOUS JOURNEY

While Kayani has ostensibly maintained a hands off approach, the army still calls the shots on Pakistan’s Kashmir and nuclear policies, does not allow any meddling in senior level appointments and the annual budget and follows its own policy in dealing with the Taliban in Afghanistan. The situation is unlikely to improve till the 5,50,000 strong army is cut to size in keeping with Pakistan’s legitimate national security requirements Paper outlining the government’s defence and strategic policy and institutional arrangements for a Higher Defence Organisation. The Paper advocated an integrated approach to defence and national security, “with the ultimate responsibility of national defence resting with the Prime Minister.” Bhutto formed a Defence Committee of the Cabinet, instituted a Defence Council to “translate defence policy into military policy”, integrated the three Services with the Ministry of Defence, re-designated the Service Chiefs as Chiefs of Staff, upgraded the naval and air Chiefs to four star rank and brought them on par with the army Chief and created a new post of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee (CJCSC). Bhutto’s moves were primarily intended to dilute the power enjoyed by the army Chief so that he would not pose a threat to him but he did not succeed.

Dictatorship On General Tikka Khan's retirement, Bhutto handpicked and appointed General Zia-ul Haq as the new COAS (1976-88; till his death in an air crash) over the heads of several senior Generals and hoped that his protégé would toe the line of his civilian bosses and keep the army where it belonged in the barracks. However, Zia had other ideas and not only overthrew Bhutto on July 5, 1977 and once again proclaimed martial law but also hanged him on trumped up charges and went on to rule for 11 long years without a thought for democracy. Zia ruled for eight years as the absolute ruler under martial law and for three years as a civilian president with absolute powers.

Zia got the Pakistan army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate embroiled in the Afghan war and commenced the Islamisation of the army. During the period 198385, after Bhutto's execution, Zia began to seek ways to legitimise his military rule.

Puppet masters It was only in 1985 that General

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Zia yielded to a civilian regime but not before promulgating the dreaded Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, under the cloak of which elected civilian administrations could be and were repeatedly dismissed by Pakistan’s Presidents in collusion with the army brass and democracy was not allowed to drop roots in Pakistan. Zia soon realised that a parliamentary form of government could not co-exist happily with a strong President and dismissed Prime Minister Junejo in May 1988. Had Zia lived, it is reasonably certain that he would have guided Pakistan towards a presidential form of government with an institutionalised role for the military.

Troika On the demise of General Zia in an air crash in Bahawalpur, General Aslam Beg (1988-91) stepped into the power vacuum as COAS and Ghulam Ishaq Khan, a Pakistan Civil Service bureaucrat, was sworn in as acting President. Under Aslam Beg’s leadership, the Pakistan army General Headquarters (GHQ) carefully weighed the pros and cons of continuing with the prevailing martial law regime and magnanimously decided that a return to army-backed democracy would be more appropriate. It was at this stage (early 1989) that the concept of the ruling ‘troika’ emerged. The troika was an informal grouping and comprised the President, the Prime Minister and the COAS. However, the army always made it quite clear where the real power lay and preferred to let the civilians bear the burden of governance so that it could concentrate on the qualitative upgradation and the modernisation of its fighting echelons and launch its ‘proxy war’ in Jammu and Kashmir and elsewhere in India.

Advent of Benazir The ruling elite grudgingly accepted Benazir Bhutto as Prime Minister in 1988 only “under American pressure but, even then, they did so only when she agreed to their terms,” which Anwar H. Syed writes were as follows:

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■■ Bhutto's party would support the election of Ghulam Ishaq Khan as President of Pakistan for a full term.

■■ Bhutto would retain Sahibzada Yaqub Ali Khan (a retired General) as foreign minister (the maintenance of a hard position towards India was inherent in this demand).

■■ She would not interfere with the military's management of the government's Afghan policy, including its working relations with the Afghan mujahideen and its oversight of their operations against the government in Kabul.

■■ She would not intervene in the military's internal administration (postings, transfers and promotions).

N-button Bhutto also agreed to be guided by Ghulam Ishaq Khan and Aslam Beg in the development of Pakistan’s nuclear and missile capability and tacitly accepted the arrangement that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons would remain under the army Chief’s control. She stated in June 1988, “The army is a very powerful institution – much more so than eleven years ago. Anyone thinking that after the elections the power of the army will automatically wane is being unrealistic.”

R. S. Sassheen has written, “General Aslam Beg used to hold ‘court’ and politicians jostled with each other to get an ‘audience’.” Aslam Beg also frequently dabbled in Pakistan’s foreign policy and no civilian head of government was strong enough to stand up to him. Beg advocated a ‘strategic consensus’ with Iran and Afghanistan and the ‘strategic defiance’ of India, completely without foreign office approval.

Janjua's death Beg was followed by General Asif Nawaz Janjua (1991-93), the second army Chief after Zia to be appointed by a duly elected civilian administration.

Asif Nawaz was a no-nonsense soldier and found it difficult to get along with Nawaz Sharif, whom he considered a scheming politician. He died of a heart attack under mysterious circumstances and was succeeded by General Abdul Waheed Kakar (1993-96) after a massive confrontation between the President and the Prime Minister.

General Waheed was apolitical and remained so. He did his best to wean the army away from politics. General Jehangir Karamat followed as COAS (1996-98) and continued the policies of his predecessor.

Musical chairs Acting on inputs provided by the ISI, during the period 1990-96, several civilian governments were dismissed by incumbent Presidents in connivance with the COAS. The Benazir Bhutto government was dismissed by the President in consultation with the COAS in mid-1990 for “persistent and scandalous horse-trading for political gain, breakdown of law and order in Sindh, corruption and nepotism and use of statutory corporations, authorities and banks for political ends and personal gain.” Bhutto blamed the army and the ISI for her dismissal. The President declared a state of emergency and appointed Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi as the caretaker head of government.

After general elections in October 1990, the Nawaz Sharif-led Islami Jamoori Itehaad (IJI) coalition, believed to have been cobbled together and funded by the ISI to prevent Benazir Bhutto from returning to power, won and Sharif became Pakistan’s Prime Minister.

Sharif was young and inexperienced and failed to show any commitment to resolve Pakistan’s numerous problems. In April 1993, the President dismissed Nawaz Sharif and installed Balakh Sher Mazari as the head of an interim government. However, the Supreme Court ordered the re-instatement of Nawaz Sharif as Prime Minister and an ugly situation was developing when General Waheed played a positive role. By

a combination of tact, forcefulness, honour and tenacity, he convinced the President and the Prime Minister that they should stand down and they did. Moeen Qureshi, a World Bank economist, agreed to lead a caretaker administration. In army supervised elections, Benazir Bhutto managed to put together a working coalition and once again took over as Prime Minister in October 1993. This time she lasted for three years and was finally dismissed again in November 1996 by President Farooq Leghari as the nation was once again becoming ungovernable and was on the verge of financial bankruptcy.

In elections held in February 1997, Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim League was voted to power with 181 seats in the 217-member National Assembly.

This time the new Prime Minster was determined to show the nation who was the real boss.

Curtailed powers Among the first few major initiatives of the Nawaz Sharif government was the 13th Amendment to the Pakistan Constitution that curtailed the President’s power to dismiss an elected government. The government then politicised the issue to appoint five new Supreme Court judges and sought to exploit the deep divisions within the judiciary. During October-November 1997, there was a standoff between the executive and the judiciary, with President Leghari openly siding with the judiciary and criticising Nawaz Sharif’s personal dictatorship.

Nawaz Sharif publicly criticised the Chief Justice and he, in turn, initiated contempt proceedings against the Prime Minister. The Pakistan Supreme Court suspended the government’s anti-defection law and began hearing petitions challenging the anti-terrorist

act and the 13th amendment to curtail the President’s power to dismiss an elected government.

On November 27, 1997, unruly Pakistan Muslim League (PML) workers physically prevented a Supreme Court bench from hearing a contempt petition against the Prime Minister. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister threatened to initiate impeachment proceedings against the President. The Pakistan COAS, General Jehangir Karamat, who had been watching the sordid drama unfolding from the sidelines with growing consternation, finally intervened to broker a truce between the President, the Prime Minister and the Chief Justice. In an hour of constitutional crisis, the civilians had once again failed to get their act together and had to settle for military arbitration. If there was anything that emerged clearly from this imbroglio, it was that the Pakistan COAS is the ultimate arbiter of power in Pakistan.

Kashmir agenda Despite having gained almost unquestioned supremacy over virtually every aspect of governance in Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif was unable to rein-in the military. In the areas considered critical by them, the armed forces continued to call the shots and followed their own agenda. Clearly, there was a message from the Pakistan army in the brutal February 1999 massacres in the Rajouri and Udhampur districts of J and K, masterminded by the ISI to coincide with the Indian Prime Minister’s bus ride to Lahore. The message was from the Pakistan armyISI-Jamaat-e-Islami combine to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and its essence was: Shake hands, play cricket and hockey, open up trade and encourage

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TUMULTUOUS JOURNEY

In fact, far from venturing to rein-in the military, Nawaz Sharif opted to keep the military at bay by leaning on it for administration. The armed forces were asked to assist in collecting unpaid electricity bills, building roads and fighting crime to hold the divided country together.

They were also given the task of conducting the national census and were asked to takeover and run Pakistan’s largest power company.

In November 1998, civil rights were suspended and martial law was imposed in Sindh in an attempt to curb ethnic violence in Karachi. To administer swift justice, military courts were established. However, the Pakistan Supreme Court later ruled that these tribunals were illegal.

A western observer described Sharif’s dependence on the military as a “coup by invitation.” Involving the army in running the administration, at a time when its commitments in keeping Karachi from burning were increasing and it was getting sucked deeper into the Afghan quagmire, was bound to result in the following: ■■ Its increasing politicisation due to its wooing by petty politicians at the functional level and party satraps at the decision-making level.

■■ A steady deterioration of its professional military capabilities as additional responsibilities left little time or inclination for long-term planning and hard training.

■■ Increasing proclivity to become corrupt like the rest of the body politic.

■■ Tendency to misuse power for personal gain.

■■ Inclination to behave with the civilian population in a high-handed manner, thereby alienating the people and worse, a growing brutality in its execution of military operations.

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The Chief of Army Staff, General Jehangir Karamat, was well aware of the falling professional standards and low morale in the Pakistan army and as a concerned professional himself, he wished to set things right. He was extremely keen that the entire gamut of national security be seen in its wider perspective and decisions taken holistically. It was for this reason that during a lecture at the Naval War College he advocated the setting up of a National Security Council. He said, “Pakistan cannot afford the destabilising effects of polarisation, vendettas and insecurity-driven expedient policies … While there must be a neutral, competent and secure bureaucracy, there was need for a National Security Council at the apex to institutionalise decision-making.”

However, the media interpreted his recommendation as a veiled attempt to institutionalise the role of the Pakistan army in governance.

Perhaps the PML ideologues saw it that way and encouraged the media to make an emotive issue of it.

Karamat resigns Either way, General Karamat resigned. His resignation sent shock waves through the army as the Pakistan media suggested that the COAS had been asked to resign by the Prime Minister and had complied.

Karamat himself has gone on record to state that he voluntarily chose to step down, as he did not wish to create an unnecessary controversy between the army and the civilian government.

He wrote to Brian Cloughley: “The speech was wrongly interpreted as a bid for power by the military and a criticism of the government … I left at my own request, to save my institution from controversial and uninformed public debate … never did the Prime Minister ask me to leave.” This appears extremely plausible because not even a Prime Minister with Nawaz Sharif’s majority in the National Assembly could have dismissed an army Chief in Pakistan. However, the military establishment was rather upset; the feeling was that Sharif’s autocratic rule had gone too far.

Musharraf arrives The

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Prime

Minister

appointed

General Pervez Musharraf (a Mohajir refugee from India) to the post of COAS. At this time, Pakistan’s economy was in shambles, corruption was rampant and administration was characterised by extreme inefficiency. The rate of growth hovered between negative and one to two per cent – a figure that was being derisively referred to as the ‘Islamic rate of growth’. Nawaz Sharif’s ‘band-aid’ approach was resented and many senior officers commented discreetly that “it is not the business of the army to become involved” in civil administration.

Nawaz's duality Nawaz Sharif, as was his wont, excelled in running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. Even as he kow-towed to the Muslim clergy for political gains and to the Pakistan army by approving the Kargil excursion, he made overtures to India and invited Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to Lahore in February 1999. The Lahore bus diplomacy was deeply resented by the Pakistan army and the Islamic fundamentalists as moves for peace with India did not suit the vested interests of either of them. In any case, the Pakistan army had by then gone too far with its planning for ‘Operation Badr’ in the Kargil district of J and K and was not going to allow Sharif to ruin what the Pakistan GHQ thought was a bold plan to once again seize the military and moral high ground on Kashmir.

265mm Live

Dependence on army

NSC gambit

295mm Trim

people-to-people contact if you wish; however, lay off Kashmir – that is our agenda and it is non-negotiable. India has consistently chosen to ignore this duality of authority in Pakistan in its diplomatic parleys with that country.

310mm Bleed

Pakistan

Post-Musharraf Pakistan Musharraf’s ignominious reign is too recent to bear detailed recounting.

He appointed General Pervez Ashfaq Kayani to the post of COAS and handed over power to President Asif Zardari’s civilian government. While Kayani has ostensibly maintained a hands off approach, the army still calls the shots on Pakistan’s Kashmir and nuclear policies, does not allow any meddling in senior level appointments and the annual budget and follows its own policy in dealing with the Taliban in Afghanistan. The situation is unlikely to improve till the 5,50,000 strong army is cut to size in keeping with Pakistan’s legitimate national security requirements.

The writer is Director, Centre for Land Warfare Studies, New Delhi, India.

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Pakistan

TUMULTUOUS JOURNEY

mission

The power of a King lies in his mighty arms…

Security of the citizens at peace time is very important because State is the only saviour of the men and women who get affected only because of the negligence of the State.

— Chanakya

Prof. Kalim Bahadur

t h e t w o-n a t i o n t h e o r y :

an amorphous i d ea With no greater rationale for its existence than the false assumption that all Muslims wanted a separate nation-State, Pakistan tried to scavange on India by seeking a resonance among those who opted to remain within a Union of India by encouraging first the Sikhs to create a Khalistan so that the two-nation theory can gain some post ipso facto legitimacy. The frequent attempts to delink the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley is based on that same illegitimate logic – hence the recurrent need to infiltrate and coerce the local population leading to a series of wars that have only left Pakistan dismembered and stewing in its own juice.

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Pakistan

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T

he roots of the partition lay in the social and political developments which go back to the early 19th century. It marked the end of the Mughal rule which was followed by widespread anarchy. After the fall of the Mughals, Muslims became inactive and decadent. Shah Waliullah, an Islamic scholar and reformer believed that the Muslim decline happened because Muslim society had been infested by alien (Non-Islamic) practices in India.

By the beginning of the 19th century the British rulers began to substitute their own rules of evidence, definitions of offences and penalties in place for those of Sharia. The Ulama protested against the interference in Islamic laws. The uprising in 1857 marked the growth of anti-imperialist consciousness among the people.

This led to the foundation of the Indian National Congress in 1885. It was a major development in Indian politics. Naturally it was attacked in the Anglo-Indian press. It was also condemned by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. He suggested that Hindus and Muslims were two different nations.

He was in other words speaking for the interests of the Muslim elite. His relentless opposition to the Congress continued. Later in the 20th century the ‘two nation theory’ was adopted by the Muslim League. Sir Syed Ahmed had campaigned for spread of education and had founded the Aligarh Muslim Anglo-Oriental College, which later became Aligarh Muslim University. He also propagated the idea that science and Islam were not contradictory. His activities were declared anti-Islam by the Ulama.

Brits in blue funk The rise and the growth of the Indian Congress had frightened the British rulers. They had taken several steps in the first decade of the 20th century which were aimed at strengthening the communal divide in India. Among these actions, the first was the partition of Bengal; the second was the famous Simla Deputation to the then Viceroy Lord Minto by the Muslims in 1906 and later the foundation of the All India Muslim League on 1 December 1906.

They could be used by the Muslim League as a counter to the increasing demands of the Indian National Congress. Muslims were afraid that they would not get representation in

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the Councils in proportion to their population. Muslim communalism was creeping in the background of the political developments of the last quarter of the 19th century.

Morley-Minto reform of 1909 took the critical step of creating communal categories, for instance separate electorates for Muslims. The main focus of the Muslim League was on getting a reasonable share for the Muslims with constitutional guarantees through negotiation with the Indian National Congress. This was the main objective of the Lucknow Pact signed by the leaders of the Muslim League and the Congress in 1916 at the annual sessions of both the parties which were held in the city. The Pact ensured the respective share of the Muslims and Hindus in any future constitutional arrangement. The British announced the appointment of the Simon Commission in 1927. It was a new door which was opened which held out the possibility of new constitutional reforms. Jinnah attempted to bring the Congress and the Muslim League together. It was not easy, while the Congress wanted a strong centre whereas the Muslim majority provinces wanted a weak centre.

Iqbal’s ambiance Sir Muhammad Iqbal in his presidential address at the session of the Muslim League at Allahabad in 1930 had talked of the Muslim State in the north-western part of India. In 1932 Chaudhary Rehmat Ali brought out a pamphlet titled “Now or Never, Are we to Live or Perish forever”. The author claimed that Muslims demand the recognition of separate national status by the grant of a separate Federal Constitution from the rest of India. The 1937 elections were not a great success for the Muslim League where it had got only one seat in the Muslim majority province of Punjab.

Vacuous seedbed Later Jinnah approached the Viceroy with a deal to support the government in the centre in return for the British accepting Jinnah as the sole spokesman of the Muslims. In fact the arguments given by Chaudhary Rehmat Ali in his pamphlet were being uncritically accepted by all the supporters of the Muslim League.

However a large and influential section of the Muslims was against

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the Muslim League and opposed Pakistan. Pakistan as a separate nation-State was contrary to the Ulama’s idea of a universal Islamic State without frontiers. The Lahore Resolution passed by the Muslim League session on 23 March 1940 was the result of a compromise among various factions of the party which Jinnah had adroitly brought about. It did not mention the word Islam nor Islamic State. It talked of States rather than a State. During the campaign after the Lahore Resolution the Muslim League leaders were not putting forward the vision of any social, economic and political system of Pakistan. It was important to use Islam without going into the details.

Jinnah’s ambiguity Pakistan came into existence on 14 August 1947. The partition of India itself was not an easy job. There were disputes about the division of the assets, of the demarcation of boundaries, about the river waters and the canals and above all about the accession of the princely states.

Neither side was satisfied and rancour went into the psyche of the leaders of the two countries. The leaders of Pakistan converted it into the belief that India had not accepted Pakistan and was out to undo it. Jinnah’ s speech at the inaugural session of the Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly on 11 August 1947 had given rise to endless debates and controversies. It is generally interpreted that Jinnah was signalling that Pakistan would be a secular State. He had said that … “you may belong to any religion or caste or creed – that has nothing to do with the business of the State”. And further that … “you will find in the course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense because that is the personal faith of each individual”.

The speech shocked the religious sections. Earlier before independence some of his speeches had given the impression that Pakistan would be based on the teachings of Islam. Even some of his admirers asserted that he did not mean what he said. It was only after Pakistan came into being that it dawned upon the leaders that the struggle for the State had to go on for long into the future. It was realised that very little thought had gone into the State’s basis, structure and ideals.

Rootless The State of Pakistan had not evolved out of history of political, social and national circumstances of the territories it comprised of, unlike many other States elsewhere in the world. It had to establish its writ over the territories of the country and start the process of nation building. It had to build up the State and its structure. There was no consensus in the ruling elite and the first Constitution took nine years to be promulgated in 1956, which lasted only two year. General Ayub abrogated it in the first military coup in 1958. The first democratic elections took place after 23 years, in 1970, which led to the secession of the larger part of the country.

Within a few weeks of independence the leadership was planning a war in Kashmir.

The imagined threat to the security of the State brought the army in the forefront. The war in Kashmir allowed the bureaucracy and the military to have a dominant share in the important foreign and domestic decision making which led to four tenures of military rule for 34 years out of 63 years since the inception of the State. All the four military rulers i.e., Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Zia-ul Haq and Pervez Musharraf destroyed the democratic institutions, suppressed the democratic rights and suborned the judiciary to legitimise the military rule under the so-called ‘Doctrine of Necessity’.

War-mongering All the four wars with India were started by the military. The threat from India was used by the military to justify the expanding military establishment. The military was held out as the defender of the ideological frontiers of the country. Every military ruler co-opted political leaders and even the political parties to support the military regimes. The State of Pakistan was called as the Martial State and the Security State. It was the imagined threat from India that determined Pakistan’s quest for strategic depth in Afghanistan. The rulers in Islamabad adopted the policy of sponsoring terrorist groups as an instrument of foreign policy in the name of jihad.

The jihadis from all over the world were welcomed by Pakistan. They have now returned to Pakistan to haunt people of the country. Most terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Muhammad, Harkatul Jihadi Islami, Hizbul Islami, etc. have been trained and armed by the Pakistan military agencies. Even the Taliban in Afghanistan had been trained by Pakistan. One of Pakistan’s well known officials Col. Imam who mentored the Taliban has been killed recently by his pupils.

with India and made its identity based on whatever was not India. It was to be the homeland of Indian Muslims but Mohajirs, that is the Indian Muslim migrants were aliens; it was to be a State based on Islam but most Muslim minority sects were being persecuted, not to speak of people of the minority religions who were not allowed any important role in the State according to the first Constitution. The issue of Pakistan being an Islamic State is also under dispute. The founder of the State Jinnah never used the term “Islamic State”. He was on record that Pakistan would not be a theocratic State. There has never been a consensus among the Islamic scholars on the details of an Islamic State. The early Meccan society during the lifetime of the Prophet was much more an Islamic society rather than an Islamic State.

Muslims divided Fissiparous tendencies If the Muslim League had been a popular party in all the provinces of Pakistan it would have been easy for the State to secure legitimacy in the country. Feudal and traditional family relations were important for the people.

Nation building had a setback when Jinnah in a meeting in Dhaka in March 1948 had defended the decision to make Urdu as the national language though he said that Bengali could be the provincial language of East Pakistan.

He argued that Pakistan was founded on Islamic traditions and therefore there could be only one national language and that language could be Urdu. He did not realise then that he had laid the foundation of Bangladesh.

All supporters of provincial demands were declared disruptors who were Indian agents. Similarly Sindhis were denounced who were against the separation of Karachi for being made the capital of the country. Thus nation building had been thrown out of the window.

Contradictions galore There was confusion about the identity of the State. Pakistan had been achieved in the teeth of opposition by India but it sought equality and parity

It was well known that most of the Islamic groups in India had opposed Pakistan. The Jama’ati-Islami had carried on a virulent campaign against the concept of Pakistan. But once Pakistan came into being they made a turnaround and said you had demanded Pakistan in the name of Islam and you have got it, now make it. The Muslim League leaders used Islam to control the increasing demands from the provinces. For the politicians the major issues were the federal formula, the language problem and the rehabilitation of the refugees.

They were making concessions to the religious lobby. The Objectives Resolution passed by the Constituent Assembly in 1949 was a major victory for the Islamic groups though the Resolution was imprecise and vague.

The problem of Pakistan‘s identity is still caught in the web of bitter controversies.

Its ambitions in Afghanistan and possession of nuclear bombs give it the pretensions of being a nuclear power.

The writer was Professor of South Asian Studies, JNU and Chairperson, Centre for South, Central, Southeast Asian and Southwest Pacific Studies. He has authored two books on Pakistan and after retirement in 2001 has written numerous research papers and articles in journals on Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh etc.

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Pakistan

TUMULTUOUS JOURNEY

There has long been a perception in some quarters in India as well as among Pakistan’s friends that if India panders to Pakistan’s demands, especially concessions in Kashmir, there will be peace and tranquillity between the two countries.

That this perception militates against the experience of Europe and its accommodation of Hitler’s lebensraum concept has been lost on the protagonists of this pernicious idea. Peace and tranquillity depends on a radical change of heart in the Pakistani military establishment, which, as long as it has jihadist elements holding the levers of power - the so-called “moderate” in the military as Musharraf portrayed himself is an oxymoron (Kargil happened because of him) Indians should not allow themselves to be deluded by such “strategic thinkers”.

S

cenario building is a powerful tool for strategic crystal ball gazing generating multiple possibilities.

This enables balanced examination of a problem and provides alternate views to broaden options. Scenario planning is a well established practice in future studies popularised by the Rand Corporation. Increasingly this has been applied to envisage future scenarios for a country with a medium to long term perspective. An application of this technique to Pakistan can suggest alternate scenarios for 2020.

Paradigms applied One view of received wisdom on Pakistan is of United States Global Trends 2025 which has denoted the future as a wild card.1 This analysis is fed by many concerns expressed over a period of the country being a failed State. Most Pakistan phobes have portrayed such a scenario based on economic penury and growing roots of fundamentalism and extremism manifesting into regional as well as global terrorism.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, President of the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi talks of a structural problem in Pakistan which will lead to instability and challenge the region in the years ahead. As Mehta states, 1 2

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“Pakistan is a State in structural crisis.

The numerous assets it built up over the years as a strategic bulwark cannot be assimilated anywhere easily. The sheer proliferation of arms and armed groups in the region makes it very likely that those with an investment in violence will continue to have a toehold”.2 Thus the most talked about scenario on Pakistan in the past decade or so has been that of a, “failed” State. That this has not happened denotes that alternate perspectives considering key drivers have not been fully actualised resulting in limiting the option to economic collapse or State fracture.

In developing scenarios for Pakistan for 2020 therefore there is a need to build multiple “stories” envisaging the plausible. The plots derived in this narrative are based on main drivers that can influence outcomes covered as apparent certainties and possible uncertainties. The uncertainties provide the four scenarios in ascending levels of progression, a Collapsed North West, Haemorrhaging Indus, Bilawal’s Quandary and Reformed Pervez.

Apparent certainties Pakistan enjoys the strategic advantage of location on the cusp of the Arabian Sea abutted by key States like India, China and Russia. Iran is

another major regional player in close proximity. Pakistan has population (6th largest in the world) and land mass (36th largest in the world) to be categorised amongst large States of the world. It is bestowed with abundant natural resources with 25 per cent arable land, natural gas reserves, coal, iron ore and copper. In their own world view Pakistanis see themselves as an important player in the regional as well as Islamic system that spans South as well as South West Asia and want to play a bigger role in global affairs.

Military dominance Pakistan’s power structure is dominated by the military intelligence (MI) complex which is likely to continue in the years ahead. Apart from a brief attempt by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) when it came to power in 2008 to place the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) under the Interior Ministry and also declared that the ISI chief will be dispatched to New Delhi post 26/11 the military intelligence stamp has been indelible. The most recent Raymond Davis case where the ISI stymied efforts by the Zardari government to grant diplomatic immunity to the American citizen involved in an incident of shooting dead two Pakistani citizens reportedly in self defence highlights the trend.

Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World. Available at www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_2025_project.html.p 72.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Differently Realistic. Available at http://www.indianexpress.com/news/differently-realistic/580213/0

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Brig. (Retd.) Rahul K. Bhonsle

Pakistan 2020: possible scenarios Continued dominance of the State structure by the MI establishment in 2020 may thus be presumed.

Functioning within this space would be Bilawal Zardari Bhutto the heir apparent to the PPP and his counterparts in other political parties in the country. It is well understood that his father the present President is keeping the seat warm for him till he picks up the ropes of political

leadership supposedly the right of the Bhutto family. This is not unusual in the context of the Indian sub-continent.

Political parties based on family legacy are in power in India (Congress), Bangladesh (Awami League) and Sri Lanka (Sri Lanka Freedom Party).

The approach of the PPP representing the political class is likely to be status quoist in protecting family and party interest.

The army leadership is likely to pass on to the post Kayani generation.

Who this will be remains unclear but the institutional view will prevail. The main fear is whether it would be purely nationalist and professional or be laced with fundamentalist ideology.

A key factor that can impact Pakistan army is support or otherwise of the people of Pakistan. Whenever the army has been weak post 1971 or in 2007 at the

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Pakistan

TUMULTUOUS JOURNEY

Despite the overwhelming indicators of a variety of internal and external forces at play there is too much emphasis on Indo-Pakistan détente as a solution to the latter’s structural crisis. As the scenarios built indicate there is more to Pakistan’s debility than its differences with India.

While this is not an argument against engagement of Pakistan, there is a need to highlight that this will have limited impact on the overall effort to positively restructure Pakistan’s trajectory towards 2020. The main change has to come from within end of the Musharraf era, people have come out on the streets against military rule. Lack of political consolidation however has prevented translating this advantage into sustained political control over the military or the ISI. Unless the army in Pakistan comes under civilian control, it will continue to dictate the national agenda. This will have contrasting effects, on one hand it will prevent the country from dropping down the path of failure, while on the other by diversion of scarce resources to maintain the military, spending on education or health care will remain low thereby keeping the people on the edge of impoverishment.

Pakistan will continue to find resources to retain conventional military as well as nuclear deterrence vis-a-vis India unless there is an economic collapse. Even when faced with economic penury in 2010 and a national disaster of epic proportions, the military succeeded in gaining a hike in the military budget for 2010-11 citing needs of war against terrorism while it has built conventional as well as nuclear capacity. The US-Pakistan military aid and assistance programme also provides substantial dividends to Islamabad while gaps will be made up

by Chinese assistance.

Sino-Pak axis China’s need to balance Indo-US relationship just as the Indo-Soviet one was seen in the 1970’s will keep it glued to Pakistan. Sino-Pakistan military axis is thus a certainty extending up to and beyond 2020. Chinese economic investments in defence are also likely to increase but how much remains uncertain so is the factor of a possible US decline in military spending leading to a weak presence in Af-Pak. Will this create an opportunity of extension of Chinese influence; the answer seems to be yes as China’s recent forays at territorial expansion in the strategic Gilgit Baltistan area of Jammu and Kashmir demonstrates. While an

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Indo-US or Indo-Russian or a US-Pakistan partnership will remain congruent, the intensity of involvement will not be matched by the Sino-Pakistan nexus.

Apparent uncertainties Classically uncertainties dictate scenarios or alternate futures and thus need a deeper examination. While some certainties relating to Pakistan are a concern uncertainties provide a sense of hope as well as despair. Some of the key uncertainties that would dictate Pakistan’s rise or fall in 2020 are economy, human and social capital, information and knowledge gap and extremism and terrorism.

Economy Pakistan’s economic indicators in 2010 and past trends are distressing.

At a GDP estimated on PPP at US$ 451.2 billion (2010) as per the CIA World Fact Book it is the 28th largest economy in the world but has one of the slowest growth rates at 2.7 per cent ranked at 135 falling over the past three years from 6 per cent plus in 2008.

Pakistan has a per capita GDP based on PPP of US$ 2400 and is ranked a very low 181 in 229 countries. By the same estimate India has a GDP of US$ 3400 and real growth rate of 8.3 per cent.

Comparatively the Indian economy at over US$ 4 trillion is roughly nine times that of Pakistan. Afghanistan has a higher growth rate than that of India at 8.9 per cent indicating the fruits of global engagement, a lesson which Pakistan could well learn.

However Pakistan has good economic potential and enjoys benefits of natural resources in terms of minerals, gas as well as abundance of water despite much noise being made over the issue of late. Pakistan is one of the biggest cotton producers; sugar cane production also remains high. Pakistan’s economic problems arise from poor management and key

April 2011 Defence AND security alert

infrastructural weaknesses as electricity production and transportation. Then there are basic issues such as poor national savings rate, low capital formation, low tax base and continuous impact of insecurity in key industrial hubs as Karachi.

2007-08 having improved over a decade from 40 plus in 1998 / 99 and is better than that of India at 36.8 in 2004. What is of concern is the high rate of unemployment at 15 per cent. Over 35 per cent of the population of the country is below 14 years today which will attain employable age by 2020.

Low rate of literacy below 50 per cent is a dangerous trend in such a scenario where employability of this youth mass may remain restricted.

Low GDP spend on education and school life expectancy of 7 years from

of normalcy with the fundamentalist increasingly occupying the centre stage if low investments in education supplanted by additional resources from external sources to religious seminaries and madrassas continues.

Knowledge poor society A weak knowledge base but strong information spread in a scenario of low educated population can spell disaster in the information age. This results in distribution of half truths pandered by fundamentalists and their acceptance

of 11,700 plus fatalities in 2009, there is an improvement with a drop to 7,400 plus in 2010 as per data culled from South Asia Terrorism Portal. Given the momentum attained violence may not come down drastically particularly so as apart from a demonstrated resolve by the army, performance of police and paramilitary remains inconsistent. The large number of extremist divergences, sub-nationalist, ethnic, sectarian and fundamentalist continue to pose a threat and there are no indications unlike in States as Bangladesh of the government and liberal society making concerted

Thus despite potential Pakistan’s GDP growth will remain low unless restructuring is undertaken which will happen only if the elites are willing to get out of the comfort zone and sacrifice their personal stakes. Taking the example of India after economic liberalisation in 1991, it has taken over one and a half decades to reach the desired potential, Pakistan’s 1991 moment is yet to arrive, thus by 2020 there is unlikely to be a major shift in the economic fortunes of the country unless radical reforms commence at the earliest. The present government lacks the political capital as well as the will to do so.

Pakistan’s ability to manage its resources particularly water would dictate the potential to restructure economy. Poor resource management will also feed conflicts both internal in Balochistan and regional with India.

Governance The key indicators of governance - political stability, corruption and respect for rule of law and government effectiveness - remain low, while there is ample scope for voicing dissent which takes both armed and the unarmed forms. There has been considerable erosion of the governance system and the steel frame of the civil bureaucracy inherited in India from the British has weakened due to penetration of the army and radical elements at various levels.

Human and social capital Pakistan’s human and social indicators are another key uncertainty.

Its Gini Index value is 30.6 in

the primary to the tertiary indicate that there is unlikely to be a major improvement in the base of the educated over a period. Presently the State is outsourcing such basic functions to fundamentalist organisations such as the Jamaat-ud-Dawa who continue to attract a large number of semi-educated unemployed who are influenced by radicalism.

Despite some notable institutions of learning, technology and research and development are neglected areas.

Computer penetration is poor while some vie for IT parity with India, the numbers are marginal. Ongoing overseas migration of educated elites will reduce resistance to restoration

without rationalisation by the masses.

With image replacing the word, education need not be primary criteria to absorb half-baked information.

Pakistan has seen a phenomenal growth in television spread, mobile telephony and vernacular media. While Pakistan’s press is seen to be relatively free it is also known for instant second-guessing thereby being a factor of mass influence.

With a weak knowledge base, implying the ability to convert knowledge to social good, the radicals may continue to feed the forces of extremism and terrorism in the years ahead.

Extremism and terrorism In incidents of terrorism from a high

attempts to rein in these groups.

There are wide fault lines between the Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns, the Mehsuds and Wazirs, the Shia and Sunni, the Deobandi and the Barelvi or the Muslims and the minorities as is evident from the current discourse on Blasphemy laws which has already claimed one provincial governor and a federal minister.

Other key fundamentals that contribute to reduction of internal security challenges such as socio-economic growth and reduction of inequality have not seen any major change. Moreover the army’s model of counter insurgency remains questionable in the long term due to

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Pakistan

TUMULTUOUS JOURNEY Regionally India and Afghanistan, the latter in particular remains continually challenged by the Pakistani military establishment supported by the ISI. The Pakistan military is using the nuclear card to stay afloat internally as well as globally just as rogue States like North Korea remain on the global radar. Coincidentally, China’s links with Pakistan and North Korea create doubts of Beijing’s willingness to be a responsible actor.

large-scale displacement and human rights concerns. The internal security situation in the country will continue to remain a challenge in 2020.

Four scenarios Under the circumstances the scenarios that can be envisaged could be four-fold. The most dangerous one for the region is that of the Collapsed North West and the best case scenario one of Reformed Pervez, outlined as per succeeding paragraphs.

Collapsed north-west The critical scenario for Pakistan is that of Collapsed North West in which the country is on the verge of failure or a failed State in 2020, fractured regionally as well as ethnically overwhelmed by forces of fundamentalism and violent radicalism. This may even result in a vertical cleft on either side of the Indus.

This will be a disaster for the region as a whole as Balkanisation of the sub-continent will bring in many decades of instability.

Current indicators reveal that Pakistan may not reach such a threshold in 2020.

Haemorrhaging Indus The Haemorrhaging Indus scenario is what Pakistan has seen from 2007–2009 post the Lal Masjid intervention forced on the military.

Rampant control of the political and regional space due to growth of fundamentalism, violent radicalism, sectarian differences, social inequity and a weak economy leading to a failed State may appear to be a marginal improvement on the Collapsed North West scenario denoted above. This is the cusp of vulnerability that the State may well assume in case the key uncertainties underlined remain on a negative trajectory.

Bilawal’s quandary Assuming that Bilawal Zardari Bhutto or his counterparts would be in power, Bilawal’s Quandary is a median scenario which envisages continued struggle to rise from vestiges of violence to a modern, responsible, regional and global player. While the intent and will of the government may be sound, the influence of forces of fundamentalism may restrain reform and compromises

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would be inevitable, yet the situation may hold promise for the future and could be one of the likely scenarios for Pakistan in 2020.

Reformed Pervez The reformed Pervez Scenario draws on the possibility of the army and the ISI’s willingness to surrender space to a responsible political class, thus army Chief Pervez Kayani (successor to another Pervez Musharraf) abandons primacy over the State apparatus and economic, social and political reforms lead to a new era of hope for the country. There are no indications of the likelihood of such a scenario at present.

Nuclear wild card An outlier scenario for Pakistan is that of the Nuclear Wild Card, suggested by loss of control over the nuclear arsenal to fundamentalists within the establishment or outside it thereby envisaging nuclear blackmail or adverse use. Eternal vigilance remains the answer to such a catastrophe.

Options While transformation of uncertainties is a function of the State apparatus changing certainties is possible through internal and external interactions. One key facet is balancing external support to the military and the political leadership.

The dominant profile of the military establishment in Pakistan and the support from the West particularly the United States and China is having an impact regionally as well as internally.

April 2011 Defence AND security alert

All this would denote that a change in support to Pakistan of external players like the United States and China would be a precursor to change.

For the United States post-2014 strategy would have to be based on an effort to restructure its equations to provide greater support to the political class and reduce dependence on the military. The Chinese all weather friendship remains a problem area as well.

Despite the overwhelming indicators of a variety of internal and external forces at play there is too much emphasis on Indo-Pakistan détente as a solution to the latter’s structural crisis. As the scenarios built indicate there is more to Pakistan’s debility than its differences with India.

While this is not an argument against engagement of Pakistan, there is a need to highlight that this will have limited impact on the overall effort to positively restructure Pakistan’s trajectory towards 2020. The main change has to come from within.

For India the options are limited to expanding the security architecture holistically to cover all dimensions, maintain people-to-people contacts and support the economy in whatever way it can. While economically India will most certainly join a different league by 2020, Pakistan has the opportunity to follow in these steps, for that it will have to transform from a military intelligence dominant State structure to a civilian one or the Reformed Pervez scenario, sadly this leap appears improbable.

The writer is an army veteran presently Director of Sasia Security-Risks.com Pvt. Ltd., a South Asian security risk and knowledge management consultancy.

His most recent book is, “Securing India: Assessment of Security and Defence Capabilities”.

Pakistan

TUMULTUOUS JOURNEY

The Pakistan nation is in a state of stasis, petrified by the Islamic fundamentalist Frankenstein it has handfed and burnished since Zia-ul Haq inducted a Saudi Arabian midwife to raise a new Caliphate. To expect the Pakistan army to rectify itself is like asking the Devil to read the scriptures. It has, in fact, shown all the signs of being the eunuch-bodyguard of the seraglio consisting of the Al Qaeda, the Taliban and its several splinter groups and the United Jihad Council – onetime “frontline fighters” against the Soviet army in Afghanistan. The US will do itself and the world a favour if it, even at this late stage of the Af-Pak farce, shuts off all military aid to the Pakistan army.

O

nce can be happenstance, but twice, three times in two months makes a design that one can ignore only at one’s peril.

Two months ago Salmaan Taseer, the governor of Punjab, was gunned down by one of his own bodyguards because he wanted changes in the Pakistan’s harsh blasphemy laws. The unexpected religious hysteria this brutal act touched off led to a spate of death threats against Sherry Rehman, who had the gall to be modern, moderate, an outspoken critic of the blasphemy laws and a woman.

Rehman had to go into hiding.

Inter-faith harmony A fortnight ago Shahbaz Bhatti, the minister for minority affairs in the central government, a Christian, was shot dead by motorcycle riding gunmen belonging to two factions of the Tehreek-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan, the Fidayeen–e-Muhammad and the Al Qaeda, Punjab Chapter. Bhatti, 42, was no pliant yes man brought into government to give it a pluralist face.

Writing in New Age Islam, Annabelle Bentham summed up his career and aspirations as follows: “Ever the proponent of Jinnah’s founding vision, Bhatti pioneered interfaith initiatives. He built bridges. He spoke at large mosques at the invitation of senior imams and eventually, in July 2010, secured a groundbreaking joint statement from religious leaders to denounce terrorism. He further launched a network of “district interfaith harmony committees” to encourage dialogue and unite communities through common concerns”.

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Blaming the victims The message the Islamists have sent is clear: they rule. The space for civil society, which was never large, is now forfeit. Pakistan is in shock and understandably, many are in a state of denial. An unnamed source told Dawn that both Taseer and Bhatti would not have been killed if their bodyguards had adhered to the standard procedure laid down for ensuring the safety of their charges. They did not do so because both Taseer and Bhatti often asked them to leave them alone and were unprotected at the time when they were slain. Their deaths, in short , were at least partly their own fault.

This is sheer nonsense. Taseer was killed by one of his own bodyguards with the tacit connivance of at least some of the others. Bhatti had dispensed with his bodyguards only when he went into his mother’s house. He may have visited her often, but was unlikely to have followed a fixed pattern. So someone close to him had to have been in touch with his assassins to tell them precisely when he was at his mother’s house.

Insider jobs The two murders therefore have one feature in common: both these moderate, forward looking, leaders were betrayed by the very people who were supposed to guard them. Al Qaeda and the Tehrik-e-Taliban have therefore thoroughly infiltrated the security police. The terror this has struck in the hearts of Pakistan’s elected leaders

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can be gauged by the prime minister, Yusuf Raza Gillani’s frantic assurances, within hours of Taseer’s killing, that the government had absolutely no intention of amending the blasphemy laws and the PPP’s insistence that Sherry Rehman withdraw the private member’s bill she had introduced in parliament to soften the severity of the blasphemy laws.

Wahabi infusion The hero’s reception that Taseer’s assassin received from large crowds of Barelvis, considered the most moderate of the various Muslim communities in Pakistan and the rose petals showered on him by hundreds of lawyers as he was being produced in court, shows how deep the Wahabi rot has penetrated into Pakistan’s Sufi-Sunni Islam. The notion that true Muslims have the right to kill deviants and heretics did not even exist in Islam till the coming of Abdul Wahhab in the 1720s. It was anathema among the Muslims of the subcontinent till only decades ago and remains so among Indian Muslims even today. But it has become normal in Pakistan even among those who do not profess to be Wahabis.

The two assassinations and the threat to Sherry Rehman, therefore carry an unmistakable warning to Pakistan’s moderates, whether in its government, its universities or its think tanks: “your lives are no longer yours, but ours.

You live at our pleasure. Beware of forfeiting it”. They therefore spell the end of Musharraf’s dream of turning Pakistan into a moderate, democratic,

Dr. Prem Shankar Jha

the end of Jinnah’s dream?

Islamic State on the Turkish model. For good measure, not that many Pakistanis remember it, they also spell the end of Jinnah’s dream for Pakistan.

US mindlessness If Pakistan is in a state of denial, the US is in a state of utter confusion.

For the past five years as Pakistan has sunk ever deeper into the clutches of the Taliban and Al Qaeda the US has put more and more of its eggs into Islamabad’s basket. Obama has said, times without number, that US aid is intended to strengthen Pakistan’s democracy, but his actions have belied his words. In seven years George Bush gave Pakistan US$ 17.6 billion, of which US$ 10 billion was in the form of armaments. Pakistan responded by creating a permanent sanctuary for the Taliban in north Waziristan and thereby virtually guaranteed military failure for the US and NATO in Afghanistan.

But Obama learned nothing. For the eight year period 2009-2016, he has committed the US to giving Pakistan US$ 28 billion, of which US$ 16 billion will be military aid. Today, as the Gillani government teeters on the edge of collapse and its members live in fear, no longer knowing whom they can trust, Obama cannot but be wondering whether he is not arming a State which is already three quarters of the way to becoming the military protector and nuclear shield of Al Qaeda, the west’s most implacable enemy.

With its democracy virtually paralysed Pakistan’s future now rests entirely in the hands of its army. But despite the largesse being showered upon it by the US, the army is still running with the Taliban hares and only pretending to hunt with the NATO and American hounds.

has been its anxiety to retain its ‘non-State instruments of foreign policy’ that it has continued to protect some of their members, like Al Qaeda’s military chief, Ilyas Kashmiri, even after they came within a hair’s-breadth of assassinating President Musharraf in 2003.

India-centric hostility

Even the outbreak of full scale hostilities against the TTP has not altogether ended the Pakistan army’s ambivalence. Till the beginning of this year it had committed no more than 1,20,000 troops to the war in FATA and Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa. The bulk of its 6,00,000-man army and 5,00,000 reserves remains on the Indian border.

The reason is its idée fixe that India is and will always be, its main enemy.

This idée fixe has become the most deadly threat to Pakistan’s future.

Like Shia zealots waiting for the reappearance of the 13th Imam, the Pakistan army has kept all but 1,20,000 of its 1.1 million army and reserves on the Indian border in readiness for a climactic battle with India. For decades it has appropriated the bulk of Pakistan’s domestic resources and US and Chinese military aid to purchase tanks, field howitzers, TOW anti-tank missiles and launchers, Cobra helicopters, missile frigates, submarines, anti-ship ballistic missiles and F-16 aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons. Instead of readying its infantry for war in the mountains of FATA it has mechanised another three of its infantry divisions and created five independent brigades, fit only for use in the plains.

The same fear of India has made it adopt an extremely ambivalent stance towards the Al Qaeda-linked tanzeems in Pakistan.

So great

Today Pakistan is reaping the whirlwind that its army and ISI have sown. The terrorist tanzeems that the latter nurtured have mounted 215 suicide bomb attacks on Pakistani civilians in the past three years and have served notice on the democratic State.

The writer has been Editor of The Economic Times, The Financial Express, and The Hindustan Times. He was the Information Adviser to V. P. Singh, former prime minister of India. He has authored many books and has been visiting Professor of the Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata, visiting Fellow of Nuffield College Oxford, visiting Fellow of the Centre for International Studies, Harvard University and is the first holder of the Chair on India’s economy, at Sciences-Po, in Paris.

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C

hina’s official defence expenditure in 2010 was US$ 80 billion. However the Pentagon felt it did not cover the Chinese payment for import of Russian weaponry – nor the large amounts spent on defence R&D. If these are factored in, China’s defence budget becomes a whopping US$ 150 billion a year which is four times India’s defence budget (US$ 36 billion in 2011-12).

China therefore poses the most serious long term security threat to India.

However in the here and now China is posing an immediate and pressing security threat by its unprecedented nuclear and conventional military support to Pakistan - which has consistently acted as its catspaw in South Asia. The essence of China’s grand-strategy in South Asia is to fully exploit Pakistan to deny India a peaceful periphery for its economic growth and keep India confined entirely to its South Asian setting. Pakistan has ably served as China’s surrogate in the South Asian region. China, in turn, has striven its utmost to build up Pakistan as a nuclear and military counterweight to India. In fact the Chinese term this strategic partnership as a core component of their grand strategy.

In colourful terms they describe this relationship as higher than the mountains and deeper than the seas.

Thus Pakistan’s entire existential purpose seems to be centred on destabilising, weakening and if possible, dismembering India. It defines its identity in starkly anti-Indian terms.

Since Independence it has launched four conventional wars against India and tried to carry out nuclear blackmail / coercion on more than three occasions.

It has launched major destabilisation campaigns in Punjab and J&K. Pakistan is a classic over-militarised State in the Austro-Hungarian or Nazi mould.

As per Paul Kennedy’s thesis, such over-militarised States are prone to economic overstretch and imperial overreach and hence most likely to collapse economically. The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990-91 fitted this model perfectly. Pakistan is

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not a State with an army. The Pakistani army owns and runs this security State through a feudal-military-ISI complex.

In the last 10 years - Pakistan has twice come to the brink of economic collapse once in 1990 (when it had just some US$ 1 billion left in its forex kitty) and then again in 2008 (when its forex reserves were not sufficient to pay for even one month’s import bill). On both these occasions, it was saved by massive monetary transfusions from America, Europe and the IMF and equally massive nuclear and conventional military assistance from China.

Fresh infusion Post 9/11 America gifted Pakistan

collapse in 2008! It has once again been revived by such massive transfusions from the West and the IMF. While China sought a peaceful periphery for its own economic modernisation since 1978 – it deliberately used Pakistan to deny the same to India. It has armed Pakistan to the teeth, gifted it nuclear and missile capabilities to deter any Indian conventional military response.

This has encouraged Pakistan to launch unrestricted asymmetric warfare against India for the last three decades. In the 1980’s Pakistan launched a vicious terrorist movement to destabilise Punjab – (India’s granary) and almost paralysed this state.

Pakistan then helped the CIA destroy the long established nation-State of

Maj. Gen. (Retd.) Dr. G. D. Bakshi

China has created in Pakistan a proxy that has reached a state of hallucination by the frequent infusion of opiates like nuclear weapons and missiles. It is not just a danger to the nation-States around it, more particularly India, but is fast reaching the stage of critical implosion brought about by the combustible mix of jihad and nuclear weapons. Chinese policy in Pakistan is turning out to be as dangerous as the American use of Islamist fundamentalists against the Soviet occupying forces in Afghanistan in the 80s. and Jaish-e-Mohammed into Kashmir.

It extended the arc of terrorism south of the Pir Panjal range. India had to raise almost six divisions worth of the Rashtriya Rifles and transfer two divisions from the Chinese Front alongwith others from our strategic reserves to bring the situation in J&K under control. When the jihadi tanzeems were put under severe pressure, Pakistan launched the Kargil intrusion to draw our troops away to the borders and give a reprieve to its beleaguered jihadis in J&K. India had to raise additional Rashtriya Rifles formations post-Kargil and in 2001-02 used these to impose severe attrition on the jihadi tanzeems in that state.

Shifting tactics

some US$ 12.8 billion of aid. The Pakistani military used some US$ 8 billion worth to buy sophisticated military hardware like Orion maritime patrol aircraft, Swedish AWACs and German submarines along with Chinese fighters and frigates. Small wonder that its economy was again on the brink of

April 2011 Defence AND security alert

Afghanistan and got it reduced to vassal status by imposing the Taliban regime in Kabul. In 1989 the Russians had withdrawn from Afghanistan.

This relieved Pakistan of its two front situation. It could now transfer its XI and XII Corps from the Afghan border for offensive employment

against India. This gave Pakistan a perception of conventional military parity with India. In the very same year Pakistan launched its proxy war in Kashmir. In 1990 China had tested Pakistan’s first nuclear device at Lop Nor. This truly emboldened Pakistan to intensify its proxy war in J&K.

Lapdog JKLF However by 1994-95, the JKLF was virtually decimated by the Indian army. Pakistan jettisoned the JKLF and unleashed its jihadi tanzeems - the Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), HUM, HuJI and later the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT)

Finding the troop density too high in J&K - Pakistan tried to spread the terrorist campaigns to mainland India.

It attacked iconic targets like the Indian Parliament and almost triggered a war in South Asia. The creation of Line of Control barbed wire fence coupled with concerted operations by augmented Indian forces broke the back of the terrorist movement in J&K by 2005-06. It was in this phase that finding the troop density too high in J&K, Pakistan launched Op Karachi to employ local tanzeems (like the Indian Mujahideen) with local narratives to

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China had ably utilised Pakistan to deny India a peaceful periphery for its economic growth and keep it destabilised and off balance within the geographical confines of South Asia. In analogical terms, Pakistan has been China’s Cuba in South Asia target the Indian cities with crude IEDs fabricated from commercially available chemicals and thus gain deniability.

In 2008, there were a string of bomb attacks in various cities of India. These culminated in the major firearms based terrorist assault on the financial capital of Mumbai in November 2008. It is noteworthy that the entire Indian land border with Pakistan has now been fenced. Hence, Pakistan mounted this asymmetric assault via the sea. Its jihadi tanzeems had by then been decimated in J&K. The ISI cleverly switched tactics and sought to mobilise the communal elements of the valley (downtown Srinagar, Bandipore, Baramula etc.) to orchestrate a South Asian version of the intifada. These were not peaceful or non-violent protests but deliberately orchestrated rioting and arson – spearheaded by well-paid stone throwers and mobs torching police stations and burning the national flag.

China had thus ably utilised Pakistan to deny India a peaceful periphery for its economic growth and keep it destabilised and off balance within the geographical confines of South Asia.

In analogical terms, Pakistan has been China’s Cuba in South Asia.

China’s Malacca bypass Pakistan’s role in China’s grand strategy has become even more crucial.

China’s critical strategic vulnerability is the fact that her critical energy supplies and trade have to funnel through the Malacca Straits bottleneck.

China has devised a Malacca bypass strategy in which Pakistan plays a crucial role. China is developing the strategic Pakistani port of Gwadar on the Makran coast and is now engaged in developing a major rail-cum-road corridor up from Gwadar to the Karakoram pass in POK and into the Chinese autonomous region of Xinjiang.

Massive oil and natural gas pipelines will run along this vital rail-road corridor which is primarily designed to bypass the choke point of the Malacca Straits. Hence China has in the past few years ominously resiled from its neutral stance over J&K and began to staple visas for Indian citizens of J&K origin. It then went as far as to deny India’s Northern Army Commander

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a visa to visit China. China is now feverishly engaged in constructing some four plutonium plants in Pakistan and has enabled it to rapidly overtake India, UK and even France in the size of its nuclear arsenal. Some 11,500 Chinese troops are now feverishly engaged in road and rail construction activity in Gilgit area of POK. They are also creating deep tunnels for the deployment of their aircraft carrier killer Dong Feng-21D missiles. These are very serious developments that have largely been ignored in our country.

Unprecedented proliferation This economically bankrupt and most dangerously unstable State is now poised to acquire the fifth largest nuclear arsenal in the world after the USA, Russia, China and possibly Israel. With 110 nuclear warheads, it has surpassed the nuclear arsenals of Great Britain, France and of course that of its arch-rival India. India has to cater for the nuclear arsenals of both China and Pakistan, but so far, it seems content to let Pakistan overtake it in this critical field. No other country in the world has given such unprecedented proliferation support to another as has China done in the case of Pakistan. Unfortunately for the last three decades India has been in a state of denial regarding the unprecedented levels of nuclear proliferation and conventional military support that China has provided to Pakistan. Consider the following: ■■ China provided the blueprints of a nuclear device to Pakistan and also HEU (Highly Enriched Uranium) for two bombs.

■■ China tested Pakistan’s first nuclear device at Lop Nor in 1990.

■■ China gave the M-9 and M-11 missiles to Pakistan.

■■ When the US imposed sanctions on the Chinese firms supplying these missiles, China put A. Q. Khan in touch with the North Koreans.

■■ China paid for the Nodong and Taepodong missiles purchased by Pakistan from North Korea.

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■■ China is now assisting Pakistan in converting its nuclear arsenal from HEU to lighter Plutonium weapons.

For this it is helping Pakistan build a Plutonium Reactor and will supply two more in the years ahead. All this support was given precisely in the period that India was making major peace overtures to Beijing. It is noteworthy that in December 1988 Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had visited China in a pathbreaking visit to restore ties. This was the period in which the Chinese had given Pakistan blueprints for the bomb.

In fact in 1990 China had permitted Pakistan to test its first nuclear device at Lop Nor. No other country in the world has gone to such lengths to provide this degree of proliferation support to another. This action had disastrous consequences for India’s national security, but we seemed to be blissfully unaware and fully engaged in thawing our relations with China. This level of nuclear proliferation support therefore is unprecedented and in itself poses the greatest danger to Indian security.

Thereafter China stepped up delivery of M-9 and M-11 missiles to Pakistan even as it talked peace and tranquillity with India. This must also be seen in relation to the fact that almost 70-80 per cent of Pakistan’s main battle tanks, combat aircraft and artillery pieces are of Chinese origin. China’s massive support has given Pakistan notions of nuclear and military parity with India. It is precisely this parity that has emboldened Pakistan to wage a relentless proxy war in J&K and now a jihad in Indian cities. It is the Pakistani dimension of the Chinese threat that needs to be clearly understood for it is the core of the Chinese containment strategy against India. Viewed in the light of the determined Chinese inroads into Nepal, Myanmar and now Sri Lanka, the encirclement strategy becomes apparent.

Asymmetric warfare The core design of China’s Grand Strategy to weaken, destabilise and tie down India to its South Asian periphery is executed via arming and instigating Pakistan to wage an unrelenting asymmetric war against India. By gifting nuclear weapons

and missiles to Pakistan, China has ensured that a provoked India does not launch a conventional riposte against Pakistan’s continual sub-conventional provocations.

China has thus fully exploited the stability-instability paradox in South Asia by encouraging Pakistan to unleash major instability at the sub-conventional level, even as nuclear weapons deter India from conventionalising the conflict. China has thus gained a peaceful periphery for itself, even while using Pakistan to continually harry and bleed India with its unremitting asymmetric assaults.

In its irrational desire to compete with a much larger India and play a zero-sum game at the cost of all its neighbours, Pakistan has become a source of regional and now global instability. Its conscious policy choice of employing non-State actors to wage asymmetric war against its neighbours, has weaponised the Pakistani civil society to a point that the nation-State itself has been seriously destabilised.

Gen. Zia-ul Haq had spread the jihad ideology into the body politik of Pakistan. He had decided to employ non-State actors to destabilise not just South Asia, but also Afghanistan and Central Asia. Dr. Ayesha Siddiqui writes, “Pakistan tried to minimise the cost of defence and increase its strategic depth by employing non-State actors.

This is not a viable option anymore.

The general perception is that these groups can be used and discarded as required. In other words they are controllable, or that their use is unlikely to change the character of a society or State. This is a total misperception.”

Zia-ul Haq tried to subvert the State in Pakistan by promoting the spread of an anti-nation-State ideology of jihad. This extremist ideology did not recognise

the sanctity of international borders, much like communism. It divided the world into two opposing camps – Dar ul Islam (the lands ruled by the pious) and decreed the rest as Dar al-Harb (or the land of war). State sovereignty, it felt was a blasphemy. The only sovereignty it recognised was the sovereignty of Allah. Hence the jihadis recognised no national frontiers and could intervene militarily, anywhere they felt that their version of Islam was threatened.

Vali Nasr, the Malaysian Islamic Scholar opines, “Zia-ul Haq’s use of ideology subverted the very character and nature of the Pakistani nation-State.

From a nation-State, he transformed it into an ideological bridgehead for exporting jihadi cause all over the world.” Zia-ul Haq’s military ideologues stretched the concept of terrorism to its ultimate. They talked of a Koranic concept of war that said

that striking terror into the hearts of their enemies was the main purpose of war. They now talked of using nuclear weapons to terrorise their opponents.

The CIA exploited Islamic extremism to raise costs for the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. It was a very tactical and short-sighted agenda and boomeranged badly on the US itself.

In promoting jihad, the US had created a Frankenstein that turned upon its maker and severely destabilised the region.

The Quadri effect The chickens have come home to roost in Pakistan today. General Pervez Musharraf pretended to be a Kemal Ataturk, who would de-ideologise the State of Pakistan and return it to Jinnah’s version of a normal, territory-centric, modern nation-State.

The sad fact is

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Dr. Harsh V. Pant

that Musharraf himself was the protégé of Lt. General Javed Nasir, the first fully bearded boss of the ISI and a card carrying member of the Tablighi Jamaat. He tried to run with the hares and hunt with the hounds. The Pakistani military collegiums of Corps Commanders and the ISI conspired to get rid of him. Gen. Kayani, a JCO’s son, far more rooted to the jihadi soil, became the new de facto strongman of Pakistan (behind a democratic façade). The process of the spread of jihadi ideology unleashed by Zia-ul Haq has now come to fruition.

Quadri – a moderate Barelvi Muslim (and not a Deobandi or Wahabi) became a national hero and youth icon for shooting Salman Taseer, the liberal Governor of Punjab (Pakistan), who was trying to save a poor Christian woman condemned to death for ostensibly blaspheming the Prophet.

The Quadri effect has clearly shown the dangerous extent to which Pakistani society has been radicalised.

N-trigger In the year 2010, Quadri had been posted 18 times on the guard detail of President Zardari and Prime Minister Yusuf Gilani. American guards are now being detailed to protect this democratic duo. But what about the safety of Pakistan’s rapidly and dangerously expanding nuclear arsenal? What about the credibility of the Pakistani Personal Reliability Programme for the 8,000

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odd Pakistan army men, who guard its nuclear assets?

Army-jihadi stock The bulk of the Pakistani army is recruited from the six districts of West Punjab (Montgomery and Lyallpur included). The bulk of the recruitment for the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) is also done from these very same districts.

Thus the same families send their sons to the army as also to the jihadi tanzeems. The chances of ideological contamination are inordinately high.

What then is the security guarantee of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal – which thanks to China, is the most rapidly growing nuclear arsenal in the world.

In Pakistan, the stage is being set for a disaster of global proportions. The Pakistani nuclear arsenal is in increasing danger of falling into the hands of violent jihadi extremists and Al-Qaeda franchises. A radical coup in the Pakistan army could convert the entire Pakistani State into a jihad machine intent on spreading destabilisation and chaos across the globe. In Pakistan, the world’s fastest growing nuclear arsenal exists in very close proximity to the fastest radicalisation process of an entire population.

The Quadri episode gives us a chilling peep into the mass mind of Pakistan – to the extent to which it has been radicalised. Nuclear weapons

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in the hands of such elements would enable them to actualise the so-called Koranic tenets of war – of terrorising the whole world now through nuclear weapons. It is a disaster waiting to happen. The Americans are consciously funding it and the Chinese are providing the nuclear ingredients for a disaster they hope will skirt their homelands. It is a vain and forlorn hope at best. The world needs to act now to safeguard the Pakistani arsenal before it is taken over by the mad mullahs of Pakistan and used by Sheikhs like Osama bin Laden or Ayman al Zawahiri.

We have little time and each day lost would be at the cost of global peace and order. The recent spat between the CIA and the ISI over the apprehension of an American operative has reduced their relations to a historic nadir. The worry is that Pakistan may now seek a total realignment with China. The key question would be China’s willingness to perpetually shore up an economically bankrupt State.

The writer is a combat veteran of many skirmishes on the Line of Control and counter-terrorist operations in J&K and Punjab. He subsequently commanded the reputed Romeo Force during intensive counter-terrorist operations in the Rajouri-Poonch districts. He has served two tenures at the highly prestigious Directorate General of Military Operations. He is a prolific writer on matters military and non-military and has published 17 books and over 70 papers in many prestigious research journals.

nukes: jihadi hand on trigger ?

The recent slaying of the provincial governor of Punjab and minister for Minority Affairs by the diehard Islamic fundamentalists brought to the fore what was till then only a subliminal fear of the direction in which the Pakistani society was drifting. Now it is out in the open that the jihadis have taken control of the soul of Jinnah’s Pakistan and the so-called “moderates” in civil society are so intimidated that their contribution to the national debate is both muted and ignored. The west has only itself to blame not just for international proliferation of nuclear weapons through Pakistan but also the looming possibility that the progeny of the madrassas could lay their hands on Pakistan’s nukes.

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ccording to the most recent estimates by the US intelligence, Pakistan has doubled its nuclear stockpile over the last few years with the nation’s arsenal now totalling

more than 100 deployed weapons.

Pakistan is now ahead of India in the production of uranium and plutonium for bombs and development of delivery weapons. It is now producing nuclear

weapons at a faster rate than any other country in the world. Pakistan will soon be world’s fourth largest nuclear weapon State ahead of France and Britain and behind only the US, Russia

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and China. It is investing heavily in plutonium production capacity with work reportedly underway on a fourth plutonium-producing reactor at Khushab nuclear complex.

catastrophe, Pakistan is producing nuclear weapons at a faster rate than any other country in the world.”

earth” precisely because of this fear of a nuclear holocaust in the Indian sub-continent.

country today, it is not clear if it would be able to continue to exert its control over the nation’s nuclear assets.

Nuclear rogue

MAD doctrine

India-specific nukes

But any attempt by the US to force Pakistan on the nuclear issue will only generate further suspicion that the US favours India and wants to control Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. This, despite the fact that throughout the Cold War years, it was Washington that was critical in giving a boost to Pakistani nuclear programme by wilfully turning a blind eye to nuclear developments in the country.

Indian and Pakistani officials, on the other hand, have continued to argue that just as the threat of Mutual Assured Destruction resulted in a “hot peace” between the US and the former Soviet Union during the Cold War, nuclear weapons in South Asia will also have a stabilising impact. They point out the fact that despite several provocations, India and Pakistan have behaved “rationally” during various crises by keeping their conflicts limited and avoiding escalation. But since 11 September 2001, the nature of the problem for the West has changed in so far as the threat is now more of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal being used against the West by radical Islamists if they can lay their hands on it.

The military has also become deeply demoralised, reflected in the large number of soldiers preferring to surrender to the militants rather than fight. There are growing signs of fraying loyalties in the Pakistani army, underlining the danger to its cohesiveness.

At a time when the US has pushed Pakistani military to shift its focus to the threat from extremist groups from within its own borders, the recent reports once again underscore the India-centric threat perception of Pakistan’s military establishment.

The danger is that this expansion is happening at a time of great internal turmoil in the country and the rise in religious extremism. The fears of proliferation and possible terrorist attempts to seize nuclear materials are real and cannot be brushed aside. Along with the defeat of Al-Qaeda, the Obama Administration’s Afghan War Review of last year has mentioned Pakistan’s nuclear security as one of the two long-term strategy objectives in Af-Pak. In State Department cables released

by WikiLeaks recently concern about the vulnerability of Pakistan’s nuclear material was evident.

The possibility As the Obama Administration was starting to review its Af-Pak policy, an intelligence report suggested that while Pakistan’s weapons were well secured, there was deep, continuing concern about “insider access,” meaning elements in the military or intelligence services. The then US Ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, wrote in a separate document that “our major concern is not having an Islamic militant steal an entire weapon but rather the chance someone working in GOP [government of Pakistan] facilities could gradually smuggle enough material out to eventually make a weapon.”

Not surprisingly then that even as American officials were trying to persuade Pakistani officials to give up nuclear material, they were quietly seeking to block Pakistan from trying to buy material that would help it produce tritium, the crucial ingredient needed to increase the power of nuclear weapons. And yet a December 2008 US intelligence briefing to NATO noted that “Despite pending economic

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Today Pakistan accuses the West of double standards and discrimination as the pressure has mounted on Islamabad for signing the Fissile Materials Cut-off Treaty (FMCT) aimed at banning all future production of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium. A successful conclusion of FMCT by the end of this year is a critical element of the Obama Administration’s non-proliferation agenda. In 2009, the US Congress passed a US$ 6.5 billion aid package for Pakistan with the stipulation that the Obama Administration provide regular assessments of whether any of the money “directly or indirectly aided the expansion of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program.” The US has already spent more than US$ 100 million helping Pakistan build fences, install sensor systems and train personnel to handle nuclear weapons.

Overkill capacity Pakistan already has more than enough nuclear weapons for an effective deterrent against India. 110 odd nuclear weapons will not make Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent more effective as compared to a deterrent based on 60 odd weapons. Nuclear deterrence doesn’t work like that. The higher number will just be used by the military to enhance its prestige by claiming that Pakistan is ahead of India, at least in this realm.

For long, the US and the West have viewed nuclear weapons in South Asia with dread because of the possibility that a conventional war between India and Pakistan might escalate into a nuclear one. Former US President, Bill Clinton called the Kashmir conflict “the most dangerous flashpoint on

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Finger on trigger There is little hope that the rational actor model on which classical nuclear deterrence theory is based would apply as much to militant Islamist groups as it would to the Pakistani government. The present turmoil in Pakistan has once again raised concerns about the safety, security and command and control of its nuclear stockpile. The command and control arrangements continue to be beset with some fundamental vulnerabilities that underline the reluctance of the Pakistani military to cede control over the nation’s nuclear assets to civilian leaders. It is instructive to note that of all the major nuclear States in the world, Pakistan is the only country where the nuclear button is in the hands of the military.

It is not at all comforting when former civilian leaders - including former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif - make it clear that even at the height of various crises, the Pakistani military kept the civilian authorities out of the decision-making loop on the crucial issue of nuclear weapons.

Moreover, senior civilian and military officials responsible for these weapons have a problematic track record in maintaining close control over them. While it is true that the Pakistani military remains very professional and perhaps the only cohesive force in the

The growing “Islamisation” of the younger generation of Pakistani military officers is well-recorded. Given the close links between the Pakistani military and intelligence services and the militant groups fighting in Kashmir and the Taliban, it is not farfetched to assume that there is a real danger of elements within Pakistan’s military-intelligence complex colluding with radical Islamist groups.

Discrete storage It is believed that Pakistan relies on separating the fissile core from the weapon thus ensuring that a usable weapon does not fall easily into the wrong hands. But it would take little time for the command and control network to collapse if Pakistan slid toward anarchy. Should that happen, sympathisers of radical Islamists within the Pakistani military and intelligence agencies could very possibly assist militant groups in acquiring the wherewithal of a nuclear weapon.

Throughout the Cold War years, it was viewed as politically prudent in the West and especially in the US to ignore Pakistan’s drive towards nuclear acquisition, as Pakistan was seen as an important ally of the West in countering the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Sinister network A. Q. Khan was the head of the Pakistani nuclear programme (and a veritable national hero) but was instrumental in making Pakistan the centre of the biggest nuclear proliferation network by leaking technology to States far and wide including Iran, North Korea and Libya.

Pakistani nuclear scientists have even travelled to Afghanistan at the behest of Osama bin Laden.

The exact number of Pakistani nuclear weapons as well as the location of nuclear storage and deployment facilities remains a closely guarded secret. Pakistan has strongly resisted US attempts to garner more information about these facilities for fear that the US would not hesitate to target and / or physically remove them in case there emerged a real threat to Pakistan’s nuclear assets.

Nuclear proliferation has never been a first order priority for the US when it comes to Pakistan. The Bush Administration had gone easy on the Pakistani military, despite the fact that it remained in control of the nation’s nuclear programme yet claimed that it had no knowledge of the A. Q. Khan network.

For the US, the role of the Pakistani military is critical in fighting Islamic extremism in Afghanistan. The same trend continues under the Obama Administration.

New nuclear matrix The chickens are, however, coming home to roost as the Pakistani military seems unable and unwilling to take on the Islamist forces gathering momentum on Pakistani territory on the one hand; while on the other, the nation’s nuclear weapons seem within reach of the extremist forces.

The US has suggested that there are contingency plans in place to deal with the possibility of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons falling into the hands of militant groups, but it remains far from clear as to what exactly the US would be able to do if such an eventuality arose.

This poses a serious challenge to the Indian credible minimum deterrent nuclear posture. While India has little to worry about Pakistan’s desire to have more than 100 nuclear warheads, the possibility of leakage from the State to non-State actors is a serious

threat as it will undermine India’s ability to maintain peace in the region.

A dangerous new nuclear matrix is emerging in the region.

India needs to be aware of the potentially catastrophic implications of the collapse of governing authority in Pakistan. A boost to fundamentalist forces in India’s neighbourhood will have some serious consequences for the utility of nuclear deterrence in the sub-continent. Irrespective of India’s other problems with Pakistan, Indian decision-makers had little doubt so far in trusting that their Pakistani counterparts would take rational decisions in so far as the use of nuclear weapons was concerned. That assumption might soon need revisiting if the present trends in Pakistan continue for much longer.

The present turmoil in Pakistan and all its attendant consequences in the nuclear realm point to the long-term costs of short-sighted policies - the politics of proliferation – followed by the West in countering proliferation.

The writer teaches at King’s College, London and is presently a Visiting Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, USA.

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It is often easily forgotten that the radicalisation of Pakistan began with the Pakistan army. That was the cradle in which military dictator Zia-ul Haq incubated the Saudi Arabian version of Wahabism. Three decades is a generation in any heirarchical establishment so it should be expected that the current GHQ is made up completely of dyed-in-the-wool jihadis. The man who shot the governor of the Punjab province for his liberal views is not the exception but the existing widespread reality of Pakistan.

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eligious intolerance and terrorist violence between various religious factions against each other have gradually attained dangerous proportions in Pakistan; the new challenge which radical and fundamentalist groups are posing may endanger the very existence of Pakistan as a modern nation-State. The assassination of the Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer by one of his security guards for proposing amendments in draconian Blasphemy Law and the subsequent support of the murderer by the society at large shows a trend that may spell doom for the liberal society of Pakistan. Take-over of Pakistan by jihadis is now a possibility and time has come to think of the consequences if such a regime takes control of Pakistan and its nuclear arsenal. In this scenario not only India will face a dire threat through nuclear blackmail and covert warfare under a nuclear umbrella, but the entire civilised world will be under threat.

Jihadi caliphate It is often said that despite obvious signs of radicalisation presently there is no religious party that can muster enough public support to come to power in Pakistan, but the possibility of establishment of a formal structure of rigid Islamic laws with the help of Pakistan army cannot be ruled out.

However, in a Talibanised society the army would have to accept the dominance of the clergy and the ideology propagated by them, whether this would be acceptable to the entire army in the long run is a moot point, the rich urban elite and senior ranks in the army may not like to lose their privileges

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to the clergy and therefore may prefer status quo to continue. Presently there is no cleric group strong enough to dictate terms to these powerful groups but they may become helpless spectators in the face of increasing public support for fundamentalist organisations and coercive religious violence.

Coercive culture A study of Pakistani society shows that more than 70 million Pakistanis are below 15 years of age; it is their religious mindset and upbringing in an ultra-conservative and rigid religious environment that gives an indication that Pakistani society may soon opt for coercive Islamic culture. A large number of Madrassas which have sprung up in Pakistani Punjab lately are under the influence of al-Qaeda and the Taliban; although religious conservatism does not automatically translate into religious extremism.

Wahabi culture and religious intolerance of the Taliban variety does and that is the danger that now looms over Pakistan. Another factor that is giving a boost to the fundamentalist movement is the American-NATO military presence and intervention in Pakistan and Afghanistan which is considered a danger to Islam by a majority in Pakistan, Antagonism towards non-believers, moderate Muslims, Sufism and Shias are signs of growth of a most vicious kind of indigenous radical culture fostered by the Mullahs under the influence of Wahabi or Salafi groups.

Moderate Muslims, who would like the secular culture to survive and the current unrest to be controlled have

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Maj. Gen. (Retd.) Afsir Karim

been reduced to a helpless minority.

Hardcore fundamentalism Pakistani army has nurtured jihadi culture for many decades and an extremely powerful jihadist clique now exists in the army. This group provides powerful support to the militant and fundamentalist organisations based in Punjab. General Zia-ul Haq, who was the first full-blown Islamist General of Pakistan army, had nurtured a new breed of religious-oriented officers in the army who are now in senior ranks and support radical Islam. The military and the ISI continue to support the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad under their influence.

The army, in any case, cannot be expected to play a meaningful role in combating jihadi terrorism when it considers jihadi militant organisations as strategic assets and a second line of defence against India. The US and many western countries seem to believe that Pakistan army may be persuaded to stop nurturing terrorist groups if the Kashmir issue is resolved to its satisfaction. The question is why should the Pakistan army allow a resolution of the Kashmir problem which helps it in sustaining its dominant position in Pakistan?

Expanding radicalisation The tribal culture in Baluchistan, Waziristan and the North-West Frontier Areas of Pakistan easily lends itself to Islamic conservatism; the fundamentalists in these regions are closely associated with the Taliban

radicalisation: global threat and have little difficulty in enforcing rigid Islamic laws. Schools for women have been closed, video and music shops have been vandalised in many towns. Although women are generally confined to their homes, yet a new breed of jihadi females are being trained as suicide bombers. Taliban militants have influence in most parts of this region and terrorist attacks have taken place here on many government offices and military establishments with public support.

In Pakistan thousands of young students, mostly from the depressed classes, pass out every year from ultraconservative Madrassas and become the torch bearers of fundamentalist Islam

in the country. They are brainwashed to believe that they must spend their lives in service of Islam and fight the infidels, most of these join Jihadi terrorist groups sooner or later. Although these young men take pride in sporting long unkempt beards, wear drab ‘shalwar’ suits as sign of their dedication to jihad unlike their mentors in the past they are technology-savvy and use modern means of communications to spread their message that justifies a permanent state of war against non-believers and advocates violence and acts of terror against them.

The jihadis are targeting the ruling class and the moderate Muslims of Pakistan as well because according to

them they are collaborating with the USA; they believe Pakistan cannot be purified and converted into a pure Islamic State unless it is freed from the clutches of US infidels and their supporters. The message to purify Islam that is being propagated in most parts of Pakistan now may soon be propagated beyond Pakistani borders to all Muslims of South Asia.Â

Hotbed of global jihad Pakistan as a failing State with the largest congregation of poor Muslims is the natural breeding ground of Islamic radicalism and is the most suitable base for launching of the global jihadi movements. Taliban and Al-Qaeda

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Dr. Arvind Kumar

and their associates have a large armed following and secured bases and sanctuaries in the most areas of Pakistan now as the efforts of the Pakistan government to curb the activities that provide recruits for the jihadis have generally been half-hearted and ineffective. In the prevailing conditions the secular groups in Pakistan have little or no influence and jihadi militants rule the roost in most parts of the country.

Liberals under threat Most moderate religious groups in Pakistan, once favourably inclined towards democracy are joining forces with the radical groups who want a Shariah based State. The centre of gravity is shifting rapidly from liberal groups and the number of people who now support radical Islamic laws is very significant indeed. It has become far more difficult now to counter this trend that eventually fuels Islamic terrorism than it is generally assumed. The recent incidents of violence and extremism suggest that the battle of ideas is already lost in Pakistan and providing an even playing field for moderate influences even by concerted international effort is becoming more and more difficult.

In these circumstances secular political parties cannot be expected to play

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any meaningful role in reducing the influence of the radical groups who advocate the establishment of a truly Islamic State and want to induce Muslims in the entire sub-continent to join the global jihadi movement.

The terrorist organisations in Pakistan are military assets and proxies that have been created and controlled by the army. Putting an end to support to terrorist organisations in Pakistan requires a determined united world wide effort; a meaningful effort by the international community is overdue.

Future prospects Continued terrorist attacks on sensitive targets could create conditions of an internecine war and eventually lead to the collapse of Pakistan as a nation-State. The army which has been the final arbiter of Pakistan’s fate so far may not be able to cope with the multiple challenges posed by a collapsing economy.

A big challenge to the army is likely to come from the jihadi onslaught with global links; their intervention will spread civil unrest that may escalate sharply to become a simmering civil war and lead to an unending involvement of

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the army in internal turmoil. There are no easy solutions in sight for the chaotic situation developing in Pakistan as it is evident that the jihadi insurgents will not give up their fight for an Islamic State and enforcement of strict Sharia laws in the foreseeable future.

The collapse of a central authority is likely to eventually lead to widespread infighting among various jihadi factions and the violence may spill over to neighbouring countries. In these conditions terrorist attacks on India may be stepped up and communal tensions in India will be stirred up further. The proxy war in Kashmir will be intensified and moderate Islamic culture in Kashmir may be finally stifled by the Wahabi culture.

A Pakistan dominated by a strong religious hierarchy after a violent take-over by a radical group replicating the Taliban take-over in Afghanistan will pose danger to the entire South Asian region.

The writer is a well known retired Indian Army general and a military scholar who has authored several books on strategic affairs and military studies. He is a graduate of the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington and the National Defence College.

ballistic missile capability With a nuclear arsenal already touted to be larger than India’s (more than 100 compared to India’s 60 plus) the expanding range of Pakistan’s delivery systems is intended to cover most of the Indian hinterland. If India is to remain credible with its minimum deterrence it must be able to hit several Chinese vital areas – Beijing, Shanghai and its bustling ports on the Pacific seaboard. Pakistan, with its measley strategic depth (even if it places its assets in Afghanistan and Iran) would be covered in toto. Concommitantly, a ballistic missile defence capable of exo-atmosphere interception at a greater height will be a gamechanger in its own right.

T

he presence of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles has now become a fact of life in Southern Asia. Ballistic missiles play an increasing role in the political and security dynamics of Asia. The countries

possessing ballistic missiles in Asia are China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Libya, North Korea and South Korea.

The growth of Indian, Chinese and Pakistani ballistic missiles in the last couple of decades in particular shows

a gradual improvement and significant capability in their programmes.

For each of these nations in India’s neighbourhood, nuclear armed missiles provide a survivable deterrent force and conventionally armed missiles can

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balance military inferiority. However, uncertainty about the status of an opponent’s missiles, short warning time and the consequences of a sudden attack may cause a country to strike pre-emptively in the early stages of a crisis.

medium ranges. It has also confirmed that there is a greater interest in the field of achieving solid propellant systems.

In fact, Pakistan has not conducted any liquid motor launches since 2006.

Ballistic missiles present a combination of operational capabilities (range, survivability, lack of an effective defence) and features (flexibility, cost) unmatched by aircraft. As nuclear delivery systems, they can provide a survivable deterrent force. Pakistan has been evolving a very robust infrastructure as far as their ballistic missile capability is concerned.

Pakistan’s desire to achieve some sort of strategic parity with India in particular has always been part of the strategic planning. The report appearing in both national and international media quoting the Pakistani military confirming the successful launch of a long range nuclear capable ballistic missile called Hatf VI or Shaheen-2. In a gap of only two days, the Strategic Forces Command (SFC) of Pakistan for the first time launched the Shaheen–2 nuclear capable ballistic missile to mark the culmination of the field training exercise. All the previous launches so far particularly for this Shaheen-2 missile were conducted by defence scientists and engineers. The involvement of SFC at this stage of launch signals advancement in their delivery systems. It also highlights the possible integration of their operational aspects of command and control systems.

Organisational structure It is well known that there are two groups within Pakistan looking at nuclear weapons and delivery systems.

The Khan Research Laboratories (KRL) originally headed by A. Q. Khan is credited with Pakistan’s acquisition of nuclear capability. The KRL has been building their liquid propellant systems – Ghauri series of missiles. It has been proven that the liquid fuelled missile was acquired from North Korea.

The other group involved in Pakistan’s ballistic missile programme operates under the purview of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC). This organisation has been responsible for the development of solid fuel rockets and missiles that include the Abdali, Ghaznavi, Shaheen-1 and the two stage Shaheen-2 missiles.

It must be reiterated here that these groups had been working in parallel with independent control over both the development of missiles and warheads.

Shift to solid fuel Pakistan has launched a number of ballistic missiles since 1998 in particular.

Based on the technical assessment and analysis, it seems that the credibility and reliability of the solid fuel rocket group is more advanced than the liquid rocket counterparts. The two ballistic missiles launches by Pakistan under the new regime during April 2008 and again two launches of both short range and medium range of Ghaznavi series and Shaheen series during May 2010 have shown an avowed commitment to develop delivery systems of long ranges as well as both short and

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Strategic superiority

The claims made by Pakistani military in particular and various reports in general about the capability of this ballistic missile Shaheen-2 have been by and large similar. It has been claimed that the Shaheen-2 missile has a range of 2,000 km and can carry both nuclear and conventional warheads.

It is a two-stage solid fuel missile with high accuracy. According to the statements issued, the launch was a part of the process of validation and technical improvements to consolidate and verify various land-based strategic missile systems. Claiming to achieve high accuracy certainly signifies the improvement in the guidance and control systems.

Test programme The technological advancement made in acquiring a long range missile like Shaheen-2 for Pakistan especially in terms of guidance and control system and also the improvements in ranges and payload requires an introspection and image analysis for validating the claims made by the Pakistani military and engineers. It must be stressed here that the history for developing

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Shaheen-2 has not been too long. The Shaheen-2 was first tested in 2004 and the consistency for the tests was maintained

by Pakistan by having minimum one launch every year. The year 2008 had been an exception because Pakistan had already launched Shaheen-2 twice.

Hence, this also shows the desperation on part of Pakistani establishments to achieve a delivery system, which can carry a nuclear warhead to the remotest corner of India.

Tall claims?

From the publicly available images of earlier launches of Shaheen-2 ballistic missile, one can infer a number of things after conducting image analysis by using very refined software. Several launches of Shaheen-2 in the last three and half years have indicated a trend of very minimal improvement in their performance and capabilities. The various images of Shaheen-2 launch on 23 February 2007 available in the public domain (www.tribuneindia. com and www.insurancebroadcasting. com ) do suggest that there is a length increase from 12.5 metres (of an earlier Shaheen-2 missile launch of April 2006) to 13.1 metres. The increase in the warhead length has also been marginal if not phenomenal. There is not much of difference in the lengths of the two stages. The image analysis of the available images of Shaheen-2 also confirms that the publicly available data on the range and the payload of this particular missile is not true.

The range of Shaheen-2 would be at most 900 km with a 1,000 kg payload and roughly 1,200 km with a 700 kg payload. The usual thumb rule is that less the payload more the ranges.

Credible arsenal There is no doubt in saying that the capability to develop ballistic missile and the progress made so far in Pakistan has been quite satisfactory.

The current reality seems to be that Pakistan does not require significant outside support for maintaining its ballistic missile infrastructure. It has been able to achieve a credible missile force. The objective of Pakistan would always be to improve and acquire the emerging technologies.

The new regime in Pakistan may have acted hurriedly in launching two ballistic missiles in three days in the

year 2008. But, for Pakistan it would serve the requirement of domestic constituencies and that has been reflected in Prime Minister Gillani’s statements that the missile and nuclear programme enjoyed complete national consensus and would continue to be consolidated and strengthened.

The successful launch of Ghaznavi during May 2010 by Pakistan again was to emphasise the importance attached to the short range. The effort to achieve this capability was reflected in 2003 during one of their launches. The technical assessment of the images of this category of missile has confirmed that this is a modified version of the Chinese M-11 missile. The range of Ghaznavi as calculated is roughly 280 km and with a payload of 700 to 1,000 kg, it could cover the targets in at least three major cities of India – Srinagar, Chandigarh and Ahmedabad. It may also include the outer perimeters of the Delhi urban area. It is most likely that China may have supplied these types of missiles in significant quantity. Whether Ghaznavi short range ballistic missile is nuclear capable or not is a matter of contention.

Cities within range So far, Pakistan has launched Shaheen-1 possibly eleven times including couple of nuclear versions.

The technical parameters and configurations of this ballistic missile matche with a longer stretched version of the Chinese M-9 missile. Shaheen-1 is a medium range ballistic missile.

The range is roughly 600 km and in addition to the major cities of Srinagar, Chandigarh and Ahmedabad, the Shaheen-1 can also definitely target parts of Delhi and its adjoining areas.

Jaipur certainly will also fall within its range. It must have been deployed and few of the Shaheen-1 could certainly be nuclear capable.

The Ghauri series of missile is liquid fuelled and uses corrosive and difficult to handle liquids - kerosene and nitric acid. The mobile launcher will have to be accompanied by separate tankers carrying the nitric acid and the kerosene fuel. It must be pointed out here that the Ghauri missile has been tested seven times since its first launch in 1998. The technical parameters and configurations are highly identical to the North Korean missile. The range

of Ghauri series has been estimated at 930 km with a payload of 700 kg. These missiles are expected to be phased out of the inventories of Pakistan’s arsenals.

and at different points of time has shown concern. The international community per se has been very much worried on this issue.

The Shaheen-2 is a two-stage solid propellant system. It has significantly enhanced Pakistan’s capabilities. So far five launches have taken place and it has shown a very linear and consistent development. The launches of the Shaheen-2 have used only a smaller Shaheen-1 stage. The technical assessment of this missile does suggest that the range and capability of the missiles have given Pakistan a real boost in terms of developing their deterrent capability. This missile certainly has the capability to inflict sufficient damage to India. The report and a number of writings do suggest that it has been inducted.

Indian response

Showcasing deterrence Despite the fact that both the neighbours, India and Pakistan notify each other of their ballistic missile tests in advance, the signalling to each other still remains a dominant issue as far as their strategies to deal with each other are concerned. Both the countries routinely carry out missile tests. The time is not to misunderstand each other but to maintain some sort of rational deterrence framework. Three major requirements for stable nuclear deterrence must exist or be created in the India-Pakistan context.

First, both countries must develop not just the ability to inflict unacceptable damage to the other side, but also a sufficient degree of ‘second strike’ invulnerability so that their forces could retaliate if attacked first. Second, the threat to retaliate with nuclear weapons for a nuclear attack must be credible.

Third, the nuclear arsenals must not be prone to accidental or unauthorised use.

The third requirement for Pakistan to fulfill has been a daunting challenge. The whole of the world is serious about this

Under the current circumstances, India is most likely to continue conducting ballistic missile tests to validate delivery systems for its nuclear deterrent while exercising strategic restraint. The technological advancement in India would help in improving the various parameters of almost all the categories of ballistic missiles.

India’s defence concerns would largely be confined to its region.

India’s technological aspirations in the field of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons are in large part a response to China’s capabilities and intentions.

In the existing geopolitical milieu, India’s main target would be to contain China’s growing sphere of influence in the region. Indian nuclear requirements would be sized against China, which should also be sufficient to cover targets in Pakistan. Viewed in this context, Indian planners and scientific and technological community would keep concentrating on achieving longrange IRBMs to have a second strike capability against China. India need not pursue an ICBM capability despite the technological potential for making such missiles. The geopolitical and geostrategic environment in the Indian sub-continent currently, however, does not warrant any increase in the arms race. The real challenge right now has been to explore ways to deal with the invisible enemy where the role of non-State actors is becoming dominant.

The writer is Professor and Head of Department of Geopolitics and International Relations at Manipal University, Manipal, India.

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Even as Pakistan is feverishly enlarging its nuclear weapons stockpile it has built up a huge echelon of sub-conventional non-State actors with a jihadi bent of mind to counter India’s conventional forces. More and more it is this sub-conventional force led and directed by regular army officers that is used to provoke India with terrorist attacks in the sure knowledge that India will not cross the international border or even the Line of Control to ease the pressure out of apprehension about Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

P

akistan has a feudal society where the elite protect their interests. The psychology of the Pakistani feudal and military elite has an ideological prejudice against secular India. The French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu has argued in his book, Distinction, that it is precisely this kind of shoring up of ‘cultural capital’ that empowers the elite social class to retreat into privileged insularity. From the day Pakistan was formed it has also suffered from ‘a small state syndrome’ and feels a sense of disadvantage vis-à-vis a large democratic and open society that is India. Being one-fourth the size of India and one-eighth of its population, Islamic Pakistan feels burdened and overawed by the presence of a large Hindu dominated India and has a perception that Muslims are ill treated in India and it is duty bound to stand up for them.

Perceptions invariably trump reality.

Military elite Pakistan’s military has established an elitist position in the country and bears an animus against India which is deep rooted and has not been easy to dispel. Hence Pakistan military’s threat appreciation and postures begin and end with India. Currently it is attempting to enter an arms equality race with India, shored up by a large nuclear arsenal under military command. The reasons for Pakistan’s animus towards India are many and majority of them stem from the history of partition and the four wars the two nations have fought. The scars and memories of war still fester on both sides of the border.

Indian example While Indian leaders have managed to oversee India’s armed forces through

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its democratic functioning and ensured the military remains subservient to the politico-bureaucratic leadership, in Pakistan the military is prime. The army shapes and announces Pakistan’s security threats and perceptions and is supported by the establishment more or less, under duress. The grip of the army on the polity through its nine Corp Commanders spread state-wise, may look invisible, but it is substantial, which has led to four successful coups by army chiefs in Pakistan with Martial Law under Field Marshal Ayub Khan, later President Ayub Khan from 1958 to 1962, General Yahya Khan 1969 to 1971, General Zia-ul Haq 1977 to 1988 and more recently Martial Law again under General Pervez Musharraf from October 1999 to 2008.

To appreciate the difference how India’s military is handled, it must be recalled that in India, Pandit Nehru despite Justice Shah’s objections entered a draconian Article 311 into the Constitution of India as Nehru feared coups. This has been used in many cases and is called the ‘President’s Pleasure’ and empowers the President to dismiss any officer of the armed forces without assigning reasons or inquiry. It was used in 1998 to unceremoniously remove the Chief of Naval Staff from his post and disrobe him of his uniform and pension.

Article 311 has also been used as a threat to force officers to resign as there is no recourse to appeal which is denied and though it is called President’s pleasure the President has no role to play or apply his or her mind, which Justice Shah had wanted but Pandit Nehru disagreed. Pakistan on the other hand has been under military influence and rule for 36 long years. Even today under a democratic facade of

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Cmde.(Retd.) Ranjit Rai

governance, the army and its chief Gen. Pervez Kayani and its powerful and well-funded Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency call many internal and external shots in Pakistan.

US-Pak connection The US-Pak military relationship, as opposed to India’s non-alignment postures and friendship with the Soviet Union, is another factor that has shaped Pakistan’s military postures against its neighbours, especially India. USA has provided aid, grants and has supplied arms to Pakistan since independence. This has historical impetus, when soon after partition, Pakistan joined the pro-US Central Treaty Organisation in 1955, also referred to as CENTO, whose original name was the Middle East Treaty Organisation or METO, also known as the Baghdad Pact formed

by Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey and the United Kingdom. It was dissolved in 1979. Pakistan also acceded to the South-East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO) an international conglomeration for collective defence which was established at a meeting of treaty partners in Bangkok in February 1955. SEATO was primarily created to block further communist gains in South-East Asia. SEATO was dissolved on June 30, 1977.

The pro-Western groupings accelerated USA’s friendship and aid to Pakistan and its military, as an American ally in the South Asia region to keep the Soviet Union away from a warm water port in the Indian Ocean. In 1971, Pakistan facilitated USA’s friendship with China and USA trained a large chunk of senior rank and file of Pakistan’s military and set up a network of quid pro quo with a base for U-2 intelligence flights from

military postures: perceptions and reality Peshawar. In 1985, USA funded and bankrolled the Mujahideen force created by Pakistan which was led by Pakistani military personnel, to oust the Soviet army from Afghanistan.

The USA was totally dependent on Pakistani Generals for that successful four year (1985-89) war when Pakistan created and supported Taliban (madrassa students from Kandahar) who took over control in Afghanistan.

USA attempted to deal with the Taliban, with Pakistan’s help, to pursue business opportunities in gas, coal, minerals and oil exploration. This

dependence on Pakistan rekindled militarily in 2002 when US declared the war on terror it unleashed in Afghanistan and used Pakistani bases and soil for transit of fuel, other stores and munitions needed for the war.

In both events India was sidelined and whenever India contributed to development projects and roads as the fourth largest donor with US$ 1 billion to Afghanistan, Pakistan considered it a security threat to be challenged and it opposed India and attacked Indian Embassy and Indians in Kabul.

Strategic depth Geographically with India to its east, and Shia Iran and Sunni Afghanistan to its west and the Central Asian Republics (CAR) to the north, Pakistan feels it has very little strategic depth and considers control of Afghanistan as its strategic depth. The 1893 Durand Line created by the British posed a challenge to newly-created Pakistan when Afghanistan voted against Pakistan’s admission to the United Nations in 1947 and laid claim to the Pashtun territories on Pakistan’s side of

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India’s moves to further the Peace Dialogue with Pakistan and attempts by India to resolve issues, are thwarted by Pakistan's army as it would lose primacy. Even when Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Thimphu in April 2010, the discussion on resumption of dialogue between India and Pakistan was hopeful when Gillani said he would ensure that the perpetrators of the 26/11 Mumbai attack would be punished and added, "The army supports me," but the reality was different. Soon thereafter vitriolic statements emanated from Pakistan and vitiated the atmosphere the Durand Line. There is support for a “Pashtunistan” that Pakistan fears and claims that India’s intelligence agency meddles in Baluchistan and Pakistan.

This has made its Generals from Rawalpindi craft, adopt and publicise a strategy of “offensive defence” vis-à-vis India. It has kept the north-west areas of FATA under autonomous control and on the other hand attempted to develop relations with Iran and make vigorous attempts to regain its influence in Afghanistan. In recent years this ambition to regain control in Afghanistan has got accentuated with the projected US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Kashmir psychosis

Geostrategic links

Many Islamic nations led by Saudi Arabia and UAE provided aid to Pakistan for Islamisation, funded mosques and religious fervour took stronger roots in the society and the military. The Pakistani Islamist groups garnered international funds and support to run religious schools called madrassas which have bred fundamentalists. From the inception in 1947, Pakistan’s military also vowed to wrest a predominant Muslim Kashmir from India, but failed in 1948 and in three subsequent wars. The defeat of Pakistan in the east in the 1971 war, the loss of Bangladesh and the humiliation Pakistan suffered in that war when India took 93,000 troops as Prisoners of War was a blot that the Pakistan army has never lived down. It vowed to avenge the 1971 defeat and, though under directions of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, all 93,000 POWs were repatriated honourably, Pakistan army never appreciated the gesture.

Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's promise given in the Simla Accord in 1972 before the release of POWs to settle issues of the border was revoked.

Pakistan leaders note that they need to have access to the CAR and to China and Chinese leaders have proclaimed Pakistan as its “all weather friend” more than once. China seeks land and sea transit routes to the Indian Ocean via Pakistan in the long term and China has provided aid and expertise to build the port of Gwadar and roads in the north in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. In 1965 Pakistan ceded a chunk of 6,500 sq km in the Shakshgam valley near Siachen to China. The encircling of continental India is being attempted by China with a 'String of Pearls', where ports like beads in a necklace can be increased or reduced. When questioned, China calls these donations of small change to assist Pakistan and India’s small neighbours and accuses India of making an “Iron curtain in the Indian Ocean” with influence in Malacca and in Indian Ocean islands. China also provides nuclear aid to Pakistan and arms to the military and Pakistan is indebted to China. China is India’s competitor and India has unresolved borders with China. Pakistan fears no threat from China and knows China follows a path to deal with the enemy (India) by being friends with the enemy’s neighbour (Pakistan).

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Since independence, to establish their importance in the country, the Pakistani military, led by professional elite created a fear psychosis among its people, that India is out to break up Pakistan. This perception took strong roots and Pakistani public looked to its military as the saviour of the nation and its Islamist way of life which again, the military employed to advantage.

The military indoctrinated its army to believe India was its enemy. The military in Pakistan was better paid and better looked after, compared to the other civil services.

Nuclear syndrome Bhutto set in motion a mission to go nuclear to defend Pakistan, “We

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will eat grass, but make the nuclear bomb” he said and dubbed it an Islamic Bomb. Pakistan’s nuclear programme moved swiftly and USA looked the other way, without applying the Glenn Amendment, when a Pakistan metallurgist Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan returned from Netherlands and offered to speed up the building of the bomb based on stolen Dutch drawings and Chinese technology. US intelligence never expected the bombs would fructify. Khan was Pakistan’s nuclear trump card, as he returned with secretly extracted technology to make highly enriched Uranium in centrifuges. Pakistan went nuclear under military supervision and a new found security confidence and posture exuded in the 80s in Pakistan’s military. Gordon Corera has chronicled how Khan, head of the Khan Research Laboratories, used Dubai in the United Arab Emirates as a base for meeting his worldwide suppliers of equipment and ceramics for centrifuges in his book Shopping for Bombs, which he hawked to Iran and Libya.

Gen. Pervez Musharraf as President during Op Parakram warned India that Pakistan would use any force (nuclear too) if its territorial integrity or existence is threatened. This posture worries the world.

gamble in the conventional Kargil war and in Op Parakram. It worked.

To vitiate the atmosphere, for the last eight years American military has used Pakistan for its logistical train to support the war on terror in Afghanistan. Pakistani intelligence have been operating under a tacit arrangement that has enabled US security personnel to undertake surveillance missions in borders of Pakistan and to execute targeted

India did not cross the Line of Control. India knows it will have to live with this dilemma and so Pakistan’s perception is that India will never call its nuclear bluff. In any war, the primary goal is not to be defeated and the Pakistan army plays to the gallery. India's moves to further the Peace Dialogue with Pakistan and attempts by India to resolve issues are thwarted by Pakistan¹s army as it would lose primacy. Even when Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Thimphu in April 2010, the discussion on resumption of dialogue between

assassinations against Al Qaeda and Taliban Islamists and insurgents in the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. This has enabled the Pakistan army to extract more favourable quid pro quos from Washington, which riles India. Pakistan’s civilian and military diplomacy has always been adept at blackmailing USA for support and aid. The Pakistan relationship with Washington has been an encouragement for the Pakistani military and has persuaded itself with its unrealistic and self-destructive ambition to seek parity with India.

Pakistan feels, that with the blackmail capability of its nuclear arsenal it can deter India, which it employed to

India and Pakistan was hopeful when Gillani said he would ensure that the perpetrators of the 26/11 Mumbai attack would be punished and added, “The army supports me,” but the reality was different. Soon thereafter vitriolic statements emanated from Pakistan and vitiated the atmosphere. The Pakistan establishment has racked up evidence of the Samjhauta Express train blasts, where Pakistan was blamed, but traces of Hindu extremists involvement have surfaced. Both militaries will have to attempt to rework their terms of engagement and dialogue. India needs to think about engaging the most powerful institution in Pakistan, the army and dispel those perceptions.

US-ISI nexus

Yet perceptions cannot trump reality, but perceptions in the Pakistani minds do control reality and that is how the Pakistan military continues to exploit India’s soft underbelly and keep fires burning in Kashmir and spreads terror induced coercion as a strategy and flexes its nuclear muscles.

Till India can find the sweet spot to make sure Pakistan changes its stances towards India, India’s military will have to remain alert and ever-occupied with Pakistan army’s security perceptions.

Last year, India’s Minister of State for Defence M. M. Pallam Raju assured the nation, “We are fundamentally a strong democratic country, surrounded

Islamist orientation From 1989 Pakistan blatantly used Islamist groups and Mujahideen against India, just as it formed the Taliban arm to subjugate Afghanistan after the Soviet Union withdrew in 1989. Pakistan succeeded in both terror strategies, especially in Kashmir. In 1998 India went overtly nuclear and Pakistan followed. The very next year in 1999, Pakistan transgressed the line of control in Kargil which led to a half war and a ceasefire under the overhanging fear of nuclear exchange.

In 2002 a Pakistani supported group of Lakshar-e-Toiba, blatantly attacked India's Parliament leading to a year of mobilisation of Indian forces when India readied for war in Op Parakram, but moved no further. This has led to a perception in Pakistan that India would never use nuclear weapons and

by an extended periphery of varying instability (Pakistan and Afghanistan) and hence it is not surprising that the role of a regional power is expected of us. Our military forces are expected to function as instruments of peace and stability in the diversely challenging environment and in the IOR”. The army chief followed up with an articulation of India’s strategy to be ready for a two front war. This is reality.

The writer is a former Director Naval Intelligence and Director Naval Operations.

Presently he is Vice President of Indian Maritime Foundation.

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Pakistan’s game plan in Afghanistan has all the hallmarks of Fascist Germany’s lebensraum gambit. In a yearning for “strategic depth” Hitler transformed the German people into Fascists just as Pakistan has created a talibanised society in Pakistan and in the Afghan hinterland with the avowed intention of extending that ideology into the former Communist Soviet Union. If America and its allies have to win the global war on terror they must stamp it out in Pakistan and not encourage the application of the concept on landlocked Afghanistan.

I

n their sixty years of tumultuous history, India and Pakistan have fought four wars and a long-drawn-out proxy war in Kashmir.

In each conflict situation, the idea of “strategic depth” has obsessed the Pakistani military planners, strategic analysts and defence experts and they have looked for it in their western neighbour. As the core of that idea led Pakistan’s strategy of supporting an extremist fundamentalist regime in Afghanistan and containment of India by proxy, it is necessary to understand the concept in a proper perspective, look at its evolution as a determinant of the country’s foreign policy and visualise its military implications during an impending war with India.

The study concludes with the view that while there is necessity of strategic rethink by Pakistan’s military as to how it looks at national security, India and Afghanistan can hardly afford their historical ties to be trapped in the Pakistani game plan.

The concept Strategic depth is a term in military literature that refers to the “distances between the front lines or battle sectors and the combatants’ industrial core areas, capital cities, heartlands and other key centres of population or military production” (Wikipedia). It refers to a region that provides safety and resources to an army or a country.

In the context of politico-military manoeuvres, a buffer zone could be a strategic depth. It is used usually as a sort of defence in depth tactic where the first line of defence breaks and is followed by a second further away and so on. An army with enough strategic

depth (typically hundreds of kilometers between the enemy and own capital) can “sell” ground for “blood,” thereby exploiting the advantages of tactical defence and it can more easily survive failures. Hitler’s attempts to gain the oil-rich and grain-filled parts of Russia in 1941 could be said to seek strategic depth. Similarly, the Soviets based in Poland used their strategic depth to withdraw to the outskirts of Moscow and launch their attack against the Germans. It is also believed in some military parlance that the French who lacked the strategic depth because of being surrounded by water, fell to the Germans during World War II. In the middle-east, the Golan Heights offers strategic depth to Israel.

Pakistan context Pakistani obsession of strategic depth could be sensed from this perspective.

The leadership in Islamabad has always considered India to be the existential threat. Military planners in Rawalpindi (the military headquarters) believe that Pakistan has been handicapped by the lack of territorial depth to absorb an attack by India and then to retaliate. They have viewed Afghanistan’s territory to be Pakistan’s “strategic depth” territory into which it could retreat from an Indian offensive.

Afghanistan is designated to provide safe harbour for Pakistani forces in the event of conflict with India.1 A friendly and cooperative Afghan State would also assure the leadership in Islamabad that India or any forces aligned with New Delhi would not pose a threat to Pakistan from across its northwest frontier. Therefore, supporting the cause of a pure Islamic State in

Afghanistan not only promised to neutralise Pashtun irredentism in terms of the controversial Durand Line, but also helped to train and indoctrinate jihadis for the struggle against India in Kashmir. This was one of the reasons why Pakistan’s policy towards Afghanistan and Indian Kashmir was kept beyond the purview of the civilian government’s scrutiny.

Determinant of policy Pakistan’s perennial search for strategic depth against India has been a determining factor in the country’s policy towards Afghanistan for most parts of its history since independence.

Relations with Afghanistan had got off to a bad start as a result of a border drawn by the British more than half a century earlier to divide Afghanistan’s principal ethnic group, the Pashtuns. In 1948, the controversy regarding this boundary – known as Durand Line2 – raised serious concern in Pakistan-Afghanistan relations.

Afghanistan even voted against Pakistan’s entry to the United Nations on the ground that the boundary issue was not yet resolved. But as land-locked Afghanistan is dependent upon Pakistan for trade and commercial transit to the outside world, it is vulnerable to pressure tactics from Islamabad. Despite this Afghan vulnerability, the secession of East Pakistan in 1971 made the political and military elites in Islamabad more concerned regarding the implications of the Durand Line to its western frontier.

Soviets in Afghanistan The

Soviet

intervention

in

Zalmay Khalilzad, “Anarchy in Afghanistan,” Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 51, No. 1, Summer 1997, p. 48.

This boundary, demarcated in 1893 by Sir Mortimer Durand, the British-Indian Foreign Secretary, to identify the so called zone of British and the Afghan sphere of influence divided the Pashtun tribe in both sides of the border. The historical fact is that the Pashtun dynasties in Kabul ruled a united Pashtun kingdom, encompassing most of what is now northern Pakistan until 1880 when the British-India pushed the Afghan boundary to the Khyber Pass.

1 2

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Dr. Jagmohan Meher

playing for strategic depth Afghanistan in December 1979 increased Pakistan’s security predicaments. General Zia-ul Haq, the frontline man in America’s antiSoviet war in the 1980s was determined

to overthrow the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul and to establish a Pakistan friendly government there.

In an interview in 1988, General Zia - a military dictator who was the first

full-blown Islamist to rule Pakistan – said, “We have earned the right to have a friendly regime there. We took risk as a frontline State and we won’t permit it to be like it was before, with Indian

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But one repurcussion of the Pakistani game plan - which the military establishment in Rawalpindi is seemingly not serious about - is the country's own peril. As it is seen from the ongoing violence in different parts of Pakistan emanating from its own terrorists and other organisations which the successive military and political leadership helped create, the country has been engulfed in the clutches of the fundamentalists and extremists and is on the verge of implosion from within and Soviet influence there and claims on our territory. It will be a real Islamic State, part of a pan-Islamic revival that will one day win over the Muslims in the Soviet Union . . .”3 In continuation of this policy, Pakistan continued to support the most fundamentalist groups among the Mujahideen, especially those zealots who would be willing to settle the long-standing border dispute between Pakistan and Afghanistan on terms favourable to Islamabad. Pakistan also supported those leaders who seemed committed to ending Afghanistan’s traditional close relationship with India. Accordingly, soon after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, Pakistan wanted to use Afghan territory to train militants for engagements in Kashmir, a policy continued till the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

Depth mechanism In the meanwhile, the term strategic depth found a formal place in Pakistan’s military-strategic lexicon during the Zarb-e-Momin military exercise in 1990 under the leadership of General Mirza Aslam Beg who used it during his military manoeuvres. He articulated that in the event of a long and difficult war with India, Afghanistan’s friendly territory could serve as a strategic buffer zone, providing secure operating bases for Pakistan’s air force and army.

General Beg recalled the 1965 IndoPak war when Pakistan sought to protect its smaller air force from Indian air attacks by parking some of its American-supplied fighter aircrafts in Iranian airfields near its western border. Both Iran and Pakistan were then pro-US allies.

In 1994, Pakistan orchestrated the Taliban – a religious fundamentalist force indoctrinated in Islamic 3 4

5

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madrassas – to establish a satellite State in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) provided Taliban with all kinds of support including logistics and advice in coordination with the Afghan cell in Pakistan’s Foreign Office.

Policy makers in Islamabad envisaged that a Taliban dominated government in Kabul would be permanently friendly towards Pakistan. So when the Taliban took over Kabul in 1996 and inaugurated the ‘Islamic’ government there followed by the closure of Indian embassy, it was seen in Rawalpindi as a strategic coup and their masters over there rejoiced. In May 2000, General Pervez Musharraf explicitly articulated Pakistan’s reasons for its continued backing of the Taliban. He stated that in view of the demographic and geographic pattern of Afghanistan’s majority ethnic Pashtuns, it is in Pakistan’s national security interest to support the predominantly Pashtun Taliban regime.

Catastrophic reversal In the post 9/11 period, as Pakistan was forced to join the global war on terrorism led by the United States,4 and the then Northern Alliance backed by the United States started bombing the Taliban targets, it looked a nightmare for the Pakistan Army. With General Musharraf announcing Pakistan’s collaboration with the alliance forces against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the entire concept of strategic depth fell like a house of cards. The all-powerful Pakistan Inter-Service Intelligence was on the brink of despair as the whole ISI world seemed to be upside down. In fact, there was little to choose between Pakistan’s strategic depth in Afghanistan and Pakistan as the strategic depth of the Taliban.

Strategic depth was being replaced

by a strategic nightmare. How could General Musharraf, a strong patron of the Taliban and other terrorist organisations, be a silent spectator?

While addressing the nation on the eve of the US attack, he said, “What I would like to know is how do we save Afghanistan and Taliban.

And how do we ensure that they suffer minimum losses.” With the de-Talibanisation process, the General (a) pleaded to shorten the bombing campaign and not to bomb the Taliban frontlines; (b) desperately requested the Americans to prevent the Northern Alliance from entering Kabul and demanded that Kabul be “demilitarised;” (c) advocated only weakening the Taliban regime and was anxious to figure out the “moderate” Taliban willing to join the new dispensation. And more significantly, (d) when thousands of Pakistani fighters and Army officers fighting alongside the Taliban were trapped in Kunduz, Mazar-e-Sharif, Kabul and Kandahar, the Pakistani “President” had to request the Americans for their smooth evacuation to Pakistan.5 In fact, Musharraf tried his best to have the fundamentalist regime in place and so also the Al Qaeda network, its infrastructure and terrorist training camps, etc.

After a long slumber, India woke up to the ground realities in the region.

New Delhi opened her consulate in Kandahar, the same town where an Indian foreign minister had arrived to negotiate a humiliating peace accord with the Pakistan-based Islamic fundamentalist-terrorist outfits who had hijacked the Indian airliner. This had infuriated Islamabad. Pakistan complained that with its presence in Afghanistan, India was encircling Pakistan with its consulates and

Selig S. Harrison, “Avoiding Afghan Civil War,” The New York Times, 14 November 1988, p. 19.

In the wake of 9/11, Washington threatened Rawalpindi to bomb Pakistan to Stone Age, if General Musharraf did not cooperate with the US in Afghanistan.

General Musharraf, as he was, behaved like a die-hard patron of the Taliban and Al Qaeda during the American military operation beginning 7 October 2001. For a comprehensive analysis on the subject, see Jagmohan Meher, “Bush on Afghanistan: Dozing at the Dossier of Musharraf,” Mainstream, 27 December 2003, pp. 91-94.

April 2011 Defence AND security alert

commandos and is financing anti-Pakistan militant organisations within that country.6 Consequently, Islamabad wanted to see major share of power to remain in the hands of the Pashtun tribal leaders who have close links with the government establishment in Pakistan.

This would also restrict the erstwhile Northern Alliance’s sphere of influence to the extreme north of the country, away from Pakistan’s borders. Since India maintains close links with the leaders of the Northern Alliance, the strategic concerns of Pakistan have become more acute.

Pakistan’s linkages with the Taliban came under constraint for some time, but soon these were revived and under the secured cover of the Pakistan army, the Taliban and Al Qaeda were regrouped in Pakistan and allied themselves with other terrorist organisations. There are mounting evidences to suggest that the Pakistani army and intelligence personnel have been fighting alongside the remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda to destabilise the US-backed and India supported Hamid Karzai government in Afghanistan. As early as 2007, The New York Times reported that 6 7 8 9

“all Taliban are ISI Taliban and that it is not possible to go to Afghanistan without the help of the ISI.”7 As per a popular perception in Pakistan, if the “body bag” conscious Americans withdraw from the country, that will ensue a vacuum and allow the Taliban and Al Qaeda to return to power in Kabul. So long as American presence is there, Pakistan’s clandestine support to the Taliban elements will continue which – the Pakistani leaders know – would ensure an American long rope for their survival in the saddle with moderate doses of aid. Clearly, for Pakistan, the present policy of hunting with the American hounds while running with terrorist hares ensures adequate space for strategic depth in Afghanistan.

Kayani doctrine General Ashfaq Kayani, who took charge in 2008 as the army chief appears to have a stronger agenda than that of his predecessor. With the United States bogged down in Afghanistan, General Kayani seems to be operating from a position of greater strategic strength on Pakistan’s policy towards Afghanistan and India. The Pakistani army chief has already declared that “we want

a strategic depth in Afghanistan but do not want to control it.”8 During a visit of US Vice-President Joe Biden to Islamabad, the Pakistani General was bold enough to push hard on the American leader demanding that the United States accept a special role for Pakistan in the proposed “end-state” for Afghanistan, install its proxies in power in Kabul and help reduce the Indian role in Afghanistan.9 More significantly, General Kayani wanted the US to get New Delhi to make concessions on Jammu and Kashmir.

Kayani seems determined to fulfill a long pending historic dream of strategic depth for the army’s regional policy. His determination probably reflects the Pakistani army’s bigger strategic posture on the basis of which the military calculates that keeping the Americans bogged down in Afghanistan by sustaining the Taliban would fulfill the strategic need of perpetuating the US-Pakistani alliance at the expense of India.

Military implication In many ways, this is an existential strategy as far as Pakistan is concerned: a strong and stable regime in Kabul would immediately put the

Amin Tarzi, “Islamabad Anxious as Kabul gets chummy with New Delhi,” eurasianet.org, 16 April 2006.

See Carlotta Gall, “At Border, Signs of Pakistani Role in Taliban Surge,” The New York Times, 21 January 2007.

See Kalim Bahadur, “Crucible or cauldron?” Defence and Security Alert, Vol. 1, Issue. 6, p. 64.

C. Raja Mohan, “Clueless on Pakistan,” The Indian Express, 14 January 2011, p. 10.

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Pakistan

Durand Line into question and the dream of strategic depth would be lost.

The Pakistani military, driven by its perception of India as the enemy and its perceived requirement for strategic depth, will therefore, not end its support for and provision of sanctuary to its longtime Afghan Taliban proxies or accept a truly independent Afghanistan.

And both Islamabad and Rawalpindi, centres of political and military powers respectively, will continue efforts to recover ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan using the Taliban as a proxy, but will do so within limits not to invite US ire and reprisals. Maintaining a threshold level of violence and subversion is integral to this strategy in Afghanistan – as is the same in case of the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir. Now, the masters of this strategy are looking forward to American withdrawal from Afghanistan and once that begins to happen, they will be harping on their effort to install their man in Kabul.

American failure in Afghanistan would naturally give them an upper hand and that would embolden them to escalate terrorist attacks against India. Hence, if the Taliban succeeds (the US fails?)

India will be threatened much more than the United States.

Jihad as strategic tool Pakistan army and ISI have been nurturing jihad for more than three decades and today we don’t know how many fervent ideologues from these only surviving institutions continue to run with the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Muhammad, etc. Pakistan’s strategic ambitions towards India and Afghanistan not only fertilise their domination, it also fosters religious extremism and state-sponsored terrorism in that country. The Pakistani Generals believe that these rogue elements could be manipulated at their own will since most of them were dependent on the Pakistan military for their training, logistics and other strategic requirements. Not surprisingly, General Kayani wants to bring these people into the power structure in Kabul and if the Pakistani game plan of gaining strategic depth in Afghanistan succeeds, that will carry a far-reaching military implication in the ever volatile geo-political and strategic landscape of the whole of Central and South Asia including India and create 10

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TUMULTUOUS JOURNEY a dangerous trend for the entire world.

Institutionalised terror It is only pertinent to bear in mind that after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, Pakistan gained a remarkable foothold of terrorist infrastructure in that country which served as reservoirs for anti-Indian jihadis in addition to their designated role as Pakistan’s State-sponsored terrorists and a significant portion of that were directed to Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir to create havoc and mayhem in the valley. The time to time terrorist attacks in India (including 2001 Indian Parliament and 2008 Mumbai) are the handiwork of the same jihadi syndicate that wants to institutionalise their terrorist infrastructure through the strategic depth game plan.

But one repercussion of this Pakistani game plan – which the military establishment in Rawalpindi is seemingly not serious about – is the country’s own peril. As it is seen from the ongoing violence in different parts of Pakistan emanating from the very terrorists and their organisations which the successive military and political leadership helped create, the country has been engulfed in the clutches of the fundamentalists and extremists and is on the verge of implosion from within. Pakistan’s search of strategic depth has proved to be a strategic folly in political and economic terms.

It is high time that the Pakistani army and its intelligence agency pay more attention to this internal dimension of their multi-layered security problems.

The crux of this instability is clearly embedded with the strategic rethink by Pakistan’s military as to how it looks at national security. Thomas Friedman writes: “People do not change when we (the US) tell them they should; they change when their context tells them they must.”10 Pakistan needs to juggle around with the direction of that “context.” Most significantly, the manner in which the Obama administration decides to engage the Pakistani military to bring about a change in latter’s perceptions on national security will be a determining factor in overcoming the current crisis in the entire region. In the meanwhile, unless the Pakistan army gives up its idiosyncratic notions of

Thomas L. Friedman, “This I Believe” The New York Times, 2 December 2010.

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TUMULTUOUS JOURNEY

seeking strategic depth in Afghanistan and fuelling terrorism in India and concentrates instead on fighting all varieties of Taliban and terrorist groups that are threatening the cohesion of the State, the instability in Pakistan will continue.

India a countervailing factor Indian concern is clearly discernible in the Islamic radicalisation of Afghanistan, especially if it is seen as Pakistan-sponsored.

Important jihadi organisations which are being funded and patronised by the Pakistani intelligence community have always viewed their offensive operations in Afghanistan and Kashmir as part of the same religious calling. In the same vein, Pakistan also uses them as its strategic assets in both the fronts. Therefore, through its creative diplomacy, economic and military assistance, trade ties, etc., India has to ensure that Pakistan’s involvement in Afghanistan’s internal affairs remains minimal and that the Taliban is prevented from the corridors of power in Kabul. To checkmate Pakistan’s anti-India moves, New Delhi is working hard to win the confidence of the post-Taliban government of Afghanistan. India has so far donated US$ 1.5 billion to Afghan reconstruction efforts and participating in various infrastructural development projects.

For the Indian strategic community, close cooperation with Afghanistan – a country with which India has had historically friendly relations up to 1992 – is a cost-effective policy to keep Pakistan under check. As India wants to see that the Kashmir issue remains dormant with little or no violence, it would be imprudent on the part of New Delhi to allow Afghanistan to once again become a pawn in Pakistani plans of a strategic depth which may help surface bigger strategic loss for India in a future conflict situation.

The writer teaches Political Science, International Relations and Area Studies at National Defence Academy, Khadakwasla, Pune, India. He is a former Fulbright Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and author of the books, America’s Afghanistan War: The Success That Failed and Afghanistan: Dynamics of Survival (edited).

Brig. (Retd.) Chitranjan Sawant

: g n i o d n u Pakistan's

? t i e c n o c d e s i v d a l l i r o r e t s n o m e h t media Nothing emphasises the dismal state of Pakistani society than the reactions of influential sections to the murders of Punjab province governor Salmaan Taseer and minister for minorities affairs Mr. Shahbaz Bhatti. You had lawyers showering rose petals on the killer and there was Sherry Rehman of the Pakistan People’s Party shamefacedly withdrawing her amendment to the blasphemy law that would have removed the causes that led to the assassination of Taseer. Now Asma Jehangir, Pakistan’s indomitable human rights activist, is under threat for seeking the abolition of this draconian Islamist-oriented law. International public opinion was shocked out of its wits. And the media reflected that reaction.

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I

f I were a citizen of Pakistan I would feel ashamed of the image of my homeland in the media.

Obviously, the present image needs a change. A makeover, if you like.

The men and women in corridors of power in Islamabad tend to blame the media for the poor image of Pakistan.

The media has its own viewpoint; it portrays what it sees.

Let us go back to basics of reporting to understand the scenario and see it in correct perspective. What is news? When a dog bites a man, it is no news but when a man bites a dog, it is NEWS. So, when the media is blamed for paying attention to negative aspects of local or national life, it takes recourse to the age-old definition of news and proceeds to defend accordingly. A newspaper or a TV feature sells when it covers the uncommon without sacrificing the truth.

Indeed the headlines of important items of news have to be catchy without being sensational.

Sensationalising would bring in the label of yellow journalism that no selfrespecting newspaper or columnist of repute would like to carry. A little twist here and a little turn there may be permitted so that the paper sells. Here is an example of making the news item eye-catching without inviting the adverse attention of the ombudsman or the watchdog called the Press Council. Pope of Rome addressed a press conference in Chicago but it was so biblical that a modern reader might not touch with a barge pole. “Holy father, what about a word of advice to call girls of Chicago? asked a chirpy reporter. Pope had been advised by his media consultant to throw the question back to the press corps if he smelt a rat there. Pope did just that and said “Are there call girls here?” Next morning the headlines screamed “Are there call girls in Chicago? asks Pope”.

Pakistan too had to deal with this kind of press corps in America and after a brief honeymoon, the politician and the pressmen did not see eye to eye on many a point. We shall take up terror factories in Pakistan and the unrelenting campaign of the international media to expose them and assess actions of Pakistan that gave it a bad name and a poor image in international media.

56

Ethnic cleansing Pakistan was born in the midst of violence on 14th August 1947.

Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the moving spirit behind founding of Pakistan as a homeland for the Muslim community of undivided India did not wish to share the date of independence with the Hindu India. He had his way in inaugurating the new country a day earlier but could not hide the hatred for the Hindus and for India that lay hidden in that diplomatic move.

Although Jinnah declared from house tops that Pakistan belonged to all communities living there but he failed to stop the violence perpetrated by the Muslims against the Hindus that forced them to flee to India. Naturally, the international media recorded and reported it faithfully. The beginning of an ethnic cleansing in Pakistan done with the tacit approval and support of the government there did not win laurels for the new country.

Deviation What should have commenced with a clean slate, now bore a tarnished image in all despatches carried by the print and the electronic media. The State of Pakistan was paying scant attention to its minorities like the Hindus and Christians and the media called it a deviation from the norms of a civilised society and a progressive country. Obviously, Pakistan had failed the test and the media was unforgiving in giving a rap on the knuckles.

Thus the image of Pakistan in the media was a tarnished one from day one.

When the Dominion of Pakistan graduated to the status of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, it certainly had a fund of goodwill of Muslim countries and their media to count upon and they did not let Pakistan down. It was on the Islamist network that Pakistan, as one of the biggest Islamic countries, impressed citizens of other Islamic nations but beyond that line it drew a zero. The media in America and European countries rightly portrayed Pakistan as a regressive State where feudal dispensation and archaic Islamic law called Sharia held the

April 2011 Defence AND security alert

common man back from the path of progress.

Medieval education Modernisation was unheard of. The orthodox clergy clung to the medieval system of education in the Islamic schools called madrassas where the Quranic verses were learnt by the rote method and subjects like science, mathematics and contribution to knowledge made by the Hindu civilisation and other European social orders were given a go by. With the result, graduates of this system of education did almost next to nothing in taking Pakistan on to the path of progress. The Asian, European and American media did not lose sight of these lacunae in the educational system of common man and the havoc it played on their advancement.

The Islamic Republic of Pakistan paid scant attention to the education of the girl child and thus half of Pakistan failed to have even a passing acquaintance with three R’s. The image of Pakistan in media went from bad to worse when it did not resist the Taliban in stopping girls from going to schools and women from taking up employment in offices where they worked with male colleagues.

Pakistan became a State worse than what it was during the days of feudal lords. Pakistan’s image in the media touched rock bottom but the high and mighty in Islamabad were not bothered because their agenda was different. Now, promotion of Islamist terror and making a mockery of the AF-PAK policy of America were the driving policies.

Taliban-Pak nexus The Taliban and Pakistan are inseparables. They are brothers.

General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, Chief of Army Staff, Pakistan is on record and reaffirms that when Pakistan goes to war with India, Taliban would protect its flanks. When the US military and strategic command pressed General Kayani to dissipate the Taliban, the latter dilly-dallied.

There is no change in the attitude of the Pakistan army top brass till today.

It is crystal clear that the Pakistan army would never go into military action against the brotherly Taliban.

It is an irony of fate that the Taliban

raised as a military force of madrassa students with American aid are now the sworn enemy of US forces.

Pakistan has now got a tarnished image in the media as a country that swindles money from Americans, warms up to Taliban and turns Nelson’s eye when the same Taliban target and kill the American soldiers in Afghanistan. The international media is not unaware of it and has chastised Pakistan time and again for running with the hare and hunting with the hound simultaneously. The media has called this lethal game of Pakistan unethical. Nevertheless, Pakistan is going full steam ahead with this Double Game policy as it brings in dollars and gives a good name to Pakistan in the Islamist countries. The international media playing referee does not assess Pakistan as a country that is above board.

New caliphate

Women as chattel

The parallel justice system introduced by the Taliban, in Swat for example, was both primitive, harsh and stood against the grain of jurisprudence. The new lords introduced new laws. Men were not permitted to shave their beards and women were kept off the public paths. Women were denied both education and employment. Their fate was worse than that of animals and they were treated as mere child-producing machines.

All this happened under the so-called watchful eyes of organs of the State of Pakistan and the government agencies kept mum. The media covered this chaos in depth. The image of Pakistan

It was common knowledge that the Taliban ruled civil society in the Swat valley, North and South Waziristan, not forgetting FATA was on way to becoming a terrorist state. In the areas ruled by the Taliban women were the worst sufferers. There was no one to order the girls’ schools to open and start imparting education or to ensure that women employees were not harassed for attending to work as it was their means of livelihood. There was not much to write home about the sexual morality of the Taliban cadres themselves. Pretty local girls were forcibly married to the Taliban office bearers and the agencies of Pakistan government entrusted with the task of implementing law and order looked the other way.

Police officials were scared of the Taliban and thus the State abdicated its responsibilities of maintaining law and order; what to talk of other niceties of life in a civilised society.

The media had not kept its eyes and ears shut and reported in the international press and TV the sordid goings on in the border areas of Pakistan. Thus Pakistan was painted with a black brush and blacker paint by the media and could not live down this image. Pakistan and its wrongdoings are so much reflected by both the print and the electronic media that unless it faces the Taliban and calls a halt to their nefarious acts, the image of Pakistan in the media will continue to be dented badly.

Jihadi cradles Madrassas or Islamic schools have given a bad name to their host country, namely Pakistan. General Zia-ul Haq, the then President, supported the Islamist movement to the hilt. The mujahideen (holy warriors) who fought the Soviet army in Afghanistan never had any shortage of money, weapon systems, recruits or political patronage, thanks to President Zia. After the mujahideen succeeded in overthrowing the Najibullah regime which the Soviets had installed before leaving in 1989 the disparate groups of Afghan fighters fell apart and began fighting among themselves. Pakistan, seeing its geostrategic gains being frittered away, launched thousands of ”talibs” (students) drawn from its rabid madrassas into Afghanistan led by Pakistan Army Inter-Services Intelligence officers who fought the mujahideen and took control of Kabul.

In due course of time, the products of the Deeni Madrassas comprised narrow-minded mullahs, bigoted men and even petty criminals who ruled the roost. Pakistan has been backing the Taliban all along and, therefore, it too got a bad name in the media and the civil society.

was tarnished by its own people and the situation grew worse day by day.

The Islamic Republic of Pakistan had defamed Islam. Islam is supposed to be a religion of peace, tolerance and indeed submission to the Will of God. However, what the Taliban did on the soil of Pakistan, with the tacit approval of Pakistan authorities, portrayed Islam as a religion of intolerance and narrow-mindedness.

The way welfare of women was ignored and their education and employment opportunities suppressed, the Taliban and their patron State, Pakistan, earned the dubious distinction of being misogynists. It is surmised that the day is not far off when women like Asma Jehangir would be up in arms against the government of Pakistan and demand the implementation of their human rights as enshrined in the charter of the United Nations.

Pakistan was dubbed as a medieval State by the media and rightly so. It is feared that Pakistan has travelled a great distance from Islamic Republic to becoming a terrorist producing outfit. Sooner or later media may help Pakistan, through Press and TV, to earn the status of being a failed State.

The writer is a well-known commentator on television and radio and has been giving running commentaries on Akashvani, Doordarshan and other channels on the Republic Day Parade and other national events for 38 years in Hindi. He has travelled widely and written on events in the conflict zones around the world.

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GSA Exhibitions organised the fourth successful Global Security Asia 2011 at Singapore from 15-17 March, 2011. It was an International Exhibition and Conference on Homeland Security

global presence

and the theme for GSA 2011 was Prevention and Protection – Safeguarding People, Property and Infrastructure.

The GSA show was very well organised by team GSA. The excellent floor plan was superbly executed ensuring easy visibility and prominence to each and every Booth.

All the International participants showed great interest in India and expressed keen desire to promote

GSA serves the International Community and presents a platform for Industry, Governments and

and project their products, technologies and services in the booming Indian market. Many of them

Security professionals to interact and develop solutions to build their respective Security structures

discussed with team DSA their plans to enter the Indian market using DSA platform to advertise and

and platforms to protect their borders and infrastructure to counter the ongoing threat of Terrorism

showcase their products and services.

and civil unrest.

The leading international magazine Defence and Security Alert (DSA) was the official media partner for GSA 2011.

DSA Booth at GSA 2011 was the centre of attraction and attracted dignitaries, visitors and industry

Team

DSA

gratefully

acknowledges

and

thanks

Mr.

Roger

Marriott,

Chairman,

Mr. Andrew Marriott, MD and Ms. Sandy Wong of GSA Exhibitions Pte. Ltd. for providing this opportunity and exposure to DSA in the Asia Pacific region and for their wholehearted support and generous hospitality during GSA 2011.

professionals like a magnet. DSA was the most popular and sought after industry magazine at GSA 2011. Its world class content, presentation and overall production quality were appreciated by all especially the industry professionals.

We all at DSA pledge to continue our endeavours to make our beautiful world more safe and secure for all.

Pakistan

TUMULTUOUS JOURNEY

Very much in the manner in which the US has helped create and sustain a jihadi terrorist network centred in Pakistan and is suffering the consequences by such acts as the 9/11 attack on its economic and military hubs another, more dangerous, phenomenon is in the making. The willful and mindboggling denial of China’s role in global proliferation of nuclear weapons and the means of delivery of nuclear warheads in Asia and the Pacific has already burgeoned into North Korea’s overt threats to use nuclear weapons if the US asserted its authority in its adjoining seas. China has revised its nuclear doctrine to make it clear that if what it perceives as its national interests are threatened it will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons (in the context of Jammu and Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh). This read with the stasis recently demonstrated by Pakistan’s civil society in the face of jihadi terrorism over the Blasphemy laws ought to drive some sense into American heads. They will not need to send to ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for them.

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Pakistan appeared as a key country in the flow of sensitive technology, goods and articles to countries and groups for the development of WMDs.

or decades, a pan-Asian proliferation network has been operating. This network has important countries such as Pakistan, China, North Korea and Iran participating in it and transacting nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles and related components and technologies.

The Western media reported about it for decades.

Suddenly, China disappeared from leaked media reports. The world is being given the impression that China has become an important stakeholder of the global non-proliferation system and it has stopped its involvement in the proliferation activities. As sources of information of all these earlier reports were western intelligence agencies, and seemingly, western intelligence agencies have chosen to play down the Chinese role, the world has been forced to accept the sanitised line on China.

The then IAEA chief also highlighted the ability of A. Q. Khan to easily put in order the functioning of nuclear black market. Study after study emphasised the fact that Pakistan was the centre of this infamous black-market web. The then chief of the IAEA called it an International WalMart. It appeared a case of non-State actors collaborating with State actors, although Pakistan tried very hard to revolve the entire episode around A. Q. Khan’s personal greed. By doing so, the Pakistani government to a great extent extricated Pakistan - the country and the State from a difficult situation.

It wanted to save Pakistan from international pressure.

China’s role

Pakistan army involvement

The 2004 A. Q. Khan episode and media reports about it tried to sell the same line that China had stayed away from the proliferation network. On the basis of intelligence information given by the US and the UK the Malaysian police arrested B. S. A. Tahir, a Sri Lankan businessman based in Dubai. In fact, it led to some details on the proliferation network. In the latest episode of proliferation network,

Initially, it tried to save even A. Q. Khan and fix the blame on low-level scientists. The spokesman of Pakistani Foreign Ministry in December 2003 very authoritatively told media about the formidable command and control system of Pakistan that would never allow transfers of sensitive technology to other countries.

Khan Research Laboratories (KRL) was well protected by the Pakistan army. By

April 2011 Defence AND security alert

denying information on the network, Pakistan underlined the fear of the loss of control of nuclear technology and materials and possibly, nuclear weapons by the Pakistan government.

In fact, Pakistan and China have an old relationship in nuclear and ballistic missiles and related technologies transactions. China has continued to play an active but quiet role in the proliferation network. On a number of occasions, Chinese officials admitted transactions, but maintained that it was for peaceful uses. For a few decades, international media reported China-Pakistan missile transactions.

China has been giving all kinds of assistance to Pakistan. It ranges from training personnel to providing equipment and vital components to transfer of full-fledged nuclear weapons and missiles. Of late, analysts have been realising that China’s involvement in nuclear and missile proliferation is at least five times greater than what was estimated before.

Chinese assistance In 1994, American intelligence agencies found that Chinese technicians were going to Pakistan to activate the transferred M-11 missiles. The Chinese had several important tasks left to undertake. It is believed that they were completing the Sargodha missile facility to be unbundled and assemble

Dr. Rajiv Nayan

Pak-China-N.Korea nexus

the M-11s and, even more importantly, training the armed forces of Pakistan to handle the M-11. In 1996, too, the presence of Chinese engineers was noted. That year, the construction of a ballistic missile production facility, using pre-fabricated sheds in the Kala-Chitta Mountain range near Fatehganj, 40 km west of Islamabad, called the NDC was highlighted.

Later in 2002, reports came that a large-scale missile production started at the Fatehganj missile factory near Islamabad that was built with Chinese assistance.

Pakistan quite deceptively gave the Pakistani names to the Chinese missiles.

Hatfs and Shaheens are nothing but Chinese missiles. Hatf-III or Ghaznavi is nothing but the Chinese M-11 which has a range of 280-300 km. Hatf-IV or Shaheen-1 is nothing but M-9 with a range of 600-800 km. Some western media also reported that solid-fuel Hatf-VI/Shaheen-2 which is supposedly

being produced by Pakistan within three years of testing is Chinese M-18.

Different intelligence reports inform different range of this missile. Its range varies from 1,000 km to 2,000 km. Several reports suggest that Pakistan started with the indigenous development of these ballistic missiles but had to resort to import them because it failed to do so.

Subterfuge Actually, Pakistan knew its limitations from the very beginning; reports about the components transfer should not mislead. Some of the components have been imported only to modernise and refine the existing systems. Tests of a number of ballistic missiles have been coming for more than a couple of decades. The test fires of these missiles never evoked credibility; all knew the exercise was merely conducted to gain legitimacy.

The published information indicates

that Pakistan has procured around 100 M-11 ballistic missiles, but uncertainty prevails about the number of transferred M-9 ballistic missiles. Reports point to the deployment of these missiles. Some analysts believe that Pakistan dumped some of the tested missiles when it was able to get better missiles. International analysts have discovered that Pakistan’s Babur cruise missile has been supplied

by China after reverse engineering the Soviet-era system- Kh-55. This analysis has come after the photgraph of Babur was released. Analysts found inability of the Pakistani science and technology base and industrial infrastructure to undertake such a task. At the same time, they found similar exercise in China where it is believed to reverse engineer the Soviet system. Another report suggests that Babur resembled Chinese YJ-62 anti-ship cruise missile.

Yet another report maintains that the Babur has been fitted with the Chinese engine to find the speed of 800 km.

Some maintain that at a future date,

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China may be forced to reveal its link and a facade of licensed production Weapons-grade uranium. The western world was rocked by the news of ring magnet transfer. The earlier reports suggested that China also transferred heavy water required for a plutonium production reactor, a special furnace, high-tech diagnostic equipment, weapon design and other assistance for Pakistani enrichment facilities at Kahuta. In 1982, one media report suggested that China supplied about 50 kg HEU to Pakistan. And quite interestingly, this information has approval of none other than A. Q. Khan himself. Other reports suggested that Pakistan procured HEU for 30-40 weapons. It is believed that the international pressure made it difficult for Pakistan to procure spare parts and other components from grey and black market to run the enrichment plant at Kahuta.

However, this difficulty should not suggest that the nuclear network which helped Pakistan’s nuclear weapons development has stopped functioning.

It is merely facing difficulties in its smooth running. Pakistan is believed to have this plant shut down. But on this issue, too, differences of opinion exist. A predominant and highly informed section of the Indian strategic community believes that Kahuta is still running and producing HEU for Pakistan nuclear weapons. However, it admits that the amount of HEU production is not very much. It is analysed that currently, Pakistan does not have capability to undertake largescale production of HEU. Time and again, the new plant Golra is mentioned.

Golra facility The Golra plant is situated near Islamabad - the capital of Pakistan. The literature on the subject indicated that its size and capability are greater than Kahuta. It is unsafeguarded enrichment facility. Some of the writings on it indicated that it has thousands of centrifuges to increase the production of HEU for the Pakistani bomb. But another and quite authoritative source of information reveals that the Golra plant is basically a rotor manufacturing enrichment plant. It has nothing to do with enrichment of uranium for bomb.

Thus, it points out that currently, Pakistan is not able to enrich much uranium for producing nuclear weapons.

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Plutonium-based weapons Pakistan has revived its plutonium route to feed its nuclear weapons stockpile. It has already got an operational Khushab reactor supposedly being used to produce plutonium for Pakistani nuclear weapons. Although the work on the Khushab reactor started earlier, it became operational in 1998. Some imagery briefs and other intelligence estimates inform that Pakistan started developing second reactor at Khushab sometime during 2000-2002.

These analyses also inform that the preparatory work for construction of the third reactor at Kahuta was spotted in 2006.

The first Khushab reactor has the capacity of 40 MWth. The ISIS, in its analysis, finds that the second reactor at Khushab has been completed and it is passing through the trial phase. Based on satellite imagery indicating emission of vapour from the second reactor, the ISIS report concludes that the plant is at least at some stage of initial operation.

Initially, it judged that the second reactor had the capacity of 1,000 MWth, but later, it revised its initial estimate. It also judges that the third reactor is also progressing very fast and may soon be completed.

Blocking FMCT The most important reason for the revival of the plutonium route is the continuing shortage of uranium in general and the bomb-grade enriched uranium in particular. The mine of Dera Ghazi Khan has been closed down and other uranium mines are in the jihadi area. Basically, Pakistan has stepped up its efforts to procure fissile materials to beat the deadline of impending Fissile Materials Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT). The real purpose of blocking negotiations of a FMCT is procurement of more fissile materials through all the possible routes. The linkage of FMCT to India-US nuclear deal is another Pakistani deception.

More astonishingly, it is discovered that the entire Chasma series is a facade to supply engineering goods and spare parts to Khushab plants.

Nukes-for-missiles Media has been giving different

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starting points of Pakistan-North Korea sensitive items transactions.

Khan frequented North Korea significantly during the early stages of its nuclear programme. A May 2003 New York Times report informed that A. Q. Khan, had at least 13 visits to North Korea. The report deliberated, if the suspicion is justified, then Pakistan which lives at the busiest crossroads of Islamic terror - is the first nation to have bartered away nuclear weapons technology on the black market. A 2002 New York Times report informed that the relationship between the two countries started after General Musharraf had become President. In the beginning of 2004, generally reports indicated that the cooperation between the two countries had begun around 1997.

Many American writers refuse to believe that China has been unaware of the network. A South Korean newspaper reported that an Iranian ship picked up missile components from the Chinese Tianjin port before reaching North Korea to procure missiles and rocket fuel in February and November 2002.

In April to July 2003, Iran got over flight rights from China to pick up cruise missiles from North Korea. Even for North Korean ballistic missiles which

alliance, Pakistan and North Korea are acting as secondary powers. Like any other modern alliance arrangement and system, it is not restricted in its orientation and approach to military alone. Its appearance and modus operandi may be military, but the target is military. It addresses regional balance of power in East Asia and Southern Asia as well as in rising Asia. As in any clandestine arrangement, the number of parties to the alliance system is a matter of speculation. It appears a coalition

Joint tests gambit On February 27, 2004, the New York Times got an American intelligence informal briefing. It reported, “Startling clues were detected after underground tests that Pakistan carried out in May 1998, when it proved to the world that its own efforts to build nuclear weapons had succeeded. According to former and current American intelligence officials, an American military jet sent to sample the air after the final test in the wastelands of the Baluchistan desert picked up traces of plutonium. That surprised experts at the Los Alamos national laboratory, because Pakistan said openly that all of its bombs were fuelled by highly enriched uranium, produced at Dr. Khan’s laboratories.

Among the possible explanations hotly debated after the tests was that North Korea - perhaps in return for the help from Dr. Khan - might have given Pakistan some of its precious supply of plutonium to conduct a joint test of an atomic weapon.” Moreover, A. Q. Khan told his interrogators that he had seen three nuclear devices in North Korea.

Some reports highlighted the Pakistani help in North Korean plutonium-based bomb development, too.

China-N. Korea link Chinese transfers of specialty steel, accelerometers, gyroscopes, Precision grinding machinery, etc. to North Korea were reported by American media. At that time, too, the role of a Hong Kong company was detected for transacting materials.

are supposed to dominate the Pakistani ballistic missile inventory have the Chinese involvement and components.

North Korea is believed to have supplied Ghauri missiles, but these missiles use the Chinese navigation systems.

Clandestine alliance Transactions among the three countries have thrown up a new strategic scenario. This is formation of a clandestine alliance which is resulting in a new kind of extended deterrence. In a classical sense, alliance is understood as a formal agreement between two or more nations to collaborate on national security issues. However, in history and in the contemporary period, a number of tacit and ad hoc alliances have been found to exist. All the three countries involved in the proliferation network have been acting as allies, but have not entered into any formal alliance. In this

of a few countries to pursue Weapons of Mass Destruction. Gradually, the international community is realising that the reach of this clandestine alliance is global. As North Korea, Iran, Libya and Saudi Arabia to name the prominent nations that are involved, security and strategic implications and ramifications are wider in range and scope.

China as fulcrum In fact, the entry of China has made Pakistani and North Korean arsenals quite credible. Pakistani and North Koreans are enjoying extended deterrence of China without entering into any pact for it. Some may raise a fundamental question related to the nature of this extended deterrence like the need of much publicised statements to convey to the adversary that the Chinese nuclear weapons may be used to ensure defence of the two allies.

The media has solved the problem of communication for the credibility of the Chinese-sponsored deterrence.

Supporters of the alliance system argue that alliances brought stability in the international system through a high degree of deterrence, an element of predictability and by restraining small powers’ propensity to go nuclear. But in the clandestine alliance system, there is total absence of certainty. If we treat China as a major or primary power of the alliance system, so far, it has not demonstrated any evidence to curb aggressive designs of either Pakistan or North Korea. As a self-fulfilling alliance, it is causing recurring tension and instability not only in the region, but also beyond it.

The growing Pakistani nuclear stockpile is going to create a highly dangerous and complex scenario for global security.

North Korea’s weaponisation is merely adding some more complexity to it. The US and its allies should stop envisioning it in terms of India-Pakistan or South Asia paradigm. On the one hand, the Pakistani stockpile may shift its target to western countries under a possible radical political regime elected or supported by the radicalised Pakistani society. On the other, ignoring the refined proliferation network involving Pakistan, China and North Korea may have its own perils for the US and its allies, especially Japan.

The writer is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), New Delhi since 1993, where he specialises in export control, non-proliferation and arms control.

He was a Visiting Research Fellow at Japan Institute of International Affairs, Tokyo, where he published his monograph - Non-Proliferation Issues in South Asia.

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Vice Admiral (Retd.) Barry Bharathan

RAM RAHIM PARESHAN! Among the questions that prick people’s minds these days on the sub-continent is whether trying to forge a consensus among the nations of the inadequately described “South Asia” be an exercise in putting Humpty-Dumpty together again. All of India’s neighbours profess a fear of being overshadowed by India in a Europe-like conglomeration. If France and Germany can now hit it off together (like a house on fire!) cannot India, Pakistan and Bangladesh take some steps towards greater trade and commerce if not the dreaded “confederation” that was once mentioned and shot down?

S

outh Asia is akin to a horse. India thinks it is on the saddle. China controls the reins. Pakistan uses

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the whip. Bangladesh clings to the saddle. America is a self imposed groom and a confused punter.

History, statistics are vulnerable to distortion and distension. An illustrative example is the futile artifice

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Aggregate South Asian economic development is the need of the decade. A full stomach is the key to reducing tensions. Motivating the polity to think differently is the need of today. Putting all disputes aside to achieve people sustenance is the start that the sub-continent can readily make without loss of constituent political face of historical claim by Pakistan that it has been in existence over 5,000 years in stark denial of the genetic and cultural DNA of the region. South Asia is irrevocably linked to the past and the future. It is a centre of eclectic absorption. Religion, culture, tradition of the region can be described in the prayer “Ram, Rahim Tero Naam”.

Politics, poverty, regional, ethnic divides, constant confrontation both within and outside, failed leadership without vision have resulted in “Ram, Rahim, Pareshaan!”.

The geo-political divide of the sub-continent into India, Pakistan, Bangladesh has presented a paradoxical impasse across sovereignty, geography, security, trade and inter-country relationships. On the ground, illegal migrations, smuggling of goods, NGO and cultural interactions continue unabated.

The leadership of the region continues to operate on a construct of politicking, pleadership and dealership both within and outside its borders. Its breeding has been structured on the legacy of a followership cult left behind by the erstwhile British masters. Most citizens of the sub-continent are on survival angst with no thought for anything else.

Politics continues to be ethnic, regional and preoccupied with no sense of real ownership and vision. It has created an India obsessed Pakistan, a Pakistancentric, Sino deferential India and a bewildered Bangladesh.

Commonalities There are several sad commonalities among India, Pakistan, Bangladesh.

The region endures lack of governance.

Despite reasonable technology know-how, there are no efficient and effective Management Information Systems for effective management.

Urban economic bias and neglect of the rural segment continues to be the trend.

High levels of corruption built

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upon by an autocratic, hierarchical politico-bureaucratic military combine that controls administration and security. This is compounded by a lack of autonomy and accountability.

valley affects the region. Terrorism both State sponsored, locally spawned, well funded, robustly equipped, fanatically manned has upped the threshholds of response across the region.

Acute shortages in water, food, clothing, electricity, shelter and education exist throughout the region.

Malnutrition, poor health, extreme poverty, illiteracy, is the consequence.

Afghan-Pak aftermath

Indifference to civics and basic hygiene has become integral to way of life in the region. Garbage dumps, guided missiles, open septic tanks and modern laboratories coexist in cold comfort. Traffic indiscipline has given birth to hierarchical privileges.

Authorities break rules of the road with impunity.

Infrastructure lags continue to constrain the area. Modernisation of existing entities is slow. Growth rates are being pegged without correlation of costs involved in the critical areas highlighted above. The entire economic index, prosperity quotient, poverty median, the purchase parity index, the national health ratio are mostly skewed.

Security scenario The biggest irony is the witless, wanton abdication of the region’s security and prosperity. The high levels of comfort that all three countries enjoy when interacting, cultivating with outsiders is a stark contrast to the intrigue, indifference, inferiority complex and mutual suspicion when dealing with each other. The Caucasian West especially enjoys privileged treatment. English language apart, it seems that the Raj spirit has never left the sub-continent. The sub-continent in many ways, is “differentially externalised and intractably misaligned” across geography, history, sharing of waters, relations with China, governing patterns and mutual misperceptions.

The angst of Afghanistan once confined within the Hindu Khush

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America has global interests ranging from energy security, security of energy, insuring salutary influence with the Central Asian Republics. Containing Iran, engaging China is part of this grand strategy while maintaining alliances with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations. Countervailing the Taliban in Afghanistan is slowly gaining ground. Recent discussions have revealed that, the American involvement and proactive presence would be fairly long term. There is also thinking that the vacuum created by US / NATO withdrawal would have far reaching adverse impact in the region ranging from a Pakistan implosion, Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, control of the nuclear arsenal falling into terrorist control, the Iranian reaction and spread of adverse Taliban influence. US aid to Pakistan is perhaps predicated on these strategic considerations. The gradual and systematic elimination of mid-level Taliban leadership over the last 18 months is indicative of this approach.

Chinese checkers China looms over the region. Robust economic resurgence, relatively strong military presence and regional influence is disconcerting to the sub-continent including its beneficiaries. Tacit Chinese support to Pakistan and its direct engagement with the Pakistan military has given it access across the governing echelons of that country. The Gwadar port development in Pakistan, its military aid to Bangladesh and offer to modernise Chittagong harbour illustrate its influence. Its military buildup in the north-east is well known. Its nuclear arsenal and military modernisation plans make the Chinese ominous.

Understandably India is cautious in

all its approaches towards the Chinese dragon!

China has an impressive global status. Its didactic leadership, its defined focus on its interests, trade surplus, progressive military buildup, nuclear capabilities poses serious concerns to India. Its defence budget is conservatively estimated to be US$ 150 billion. In comparison India’s US$ 30 billion defence budget is woefully inadequate.

The Tibet Autonomous Region has water resources that are significant for the region. Arunachal Pradesh is also in the Chinese claim alongside retention of Aksai Chin in the north-west.

Despite the India-initiated Peace and Tranquillity Agreement, measurable volume of trade, China appears to hold the cards while making India to play!

The South Asian security scenario will continue to haplessly and helplessly witness a state of constant tension between India and Pakistan.

Both militaries would be in a state of flux. Constant shifts from heightened

alerts to subdued readiness would be the operating norms. Localised skirmishes, tactical confrontations, infiltration, killing of civilians, extortion will continue. Direct and hidden costs spirals are likely to be glossed over.

Low intensity counter-terrorism measures against constant terrorist threats would be the daily order of the day. Internal security issues will have to be managed by the military in the face of comparatively ineffective, ill-equipped police and paramilitary forces.

India would be compelled to invest in bolstering military infrastructure and defences in the north-eastern India.

Sino-Indian relationships would oscillate between frustration and confrontation. It would be a combination of diplomatic posturing, military standoffs and political negotiations.

Illegal immigration would be a continuing phenomenon across the borders from Bangladesh. Changes in the ensuing demographic profile are

bound to create clashes and backlashes.

The consequences of people fleeing from Pakistan in the event of an implosion cannot be countenanced.

The Indian machinery does not have the band-width to deal with this contingency.

The probability of direct conflict appears to be low.

Regional disturbances, reactive retaliations, exchange of fire between security forces, acts of terrorism by different groups would be the norm.

Military musings Simple arithmetics of force levels comparison between India and Pakistan would highlight the former’s marginal superiority in conventional forces. Aging equipment, delayed modernisation, deferred acquisition procedures, dependency on out of country resources highlight hollowness of both militaries. Internal security issues also strain and stretch operational readiness. Analysis of the last three short conflicts of 65, 71 and Kargil would reveal status quo ante in

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terms of geopolitical gains.

The Parliament attack and the Mumbai attack are perhaps grim reminders that nothing has changed in terms of an Indian counter-response.

More significant is the Pakistan assessment that India would continue to be passive and that the Americans would prevail upon to ensure this. May be there is some inexplicable wisdom in India’s restraint!

Dr. Tej Pratap Singh

The nuclear dimension has created its own détente. In effect the militaries in the region are “forces in being” imperatives which may really not be germane in conflict resolution. They are perhaps insurance and assurance guarantors that regularly require a premium but would be hard put to pay up in full!

The sub-continent continues to have a very small share of the global trade.

Exports still play a very limited role in GDP. While it has moved from inward to outward looking economic policies, international trade, as a proportion of GDP, is still well below the world average. The region represents about 1.2 per cent of world exports and 1.7 per cent of imports. India is Pakistan’s 17th largest import source while India is Pakistan’s 9th foreign market. Trade and commerce expansion within the region would have significant salutary benefits.

Could any one country progress and prosper alone in the region? Can generic porosity, cultural links, DNA strains, shared natural resources of the region be discounted?

What are the alternatives to perpetual tension with probability of conflict?

Has the leadership really examined interdependence imperatives, even in conditions of impasse? The Peace and Tranquillity Agreement between India and China readily comes to mind.

The EEC is a modern example of once warring nations getting together for the greater good of their people.

The expansion of the World Trade Order, the region becoming an emerging marketplace, the war against terrorism, the fear of the macro consequences of a nuclear war in the sub-continent has caused a permanent proactive western presence. The sub-continent and the Indian Ocean

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region are strategic gateways, perhaps too important to be left to the incoherent, intransigent, impoverished triad of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh!

In many ways the tenuous state of the South Asian security scenario seems to be linked to these overarching realities.

Two or three decades later will territorial security and sovereignty have primacy over aspects of human security? How would the region cope in sustaining water, food, electricity, housing needs? In the face of the already existing shortages how will the land cater for the rapidly rising population?

Pervasive questions Confidence building measures become building of confidence steps.

This would require Pakistan to be pressured to sign an agreement that it will not sponsor or support terrorism?

SAARC consider setting up South Asian Federation Arrangement Initiatives? Could a reflection, on the realities of the region emerging within the next two decades be made? Can the promises of such an initiative be pragmatically spelt out?

What would it take?

Shedding of historical baggage of the past is perhaps an imperative step.

India as a stable, progressive economic power with global recognition of its international potential needs to take

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the lead. It must break new ground.

Review its policy of hitherto keeping big powers away from any bilateral regional issues is one such move. The realities of their presence and power, the advantage of their position, the moderating influence of their direct participation and the prudence of this acceptance need to be recognised and acknowledged.

Aggregate South Asian economic development is the need of the decade.

A full stomach is the key to reducing tensions. Motivating the polity to think differently is the need of today.

Putting all disputes aside to achieve people sustenance is the start that the sub-continent can readily make without loss of constituent political face.

The agreement to create SAFTA - the South Asian Free Trade Agreement in the 12th SAARC summit augurs well for the region. This should, hopefully lead to some tentative steps towards some federated arrangements. It would foster some positive and definitive discussions on more contentious issues.

The call to break bread or shed blood has to be made by India with Pakistan. “Ram, Rahim Tero Naam” or “Ram, Rahim Pareshan!” is predicated on whether we break bread or shed blood!

The writer is former Vice Chief of Naval Staff. He also served as Indian Naval Attache in Washington DC, USA.

unending quest for parity It is a fact of history and relations between nations that there is always an element of rivalry or competition in the management of their interaction. It is out of the necessity of evolving such relationships that great minds like Chanakya and Clausewitz and Bismarck and even the much-reviled Hitler developed strategies to deal with issues of war and of peace. Pakistan, having been part of India for centuries, has not had time to bring forth an eminence grise who could chart a future for the nation-State within the context of good neighbourliness. Jinnah’s legacy of the two-nation theory carried within itself the seeds of rivalry and divisiveness that were like poison in potency. Pakistan may well succumb to the gall of disappointments vis-a-vis India that it has had to experience in its short history of existence.

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I

ndia-Pakistan relations can be likened to the twin brothers, who cannot live together nor live without each other. Like the two siblings, both are squabbling all the time and cannot get along well but they also cannot wish away each other and both have to be under the same roof and share the same space. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, former Prime Minister of India rightly observed that since you cannot change your neighbour, it is a prudent policy to engage your neighbours in mutually beneficial relationships. However, engaging neighbours is the most difficult part of the foreign policy particularly in the post-colonial third world. Engaging Pakistan has always been problematic for India and also fraught with dangers.

Common destiny The destiny of Pakistan is tied with India. Pakistan tried to link its destiny with West Asia in the name of Pan-Islamism but global community always treated Pakistan as part of South Asia and not of West Asia. Pakistan and India are so much similar that if you remove the religion, there is hardly any difference between the two. This vast similarity has created the problems for Pakistani ruling elite - how to construct and sustain the separate distinct identity for Pakistan? Leaders like Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru were skeptical about the long term survival of Pakistan as a separate State. Nehru was of the firm opinion that when the religious frenzy will cool down, India and Pakistan will come together. Some socialist leaders of the post-independent India such as Ram Manohar Lohia and his disciples like Mulayam Singh Yadav etc. talk about the confederation of India and Pakistan. This kind of talk of reunification of Pakistan with India has created deep suspicion in the minds of Pakistani rulers regarding the motives of India and this has made them more hostile towards India. Many Pakistanis think that despite more than sixty-three years of the existence of Pakistan, India has still not reconciled to the partition of the country and creation of Pakistan.

Parity obsession Pakistan foreign policy is Indo-centric. Pakistan foreign policy is conceived, designed, articulated and pursued by keeping India in mind.

India provides the context for the

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Pakistan foreign policy. Unending Pak quest for parity with India is the most significant determinant of Pakistan’s foreign policy. However, this quest for parity so far has proved to be an elusive goal. Pakistan foreign policy towards India is guided by the zero-sum game approach. Any gain for India is treated as loss for Pakistan. This excessive Pak obsession of parity with India has precluded any possibility of Pakistan’s pursuit of the enlightened national interest vis-à-vis India.

Since its inception, Pakistan has been striving for parity with India. When Pakistan was carved out of India in 1947, the Cold War had began and the United States had initiated the strategy of containment and encirclement against the communist world in general and Soviet Union in particular. To cap, contain and roll back communism, the US had initiated the process of the formation of military alliances, permitted by the United Nations for self-defence. The US first tried to woo India but because of Nehru’s policy of independence of foreign policy, the US overtures did not make much headway.

To preserve the independence of foreign policy, Nehru conceptualised and articulated the policy of non-alignment, to steer India away from the bloc politics of the protagonists of the Cold War. When it became evident to the US foreign policy makers that India will not join any Cold War military alliances, the US turned its attention towards Pakistan as the substitute for India. Pakistan grabbed the opportunity with both hands and became part of the US-led security alliances against Soviet Union and the communist world.

Pakistan joined the US-led military alliances to realise its dream of achieving parity with India. Undivided Pakistan had the unique distinction of being member of the two US sponsored military organisations viz South East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO) and Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO). East Pakistan enabled it to become the member of the SEATO and West Pakistan to CENTO. Pakistan also provided the bases and other logistical support to the US intelligence network for eavesdropping on the former Soviet Union. During the U-2 incident, Pakistan was warned by the Soviet Union to desist from getting involved in the American spying

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network against Soviet Union from its territory.

Pakistan received massive economic and military aid from the US and its allies. Moreover, Pakistan got valuable western political support on the issue of Kashmir. This western support to Pakistan on Kashmir issue compelled India to tilt its foreign policy towards the Soviet Union, which eventually culminated in Indo-Soviet Friendship Treaty in 1972 during the Bangladesh crisis. However, Pak dream for parity with India through US support was shattered when East Pakistan seceded from West Pakistan. In the post-Bangladesh period, the truncated Pakistan was not in position to achieve parity with India. The US accepted the geopolitical reality of South Asia and then US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger accepted India as a pre-eminent power in South Asia.

Post-Bangladesh Even after bifurcation of Pakistan, truncated Pakistan did not abandon its quest for parity with India. China also joined the US in bolstering Pakistan in South Asia as a rival to India.

With the demise of communism and disintegration of the Soviet Union, the US policy towards South Asia changed.

In the post-bipolar world, Pakistan lost its strategic importance to the US and the US began engaging India.

The 9/11 attack restored Pak strategic significance to the US but the US continued its engagement with India.

Today in the changed global security scenario, the US and India have emerged as close strategic partners.

The US has de-hyphenated India from Pakistan and has hyphenated India with China. India never liked its hyphenation with Pakistan but India loves its hyphenation with China but China hates to be hyphenated with India. In the post-bipolar world, the US has abandoned its Cold War policy of helping Pakistan to achieve parity with India in its broader policy of containing Soviet Union and its allies.

In the US perception, India was a close Soviet ally and so it must be contained in South Asia. Now in the changed post-Cold War global scenario, US is more interested in encouraging India to seek parity with China rather than containing it.

China is the all-weather friend of

Pakistan and China has taken the place of the US in helping Pakistan in attaining parity with India. Sino-Pak geopolitical interests converge in South Asia against India. China perceives India as a regional rival and to contain India, China is bolstering Pakistan. Chinese economic and military assistance has sustained the Pak quest for parity with India even after its abandonment by the US. Pakistan owes its nuclear weapons and missile programmes to China and its ally North Korea.

Nuclear parity Pak’s nuclear and missile programmes are desperate efforts for parity with India. When India conducted first Pokhran nuclear explosion in 1974, then Pak Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto famously said that Pakistan will eat grass but will make nuclear weapons.

Pakistan single-mindedly pursued its nuclear weapon programme and probably made nuclear weapons before India. Right now, it is being said that probably Pakistan is having more nuclear weapons than India. When India conducted PokhranII explosions in May 1998, Pakistan responded immediately within a month with its Chagai Hill explosions.

The same is the story of Pak missiles programme. Pakistan responded to the Indian missile programme by launching a series of Hatf and Ghauri missiles in response to India’s Prithvi, Akash and Agni missiles.

Pakistan resorted to all the tricks under the leadership of its tainted nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan to develop its own nuclear deterrent and delivery system in response to India’s nuclear and missile programmes. Pakistan stole the nuclear technology from the different western countries and borrowed nuclear bomb design from China and missile technology from North Korea under a barter system.

Pakistan nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan presided over the global nuclear Wal-Mart. Pakistan now enjoys the dubious distinction of being the leading

global nuclear proliferator. In its quest for nuclear parity with India, Pakistan is demanding from the US the same kind of civil nuclear deal which the US has concluded with India. However, the US has denied the civil nuclear deal with Pakistan on the ground of its worst proliferation record. Not only nuclear weapons and missiles, Pakistan responds to every Indian major arms acquisition. Whether it is fighter planes, submarines, warships, AWACS or any other sophisticated weapons, Pakistan tries to match India in its quest for parity with India.

Geopolitical roulette Pakistan loves to be compared with India as India loves to be compared with China and China loves to be compared with the United States. Pakistan, India and China are seeking parity with India, China and the US, respectively.

However, none of them has succeeded in achieving parity with their strategic rivals. During Cold War time in the bipolar world, the bipolarity was never evenly balanced. There was always uneven distribution of the power between the US and Soviet Union in the bipolar international system. Soviet Union always sought parity with the stronger United States but the latter always maintained its edge over the

former and in this unending Soviet quest for parity with the US, the Soviet Union eventually collapsed and thus eclipsing one pole and converting the world into the unipolar world.

The Soviet unending quest for parity with the US eventually proved to be disastrous for the Soviet Union as it never had the adequate wherewithal to compete with the US. The fate of Chinese quest for the parity with the US is still not known. It is premature to say anything regarding Chinese quest for parity. However, in the past whenever the revisionist powers like Germany have challenged the status-quoists or established powers like Britain and sought parity with it, the radical powers have always been humbled. If China succeeds in achieving parity with the US, it will be a remarkable achievement which has very few instances in the world history. Regarding India’s quest for parity with China, most of the scholars don’t see any possibility of its happening in the foreseeable future.

The story of the Soviet quest for parity with the US is somewhat similar to the case of Pak quest for parity with India. Like the Soviet quest, Pak quest for parity is weakening Pakistan.

Like Soviet Union, Pakistan has been balkanised. Eastern Pakistan became Bangladesh and thus caused serious setbacks to its efforts for parity with India. After its disintegration, the successor State of the Soviet Union, Russia, has given up the quest for parity with the US, but Pakistan even after its bifurcation has not abandoned its elusive search for parity with India.

Truncated Pakistan has not accepted the geopolitical reality and is still pursuing with renewed vigour a policy to catch up with India.

The writer is Associate Professor, Dept. of Political Science, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India. He has been awarded Faculty Research Fellowship by Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, (SICI) and Charles Wallace Visiting Fellowship by Cambridge University. He is also Salzburg Global Seminar Fellow.

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akistan due to its geostrategic location, is a centre of attraction for major powers and rivalry among them. It is because of this that she has been able to maintain favourable relationship with powers that have been contending among themselves, like the USA, Russia and China and managed to obtain economic assistance from them as also from oil-rich West Asian nations.

Pakistan lies at the north-west boundary of India. To the south, it has 1,000 km long coastline along the Arabian Sea. To the west is Iran, with the frontier running across the rugged plateau. To the north-west is Afghanistan, with mountains of the Hindu Kush forming a natural barrier between the two countries. To the north it has a boundary with the Sinkiang of China. It occupies a strategic location on the western promontory of the South Asian land mass dominating large expanse of the Arabian Sea in close proximity to the volatile oil rich Gulf region and the gateway to the Indian sub-continent and South-East Asia.

Influence of geography Pakistan’s geography gives her the following strengths due to which she gains self confidence in global affairs: It provides a link between Central Asian Republics and the rich Gangetic plains of the Indian sub-continent.

Trans-Asiatic route, connecting South East Asia to South, West and Central Asia passes through it. It has control over western gateways to China and strategic Khyber Pass through which came the invaders attacking Indian sub-continent from the north-west.

People of Pakistan are a mixture of various ethnic groups. It has, therefore, close ethnic and cultural relationship with Aryan and Arabic countries. Some of its people have physical characteristics similar to the Mediterranean people of Europe.

Its population being Muslim, it has developed close ties with the Arabs, Persians and the people of Central Asian Republics. Enclosed by great Hindu Kush mountains in the north and rugged Iranian plateau in the west, it has free opening towards the east into India and towards south-west into the Arabian Sea. River Indus and its tributaries, viz Chenab, Jhelum, Ravi

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and Satluj flow from north-east to south west - a corridor equally suitable for communications. It is this characteristic which makes this country attractive for Central Asian countries and China to seek seaward facilities in the Arabian Sea. It is surrounded by three largest States of the World - Russia (still maintains tight control on erstwhile Republics of Central Asia) China and India. Geographically, it is adjacent to the mouth of the Persian Gulf through which flows, approximately, 65 per cent oil requirement of the world.

The distance from south-west to northeast is 1,800 kms. From east to west, at the narrowest stretch, it is less than 300 kms. Hence, its capacity to sustain long compaign from east to west is limited, forcing it to try and expand its sphere of influence further west into Afghanistan over which it had recently gained control through the Taliban. Its coastline places it in an advantageous position in the northern part of the Arabian Sea.

south–east Asia and Australia in the east, the Arab world and the Indian sub-continent forming a roof over it in the north. It opens only in the deep south towards the frozen continent of Antarctica. In terms of surface transport, it has unrestricted channels of entry and exit. These are: One, across Suez canal connecting it with Europe via the Mediterranean; two, overland route via basins of Tigris and Euphrates connecting it with the central Europeon region; three, circuitous route around the continent of Africa that Vasco de Gama had followed; four, to the Far East via Singapore and, five, the oceanic route astride the continent of Australia that connects it with the South Pacific region. Pakistan exercises influence over three of the above mentioned five channel routes and therefore, has an influencing position in littoral States of Eastern Africa and South West Asia.

Strategic importance

In the wake of developments in Iran and Afghanistan, Pakistan became a frontline State. Due to its geo-strategic location, it has become a centre of rivalry between USA, Russia and China for their pronounced interests in this region. Presence of over 33,000 Pakistani troops and 3 million immigrant Pakistani workers is West Asia, Pakistan exercises great influence in these countries and is aspiring to be the industrial backyard of West Asia. It has successfully played up its religious and cultural linkages with West Asia in this region. She has projected herself as the third leg, after Israel and Saudi Arabia, of US strategic interests in this region.

In relation to global power struggle and specially the two erstwhile power blocks and now China, Pakistan occupies a uniquely favourable strategic location. It has a direct influence on the rimland region of the Arab countries and is, therefore, useful to any global power wanting to consolidate its hold on these countries.

The list includes Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Oman and Yemen and all of them are in the category of richest oil producing countries of the world.

Pakistan, located close to maritime routes and covering the world’s vital oil tanker lanes from the Gulf oilfields, is of strategic value. Most of these lanes emanate from Persian Gulf, Gulf of Oman, Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. These are within easy striking distance from Pakistani ports of Karachi, Omara, Pasni and Gwadar. In fact, the mouth of Persian Gulf is only 350 kms from the nearest Pakistani port. It is this factor which impelled China to provide hundred per cent aid to develop Pasni and Gwadar and in exchange gained berthing rights for Chinese navy.

Pakistan’s geography gives her a favourable position in the Arabian Sea which is a part of the Indian Ocean.

The Indian Ocean is enclosed by the eastern coastlands of Africa in the west,

April 2011 Defence AND security alert

Lt. Gen. (Retd.) O. P. Kaushik

Human assets

Pakistan enjoys close relations with the Islamic world and being a powerful Muslim country has a great influence over them. She has become the self proclaimed leader of Islamic insurgency and is being supported in her efforts by rich Islamic countries like Oman, Saudi Arabia, Libya, etc. She subjugated Afghanistan with the help of the Taliban who are an instrumentality of Islamic insurgency. Next are the Central Asian Republics that have predominantly Muslim populations. Sinkiang province of China with large size Muslim population is equally affected. Pakistan, with astounding faith in Islamic fundamentalism, will make deliberate attempts to spread Islamic insurgency

straddling the crossroads Pakistan has taken full advantage of straddling the confluence of lines of communication and egress on the roof of the world. It was not for nothing that the Great Game between Tsarist Empire and the British Raj of control and domination was played out through its territory long before Pakistan itself became a reality. How much it can become a benign influence and contribute towards the goal of a multipolar world is, as yet, a work in progress. The potential is there but the circumstances of its birth, its descent into Islamic fundamentalist depths and its congenital enmity with India may yet circumscribe its role.

“Pakistan belongs to that class of States whose very survival is uncertain, whose legitimacy is doubted and whose security related resources are inadequate.

Yet, these States will not go away, nor can they be ignored. Pakistan, like Taiwan, Israel, South Korea and South Africa, has the capacity to fight, to go nuclear, to influence the strategic balance, if by no other reason than collapsing, since it is surrounded by the three largest States in the world and is geographically adjacent to the mouth of the Persian Gulf,” Stephen Cohen.

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Pakistan

TUMULTUOUS JOURNEY

India’s concern in the strategic factors of the region is natural. Pakistan is a continuation of large Indian mass and was separated artificially through an imaginary line. India remains deeply interested in the developments taking place in Afghanistan and Central Asian Republics because of deep cultural, psychological, emotional, economic and political relationship. We cannot forget the historical fact that the Muslim and Mughal invaders came through the Khyber Pass. Even earlier than that from 1,500 BC the country was invaded by Aryans, Greeks and Persians. Arabs arrived in the AD 700, bringing the Muslim religion with them. All these historical developments took place through the territories which now comprise Pakistan. We, therefore, share the strategic concerns with Pakistan in this region and because of this reason alone a strategic partnership between India and Pakistan is called for in these regions which gives distinct geopolitical advantage to her. She has notoriously become an epicentre of Islamic terrorism in the world.

Pakistan and China Pakistan becomes geo-strategically important for China for two reasons, first, to avoid encirclement by the USA and its West European strategic partners and, two, to augment Chinese influence in South Asia and extend her presence to within 350 kms of vital Persian Gulf Region. Pakistan under China’s influence could serve as a launching pad to influence events in West Asia and the Arabian Sea. Development of Karakoram Highway and Pasni and Gwadar ports are being seen as steps to reach waters of the Arabian Sea with a view to dominate the activities in the Indian Ocean.

After providing Pakistan with nuclear weapons designs and missile development technology, China has now developed a naval base for Islamabad at Gwadar on the Baluchistan coast, off the Gulf of Oman. The Gwadar project was conceived some years ago primarily on account of operational constraints the Pakistan navy had faced during the 1971 war with India at Karachi harbour due to over congestion and being within the striking distance of Indian naval bases. On the advice of Chinese experts, Gwadar, was approved and China offered to build the facility on a “turn key” and “build-operate-transfer”(BOT) basis.

Following the recent visit of Chinese Prime Minister to Pakistan, work on the project has gathered momentum.

It is believed, under the agreement, Chinese navy will have free access to the port’s berthing, dry dock and other facilities. Linked with it is Chinese help to Myanmar in building naval facilities in Haingyi and Coco Islands

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not far from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The use of these facilities in the eastern flank of the sub-continent

by China and availability of similar facilities at Gwadar will immensely increase China’s bluewater reach and power projection capabilities to the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea and beyond. China is in the process of reviving the old traditional gateway to China - the 'Silk Road'. This road connected the heart of China to the east coast of the Mediterranean. The feeder axes, running perpendicular to the 'Silk Road', emanate from the Indian Ocean and after passing through Pakistan, join the 'Silk Road' at Kashgar and Yarkand from where these proceed into the Chinese interior. Yet another overland gateway to China is the Karakoram Highway. Twisting through northern Pakistan along a narrow corridor and precarious mountain passes, the highway enters into western China where it feeds into Kashgar. Thus Pakistan controls the western gateways to China. Pakistani strategic calculation is that if Pakistan is the dominant or hegemonic power over the western gateways to China, Islamabad will be in a position to exert influence over the entire Trans-Asian axis and will enable it to become a linchpin between China and the Tehran-led Islamic Block which will enable her to enjoy economic and political benefits.

Pakistan and USA Pakistan has enjoyed close and cordial relations with USA almost since its inception. Pakistan has been a staunch ally of USA as a member of the now defunct SEATO, CENTO and Baghdad Pact in return for which she received unlimited moral and political support in addition to vast amounts of US economic and military aid. USA granted her the status of Major NonNATO Ally. Soviet intervention in

April 2011 Defence AND security alert

Afghanistan and developments in Iran, made Pakistan a frontline State to serve the US interests in this region.

In curtailing the Russian / Chinese influence, control oilfields of South and South-West Asia and for base logistic and communication facilities in the region to conduct counter terrorist operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan is strategically important for the USA. Pakistan has a vital role in the RDF and some sources even suggest that it has given facilities to the USA on the Makran coast. Since US efforts to regain her earlier hold over Iran are not likely to succeed in the near future, Pakistan will continue to play an important role in the US strategic calculations.

of tolerance. The Pakistani advances towards the Central Asian Republics whether social, political, cultural or economic will always be seen by the Russians with suspicion and, hence, she will be concerned strategically on this front.

interest in the Central Asian Republics and is continuously monitoring the Pakistan-sponsored Islamic insurgencies advance to this region.

The US is bound to take steps to ensure that China is kept in its place so that it cannot challenge the US regionally or globally. The US -Japan security treaty, the US commitment to keep 1,00,000 troops in Asia, the US involvement in the Central Asian Republics and the US appointing a coordinator in Tibet, are all indications of a long term US strategy towards China. Hence, this region will remain the focus of attention for both.

Geography of Pakistan confers upon her distinct strategic advantages.

Ayub Khan once said, “We are dwarfed by our big neighbours with whom we must have good relations”. Geographic compulsions alone have forced Pakistan to have friendly relations with two communist giants - China and Russia.

Close proximity to West Asian oil, her influence over the Arab world, her support to the US strategic policies in the region, her championing Islamisation and pan-Islamism, control over the northern approaches to the Arabian

India’s concern in the strategic factors of the region is natural.

Pakistan is a continuation of large Indian mass and was separated

Sea and strengthening of military and political links with China are clear indications of her strategic importance in this part of the world. Russia though currently passing through a difficult phase in face of problems posed by competing nationalisms and idealogies, a declining economy and generally a tight fiscal situation, she has nevertheless continued maintaining

artificially through an imaginary line. India remains deeply interested in the developments taking place in Afghanistan and Central Asian Republics because of deep cultural, psychological, emotional, economic and political relationship. We cannot forget the historical fact that the Muslim and Mughal invaders came through the Khyber Pass. Even

Indian interest

earlier than that from 1,500 BC the country was invaded by Aryans, Greeks and Persians. Arabs arrived in the AD 700, bringing the Muslim religion with them. All these historical developments took place through the territories which now comprise Pakistan. We, therefore, share the strategic concerns with Pakistan in this region and because of this reason alone a strategic partnership between India and Pakistan is called for.

In course of a press conference during his New Delhi visit in December 1998 the Russian PM, Primokov, hinted at the possibility of a strategic understanding between Russia, China and India. China has now expressed same feeling again.

Pakistan geographically being part of India can also be included to form

Pakistan and Russia Russia has been suspicious of Pakistan on account of her alliance with the US and China and Pakistan’s direct involvement in Afghanistan as a frontline State supporting US efforts which resulted in humiliating withdrawal of Russian forces and takeover of Afghanistan by Islamic fundamentalists - the Taliban. Russia is still keeping rigid control on Central Asian Republics which till recently were part of the erstwhile USSR. She will not permit any influence to permeate which acts hostile to the Russian interests in these territories. From that point of view, Central Asian Republics are considered as soft under-belly for Russian security - a status enjoyed by Afghanistan till recently. She considers Pakistan’s effort in promoting Islamic insurgency contrary to her interests as the Central Asian Republics are predominantly inhabited by Muslim population. Hence, Russian interest lies in avoiding fundamentalist regimes in her close vicinity and protect her southern flank. Pakistan, however, has taken meticulous care never to push the Russians beyond the threshold

a “Strategic Quadrangle”. The US living across seven seas can only be an acquaintance and not a geographical perspective.

The writer was General Officer Commanding in Kashmir Valley and Chief of Staff of the Eastern Command.

April 2011 Defence AND security alert

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protection

safety measures

Team DSA

Always be aware and alert.

Always be aware and alert.

Install and maintain proper fire alarms and smoke detectors with automatic dialing facility. Also store the phone

Do not panic.

numbers of nearest fire station, ambulance and your mobile number in the automatic dialing facility.

Call the city / locality fire service and ambulance immediately.

Install fire exit doors on every floor of the building.

Feed the fire emergency numbers in the speed dial of the fire alarm systems for immediate communication.

Install fire extinguishers on the lobby of every floor.

Alert all the family members and neighbours / residents without creating panic.

Have regular fire drills to train all residents and family members in handling fire emergencies, understand evacuation

Never use the lift during a fire in your building or apartment. Leave the premises by the nearest available exit as quickly

plans and recognise sound of fire alarms.

as you can using the staircase.

Get all your belongings and home suitably insured.

If you are trapped in your room or building during a fire try to stop the smoke and fire from getting into your room. Use

Check the gas nozzles every night and keep them in the switched-off mode.

wet towels, blankets or spare clothes to block the gaps in the doors and open all windows.

When an electric or electronic gadget is not in use, make sure it is unplugged.

If your clothes catch fire, drop yourself down and roll on the ground. Do not panic or run, it will make the fire burn faster

Ensure that electric wiring is done by qualified and certified electrical contractors.

and lead to more injuries or burns.

Always insist on and install safety electrical devices like MCB / ELCB switches etc.

When trying to escape from a room engulfed with smoke, protect yourself from choking. Crawl through the room on your

Teach and educate children / youngsters the do's and don'ts in case of a fire emergency.

knees, as cool and clean air can be found a few inches from the floor.

Plan and fix the assembly point and inform everyone.

Take extra precaution during festivals and monitor children when bursting fire crackers etc.

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April 2011 Defence AND security alert

April 2011 Defence AND security alert

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Pakistan

TUMULTUOUS JOURNEY

The endgame in Afghanistan remains obscure given that the US-led global war on terror has not achieved its objectives either inside Afghanistan or against the jihadi diaspora. One thing is clear, the mid 2011 deadline for withdrawal is impracticable and could easily lend itself to the interpretation that it is a defeat of the US. By trying to invest greater trust on Pakistan as the arbiter in Afghanistan, the US may extricate itself locally but there is no guarantee that the globalised jihadi would declare a ceasefire and come to terms with American hegemony.

T

he terrorist catastrophe of 9/11 was an exceptional act of violence perpetrated against the sole Super Power of the world - the United States of America, causing worldwide denouncement of the ‘act’ and its ‘perpetrators’ and prompting initiation of a global war against the terror perpetrated by Al Qaeda from Afghanistan and led by Osama bin Laden in collusion with Taliban.

Aligned to the United States through multiple security treaties since 50’s, Pakistan has attained a reputation as “America’s most allied ally”.

Subsequently, Pakistan has played a significant role in waging the global war on terror (GWOT) and continued to show its commitment to combating the spectre of terror. Given its political, social, economic, strategic and military compulsions, Pakistan remains cautious of its long-term national interests that would never be sacrificed on someone else’s short-term interests. The focus of this article is intended to underpin the burden and props of Pakistanisation of the global war on terror in Afghanistan and its implications for the United States.

Guerrilla tactics As initially planned, the principal objective of the USA at the beginning of the global war on terror was to destroy or disrupt Al Qaeda in Afghanistan to safeguard the US global authority and to ensure its homeland security from the fallout of 9/11 terrorist onslaught. But, appreciating the over-all developments and emerging scenarios during the preceding nine years, it has become a matter of serious speculation that even if Afghanistan were completely brought

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to the level of pacific settlement, the threat of jihadist-fuelled transnational terrorism would continue to persist at the core of the issue because it no longer remains just a challenge posed by a single organisation Al Qaeda but also a number of splinter groups, their outfits and fanatic jihadi extremists planning, programming and launching their selective and or indiscriminate acts of terrorist violence in Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, North Africa, Somalia, India, Bangladesh and elsewhere.

Indiscriminate violence It has fuelled unprecedented increase of indiscriminate and selective employment of violence or threat to use violence, including murder, assassination, sabotage and subversion, the destruction of public records and property, hijacking of planes, holding people as hostages, the capture of holy places, kidnapping government officials, diplomats and business executives, remote-controlled blasts against military personnel and convoys, suicide bombings and killings etc., aimed at fulfilling a variety of political and strategic ends. In the long run, the Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters have turned the Afghan conflict into a protracted rural guerrilla campaign against the forces of the US and its allies in the hilly terrain, coupled with selective terror plots in urban and semi-urban areas in Afghanistan.

Transnational jihad Under the present circumstances, Al Qaeda represents evidently one edifice and exemplifies the manifestation of the threat of transnational jihadi terrorism. Thus, where the Taliban fighters resort to guerrilla principles,

April 2011 Defence AND security alert

Dr. Rajendra Prasad

strategy and tactics in the hills of Afghanistan, the transnational jihadi elements would remain inclined to employ them in the South Asia, South-West Asia, Central Asia and beyond. Evidently, the transnational jihadi terrorists are neither withdrawing nor are they giving up their line. Like Taliban in Afghanistan, they can refrain from fighting against the stronger forces, while hitting vulnerable targets whenever and wherever they can.

There are undoubtedly a number of actors and complexities intertwined with the trans-nationalisation of the phenomenon of jihadi terrorism. Many incumbent governments across the North Africa, the Middle East and the South Asia and beyond would never let these elements and their outfits gain ground and cause disorder and erosion of their authority within their territorial jurisdiction. But, looking at various developments and action-reaction phenomena in Afghanistan, it is worth recording that whenever the Americans try to concentrate large force in one area, Al Qaeda disengages, disperses and reassembles elsewhere. The threat will undoubtedly continue to multiply and germinate new challenges, but in the end, it will continue to exist along the lines of the protracted guerrilla campaign against the United States.

Structure intact As noted earlier, the pronounced US objective in Afghanistan was the destruction of Al Qaeda. While Al Qaeda’s potency as it prevailed almost a decade ago has surely been undermined and lowered to some extent, Al Qaeda’s structure and flexibility to evade decisive engagement in any specific location indicates that

global war on terror: role reversal undermining and lowering it can no longer be attained by fighting a localised war on terror in Afghanistan.

The transnational jihadi terrorism is not confined to Afghanistan and does not need Afghanistan after crossing national frontiers. Hence, irrespective of the infallibility or successes of the global war on terror in Afghanistan, it would amount to little difference in the long-term campaign against transnational jihadi terrorism across the changing geographical frontiers.

Nuclear ambitions Also, there have been credible reports of the Al Qaeda and trans-national jihadis being interested

in the possession / acquisition of nuclear weapons through the covert deal between Pakistan’s Khan Laboratories and Osama bin Laden.

Serious concerns by many sensitive and informed minds about the possible uses of radiological bombs by the jihadi terrorists, popularly known as “dirty bombs”, have been accepted as a probability. If Al Qaeda elements ever succeeded in acquiring nuclear devices, they would certainly use them, defying nuclear deterrence and causing existential threat to the US and other targets, as well as giving a catastrophic blow to world peace and order. On the contrary, according to some observers, the transnational jihadi terrorism doesn’t constitute an

existential threat to the United States through the hidden menace of nuclear terrorism. While acts of terrorism have been perpetrated against civilian targets during 9/11, there is rarely any probability of having undermined the territorial integrity of the United States or the way of life of the US population at large in the foreseeable future. These acts are dreadful and must be curbed. But it is notable that transnational terrorism is and still continues to emerge as a challenge that for nearly a decade from 2001 onward has been visualised as the most potent strategic threat to the United States of America and its allies in the West.

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Pakistan

TUMULTUOUS JOURNEY

US burden in Afghanistan So far, the United States has continued to carry on fighting the war on terror in Afghanistan. As the citadels of Al Qaeda have been largely dismantled and many of their cadres have fled Afghanistan, the overall political agenda for the United States in that country has been reshaped to extend adequate support for the emergence of a democratic and uncorrupt Afghanistan.

It is not vividly discernible that anyone rightly appreciates how to do it in reality, particularly given that most Afghans brand the US-backed ruling government of President Hamid Karzai as the pivot of the rampant corruption and beyond Kabul most Afghans do not lend credence to opt for making political and social arrangements on corrupt lines.

Undoubtedly, hurried US withdrawal from Afghanistan may culminate in strategic and political losses and erosion of the US authority in the domain of international politics. The strategic zig-saw puzzle is that simply terminating the GWOT after the lapse of more than nine years would destabilise both Afghanistan and Pakistan in particular and the other US allies in the Islamic world in general. The United States has made substantial efforts to curb Al Qaeda’s prime agenda of instigating a series of insurrections against many ruling governments and replacing them with jihadist regimes. Evidently, the US did it by displaying its political will and formulation of a grand national strategy to protect freedom and democracy regionally and globally, as and when it was required. The overarching complexity of withdrawal is that the gravity and proximity of relationships generated and structured by the United States at the regime level could collapse in Afghanistan if it withdrew hurriedly. By doing so, the United States of America would be branded as having lost the global war on terror. On the other hand, by implication, the power, prestige and glory of the jihad-centric radical movements and thereby the edifice of their ideology would have surgical impact across many regions and this could destabilise many democratic governments and endanger the US interests.

At the domestic level, the present US Administration under President

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Obama faces a political problem of being inherently anti-war and so not fully committed to the war effort.

Since a President must retain political support to be effective, withdrawal becomes even harder. Therefore, weighing the strategic benefits, President Obama is not going to order a complete withdrawal of all combat forces any time soon - the national and international political alignment won’t provide politico-strategic leverage for such a step. At the same time, remaining in Afghanistan for long is now unlikely to offer any further benefit and eventually facilitates the US potential rivals like China and Russia to remain free from such burdens.

Pakistanisation As already appreciated, for so many unstated reasons, Pakistanisation of the war on terror is one of the viable options for the United States. Opting for this process, it is not meant to extend the war into Pakistan but rather drawing Pakistan into greater commitment in Afghanistan. The Taliban phenomenon has gained ground in Pakistan through different means and modus operandi that pose serious challenges and extensively hamper Pakistani efforts to regain their freedom of action in Afghanistan.

Now, under the present circumstances, the role of Pakistani Taliban is equally challenging. It has germinated the seed of a major national security threat for Islamabad, which, coupled with the deep-rooted resource crunch, severe economic crisis and debt burden, has undermined Pakistan’s capacity to manage crisis-prone Afghanistan. In reality, the US willingness and support for the Pakistanisation of the global war on terror have found expression at a time when the Pakistanis are not in a perfect position and readiness to capitalise on it.

During the initial stages of the global war on terror, the United States ventured to maintain a distinction between the Taliban in Afghanistan from the regime in Pakistan for its own reasons. The Taliban phenomena in Afghanistan and Pakistan have not been one and the same in nature. The US has never succeeded in its dealings with Pakistan’s continuing inclination to camouflage their stakes and maintain a relationship across the border. Still, US opposition continues to remain singularly the most potent barrier to Pakistan’s consolidation of the Taliban in Afghanistan and any departure from

April 2011 Defence AND security alert

this position may facilitate new courses open to Islamabad in that regard.

The Pakistani inter-linkage with Taliban, which was a burden for the United States in the preceding decade, now offers leverage for Washington because it facilitates a reliable channel for meaningful communication and dialogue with the Taliban to provide real bargaining chips to the US. If talks are really under way, Islamabad can be as good a place as any in the light of the strategic and political mutuality of Pakistani relationship with the US. Pakistan figures as a trusted US ally to serve its long-term goals in the post 9/11 changing global strategic scenario, both to balance increasing Chinese influence in Asia and partnership with Pakistan on matters of mutuality. Pakistan needs the United States for the same reason and even more to contain its traditional enemy India. It must have a relatively stable Afghanistan to safeguard its western frontiers. Meanwhile, the Taliban intends to regain power and to run Afghanistan.

Seemingly, the US perception of its vital national interests is in a state of flux. The US may not involve itself deeply in how Afghanistan is politically administered so long as Afghanis do not lend support to the transnational jihadi groups and religious outfits. But it would certainly be interested in its withdrawal to take place in such a way that strengthens its influence and resolve rather than weakens it. Pakistan can facilitate the cover mechanism for setting the tone of a negotiated conflict resolution. To my humble mind, Pakistan has adequate political, economic, military, strategic and historical reasons to play this role.

The original motive of the global war on terror is now incompatible with the current objective. Even a limited score of victory would cause little difference in the fight against transnational jihadi terrorism, but a defeat could inflict tremendous damage to the US national interests as well as to its Super Power status.

Therefore, the United States needs arespectable withdrawal, which is not likely to be branded as defeat.

The writer is Professor in the Department of Defence and Strategic Studies (DDSS) and Dean, Faculty of Science, DDU Gorakhpur University, UP, India.

Pakistan

TUMULTUOUS JOURNEY

Moscow’s engagement with Islamabad can best be described as realpolitik in the face of the threat of Chechen and Islamic fundamentalists to the Russian heartland as well as the Central Asian region. It grows out of a realisation that both global terrorism as well as nuclear proliferation have their epicentre in Pakistan and Moscow cannot but be chary of Chechens getting their hands on Pakistani nuclear knowhow and materials. Also, there can be no gainsaying the fact that Pakistan’s location straddles the pathway that Russian oil and gas can traverse to India. Much depends on Pakistan’s ability to deliver on the global war on terrorism, especially after the US begins its withdrawal from Afghanistan. If and when the Taliban returns to Kabul, Moscow will need a restaining hand to prevent the mullahs from infiltrating the Muslim-dominated Central Asian Republics and threaten Moscow itself.

T

he end of the Cold War brought about a tectonic shift in the very basics of logic of realpolitik and the new international situation. The truth is that foreign relations are always dynamic and never set in stone for ages. Thus, the new realities of the post Cold War world led the Islamic Republic of Pakistan make attempts to resettle the existing equilibrium in terms of finding friends at regional and global levels.

No bilateral relation of Pakistan has seen such a positive change in the recent past, as its relations with the Russian Federation.

Pakistan’s relation with the Russian Federation is marked by a newly-found warmth.

Normalisation of relationship with Russia is a major foreign policy success Islamabad has had, in the last ten years.

Incompatibility Pakistan-Russia relations are determined by two important factors: Russia-India relationship and Pakistan’s relationship with the US. However, ever since Pakistan came into existence, it has tried to woo Russia (and earlier the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics).

It was important for Pakistan to have good relationship with the Russian bear; an important neighbour and

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a super power. Although in 1949, the then Pakistani Prime Minster Liaquat Ali Khan had received a formal invite from the USSR, he chose to go to Washington instead. On his visit to the United States, Pakistan became a part of the Western Alliance. In response, Moscow drew closer to New Delhi militarily and politically. Moreover, Moscow provided unequivocal support to India on Kashmir as also on other bilaterally contentious issues.

The arrival of Khrushchev and foreign minister Bulganin duo at the Russian centre-stage soured Pakistan-Russia relationship. The two leaders put their weight in favour of India and Afghanistan respectively and criticised Pakistan’s disturbing activities in the region. So far, Pakistan has been remarkably successful in playing out its close military and political ties with China against those with the US. However, the same strategy failed to yield any significant results in its experiment of playing out the Russia-US game.

Tashkent and after During the second Indo-Pakistan war of 1965, the USSR tried to play the role of power broker in the Indian sub-continent by way of mediation in the India-Pakistan dispute. It mentored

April 2011 Defence AND security alert

Rohit K. Mishra

both India and Pakistan to come to an agreement in Tashkent. Thereafter, Premier Alexei Kosygin visited Pakistan in May 1969 as foreign minister of the USSR. As a friendship gesture and an attempt to kick-start the relationship to an upward trajectory, Pakistan was provided with helicopters. Also, a steel mill with the Soviet funding, was set up in Karachi.

However, the tide of Russo-Pakistan friendship could not last long as the latter played an instrumental role in bringing the US and China together through what is popularly known as the ‘ping-pong diplomacy’. According to Vijai Sen Budhraj, initially USSR was neutral in the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war, but later decided to throw its weight behind India, when the military rulers of the then West Pakistan started massacring Mukti Bahini members.

It has been proved and documented beyond doubt that the Soviet support, in that context, was incredible and crucial in keeping China and the US out of the sub-continental strategic theatre.

Pakistan’s frontline status Mutual neglect, if not mutual avoidance, went on for decades that followed in the Pakistan-Russia relations. Even the biggest symbol of

fountainhead of terror: Russian equation Pakistan-Soviet cooperation; the steel mill at Karachi was misappropriated

by Pakistan. Apparently, the issue turned out as a symbol of mutual distrust between the two countries.

Relationship between the two dropped to its lowest ebb during Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. At that time, Pakistan had played an important role in

training of Taliban fighters, in support of American strategy to trap the Russian Bear in the bog of Afghanistan.

Under the leadership of Zia-ul Haq, Pakistan became the frontline State in the defeat and ultimately withdrawal of, the Soviet forces from Afghanistan.

Pakistan

also

supported

the

Mujahideen for the jihad against the occupiers and encouraged Chechen fighters to join. Russia, time and again, alleged Pakistan of supporting and training Chechen fighters in the Pakistani madrassas. Pakistan’s infamous support and recognition to the Taliban government gave them a bad name in the entire Central Asian

April 2011 Defence AND security alert

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Pakistan

TUMULTUOUS JOURNEY

region. Russia alleged that Pakistanis were also responsible for illegal drug trade and Islamisation of the Central Asian region; Russia’s soft underbelly.

Collapse of the USSR and eventual emergence of the Russian Federation led to many shifts in the foreign and security policy focus. Russia under the new foreign minister, Andrei Kozyrev tried to bring the relationship with Pakistan back on track. Coupled with this was the idea of maintaining a fine balance between both New Delhi and Islamabad. In 1993, Kozyrev paid a visit to Pakistan during which a number of developmental projects for Pakistan were also approved. In fact, from 1991 to 1996, Islamabad enjoyed good terms with the Russian Federation.

Return to India focus With Vladimir Putin’s arrival at the Russian power-centre, India regained much more prominence than Pakistan in the Russian foreign policy calculus. However, it was Yevgenii Primakov, who first insisted on close cooperation with India, while clearly pointing towards Pakistan on the issue of external support to the Chechen Islamic radicals who had waged an incessant attack on Russia. The idea was robustly backed up through a concrete follow-up action in the form of inking of India-Russia Strategic Partnership Agreement in 2000.

Nevertheless, Islamabad doesn’t seem to have given up on having cordial ties with Russia. It has been expressing interest in reviving relations with Moscow, especially after India’s decisive tilt in favour of the United States. The trend is witnessed post 1991 in general and with the coming of the BJP led NDA alliance to power and subsequently the signing of the Indo-US nuclear deal, in particular.

Moscow-Islamabad warmth The geo-political realities of the post 9/11 world have also helped Pakistan in its endeavours. After September 11 terrorist events, Pakistan has emerged as a frontline State against war on terror; committing itself, at least theoretically, as a fellow member of the anti-terror coalition. Interestingly enough, both Moscow and Islamabad are on the same page in the fight against terror. This strengthened

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cooperation between the two has led to improved mutual understanding.

Friendship with Pakistan reached new heights with a visit to Islamabad by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail E. Fradkov in 2003. It was the first visit by a Russian leader in almost four decades. Many new agreements such as those on promoting cooperation in the fields of culture, arts, archaeology, archives, cinema and one for increasing cooperation in combating illicit trafficking, abuse of narcotics and psychotropic substances, were signed during the visit.

Musharraf’s visit In this context, General Pervez Musharraf’s Moscow trip from 4-6 February 2003 was a major success.

Interestingly, it was the first official State visit by a Pakistani leader to Moscow since Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s in the 1970s. The visit aimed at initiating a relationship with the ‘New Russia’.

General Musharraf told Putin that Russia was best placed to act as a mediator. Russia too, at that time, was inclined to advance that policy to make India realise that its support should not be taken for granted. It was more so at a juncture when New Delhi embarked upon a policy of replacing Russian military hardware with that of the United States, Israel and France.

The meeting reinforced the ‘good things’ of the past like cooperation in the oil and gas sector and space technology and an MoU for the revival of Karachi Steel Mills. They also vied for developing stronger trade relations, which amounted to a miserly US$ 100 million. It was also decided that the Pakistan-Russia Joint Economic Cooperation Commission would meet in the first half of every year to discuss the possibility of expanding bilateral trade which was at that time hovering around US$ 83 million annually.

Representatives of two Russian oil giants Gazprom and Lukoil Russia stepped up their aid to Pakistan when a devastating earthquake had hit the country. Russia sent IL-76 plane, provided mobile hospital and a planeload of tents, beds, blankets etc.

Russia also tried to solve the prickly issues regarding terrorism. Musharraf during his visit also asserted Pakistan’s

April 2011 Defence AND security alert

control over Kashmir which led to the animosity with India and prepared the ground for Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani’s visit to Moscow.

Indian influence Pakistan has realised that a good relationship with Russia will cap the power of Pakistan’s large ‘southern neighbour’ in the Indian sub-continent. On August 18-19, 2010, the second summit of the Group of Four (Russia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan) was hosted in Sochi by the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. During the summit, it was decided that a mechanism of quadripartite consultations at ministers of foreign affairs’ level be launched. The agenda, it was decided, would include issues pertaining to regional economic cooperation and the anti-narcotics structures.

It is considered by many commentators as a new move by the Russians in the grand chessboard of Eurasia.

According to the media reports, significant deals were signed during the summit. Russia agreed to join two long-planned regional infrastructure projects that would create energy and transport corridors from Central Asia to Pakistan across Afghanistan.

One project, CASA-1000 (Central Asia-South Asia), involves the export of electricity from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Russia agreed to help to build two hydro-power plants in the Central Asian States that will supply electricity for the project. Another project is a motor road and a railway from Tajikistan to Pakistan across the Wakhan corridor.

Afghanistan-Pakistan Trade and Transit Agreement (APTTA) grants Pakistan the right to trade with Central Asia via the Wakhan corridor.

Energy hub The ‘Group of Four’ is institutionalised as a permanent arrangement, separate from the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the Collective Security Treaty Organisation. Pakistan has observer status in SCO and is striving hard with strong backing from China to get permanent membership. Russia is an observer at the OIC. Islamabad is also in consultation with Iran for exporting

gas. Pakistan sees bright prospects of emerging as a transport and communication corridor as the TAPI pipeline route from Iran, Turkmenistan to Afghanistan and possibly India lies through Pakistan only. The prospects are really bright.

Pakistan is looking towards Russia as a new source of weapons and a partner in space co-operation when most of the taps in the West are being turned off alleging Pakistan’s involvement in terror. In 2009-10 Russia stopped its opposition to the supply to Pakistan of Chinese JF-17 fighter planes powered

by Russian engines. In the last decade, Russia had sold Pakistan over 40 MI-171 transport helicopters of a civilian version.

Defence cooperation?

Pakistani prime minster Syed Yusuf Raza Gillani during the annual SCO Heads of Government Council (HGC) 2010 held in Dushanbe met Putin. Pakistan expressed interest in the purchase of an MI-35 attack helicopter to fight terrorism. An MoU is also under consideration on defence collaboration to intensify overall cooperation. Prime ministers of both the countries desired to augment bilateral relations between Moscow and Islamabad.

It was said that the two sides should explore a new beginning by building a strong edifice of interactions aimed at strategic, political and economic convergence through consultations on the evolving new security architecture in the Asia-pacific region as well as the ‘Greater Eurasian Region’. Pakistan has been swift in bagging the Russian offer of defence supplies as they are getting it from India’s anchor partner in defence.

In 2010 only Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari met President Medvedev five times and is keen to have a stand alone meeting with President Medvedev to give a new fillip to the relationship. In February 2011 also, the two sides held high-level talks on militancy and nuclear proliferation.

Part of the solution Pakistan has successfully moulded Russian thinking on many issues and military co-operation is just one strand of it. Moscow’s turnaround is due to the realisation that seeing Islamabad as part

of the region’s problems does not help to advance the Russian goal of playing a bigger role in the region. Russia is now looking at Pakistan as a part of the solution. Russia has changed its stand on many issues regarding Pakistan.

For instance, it used to slam Islamabad for its activities in Kashmir. However, recently when Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov visited India, responding to the media on Moscow’s contacts with Islamabad, he said, “We find it necessary to talk and to cooperate with all countries. It is absolutely important to do it, otherwise it would lead to isolation and isolation leads to a dead end ... We are for engagement of all, on which depends the solution of international problems.”

These developments have certainly made Pakistan’s arch rival - India, uncomfortable. According to Vladimir Radyuhin India will have to learn to live with the new RussiaPakistan bonhomie, just as Russia has taken in its stride India’s entanglement with the US.

One may argue that PakistanRussia relationship doesn’t thrive on its own. During the Cold War years, it was a sub-set of Russia-US and India-Pakistan equation. Even after the end of the Cold War, this set of bilateral relationship is grappling in the dark; trying to rationalise itself as an outcome of deteriorating Pakistan-US relations at one hand and burgeoning India-US relations on the other. Thus, it can be said that while India has come out of the shadows of the Cold War politik, Pakistan is yet to set its sights free of blurs caused by the ‘India syndrome’ in terms of its engagement with the world’s biggest nation-State.

The writer is associated with the Centre for Russian and Central Asian Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His areas of interest include Russia, Central Asia, India and its neighbourhood and the Asia Pacific region.

April 2011 Defence AND security alert

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GLOBAL DEFENCE AND SECURITY EVENTS / SHOWS APRIL 2011

Friday 1st April 2011 – Sunday 3rd April 2011 Civil Protec Fiera Bolzano, Bolzano, Italy

Wednesday 13th April 2011 - Thursday 14th April 2011 Search and Rescue Bournemouth International Centre, Bournemouth, United Kingdom

Monday 4th April 2011 - Thursday 14th April 2011 IPOMEX - 4th International Police Trade Fair and Conference Messe und Congress Centrum Halle Münsterland, Munster, Germany

Friday 15th April 2011 IDEF 09- 9th International Defence Industry Fair USA

Tuesday 5th April 2011 - Thursday 7th April 2011 Offshore Patrol Vessels Asia-Pacific 2011, Grand Hyatt Singapore, Singapore Tuesday 5th April 2011 - Thursday 7th April 2011 The Safety Show - Workplace Safety Exhibition Melbourne Exhibition & Convention Centre, Melbourne, Australia Tuesday 5th April 2011 - Thursday 7th April 2011 ISC West Sands Expo Convention Center, Las Vegas, USA Tuesday 5th April 2011 - Thursday 7th April 2011 The Safety Show Sydney 2011 Melbourne Exhibition & Convention Centre, Melbourne, Australia

Sunday 17th April 2011 - Wednesday 20th April 2011 International Symposium on Air Defense Beijing, China Tuesday 19th April 2011 - Wednesday 20th April 2011 Counter Terror Expo 2011, Olympia Conference and Exhibition Centre, London, UK, Tuesday 19th April 2011 – Wednesday20th April 2011 Counter Terror Expo Olympia Conference & Exhibition Centre, London, United Kingdom Tuesday 19th April 2011 - Thursday 21st April 2011 Safety EXPO Cosumnes River College, Sacramento, USA

Monday 11th April 2011 - Thursday 14th April 2011 Maritime Homeland Security Summit, Renaissance Baltimore Harbourplace Hotel, Baltimore, MD, USA

Tuesday 26th April 2011 - Thursday 28th April 2011 Security Beijing - Beijing International Exhibition for Public Security Products China International Exhibition Center CIEC, Beijing, China

Tuesday 12th April 2011 – Friday 15th April 2011 China Sourcing Fair: Security Products AsiaWorld-Expo, Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Tuesday 26th April 2011 - Thursday 28th April 2011 International Security Conference & Exposition Expo Center Norte, Sao Paulo, Brazil

Wednesday 13th April 2011 - Thursday 14th April 2011 Defence IT 2011, Bristol Marriott Hotel City Centre, Bristol, UK,

Friday 29th April 2011 - Saturday 30th April 2011 Greentech Fire, Safety & Security India Conference & Expo Shangri La Hotel New Delhi, India

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