Driven By Neither Hawks Nor Doves: New Age Islam’s Selection From India Press, 6 January 2016
New Age Islam Edit Bureau
06 January 2016
• Driven by neither hawks nor doves
By Nirupama Rao
• A dangerous escalation
By The Hindu
• Learning lessons from Pathankot incident
By Ashok K Mehta
• Pathankot attack puts Sharif in a spot and he must be seen to act now
By Hindustan Times
• The Sharif to contend with in Pak
By Mohan Guruswamy
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Driven by neither hawks nor doves
Nirupama Rao
06 January 2016
The truth in India-Pakistan relations is not about golden tomorrows but the ingested bitterness about bloody and betrayed yesterdays, and how we can craft a future of a well-functioning, normal relationship despite this.
The terrorist blitz-from-the-ground on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot has brought home to us the fact that there is no brave new world in cross-border relations with Pakistan. Time after time, the same dissonances come back to haunt us. Overtures made, initiatives taken, emotional handshakes seem to vaporise the instant the atavism and distrust-laden DNA in these relations reasserts itself in the wake of such premeditated violence and terrorism.
Attacks like Pathankot come with a heavy price — the price paid in lives lost of our defence personnel and commandos, and the jolt that is felt when it is realised that the old days when terrorism bled our people have not gone away, more so when it was just a few days ago that our Prime Minister, like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, decided to go to Pakistan, even if briefly, to extend an olive branch.
Negotiating many minefields
In the welter of pain felt on the deaths of our personnel in Pathankot, and the doubts that re-awaken about the judiciousness of a policy advocating dialogue with Pakistan, it is important that we are more reflective and introspective in our reactions. First, there is a need to understand that the truth in India-Pakistan relations is not about golden tomorrows but the ingested bitterness about bloody and betrayed yesterdays and how we can craft a future of a well-functioning, normal relationship despite this.
Second, diplomacy with Pakistan is essentially like seeking a white flag meeting (as a temporary truce for negotiation, not a surrender) while walking a field embedded with mines. That is essentially the terrain we must negotiate and we will be bloodied in the process. Third, hard-nosed rationality demands that we understand the nature of our adversary, and its multi-armed-and-headed character. The deep-seated antagonism that the vast majority of Pakistanis in decision-making capacities evince for India is a given.
Diplomacy with Pakistan is in many ways charting a course without reliable maps. In many ways, that map has a missing segment, much like the map in the latest Star Wars movie, where the search for Luke Skywalker is held up because there is a critical segment missing. Another character in the Star Wars series, Yoda, the most powerful of the Jedi, was perhaps addressing Pakistan when he said: “If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.”
There is a Jedi-like dilemma also for India here: how do we face the truth and choose, and how do we use our Force for knowledge and defence? The truth in India-Pakistan relations is a miasma-ridden mass of mutual recrimination, of issues that raise pollution levels to the level of near hopelessness, of enmities that exist only between blood brothers. Understanding that we carry this heavy burden must entail that we must seek to ease it rather than add to its weight.
Unlearning what we’ve learned
And that is where India’s initiatives to seek dialogue with Pakistan show the right way. They display the strength and flexibility that is the sign of a grown-up nation. At the same time, vigilance being the price of liberty, we cannot let down our guard because irrational violence and the threat of terrorism directed against Indian interests (including in Afghanistan) from across the border have not ceased being the default actions of powerfully entrenched interests in Pakistan.
But the problems in India-Pakistan relations must be addressed without the application of mantras and shibboleths. That is where, to paraphrase Yoda again, we must unlearn what we have learned. All the issues that covered the old Composite Dialogue need to be addressed in a graduated manner that still enables focus on the larger picture and the organic whole — which should be the need for a relationship that functions peacefully, is normalising and has the well-being of the people of the two countries at its heart. This should be a relationship that is driven by neither hawks nor doves but by a clear charter of goals and the steady hand of a confident leadership.
Systemic responses, not hysteria
In a national agenda defined by the need for development, security and good governance, the factor of security stands out in our external relations and cannot be divorced from the work of diplomacy. The Pathankot experience evokes memories of past attacks and the degrees of national preparedness in terms of intelligence assessments, inter-agency coordination, effective response, and communication strategy. Have we absorbed past experience and the ways to avoid the pitfalls of yesterday? When one witnesses the levels of hysteria and cacophony in some of our media channels, the distinct impression one gets is of a dystopian universe of confusion, blaming and shaming and hyperventilation, a news cycle replaced by an outrage cycle as one observer recently said.
We are not as a country sensitive to the image we should proactively project, although we are easily outraged by slights to our self-esteem and our perceived sense of India’s place in the world. In times of crises, a war-room approach will help — popularly defined as that bunch of strategists around that big table, with a flow chart and that big board but much more than that. The orchestration of operations concerning security, crisis response, and communication is vital: bringing key experts on deck helps clarify chaotic situations as the experts put it. We need to identify critical gaps, timelines, risks and their mitigation, also the communication process and how the checkpoints regarding media management must be manned. The closure of leaks of information is a critical must. In times of emergency, as we have learnt to do with responses to natural disasters, we must learn to systematise our processes better.
Sticking to the agenda
Returning to the agenda with Pakistan, let us not forget that there is a very human desire for peace in both countries. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent handshake in Pakistan with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif rekindled memories of an event from a long-ago timeline — the Christmas Truce of 1914 between German and Allied soldiers — a momentary truce in a landscape of conflict. “Two nations singing a carol in the middle of a war” was how one observer put it. The next day the hostilities commenced again. But from the two World Wars of the last century, the warring nations involved moved to embrace a situation of coexistence and Europe’s battlefields, while frozen in historical memory, do not exist in the present. For India and Pakistan, there is a lot of learning and unlearning involved.
The emphasis in our relations with Pakistan must be on keeping the channels of dialogue open together with vigilant intelligence and an astute assessment of Pakistan’s moves. When the two sides meet next, Pathankot will obviously dominate the agenda. It will not be enough for Pakistan to just play the usual signature tune that its state machinery was not involved. India has a legitimate right to question Pakistan’s credibility on this issue. It is a truth universally acknowledged that terror groups targeting India continue to operate with impunity from Pakistani soil. Why is it that Pakistani intelligence and security do not silence them? It is not enough to plead that Pakistan is the worst victim of terrorism today. Much as the world and India felt grief for the lives of innocent children lost in Peshawar, the suffering of innocent Indians at the hands of terrorists with cross-border affiliation on so many past occasions cannot be ignored. This is a peace process, therefore, that has many miles to go.
Nirupama Rao is Former Foreign Secretary and Ambassador of India to the U.S. and China.Twitter: @NMenonRao
thehindu.com/opinion/lead/driven-by-neither-hawks-nor-doves/article8069411.ece?css=print
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A dangerous escalation
By The Hindu
The execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, an influential Shia cleric, by Saudi Arabia has expectedly led to a flare-up of sectarian passions in West Asia. Sheikh Nimr was the most prominent religious leader of the Kingdom’s Shia minority, which has long been subjected to institutionalised segregation by the Sunni monarchy of the al-Saud family. He was the driving force behind the 2011 protests in the country’s east, inspired by Arab Spring protests elsewhere. Moreover, Sheikh Nimr was a respected cleric among the Shia community in general. He had spent years in Iran’s Shia seminaries. Tehran had repeatedly asked Riyadh to pardon him. By executing him, ignoring all those pleas, Saudi Arabia has dangerously escalated its rivalry with Iran. Within days, the stand-off has snowballed into a full-blown diplomatic crisis with sectarian overtones. Saudi missions in Tehran and Mashhad were ransacked by protesters. In return, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Sudan have cut diplomatic relations with Iran, while the United Arab Emirates has downgraded ties.
West Asia is already witnessing sectarian conflicts. Iraq, which is torn apart on sectarian lines, is taking baby steps under the new Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, to rebuild national unity. The country witnessed a bloody phase of sectarian strife in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion. Parts of the country, including the second largest city, Mosul, are still under the control of Islamic State, which is carrying out a systematic campaign against non-Sunni religious groups. In Yemen, the Shia Houthi rebels are fighting forces loyal to a Saudi-protected government led by Sunnis. In Bahrain, the wounds of a Shia rebellion which was crushed by a Sunni monarch with the help of the Saudis are still not healed. By executing Sheikh Nimr, Riyadh has poured oil into this sectarian fire, for which the region will have to pay a huge price. For decades, one of the main sources of instability in West Asia has been the cold war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Though the ultimate goal of both nations has been regional supremacy, they use sectarianism as a vehicle to maximise their interests. While Riyadh has the support of Sunni monarchs and dictators in the Arab world, Iran is aligned with Iraq and Syria, besides its proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. This sets the stage for a dangerous Shia-Sunni conflict across the region. Unless tensions are dialled down between these two heavyweights, there will not be peace in West Asia. Both the U.S. and Russia, allies of Saudi Arabia and Iran respectively, have called for calm. Moscow has reportedly offered to mediate between Riyadh and Tehran. The U.S. and Russia should use their influence to rein in further escalation of tensions. Unchecked, the Saudi-Iran rivalry could plunge the region, already torn apart by invasions, civil wars and terrorism, into further chaos.
thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/editorial-on-saudi-arabias-politics-a-dangerous-escalation/article8069405.ece
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Learning lessons from Pathankot incident
By Ashok K Mehta
06 January 2016
The air base attack has shown for the nth time that India's readiness to defend and prevent such strikes is well below par. The Government and the country have to get serious about countering terrorism
PPrime Minister Narendra Modi’s sudden turnabout in talks with Pakistan was hailed as an act of statesmanship. Surprisingly but not unexpectedly, within days, the spoilers, believed to be from the Jaish-e-Mohammed struck the Indian Air Force base at Pathankot but fortuitously failed to destroy any aviation assets. Even as mopping up operations were progressing slowly in Pathankot, terrorists presumably from the Haqqani network attacked the Indian Consulate at Mazar-e-Sharif in Afghanistan. The pincer attack on India in the new year and less than robust response by the Indian security forces at Pathankot raised the usual questions about the prudence of restoring dialogue with Pakistan for the sake of talking the talk, the readiness of the security forces in counter-terrorism operations and soundness of our internal security structures even after seasonal cross border attacks from Pakistan including spectacular assaults on Parliament and Mumbai, and the Indian leadership’s warped idea of a befitting reply.
The strike at the air base in Pathankot is riddled with holes, that too after exceptional actionable intelligence was available days in advance. The ground operation has turned out to be the longest counter-terrorism action ever anywhere. The lapses by the Border Security Force and the Punjab Police were compounded by the deployment of a mixed band of forces confounding the command and control of the operation. In short, had the operation been properly coordinated, some of the terrorists would have been apprehended but that was not to be. Defusing a grenade booby-trapped to a dead terrorist that killed Lieutenant Colonel Niranjan Kumar of the National Security Guard was also a serious lapse. It was not clear who was directing the operation and from where. Several infantry units were available in Pathankot and should have been pressed into service well before the NSG was flown in. Cross border terrorist attacks in Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir have established a clear pattern, but security forces have failed to learn from it. The thermal imagers deployed on the border were apparently not working which reflects the casual approach to counter-terrorism. While great care and caution have to be exercised in counter-terrorism operations, a sense of urgency to terminate the operation is missing. Stretching out operations gives valuable 24x7 publicity to the terrorists and does not reflect well on the fourth largest Armed Forces in the world. An National Investigation Agency enquiry has been ordered and one hopes it will fix blame and some heads will roll.
We need to take a lesson from the West, notably the UK, the US and Europe who only recently have had to deal with terrorism. Their accent is on preventing acts of terrorism as nearly 70 per cent of the counter-terrorism resources are utilised in preventing at source, planned events of terror. As that does not appear to be politically and militarily doable inside Pakistan or Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, the next best option is to enhance our intelligence assets, strengthen surveillance on the Punjab border and ginger up the counter-terrorism apparatus in border States and integrated it with the central agency. Unfortunately, neither the National Counter Terrorism Centre nor the National Intelligence Grid has seen the light of day. Is India serious about combating terrorism?
That the twin strikes at Pathankot and Mazar-e-Sharif were designed to derail the dialogue process requires no second thought. What requires to be ascertained is the role of the Pakistani state, Pakistan Army and the Inter-Services Intelligence in doing a Kargil at Pathankot to break up the Lahore bonhomie. Already the United Jihad Council has thrown a smokescreen by saying India should not blame Pakistan for Pathankot as it is part of the Kashmiri freedom struggle.
We should not be misled by these diversionary tactics. Intelligence and security agencies should collect all the evidence and tell-tale signs of the two terrorist groups especially from the air base and fill up the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle to nail the Pakistan-based terrorist outfit — Jaish or Lashkar — and present it to Islamabad and if necessary consider presenting it to the UN and the international community.
So far, Pakistan’s official response to Pathankot is predictable: Its condemnation of the attack and reaffirmation of Islamabad’s intention to join India in tackling terrorism. It has said that it will cooperate with India on the leads that it has provided from the terror attack at Pathankot. This is a welcome departure from its habitual position of denial and transferring the blame to ‘freedom fighters’ from Kashmir. New Delhi similarly has been careful in its statements on the attack and has not named Pakistan or called off the talks. Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar said that one attack should not be allowed to derail talks. Similarly, General VK Singh, Minister of State for External Affairs, has said that talks need to be continued in order to strengthen the civilian Government.
Under the circumstances, the two National Security Advisors should meet prior to the scheduled meeting between the Foreign Secretaries at Islamabad. Mr Ajit Doval should ask for an explanation from Lt Gen Nasir Janjua on the Pakistani outfit responsible for the Pathankot attack. Mr Doval should be able to figure out whether the ISI was involved in the Pathankot attack. Both sides will need to reaffirm their commitment to continue with the dialogue process but only after it is reasonably clear that the Pakistan military establishment is not averse to it.
The attack at the Pathankot air base has shown for the nth time, that India’s readiness to defend and prevent such attacks is well below par. The befitting reply is shameful. This is in spite of the terror strikes against India’s Parliament in 2001 and the Mumbai assault. It is apparent that no lessons were drawn and very little done to enhance the equipment preparedness of the internal security architecture.
The Government and the country have to get real serious about countering terrorism as spoilers will strike at another time and place, sooner than later. Talking to Pakistan is not an option but a necessity. We have to engage Islamabad, the civilian Government as well as find suitable means to establish contact with the Army. But while doing so, be armed with a deterrent that we have failed to create despite the oral bravado of the establishment. For example, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar has said many things about countering terror with terror. Mr Doval likewise has dared Pakistan to do another 26/11. Talks and terror will continue till either Pakistan’s Army chief General Raheel Sharif becomes a Musharraf; or Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif becomes the real sheriff.
dailypioneer.com/columnists/edit/learning-lessons-from-pathankot-incident.html
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Pathankot attack puts Sharif in a spot and he must be seen to act now
Hindustan Times
Jan 06, 2016
Great that the Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif assured his Indian counterpart over the phone to take action against the terrorists, but it is equally important that he moves now to punish the Pathankot perpetrators, else the ensued talks will fail. (Reuters)
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is familiar with the triumphs and setbacks of political life. He had two tumultuous stints as prime minister in the 1990s, weathered a long exile in Saudi Arabia after attempting to depose General Pervez Musharraf as army chief before returning to power in 2013. Mr Sharif’s India policy has also never proceeded as planned. For long a proponent of good bilateral ties he saw the landmark Lahore Declaration undermined — or so he claims — by Gen Musharraf’s misadventure in Kargil. In recent months, he has seen New Delhi call off talks twice after being invited for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s swearing-in. It is a measure of his longstanding links with the Indian establishment that such disruptions were worked out and Mr Modi was able to drop by for an unannounced visit to Lahore last month.
The attack at Pathankot, however, puts Mr Sharif in a difficult spot much as it enrages the public and his interlocutors in India. Not only does the attack potentially jeopardise the prospect of quickly enhancing economic ties that Pakistan is keen on, it is a blow to Mr Sharif’s authority that has both domestic and bilateral ramifications. The attack suggests that non-State actors and elements in the Pakistani military establishment can, at any time, unravel his diplomatic initiatives should they choose. Not long ago, Mr Sharif had to deal with domestic instability and political gridlock through the protests staged by Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and cleric Tahir-ul-Qadri, which many alleged were supported by the military. Now Mr Sharif’s outreach to India is being threatened by machinations staged either by his opponents or those implacably opposed to bilateral rapprochement.
India cannot expect forward movement under these conditions. Notwithstanding his keenness for better ties and his domestic constraints, Mr Sharif now needs to demonstrate to Mr Modi — who has taken risks of his own and rallied the BJP and the RSS to support engagement — that he is capable of taking action against the perpetrators of Pathankot and 26/11 Mumbai. A large part of the India-focused terror networks are in his home province of the Punjab. Rather than merely attempting to contain terrorists through political means, which is clearly not an airtight strategy, Mr Sharif has to be seen as taking on the LeT and the JeM more directly. He has done the right thing by calling Mr Modi to reassure him of support while investigating the Pathankot assault. There has to be a certain measure of urgency in meeting that commitment and punishing the perpetrators. Else, India will soon question the point of bilateral contact.
hindustantimes.com/editorials/pathankot-attack-puts-sharif-in-a-spot-and-he-must-be-seen-to-act-now/story-F5D5VnJSASoAqpbsd3mOyK.html
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The Sharif to contend with in Pak
Mohan Guruswamy
Jan 06, 2016
While Gen. Sharif is hard on terrorists who attack Pakistan, he has his uses in continuation of the old India-centric military policy of ‘death by a thousand cuts’… The Army is not on the same page as the civilian leadership that favours talks with India.
The most popular man by far in Pakistan today is the Army chief, General Raheel Sharif. Many Pakistanis see Gen. Sharif as a messiah who is saving the country from terrorism, corruption and all manner of social ills. Since his appointment as Pakistan’s 15th Chief of Army Staff, Gen. Sharif’s image has been popping up across the country. He appears in banners thanking him for restoring law and order in the chaotic city of Karachi and on the backs of rickshaws. Even politicians running for local elections have used his image. His image appears in campaign literature produced by Imran Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaaf and also on the package of “Captain Men” brand of men’s underwear.
The general has even gone viral with the hashtag #ThankYouRaheelSharif appearing on Twitter and Facebook. The hashtag first appeared after the attack on an Army-run school in Peshawar on December 16, 2014. The Army Chief seemed to lead the effort to catch and punish the militants responsible for killing 150 people, mostly schoolchildren. On November 30, 2015, he signed the death warrants of four militants convicted by a special military court established after the massacre.
Pakistan also lifted the moratorium on death penalties after the attack. Since then over 300 convicts have been hanged across Pakistan. He also signed off on the decision to punish several officers who were found to have failed to protect the children massacred in the Army-run public school. The military holding its own to account is rare and welcome — and Gen. Sharif gets much credit for doing so.
Gen. Sharif hails from a well-known Rajput Mussalman military family with roots in Punjab. His father, Rana Muhammad Sharif, was a Major in the Pakistan Army. His eldest brother, Major Rana Shabbir Sharif, was killed in the 1971 war and was awarded Pakistan’s highest military award, Nishan-e-Haider, posthumously. Another brother, Captain Mumtaz Sharif, was recognised for his bravery and was awarded Sitara-e-Basalat. Gen. Raheel Sharif is also a nephew of Major Raja Aziz Bhatti, another Nishan-e-Haider recipient for his gallantry in 1965.
Gen. Sharif’s personality and policies have endeared him to many — both in Pakistan and abroad. His gregarious demeanour with his can-do attitude and stirring promises to combat militancy of all stripes has played well in Washington DC, London, Rome, Moscow, Kabul and Beijing — all key capitals he visited in recent months.
More importantly, this Sharif is getting things done, while the other is doing what politicians seem to do best — little. The word that Pakistanis tend to invoke the most in describing Gen. Sharif is “doer”. He spends time with troops in the field, condoles with victims of terror and meets visiting dignitaries. He shows he cares for his men and they reciprocate with near adulation that spills over into Pakistani society as a whole, making him the Sharif to contend with in Pakistan.
Gen. Sharif also launched Zarb-e-Azb; the much-needed offensive in North Waziristan and the military has scored some major victories. Today, terror attacks in Pakistan are down dramatically from previous years. The millions of Pakistanis who are sick of terrorist violence and simply want to live in peace are well aware of this.
While Gen. Sharif is hard on terrorists who attack Pakistan, he has his uses for India-centric terrorists in continuation of the old Pakistan military policy of “death by a thousand cuts”. Indian intelligence agencies seem agreed that the Pakistani Army is not on the same page as the civilian leadership that favours talks with India.
Echoing the Saudi policy of diverting its internal jihadi terrorist proclivities overseas, the Pakistan Army has adopted a similar stance. It is harsh on domestic terrorism while it nurtures terrorist armies for its India policy by other means. Indian intelligence agencies say that since December 2014, the Inter-Services Intelligence has been working on reviving the fortunes of the Jaish-e-Mohammad by merging it with the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which had been staging attacks inside Pakistan. By merging the two, the Pakistan military establishment is ensuring that the energies of the Jaish is committed to fighting against India and not in Pakistan.
The Jaish-e-Mohammad has Indian antecedents. Maulana Masood Azhar set it up in March 2000 after his release from Jammu prison in exchange for passengers of Indian Airlines flight IC-814, which was hijacked and was taken to Kandahar. The sorry handling of that crisis by the previous BJP-led government is well known. Masood Azhar was escorted out by no less a person than India’s then foreign minister, Jaswant Singh. The present national security adviser Ajit Doval too was aboard that flight as a part of the “negotiating” team with the Taliban.
The hugely empowered Jaish-e-Mohammad launched the 2001 attack on India’s Parliament. Seemingly bowing down to India’s pressure in January 2002, the government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf “banned” the group. The Jaish responded by changing its name to Khuddam ul-Islam. The Jaish-e-Mohammad has assumed its original name now. A giant mural over the entrance of its headquarters at Bahawalpur in Pakistan’s Punjabi heartland loudly proclaims, “To Delhi, O’ Hindus, the army of the Prophet will soon return.”
The Jaish-e-Mohammad is no Kashmiri group seeking just Jammu & Kashmir’s annexation by Pakistan, but a group with the larger objective of establishing a Nizam-e-Shariat over India. The Pakistan Army may not be too keen on a Nizam-e-Shariat in Pakistan, but it will not pass up any opportunity to wreak vengeance over India for its string of defeats in 1948, 1965, 1971 and 1999.
Mohan Guruswamy, a policy analyst studying economic and security issues, held senior positions in government and industry. He also specialises in the Chinese economy.
asianage.com/columnists/sharif-contend-pak-115
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