Big Fat Story
Can India and Pakistan live in peace?
Since 1947, when India and Pakistan became independent from Britain, the neighboring nuclear-armed states have been at each others’ throats and fought three major wars. On one side is the world’s biggest democracy; on the other a failed state where weak civilian rule alternates with martial law. Another war is all too possible. Thousands of troops remain stationed either side of the Kashmir border. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, who inherited the post after the assassination of his wife, Benazir Bhutto, started peace talks with India. But the Mumbai attacks have brought these to an abrupt halt. As India’s External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee explained, “If these [attacks] are not adequately addressed by the other side, [it] create[s] an atmosphere that's difficult to carry on … the peace process.” In light of flawed intelligence that failed to anticipate the attacks, and facing key elections next year, the Indian government is under severe pressure to respond robustly. Egged on by exacerbated Indian opinion makers, Mukherjee does not rule out a military strike against Pakistan. “When it takes place, people will come to know. It's not publicized,” he told NDTV.
Photo: Chris Hondros/Getty
Pakistani group foments violence in India.
Mumbai police say Yusuf Muzammil, a Lashkar-e-Taiba leader living in Pakistan, masterminded the Mumbai terrorist attacks and was in touch by cell phone with the 10 terrorists before they landed in India. Four other LeT leaders, based in Pakistan, were also involved and were sending messages to the only terrorist captured, Ajmal Kasab, even after he had been caught. India has demanded Pakistan turn over 20 terrorist suspects living in Pakistan. They include Dawood Ibrahim, a Mumbai gangster-turned-terrorist-backer living in the fashionable Defense Housing Society in Karachi, who is wanted by India in connection with bombings in Mumbai in 1993. (Pakistani authorities deny Ibrahim is in the country.) Others include: Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, head of Jamaat-ud-Dawa and the LeT founder; and Muslim cleric Maulana Masood Azhar, head of militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad, who was traded for passengers on a hijacked Indian Airlines flight in 1999. Failure to deliver will add to pressure for India to respond with force.
Photo: Reuters
A fragile president intimidated by a powerful military
While Indian and Pakistani leaders have been talking peace, both countries' intelligence agencies—India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)—have been provoking low-intensity conflicts. India has its spies under control, Pakistan does not. This summer India charged the ISI with helping the Taliban attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul, killing 50. After the Mumbai attacks, Pakistani PM Yousuf Raza Gilani phoned Indian premier Manmohan Singh and offered to send his ISI chief to Delhi. But the decision was quickly vetoed by Pakistan's powerful military, which saw the visit as capitulation. (Pakistan will send a more junior spy.) Many Pakistanis feel besieged by India, with its strong presence in Afghanistan and Kashmir. In that light, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari’s offer to renounce the first-use of nuclear weapons, allow visa-free travel to India, and his remark that there's "a little bit of Indian in every Pakistani," make many Pakistanis feel there has been "surrender without a battle." The military, led by Army General Ashfaq Kiani, are not pleased.
Photo: Ho New/Reuters
Will there be war?
Beyond the conventional wisdom on the Mumbai attacks, some provocative possibilities are emerging: Will Pakistan’s fragile democracy end up being bolstered? Is there a link to Daniel Pearl’s killers? Could the horror provide a prominent role for Bill Clinton? And will President Obama face a third war on his watch?
The Mumbai attacks may serve as a wake-up call.
For decades, India has been trying to draw the world’s attention to the danger of Pakistan. From its inception, as a Muslim state forced upon the departing British, it has been a violent and volatile failed state. Its treatment of its eastern appendage, now Bangladesh, leaving Calcutta swamped by Muslim refugees, was a foretaste of future horrors. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright gets it. “Pakistan has everything that gives you an international migraine,” she said on CNN. “It has nuclear weapons, it has terrorism, extremists, corruption, very poor, and it's in a location that's really, really important to us.” Pakistan’s radicalized tribal areas, where more than a million men under 25 carry weapons, have long become a haven for al Qaeda fleeing the Allied occupation of Afghanistan. America’s new President will be asking whether basket case Pakistan can continue to be an American ally against terror when it is such a large part of the problem. “The Indians have been most anxious that the U.S. has not quite appreciated the gravity of the problem,” said Ashley Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Photo: Kristoffer Tripplaar/Getty
Is the gang behind his beheading linked to the Mumbai terrorists?
Boundaries between terrorist groups are as porous as the remote borders where they thrive, leading some to look for a connection between attacks. The two groups suspected of the Mumbai bombings, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammed, have schools and safe houses near Bahawalpur, Pakistan. The man sentenced to death for the murder of the Wall Street Journal journalist Danny Pearl was affiliated with Jaish-e-Muhammed. While evidence increasingly points to LeT being the main force behind the Mumbai attacks, connections are being uncovered between the two main groups championing Pakistan’s right to Kashmir. “You’re talking about a like minded universe rather than specific groups,” Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert Georgetown University told The Daily Beast. “A lot of these groups that were based in Azad [free] Kashmir have recently moved to the tribal areas. They’ve certainly all been there.”
Photo: Getty
Lame duck Condi Rice’s arrival in Delhi today is unlikely to achieve much. But buried in a long interview in October with Time’s Joe Klein, Obama spelled out his ideas for defusing the Kashmir dispute, which lies at the heart of the 60 year old enmity between India and Pakistan. Obama’s aim? “For us to devote serious diplomatic resources to get a special envoy in there … and essentially make the argument to the Indians, ‘You guys are on the brink of being an economic superpower. Why do you want to keep on messing with this?’ To make the argument to the Pakistanis, ‘Look at India and what they are doing. Why do you want to keep being bogged down with this, particularly at a time where the biggest threat now is coming from the Afghan boarder?’” Klein chipped in, “Sounds like a job for Bill Clinton,” to which, instead of demurring, Obama replied, “Might not be bad. I actually talked to Bill … about this when we had lunch in Harlem.”
Photo: Kin Cheung/AP
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