Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Is It Terrorism Or A Long Term Covert War Strategy?

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This week a small bomb exploded in the Holy City of Varanasi at the Dashashwamedha Ghat where prayers are held. Hundreds of people watch this event either at the Ghat or from boats in the River Ganga. This bomb attack was terrorism, a dastardly act intended to injure and kill innocent people.

VaranasiBut this attack is very different from the horrific attack on Mumbai by commandos from Pakistan in November 2008. The attack on Mumbai was NOT terrorism, but a totally different operation. It was an exquisitely planned and flawlessly executed attack by professionally trained commandos armed with an arsenal of lethal weapons. Prior to the attack, the supporting cadres had scouted the targets, established base camps in nondescript buildings, and stockpiled on weapons and support material. The attackers traveled from Karachi to Mumbai in trawlers; they came ashore in inflatables in isolated portions off the Mumbai coastline at night, and went quietly to their planned rendezvous points. Then, like clockwork, they carried out their mission.

Based on the testimony and interrogation of David Coleman Headley, media analysts have reported that the attack was assisted or masterminded by elements associated with Pakistan’s Intelligence Service, the ISI. Whether this is true or not, we leave to the relevant officials. The more relevant question is whether this was one isolated attack or part of a long-term strategy.

The Pakistan military, in my opinion, has been a relentless enemy of India since the partition. They attacked India in 1947, 1965, 1971 and then finally in 1999. After the disastrous defeat in the 1999 Kargil conflict, I believe, the Pakistani Army came to the conclusion that they could not afford to engage the Indian Army in combat. It was time for a different strategy.

A New Strategy for Covert War against Indian Society?

We do not know what the Pakistani Army designed. But let us indulge in speculative analysis.

Readers, if you had to design a strategy, what would you do? You would realize that a successful strategy should pit your strengths against the weaknesses of your enemy. So a smart strategy against India should bypass the professional, well-trained Indian Military and attack the soft underbelly of India, the local Indian administrations. It is no secret that the local administrations in India are rather pathetic – inefficient, incompetent and sometimes corrupt. If the Indian Army is made of “Lions”, the local administrations are made of “Sheep”; complacent people content to graze in their local fiefdoms and conditioned to follow the direction of their shepherds or of their bosses above.

Ajmal KasabIt is a characteristic of wolves to attack sheep. Where would you find wolves? You would look to the poor, destitute areas of Pakistan-Pashtunistan. No shortage there of young men who, for a relatively small amount of money, could be trained in military combat, bomb-making and other terrorist activities. These men could be infiltrated into India for specific missions, a simple task given Indian complacency and laxness. If these young men are successful, mission accomplished. If these young men fail, no harm done as long as the masterminds could claim plausible deniability.

Such a strategy of attacking local Indian administrations would be easy and effective. It would cost little and create havoc in India. The pathetic state of the Indian political machine would render it incompetent to taker any effective action. In this way, you would be able to create a strategy of a long-term relentless Covert War against the Indian society.

How would such a strategy succeed? Go back and recall the events of November 2008. You will see that such a strategy could succeed brilliantly without incurring any liability or damage to the masterminds of the strategy.

Long Term Implications for India

If such a strategy actually exists, then it could have long-term implications for India. It would require the entire Indian establishment to act upon it. It would need an innovative hard set of responses, each calibrated to trigger upon a specific type or level of scenarios.

Unfortunately, this is not an Indian strength. India has not demonstrated any long-term strategic vision since Independence. No Indian agency has demonstrated the ability to work in tandem with other agencies, and the Indian Government has not created an awareness of the long-term danger to India.

At the current rate of economic progress, the Indian society would be richer, more educated and generally content with its prosperity within the next ten years. Next to this wealthy soft Indian society, the Pakistan-Pashtunistan area would be home to almost 300 million people, most of them poor, destitute and without any real means of employment. This would be an army of hungry wolves ready to descend on a rich, soft India to loot and plunder just like their ancestors began doing about 1,200 years ago. These would not be military attacks from a government but attacks from ‘independent’ groups of professionally trained wolf packs on Indian society.

What is the solution against attacks by Wolves on the Sheep? The protectors of the Sheep have to enter the den of the Wolves to unleash punishment.

Will India ever have the mental and military strength to do so? Or will India, the seeker of a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, keep running to America with its grievances?

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Indian Mujahideen strikes in Varanasi

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The Indian holy city of Varanasi was rocked by a blast on Tuesday evening at 6.30 pm near the Vishwanath Temple at the Dashashwamedh Ghat. An infant was killed and more than 30 people, including four foreigners were injured in the attacked reportedly carried out by the Indian Mujahideen. The improvised explosive device (IED) was said to have been placed in a milk container near the temple. The organization claimed responsibility for the attack in an email that said that the blast was being carried out against the recent court verdict in the Ayodhya Babari Masjid case. Hindu nationalists had razed the Babri Masjid 18 years ago on Dec 6.

The Indian Mujahideen was responsible for other attacks including the 2008 attack in Jaipur that killed 63 people, and a gun attack on a tourist bus outside Delhi’s Jama Mashjid in September 2010. A father-son duo from Mumbai was arrested by the police in connection with the email earlier today. Indian Home Secretary Gopal Pillai has said that it was too early to comment upon weather individuals operating from Pakistan were responsible for the attacks. Intelligence agencies had reportedly issued an alert about possible terrorist activities during the Babri Masjid demolition anniversary. Security measures such as metal detectors were not in place near the site of attack.

The US embassy has issued an alert and asked its citizen to practice good security and maintain heightened situational awareness. No U.S. nationals have been reported to have been injured in the attack.

India-US Relations Blog

How will Wikileaks affect the U.S.-India dynamic?

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Last week began with a bang as Wikileaks snuck out its latest offering of classified government cables and documents causing a stir in diplomatic circles. The leaked documents provide a glimpse into the U.S. State Department’s dealings with and impressions of various countries and global leaders. While the veracity of these documents will continue to remain suspect, there is little to suggest that all of the contents of the documents are doctored. Assuming that the information contained in these documents is partially true, there are some interesting and disturbing revelations for India, particularly with regard to Pakistan and China.

Image credit www.skuggen.comProbably the most disparaging of comments about India is a poor assessment of the Cold Start strategy, a military strategy to be implemented in retaliation of terrorist attacks in India. The exposed document revels U.S’ doubts about the deterrent capability of Cold Start for Pakistan, and India’s intentions of every using it given that it did not do so after the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai. It also says that several senior government officials have neither “supported, endorsed or advocated” for Cold Start.

Other documents reveal how China blocked a UN Security Council vote on sanctions against Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and its leader Hafiz Saeed at the behest of Pakistan before the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai.  JuD and Hafiz Saeed have been accused by India of having planned terrorist attacks on India. Since then JuD has been put under sanctions and the Pakistan government is tasked with implementing the freeze on assets. However, JuD and Saeed continue to be operational even today.

Another set of documents show the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s annual budget, raised through private funds and charitable networks of JuD, is $ 5.2 million. Hafiz Saeed and LeT’s Zakir-ul-Rehman Lakhvi are said to continue operating and generating funds in spite of having been detained by Pakistani agencies for their involvement in the Mumbai attacks. Still other documents talk of how Pakistan would not stop supporting terrorists against India no matter how much aid poured in from the U.S.  The documents shows a Pakistan obsessed with animosity with India and no amount of money would not make a difference to its intentions about India.

These and other documents from Wikileaks vindicate India’s allegations about Pakistan sponsored terrorism against India, and their role particularly in the 26/11 attacks. While the contents of these documents might not be particularly surprising, it brings a mixed bag of emotions as far as its relations with the U.S. are concerned. On the one hand the leaked cables show how the U.S. is concerned about terrorism emanating from Pakistan, the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and a circumstance necessitated relationship filled with suspicion and distrust. On the other it raises questions about what the U.S was doing sitting on such extensive information about Hafiz Saeed and other terrorist activities in Pakistan? Why did it not act against terrorism in Pakistan with the same speed and determination as it did against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan or against Iraq? Is the U.S. genuinely concerned about terrorism as a whole, or only when it lands on its shores? Is India good only as a trading partner for America, or does it appreciate its strategic importance in South Asia? How true is the ‘natural allies’ rhetoric, or would short term strategic considerations continue to override long-term gains that the U.S-India partnership can provide each country?

India has so far chosen to maintain a stoic silence on the Wikileaks and refrained from criticizing the U.S for the leaking of classified conversations. Irrespective of how damaging the leaks are to security interests or bilateral relations, the sheer number of documents leaked (over 90000) is enough to raise concerns about the confidentiality and privacy of future interactions with the U.S. Though the revelations might not have been too startling, diplomatic bridges have been damaged as is evident from the U.S’ hurried damage control response, including plans to charge Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. With time the memory of these embarrassing revelations will be relegated to history, and all might seem well with the India-U.S relationship. But will the two countries truly be natural allies? Or will the ghosts of Pakistan and U.S’ inaction to the detriment of Indian security interests loom large over this nascent relationship?

Important links:

“WikiLeaks U.S. embassy cables: as it happened”

“US doubts Pak will fight militants”

“WikiLeaks cables portray Saudi Arabia as a cash machine for terrorists.”

“Wikileaks: China thwarted action against anti-India terrorists”

“Cash from Haj pilgrims used to finance 26/11: WikiLeaks”

“WikiLeaks cables: Accused Mumbai plotter runs operations from jail”

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

26/11: India’s options two years after

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Two years ago, on Thanksgiving, as American families sat down to dinner, their TV screens came to life with a macabre spectacle. Ten terrorists, trained to numb their emotions, went on a killing spree in Mumbai unparalleled in modern history.

There have been commentators who’ve pointed out that after all, there are terrorist attacks on a daily basis in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia etc. So why should the Mumbai attacks raise so much consternation? And yet the Mumbai attacks stand out neither for their scale nor the murder – but for their modus operandi and intent. And it wasn’t just the fact that the attackers seemed unmoved by the horror of murder – the slow and calculated shooting of scores of unarmed people. It was also the fact that unlike in other terrorist attacks in the region, the terrorists in Mumbai were neither domestic insurgents nor disaffected citizens of the country. Instead, in Mumbai, the attackers were foreign nationals…Citizens of another country who had crossed an international border explicitly for the task of carrying out an essentially military action during peacetime. The causes cited by the Mumbai attackers were hardly personal. Given the legacy of relations between Pakistan and India the ten terrorists’ action could have been a causus belli. But, India chose not to respond with any form of military action and gave Pakistan an opportunity to deracinate Lashkar-e-Taiba from its soil. And yet the Lashkar, as much a nationalist group as it is a religious extremist group, has thus not been smashed by the strong arm of the Pakistani state. Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, despite being proscribed by the UN, continues to be in public life and the Jamaat-ud-Dawa continues to make news, most recently through its fund-raising drive during Eid-ul-Adha. Ajmal Amir Kasab’s confessions and David Headley’s testimony prove that Lashkar-e-Taiba’s plans are far from over.

Commandos in action during Mumbai attacksSome Pakistani analysts say that deracinating the Lashkar-e-Taiba is impossible because Pakistan’s establishment fears the repercussions of opening up another front by taking on Lashkar-e-Taiba which has powerful patronage networks in the country. Others aver that Pakistan’s military establishment needs such groups for the insurgency in Jammu & Kashmir and that they serve as a “strategic reserve” to achieve the strategic goals of the establishment vis-à-vis India. These reasons are anything but reassuring for anyone that believes in peace between the two countries.

It is clear that should a terrorist attack such as the Mumbai attacks recur, India would not be able to show restraint against the groups. Public opinion is often a strong factor in democracies as was seen in the U.S. response to 9/11. Unsurprisingly, a recent Pew poll indicated that most Indians would support military action against Lashkar-e-Taiba and other extremist groups if they conducted another terrorist attack in India. The only question for India is to determine when its red lines have been breached.

The response by India would be anything but vindictive. India’s objective would not be about destabilizing Pakistan. India recognizes the far-reaching consequences of such a scenario for India’s and international security.  Instead, should another such terrorist attack occur, what India is likely to do is target the cogs and wheels of the “terror machine” – the complex web of non-state actors who are willing to cross an international border to execute military actions – inside Pakistan.

India of course would have costs to bear.  Indian policymakers understand that there are no reliable patterns to be drawn from the history of military response to cross-border terrorist attacks. The attack and India’s response could alleviate tensions in the region enough to have an impact on the India’s economy. There would be costs in terms of human casualties. There may be no guarantees against future attacks. And yet… should a terrorist attack by a Pakistani national or a terrorist attack traceable to Pakistan recur on Indian soil, all the above costs for India would be overshadowed by the cost of doing nothing. India also remembers the adverse impact of the Mumbai attacks on the Indian economy. In short, the cost of doing nothing would have such a serious impact on the political-economy of India that it would have no other option but to respond and strike.

The onus of preventing a future attack therefore, lies as much with Pakistan as with India. The latter would of course have to strengthen its anti-terrorism institutions and structures. Pakistan, on the other hand, has to be resolute and come down hard on Lashkar-e-Taiba and its allies, and extend India the kind of security cooperation that it has extended to other countries such as Iran.

The Mumbai attacks will forever be remembered as one of the most brutal assaults ever perpetrated. Allowing another attack to happen would be just as grave a crime.

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Cold Start as Deterrence against Proxy War

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By Sushant Sareen
Indian Review of Global Affairs

For some months now, the Indian Army’s ‘Cold Start’ (CS) doctrine has been attracting a lot of attention from Western diplomats, generals and political leaders. The reason is simple: the Pakistanis, who were reluctant to move against their ‘strategic assets’ (aka Taliban and al Qaeda affiliates like Lashkar-e-Taiba), have self-servingly flagged this doctrine as proof of India’s hostile and aggressive design. Waving the ‘threat’ from India, the Pakistan Army has been resisting pressure from the West to redeploy troops from the eastern border to the western front. The gullible Westerners appear to have bought the Pakistani line and are seeking to persuade India to renounce the CS doctrine. This, the Westerners believe, is the magic bullet to address Pakistan’s sense of insecurity and allow the Pakistan Army to move against terrorist safe havens inside Pakistani territory.

How much the CS doctrine has spooked the Pakistanis is clear from the statements of the Pakistani political leaders and generals. Addressing senior officers in the GHQ on 1st January, the Pakistan Army Chief General Ashfaq Kayani called the CS doctrine “an adventurous and dangerous path”. He flogged this theme during his talk at the NATO headquarters in Brussels and later in a meeting with Pakistani journalists where he showed deep concern over the Indian Army’s preparations for making the CS doctrine operational. Taking the cue from him, the National Command Authority of Pakistan issued a statement in which it said that “offensive doctrines like Cold Start…tend to destabilise the regional balance.” The Azm-e-Nau military exercises, held in April-May 2010, were primarily aimed at countering the CS strategy of the Indian Army. Completely at a loss to understand Pakistan’s recalcitrance over acting against Islamist terror groups, the West appears to have latched on to Pakistan’s India bogey as a possible solution to end the Pakistani double-game in the war on terror. Hence, the efforts to try and make India back off from the CS strategy.

Wagah border ceremony The problem, however, is that no amount of disavowals by India, and no amount of security assurances by the U.S. or other Western nations, will ever convince Pakistan, which has been badly rattled by the CS doctrine, that India’s basic defence posture is defensive in nature and orientation. Despite the Indian Army Chief General VK Singh denying the existence of any such doctrine, the CS strategy has acquired a life of its own in the Pakistani military mind.

Come to think of if, this is probably not such a bad thing from India’s point of view. Even as strategists debate the practicality or otherwise of the concept of a limited war under a nuclear overhang and the CS doctrine as a military strategy – after all, the battleground has a nasty habit of springing surprises that can ground the most well-prepared battle plans – the doctrine’s validity has been confirmed by Pakistan’s frenetic efforts to put in place a counter strategy. That the Pakistan Army is preparing to counter the CS by its conventional forces and not through use of nuclear weapons is a tacit acceptance of both the theory of limited war under a nuclear overhang as well as the exploitation of this strategic space through the device of CS doctrine.

More important, however, has been the utility of the CS doctrine as a tool of psy-war. Not only has it unsettled the adversary, it has also put in place an effective deterrent against the proxy war unleashed by Pakistan-sponsored terror groups in India. In other words, Pakistan can no longer be sure whether or not India will resort to lightening strikes across the border in response to actions by Pakistani terror groups inside India. The prospect of sudden retaliation by India effectively means that the impunity with which Pakistan was exporting terror to India is in grave danger. Perhaps, this is one of the major reasons why there has been no major terrorist attack in India since 26/11.

But the utility of CS as a deterrent to sub-conventional warfare or proxy warfare depends in large measure on the credibility of the deterrent. In a sense, the dynamics and dialectics of a sub-conventional deterrence like CS are no different from those of nuclear deterrence. As and when India effectively operationalises the CS doctrine, it will have to ensure that the adversary knows the resolve of the Indian state to implement this strategy in response to another major terrorist strike. This is critical to prevent any miscalculation or misreading by Pakistan of India’s resolve. While the retaliation does not have to be immediate – to quote Mario Puzo “revenge is a dish that tastes best when it is cold” – any failure by India to resort to CS in response to a terror attack supported, inspired or originating from Pakistan will degrade the value of the deterrence.

It is in this sense that the CS doctrine is a double-edged weapon for both India and Pakistan. To retain credibility India will have to retaliate militarily using the CS strategy, otherwise not only will India lose all credibility but it will also embolden Pakistan to continue to unleash jihadist terror on India. But retaliation will put India on the escalation ladder which could easily go beyond the scope and scale of CS operations. The big unknown is that with sub-conventional deterrence in the form of CS doctrine breaking down, how much time and what level of desperation of either party will force them to take the next escalatory step which in turn could lead to making real the spectre of a nuclear exchange in the subcontinent.

To an extent, the escalation ladder will depend on how Pakistan responds to a CS by India. The dilemma for Pakistan will be that if it does not respond with its nuclear weapons, it will not only validate India’s belief of space for a limited war under a nuclear overhang but, more seriously, rob Pakistan of its nuclear deterrent, if only in the context of a limited war. In other words, Pakistan will face a Hobson’s choice: it can either degrade the quality of its nuclear deterrent or it can unleash a nuclear holocaust which will not only wipe it out but wreck horrendous damage on India and indeed on the rest of the world.

As long as the sub-conventional deterrence holds, the enunciation of the Cold Start doctrine actually introduces a degree of strategic stability in the region by forcing Pakistan to exercise extreme caution in unleashing terrorist violence in India. Far from asking India to renounce the CS doctrine or put it in the cold storage, the West needs to impress upon Pakistan that it can no longer expect India to roll over and play dead in response to actions of terror groups based inside Pakistan. If Pakistan stops using terror as an instrument of state policy, the CS strategy will stay in the cold storage. Otherwise, all bets are off.

(The article originally appeared at www.irgamag.com. USINPAC and IRGA are content partners.)