Urdunama: Indian Misadventure

The Daily Ausaf has been fairly regular in the recent past in drawing attention to what it calls an “Indian conspiracy” in Pakistan and the need for Pakistan to counter it.  This theme, though not unusual in Pakistan’s vernacular press, has appeared more frequently recently than hitherto.  One wonders if there is more mischief at hand than meets the eye.

Below is the December 11 editorial from Daily Ausaf:

Interior Minister Rehman Malik has said that proof of India’s involvement in terrorism in Pakistan has been presented to the Foreign Affairs ministry so that the ministry may raise this issue in all international fora.  Malik said, “We have ample proof of India’s involvement in terrorist activities inside Pakistan”.

Weapons confiscated from four trucks in Bara had Indian markings.  He said his ministry was responsible for accumulating evidence, which is then passed on to the concerned institutions and ministries.

After 9/11, India has benefited greatly from America’s opportunistic wars. But what sort of peculiar logic is this, where Pakistan is forced to make the most sacrifices, while India reaps the most benefits.  This situation points to our weakness where our past leaders made policies only to satiate their own power.  Pakistan continued to sink as a result of this, and India fully exploited this situation.

On one end, India tried to sabotage the movement for Kashmiri independence, and on the other, it has created a situation of virtual anarchy in Pakistan by sending in terrorists through Afghanistan, in its quest for “Akhand Bharat.”

Despite this situation, the US not only  forgot Pakistan’s sacrifices in its war, but also tried to use India as an effective counter-weight to our ally, China.  This Indo-US friendship also includes the civil nuclear agreement between the two countries. As a result of the US’s friendship, India’s attitude is getting increasingly bellicose.  And India has been trying to avoid any further dialog with Pakistan on the Kashmir issue.

Even if firecracker bursts in India, their media blames Pakistan’s intellegence agencies, while on the other hand despite India’s support to terrorists in Pakistan, our leaders have been silent, and India has been making full use of our silence.

To promote its impure vision for an “Akhand Bharat”, India, via its agents, is trying to dismember and destroy Pakistan. It is also attempting a cultural invasion of our youth. Unfortunately, India’s cultural invasion of Pakistan is being helped by some of our own people.

Even Afghanistan’s external intelligence agency, RAMA, whose name sounds like “Ram”, was founded by India’s RAW.  India has increased its budget allocation for intelligence to facilitate RAW’s activities inside Pakistan.  India’s intentions are to encircle Pakistan — to that end it has established air bases in foreign countries.

With the ruse of helping reconstruct the airport in Jalalabad, India has deployed about 10,000 troops in Afghanistan, whose job is to support activities against Pakistan.  Therefore, India’s espionage and terrorism in sevaral parts of Pakistan — from Wana and Waziristan to Baluchistan — is irrefutable.

Our media has reported India’s hand in several terrorist activities in Pakistan — from the attack on the Manawa training center to the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team.  The question that needs to be asked is why India’s shameful and alarming acts haven’t been exposed to the world.

India’s politicians and media make it a point to sully Pakistan’s name, without proof, after every terrorist attack, but here, our politicians, despite beomg armed with concrete evidence of India’s terrorism in Pakistan, appear reluctant to present this to the world.

It is time to give India a befitting reply to its misadventures against Pakistan.

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Filed under: 9/11, Af-Pak, India, Pakistan, Terrorism, Urdunama, Afghanistan, akhand bharat, ausaf, baluchistan, bara, China, cricket, India, Kashmir, manawa, Pakistan, raw, RAWA, Rehman Malik, Sri Lanka, Terrorism, Urdunama, US, wana, waziristan

26/11 and India’s response

It’s politics as usual in New Delhi, and no one seems to care

A year has gone by after the carnage in Mumbai that left over 190 people dead and hundreds injured.  In the immediate aftermath of 26/11, articles were written about the gaping holes in India’s internal security preparedness.

Recommendations put forth to the Indian government are all in public domain —  a tougher anti-terrorism law, a separate ministry for internal security, police reform, increasing NSG headcount and footprint, and enhancing India’s covert ops capability.  The Filter Coffee also presented recommendations in the wake of the 26/11 attacks.

Of the recommendations made, Manmohan Singh’s government chose to make the establishment of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) central to its response to the holes in India’s internal security preparedness.  To be sure, the establishment of the NIA was an important move, because it addressed Centre-State jurisdiction issues that hitherto plagued the CBI.

However, the NIA’s mandate notwithstanding, nothing in public domain indicates any significant activity in the NIA, until 11 months and two weeks after November 26, 2008, when the NIA belatedly sprung into action, based on inputs from the FBI on David Headley and Tahawwur Rana.

In addition, by virtue of design, the NIA mostly addresses post-incident investigation and forensics.  Manmohan Singh’s government articulated little by way of detective and preventive enhancements to India’s internal security preparedness.

The bigger picture that needs to be examined on the first anniversary of 26/11 isn’t necessarily about specific structural and organizational changes, but about the government’s willingness (confidence?) to make public aberrations in its response to the terror attacks and how these can be addressed.

In the year following the World Trade Center attacks in the US, the Bush Administration constituted the 9/11 Commission to examine aspects of US’s response to the attacks as they unfolded, and make recommendations on how the US should proceed, going forward.  The US Department of Homeland Security was born out of these recommendations.

India deserved its 26/11 commission with a limitless mandate to examine our response to the attacks in Mumbai. Key aspects of the events of 26/11 require independent review.

These include incident-specific issues relating to governance and leadership such as  (a) How long it took to notify key stakeholders, such as the Prime Minister, NSA, intelligence services and ministers of Home Affairs and Defense, (b) The time it took for the relevant stakeholders to coordinate and assess the situation, (c) How long it took to authorize deployment of anti-terror units to the scene, and (d) Crisis management — who was coordinating what aspect of India’s responses.

The second aspect of the commission’s review should have entailed structural and organizational changes and enhancements, including those previously discussed.  Sadly, this government does not have the gumption to constitute such a comprehensive review of its responses to the 26/11 attacks.  This isn’t an assailment of the the UPA administration, it is an indictment of India’s petty political environment.

There are critical aspects of the attack that require further analysis — aspects that India is still uncovering, including the roles of Headley and Rana — and questions that no one seems to be able to answer, such as how a bunch of semi-literate people alien to Mumbai, were able to negotiate their way through the city’s conspicuous and inconspicuous landmarks, without local assistance.

This cannot be accomplished by adhocism or through token responses, such as establishing the NIA and deploying the NSG in some cities. One would have thought that the time was ripe for such a bold response, faced as the UPA is, with an ineffectual, embattled Opposition. Sadly, barring a few cosmetic rearrangements, not much has changed in India, and no one, least of all Mumbaikars seem to care.

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Filed under: 26/11, commandos, India, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Mumbai, Mumbai Terrorist Attack, National Security Advisor, National Security Guard, NIA, Politics, POTA, south mumbai, Terrorism, World, 26/11, 9/11 commission, anti-terror law, bjp, cbi, daood gilani, david headley, homeland security, IB, internal security, Manmohan Singh, Mumbai, national security guard, NIA, raw, tahawwur rana, UPA

Nuclear Arithmetic, Deterrent Calculus

K Santhanam sent the Indian media into a flutter with his statement that the thermonuclear device (Shakti-I) tested in 1998 during Pokhran II was not completely successful and did not produce the anticipated (and reported) yield of 40-45 kT.  He put this apparent failure in the context of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), advocating that we do not sign or ratify the treaty until India’s thermonuclear capability can be successfully demonstrated.

Notwithstanding denials from APJ Abdul Kalam, Admiral Sureesh Mehta, R Chidambaram and Brajesh Mishra, the vast differential in the reported vs. observed yield is no secret.  International nonpartisan sources, such as the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) indicated 10  years ago that yield of Shakti-I was between 12-25 kT.  Indeed, Santhanam’s statements were also corroborated by both former AEC chairman PK Iyengar, and national security expert Bharat Karnad.

However, this admission does not change India’s nuclear posture much, either with regard to Pakistan or China.  Nuclear weapons are a deterrent force and Pakistan will neither be emboldened nor hindered by the admission of this yield differential, in the event that it is contemplating a nuclear attack against India, in the face of rapidly deteriorating circumstances during a conventional war.

A nuclear bomb is a nuclear bomb. Indeed, the credibility of Pakistan’s own nuclear tests in Chagai were marred by reports of a significant divergence between reported vs. observed yields.  While Pakistan reported tests of six nuclear devices (two in the kT range, and four in the sub-kT range) with a total yield exceeding 36 kT, nonpartisan sources indicate the May 28, 1998 tests produced a total yield of between 9-12 kT.

However, despite such reports, Pakistan’s arsenal consisting largely of tactical nuclear weapons (TNW) acted as a very credible deterrent against possible Indian offensives across the LoC during Kargil.  Additionally, had Pakistan’s “diminished” nuclear capability been a factor, India’s responses to the December 13, 2001 Parliament attack and the recent 26/11 Mumbai attacks would have been very different indeed.

The nuclear calculus also doesn’t change much with regard to China.  India’s current nuclear posture continues to be incongruous to its “No First Strike” nuclear doctrine.  The nuclear triad, a corollary to the “minimum credible deterrence” and “No First Strike” policies remains unfulfilled, with two of three legs of the triad not currently being operational (with respect to China).  While India has taken the first step in the development of nuclear-powered submarines, the first of these, INS Arihant, will not be operational for sometime.

The most serious challenge to India’s “minimum credible deterrence” is its crippled missile program.  India’s longer range Agni-III IRBMs are as yet incapable of hitting strategic targets such as Beijing or Shanghai. The development, production and weaponization of the Surya-I and Surya-II ICBMs have experienced delays exceeding 10 years, as a result of high-technology denials by the US and the sloth-like inertia of DRDO.

Without true ICBM capability and bereft of an operational nuclear-powered submarine, India’s deterrence against Chinese aggression remains challenged; a 12 kT fission bomb or 50 megaton hydrogen bomb changes nothing under these circumstances.

The low yield of Shakti-I alters neither Pakistan’s perception of Indian retaliatory capability in the event of a Pakistani nuclear first strike, nor does it hurt any further, India’s credibility in being able to deploy nuclear payload to strategic targets in China, should the need arise.  Shakti-I changes nothing with regard to Pakistan; however, if looked through the prism of maintaining a credible deterrent against China, should reignite a debate  on the sorry state of India’s delivery systems and the credibility and logic behind our “No First Use” posture.

Filed under: China, India, Mumbai Terrorist Attack, Nuclear Proliferation, nuclear weapons, Pakistan, Strategic Forces of India, World, 26/11, Abdul Kalam, agni, agni-iii, brajesh mishra, chagai, China, drdo, icbm, India, irbm, k santhanam, kargil, minimum credible deterrent, missile, no first strike, nuclear weapon, Pakistan, pk iyengar, pokhran, r chidambaram, shakti, sureesh mehta, surya, thermonuclear