Words In The Sheath

• India feels Pakistan’s civilian government isn’t complicit in the Mumbai attacks; it was engineered by rogue elements in the ISI and the army. War could weaken the Zardarigovernment. Not in India’s interest.
  
• Pakistan fanning the fear of an imminent Indian attack. Turns the world’s attention from terror to stopping a possible war. Against India’s interest.
  
• India wants to thwart the ISI/Pak army goal of easing pressure on continuing an unpopular conflict on the Afghan border. Threat of war justifies Pakistan redeploying from the west to the east.
  
• Won’t be to the liking of Nato countries operating in Afghanistan.
  
• Without giving remedial measures a chance, India could forfeit the world’s sympathy. Could raise the spectre of nuclear exchange.
  
• Cost of war bound to add to India’s economic woes without guaranteed victory. For instance, take 2001-2002 troop mobilisation: 682 soldiers died, the government officially spent Rs 700 crore; unofficial estimate: Rs 6,000 crore.

• Does India have exact info on all the active terrorist camps?
  
• Even where it does, collateral damage can’t be ruled out. An attack on Muridke, for instance, could see several innocent madrassa students being killed.
  
• High risk of Pakistan retaliating and going to war
  
• Anyway, no action before December 24, the last day of polling in Kashmir where the voter turnout so far has been impressive, helping India score a point

• Get the world powers, particularly America, to persuade Pakistan into mollifying angry Indians. How?
  
• Visible and verifiable dismantling of the terror apparatus
  
• Handing over some of those on India’s 20 Most Wanted list that was delivered to Pakistan in 2002
  
• India’s possible preferences: Maulana Masood Azhar, who was released during the Kandahar crisis; Hafiz Mohd Saeed, Lashkar’s patron; underworld don Dawood Ibrahim
  
• Pak says no but could be persuaded to hand them over to the US, who in turn could turn them over to India

• Expect surprise action from Delhi, at a time of its own choosing. Till then, keep Pakistan guessing. No repeat of the 2001 experience, of issuing threats not possible to implement.

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The grim mood at the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting of November 29 spoke eloquently of the battering the party bigwigs believed they had received because of the carnage in Mumbai. As Congress president Sonia Gandhi began to speak, the air became so thick with tension that participants could have almost touched it. Sonia demanded accountability. Rahul Gandhi said he felt as humiliated as anyone being slapped in public. Their remarks set the tone: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, defence minister A.K. Antony and foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee offered to resign. Home minister Shivraj Patil rustled up a paper to scribble his resignation, but was told to do it through appropriate channels. There wasn't even a murmur of sympathy for him.

The CWC meeting lasted all of a furious three hours. Some questioned India's Pakistan policy and wondered at the wisdom of calling the ISI chief to Delhi; others stressed on the need to strengthen the country's existing security system. In the end, the CWC expectedly agreed to back any "political, diplomatic or military" step the government would take against the Pakistan-based perpetrators of Mumbai. The mandate, though, was invested with urgent purpose: the government's response had to be effective and visible to the people who are to vote in the general elections only months from now.

The political implications of Mumbai were not lost on former foreign minister K Natwar Singh, who left the Congress with much bitterness in 2005. "No Indian government can be seen as soft on Pakistan," he told Outlook. "For all practical purposes, the India-Pakistan dialogue is now dead." As UPA's foreign minister, it was Natwar who in 2004 had said that, unlike the preceding NDA government, India won't snap ties with Pakistan. But Mumbai is a provocation no democratic government can afford to let pass. Natwar admits, "The situation now is different. It will be unrealistic to continue the dialogue."

But cessation of the Indo-Pak dialogue isn't expected to satisfy the people, particularly the vociferous middle class which is baying for Pakistan's blood. It wants war, dismissing those cautioning against it as faint-hearted. The UPA government, wiser from the NDA experience, is aware of the pitfalls of issuing empty threats—which is what the massing of troops on the border post the December 13, 2001, attack on Parliament ended up being.

A hint of UPA's strategy came to the fore in Pranab's statement following his meeting with US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice—"We are determined to act decisively to protect our territorial integrity and the right of our citizens to a peaceful life with all means at our disposal." Officials say his statement does not signal immediate war. However, this doesn't mean the option has been taken off the table. The Indian leadership's ambiguity is deliberate, aimed at keeping Islamabad and the world guessing about its future plans. New Delhi hopes nervous world leaders would pressure Islamabad to assuage India's outraged sentiments.

Few in the foreign policy establishment actually favour the war option, fearing that the world's sympathy for India could dissipate in a jiffy. Global leaders, they claim, realise that the string of bombings and the Mumbai carnage are attempts at damaging India's growth prospects and bringing power parity between the two countries. War could, willy-nilly, have world leaders reintroduce the hyphen between India and Pakistan, something they had lately tended to efface.

These officials believe Mumbai was aimed at provoking India into retaliating militarily, thereby providing the Pakistan army the pretext to shift its troops from the Afghan border to the eastern front. Compelled to cooperate in America's war on terror in Afghanistan, and worried by the anger of the Pakistani masses owing to the mounting casualties in the tribal areas, the Pakistan army would exploit an Indian retaliation to ease the pressure it is under. This could also hamper America's efforts to root out the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Their elimination is to India's advantage, weaken as it automatically would the Pakistan-based terror groups as well.

Not only this, the government feels convinced that the NDA government's massive troop mobilisation of 2001 served little purpose other than reinforcing the status quo in power equations, raising the spectre of a nuclear conflict, inviting the intervention of world powers, and prompting Pakistan to put a temporary cap on terrorism. The limited gains were achieved at a formidable cost. Operation Parakram, as the 2001 troop mobilisation was named, cost the exchequer Rs 700 crore (unofficial estimate: Rs 6,000 crore) and claimed the lives of 682 soldiers. The cost of war could be forbidding in 2008 because of the economic slowdown, disabling India from taking measures to revive the economy.

There's also the compulsion of the Kashmir election. With the Valley witnessing unexpected voter turnout, New Delhi does not want to take a precipitous step that could end the ceasefire along the Line of Control. This could prompt the Pakistani establishment to undermine the Kashmir polls, the last phase of which is on December 24. Indications are that India will do nothing till then to jeopardise the situation there.

But what about limited, targeted strikes on the terrorist training camps? It's an option more suited for special effects rather than for tackling the problem of terrorism. For one, officials say, these camps are located not just in the uninhabited areas of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. They are there in Karachi, Lahore and the North Western Frontier Province. Even 'surgical' strikes in what are early days of the Mumbai massacre could kill innocent civilians and generate a wave of sympathy for them worldwide. Even otherwise, India's surgical strikes could see Pakistan retaliate and engage in a full-blown war, exactly what the US doesn't want. Says an Indian diplomat, "A military option is not possible now. It will trigger a confrontation and bring the matter before the UN Security Council. Willy-nilly, this could reopen the Kashmir file."

Sources say Pakistan has been deliberately fanning fears of India going to war, its leadership complaining to the Bush administration about India's war-mongering. India, subsequently, told the Bush administration that it hadn't ordered troop mobilisation nor had any plans of doing so immediately. Nevertheless, it prompted Rice to fly down to the subcontinent to douse the flying sparks, only a provocative incident away from becoming a raging conflagration.

Helping hand: Condoleezza Rice with foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee in New Delhi four days after the attack on Mumbai

In New Delhi, Rice said the Pakistani government will have to take responsibility for the "non-state actors" (terrorists) operating from its soil. A day before, Republican senator John McCain assured India of taking up the issue with the Pakistani leadership, particularly the military establishment. US joint chief of staff Adml Mike Mullen, visiting the subcontinent, reportedly told Pakistanis on Thursday that the US had enough evidence of a Pakistani hand in the attack. But this fell short of the outright endorsement India sought. Indian officials were disappointed, for instance, with Rice saying that both Pakistan and India are victims of terrorism and with her failure to discern that the army continues to pull the strings of Pak's democratically elected government.

Washington's equivocation, reminiscent of 2001, prompts former Indian diplomat M.K. Bhadrakumar to fulminate, "It's doublespeak bordering on hypocrisy on the part of the Americans. It also brings into question our assertion that George W. Bush has been the friendliest US president we ever had." He said the current crisis belies the claims of Bush and Manmohan sharing a "personal chemistry". "We didn't expect Rice to come here and tell us that both India and Pakistan are victims of terrorism. We expected much more." He and others question what India had gained by breaking the national consensus on foreign policy and entering into a "strategic partnership" with the US.

It wasn't that India didn't put its view forthrightly to visiting American leaders. Pranab Mukherjee told both Rice and McCain separately that though India was a peace-loving country and not a 'war-monger', the American leaders must realise that a democratic government can't be indifferent to the public mood. He then said that India's responsible behaviour till now shouldn't be taken for granted.

Through this week, though, India didn't do anything other than work its diplomatic levers. On December 1, it served a demarche on Pakistan high commissioner Shahid Malik, saying New Delhi expected Islamabad to take strong action against those "elements" in Pakistan who had carried out the attacks in Mumbai. This, it said, is a precondition to pursuing a "qualitatively new relationship" with New Delhi, as Islamabad ostensibly desires.

India, sources say, wants Pakistan to atone through some immediate action. For instance, it is prepared to give the Americans a chance to persuade the Pak establishment to dismantle the terror apparatus in a visible and verifiable way. Agrees Natwar Singh, "The Americans have a lot of influence over Pakistan; they can pressurise it to cooperate."

Sources say the dismantling of the terror apparatus could take weeks, even months. More immediately, New Delhi wants Pakistan to hand over some of those who are on the most wanted list that the NDA government passed on in 2002. Though South Block never officially acknowledged the much-publicised list of 20, the Pakistanis are aware of the identities of those who are on it.

Dec 2, ’08: Nawaz Sharif, Yousuf Raza Gilani, Fazlur Rahman, Shujaat Hussain at the National Security Conference on Mumbai terror

Politically, the UPA will want Pakistan to extradite either some of those who hijacked the IC-814 plane in 1999, or Masood Azhar, who was released during the prisoners-for-passengers deal before the ill-fated aircraft could return to India from Kandahar. The other big catch for India could be Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, the founder of the Lashkar-e-Toiba. Obviously, no Pakistani establishment is likely to survive such a measure, but sources say it could hand them over to the Americans, particularly as six of their citizens died in the carnage. Over time, the Americans could turn them over to India, providing Islamabad the fig-leaf to hide behind.

The UPA government fervently hopes the resolution of the crisis will work according to script. The extradition of Maulana Azhar, for instance, could provide it a terrific campaign line saying it brought back the terrorist whom the BJP had released. Should this not fructify, and New Delhi gets no comfort from Islamabad in any form, expect India to adopt a retaliatory method of its own choosing, at a time of its own choice.