Twirp : Terrorist Wahabi Islamic Republic Pakistan 3

[Naresh]

<b>Indian airstrikes if Pakistan does not act fast : McCain</b>

By Ejaz Haider

<b>LAHORE : US Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has said that there is enough evidence of the involvement of former Inter-Services Intelligence officers in the planning and execution of the Mumbai attack and if Pakistan does not act, and act fast, to arrest the involved people, India will be left with no option but to conduct aerial operations against select targets in Pakistan.</b>

Senator McCain, who arrived in Pakistan Friday from New Delhi with Senators Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), was talking to a select group of Pakistanis at an informal lunch in Lahore. When Daily Times quizzed him on the issue of use of force he said that this is what he and the other Senators were told by India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who, as Mr McCain put it, was visibly angry and reeling from the shock of the attack.

“The democratic government of India is under pressure and it will be a matter of days after they have given the evidence to Pakistan to use the option of force if Islamabad fails to act against the terrorists,” he said.

<b>To a question about what the United States would do in the event that India carries out such a threat, Mr McCain said that Washington would not be able to do much even as “privately I will try to dissuade India from doing so”.

“We were angry after 9/11. This is India’s 9/11. We cannot tell India not to act when that is what we did, asking the Taliban to hand over Osama Bin Laden to avoid a war and waging one when they refused to do so.”;</b> He conceded the point that such an Indian attack could beget retaliation from Pakistan and that this is precisely the trajectory of actions and reactions that those who attacked Mumbai were hoping for but stressed that at this point, if Pakistan does not do anything to find and arrest the “bad guys”, India will have no option but to use force.

Senator McCain who left for Islamabad shortly after lunch said that he and the other Senators would meet the army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, before proceeding to Kabul in the evening. He said he would discuss the situation with General Kayani. While he did not say it in so many words, it was clear from his remarks through the hour-long luncheon that he would convey a message to General Kayani on any Indian threat to use force and about how serious the situation is.

Mr McCain’s remarks were interesting, come as they did on the heels of a report that “Pakistan went into a state of ‘high alert’ last weekend and was eyeing India for possible signs of military aggression, after a threatening phone call made to President Asif Ali Zardari by someone from Delhi who posed himself as Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee”.

The issue of that hoax call is still being debated in Pakistan and given the situation, as also evidenced by Mr McCain’s remarks, is difficult to ignore. Mr McCain, as also Senator Graham, seemed convinced that there are training camps inside Pakistan and they are being “emptied as we speak”.

“There were red dots on the map when the Afghan war began; those dots have been increasing in number,” Mr McCain said.

There was also a sense that while the “civilian” Government of Pakistan may not be involved in any of these acts, other institutions in Pakistan – a thinly veiled reference to the army/ISI – may be pursuing a different policy.

Mr McCain, however, conceded that he had no formal information from the US government on what sort of evidence India may have on any links between the men who attacked Mumbai and their alleged handlers in Pakistan. What he put on the table in Lahore, therefore, was gleaned from what his delegation was told by India, including the now known allegation that the attackers were constantly in communication on satellite and cell-phones with handlers in Pakistan.

The last time India mobilised its army against Pakistan was in 2001-2002. But several rounds of war-gaming after the mobilisation showed that any military action would not result in delivering political and strategic objectives.

It was not clear what New Delhi might hope to achieve through air strikes and Mr McCain could not enlighten his Pakistani interlocutors beyond stressing that New Delhi was under pressure to act and be seen as acting in the face of such a brazen attack. Mr McCain also argued that by moving against the terrorist groups Pakistan will be strengthening its credentials as a democracy. Democracies, as the democratic peace theory postulates, do not go to war, even as it is obvious that they can if this issue does come to an exchange of “fisticuffs”!

Mr McCain, who proceeded to Afghanistan yesterday evening along with his Senate colleagues, also exchanged views on the Afghanistan situation and admitted that the drug problem there was helping fund the insurgency. He said that he would talk to President Hamid Karzai whose brother, as Mr McCain put it, is involved in the drug trade.

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