02-13-2009, 08:55 AM
The question is: which is the real Pakistan?
By David Pilling
Published: February 12 2009 02:00 | Last updated: February 12 2009 02:00
Rakesh Maria, the tall and lean joint commissioner of police in charge of investigating the Mumbai bomb attacks, allows himself few doubts about Pakistani involvement in the November assault that killed more than 180 people and traumatised a subcontinent. Speaking in his tightly guarded office last night, he left little room for ambiguity when he declared: "This thing has been planned in Pakistan; these people have been trained in Pakistan, have been equipped in Pakistan, and this thing has been launched from Pakistan."
As to whether such malicious activities could have been undertaken without the direct knowledge of Pakistani authorities, he snorted: "I am saying these groups were operating in Pakistan. How can you say they don't know? Either I am deaf, dumb or blind, or [they are] conniving absolutely."
Yet, 10 weeks after the bloody and audacious assault on India's throbbing commercial centre, India has not responded, either diplomatically or militarily. Ask Indian officials and academics about Pakistan and the slightly disarming response that comes back is: "What is that?" One senior official in New Delhi, describing what he said was Islamabad's incoherent and contradictory response to the Mumbai attacks, said Pakistan was not so much a failed as an "unfinished" state. More frightening almost than the idea that some elements of the Pakistani state or military may have succoured terrorism is the suspicion that Pakistan may not exist at all in any meaningful sense.
Certainly, Islamabad has not offered a coherent response. It initially denied that Amir Kasab, the sole survivor (now in Mr Maria's custody) alleged to have been involved in the attacks, was of Pakistani origin, but later seemed to cede the point. According to Indian authorities, nor has Islamabad ever responded to a dossier detailing the police investigation, despite the fact that it was handed over weeks ago.
Worse, last week Pakistani courts released from detention Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear programme suspected of spreading nuclear secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea. That can either be interpreted as underlining the weakness of Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan's president, appeasing hardliners at home; or as a provocation to the US days before the arrival of Richard Holbrooke, special representative. Probably it was both.
Venting frustration at the multiple personalities of the Pakistani state, the senior Indian official says: "There has to be someone on the other side of the table to deal with." Pakistan, with its shaky civilian government and a Jihadist-infiltrated military, does not provide that stable interlocutor. When it comes to Pakistan, the question for India - and by extension the rest of the world - is: what precisely are we dealing with? Mr Holbrooke, the bombastic and brilliant representative released on the streets of Islamabad only days after Mr Khan, must ponder the same question. He needs to assess the new US administration's strategy of tripling aid to Islamabad.
The question he faces is: which Pakistan will receive the money? The seemingly moderate one represented by Mr Zardari, who has rhetorically reached out to India? Or the one that denies Pakistan had anything to do with the Mumbai attacks and that regards Mr Khan not as an international threat, but as a hero of the anti-western cause? It matters. If the Pakistan that India suspects has sponsored terrorist attacks in India and Afghanistan is to receive the loot, then rather than killing the beast, the US will be feeding it.
Viewed from India, Pakistan is such a scrambled egg of a nation, with moderate and extremist elements fused, that it is impossible to say where one ends and where the other begins. Increasingly, the US is drawing a similar conclusion.
Over and above the terrible ambiguity is the suspicion that Mr Zardari, widower of the assassinated Benazir Bhutto, is not actually in charge. Brahma Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research, referring to the fact that large swaths of the country are outside government control, says: "Zardari and [Hamid] Karzai [president of Afghanistan] are more like mayors of their capital city. They are powerless and helpless."
Yet the only positive thing to have come out of the past 10 weeks has been India's relatively calm response, echoed by an electorate that has not been easily whipped up into frenzied anti-Pakistani sentiment. In recent state elections, voters did not punish incumbents - as the opposition Bharatiya Janata party invited them to do - for their supposed lack of action against Pakistan. In part, Delhi's restraint has been pragmatic. It does not want to rise to the terrorist bait by engaging in limited or, God forbid, all-out confrontation with its nuclear-armed neighbour. But in part it has held back because it does not know what it is dealing with. As George W. Bush discovered in his "war on terror", fighting an abstract concept - even one with a flag and seat at the United Nations - is like chasing shadows.
david.pilling@ft.com
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
By David Pilling
Published: February 12 2009 02:00 | Last updated: February 12 2009 02:00
Rakesh Maria, the tall and lean joint commissioner of police in charge of investigating the Mumbai bomb attacks, allows himself few doubts about Pakistani involvement in the November assault that killed more than 180 people and traumatised a subcontinent. Speaking in his tightly guarded office last night, he left little room for ambiguity when he declared: "This thing has been planned in Pakistan; these people have been trained in Pakistan, have been equipped in Pakistan, and this thing has been launched from Pakistan."
As to whether such malicious activities could have been undertaken without the direct knowledge of Pakistani authorities, he snorted: "I am saying these groups were operating in Pakistan. How can you say they don't know? Either I am deaf, dumb or blind, or [they are] conniving absolutely."
Yet, 10 weeks after the bloody and audacious assault on India's throbbing commercial centre, India has not responded, either diplomatically or militarily. Ask Indian officials and academics about Pakistan and the slightly disarming response that comes back is: "What is that?" One senior official in New Delhi, describing what he said was Islamabad's incoherent and contradictory response to the Mumbai attacks, said Pakistan was not so much a failed as an "unfinished" state. More frightening almost than the idea that some elements of the Pakistani state or military may have succoured terrorism is the suspicion that Pakistan may not exist at all in any meaningful sense.
Certainly, Islamabad has not offered a coherent response. It initially denied that Amir Kasab, the sole survivor (now in Mr Maria's custody) alleged to have been involved in the attacks, was of Pakistani origin, but later seemed to cede the point. According to Indian authorities, nor has Islamabad ever responded to a dossier detailing the police investigation, despite the fact that it was handed over weeks ago.
Worse, last week Pakistani courts released from detention Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear programme suspected of spreading nuclear secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea. That can either be interpreted as underlining the weakness of Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan's president, appeasing hardliners at home; or as a provocation to the US days before the arrival of Richard Holbrooke, special representative. Probably it was both.
Venting frustration at the multiple personalities of the Pakistani state, the senior Indian official says: "There has to be someone on the other side of the table to deal with." Pakistan, with its shaky civilian government and a Jihadist-infiltrated military, does not provide that stable interlocutor. When it comes to Pakistan, the question for India - and by extension the rest of the world - is: what precisely are we dealing with? Mr Holbrooke, the bombastic and brilliant representative released on the streets of Islamabad only days after Mr Khan, must ponder the same question. He needs to assess the new US administration's strategy of tripling aid to Islamabad.
The question he faces is: which Pakistan will receive the money? The seemingly moderate one represented by Mr Zardari, who has rhetorically reached out to India? Or the one that denies Pakistan had anything to do with the Mumbai attacks and that regards Mr Khan not as an international threat, but as a hero of the anti-western cause? It matters. If the Pakistan that India suspects has sponsored terrorist attacks in India and Afghanistan is to receive the loot, then rather than killing the beast, the US will be feeding it.
Viewed from India, Pakistan is such a scrambled egg of a nation, with moderate and extremist elements fused, that it is impossible to say where one ends and where the other begins. Increasingly, the US is drawing a similar conclusion.
Over and above the terrible ambiguity is the suspicion that Mr Zardari, widower of the assassinated Benazir Bhutto, is not actually in charge. Brahma Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research, referring to the fact that large swaths of the country are outside government control, says: "Zardari and [Hamid] Karzai [president of Afghanistan] are more like mayors of their capital city. They are powerless and helpless."
Yet the only positive thing to have come out of the past 10 weeks has been India's relatively calm response, echoed by an electorate that has not been easily whipped up into frenzied anti-Pakistani sentiment. In recent state elections, voters did not punish incumbents - as the opposition Bharatiya Janata party invited them to do - for their supposed lack of action against Pakistan. In part, Delhi's restraint has been pragmatic. It does not want to rise to the terrorist bait by engaging in limited or, God forbid, all-out confrontation with its nuclear-armed neighbour. But in part it has held back because it does not know what it is dealing with. As George W. Bush discovered in his "war on terror", fighting an abstract concept - even one with a flag and seat at the United Nations - is like chasing shadows.
david.pilling@ft.com
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009