SHOCKINGLY SWAT

By

SUSHANT SAREEN

    If there was ever an evaluation, then 'D' is the only grade that would be awarded to the 3-D strategy – Dialogue, Development and Deterrence – that the PPP-led coalition government claims to have adopted against the Islamist insurgents in both the tribal areas straddling Afghanistan as well as settled districts like Swat in NWFP.

The dialogue has failed because for the insurgents it was never more than a ruse to regroup their forces, gather more resources and spread their influence. What is worse, the state entered into a dialogue from a position of weakness. Its only leverage was the threat of use of military force to enforce the terms of a deal, an instrument that when used, proved to be blunt, if not ineffective. Development has not only failed to take off, but is in fact regressing. After all, no new social, infrastructural or employment generating project is possible in an area which has become a veritable warzone. As for Deterrence, it has completely collapsed. In contemptuous disregard of the heavy presence of security forces, the Islamists are merrily going about their task of burning down schools, murdering people, enforcing their version of Islamic law, and establishing a parallel state structure.

    The statistics on Swat tell the story of the rapid disintegration of the authority of the Pakistani state in this region. The army was deployed in late 2008 to check the march of the Islamist warriors. But instead of pushing back the militants, the military operation has achieved exactly the opposite result. From a time when the militants dominated around 20 percent of the area, to now when they effectively call the shots in over 90 percent of the area, it has been a shocking, if not scandalous, manifestation of the inability, or worse unwillingness, of the army to restore the writ of the Pakistani state in an area that was once called the Switzerland of the East.

Nearly two hundred schools have been destroyed, hundreds of people have been murdered (some because the length of their shalwar was not correct), girls have been banned from going to school, women have been forbidden from stepping out of their houses without male relatives, kangaroo courts have been passing judgements on civil and criminal matters which can be flouted only on pain of death, shaving beards is not permitted, music, dance, films, TV have been declared un-Islamic. In other words, anything and everything that catches the fancy of the local Taliban can be declared un-Islamic and no one can question, much less argue, the absurdity of the fatwas being issued by the clerics.

    That all this has been happening amidst claims – clearly inflated as it now appears – by the military of the successes it has notched up against the Islamists, has given rise to all sorts of conspiracy theories. Many people from Swat accuse the army of being a casual bystander when the Taliban indulge in their depredations. They ask how is it possible for the Taliban to strike right under the nose of the army without ever being challenged or ever suffering casualties. They allege that the army never targets the known bases of the Taliban and that the militants supposed to have been killed by the army are, more often than not, innocent civilians.

Members of the provincial government and political workers from the area suspect that the army is deliberately allowing Swat to become a base and a sanctuary for militants from both Afghanistan and Kashmir. These people point out that since Swat doesn't share a border with either Afghanistan or Kashmir and yet is in close proximity to both these places, it serves as a convenient place from where to mount operations and that too with complete deniability on the part of the Pakistani state and its security services. They ask how it is possible for so many outsiders – Punjabi jihadis, Uzbeks, Chechens, Arabs, Kashmiris, among others – and so much money and weaponry to continue to flow without any let or hindrance to the Islamists in Swat. While these allegations might appear to be somewhat over the top, the questions they raise about the actions (or the lack of them) of the security forces in the entire Swat operations have yet to be answered satisfactorily.

    More glaring than the failure of counter-insurgency operations, however, is the political and ideological failure of the political class to understand the dialectic of Islamic militancy, especially in Swat. A common refrain among the political class is that imposition of Shariah in Swat will solve half the problem. Those subscribing to this view say that many of the combatants are fighting for replacing the English common law with Islamic law and conceding to this demand will isolate the hard-core militants and the criminal element, making it easier to end the violence. But advocating imposition of Shariah as a means to bring peace is akin to a drowning man clutching at straws. It completely ignores the revolutionary change that the Islamists seek to bring about, first in Swat and its surrounding areas, and then in rest of Pakistan.

    At the heart of the problem in Swat is not the yearning among the people for speedy justice according to Islamic law. The real question is who will have the power to administer this system and dispense justice. But this is something that no one is willing to admit openly. In fact, when top officials say that as Muslims no one can oppose Shariah law then it shows the fundamental mismatch between the objective of establishing state authority and the approach being taken by the functionaries and beneficiaries of the state to re-establish its writ. After all, if imposing Shariah was enough to end the militancy, then it would have been done long back. The reason why it has not been done, and why even when it is done it will not end the insurgency, is that there is no consensus on what exactly Shariah is.

Much like the Hindu pantheon, where every individual or group defines God according to its own preference, tradition, custom, there are innumerable interpretations of what is or is not Shariah. No two Mullahs, even when they belong to the same theological and doctrinal stream, agree on what is, or is not, Islamic. For instance, while the Taliban insist that women are not allowed to work, other Ulema disagree vehemently with such an obscurantist interpretation of Islam.

The issue therefore is not Shariah, especially since all laws in Pakistan have already been Shariah-ised. At the end of the day, what is happening in Swat is a struggle over who will wield the power to decide what Shariah is. Equally important, who will administer and implement the Islamic law? In other words, will the Pakistani state as it is currently constituted exercise the authority to interpret and impose Islam or will the Mullahs and their storm troopers enforce their version of Islam.

There is also a clear class dimension to this power struggle. The traditional elite are being challenged by force of arms by the dispossessed, deprived and marginalised sections of society. If the latter are successful, a new social order will emerge in places like Swat, which in turn will become a precursor for similar changes in the social and political structure in other parts of Pakistan. On the other hand, if the Islamists are unsuccessful in wiping out the established elite, they will still end up forcing a medieval form of Islam in large swathes of Pakistan.

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    <1250 Words>                        29^th January, 2009

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OVER THE HILL IN KASHMIR

By

SUSHANT SAREEN

    The elections to the Jammu and Kashmir state assembly have surprised and shocked (depending on which side of the divide they belong) everybody who has anything to do with the state. Mainstream and Integrationist politicians, separatists, militants, security forces, analysts and journalists, and most of all the Pakistanis, have all been trying to make sense of the tectonic political shift that seems to have taken place in Jammu and Kashmir. While at one level the elections appear to be a resounding rejection of the separatists, at another level the sentiment in favour of separatism has not entirely died. In other words, while on the one hand the people of the state have chosen to place their faith in the institutions of Indian democracy, on the other hand a sense of alienation continues to exist.

Not surprisingly then, all the players in the Kashmir drama, including those who seem to have been marginalised by the electorate, have found something to hold on to. The integrationists are elated by the huge turnout in the elections. The separatists are stunned into a sullen silence by the clear rejection of their election boycott call by the people. The security forces are cautiously optimistic that the worst phase of the insurgency in the state is over. The militants are unable to decide whether they might have made a mistake by not coercing people not to vote. They had probably assumed that people would boycott anyhow so it was more politic not to issue any threats. The pompous analysts and self-proclaimed Kashmir watchers (most of who sit in Delhi) are nursing yet another injury at the hands of the people and their uncanny ability to prove all pre-election predictions horribly wrong. And finally there are the Pakistanis, who now are placing all their hopes of grabbing Kashmir on the handful of newspaper articles in the Indian press advocating 'Azadi', most of which have in any case been consigned to the dustbin of history by the election verdict in Jammu and Kashmir.

The main reason why everybody is finding it difficult to make sense of the momentous success of the elections is that nobody had expected anything of these elections. The elections took place against the backdrop of the Amarnath agitation which had polarised the political environment in the entire state. Not only was there a split along regional lines between Jammu and Kashmir valley, but to an extent also along communal lines. Not surprisingly then, most people were convinced that the elections will be a washout with a very low voter turnout. But exactly the opposite happened. Bread and butter issues proved stronger than communal and separatist agendas.

This is not to say that communal polarisation and separatist politics didn't play a role in the elections. Both these agendas did find resonance, but nowhere near what was being expected. The BJPs performance in the Jammu region was a direct outcome of the Amarnath agitation. And the PDP's soft-separatism and Muslim majoritarianism did work to an extent in the Valley and helped the party improve its performance. But even the gains made by the BJP and the PDP are indicative of a remarkable change that has come in Jammu and Kashmir.

To see the Amarnath agitation in Jammu purely as a Hindu movement would be a travesty. No doubt, there was a religious sentiment attached to the entire movement. But the real force behind the movement was a sense of deprivation and grievance in Jammu as far as development was concerned. Jammu was really asserting its right for equitable resources of the state and protesting against what it perceived as a Valley-centric development program of both the central and state government. In this sense, the voting pattern in Jammu was not negative or communal but positive and participatory.

In the Valley too, the fact that people shunned the hard-line separatism and negativism of the Hurriyet Conference – widely referred to by its sobriquet, Hartal (Strikes) Conference – in favour of a mainstream political party like PDP that was seen as flirting with separatism to make itself appear more attractive, is in itself a very positive development. In a sense, the discontent in the Valley, which occasionally finds expression in the demand for 'Azadi', no longer has the stridency that it had in the past. The slogan of 'Azadi' is today not a demand in favour of separatism but a protest against any and every problem and issue – from granting land to Amarnath shrine board to agitating against a sex scandal, and from demanding jobs to protesting against power cuts.

At the same time, it would be a denial of reality to imagine that the separatist sentiment does not exist in the Valley. Even though open expressions and support for separatism might recede into the background, latent separatism will remain around for quite some time. It would be entirely pointless trying to snuff this out completely. If anything, any such an attempt might result in exactly the opposite of what it is trying to achieve. In multi-cultural and multi-ethnic states it is quite normal for separatist sentiments to linger, for decades and sometimes longer. With passage of time, and with economic development and political accommodation, separatism gets tempered down and assimilates itself in the national mainstream. Remnants of separatist sentiment might still find expression, but in a very esoteric sort of way, which can comfortably co-exist with hundreds of other such esoteric ideas.

    Of course, India is nowhere near to reaching such a stage as far as Kashmiri separatism is concerned. But perhaps the first step in this direction has been taken with the last state assembly elections. A lot will now depend on how the coalition government in Jammu and Kashmir performs, and how much it is able to connect with the people and address their existential problems. Good and responsive governance will be half the battle won because it will sound the death knell of the jihadist and Islamist separatist groups who have nothing to offer to the people except death, destruction, and dungeons.

    But governance alone will not be enough. At the end of the day, separatism is a political issue on which religion, development, economy start to dovetail. Therefore, the politics of separatism cannot be ignored. This is not to argue in favour of going out of the way to start negotiations with the separatist conglomerate. If anything, it is imperative that no special status be accorded to the separatist leadership. At the same time, India must take care to not shut the door completely on separatist leaders, many of whom may now be inclined to join the Indian mainstream, more so with Pakistan's inexorable slide towards talibanisation and state failure.

    In many ways, India seems to have successfully crossed over the hill in Kashmir. The insurgency is all but over. Top insurgent leaders are busy surrendering or striking deals to surrender. The people too no longer support an armed struggle. Faith in the political system's ability to address basic issues of existence is on an upswing. In other words, the situation is excellent, the best in the last 20 years when terrorism bared its fangs in Jammu and Kashmir. India now needs to ensure that the separatists don't manage to get through the front door (elections) that which they couldn't get from the back door (armed insurgency fuelled from across the border).

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    <1235 Words>                        23^rd January, 2009

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PAKISTAN'S TRYST WITH TALIBANISATION

 

Long years ago – 1947 to be precise – Pakistanis made a tryst with Talibanisation, and now the time comes when they shall reap what they have sown, if not wholly or in full measure, then very substantially. Interestingly, the fulfilment of Pakistan's long standing quest for puritanical Islamic rule to not only forge an identity for its people and to unite them against India, but also to crush ethnic nationalism within its own borders, should really not cause too much concern in India.

Quite aside the fact that on its own India cannot, even if it wanted to, halt Pakistan from becoming a medieval Islamic state, there is no reason why India should even attempt this. If anything, India should not only call Pakistan's bluff (or, if you will, blackmail) of the Mullahs taking over in Islamabad, but also welcome and, if possible, encourage the spread of Talibanisation in Pakistan. Bizarre though it may seem, talibanisation, and not democracy, will be India's revenge for the murder and mayhem that Pakistan has been exporting to India since independence. And, in a somewhat perverse way, only after Pakistan is Talibanised will India find it easier to achieve strategic security and stability in the region.

Just as al Qaeda is no longer only an organisation but has transmogrified into a political philosophy, talibanisation too is a mindset rather than merely a bunch of AK47 wielding, madrassa educated crazies who think they are imposing Allah's law on the people. The sad fact is that India has been dealing with a Talibanised Pakistan for very long now, only the Indians never realised it. The Pakistan army soldiers who mutilated the bodies of Indian soldiers in Kargil, and their superior officers who acquiesced in these acts were not 'enlightened moderates' but Taliban. Pakistani officialdom (serving or retired, civilian or military) and politicians who threaten a nuclear holocaust on India are Taliban. Pakistani news anchors who spit abuse and venom on India and Hindus and who say that the Mumbai terror attacks were carried out by the 'Al Faida' group (basically Indians who staged these attacks to sully Pakistan's 'image') are Taliban, as are those Pakistani journalists who say that suicide bombers should spare them and instead target India and Hindus. Pakistanis who have and continue to support and protect jihadi organisations Jaishe Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Harkatul Mujahedin or political parties like Jamaat Islami are Taliban.

If truth be told, in terms of mental attitudes towards India, there is very little to choose between an Ahmed Shuja Pasha, a Hamid Gul or an Imran Khan, and those whom these people call 'patriotic Pakistanis', namely, Baitullah Mehsud of Waziristan, Mullah Fazlullah of Swat, Maulvi Faqir Mohammad of Bajaur and others of their ilk. As far as India is concerned, the extremists have always called the shots inside Pakistan. And now if the clean shaven, western suit attired, public school educated, English speaking, whisky swilling, mujra watching Taliban are replaced by the hirsute, Shalwar wearing, Urdu speaking, Madrassa educated Taliban, all that will happen is that the double-speaking, double-dealing, duplicitous behaviour will end, as will the hypocritical expressions of seeking friendship with India.

The first benefit of a 'real' Taliban dispensation inside Pakistan (as opposed to the 'moderate' Taliban currently ruling the roost) will be the end of the confusion inside India of who and what it is dealing with in Pakistan. In the past, India had a certain comfort level in dealing with military dictators in Pakistan, simply because India knew exactly where it stood with these characters. This was not possible when politicians came to power in Islamabad because it was never clear how much power they actually wield and how much they can deliver on their assurances and commitments.

Secondly, a Taliban regime in Islamabad will be just, if not divine, retribution for the cynical exploitation of radical Islam for political objectives by Pakistan's civilian and military rulers, its intelligentsia, media, academia and what have you. It is unfair to blame only Gen Ziaul Haq for the radicalisation that is being witnessed in Pakistan today. The truth is that Zia only formalised and institutionalised the process of Islamisation, which had in fact started with the demand for Pakistan and gathered pace after Pakistan came into existence. The spread of talibanisation inside Pakistan today, with Pakistan for all practical purposes losing control over the trans-Indus territory, is part of a continuum, and as such unstoppable. This is partly because no one in Pakistan can stop it for ideological and religious reasons. And partly because influential sections of the Pakistani state and society don't perceive the Taliban as an existential threat. In fact, the Pakistani establishment is actively promoting the Taliban in Balochistan to counter the Baloch nationalists, who they see as a bigger threat to Pakistan's security than the Taliban. It is of course another matter that the Islamists will use the Pakistani state's largesse to eventually snatch the power from it, as indeed they have done in the Pashtun belt further north. The resulting destabilisation and weakening of the Pakistani state is not something on which India needs to shed any tears.

The third benefit of talibanisation is that it will eventually make the Pakistan problem so much more manageable for India. If the current Pakistani state structure doesn't fight the Taliban, then at the very minimum Pakistan will split vertically down the Indus. If the security forces fight the Taliban, then Pakistan will be embroiled in a long and bloody civil war. A victory in this war is not possible unless Pakistan gets off its Islamic hobby horse and the state is secularised and reconstituted along liberal lines. A defeat at the hands of the Taliban will bring the Mullahs to power in Islamabad, something that will end the sort of soft-peddling and kid-gloves approach with which the West has treated Pakistan until now.

More than India, it is the West that needs to be worried at the prospect of a Talibanised Pakistan. The takeover of Pakistan by the bearded brigade will compel the international community (including countries like China and Saudi Arabia) to intervene directly and forcefully. This intervention could take the form of placing Pakistan under international trusteeship for a few years to clean the mess inside that country. The icing on the cake of any direct or indirect intervention will be that Pakistan will be de-nuclearised, thereby ending the second point of blackmail – the first being talibanisation – that Pakistan has used to export terror into India.

Since India at present simply doesn't have the military superiority, the economic clout or the diplomatic influence that is required to force compliance on Pakistan, it needs to ride piggy-back on the international community for tackling its Pakistan problem in the short to medium term. India must however take the necessary steps – including forcing Pakistan to abandon the western border to the Taliban – to ensure that the situation reaches a point where the Taliban get into a position to take-over the Pakistani state, thereby forcing the international community to intervene in Pakistan. In the long run however India will have to put in place efficient and effective systems of border control and management and cross border intervention to protect its citizens. This is the lesson of 5000 years of history which India cannot afford to ignore any longer.

WHY PAKISTAN IS NOT TRUSTED

By

SUSHANT SAREEN

    It could all have been so different post-Mumbai. Instead of the war of words, the hardening of national positions, the military sabre-rattling accompanied by apocalyptic threats, the recourse to a false and perverse sense of national honour by linking it with protection of murderous jihadists, and the tremendous energies expended on fending off diplomatic offensives, the terror strikes in Mumbai could have easily catapulted relations between India and Pakistan to a completely different level. Everything, of course, hinged on how Pakistan would deal with the elements that plotted and perpetrated the carnage in Mumbai. If Pakistan had fulfilled its solemn bilateral and international commitments to not allow its territory to be used for export of terrorism, and had sincerely and seriously cracked down on those responsible for the Mumbai outrage, it would have transformed the face and future of the subcontinent. Unfortunately, Pakistan's brazen denial and unconscionable defence of the dastards who indulge in mass murder has created a black hole of trust and confidence which will suck the two neighbours into an endless confrontation.

    Quite clearly, Pakistan's condemnation of the Mumbai terror strikes and its solemn assurances that it will cooperate fully to bring to justice anyone and everyone who had a hand in the mass murder committed in Mumbai convinces no one in India. If despite overwhelming evidence, Pakistan has taken six weeks even to accept Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving terrorist, as a Pakistani, then one doesn't have to be a rocket scientist to calculate the chances of Pakistan ever acknowledging the other nine dead terrorists as its citizens. What is more, if Pakistan is so reluctant to admit the involvement of its citizens in the Mumbai attack, then it naturally raises serious questions about Pakistan's sincerity and seriousness in cracking down on terror groups operating inside Pakistan.

    The massive credibility gap between what Pakistan says and what it does makes it impossible for India to share evidence with it, much less engage in any sort of joint investigation in terrorism cases. There is a genuine fear that any sensitive evidence or information that is given to the Pakistani authorities will be used to cover-up all traces of the crime. This is a standard operating procedure used by intelligence officials in Pakistan. In his book 'Pakistan Between Mosque and Military', the current Pakistani ambassador to the United States, Hussain Haqqani, writes: "The ISI advised civilian officials dealing with official Americans to ask for evidence from the Americans of Pakistani activities supporting terrorism. The answers would give the ISI an idea of the means the United States was using for intelligence gathering in Pakistan and would enable it to restructure its efforts to evade US detection". In other words, any information on the Mumbai attacks that would be given to Pakistan by India would be used by the dirty tricks department of the ISI to destroy evidence in order to protect the perpetrators of the crime.

The disappearance of the family of Ajmal Kasab only confirms that nothing has changed since Haqqani wrote his book. In fact, the experience of Indian officials who participated in the Joint Anti-terror Mechanism has been along similar lines. According to a senior Indian diplomat, on one occasion the Indian side gave the Pakistanis information about an Indian citizen who had murdered the former Home Minister of Gujarat, Haren Pandya, and then escaped to Pakistan. The precise location of this person in Karachi was given to the Pakistanis. A week later the Pakistanis reverted back and told the Indian side that there is no such person at this location. The Indians were not surprised because within hours of sharing information with the Pakistanis, the wanted man was shifted out to a new location. But this time the Indian side did not volunteer the new information since it would compromise their source. So much for intelligence cooperation and joint investigation with Pakistan!

The Janus-faced policy that Pakistan has adopted on the issue of all types of terrorism becomes clear from the constantly shifting and contradictory statements emanating from very senior officials. On one day the ISI chief Lt Gen Ahmad Shuja Pasha briefs top Pakistani journalists and tells them "we have no big issues with the militants in Fata. We have only some misunderstandings with Baitullah Mehsud [ the very man that Pakistani authorities have blamed for assassinating Benazir Bhutto and who is spearheading the purported Islamist insurgency in the Pakhtun belt west of the Indus river] and Fazlullah [who has been burning girls schools and who has imposed the most horrific version of Shariah law in Swat valley]. These misunderstandings could be removed through dialogue." He also threatened to move Pakistani troops deployed against the Taliban to the borders with India. Quite predictably, there was a furore because this statement was seen evidence of the double-game that many people around the world have been suspecting the Pakistan army to be playing. So, a few days later, the ISI chief changes his tone and tenor while giving an interview to a western magazine and said that "we may be crazy in Pakistan, but not completely out of our minds. We know full well that terror is our enemy, not India."

    The low cunning that is being displayed by the Pakistani authorities to stone-wall any investigation also comes out clearly from the statements of very senior serving and retired officials. These people never tire of repeating that it is in Pakistan's interest to eradicate terror groups and that Pakistan will never flinch from acting against these groups or individuals if evidence is made available. But the moment the Pakistani authorities are forced to accept that Kasab is a Pakistani, these very same people come on TV channels and denounce their government. The situation becomes even more ridiculous when the very people who refused to accept that Kasab is a Pakistani, now say that he was kidnapped by Indian intelligence from Nepal where he had gone as part of some delegation!

Obviously, most Pakistanis have developed a psychotic mindset. They first invent an incredulous story. Then they actually start believing this story. And, finally they start the ritual of raving and ranting because no one else in the world is willing to buy their nonsense. This is precisely what is happening as far as the Mumbai terror attack is concerned.

The big question is why the current political dispensation is trying to stone-wall investigations into the Mumbai attacks. Surely, it cannot be because they think that the involvement of Pakistanis will sully Pakistan's image. The truth is that Pakistan's image is already mud. By extending cooperation in the investigations Pakistan's image would have only improved. But by trying to mount a clumsy cover-up operation and by slipping into a denial mode, the Pakistani authorities have strengthened the conviction in rest of the world that Pakistan is the epicentre of terrorism and a country that is fast heading towards state failure.

More serious is the implication that by protecting the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks, the Pakistani government is trying to hide the role that Pakistani state agencies played in this outrage. After all, if it was only non-state actors that were responsible, who may or may not have functioned as auxiliaries of the Pakistani state agencies in the past, then this was an excellent opportunity to signal a break from the past. But by not doing so, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that Pakistan continues to sponsor these groups as part of state policy.

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    <1250 Words>                        8^th January, 2009

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REVISE THE NUCLEAR DOCTRINE

By

SUSHANT SAREEN

    Soon after declaring itself a nuclear weapon state in 1998, India enunciated a nuclear doctrine. One of the salient features of this doctrine was the pledge of No First Use (NFU) of nuclear weapons. Quite aside the fact that NFU is something of a non-doctrine because it betrays a level of procrastination and prevarication that dilutes the posturing that is intrinsic to power projection based on possession of nuclear weapons, it was adopted by India on the basis of two fundamental premises. The first was that NFU would assuage the international community by positing India as a responsible state that was not going to engage in any sort of irresponsible nuclear sabre-rattling. This helped in warding off the pressure that would have otherwise come on India after it had ended the nuclear ambiguity in the region.

The second premise was that the civilian and military leadership of countries that possessed nuclear weapons would always behave in a rational and responsible manner. This meant that nuclear weapons would never be treated as weapons of war but as weapons of deterring aggression. Implicit in this was the assumption, flawed as it turns out, that a responsible nuclear weapon state would not hide behind its nuclear umbrella to conduct proxy war against its nuclear rivals.

    Ten years down the line neither of these premises hold true. The international environment has adjusted and accommodated to the reality of India's status as a nuclear weapon state. The endorsement by IAEA and NSG of the civilian nuclear deal stands testimony to this reality. There is no international pressure now on India to roll back the nuclear programme. More worrisome, however, is the collapse of the premise that nuclear weapon states behave responsibly and will desist from resorting to nuclear blackmail.

The brazen manner in which Pakistan has indulged in nuclear sabre-rattling during every crisis with India, with senior officials and politicians openly declaring their intentions to use nuclear weapons against India as an opening gambit in the event of hostilities, should force India to rethink and revise its NFU policy. A recently retired Corps Commander, Shahid Aziz, who at one time was being considered as a possible successor to Gen Pervez Musharraf, has advocated firing "a nuclear warning shot in the Bay of Bengal, across India, demonstrating our circular range capacity" in order to send the message that "you don't mess with a nuclear power and get away with it". Retired Lt Gen Hamid Nawaz, who has been both defence secretary and Interior Minister, never stops saying that Pakistan will resort to nuclear strikes against India within hours of hostilities breaking out. And then there is the foul-mouthed former minister, Sheikh Rashid, who openly declares that Pakistan has made nuclear weapons not to keep them in the cupboard but to use them against its enemies (read India).

India would be living in denial if it dismisses these retired generals and out-of-power politicians as diseased minds, not the least because this is a disease that afflicts most Pakistani generals and politicians. The past record of Pakistani behaviour during Indo-Pak crises proves that these people are not loonies on the loose; rather what they are saying is really how those who control Pakistan's nuclear weapons think. Way back in 1990 when tensions between India and Pakistan erupted over Jammu and Kashmir, Robert Gates had to visit the region to prevent a nuclear war from breaking out. During the Kargil conflict in 1998, the Pakistanis were once again preparing to launch their nuclear arsenal (without the knowledge of the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif), before the Americans forced them to stand down. In 2002, when in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on the Indian parliament, India amassed its troops on the border with Pakistan, there was yet again talk from Pakistan's side of using its nuclear weapons against India. Once again the Americans stepped in.

On all these occasions, India denied any possibility of a nuclear war and the official Indian position was that the US was indulging in unnecessary scare-mongering. India's reaction was prompted partly by a feeling that the Americans want to use this as a pressure tactic on India's nuclear program, and partly by India's touching belief in Pakistan's rationality. But in the light of the utterances of Pakistani leadership and past experiences, India needs to revisit its assumptions on Pakistan.

Clearly, India's Gandhian approach to nuclear weapons, exemplified by the NFU doctrine, has left India open to nuclear blackmail from Pakistan. As a result, India faces the ridiculous spectacle where, instead of India warning the world of the dangers of a nuclear conflagration in case cross-border terrorism emanating from Pakistan does not cease, India has been exerting to demonstrate to the world that it is not escalating tensions with Pakistan.

Even if this wasn't the case, the NFU still wouldn't make sense. After all, does NFU mean that India will use nuclear weapons only after millions of Indians have been vaporised by a hostile power? Does this mean that India will not use nuclear weapons even if it faces the prospect of defeat in a conventional war? Does it not imply that India is leaving itself open to the threat of a war that its adversary feels free to impose, confident that India will never use nuclear weapons?

At what stage of a conventional war will India be willing to use nuclear weapons is a question whose answer needs to be worked out before nuclear doctrines are announced. While preparing a strategic doctrine it is essential to take into account both the best-case scenario as well as the worst-case scenario. The NFU doctrine is based entirely on the best-case scenario that in the event of hostilities India will worst the enemy in a conventional conflict. To this extent NFU is an extremely inadequate strategic doctrine. The inadequacy becomes even more stark if you take into account the fact that India's best-case scenario is the enemy's worst-case scenario, one in which the enemy has made clear its intentions to use nuclear weapons!

Imagine a hypothetical situation in which the Pakistanis manage to break-through Indian defences, occupy large tracts of Indian territory, cut the lines of communication of Indian forces deployed in Kashmir and then sue for a settlement on their terms? What if Pakistan is about to seize territory where India's Prithvi missiles are deployed? Will India withdraw these systems or will it fire them? Given that Prithvi has a range of only 250 Km, at what stage of retreat will India use these missiles? Or will India wait till Delhi falls?

The time has come for India to call Pakistan's nuclear bluff, which has been used to sponsor terrorism inside India with the knowledge that India will never retaliate. India should not only exclude Pakistan from its NFU doctrine but also adopt a doctrine of pre-emptive nuclear strikes against an adversary (read Pakistan) that is planning to use nuclear weapons against India. The ante needs to be upped, not just to give the Pakistanis a taste of their own medicine but also put the fear of India in them. After all, nuclear brinkmanship is a game that two can play.

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    <1200 Words>                    31^st December, 2008

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