Getting Pakistan to act
SIX weeks after the Mumbai attacks, India is still groping for a strategy to get Pakistan to crack down on Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and other extremists. Islamabad has finally admitted that Amir Ajmal Kasab is a Pakistani.
Yet, important sections of Pakistan's establishment deny the attacks were masterminded from Pakistan. While the likelihood of a military conflict has receded, it certainly hasn't disappeared.
India is playing its diplomatic cards badly vis-a-vis Pakistan just when it has produced a dossier containing evidence of LeT's role in the attacks.
A day after India presented the dossier to Pakistan Prime Minister Manmohan Singh accused Pakistan of using "terrorism as an instrument of state policy." He charged it with "whipping up war hysteria" and blamed its "fragile" government for the neighbourhood's "uncertain security environment."
This runs counter to the spirit of the India-Pakistan peace process and the two year-old Joint Anti-Terrorism Mechanism. It also makes nonsense of India's view that Pakistan is friendly towards India and keen to act against terrorists.
Dr. Singh adduced no evidence to prove the Pakistan government's involvement in the attacks. His charges were based on a general assessment, surmise or inference, similar to that drawn by Home Minister P Chidambaram, namely: "In a crime of this size and scale, I will presume that it was state-assisted until the contrary is proved. I will draw an adverse inference."
Such inference fits past patterns of "plausible deniability" in which the ISI instigated terrorist violence.
It may well apply to Mumbai, although other persuasive hypotheses suggest the ISI may only have given logistical support. However, the assessment must be specifically proved in Mumbai's case. Dr. Singh didn't do that.
This reveals serious policy incoherence. If India's objective is to get Pakistan to further investigate LeT's role in the operation, then it is counterproductive to accuse Pakistan. If the goal is to discredit Pakistan, then it is pointless to share the dossier with it.
This incoherence is partly explained by India's frustration with Pakistan's attempt to divert international attention from Mumbai to the danger of war. But the world still remains focused on the Mumbai mayhem.
Mumbai is an ideal case for the International Criminal Court. But India and Pakistan have not signed the ICC treaty. Nor has India evoked the 1987 Saarc anti-terrorism convention.
Many Pakistani leaders mulishly deny that the Mumbai attacks were directed from Pakistan, and that Pakistan bears responsibility for India's security.
The dossier reveals unimpeachable evidence, including GPS and satellite-telephone signatures; transcripts of conversations between the attackers and their handlers; arms with Pakistani markings; virtual phone numbers generated over the internet; and various money trails.
This evidence will bear any legal scrutiny. It's LeT's self-proclaimed goal to attack civilians in countries like India and undermine their governments.
But how does India convince Pakistan to act against LeT and dismantle the jehadi- secret agency infrastructure? There are four ways: armed coercion, United States mediation, persuasive bilateral diplomacy, and intervention through the United Nations Security Council.
The first option must be ruled out: it's fraught with the danger of a nuclear holocaust.
India's limited conventional superiority over Pakistan cannot compel Islamabad to yield to India's demands. Besides, it would play straight into the hands of al-Qaeda-Taliban, which wants an India-Pakistan conflict so that Pakistani troops are moved from the Afghanistan border.
India is investing unwisely by virtually outsourcing to the US its own responsibility to engage with Pakistan -- in the belief that Washington would somehow persuade Islamabad to act against extremists. However, Washington can act in ways that promote terrorism, as in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Apart from the imbalance and myopia typical of US policy, there's a huge risk in greater US involvement in our region. President-elect Obama plans to intensify the Afghanistan war. This will increase America's dependence on Pakistan's army, and downgrade India's anti-terrorist concerns.
The wisest approach for India is bilateral diplomacy plus Security Council-centred multilateralism.
Post-Mumbai, India and Pakistan have only conducted "megaphone diplomacy." India should have used Track II approaches and quietly engaged Pakistani officials, sharing with them evidence against LeT. But the government has behaved as if Track II only works in peacetime, not during crises.
But various crises show that Track II is useful in emergencies too.
India can also approach the Security Council under resolutions, which cast a duty on all states to act against terrorists, refuse to harbour them, and inform one another about their activities. Failure to do so can invite sanctions.
If Pakistan fails to act, India can demand "smart sanctions," such as suspension of military aid, travel bans on state functionaries, and monitoring of progress of actions against terrorist groups.
Creative diplomacy is the need of the hour. Indian and Pakistani civil society groups have taken welcome initiatives to show it's both possible and necessary. The least our governments can do is to follow them.
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