+ Larger Font | + Smaller Font

Open Forum

The Open Forum on this web-site, is a place where all are welcome with their fresh ideas, suggestions, recommendations, frank opinions and candid comments on practically anything under the sun. Our webmasters will be always accommodative to accept all that you want to say, albeit within the framework of relevance to the Prabodhini's Mission!

The Prabodhini's Mission includes anything and everything about democracy, leadership, good governance and volunteer work, as also development activism, institution building and above all, human development!

All those desirous of contributing to this Forum, should send their articles, essays, features or just plain thoughts to forumeditor@rmponweb.org


The Pioneer http://www.dailypioneer.com OPED | Friday, December 26, 2008

Not war as we know

Hiranmay Karlekar - Pay Pakistan back in its own coin

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has done well to make it clear that India does not want a war with Pakistan. What he meant was obviously conventional war, like the ones the two countries fought in 1947-48, 1965, 1971 and 1999. The fact is that Pakistan has been waging an unconventional war against India, in the form of encouraging insurgency and terrorism, ever since the 1950s. Its instrument has been the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate formed in 1948. The latter began arming, training and otherwise aiding secessionist Naga rebels from what was then East Pakistan, from the 1950s. In the 1960s it extended support to secessionist Mizo rebels as well.

The process came to a halt at the end of 1971 when East Pakistan emerged as independent Bangladesh led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman following a heroic, as well as a profoundly traumatic, liberation struggle. Pakistan, however, resumed it not long after his savage murder, along with all member of his family except his two daughters, Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana, on August 15, 1975. Maj-Gen Zia-ur Rahman, who established himself as a military dictator after a brief interregnum, and who later introduced an authoritarian constitution with democratic trappings, sought consolidate his position with the support of pro-Pakistani fundamentalist Islamists, centred round the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh and its front organisations, who had collaborated with Pakistanis in 1971 trying to savagely suppress the liberation war. During his rule, which was cut short by his assassination in May 1981, and also that of Lt-Gen HM Ershad, which followed, again, after a brief interregnum, Bangladesh’s premier intelligence agency, the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI) ,began functioning like a branch office of the ISI.

The DGFI began providing sanctuary, training and other help to secessionist rebel outfits of northeastern India like the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Isaak-Muivah), United Liberation Front of Asom and the United National Liberation Front (UNLF) of Manipur, and the separatist Kamptapuri Liberation Organisation operating in North Bengal. In the west, the ISI began arming and training Kashmiri and Sikh secessionist rebels in the training camps set up for Mujahideen groups fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan. The process continues unabated in Bangladesh, with successive Governments of the country contemptuously dismissing India’ s request to stop aiding the rebels In the West, the Punjab Police, led by Mr KPS Gill, has suppressed Sikh terrorist organisations and the ISI’s efforts to revive them have drawn a blank. With terrorist strikes becoming increasingly difficult in Jammu & Kashmir thanks to the vigilance of the security forces, the ISI, with the cooperation of the DGFI and terrorist organisations like the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami Bangladesh (HUJIB), have been hitting out in different parts of this country.

The attack on Mumbai on November 26, as well as that on Parliament on December 13, 2001, was a part of the same process which has the aim of not only wresting Jammu & Kashmir from India but weakening and balkanising the latter through the strategy of ‘death by thousand cuts’ inflicted by terrorists and insurgents. In the case of the attack on Mumbai and Parliament, however, there was also a specific aim-provoking an Indian response which would provide Pakistan with an opportunity to divert its troops now engaged in fighting — albeit selectively and unwillingly — Taliban and Al Qaeda forces operating from their bases in its Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and North-West Frontier Province and staging terrorist strikes in, and attacks on, United States and Nato forces in Afghanistan.

The reason is simple. Pakistan wants to keep the Al Qaeda and the Taliban alive to re-establish its lost suzerainty over Afghanistan, use them as force multiplier in its continuing unconventional war against India, and milk the United States for financial and military aid on the plea of fighting them. The question is: What should India do? A conventional war now is precisely what Pakistan wants, a point underlined by its warlike moves on the ground and aggressive aerial exercises over its important cities. Even otherwise, a war is no solution. Since both countries have nuclear weapon, internal pressure will halt it before it comes to a nuclear standoff. The answer is retaliating through unconventional warfare against both Pakistan and Bangladesh and applying economic pressure. It is time we began.


Other Articles