The Mumbai Blasts

Alright, so writer/editor/analyst Nitin Pai of The Acorn and myself agreed to have a sort of public conversation on the Mumbai attacks and their aftermath. Below are the first two emails; I will follow with a third soon and hopefully Nitin will find the time to reply. Without further ado...
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Hi Nitin,

In some ways, it feels like the dust has settled on the Mumbai attacks - at least on the discourse front - but in many other ways, it feels like the party's just getting started. The atmosphere on both sides of the border is unbearably tense. There was a report in Dawn about how a prank call from someone purporting to be Pranab Mukherjee put Pakistan's military on alert. I guess this is what it would feel like if Brad Pitt went over to Jennifer Aniston's parents' house during Thanksgiving, only if Pitt and Aniston both had nuclear weapons.

There are three sets of "things" about the attacks and the aftermath: the set of things which I know for sure, the set of things I'm not sure of, and the set of things that I'm completely lost on.

Things I know for sure

1. Having Asif Zardari in charge during a crisis is a bad thing

I bet even the lawyers are missing Musharraf right now. That guy was smooth, knew how to play the media game, and could talk up a storm. Zardari, on the other hand, is a bumbling idiot. He clearly learned nothing from his wife, who was even better at playing the rhetoric game than Musharraf (she was able to convince the entire establishment in DC and London that the chosen one from a feudal-aristocratic family was most attuned to democratic and liberal principles, for crying out loud). Zardari is liable to say or do something immensely stupid, which would be harmful at the best of times but can be near-apocalyptic during a crisis between two nuclear-armed states. Having a guy who confused the causes of World War I for the causes of World War II, or who went on Indian television and talked about instituting a no-first-use policy on nukes without running it by the people who actually decide nuclear policy in Pakistan in charge is a bad thing.

2. India's options are severely limited

India cannot launch an invasion or anything of the sort, because Pakistan has nuclear weapons. It cannot expect the U.S. to do its bidding to the extent that it would like because, as Negeen mentioned, Pakistan actually has leverage over the U.S. in the form of 100,000 troops on its western border (though this is not to say the U.S. won't do its bidding at all, quite the contrary). Even "low-level" responses, such as precision military strikes in Pakistani Kashmir are fraught with danger. Finally, doing nothing is perhaps the most unpalatable option of all: the Indian people, if my reading of various Indian newspapers and blogs is correct, want to throw a punch, for cathartic purposes if nothing else. But at this point, they cannot take anything other than extremely lame measures like calling off India's cricket tour to Pakistan or not allowing the release of some Shah Rukh Khan movie across the border.

I was leading my weekly discussion section this past Wednesday for a introductory course in international relations. It was all undergrads, but they're smart undergrads. So I asked them a simple question: "What would you do?" If you were an adviser to Manmohan Singh right now, I asked, what do you tell him? I was met with silence. I waited. Nothing. "No, seriously. What do you say to him?" Nothing. I waited a couple of seconds, before I moved on to discuss this week's readings, but it was telling that there wasn't even a suggestion.

3. This was not India's 9/11

The reason 9/11 was America's 9/11 was that the U.S, as a state, was not used to political violence. Of any kind. Even its civil rights movement was abnormally non-violent. The idea of civilians being targeted for political aims was not just anathema to them, but simply new.

This is the main reason that Mumbai is not India's 9/11. India is a violent country, by most standards. From secessionist movements to ethnic riots to religious violence, India has seen it all.

And yet the reaction to this episode easily outflanks the reaction to other forms of violence, even if they were more brutal in terms of lives cost. By way of illustration, not only was Narendra Modi not punished for aiding and abetting riots that killed more than 2000 people - ten times the casualties of the Mumbai attacks - but he and his party were in fact rewarded by being reelected.

There is, of course, a very simple reason for this dichotomy: notions of Self and Other. Identities, as Alex Wendt might say, constitute interests. Put differently, who we think we are - and, by extension, who we think we are not - will impact what we consider to be impacting our values and beliefs. It's clear to me from the mobilization of civil society in India in the last ten days that violence perpetrated by groups originating from Pakistan simply means something different than violence perpetrated by one's own, even if the latter costs more in terms of lives lost. We in Pakistan are no strangers to this phenomenon. Innocent civilians lost due to American drone attacks elicit a very different reaction than the Taliban bombing girls' schools does.

Things I don't know for sure

1. What the motives of the attacks were

Assuming we can abandon the language of evil-doers and killing for killing's sake, I am unsure of the precise motivations for the attacks. I suppose how one conceives of the motivations of the attackers is in part determined by how one conceives of the attackers themselves.

If, for instance, one considers the attackers to be operating as an extension of the arm of the Pakistani state, then there are two possibilities. First, the attackers wanted to widen the low-level war fought in Kashmir for two decades to the Indian "mainland". Second, and more convolutely, the attackers were sent to escalate tensions on the eastern border, thus affording the military and the ISI the opportunity to take forces away from the western border where they are fighting an unpopular and difficult war.

On the other hand, if the attackers are a relatively autonomous entity, the possibilities change. One idea could be to sow discord between Pakistan and India, retard the five-year peace process which would marginalize them if it actually came to fruition, and create operational and political space for them to operate. If this is the case, they have already succeeded. Another possibility could be that this was a replica of Bali, i.e., a targeting of westerners in an eastern country. If that is the case, it is merely another step in these groups' war against the west.

I really don't know.

2. Is there anything the Congress Party can do to stop the BJP winning elections next year?

Crises are usually good for political parties in power, if they handle them correctly. The Republicans in the U.S., for example, used the rally-round-the-flag effect for a good six years to stay in power, despite being terrible at leading and governing. The Indian case seems different to me, because as a distant observer, I sense a fair degree of pent-up frustration with Congress' ability to protect Indians, and this Mumbai attack seems to be the straw that broke the camel's back. Do you think Congress has a snowball's chance in hell next year? If yes, why?

Things I am completely lost on

1. How the Pakistani security establishment is going to change priorities, if at all

It's no secret that post-9/11, the military and the ISI have targeted militant groups that operate against domestic targets - such as Shias - and targets to the west - such as in Afghanistan - a lot more than they've targeted groups that operate against targets to the east. I wouldn't go so far as saying the latter have been left alone, but they've definitely been given more leeway.

I wonder if that will change. On the one hand, this crisis has shown that these groups can mean a lot of trouble for Pakistan, because bringing the state to the brink of war with a militarily and economically stronger rival is a seriously suboptimal outcome. On the other hand, the preceding reason could well be used to justify their continued existence. In other words, the severe imbalance of power between Pakistan and India could be interpreted as a reason to keep these groups hanging around, just in case.

2. What Barry-O is thinking right now

You know how I feel really sorry for? The guy who idealistically claimed throughout his campaign that we - whomever "we" may be - "will change America and change the world." As I said in another class I TA, Obama is barely going to be able to change the carpeting in the White House, forget the entire bloody world (and I say this as an Obama supporter).

One issue is simply the course of events, which are invariably more complicated once you're in power than when you talk about them as a dispassionate observer. If Obama was faced with this crisis as President, what would he have done? Nothing too different than George W. Bush, I would imagine.

A more important issue is what the underlying intellectual philosophy is that guides Obama's thoughts. He seems to come from a tradition of realism, especially when he says things like "I have enormous sympathy for the foreign policy of George H. W. Bush." Indeed, this is the exact reason he picked Robert Gates as Defense Secretary - not all that team of rivals nonsense. On the other hand, he's spoken about supporting democracies and interventions in places like Darfur that make him closer to the liberal hawk/interventionist camp in the U.S. (think Madeline Albright). So when he picks the liberal-hawk-to-end-all-
liberal-hawks (Hillary) to be Secretary of State, I don't know what to think about his philosphy on international relations. And not knowing his general intellectual persuasions makes it harder to guess what he would think or do in specific crises like this one.

I guess that's a lot for one email. I'll shut up now, and look forward to your thoughts.

Best regards,

Ahsan
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Ahsan,

Using the 9/11 analogy or anticipating President Obama's stance on these attacks look at the situation from an America-centric perspective. While this may allow a greater degree of debate among scholars and laymen alike, it is best we set aside these distorting prisms if we want to examine the situation with clarity.

I have previously characterised contemporary India-Pakistan relations as a game where India faces three players on the Pakistani side. India would like to engage and give the benefit of the doubt to one player (now Zardari & Co, for the want of a better name), but contain or suppress the second (Gul & Co, again for the want of a better name). The third Pakistani player, Kayani & Co, stood in between the Zardari & Gul companies, with evolving relationships with either. The relationship between Zardari & Co and Gul & Co appears to India as antagonistic, but not beyond all doubt. The dynamics of this four-cornered relationship was evolving, and was perhaps headed for some stability, until the Mumbai terrorist attacks were executed by the Lashkar-e-Taiba, likely with the ISI's connivance.


The fact that the attacks were carried out, and allowed to be carried out suggests:


a) That whatever might be the long-term benefits of having a civilian dispensation in Pakistan, it is not a credible interlocutor in the short-term.


b) That, in the post-Musharraf dispensation, the quarters that control Pakistan's nuclear weapons and the quarters that control its jihadis are operating increasingly independently.


c) That unless India acts forcefully, it may have to live with an escalating level of terrorist attacks. The Mumbai blasts of 1993 set off the trend of serial blasts. The Mumbai blasts of 2006 set off a new series of synchronised bombings. The Mumbai attack of 2008 might indicate a new wave of urban guerilla warfare.

This suggests that India must match its long-term commitment to a Pakistan's internal reconciliation and democracy with a short-term disregard for the unwilling or impotent de jure rulers. India's response must not be constrained by the need to keep Zardari & Co in power.


Second, far from having no options, it must be noted that India has a few options: not conducting a punitive strike is an option; sending troops to Afghanistan is an option; working towards an international coalition (of the kind proposed by Robert Kagan recently) is an option; bridging the United States and Iran to make use of the land corridor from Bandar Abbas to Kabul via the Zaranj-Delaram highway is an option; lobbying the international community to tie economic aid to Pakistan to Islamabad's meeting concrete milestones is also an option. In fact, if it is established that Gul & Co conducted the Mumbai attacks independent of Kayani & Co, the nuclear dimension becomes more manageable.


Third, the Mumbai attackers might well have failed in a broad strategic sense: by uniting the fissiparous Indian polity on the need to defeat jihadi terrorism. True, the post-Mumbai spirit might fizzle out, but already, politicians and policymakers have come around to tackling terrorism in the right earnest.


As I write this, Zardari & Co have arrested a top-rung Lashkar-e-Taiba leader and raided its Muzzafarabad camps. Symbolic as it is, it is still a welcome move. But will the other players on the Pakistani side accept this quietly?

regards,

Nitin