Monday, January 26, 2009

The Dilemma of Dealing With Terror Central

Ramesh Thakur

WATERLOO: In the winter of 1971, as millions of refugees poured into India from then East Pakistan in the grip of civil war, the world advised India against war but offered no solution to the crisis. Subsequent Indian military intervention helped create Bangladesh from the breakaway state. The current imbroglio over Pakistan’s role in the terrorist attacks in Mumbai and the world’s passive role rings an ominous parallel with the past.
Once again, outsiders advise India against war, but offer no realistic plan to destroy the infrastructure of terrorism infesting Pakistan and endangering the world. War clouds will continue to gather as three key equations change.
First, as terrorists have attacked India repeatedly with Pakistan-based planning, training and financing, the balance between military response and inaction has shifted toward the former. Pakistan’s military-intelligence-jihadist complex has been lethally effective in outsourcing terrorism as an instrument of policy. India has been second only to Iraq as the scene of terrorist attacks, averaging more than a 1000 terrorist killings annually in the last five years. India’s policy of offshoring the response by appealing to the nebulous international community has been ineffectual. Washington and its NATO allies are more interested in cajoling Pakistan to fight the militants in the lawless border region with Afghanistan. Russia has no leverage over Pakistan. China has a history of using Pakistan to trap India in a subcontinental straitjacket; its media have dutifully parroted Pakistan’s line about India looking for external scapegoats for national intelligence and policy failures. Outsiders’ neglect of India’s sensitivity could result in a double blow: a costly India-Pakistan war and the intensification of export-quality Islamist terrorism as Pakistan falls apart.
Even by the dismal standards of a well established frontline state in the fight against terrorism, the carnage in Mumbai was notable for its savagery, audacity, choice of targets and duration. The possible motives include the desire to provoke Hindu-Muslim riots in India; to strike at the heart of India’s rising global profile as a big emerging market by crippling its financial capital; to sabotage the provincial elections being held in Kashmir; to undermine the peace and goodwill gestures toward India by President Asif Ali Zardari; or to stoke India-Pakistan tensions as a means of drawing Pakistani attention and military resources back from the Afghan border regions to Kashmir and the Indian border.
The Mumbai attacks mark a tipping point and constitute India’s own “9/11.” There is a frozen anger today in the country not sensed before at a government that is all bark and no bite. Indians are as contemptuous of their own politicians as angry at Pakistan. Delhi’s intelligence failures and bumbling response were amplified by politicians’ tone-deaf comments that reeked of insolence and imperiousness. After each terrorist attack, the government expresses shock, promises resolute action against the heinous perpetrators and blames a foreign country for arming, financing and training the terrorists, and then retreats into complacency and inaction until the next big attacks. Unvented public rage could morph into rejection of democracy as limp and corrupt.
Second, India may no longer have a vested interest in a strong and stable Pakistan. It would be better off with such a neighbor, just as all South Asians benefit from a vibrant India. But for a decade, even as Pakistan has teetered on the brink of collapse and disintegration, reduced to a bit player, India has prospered and emerged as a big player in world affairs.
Third, Pakistan’s record of double dealing, deceit and denial of Pakistan-based attacks, in Afghanistan and India alike, has been based on four degrees of separation – between the government, army, ISI, and terrorists – whose plausibility may be fading as it is exploited as a convenient alibi to escape accountability. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, by instinct circumspect in his words, said on January 6 that “given the sophistication and military precision,” the Mumbai attacks “must have had the support of some official agencies in Pakistan.” The combination of training, selection and advance reconnaissance of targets, diversionary tactics, discipline, munitions, cryptographic communications, false IDs and damage inflicted is more typically associated with special forces units than terrorists.
The attacks presented India with a policy dilemma of heads they win, tails we lose. No effective response by New Delhi keeps India bleeding at a cost-free policy for Pakistan. A military response would allow Pakistan’s army to break from fighting the Islamist militants that deepens the army’s unpopularity, assert dominance over the civilian government, regain the support of the people as the custodian of national sovereignty and internationalize the bilateral dispute.
What then might be a way forward? One or both of two further equations need to change. First, the military must be brought under full civilian control. This cannot be done until the government accepts the evidence of the connections to Pakistan from the captured terrorist as well as satellite and cellular phone logs and intercepts. Outsiders, including India, cannot help if the government persists with denial well past the point of plausibility. The dossier provided by India, assembled with the help of the forensic skills of American and British agencies, is compelling. There is justification for Secretary Madeleine Albright’s description of Pakistan as an international migraine and the more popular label of it as the world’s terror central.
The second solution should be attempted only if the establishment of civilian supremacy over Pakistan’s military-intelligence services proves impossible. Like the Americans firing missiles into Pakistan from unmanned drones, India should adopt the policy of taking the fight into neighboring territory from where terror attacks originate. It should root out the human leadership and material infrastructure of terrorism through surgical strikes and targeted assassinations. India does not have such intelligence and military capacity today; it must embark on a crash course to acquire it. And combine it with escalation dominance capability: Pakistan should know that any escalation from the limited strikes will bring even heavier punitive costs from a superior military force.
This brings us to the need to change a final equation. Pakistan’s contributions to the war on terror on its western front are of lesser import than its fuelling of terror on its eastern front. Yet the rewards for the former exceed penalties for the latter. And much of the $10 billion US military aid has been directed by Pakistan at India, not the Taliban. India and the US together need to reverse the structure of incentives and penalties.
There is a desperate need for all countries of the region to cooperate in ridding South Asia of the deadly virus of terrorism. This requires a united three-pronged approach of robust and resolute action by the law enforcement agencies acting collaboratively, efficient and credible criminal justice systems and an urgent redress of group-based political grievances that stops Muslims from being massacred in Gujarat, Christians from being terrorized in Orissa, Hindus from being ethnically cleansed in Kashmir, Tamils from being oppressed in Sri Lanka, and civilians from being butchered by terrorists across South Asia. All this can best be done through democratic structures and institutions; not abandoning but upholding the rule of law impartially, strictly and promptly.

Ramesh Thakur is the founding director of the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Ontario.
YaleGlobal Online
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=11831

Monday, January 12, 2009

Time will show if the lessons of 2006 were learnt

Tim Cross

For those of us who have lived through the wars of 1956, 1967, 1973 and 1982, and all the wars since, there is a strong element of deja vu as another ground campaign gets under way.
Leaving aside the political rights and wrongs, any military analysis should consider the Strategic Intent, the Operational Campaign Plan and the Tactical Battles.
Strategically, what is each side after? On the face of it, Hamas's intent is the establishment of a viable state – if not the destruction of Israel. Hamas clearly decided that the best way to keep the pot boiling was to goad Israel into taking what would be seen as repressive and disproportionate action; this to bring down the wrath of the international community and if possible to draw in allies. For its part – and in the knowledge that it currently has the support of the US – Israel sees no option but to deal with the constant rocket attacks by taking offensive military action. But it would appear that strategically their intent now is to destroy Hamas as an effective political and military force, forcing the Palestinians in Gaza to think again about the nature of their government.
Operationally, the Israeli campaign plan is what is known as a joint offensive – using air, land and naval power to isolate and destroy the Hamas leadership, and to destroy their ability to conduct attacks on Israeli settlements and towns. The strength of the initial air campaign seemingly caught Hamas off guard. That they have been hurt cannot be in dispute. But it is clear that Hamas's ability to continue to attack Israel has not yet been destroyed. Hence the land campaign. Whilst the decision to launch it will not have been taken lightly, it does seem that this was the intent from the start. The Israeli leadership will not have believed that they could destroy Hamas from the air. But a land campaign means closing with Hamas in tactical battles.
Tactically, Israel is able to use its armoured forces to good effect initially. The problem will come when they hit the urban centres. Fighting in built-up areas is notoriously difficult; it soaks up manpower, and casualty rates – on both sides – will be high. Finding and destroying all the weapon stockpiles will be no easy task.
It was tactically that Israel lost in the Lebanon in 2006; Israel says that it learnt lessons from that campaign. Time will tell.
The irony, however, is that even if you win tactically you don't necessarily win operationally or strategically. My guess is that Israeli forces will capture or destroy a lot of "stuff". They will probably win the majority of the physical fights, and they may well out-manoeuvre and out-think Hamas. But that will not be enough. The key component of military fighting power is the Moral Component. And the key issue here will be the way that this land campaign is fought, and the damage that is done. Many will die in the coming days, and the balance will surely be heavily against the Palestinians; and the flow of humanitarian support into Gaza has at best been constrained. This will only get worse. What the world will see will be an unequal fight; and I doubt that their sympathies will be with Israel.

Major General (Retired) Tim Cross was the senior British officer within the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad in 2003
The Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/tim-cross-time-will-show-if-the-lessons-of-2006-were-learnt-1225798.html

The new Cicero

Charlotte Higgins

In the run-up to the US presidential election, the online magazine Slate ran a series of dictionary definitions of "Obamaisms". One ran thus: "Barocrates (buh-ROH-cruh-teez) n. An obscure Greek philosopher who pioneered a method of teaching in which sensitive topics are first posed as questions then evaded."
There were other digs at Barack Obama that alluded to ancient Greece and Rome. When he accepted the Democratic party nomination, he did so before a stagey backdrop of doric columns. Republicans said this betrayed delusions of grandeur: this was a temple out of which Obama would emerge like a self-styled Greek god. (Steve Bell also discerned a Romanness in the image, and drew Obama for this paper as a toga-ed emperor.) In fact, the resonance of those pillars was much more complicated than the Republicans would have it. They recalled the White House, which itself summoned up visual echoes of the Roman republic, on whose constitution that of the US is based. They recalled the Lincoln Memorial, before which Martin Luther King delivered his "I have a dream" speech. They recalled the building on which the Lincoln Memorial is based - the Parthenon. By drawing us symbolically to Athens, we were located at the very birthplace of democracy.
Here's the thing: to understand the next four years of American politics, you are going to need to understand something of the politics of ancient Greece and Rome.
There have been many controversial aspects to this presidential election, but one thing is uncontroversial: that Obama's skill as an orator has been one of the most important factors - perhaps the most important factor - in his victory. The sheer numbers of people who have heard him speak live set him apart from his rivals - and, indeed, recall the politics of ancient Athens, where the public speech given to ordinary voters was the motor of politics, and where the art of rhetoric matured alongside democracy.
Obama has bucked the trend of recent presidents - not excluding Bill Clinton - for dumbing down speeches. Elvin T Lim's book The Anti-Intellectual Presidency: The Decline of Presidential Rhetoric from George Washington to George W Bush, submits presidential oratory to statistical analysis. He concludes that 100 years ago speeches were pitched at college reading level. Now they are at 8th grade. Obama's speeches, by contrast, flatter their audience. His best speeches are adroit literary creations, rich, like those doric columns, with allusion, his turn of phrase consciously evoking lines by Lincoln and King, by Woody Guthrie and Sam Cooke. Though he has speechwriters, he does much of the work himself. (Jon Favreau, the 27-year-old who heads Obama's speechwriting team, has said that his job is like being "Ted Williams's batting coach.") James Wood, professor of the practice of literary criticism at Harvard, has already performed a close-reading exercise on the victory speech for the New Yorker. Can you imagine the same being done of a George Bush speech?
More than once, the adjective that has been deployed to describe Obama's oratorical skill is "Ciceronian". Cicero, the outstanding Roman politician of the late republic, was certainly the greatest orator of his time, and one of the greatest in history. A fierce defender of the republican constitution, his criticism of Mark Antony got him murdered in 43BC.
During the Roman republic (and in ancient Athens) politics was oratory. In Athens, questions such as whether or not to declare war on an enemy state were decided by the entire electorate (or however many bothered to turn up) in open debate. Oratory was the supreme political skill, on whose mastery power depended. Unsurprisingly, then, oratory was highly organised and rigorously analysed. The Greeks and Romans, in short, knew all the rhetorical tricks, and they put a name to most of them.
It turns out that Obama knows them, too. One of the best known of Cicero's techniques is his use of series of three to emphasise points: the tricolon. (The most enduring example of a Latin tricolon is not Cicero's, but Caesar's "Veni, vidi, vici" - I came, I saw, I conquered.) Obama uses tricola freely. Here's an example: "Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation, not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy ..." In this passage, from the 2004 Democratic convention speech, Obama is also using the technique of "praeteritio" - drawing attention to a subject by not discussing it. (He is discounting the height of America's skyscrapers etc, but in so doing reminds us of their importance.)
One of my favourites among Obama's tricks was his use of the phrase "a young preacher from Georgia", when accepting the Democratic nomination this August; he did not name Martin Luther King. The term for the technique is "antonomasia". One example from Cicero is the way he refers to Phoenix, Achilles' mentor in the Iliad, as "senior magister" - "the aged teacher". In both cases, it sets up an intimacy between speaker and audience, the flattering idea that we all know what we are talking about without need for further exposition. It humanises the character - King was just an ordinary young man, once. Referring to Georgia by name localises the reference - Obama likes to use the specifics to American place to ground the winged sweep of his rhetoric - just as in his November 4 speech: "Our campaign ... began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston", which, of course, is also another tricolon.
Obama's favourite tricks of the trade, it appears, are the related anaphora and epiphora. Anaphora is the repetition of a phrase at the start of a sentence. Again, from November 4: "It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools ... It's the answer spoken by young and old ... It's the answer ..." Epiphora does the same, but at the end of a sentence. From the same speech (yet another tricolon): "She lives to see them stand out and speak up and reach for the ballot. Yes we can." The phrase "Yes we can" completes the next five paragraphs.
That "Yes we can" refrain might more readily summon up the call-and-response preaching of the American church than classical rhetoric. And, of course, Obama has been influenced by his time in the congregations of powerfully effective preachers. But James Davidson, reader in ancient history at the University of Warwick, points out that preaching itself originates in ancient Greece. "The tradition of classical oratory was central to the early church, when rhetoric was one of the most important parts of education. Through sermons, the church captured the rhetorical tradition of the ancients. America has preserved that, particularly in the black church."
It is not just in the intricacies of speechifying that Obama recalls Cicero. Like Cicero, Obama is a lawyer. Like Cicero, Obama is a writer of enormous accomplishment - Dreams From My Father, Obama's first book, will surely enter the American literary canon. Like Cicero, Obama is a "novus homo" - the Latin phrase means "new man" in the sense of self-made. Like Cicero, Obama entered politics without family backing (compare Clinton) or a military record (compare John McCain). Roman tradition dictated you had both. The compensatory talent Obama shares with Cicero, says Catherine Steel, professor of classics at the University of Glasgow, is a skill at "setting up a genealogy of forebears - not biological forebears but intellectual forebears. For Cicero it was Licinius Crassus, Scipio Aemilianus and Cato the Elder. For Obama it is Lincoln, Roosevelt and King."
Steel also points out how Obama's oratory conforms to the tripartite ideal laid down by Aristotle, who stated that good rhetoric should consist of pathos, logos and ethos - emotion, argument and character. It is in the projection of ethos that Obama particularly excels. Take this resounding passage: "I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton's army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I've gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world's poorest nations." He manages to convey the sense that not only can he revive the American dream, but that he personally embodies - actually, in some sense, is - the American dream.
In English, when we use the word "rhetoric", it is generally preceded by the word "empty". Rhetoric has a bad reputation. McCain warned lest an electorate be "deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change". Waspishly, Clinton noted, "You campaign in poetry, you govern in prose." The Athenians, too, knew the dangers of a populace's being swept along by a persuasive but unscrupulous demagogue (and they invented the word). And it was the Roman politician Cato - though it could have been McCain - who said "Rem tene, verba sequentur". If you hold on to the facts, the words will follow.
Cicero was well aware of the problem. In his book On The Orator, he argues that real eloquence can be acquired only if the speaker has attained the highest state of knowledge - "otherwise what he says is just an empty and ridiculous swirl of verbiage". The true orator is one whose practice of citizenship embodies a civic ideal - whose rhetoric, far from empty, is the deliberate, rational, careful organiser of ideas and argument that propels the state forward safely and wisely. This is clearly what Obama, too, is aiming to embody: his project is to unite rhetoric, thought and action in a new politics that eschews narrow bipartisanship. Can Obama's words translate into deeds? The presidency of George Bush provided plenty of evidence that a man who has problems with his prepositions may also struggle to govern well. We can only hope that Obama's presidency proves that opposite.

• Charlotte Higgins is the author of It's All Greek To Me: From Homer to the Hippocratic Oath, How Ancient Greece Has Shaped Our World (Short Books).

Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/26/barack-obama-usa1

Bombs and bullets cannot destroy India - as long as its gates remain open

Shashi Tharoor

There is a savage irony to the fact that the unfolding horror in Mumbai began with terrorists docking near the Gateway of India. The magnificent arch, built in 1911 to welcome the King-Emperor, has ever since stood as a symbol of the openness of the city. Crowds flock around it, made up of foreign tourists and local yokels; touts hawk their wares; boats bob in the waters, offering cruises out to the open sea. The teeming throngs around it daily reflect India's diversity, with Parsi gentlemen out for their evening constitutionals, Muslim women in burkas taking the sea air, Goan Catholic waiters enjoying a break from their duties at the stately Taj Mahal hotel, Hindus from every corner of the country chatting in a multitude of tongues. Today, ringed by police barricades, the Gateway of India - and gateway to India's soul - is barred, mute testimony to the latest assault on the country's pluralist democracy.
The terrorists knew exactly what they were doing. Theirs was an attack on India's financial nerve-centre and commercial capital, a city emblematic of the country's energetic thrust into the 21st century. They struck at symbols of the prosperity that was making the Indian model so attractive to the globalising world - luxury hotels, a swish cafe, an apartment house favoured by foreigners. The terrorists also sought to polarise Indian society by claiming to be acting to redress the grievances of India's Muslims. And by singling out Britons, Americans and Israelis, they demonstrated that their brand of Islamist fanaticism is anchored less in the absolutism of pure faith than in the geopolitics of hate.
Today, the platitudes flow like blood. Terrorism is unacceptable; the terrorists are cowards; the world stands united in unreserved condemnation of this latest atrocity. Commentators in America trip over themselves to pronounce this night and day of carnage India's 9/11. But India has endured many attempted 9/11s, notably a ferocious assault on its national parliament in December 2001 that nearly led to all-out war against the assailants' presumed sponsors, Pakistan. This year alone, terrorist bombs have taken lives in Jaipur, in Ahmedabad, in Delhi, and several different places on one searing day in Assam. Jaipur is the lodestar of Indian tourism to Rajasthan; Ahmedabad is the primary city of Gujarat, the state that is a poster child for India's development; Delhi is the political capital and window to the world; Assam was logistically convenient for terrorists from across a porous border. Mumbai combined all the four elements of its precursors: a grand slam.
Indians have learned to endure the unspeakable horrors of terrorist violence ever since malign men in Pakistan concluded it was cheaper and more effective to bleed India to death than to attempt to defeat it in conventional war. Attack after attack has been proven to have been financed, equipped and guided from across the border, the most recent being the suicide-bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul, an action publicly traced by American intelligence to Islamabad's dreaded military special-ops agency, the ISI.
The risible attempt to claim the Mumbai killings in the name of the "Deccan Mujahideen" merely confirms that wherever the killers are from, it is not the Deccan. The Deccan lies inland from Mumbai; one does not need to sail the waters of the Arabian Sea to get to the city from there. In its meticulous planning and military precision, the assault on Mumbai bore no trace of what its promoters tried to suggest it was - a spontaneous eruption by angry young Indian Muslims. This horror was not homegrown.
The Islamist extremism nurtured by a succession of military rulers of Pakistan has now come to haunt its well-intentioned but lamentably weak civilian government. The militancy once sponsored by its predecessors now threatens to abort Pakistan's sputtering democracy and seeks to engulf India in its flames. There has never been a stronger case for firm and united action by the governments of both India and Pakistan to cauterise the cancer in their midst.
India is a land of great resilience that has learned, over arduous millenniums, to cope with tragedy. Bombs and bullets alone cannot destroy it, because Indians will pick their way through the rubble and carry on as they have done throughout history. But what can destroy India is a change in the spirit of its people, away from the pluralism and coexistence that has been our greatest strength. The prime minister's call for calm and restraint in the face of murderous rampage is vital. If these tragic events lead to the demonisation of the Muslims of India, the terrorists will have won. For India to be India, its gateway - to the multiple Indias within, and the heaving seas without - must always remain open.

• Shashi Tharoor is a former UN under-secretary general and author of The Elephant, the Tiger & the Cell Phone shashitharoor.com

Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/28/mumbai-terror-attacks-india-islam

Mumbai terror attacks: India fury at Pakistan as bloody siege is crushed

Randeep Ramesh and Vikram Dodd in Mumbai, Jason Burke in Islamabad, and Peter Beaumont

Tensions between India and Pakistan escalated last night after it was claimed that the only terrorist to have survived three days of deadly battles in Mumbai was from Pakistan, and that his nine fellow Islamist militants were either from that country or had been trained there.
The claims about responsibility for the attack, in which almost 200 people were killed, came from leaked police accounts that gave details of the interrogation of Azam Amir Kasab, 21, said to have been the man pictured at Mumbai's main train station carrying an assault rifle and grenades.
According to the reports, which could not be independently verified, Kasab said that the operation was the responsibility of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a jihadist group based in Pakistan, and its aim was to 'kill as many as possible' in what was intended to be India's 9/11. The claims were made as Indian special forces ended the violent sieges around Mumbai with the killing of the final three terrorists holding out in the Taj Mahal Palace hotel - where British survivors had walked through rooms strewn with bodies and 'blood and guts' as they were led to safety.
The allegations about Pakistan emerged as India was confronted with the full horror of the past few days. Reporters were allowed into the wrecked and scorched remains of the Taj Mahal and Trident-Oberoi hotels, where scores of victims had been murdered.
Public anger in India has been mounting following allegations linking Pakistan to the attacks. They include:
• Kasab's claim that militants were trained in two camps run by Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan.
• Allegations that phones found on a trawler suspected of ferrying the gunmen to Mumbai had been used to contact Pakistan.
• The claim by India's minister of state for home affairs, Sri Prakash Jaiswal, that 'the investigation carried out so far has revealed the hand of Pakistan-based groups in the Mumbai attack'.
In response to the claim that the attackers were either Pakistanis or had been trained there, a senior Pakistani official said troops would be sent to the border if tensions continued to rise.
However, despite initial claims, it became increasingly certain that there was no involvement of British-based fundamentalists. Police forces across the UK denied they were investigating named individuals and Gordon Brown said there was no evidence linking any of the terrorist to the UK.
The escalating war of words between India and Pakistan has set alarm bells ringing in the United States, where President Bush convened an emergency meeting with senior security officials. President-elect Barack Obama, who has said that reconciliation between the nuclear-armed neighbours is essential to stabilise Afghanistan and defeat al-Qaeda, called Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday night to offer condolences.
The cold-blooded intent of the militants has shaken India. Officials said just 10 gunmen, with enough arms and ammunition 'to kill 5,000 people', had attacked the Taj, the Trident-Oberoi, the main railway station, a popular restaurant and a cinema. In the siege of a Jewish centre, which was retaken by security forces on Friday night, the militants had bound and shot five people, including a rabbi and his wife, before they were killed.
A handful of gunmen held out for almost three days, taking hundreds of people hostage, many of them Westerners. Twenty-two of those killed were foreigners. Last night emergency services raised the prospect that many - including three Britons - were still missing from the Taj.
The gunmen set the 105-year-old hotel ablaze as they evaded scores of India's best-trained commandos. They left bodies with grenades stuffed into their mouths.
The photograph of a baby-faced militant, whom newspaper reports claim is Kasab, wearing combat trousers and swinging an AK47 in Mumbai's main railway station, is the defining image of the rampage. His victims are said to include Mumbai's anti-terror squad chief Hemant Karkare, whose body was cremated yesterday.
Under questioning, Kasab is said to have admitted to being a resident of Faridkot in Pakistan's Punjab province. 'I was trained by Lashkar-e-Taiba and asked to cause maximum casualties in Mumbai,' he is alleged to have said, referring to an organisation which India says is sending armed militants into Kashmir. Kasab was arrested on Wednesday night after his partner, said to be Ismail Khan, was shot dead.
The duo's night began when they fired on commuters in the railway station and in two hospitals. Kasab told police that they had learnt about Mumbai's geography using Google Earth.
According to Indian media reports, the captured militant said that a room booked in the Taj had been used to store explosives and ammunition ahead of the attacks. This might explain how the squads of gunmen were able to reload their weapons over more than 50 hours and appeared to have an inexhaustible supply of grenades.
Asif Ali Zardari, the President of Pakistan, yesterday appeared on Indian television in an attempt to defuse tensions. 'As President of Pakistan, if any evidence comes of any individual or group in any part of my country, I shall take the swiftest action in the light of evidence and in front of the world,' he said.
Analysts said that the omens did not look good for the peace process between India and Pakistan. 'I expect a very difficult time ahead,' said Tariq Fatemi, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington. 'Anything short of a real and genuine effort to co-operate by Pakistan would send very, very bad signals - not just to India but to the US and to Europe too.'

Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/30/mumbai-terror-attacks-india3

Mumbai: Behind the attacks lies a story of youth twisted by hate

Jason Burke

The pitted roads around Multan, the city of saints, stretch flat across the fields. They lead past rundown factories, workshops, shabby roadside teashops and mile after mile of flat fields broken only by the mud and brick houses of the villages of Pakistan's rural poor. One road leads south-east to the nearby city of Bahawalpur, the biggest recruiting base of the militant groups currently being blamed by India for the Mumbai attack; another leads north-west to Faridkot, the home village of Mohammad Ajmal Mohammad Amin Kasab, a 21-year-old Pakistan national named yesterday in the Indian media as the only gunman involved in last week's atrocity now alive and in custody.
Already a picture claimed by the Indian media to be Kasab, showing a young man dressed in combat trousers, carrying a backpack and an AK47, on his way to to Mumbai's main station to carry out his deadly work, has become an iconic image of the assault on the city.
Two other militants have been named. Like Kasab, according to the Indian media reports, they are said to be from the Multan region, southern Punjab. They, too, are said to be members of the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure) and to have followed a five-month training period to prepare them for the attack. The charge of the group's involvement, denied by its spokesmen, has explosive political consequences for the volatile region and must be treated with caution. In the long-running contest between India and its neighbour, propaganda and misinformation is far from rare. But if the details now emerging are confirmed, the link to Pakistan may spark war.
For though it is widely acknowledged that Pakistan's civilian government has limited control over local militant groups, it is clear that Pakistan's military and security establishment does.
Lashkar-e-Taiba was originally founded with the support of the Pakistani military intelligence service, the ISI, to fight as 'deniable' proxies in the contested territory of Kashmir, part of a decades-old strategy by the militarily weaker Pakistan to 'bleed' its bigger rival. The ISI also has connections with Jaish-e-Mohammed, the second group that New Delhi security officials has accused of involvement in the Mumbai attacks.
For the moment little is known about the three men named yesterday or their accomplices. But their place of origin comes as no surprise to experts. Both Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed draw the majority of their recruits from the southern Punjab. Last week The Observer travelled to the twin towns of Multan and Bahawalpur, the centres of the region, to investigate the reality of the groups' power on the ground, their relations with the Pakistani intelligence services and the factors which drive young men, possibly including the Mumbai gunmen, to join them.
Trace a line from where US special forces battle Taliban fighters in the corner of empty desert where the Afghan, Pakistani and Iranian frontiers meet, follow it through the badlands of the Pakistani North West Frontier and on through the bomb-blasted cities of northern Pakistan and down through Delhi, attacked in September, to shell-shocked Mumbai, and one thing becomes clear: this zone has displaced the Middle East as the new central front in the struggle against Islamic militancy. The southern Punjab falls on the line's centre point. There may be doubt over the identity of the attackers, but there is none that Multan and Bahawalpur and villages such as Faridkot are in the Indians' sights.
For most militants in the region the story - and that of Azam Amir Kasab is unlikely to be very different - starts at school. The southern Punjab has one of the highest concentrations of religious schools or madrassas in south Asia. Most teach the ultra-conservative Deobandi strand of Islam that is also followed by the Afghan Taliban and, crucially in this desperately poor land, offers free classes, board and lodging to students.
In Bahawalpur the Jaish-e-Mohammed group, believed responsible for a string of brutal attacks across south Asia, including the murder of Jewish American journalist Daniel Pearl, has been linked to two such madrassas. One is the headquarters of the group - a semi-fortified and forbidding complex in the centre of the town. The other is the Dar-ul-Uloom Medina, where the brother-in-law of Rashid Rauf, the Bahawalpur-based suspected British militant thought to have been killed in an American missile attack eight days ago, is a teacher. Surrounded by some of the 700 students, he told The Observer that 'jihad' was the duty of all his young charges.
The pupils at the more radical Bahawalpur and Multan schools grow up soaked in extremist ideology. The most senior cleric in Bahawalpur, Maulana Riaz Chugti, said his students could only go 'for training or to fight' after their studies or when the schools were shut for the holy month of Ramadan.
'To fight in Afghanistan or Kashmir and to struggle against the forces who are against Islam is our religious duty,' Chugti, who oversees the education of 40,000 students, told The Observer.
In Bahawalpur both the effects and the limits of the recent reversal of policy by the ISI, the powerful Pakistani military intelligence service, are evident. A crackdown on the militant groups was launched after they were blamed for a bloody attack on the Indian parliament in 2001 which almost brought India and Pakistan to open war. The groups, previously seen as a strategic asset, were suddenly seen as, at least for the moment, a liability. When their operatives were linked to plots to assassinate the then President, and evidence of collusion with al-Qaeda itself became clear, the pressure mounted on the ISI to rein in their former protégés.
'The militants have had to lower their profile,' said one local security official. 'They are no longer recruiting or preaching or raising funds openly. Things are much more difficult for them. If they recruit at all they do it individual by individual, not en masse like before. There is no production line.'
But the groups - along with break-away outfits with their roots in sectarian Shia-Sunni violence in the region - still have a significant presence in the region, particularly in remote villages such as that of Azam Amir Kasab. 'They may be semi-retired, but in my village there are 300 men who have fought in Afghanistan and have training and can be activated with one phone call,' one local former militant said. That fighters for one operation should come from the same place was not surprising. 'When I went to Afghanistan I went with five guys who I knew from school,' he said.
The young men of the southern Punjab have been found across a broad swath of south Asia and even further afield. In Kabul in August, The Observer interviewed Abit, a 23-year-old from Bahawalpur who had surrendered to Afghan police seconds before he was supposed to blow himself up in a huge truck bomb. Other militants from the town have been found as far away as Bangladesh. Lashkar-e-Taiba members have even been located in Iraq.
The groups are also of great interest to British intelligence services, who fear their key role as intermediaries between young volunteers from the UK's Muslim community - such as Rauf - and al-Qaeda leaders based in the volatile tribal zones along Pakistan's western frontier. The groups, the sources say, have a UK support network to supply funding.
The groups' relationship with the intelligence services is complex. Front organisations for the groups have even put up candidates in recent elections and travel without fear throughout Pakistan. Earlier this year The Observer interviewed a representative of one group alleged to be linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba in the foyer of a luxury Lahore hotel.
Local politicians said groups in the region were still powerful enough to intimidate the local government and security forces and even to collect tax or mediate in legal disputes in some areas. Roshan Gilani, a Shia community leader in Bahawalpur, said music shops had received Taliban-style threats, telling them to close or risk violence. Prominent Shias have been told they are on a hit list.
Until the Mumbai attacks, the recent series of bombings in India had been attributed by most analysts to a home-grown militant outfit: the Indian Mujahideen. With many highly educated and middle-class recruits among its ranks, and led by a 36-year-old computer engineer, the group's members have a very different profile from the Pakistani groups' recruits. But though their paths may be very different, the militants' eventual destination - fanaticism, violence and hate - are the same.
Intelligence agencies have done much research since 9/11 into how individuals become terrorist killers. Dehumanising the enemy is seen as key. Civilians are no longer seen as innocent but as complicit in a war waged by their governments against Islam. Group dynamics also play a huge role, particularly when teams of militants are isolated from normal society for long periods of time. Training camps - such as those in which Azam Amir Kasab is said to have spent months - are the perfect way of reinforcing solidarity and the new 'world view' which will allow them to execute murderous operations, such as killing diners in a hotel restaurant in cold blood.
Indian authorities believe local members of the Indian Mujahideen may have acted as scouts to prepare the ground and gather intelligence before the attack. Security services now recognise that militant groups looking to prepare attacks seek out resources and often enter into temporary coalitions with other outfits when necessary. Though criminal links to Islamic militants are rare, they are not unknown, and there are some suggestions that local underworld networks may have been exploited to get the attackers to the targets by sea.

Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/30/mumbai-terror-attacks-india

Terrorists could mount nuclear or biological attack within 5 years, warns Congress inquiry

An investigation by the US Congress into weapons of mass destruction published yesterday made a chilling prediction of terrorists mounting an attack using biological or nuclear weapons within the next five years.
The six-month inquiry mentioned Pakistan as one of the likeliest sources of such an attack. The target could be the US or some other part of the world.
The report, by the bipartisan Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction, said "unless the world community acts decisively and with great urgency, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013".
"Terrorists are more likely to be able to obtain and use a biological weapon than a nuclear weapon," it said.
George Bush said the report highlighted the greatest threat facing the US and was "dangerously real". He said that after the 9/11 attacks he had put in place policies tackling the threat and he was leaving a good foundation for his successor.
Barack Obama's incoming administration, which is to prioritise tackling the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, was briefed on Capitol Hill yesterday about the findings in the 132-page report.
The commission, led by former Democratic senators Bob Graham and Jim Talent, was given six months to complete the report. It followed on from the work of the commission that investigated the 9/11 attacks.
Graham told reporters that a biological or nuclear attack within the next five years was not inevitable and the commission's reports included a series of recommendations which, if implemented, could diminish the threat. The recommendations included the creation of a White House post focusing on proliferation and more emphasis on diplomatic efforts.
The team's remit ranged from lack of security at biological labs in the US to the safety of nuclear stockpiles in Russia. It conducted 250 interviews with scientists, analysts, intelligence agencies and the military.
The report concluded that the risk from biological or nuclear weapons was higher than sceptical foreign policy and defence analysts have so far suggested. Those analysts had pointed to the complexity of transporting such weapons and the limitations of a nuclear "dirty" bomb, whose radius of damage is minimal compared with missile-delivered warheads.
The report disagreed, saying: "No mission could be timelier. The simple reality is that the risks that confront us today are evolving faster than our multi-layered responses.
"Many thousands of dedicated people across all agencies of our government are working hard to protect this country, and their efforts have had a positive impact. But the terrorists have been active, too - and in our judgment America's margin of safety is shrinking, not growing."
It added that much dangerous biological and nuclear material around the globe was "poorly secured - and thus vulnerable to theft by those who would put these materials to harmful use, or would sell them on the black market to potential terrorists".
As well as the threat from stateless militant groups, the commission expressed concern about the danger posed by proliferation of nuclear weapons in countries such as Iran, saying the Obama administration must stop Tehran acquiring a nuclear weapons capability.
It pointed to Pakistan, both at state level and among stateless groups, as one of the areas of most concern. "Were one to map terrorism and weapons of mass destruction today, all roads would intersect in Pakistan," the report said.
Talent told journalists: "It is the epicentre of a lot of these dangers." He said the report had been drawn up before the Mumbai attacks. The commission recommended that Pakistan be top priority for the Obama administration in terms of terrorism and proliferation.
Proposals include eliminating terrorist safe havens through military, economic, and diplomatic means, securing nuclear and biological materials in Pakistan, countering and defeating extremist ideology, and constraining a nascent nuclear arms race in Asia.
Other recommendations include strengthening the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and other international safeguards, creating a US national security force appropriate to the 21st century and developing a more coherent strategy for countering ideologies that lead to terrorism.
At home, the commission was disturbed by the apparent lack of security at laboratories dealing with dangerous biological materials.
Government investigators sent to check on the vulnerability of such research sites were able gain access to the outside of these buildings and then observe work inside.
It was fortunate that they were from the government and not al-Qaida as these were precisely the lethal trove that the terrorists have been seeking for years, the report said.
The investigators watched a pedestrian simply stroll into one of the buildings through an unguarded loading bay.
The commission recommended tighter oversight of the 400 research facilities and 15,000 staff engaged in such work.
Another recommendation was for the establishment of an anthrax preparedness strategy.

Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/04/terrorism-nuclear-attack-congress-report

Finding Russia's place in Europe

Joschka Fischer

For 19 years, the west (America and Europe) has been putting off answering a critical strategic question: what role should post-Soviet Russia play globally and in the European order? Should it be treated as a difficult partner or a strategic adversary? Even when this choice became critically acute during the crisis of Russia's short war against Georgia last summer, the west didn't provide a conclusive answer to this question. If you follow most east Europeans, the UK and the Bush administration, the answer is "strategic adversary". But most west Europeans prefer "difficult partner". These seemingly mutually exclusive alternatives have one thing in common: neither of them has been thought through to the end.If you see Russia as a strategic adversary ? and the restoration of Great Russian power politics under Vladimir Putin, to the detriment of the rule of law in domestic and foreign policy, does indeed speak for it ? then the west should fundamentally change its agenda. While Russia is no longer the superpower it was in the Soviet era, militarily it is still a great power, at least in Europe and Asia. To address the numerous regional conflicts (Iran, Middle East, Afghanistan/Pakistan, central Asia, North Korea) and global challenges (climate protection, disarmament, arms control, nuclear anti-proliferation, energy security) that have high priority on the western agenda, co-operation with Russia is necessary. A strategic confrontation with Moscow, ie a new kind of "mini-cold war", would undermine this agenda, or at least complicate its implementation significantly. So the question is simply whether the threat emanating from Russia is so grave that this kind of strategic reorientation on the part of the west is required? I believe it is not. Putin's claim to great-power status and his great-power policies are structurally very vulnerable. This is especially true at times where the price of oil has fallen below $40 per barrel. And he knows that. Demographically, Russia is in a dramatic nosedive; it remains economically and socially backward; its infrastructure is underdeveloped, as are its investments in education and vocational training. Economically, it mainly relies on energy and commodity exports, and in its modernisation efforts it is largely dependent on the west, particularly Europe. Due to its geopolitical position and its potential, however, Russia will remain a permanent strategic factor in Europe and Asia that cannot be ignored. To integrate the country into a strategic partnership is therefore in the west's interest. But this would require a western policy based on long-term thinking and a self-confident and strong power position, because the Kremlin will perceive any sign of division and weakness as encouragement to return to Great Russian power politics.A few months ago, the Russian government came up with a proposal to negotiate a new European order within the framework of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Russia considers the agreements from the 1990s unjust, based as they were on its weakness at the time, and it wants to revise them. Moscow's main strategic objective is the weakening or even rollback of Nato as an anti-Russian military alliance and the re-establishment of its east European and central Asian zones of influence. But Putin is making a big mistake here, because all these aims are unacceptable for the west, and the Kremlin still doesn't seem to understand that the best and most effective guarantee of Nato's existence was, is, and will continue to be an aggressive Russian foreign policy. In the former mother country of Marxism-Leninism, the leaders still don't seem to understand dialectics. After all, if Russia's government really wanted to achieve a change in the post-Soviet status quo, it should, first and foremost, pursue a policy vis-a-vis its neighbours that reduces rather than increases fears. But this applies similarly, if in reverse, to the west: on the one hand, the principles of a new Europe as defined by the OSCE after 1989/90 don't allow decisions about alliances to be subject to the veto of a large neighbour. The same is true for free and secret elections and the inviolability of borders. On the other hand, the missile defence systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, and the prospect of Nato accession for Georgia and Ukraine, assume confrontation where this was not at all necessary. The west should not reject Russia's wish for new negotiations on a European security system. Instead, it should be viewed as an opportunity finally to answer the key question of Russia's place within Europe. Nato must play the central role here, because it is indispensable for the vast majority of Europeans and for America. The possible trade-off could be that the existing principles and institutions of the post-Soviet European order, including Nato, remain unchanged and are accepted and implemented by Russia, which would get a significantly enhanced role within Nato, including the perspective of full membership. The peripheral nature of the Nato-Russia Council was clearly not enough and did not work.But why not think about transforming Nato into a real European security system, including Russia? The rules of the game would be changed and a whole variety of strategic goals could be achieved ? European security, neighbourhood conflicts, energy security, arms reduction, anti-proliferation, etc. Yes, such a bold step would transform Nato. But it would transform Russia even more. If the west approaches these discussions with Russia without illusions, with a clear understanding of its own strategic interests and with new ideas for partnership and co-operation, the worst to be feared is failure. Of course, this approach presupposes two things that don't exist at the moment: a common transatlantic approach to dealing with Russia, and a European Union that acts in much greater unison and is therefore stronger. Nonetheless, the challenge posed by Russia does not allow any further procrastination. There is simply too much at stake. Joschka Fischer, a leading member of

Germany's Green party for almost 20 years, was Germany's foreign minister and vice chancellor from 1998 until 2005

Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/11/russia-eu

Why Iran Seeks Nuclear Weapons

Arch Roberts Jr.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, FL: Expert observers of Iran hang on the latest reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency of how many centrifuges are running, how far the country must go to build a bomb, the latest inflammatory remarks from President Ahmedinejad, speculation about a lame-duck Bush administration military strike, or the same from Olmert’s Israel.
Iran’s decision on nuclear weapons was made at least two decades ago. Despite its professed peaceful intentions, nobody in their right mind would disagree with the notion that Iran maximizes its room for maneuver by all possible means, with nuclear arms or without. Tehran doesn’t mind foreign suspicions at all; rather, its strategic interest is to encourage them, if only to achieve the effect of nuclear deterrence before possessing a nuclear device. Iran’s policy has created a virtual deterrent, and its policies across the board, from the mullahs’ point of view, amount to “constructive irresponsibility.” Iran wants us to spend time guessing its next step.
The current conflict in Gaza provides an example of Iran’s strategic ambitions. Iran has long used Hamas and Hezbollah as proxies in pursuit of its interests. At arm’s length, these organizations support Iran’s long-term goals: tie down Israel’s actions in the short term, and frustrate all efforts at Middle East peace. Israel’s 2006 failure in Lebanon, chasing down Hezbollah, only served to embolden the mullahs in Tehran. The assault on Gaza, while it may stop rocket attacks on civilians, could be expected to achieve much the same result.
There’s no plausible peaceful explanation for Iran’s uranium enrichment program: The fuel for its first nuclear reactor at Bushehr will be provided by Russia, with a requirement that spent fuel, full of weapons-usable plutonium, will be returned to Russia. Plans for future reactor construction are well in the distance. So the non-bomb uranium Iran has produced to date has no purpose besides that of a nuclear “breakout” option: kick out the inspectors, run the uranium through the centrifuges several more times, work on missiles and other delivery means, and finish up with a couple of bombs. In the view of Iranian leaders, this posture improves Iran’s strategic military perspective.
Put yourself in Ahmedinejad’s, or more important, Khamenei’s, position. How could you not pursue the nuclear option? A proud and ancient nation, subject to a long history of Western meddling, a Persian oasis in a multitude of Arabs and others, a combatant in many bloody wars, must have insecurities that far outweigh the prospects of UN Security Council resolutions and sanctions. The flood of diplomats into Tehran over the last several years only increased the value that Iran’s leaders, and much of its public, place on the virtual deterrent option that’s a stockpile of uranium sufficient for a bomb.
Consider the current environment and the history that informs Iran's leaders. Iran has declared the United States its principal strategic threat for three decades; indeed, this enmity has been a central organizing principle for the government. Flirtations with more normal relations with the US have been frequent, from the end of the Carter Administration through Iran-Contra to the present consideration of opening an American Interests Section in Tehran. But the government of Iran has been divided in important ways since the revolution, with many observers noting its conflicting signals to the major powers, simultaneously conciliatory and defiant. This behavior only increased during the term of fiery Ahmadinejad.
According to the Federation of American Scientists, Israel has had nuclear-capable missiles since 1966 – perhaps the most significant political driver of Iran's national policy. But there are many others as well: Saddam Hussein's Iraq, using chemical weapons and pursuing nuclear ones, waged a punishing war against Iran for a decade after the 1979 revolution. The US has had a considerable military presence on Iran's land borders since 2001, a continuous and significant naval presence in the Gulf for longer, and it shot down an Iranian airliner during the Reagan administration.
In Kenneth Pollack's excellent book, "The Persian Puzzle," he relates the tension among Iranian policymakers between transparency and concealment regarding the nuclear option. Concealment was the policy for 20 years until the revelations of 2002. Once revealed, the public face of Iran’s policy changed to one of declarations of capability and denials of intent to build a nuclear weapon. On this question, Iran has many models to consider. Israel, as late as 2006, famously stated it would not be the first country to "introduce" nuclear weapons into the Middle East, a contrived ambiguity that has served its national interests, but leaves no confusion about its intent. Ironically, this Israeli policy is perhaps most consistent with Iran's current posture. The mere possibility of an Iranian nuclear weapon approximates its actual possession.
Another mature nuclear power in the neighborhood, India, has pursued a similar approach to Iran’s. After its first nuclear test in 1974, India tried to persuade the world that the test was for peaceful purposes, with little success and few penalties. North Korea conducted a nuclear test in 2006, in the midst of the Six-Party talks on denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, another virtual deterrent.
The model Iran may follow is China, which pursues a policy best described by Jeffrey Lewis and others as "minimum deterrence." Apart from fielding the largest army in the world, China maintains perhaps 200 nuclear weapons and declares a no-first-use policy. China enjoys a level of respect and consideration Iran's leaders have never enjoyed, but to which they logically aspire.
Let’s go back to the box in which Iran’s policymakers have placed themselves: After at least two decades, Iran got caught, publicly, in 2002, and had to submit to inspections of items never declared to the IAEA. Libya renounced its nuclear program around the same time. If you’re the Supreme Leader in Iran, what do you do? You pretend to cooperate with inspectors, work your Non-Aligned Movement allies in the UN system and slow-roll the slow-response mechanisms of the UN – all the while not compromising the strategic decision made decades ago. This is predictable, not radical behavior. Iran can always hang opposition to its actions from the US and others on outsiders and “Zionist tendencies,” and pin IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei’s technical statements on the fact that he’s an Egyptian, and therefore suspect. (Nobel Peace Prize winner ElBaradei must have the patience of Job.)
So what’s to be done? The only way out of this mess is more of the same: call a high-level Middle East peace conference; think creatively about the kind of no-first-use nuclear policies that have served China well; include Israel while protecting its strategic interests; find ways to guarantee Israeli and Iranian borders; and, most important, focus on nuclear issues before it's too late.
No one can doubt the commitment of the US to Israel’s security, nor should anyone question the value of a prospective region-wide commitment to security behind currently-agreed borders. Israel might even rethink its own nuclear posture in light of such developments.
Iran would likely participate in any regional conference devoted to Middle East peace. Such a meeting would mark its undeniable influence in the region and perhaps mitigate the toxic relations existing with the US since 1979. It might just reduce the nuclear impulses that Iran cultivates as a counteraction to US and Israeli military power, as well as those they may harbor in a long-range analysis of a nuclear Turkey or Saudi Arabia. Why not? Absent an acceptable, overarching alternative, accepting Iran’s ambiguous nuclear power may all we’re left with.
Arch Roberts Jr. is a consultant on international affairs, formerly a staff member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and elsewhere in the United Nations system. These views are his own.

Yale Global Online
http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=11793