EMBRACE US, EUNUCHS

(Hafiz Saeed's song for India)

Embrace us, do, we will hug you too,
To make you forget what we remember;
Many tiny cuts we will evermore inflict,
To bleed you dry and then dismember.

Every weapon on to bring you down,
Great we won’t let you again become;
A mongoose and a snake's enmity this,
No mercy or respite till you succumb.

At war we are, you pretend it is peace,
You talk to prolong it, we parry to win;
We will not tire, our belly is afire,
Nor will we rest till you kneel, give in.

No cost is too high, no blood too much,
Time doesn’t daunt us, nor a lethal blow;
You fight to not finish but make peace quick,
For us there’s no peace till we slay you low.

Relentless Ghori felled foolish Chauhan,
When he won at last, it was their last battle;
Forgiving is a virtue, forgetting can be fatal,
We remember this truth, you revel in prattle.

A thousand years’ war, eating nothing but grass,
Is not a psycho’s boast, or a coward’s threat;
Each defeat’s ebb builds a tide of revenge,
On one we will hit home, you always forget.

Irrational for you is God’s way for us,
Kafir you won’t get it, such a soft mindset;
This is no game that can end in a draw,
Jihad is never over till victory is met.

Embrace us, eunuchs, we will reciprocate;
Cowardly pleas will help us speed you to your fate.

************************************************

SA'FAI' BEGINS, PURGE NEEDED

The whitewash, sa’fai’, of the damning Faigate revelations that have sinister implications for India, both internally and in its responses to Pakistan, has begun. And, as expected, the usual suspects are at it.

Prannoy Roy and Barkha Dutt’s NDTV, chastened by "guilt-tweets" of Ms. Dutt before and after the Radia tapes rash hit and claimed her, continuing histrionics notwithstanding, has chosen to remain silent lest it is unable to pull its smelly foot out of its mouth subsequently. Their burden has been taken on by two old friends of the channel, the publicly exposed Vir Sanghvi and the yet to be Shekhar Gupta.

Vir Sanghvi, now reduced to writing on the net, the very medium he derided at the peak of his wholly "paid" arrogance, has written another Radia piece “ dressed up” to look as a pat in the back for India, but meant to exonerate his many corrupt liberal friends who have been found to be anti-national as well. If you read the whole piece, you will find that Sanghvi has been unsparing in exposing the well-known game plan of Pakistan – which, let us be clear, means the ISI, which in turn means Pakistan’s Army Chief – for Kashmir which, as he brings out, India has been been warning the world about.

Yet, Mr. Sanghvi wants us to believe that the real issue about Faigate is that Ghulam Nabi Fai's organisation, the Kashmir American Council, was “created by the Pakistani state to con Americans!” You don’t expect men of Vir Sanghvi’s integrity to tell us why the ISI wanted to con the Americans over Kashmir. Because if he does that then he knows he cannot conjure the lame and disgraceful defence that he offers, in just a couple of lines, for Indian liberals and peaceniks, among them Justice Sachar, author of the infamous Sachar Commision report, who were regulars at Fai’s Kashmir conferences that were micro-managed by the sinister ISI. They, he claims, were unaware of Fai’s sources of funding and whitewashes their culpability by saying: “it is sad and unfortunate that they were duped into lending legitimacy to an ISI-sponsored initiative.”

The Editor of Indian Express, Shekhar Gupta, has, for once, beaten Vir Sanghvi and conjured an even more absurd defence of the indefensible, but one that some of those caught will try to employ to escape the accusation of committing plain treason.

Gupta rubbishes Sanghvi's line that those who enjoyed Fai’s hospitality were unaware that he was a Pak/ISI agent. This is what he says of Fai: “But all of it, the injured air of Kashmiri victimhood, and Americanised English would not fool you about who he exactly was, and what precisely he was after. He was a Pakistani lobbyist for “their” Kashmir cause, leading a very cleverly constructed over ground support base for the malevolent movement that was picking strength in the early nineties. You would have to be utterly nuts, delusional or smoking some awful prohibited substance to not figure this out. Would you have known he was funded by the ISI? Again, you had to be from another planet to believe anything else.”

As every donkey and his son knows, Pakistan’s Kashmir policy is driven wholly by the military and its outstanding covert operations outfit, the ISI, that has been fermenting trouble in the Valley and other parts of India for a long, long time. That is the reason why Gupta has abandoned the unaware line. But, he also knows that sleeping with the ISI is an unforgivable act of treason, soaked in blood. So, he bails out the likes of Justice Sachar and many others yet to be exposed by inventing a high moral ground where none can be: “A more honest — and morally totally convincing — answer would have been the straight one. That as an intellectual or, in case of some, as a civil society activist, you were fully within your rights to go and speak at any forum, even if it was funded or organised by the Pakistanis and that just the fact of accepting a free ticket and a tiny per diem would not have compromised your integrity.”

As I understand this bizarre argument, it is perfectly fine for well-known Indians who are representing India to lend respectability and credence to, and bolster the ant-India position of the ISI on Kashmir across the world, knowing fully well that it is one over which three wars have been fought and over which a proxy war is still on. So, by the same logic, Indians should also be at liberty to go to Kashmir and physically fight ISI’s war against India, or do the same in other parts of India by carrying out a terror attacks and killing innocent people.

A war is fought more in the minds than on the battlefield. How can any sane man argue that while Indian foot soldiers of the ISI (a wing of Pakistan's military) are guilty and should be hanged, those who are knowingly furthering its hostile-to-India cause and its war across the globe are not only innocent but have a right to do so?

But Gupta has the the nerve to say that it is entirely irrelevant as to “who accepted Fai’s free tickets and hospitality, knowingly or unknowingly.” Perhaps Gupta no longer needs such petty perks. But, the same gentleman, knowing what he does about the military’s vice-like grip over Pakistan's India policy, was among the first to articulate, and repeatedly, after 26/11 that India should actually strengthen Pakistan and give to it concessions over Kashmir and other issues to “enhance the power and credibility” of Pakistan’s government, one that even prints fake Indian currency in its mints. Then I had imagined that he was writing the nonsense he was because someone in the corridors of power that he lives in had asked him to. Now the picture is getting frightening.

For India, what Faigate means to the Americans is, at one level, peripheral. It is undoubtedly a cog in the big picture, but for us the immediate and extremely worrying concern is that it is the tip of a very large ISI iceberg that is attacking India at all levels in pursuance of the Pakistan military’s single-point objective of bleeding India to death through a thousand cuts.

What the likes of Shekhar Gupta and Vir Sanghvi will not speak of are the scary logical deductions that must come first to the minds of all analysts as a result of Fai exposure as an ISI agent. The simple fact is the Fai was used by the ISI to defeat India internationally in so far as its position on Kashmir is concerned. And it spent millions of dollars over the counter and -- there can be little doubt -- many more below it, to get Indians to help it win this small but integral part of its existential war against India. The real war is being fought and will be fought on ground in India, including Kashmir. Does it take rocket science to understand that ISI must have been spending a thousand times more here, at every possible level, starting from sleeper cells to the media, academia, think tanks, babudom, and India’s political leadership, right up to and including 10 Janpath?

Rahul Gandhi’s assessment, shared with an American, – no electoral politics there – that Hindu terror posed a bigger threat to India than Pak-sponsored terror, is irrefutable proof that – notwithstanding his limited intelligence and grasp – even the future Prime Minister of India (as some believe) is being deliberately misguided by his trusted advisers. This cannot be a coincidence. The ISI has penetrated even his innermost circle.

While one can accept that the daily front paging of Hindu terror is essentially driven by the compulsions of vote-bank politics, it cannot be an accident that the whole mainstream mind-space has become irrationally pro-Pakistan during the last few years.

Sonia Gandhi has appointed the lawyer who defended ISI’s front organisation SIMI, the mother of the Indian Mujahideen who have carried out many terror attacks, as India’s Law Minister. She has also filled the NAC with hate-filled activists of very dubious antecedents and got a former bureaucrat who has given SIMI a de facto clean chit to draft the pernicious Communal Violence Bill that emasculates Hindus and puts the reins of determining culpability of individuals and all state organs, including the military, in the hands of unelected representatives from minority communities, in so far as Hindu-Muslim tensions (let's cut pretences) are concerned.

Seen in isolation, as indeed, liberals and ISI agents want us to, the many steps being taken by Sonia’s government and NAC seem innocuous, even harmless. But when viewed holistically, one cannot miss the fact that there is a method behind it all. Liberals and peaceniks and Hindu-haters are all pushing the “Break-India” agenda of the ISI.

The labyrinth of terror of which Fai was a part runs deep in India and many of these guys who have virtually been dictating India’s policies along all dimensions with regard to Pakistan and, by extension, Indian Muslims, who the ISI has been trying to turn into its assets, are central players in it, many willing, aware. That is why the hushed silence. That is why these fraudulent defences.

“ISI has more freedom of opinion than us.” This tweet unknowingly sums up the picture that India’s traitors have helped paint. They are many, they are powerful, they are dangerous, they have vested interests. And they have already begun the Big Cover Up. They may have much at stake, but India has much more. So, they have to be taken on by the state, by each one of us. The sa’fai’ under way must be exposed, and pressure put on the government to uncover and remove all termites who have gnawed deep into India, right to the doors of Sonia Gandhi who seems to have got caught in a trap of her own making.

The purge has to be ruthless and untouched by any political or personal considerations. This is the real lesson of Faigate.
'

MUMBAI ONCE MORE

Mumbai has been hit once more. Will be hit many times over. Given the trajectory that our leaders and policy makers have put this nation on, it not a question of whether but when another terror strike will take place.

Notwithstanding Rahul Gandhi’s baseless claim that 99% terror attacks have been prevented, it is true that the frequency of attacks has reduced since 26/11. But this is not because of the few half-measures taken by the government to bolster internal security but because a) Pakistan’s hands have got a bit tied after they were completely exposed for the first time ever in that attack b) Sonia Gandhi has gone into a maniacal mode to consolidate her Muslim and minority vote bank guided by her personal predilections and her campaign team consisting of the NAC and dubious NGOs and hate-mongering activists, prompting terrorists and their masters across the Radcliffe Line to pull their foot off the terror-attack pedal till she delivers, so that reaction from the majority community is muted, and c) focus of the intelligence agencies has been diluted and diverted to create a big media tamasha of the clear, present and growing danger of a virtually non-existent Hindu terror which was the creation a handful of people involved in four attacks, the last of which was in 2007, giving them time and space to consolidate and build.

The net result is that the people of India are today more vulnerable than they were earlier to terror; sitting ducks, as a leading daily headlined their plight after the Mumbai serial blasts on July 13, 2011.

What does it take to fight terror? First, a country has to put in place internal measures, including a robust real-time intelligent network, to make it extremely difficult for terrorists to get funding, local support and freedom to move around with little fear of getting caught before they launch an attack. After an attack, not only should getaway be made very difficult but there should be swift and stringent punishment, mainly as a deterrent for those who might be contemplating joining such outfits. Second, the external factors responsible for propagating and exporting terror should be made to feel the cost of their misadventure to the degree that they are compelled to put a stop to their activities. Unless the second part is conclusively addressed, the first will yield only limited results, and lower the morale of the people and the nation as a whole.

But, be it in the corridors of power or in post-attack discussions and columns, despite the sound and fury, despite the very detailed knowledge some analysts have about the mother-terror architecture in Pakistan, in the end, the refrain remains the same: we can do no more than talk to Pakistan, and we must improve police and intelligence set up at home.

The first part, the easy, meaningless one really -- except for analysts and commentators -- continues to be pursued, while the second remains as neglected as it always was.

In fact, given Sonia Gandhi’s seemingly obsessive compulsion to woo the minorities, central agencies are increasingly looking the other way as the Indian Mujahideen consolidates and spreads it wings, and as Pakistan deploys more and more local sleeper cells to be activated at a time of its choosing. Home Minister Chidambaram, who initially promised much, seems to have been effectively been done in by Sonia’s team that is more focused on emasculating the majority and splitting the society communally to deliver an electoral victory to Sonia in 2014, than on allowing the government to fulfill its constitutional obligation of protecting the lives of its citizens and securing the nation from the menace of terror of which it has been a victim for almost a quarter century.

Talking to Pakistan is not going to yield anything for India. Pakistan is getting India to the negotiating table at the point of gun not to give but to extract, to extort. Our leaders and babus have made their mouths and minds the weapons of choice to deflect and defeat the aggressive, never-say-die, hate-filled minds ready to wage – and doing so – a thousand year war. They think little about the helpless and innocent Indians who are getting killed again and again, because they and their kith and kin are safe and secure. They believe that giving some concessions will get the Pakistanis off their back, and they spend their energies solely on trying to give only that much as will not raise a furore in the country.

The Pakistanis, who smelled the coward in them long back, on the other hand, keep shifting the goal posts and outsmarting them at every turn, so as to wear them down till finally they --India -- submit. It does not seem to have struck our guys that the more we give, the more the demands will increase, after suitable pauses. May be they know it; but if that be so, it means that their ignorance of and abhorrence for the employment of force to counter and defeat force overrides their commonsense, live and effective examples of other nations notwithstanding.

The US is a democracy like us, but after just one major attack on mainland US, they went for the perpetrators of the attack even though they were non-state actors in a sovereign country. And, though it took them ten years, they hunted down and killed Osama bin Laden. They knew that unless they struck terror back in the hearts of the terrorists, attacks on the US would not only continue but would increase in intensity and frequency. Though they that also put in place very stringent measures to almost eliminate the chances of further major strikes, they were never under any illusion that mere defense would defeat fanatic warriors who were not fighting a conventional war and who thought nothing about losing foot soldiers fed to fight and die for virgins in paradise.

That is why there have been no attacks on America till now, while here the sense of despair is becoming alarming. Make no mistake: if there are more such attacks, that country will not hesitate at all to introduce even harsher measures, at greater cost to individual freedom temporarily. Liberty comes at a price and can be enjoyed unfettered only in a secure nation not facing a serious threat. Many terror attacks and decades later, we refuse to learn even basic lessons.

Is this the response expected from a huge nation of 1.2 billion to such a grave threat? Every time a terrorist attack takes place, our politicians almost proudly and openly announce that a neighboring country, Pakistan, is behind it. It is almost as if they are telling the nation that they have done their job by blaming Pakistan, which is all they can do, and that the nation has no choice but to meekly continue accepting this evil. Having identified the source two decades back, why has no effective response been formulated yet? Why do we continue to wail like a helpless, defenceless woman who is being repeatedly raped by a small boy 1/6th her size?

Just imagine a scenario in which Pakistan was six times our size rather than the 1/6th it is. What would it have done by now? Do I need to spell out? We probably would have long been splintered and devoured as a nation by that country, and run over by Talibani extremists. And what have we done? For six decades, we have aimlessly and apathetically allowed a tiny Pakistan to fearlessly keep trying to do precisely that, and have not yet formulated a terminal response that can put an end to this cancer that is going larger and that will, inevitably, afflict our own Muslims in the long run, just as is being planned.

We seem to know well only how to rush quickly to the high moral ground of fatal weakness that our first Prime Minister taught us, and camouflage the overriding concern for electoral victory that his Italian grand daughter-in-law is pursuing with deathly determination.

Till this debilitating paradigm remains in place, the ordinary people of Mumbai, indeed the whole of India, will continue to live with the fear that they may not return home in the evening, that their blood soaked bodies will be dumped like garbage at the back of trucks.
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RSS IS THE NEW ISI, THE LATTER A FRIEND

RSS is the new ISI. Chetan Bhagat has hit the nail where the BJP should have but, inexplicably, hasn’t.

Ever since the Congress stormed back to power in 2009, it has launched such a vicious and relentless attack on the RSS that one cannot be faulted for believing that the organisation is as dangerous a terror outfit as the Al Qaida, and is out to destabilise and dismember India. At the same time, the party and the government have all but forgiven Pakistan for all its sins and launched an equally relentless campaign to convince Indians that they have more in common with Pakistanis than with Indians who do not subscribe to the views of the Congress and embedded media.

For Congress if the RSS is the new ISI, the latter has to be the new – though unstated, for obvious reasons -- friend. And so it seems it is.

When the Congress party did better than even it expected during the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, among the many theories doing the rounds was one that was whispered but not openly articulated, the evidence then being not solid enough to substantiate it. As per this conspiracy theory, the ISI had a role to play in the victory of the Congress and defeat of the BJP. This was based on the following conjectures and assumptions that would have motivated the ISI:

• A BJP government is most likely to react militarily to another Mumbai 26/11 type of attack. After the terror attack on Parliament in 2001, the then BJP government had given the go-ahead for launching a military offensive that was called off only at the very last minute, thanks to the intervention of the US. Next time, a BJP government is more likely to not give in to US pressure. The Congress, on the other hand, made a lot of noise but did little after Mumbai 26/11. In future too it will try its best to avoid precipitating a crisis, no matter how grave the provocation, with an eye on Muslim votes.
  
• The Congress has lost its core dalit vote in UP to Mayawati and Yadav vote to Mulayam Yadav. It also no longer has any core vote among remaining Hindus, who are vulnerable to advances of the BJP. Due to this fundamental weakness, it needs Muslim votes to survive and win. A Congress government will, therefore, per force be very soft towards the activities of the SIMI and the Indian Mujahideen, and give them much needed time and space to expand their influence and multiply their hit capability, to be activated at the right time. This will help in furthering ISI's long term strategy of bleeding India to death through a thousand cuts.
• The Congress will also turn a blind eye to the radicalisation of Indian Muslims that is vital to achieving the ISI’s plan of the creating and expanding an Islamic sub-state within the secular Indian state so that the avowed objective of the SIMI and Pakistan to turn India into an Islamic state is achieved when an opportunity presents itself.
  

In support of this theory, the following facts were cited then:

• There has not been a single terror attack, big or small, since Mumbai 26/11. This is because the ISI ordered all such attacks to be put on hold at least till the elections to ensure that no Hindu votes get diverted to the BJP.
• Compared to 2004, the Congress has gained around 6% vote share in UP and some other states. But in UP, where the Muslim population is large, the party has gained a huge 10% compared to the Assembly elections in 2007, when it got just 8.56% of the votes. The fact that the only other party to gain vote share in the state since 2007 is the BJP, although by only 0.57%, while the both the SP and BSP have lost around 2% and 3% respectively, is conclusive evidence that it is mostly the Muslims who have shifted to the Congress in huge numbers.
• This tectonic shift in the Muslim vote to the Congress in UP that has helped it increase its seat tally to 21 from a paltry nine, has taken place virtually unnoticed. This could not have happened on its own. There was obviously a concerted effort by influential and powerful extremist elements and possibly some fundamentalist religious leaders to keep this development under the wraps, as it were, to prevent any polarisation of the the Hindu vote in favour of the BJP and away from the Congress, as a reaction, because had that happened, this shift of the Muslim vote would have got negated.

Two years have passed since Congress won the elections. These two years too have been free of any terror attack. But note the total contrast in the manner this incident-free period is being projected by the Congress.

ISI, LeT, SIMI, IM and other umbrella terror outfits have been virtually removed from public mind, thanks to an obliging media and the candle brigade that either do not talk about them or do so in manner that makes them look almost benign. The speedy trial and acquittal of the Batla House accused tried under normal laws, not UAPA or MCOCA, right in the heart of India’s capital has also been quietly buried, so that memories of people are not refreshed, and the design of the Congress is not revealed.

On the flip side they have got into overdrive about the common culture, language and ethnicity – the sameness -- of the people of India and Pakistan (South Asia for bubble gum kids) and the great love they have for each other. Indians are being told ad nauseum that a vast majority of ordinary Pakistanis are secular and want to have very close relations with their Indian brothers, but – this is critical – their wishes are not being fulfilled primarily because the RSS and the Sangh parivar are poisoning the atmosphere in India, just like terrorists with AK47s are in Pakistan.

The almost total silence about the many Pak-sponsored terror attacks that killed thousands of Indians, is being matched by the almost daily front-paging and prime-timing of leaks about four bomb blasts carried out a few years back – the last was in 2007 – by a handful of misguided Hindu extremists, in reaction to Pak-sponsored attacks. Almost all of them are in prison and no one has yet been convicted. But every other day, there are leaks by state agencies to the media about confessions or new leads found.

The picture being Photoshopped, very systematically and deliberately, is of a Hindu terror that is happening now and one that poses a real, present and growing danger to India and Indian Muslims. The RSS and the Sangh parivar, we are being helpfully told, are the only enemies that Indians need to worry about: India’s real war is not against Pakistan or Islamist terror promoted and supported by the ISI, but against Saffron terror spawned by the RSS.

The aim of this Goebbelsian refrain, tragically, is no more than to convince us to vote for Congress as our only hope, even as it plunders India like no one has ever, right in front of our eyes, with an arrogance and shamelessness that defies understanding.

The party, as I said in my previous post too, has so completely put all its eggs in the minority basket, that the only Indians left to oppose it, exceptions apart, are Hindus. Thus each one of us who raises his voice against the government is by default a RSS worker. It is, therefore, only natural that Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev, the two leading faces of the anti-corruption movement that has erupted on the back of strong popular revulsion against what appears to be the only agenda of the present dispensation at the Center, are being vilified by the Congress as RSS agents.

The success that the Congress party achieved in UP in 2009 has manifestly led its strategists to believe that it can retain power in Delhi if it can get Muslims to vote for it en bloc again. The Hindu vote, splintered along every fault line possible, cannot pose any challenge to it as long as hatred and revulsion can be generated for the RSS and the Sangh parivar among enough Hindus. Other Hindu caste based parties and regional outfits will fall in line and make up the shortfall in seats, if any. The ongoing caste census may well divide them even further, making Congress rule even easier.

‘Unite Muslims, divide Hindus’: this is evidently the fail-safe election mantra that is being chanted in 10 Janpath now.

Why has there been no Pak-sponsored terror attack since 26/11? The answer, to my mind, is simple. When the Indian government has taken upon itself to unwittingly further the agenda of the ISI, where is the need for it to resort to active jihad that will inflame passions and undo the good work prematurely? For the last two years, little has been heard of the SIMI and IM too. Have these outfits dissolved or are they, with ISI’s help, quietly expanding their base even as Indian intelligence agencies look the other way in line with the dictates of their political masters who see the voting machine and nothing else?

Sonia Gandhi’s hatred for the Hindu Right is well known. Vir Sanghvi wrote about it and Wikileaks has confirmed it. But it now appears that her antipathy extends to Hindus as a whole. Nothing else can explain the manner in which the the Communal Violence Bill that she has approved, has been prepared in unholy haste by her handpicked, unelected team that includes known Hindu haters, even though there have been no communal riots for almost a decade.

In one stroke, the bill has achieved what a thousand terror attacks cannot. The Hindu has been virtually declared The Terrorist in his own country and, – if the bill is passed – subject to draconian provisions of law that even terrorists who blast innocent people are not. He cannot speak, he cannot write, much less do, anything that can be construed as offensive by a member of a minority community. Worse, even democratically elected governments, where Hindus are going to be in majority, have been declared untrustworthy; unelected bodies where minorities are in majority will decide whether the Hindu is guilty or not. His voice has, thus, been throttled and his spirit, his freedom killed far more effectively than the ISI could have in a hundred years, if at all.

When your own government nukes you, where is the need for the ISI to send Fedayeen to kill a few innocent people here and there?

If Sonia’s Congress continues to speed India to its ruin in this manner, a deceptive peace will prevail. This is not a peace to celebrate; it is a peace to fear. This is not a peace that will lead to peace; it is a peace that will end in mayhem. This is not a peace that will make India strong; it is a peace that will make its enemies strong. Do you want to go along, or would you rather be dubbed the new ISI?
'

PAK ARMY, THE TERROR MONSTER

The obfuscations, the denials, the pretensions have gone on for far too long. For far too long the mountain of damning evidence that has been surfacing with telling regularity, steeped with the blood of hapless individuals, both soldiers or civilians, has been simply ignored and filed. For far too long policy makers have stuck mindlessly to the adage “this too shall pass,” ignoring what has been clear even to them and what many informed analysts have been saying ad nauseum for years.

Osama bin Laden has, in his death at the hands of US Navy Seals in a compound bang in the middle of a secure Pakistani military station, delivered a blow so severe to nations and leaders thus far unwilling to face the fundamental truth of the foundation of the terrorism of which he was the most visible face, that it will be a crime if they do not still rouse themselves and do what they have been running away from till now.

As I wrote in my previous piece and in many others before that, the real terrorists who threaten the world are not the ones who carry out terror attacks in India and elsewhere. They are merely foot soldiers assiduously created, cultivated, protected and deployed by the military machine of Pakistan that believes terror is a technique of war that the state is entitled to use in furtherance of its religious and political objectives.

We in India have been facing terror without facing the reality that is carefully concealed behind it and paying a very heavy price, unfelt and un-understood by weak, ignorant and unwise policy makers personally untouched by this two decade old undeclared war. Despite increasing provocations, the last visible one being 26/11, we continue to fool ourselves into believing that we can defeat terror by talking and making concessions to the very guys who are using that weapon with precisely that objective.

After 9/11, the US bullied a very reluctant and duplicitous Musharraf into becoming their ally in their war in Afghanistan. Possibly they were then confident that their ‘shock and awe’ operations in Afghanistan would scare Pakistan’s military leaders into abandoning their relationship with the Al Qaida and Taliban. The LeT and other terror groups operating against India were then of no concern to them. Never did it strike them, on the face of it at least, that they were fingers of the same Pakistani hand. Had their cocky analysis – amnesic of the lessons of the Soviet misadventure -- of the mindset of Musharraf & Co. been right, the US would have achieved a relatively swift victory. It did not.

There lies the real story and the lesson that has been ignored by the US for almost 10 years. And, despite Laden, there are efforts being made still to make sure it remains so.

Like India, the US is worried about waging a war with a nuclearised Pakistan and wants to avoid it all costs, particularly since the threat to its mainland is not even near the kind that India has been, and is, dealing with. In addition, it needs Pakistan as a logistic conduit for the 120,000 US troops in Afghanistan. There is no other practical sea-land route available to maintain such a large fighting force there. The wily Musharraf, his DG ISI Kiyani -- now Army Chief -- and other Pakistani generals grasped the strategic significance of these paralyzing constraints even before America invaded Afghanistan and saw in them an opportunity to not only keep India under attack but also to score a spectacular victory for what we call terror and they Islam, over the second super power to invade Afghanistan. And they went about achieving this objective with single-minded, indeed manic devotion.

There is no getting away from the conclusion that both Musharraf and Kiyani were not only in the know of Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts but would have personally authorized his protection and concealment from the Americans. Deniability of their complicity had to be built into the method used for this – think ‘non-state’ actors in 26/11 and other terror attacks – and that is precisely what is being attempted now to convince the world that they did not know that he was where no one would have suspected him of being, where he would never have chosen to go unless he was sure that the US would not get him, where a confident Musharraf probably agreed to shift him after having successfully hidden him in less incriminating places for many years.

From incompetence to complicity of a few low-level ISI operatives to involvement of India-specific terror outfits like Hizbul Mujahideen, analysts -- free and embedded -- in India, the US and Pakistan are trotting out stories that absolve Pakistan’s top leaders. A few analysts believe that various DGs of ISI were in the know but not the Army Chiefs. Implied in this reasoning is that hand-picked ISI heads and their subordinates were engaged for years in an operation of such a huge magnitude and having such enormous implications in willful defiance of the orders of the most powerful man in Pakistan. This is as absurd as it can get.

Behind the elaborate and almost impenetrable smoke screen placed with great skill by Pakistan’s military, one could always see, with some effort, that terror in Kashmir and Afghanistan were two sides of the same coin minted by it. The logical deduction from that was that the war on terror had to be won in Pakistan and that both India and the US were fighting the wrong guys in the wrong place. But the US, preferring to look only at its end of the terror matrix and focusing on a narrow, short-term objective, thought it could to get clever, determined and driven Pakistani generals to do what it wanted in Afghanistan by nudging India to give them what they wanted, at least partially, in Kashmir.

Laden has, for the first time, laid bare the real face of terror and the terrorist like never before.

This leads to the inevitable question about where the shattered US-Pakistan alliance goes from here. If Kiyani and his men in uniform – literally the state of Pakistan – are the leading soldiers of global jihad, then how does the US defeat this enemy of the world and ensure that it does not raise its ugly head ever again? A 600,000 strong Army with nuclear bombs to throw around is no pushover. Does that mean that the only super power in the world is going to accept defeat garnished with the semblance of victory and let it grow even stronger and more destructive till a bigger catastrophe strikes and results in an extremely violent and costly war?

Or is it time to kill the monster that has inflicted more misery and havoc upon its own people than it has on its many perceived enemies, and free Pakistan from its clutches? The answer is obvious but the path to it is perilous. No one knows it better than the generals who have brought Pakistan to the brink of ruin and who are going to bash on if they get away. They are not going to willingly loosen their vice-like hold over Pakistan and its resources; they have to be forced to and then weakened enough so that they do not rise again, even more murderous, as they did after the 1971 debacle.

It should not take the US more than two days to incapacitate Pakistan Army and secure its nuclear weapons. With a ready and willing India to its East, it just needs to take out Pakistan’s Air Force, making its ground forces sitting ducks from the air. With the US becoming guarantor of its security, like it is of Japan, dismantling of the military-terror apparatus can follow. Without patronage, funds and professional guidance, terrorists outfits will dissolve into the countryside, just as the Nazis did.

Yes, things may go wrong; that is a calculated risk experts in the game have to take. But, if the terrorist-generals get away even now, chances are high that things will go horribly wrong some years down the line.
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LADEN DONE, KIYANI AND CO. NEXT?

Think of Abbottabad as Ramgarh and Khadakvasla rolled into one, with a bit of old Dehra Dun thrown in. It is as complete a military town as you can find. With two Regimental Centers, Baluch and Frontier Force, an Officers’ Training Academy and a large number of retired military officers who have settled down there, it makes for an excellent place to hide someone like Osama bin Laden.

Given the the fact that Pakistan military has been radicalised and its officers, right up to the Army Chief, have helped create and sustain the Al Qaida ever since Laden made Afghanistan-Pakistan his home, the chances of a such a valuable asset being accidentally spotted in Abbottabad and the information being leaked out are minimal. In addition, very few will suspect that Pakistan will be so foolish as to do hide someone like him there, for it will implicate both the military and its rogue outfit, the ISI – many erroneously believe it is an autonomous monster – in the event of him being caught.

In the middle of such a town, for over five long years, Laden lived in a house unlike and much larger than any in the neighbourhood, fully fortified with up to 20 feet high perimeter and internal walls topped by barbed wire and watched by cameras 24/7, but with no telephone or internet that could be used to track him down through electronic surveillance. The three-storied mansion was constructed in 2005 and, as per numerous reports, was occupied since then by an ailing Laden till a US bullet sent him to the 72 virgins he had been promising to thousands who died fighting his hate-filled, religion-driven war.

And Laden was not there alone. He lived with two wives, seven children and many servants and bodyguards. According to some reports, there were as many as 22 people in the mansion when US Navy Seals slithered into it in the pitch of the night on May 1, 2011. So many Arabs, who looked and spoke different, could have neither slipped into Abbottabad quietly nor stayed there for so long unnoticed and unreported. Unless, of course, the top Pakistani military, and I dare say even the civilian leadership, not only knew about it but was completely committed to protecting the Islamic hero that they themselves had created and nurtured.

Many Indian analysts, including the usual suspects – pun intended – like Barkha Dutt who are hell-bent on making Pakistan emerge smelling good even when it stands completely exposed, have been desperately making out a case that the US could not have carried out this operation without the knowledge and assistance of Pakistan. The logic is that after 10 long years, Pakistan had decided that Laden has become lead around its legs and that sacrificing him would help it extract some strategic advantage from the Americans in so far as Afghanistan is concerned. If this indeed was the case, to an even uninformed observer it would have occurred that the safe house in Abbottabad cantonment, built when Kiyani was the ISI chief, was the last place where they would have wanted him found out. They would have first mover him out to a ‘neutral’ hideout which did not point to its top military leadership and then given him away to the Seals.

Only the naïve will believe and the not-so-naive will want to make others believe that Pakistan was in the know of the Laden operation but is not claiming credit for fear of backlash. The cold truth is that had it got even a whiff of what was under way, Laden would have whisked away within minutes from what undoubtedly was a safe house provide by the Pakistani state. Moreover, had there been any Pakistani boots in and around the mansion when the Seals were sealing Laden’s fate, and had Kiyani known what was happening, he would have not let the Americans take Laden's body out of Pakistan. His subsequent hasty burial at sea shows that the Americans did not want the body to be taken over by the Pakistanis who would have, without doubt, helped turn his burial spot into a shrine to motivate more brainwashed murderers.

The Americans have since confirmed that Pakistan was informed about the operation only after American troops had killed Osama and flown out of Pakistani airspace. Many will continue to doubt this version, but I have little doubt that the tracking down and killing of Laden was a solely American affair.

For Pakistan, Laden was a living symbol of victory, a very motivating slap on the face of the world’s only super power, a statement to faithful radicals that although Pakistan appeared to be fighting with the Americans, it was actually fighting to defeat it and achieve for radical Islam a spectacular victory without a parallel, a victory that would lead to The Flag of Islam being hoisted in Delhi and eventually the whole world. Few would have missed the victorious smirk on the faces of Pakistanis from Musharraf to Kiyani when they denied that he was in Pakistan. So confident they were of their ability to hide him from America might forever.

Laden’s killing has dealt more than just a symbolic blow to the Al Qaida. It has changed the very dynamics of the war on terror that America and the rest of the free world is fighting. With Pakistan having been exposed in the worst possible manner it could have been, Obama will now be able to justify to the American public the eventual pushing of the war into and against Pakistan.

Pakistan cannot be America’s ally. It has been forced to become one only because the US cannot prosecute a war in land-locked Afghanistan if Pakistan does not give access its sea ports and surface transport networks to provide logistic support to the troops operating there. Had there been a US-friendly regime in Iran, Pakistan’s bluff would have been called long back. It is primarily due to this crippling logistic constraint that after 9/11 the US had threatened to bombard Pakistan back into stone age if it did not join its war on terror.

In private, the Americans must know that though they have taken out Laden, his is not the head whose decapitation will suffice. The real terrorists who need to be eliminated are Kiyani, Pasha and the rest of the gang of generals and political leaders who have turned Pakistan into one big terror factory that is beginning to swallow itself, not to die but to morph into an even more radicalised and dangerous monster.

The US is most likely not going to simply walk off from Afghanistan and Pakistan like the Soviets did, leaving behind an even more radicalised Pakistan in the hands of Kiyani & Co., the very people who have betrayed the US while pretending to fight with it, so that they can start the game all over again after a respite. They too will have to be taken out along with the massive architecture that supports the beast they have unleashed. The marriage of compulsion has not and cannot produce sweet fruit. It has to and will be ended. To the advantage of the US and the rest of the world. The only question, to my mind, is when, not if.

On the other hand, the Indian foreign policy establishment, hijacked as it has been by time-pass talkers, woolly-headed romantics, Nehruvian apologists and those driven by petty politics will, as always, do nothing except talk about chemistry and 'history', enjoy great (mis)guided trips to Pakistan and elsewhere and parrot that it is in India's supreme national interest to have a strong Pakistan!
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Related reading:
1. No answers to Pakistan's formidable force multipliers
2. Should Pakistan be saved?
3. Don't beggar my buggering neighbour, make him bigger
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JASMINE REVOLUTION: A MIRAGE IN THE DESERT

The Jasmine revolution, if it can be called a revolution, has failed. As it had to. Liberty, freedom and the will of the people, ideas that the modern world holds dear and, paradoxically, that have made many go wrong in their interpretations of what has happened, should eventually prevail. Change will triumph. But that revolution, the real one, is still some decades and much bloodshed away.

MJ Akbar, an astute observer of events past and present, foresaw in 2002 that most of the Arab world was 10 to 15 years away from its French Revolution. Unfortunately, he saw the developments through a bifocal lens – liberal and Muslim – and France distorted his vision. That is why in the flush of the moment in Egypt, he saw what is still distant: Gandhian values, democracy, cries for freedom, the works. That is why elsewhere too he saw the republican spirit at work. Fareed Zakaria, wearing almost identical spectacles, was a little more circumspect in his assessment of the developments in Egypt. While he felt that fears of a theocracy were overblown, he conceded that the most likely outcome was an “illiberal democracy” in which “the elected majority restricts individual rights and freedoms, curtails civil society and uses the state as its instrument of power.”

Was this Arab revolution ever going to be a secular clash between dictatorship and democracy, between suppression and freedom, as the modern non-Islamic world believes it would? Or, if it had succeeded, was it going to result in one tyranny replaced by another, as Ayaan Hirsi Ali and some Pakistani analysts – made wiser by first-hand experience -- believed it would?

The manner in which the regimes in Libya and Bahrain have suppressed those opposing them with brutal force is an answer in itself. Closer home, Pakistan did the same to defeat and kill Baloch leader Nawab Akbar Bugti and crush hostile Taliban etc. Earlier, in Afghanistan, it had installed and supported perhaps the most tyrannical and oppressive theocratic regime that the world has seen for a long time, and is now headed inexorably down the same slope itself. In Iran, the one country where a revolution truly succeeded in the Muslim world, a corrupt monarchy was replaced by a tyrannical, intolerant theocracy that continues to brutally crush its opponents. Let us not talk of Indonesia and Malaysia or, to a lesser extent, Bangladesh, because though they are Islamic states, culturally and civilisationally they still remain somewhat tethered to their pre-Islamic past.

Islamists have never stopped saying that Western style secularism, democracy and liberty are alien to Islam. Islam means submission to the will of God and obedience to His law.The law is laid down explicitly and submission to it enforced in varying degrees across the Muslim world. Submission, thus, comes naturally, both to those imposing it and to those submitting. As a direct consequence, so does use for force, as recent developments in Pakistan have graphically illustrated once again.

Rebelling against a secular or semi-secular tyrant is relatively easy because he enforces submission to his own laws. But to interpret it as a mass craving for liberal values is erroneous, to say the very least. Findings of the Pew Research Centre, as highlighted below, on the views of Egyptians and Pakistanis, in fact, point in the opposite direction: fundamentalism is on the rise. Figures for Pakistan are in brackets.

• Role of Islam 95% (88) of those who feel Islam is playing large role in politics think it is good, while 80% (79) of those who think it is playing a small role think it is bad. Islam must play a much bigger role.

• Traditional Muslim practices 82% (82) favor stoning adulterers to death; 77% (82) favour chopping off hands of robbers; 86% (76) want death for those who leave Islam.

Perhaps it is good that the Jasmine revolution has failed. Had it succeeded, most likely a new and more unpredictable set of Islamist tyrants would have forced people into submission, after the dust had settled, and not liberal democrats ready to be one among the people, running governments of, by and for them. As far as the non-Muslim world is concerned, that phase is best skipped.

Yes, it cannot be denied that the challenge of change has knocked on the Arab door. But that door is not going to open easily. For that to happen, the Islamist boil has first to burst. Is there evidence of that happening anytime soon? In Shia Iran the mullahs are fully entrenched; in Sunni Pakistan forces they represent are on the verge of swamping the state; extremism is ascending across the globe.

History tells us that tyrants who rule in the name of God are most difficult to overthrow, for they enforce submission to His laws as interpreted by them and do not recognise or respect change. There is no evidence to suggest that the Tsunami that will make the ones in the Muslim world submit to the will of the people has begun to move yet. The failed revolution was no more than a mirage in the desert.
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WILL EGYPT GO THE PAK WAY?

Egypt is in turmoil. A dictator is on his way out and there is great uncertainty and fear about what will happen after him. At one end of the spectrum are those who believe that after decades of oppressive rule democracy will triumph. At the other extreme we have those who see Islamists claiming the country after the dust settles.

A stable, secular, non-confrontationist democracy is what the whole world would want to see not just in Egypt but in the rest of the Arab world. But is Egypt headed that way, or is it more likely to land on the slippery slope that Pakistan finds itself on today?

In July 2010, the Pew Global Attitudes Project Report about Pakistan came up with disturbing figures about the extent to which Pakistan had become radicalised, thanks in no small measure to the ideological and political thrust imparted by its leaders, military and civil. I had then written a piece on its findings which were largely ignored since they did not fit in with the picture that some analysts had been painting. It was evident from the report that Pakistan slide into religious extremism was real and dangerous. A few months later, Punjab Governor Salman Taseer’s assassination by his body guard for opposing the blasphemy law -- and the reactions that followed -- rudely awoke everyone save a few die hard romantics, and raised real worries about Pakistan imploding and plunging into a dangerous and violent Islamist abyss.

What does Pew tell us about Egypt? Surprisingly, there are some striking similarities with Pakistan that are almost ominous. That being so, are we right in assuming that the demonstrators who have taken over Tahrir Square in Cairo are actually looking for a Western-style democracy? Or is the Muslim Brotherhood, believed by some to be the force behind the unrest, likely to succeed in turning the country into an ‘Only Islam’ state?

The first and extremely significant Pew finding is that an overwhelming 83% -- the highest in the world -- Pakistanis and Egyptians hold a ‘very unfavourable’ opinion of the United States. Understandable in the case of Pakistanis because of America’s invasion of Afghanistan; but what has rankled the Egyptians so much? Does such a strong dislike for the US also translate – in conjunction with other factors – into some sort of a rejection of secular and friendly democracy too?

Some answers may lie in the figures that follow. Figures for Pakistan are in brackets.

• Role of Islam 95% (88) of those who feel Islam is playing large role in politics think it is good, while 80% (79) of those who think it is playing a small role think it is bad. Islam must play a much bigger role.

• Traditional Muslim practices 82% (82) favor stoning adulterers to death; 77% (82) favour chopping off hands of robbers; 86% (76) want death for those who leave Islam.

• Struggle between modernisers and fundamentalists Only 31% (44)see a struggle between modernisers and fundamentalists and 59% (28) of those side with fundamentalists. Pakistanis surprise positively here.

• Democracy 59% (44) prefer democracy to other types of government; 22% (15) believe under certain conditions a non-democratic government can be preferable.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was once a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and knows the dynamics first hand, thinks it is inevitable that the the organisation will win the September election and that the leaderless, secular democratic forces that have swept one tyranny aside could easily succumb to another. Fareed Zakaria, on the other hand, is convinced that fears of an Egyptian theocracy are vastly overblown and that democracy could work: ”The nation has seen both Mubarak and Iran’s Mullahs and wants neither.” Had Zakaria looked further eastwards, he may have been less sanguine: Pakistan has seen both Iran’s Mullahs and Afghanistan’s Taliban but is still heading straight down that Islamist path.

Are theocracy and democracy completely mutually exclusive as many seem to suggest? Are they really two opposite poles in geo-political and geo-strategic terms? If they were, the US would have not been backing dictators in areas and countries where democracy was, and remains, in danger of seamlessly slipping into unacceptable hands, to say the least. Sure it has made many blunders in the process. But what's the guarantee that the alternatives would have been better for the world?

Pakistan, lest we forget, is a democracy. But it is not secular, has never been. On the contrary, it has been sliding down the Islamist slope for decades and today finds itself firmly in its grasp, future bleak, its very survival in question. When a closet Talibani like Imran Khan, who openly supported handing over Swat Valley to the Taliban and their medieval system of justice, admits to Barkha Dutt that the “situation in Pakistan in not just bad; it is much worse,” little room is left for doubt about what we are facing.

India, bereft of a strategic vision and thereby plans to impact other nations in its supreme national interest, often fails look beyond the idea of democracy, as if it is an end in itself. Its reactions to the developments in Eqypt are, not surprisingly, marked by benign disinterest befitting a non-player who wants to occupy an imaginary and meaningless high moral ground that no other nation has any time for.

But the Arab world, the West and the US have their ears to the ground. They know that the Tahrir Square quake has the potential to shake, disturb and disrupt their world and the global order like nothing has in the past few decades. Caught almost totally by surprise and rattled by nightmare scenarios, they are frenetically trying to figure out ways to minimise its ill effects.

Egypt may well go Pakistan's way over time, with a domino-effect. If that happens, India too will be impacted directly and will not be able to afford the luxury of practicing inertia-driven non-involvement that it has so got used to. Democracy is only a form of government; when analysing and dealing with potential threats, it does not lend itself to being used either as a shield or a missile.
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KASHMIR: NO SOLUTIONS ACROSS LOC

There is undeniably a serious, continuing communication gap between North and South Blocks. It is almost as though they represent the views of two different governments.

How else does one explain the fact that while the Foreign Minister believes that Pakistan remains the epicenter of terror, the Home Secretary has manifestly seen such a major improvement in the Pak-sponsored terror situation in Kashmir that he has unilaterally announced a major policy shift? Despite Pakistan’s dogged refusal to bring to justice sponsors of 26/11, despite its Army continuing to push terrorists into the Valley, GK Pillai has announced a 25% cut in security forces there and unilaterally offered, in the words of MJ Akbar, “multiple-entry, six-month travel permits (not Indian passports, but specially designed permits that might leave the nationality question vague) to Kashmiris to cross the Line of Control into Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir,” and from there, seamlessly into Pakistan.

This, as MJ Akbar notes, suggests that India has forgotten 26/11 despite Pakistan making no move to bring to justice its perpetrators, and has almost surreptitiously decided to resume the pre-Mumbai equation with Pakistan. “The UPA may be entirely rational in conceding defeat in the stand-off against Islamabad,” he argues, “but confession and clarity before the Indian people would help.”

The unilateral decision of the Home Ministry to issue permits to Kashmiris on the Indian side of the LOC is part of a plan first mooted by General Pervez Musharraf which, as per former Pakistan Foreign Minister Khursheed Mahmood Kasturi, India and Pakistan were just a signature away from signing in 2007. It is generally accepted that the deal involved demilitarisation along the LOC and within the state on both sides, maximum self-governance, free movement of Kashmiris within the whole state, and some sort of joint mechanism comprising Indians, Pakistanis and Kashmiris on both sides of the LOC to oversee self-governance and other issues.

The entire deal was, to my mind, a sell-out by India even at that time. Now, considering the Islamist abyss into which almost all organs of Pakistan have descended, as developments there after the killing of Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer have shown, it should not even be thought of. But the shift, announced by the Home Secretary, leaves little room for doubt that not only has Pakistan succeeded in defeating India over 26/11 but India has also chosen to ignore the fact that the Pakistan it is dealing with now is not the one it knows, the one that has been trumping it on the negotiating for decades: Qadri’s Pakistan is a dangerous, different beast altogether, not one that should be given even the whiff of victory over ‘Hindu’ India.

According to Pillai, Pakistan -- pursuing a comprehensive solution to the core problem of Kashmir -- rejected India’s piecemeal proposal to allow Kashmiris to move relatively freely across the LOC. There can, thus, be little doubt that his unilateral announcement is but the first step towards reviving at least the original deal, even though under General Kiyani, who had earlier gone along with Musharraf, Pakistan wants India to make even more concessions.

Let us examine some of the dangerous implications and ramifications of the deal that is being revived by a government that seems to have been 'stoned' into submission and is being led to believe that it has no alternative but to capitulate.

• Free movement across LOC. It needs to be emphasised that for Pakistan LOC is not the solution but the problem. It is not satisfied with the part of the state it has and wants all of it; it “runs in its blood”. Only Pakistan will gain if the LOC is made irrelevant. Given the different ethnicities of various regions of the state, the so-called free movement across the LOC will eventually be a predominantly one-way movement from its side into not just the Valley but the whole of the huge state. Considering what happened to Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley, non-Muslims from the Indian side will not only feel discouraged to travel to the Pakistan side of the LOC, but will also, one way or another, be prevented from doing so by fundamentalists there. Movement across LOC will be permitted on permits. India has Article 370 in place, so there will be almost no cases of false permits being issued to non-state subjects by the state government. On the Pakistani side, however, there is no similar restriction and Punjabis who now dominate Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) are little different from those from Punjab province, from where many more many have settled there after 1947. Given that Pakistan's real objective is to amalgamate J&K into Pakistan, what we will see is planned settlement of “Qadris” over time in parts of Jammu province where they can relatively easily merge with locals and radicalise them too. Non-Muslims in the state will become even more marginalised than they are now. Terrorists will also drive them out from more and more far flung areas and close in on towns and cities over time. The separatist sentiment now confined to ethnic Kashmiris and the Valley, will spread to other parts of the state too, with the collusion and active assistance of government officials.India’s nightmare will come true, no one but its own blindness to blame.
  

• Joint Control.This is a misnomer. It will be nothing less than ceding control to Pakistan. On ground, control of Kashmir Valley has already been ceded involuntarily along many significant dimensions by India. The joint control mechanism will spread that span to Jammu and Ladakh regions too. Representatives of POK, Indian Kashmir, Pakistan and India will form part of this mechanism. Effectively, three out of four of these groups will be under Pakistan control ab initio. India will also, undoubtedly, be pressured to place religion-blind, 'secular' representatives in the body from its side. Need more be said? With such a body monitoring self-government, one can be sure that demands for more and more areas of governance to be liberated of Indian (notionally Pakistani too) control will be made, militants on call to drive home the point: that is how Pakistan will complete creeping acquisition of not just the Muslim majority Kashmir Valley but the rest of the state too.

• Demilitarisation. Demilitarisation of POK is virtually meaningless from the Indian point of view as there will no gain to India there along any dimension. It is the demilitarisation of the Indian side that will have devastating short and long term consequences. Almost immediately, thanks partly to joint control, the writ of the Indian state will become less than notional in the Muslim Kashmir Valley. Without a bullet being fired, the situation will become worse than it was in the early Nineties when Pakistani currency was openly used in parts of the Valley, and people had set their watches to Pakistan Time. The writ of militants - non-state actors if you like - will run unchecked over vast swathes. Coupled with free trans-LOC movement, it will also result in more and more areas being cleansed of Hindus with ease, often undetected, in a re-run of what happened to Kashmiri Pandits. After 20 years of fighting terrorists and after losing the lives of thousands of sons of India, its leaders will have done no more than quietly lay down arms and set the clock back to 1989, worse to follow.

These changes are not going to convert the whole state of Jammu and Kashmir into a Europe with people moving happily across as civilised human beings who are nicely settled and at peace with the world. When love and trust is absent across a settled international border drawn on the basis of religion, how can it blossom in an area that one desperately wants to snatch from the other on that very basis? Put another way, if the two countries can make their borders like the European ones, will the LOC not dissolve on its own? Why has that not happened till now? Is there even a remote chance of it happening given the trajectory that Pakistan is now on, that may well see it implode?

The answer is self-evident. Yet, a defeatist India continues to delude itself into believing that it has no choice but to give in to a failing Pakistan that is rapidly becoming become as radical and Islamist as the many groups nurtured by it. Qadri’s Pakistan is never going to be the strong and stable neighbour at peace with India that India hopes it will be after it gets what it want in Kashmir. Quite the contrary.

Solutions lie on this side of the LOC, problems on the other. India has to start thinking out of the box so that it can put Pakistan out of the Kashmir equation, not integrate it into it. Old templates need to be incinerated, not given a deceptive gloss.
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SHOULD PAKISTAN BE SAVED?

If the creation of Pakistan can be visualised as heavy snow falling on and covering upper reaches of precipitous slopes, then the calamitous avalanche that seems to have taken many by surprise, that suddenly seems unstoppable, that is poised to flatten everything below the snowline, should have been anticipated and strong barriers constructed in its predictable path so that it could have been checked and contained before it began its destructive descent.

Jinnah may have, at one level, visualised Pakistan as a modern Muslim state that viewed religion as a purely private matter – a mirror image, really, of secular India – but he would have known that the jihad that even he flirted with to violently snatch his state, was not an idea that would be forgotten after Pakistan was created. That is perhaps why he wanted to erect a barrier between the state and religion. But other Pakistanis, flush with success and angry that it was not complete, had different ideas. To cut the long story short, the snow continued to fall silently till General Zia-ul-Haq purposefully picked up a few fistfuls, made a snowball and set it rolling down the steep Islamist slope, in the hope that it would gather Kashmir and Afghanistan, and eventually the whole of ‘Hindu’ India, for Pakistan.

With the Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer’s assassination by Malik Mumtaz Husain Qadri, his bodyguard, only because he called Pakistan's blasphemy law a black law, and the subsequent developments on Pakistan, the avalanche has dramatically demonstrated how strong and powerful it has become and how powerless and defenceless are those who stand in its path.

Details of the Qadri-generated shock waves have been extensively covered in the media and by analysts, and I do not wish to tread the territory again. I would, however, like to draw the attention of readers to what two of India’s best and brutally honest Pakistan analysts have to say. MJ Akbar warns: “ we are seeing, unless we are lucky, the future of Pakistan on the face of Malik Qadri.” Tavleen Singh explains that the real danger of Pakistan imploding is because its “descent into venomous, violent Islamism is mostly the fault of their leaders and...this idea of faith has seeped into the fabric of Pakistani society. It is not just mullahs who spread the message but lawyers, policemen, judges and army officers.” It must be mentioned that it is not the first time this has been seen, though never openly on this scale. Even Imran Khan, the cricketer-turned-politician loved by India’s secularists, is a fundamentalist who supported handing over of Swat Valley to the Taliban and the latter’s system of justice. But, till Qadri struck, India’s media pretended otherwise and chose see only the ‘liberal’ PLU in him.

Many analysts have been arguing that a strong, stable Pakistan is in India’s interest and that India should make every concession possible, including over Kashmir, to strengthen the democratic government and, by implication, moderate voices there, because we are same people, because Pakistanis love Bollywood as much as we do, because you cannot change geography -- the usual nonsense. The frightening and ridiculous alternate scenario that some have been painting is that presently Pakistan stands between India and the Taliban – they are already just 150 km for our border, they shout -- and that if Pakistan goes, we will have thousands of armed radicals on India's border, creating havoc in India.

Let us face the harsh truth that but a few have been speaking about: the real danger that India faces is not from lightly armed groups like the Taliban and the LeT. There is no way that they can defeat a half-million strong military and take over Pakistan. The nightmare scenario, clear and near-present, is that the whole state, including the military, will become as Islamist as the radicalised groups nurtured by it.

It is worth recalling that in 1947, Muslim soldiers of Indian Army who opted for Pakistan, an idea that almost till the end many believed would not take the shape it did, overnight became enemies of their regimental colleagues. Within months of the creation of Pakistan, they fought against and killed the men they had fought with and killed for. If that dramatic transition was easy, formal adoption of the radical and extremist ideology that has been pursued by the state of Pakistan for decades will be seamless. In fact, as the Qadri case shows, it is substantially already in place in not just the military but all organs of the state and civil society too.

The radical Islamism that is now no longer deniable in Pakistan has been visible almost openly in India’s Kashmir Valley for many years. It manifestation, not growth, has been restrained because of the presence of Indian security forces. But India as not been looking. Partly because its liberals have got the idea of secularism messed up and, more importantly, because its policy makers have embraced a ‘drift, hope and react-only-when-forced-to’ policy. Eyes wide shut. Even the US has not paid attention to the mistakes India has made in Kashmir. It is repeating them, much to Pakistan’s joy. No amount of bribing or “winning of hearts and minds” is going to work in Afghanistan. The billions of dollars it is giving to Pakistan too is not going to make the latter give up its duplicity and help the US win its war in Afghanistan. Nor is it going to retard the unstoppable radical avalanche.

Tavleen Singh knows that there is little that can now be done to stop the tearing avalanche from reaching the bottom of the Pakistani mountain. Unlike Sudheendra Kulkarni and others like him, she knows India can do nothing to save Pakistan. But she too falls into the trap, perhaps due to the pain she feels for that country, of seeing a faint flicker of hope if the US stops the war in Afghanistan because then, according to her, Pakistanis will not be able to find someone else to blame for their problems.

This is as naïve and dangerous an argument as asking India to leave or, at the very least, make major concessions on Kashmir to Pakistan. One more perceived victory against a super power will be the perfect fuel to fire Islamists to re-energise Pakistan and put India in the fore sights of their Kalashnikovs -- nuclear bombs too -- with renewed confidence and venom. If India too ‘loses’ in Kashmir, both will only be doubled.

The time for indulging in the luxury of romanticising a strong, stable, non-radicalised Pakistan that is at peace with India and the West is over. That such a Pakistan was never going to be a reality has been clear for a long time. Qadri has only made sure no one can pretend anymore. An Islamist Pakistan is a danger not just to India but to the whole world. This reality has to be confronted head-on and the danger neutralised, sooner the better.

Has anyone heard Pakistan ever say that a strong, stable India is in Pakistan’s interest? How can the reverse be true? Let us stop even thinking of saving Pakistan. Five fingers, separated, cannot deliver the punch that a fist can. They need to be worked on. Carefully.
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'PAK' INTENTIONS

Before Mumbai was attacked on 26/11, the response of the government every time terrorists struck used to be sickeningly identical and helpless. Home Minister Shivraj Patil would blame Pakistan, his deputy would say that the hand of the ISI was visible, the NSA would either remain silent or would waffle that there was credible evidence of Pakistan's involvement and declare that the LeT needed to be destroyed. Their job, they believed, ended there; in blaming Pakistan they had achieved a victory for India. Not surprisingly, nothing whatsoever was done by them for five long years to strengthen India's intelligence and security apparatus or to deter Pakistan from prosecuting its proxy war.

After 26/11, P Chidambaram woke up a comatose Home Ministry and set in motion badly needed reforms and organisational changes that should have been put in place decades back. But, he seems to be the lone ranger in a paralysed foreign policy and national security establishment that seems to be determined to pursue just the dream course that Pakistan would like India to till its objectives are achieved.

The net result of this continuing inertia and muddle is that Pakistan has come to believe, rightly, that India's leaders are utterly weak and mortally afraid of holding Pakistan to account for any hostile offensive action including an open limited war like the one Musharraf unleashed in Kargil in 1999.

It may be recalled that immediately after 26/11, Pakistan had denied that those involved in the attack were Pakistanis. Later, when confronted with the evidence provided by Kasab and the Americans, and rattled and worried about India's response, in unison they all -- leaders, experts, journalists -- started saying that they were non-state actors, rogue elements of the ISI, and that Pakistan itself was a victim of terror.

Our guys then, noises apart, happily latched onto the 'rogue elements' lie because it saved their face more than Pakistan's; it provided them with just the excuse they were looking for to avoid disturbing the comfortable status quo they had spent a lifetime protecting and promoting. They were keen to get back to kebabs and conversation -- familiar terrain, so what it if meaningless and totally unlikely to yield anything to India's advantage? The net result was disasters, first at Sharm-el-Sheikh where Pakistan turned the tables on them by getting them to talk about Baluchistan, and later at Islamabad where Foreign Minister SM Krishna was publicly humiliated and 26/11 was successfully converted into a non-event.

This is what I had written a few months back: "A vital fact that seems to have escaped most of us that there is no space for "rogue elements" in any military; they are summarily and severely punished because any challenge to the laid down rules, roles and leaders cannot be accepted under any circumstances. If soldiers start breaking rank, the very foundations of a military organisation and its command and control structure are destroyed, and it ceases to be an effective instrument of war. So, we have to be very clear that wherever the involvement of the ISI is revealed, it has to be of the organisation, not individuals. There is no room for buying Pakistan's argument that some rogue soldiers have acted on their own. It is simply not possible, except in a rare case, nipped with swift punishment. Has anyone ever heard of that happening in Pakistan, ever?"

The latest revelation that the Interpol has issued a Red Corner Notice for two serving Majors of the Pakistan Army for their involvement in 26/11 confirms this. Let us also remember that this is only the tip of the huge iceberg of deceit that Pakistan has been able to successfully conceal -- or was it allowed to by the Indian establishment that knew about it all along?-- for years about the complete involvement of its military, including the ISI, in terror operations against India in Kashmir and elsewhere. The needle of culpability points right to the top of the military pyramid.

For those in the Indian establishment still willing to give Pakistan the benefit of doubt or, worse, intent on making Indians believe that things are much better than they are, someone with a sharp sense of the weak minds of Indian leaders has removed even the fig leaf. Once again.

Last year, Musharraf had Karan Thapar -- trapped in his own limited and distorted view, script and agenda -- so distracted by his sartorial elegance that even though he made some terribly shocking statements about Kargil, terror and role of the LeT, along with state of Pakistan, in protecting the interests of Indian Muslims -- not Kashmiri Muslims mind you -- that the latter simply was not able to even acknowledge anything offensive Musharraf was saying. To make matters worse, no one in the Indian establishment too made any noise at all, despite the fact it was a former President who had made such provocative policy statements.

Emboldened, Musharraf now says -- overlook lame subsequent denials -- that Pakistan has trained terrorists to fight against India in Kashmir, that he has no regrets for the Kargil intrusion by Pakistan's military. He also says that the LeT, a Pakistani Punjabi terror outfit that launched the 26/11 attack, is rightly fighting for the 'freedom' of Kashmiris. His justification, openly stated, is that since India is not prepared to resolve the Kashmir dispute in a peaceful manner (in the manner that Pakistan wants it to, one must add), Pakistan has a right to promote its own interest.

Now that is a crystal clear statement of intent that Pakistan has and will use all means available, including war, to settle Kashmir in its favour when an opportunity presents itself or can be created by its military establishment. Fear gone, the gloves are off. Musharraf is mocking and daring India's leaders, indeed the whole nation, to stop Pakistan, if they have the balls. And what has been the response of those looking after our foreign policy? The same 'We-always-knew-it' yelp, as if that is a Daisy Cutter that will flatten and deter Pakistan's leaders from doing what they have been for decades.

Musharraf is not wrong when he says that Pakistan won Kargil. Lt Gen Krishna Pal is right when he says that India lost that war. Having driven the Pakistanis out of Indian territory at a speed that no one initially expected, India failed to make Pakistan pay for its misadventure by not moving into, say, Gilgit-Baltistan, so as to get it to the negotiating table on its knees. On the contrary, after Musharraf seized power, Vajpayee legitimised Kargil and gave on a platter to Musharraf the victory his troops had failed to, by agreeing to give concessions that no Indian Prime Minister had ever even thought of. The attacker was rewarded, the attack justified.

If the whole of Kashmir is a dispute, then POK and the strategic Gilgit-Baltistan are as up for grabs for India as the Valley is for Pakistan. If Pakistan says its proxy and hot wars to wrest the Valley are justified, then it automatically gives India a licence to use the same means to reclaim parts of the state under Pakistani occupation. But India has not even whispered this counter, much less think about giving it concrete shape, if only with the limited objective of getting Pakistan off the Valley's back for good.

India's war against Pakistan over Kashmir is not going to be won by India in the Valley; it has to be won elsewhere. The US is not going to win it for us, nor is our tremulous response to Pakistan's continuing aggression. Pakistan, as should be now clear to everyone, cannot, will not, stop doing what it has been to get India on it knees. Emboldened by India's cowardice, it has now stopped even pretending otherwise. It has to be made to stop. Our so-called 'nuanced responses' befitting 'big, serious nations that do not run foreign policy for cheap thrills' -- which practically has meant doing nothing to create even a ripple in the disadvantageous-to-India statu quo -- have not yielded any dividend thus far, will not yield any in future too.

After 9/11 the US did not talk nuance. More recently, despite the fact that supplies for its troops in Afghanistan go through Pakistan, it has made it clear to its leaders that "all bets are off" if there is another terror attack on the US." Our netas, babus and diffident generals need to awaken to the fact that there is only one language that Pakistani generals, as also their civilian leaders who talk and behave like tribal chieftains, speak and understand. They are not hiding their 'Pak' intentions. The communication mismatch is at our end. The onus to remove it is on us. India is under attack, not Pakistan.

AFSPA OR TERROR 2?

In 2008, voters came out in large numbers in the Valley, defying calls given by pro-Pakistan separatists to boycott the elections. Why did they do so? Because they felt they safely could: there was a near total absence of terrorist violence and, unlike during previous elections, no threats were issued by either the LeT or the HM. Many believe that both kept mum because their ability to enforce a ban through use of force had been significantly eroded. And the ordinary Kashmiri knew it well enough to muster courage to go out and cast his vote. No wonder pro-Pakistan hardliner Syed Shah Gilani, stung by the surprise, could do no more than than say that voting figures were artificially inflated by bogus voting and invisible pressure of security forces.

It is a no-brainer that Gilani's Pakistani masters would have been even more deeply disturbed by this unacceptable normalisation of the situation that, more than anything, signaled an important shift in public opinion away from a failing Pakistan. Were Pakistan's generals going to just sit back and let Kashmir slip out of their fingers? Were they expected to simply shrug off their defeat and let the blood that runs in their veins just flow out of their body?

A strident Pakistani response to reclaim Kashmir should have been anticipated by India. Perhaps it was too. But, a clever enemy that is driven by a congenital 'junoon', hit where and when few expected it to. The military mind that was strategising the counter offensive yet again achieved what is central to success in any military operation: complete surprise.

Just before the tornado of stones hit an unsuspecting India in May this year, there was much complacency. Absence of violence and influx of a record number of tourists made many analysts who know Kashmir inside-out claim that the tide had turned, that India had almost won the war against Pakistan, that the people of the Valley had turned their backs on that nation. They were as right then as they are now about the anger of tormented youths who have grown up under the shadow of the gun.

It is presumptuous, if not downright unintelligent, of those who fly into the Valley for what are essentially well-protected and by now well rehearsed conducted tours for a couple of days to claim that they understand the dynamics better than those who serve and live there on a full-time basis for years, and professionals who have intelligence and operational inputs that are not available in the public domain. It is because of this Molotov cocktail of arrogance, ignorance and focus on the moment rather than the continuum that the whole debate about Kashmir has got largely deflected from the essentials.

In the last few months, 70 precious lives have been lost due to firing on stone pelters and arsonists in a few towns in the Valley. Deaths of ordinary citizens pain every one, more so soft, emotional Indians who are easily swayed by suffering. The deaths, not surprisingly, have become central to the argument designed to deflect India's attention away from core issues behind the intifada and pressurise what is widely perceived to be weak, confused and vote-bank driven Indian government into making concessions that, on the face of it, appear somewhat justified.

Consider this: all protesters have been killed in firing by the state police and CRPF. Not one has been killed by the Army. Lt Gen HS Panag, former GOC-in-C of Northern Command, under whose watch the whole state was, tells us that the Army has not opened fire on protestors for the last 20 years and that for the last 10 years the Army has not operated in any city. The police are responsible for maintaining law and order in all cities and they have been given additional powers under that Public Safety Act(PSA) and the Disturbed Areas Act(DAA). This means that none of those teenagers who have been pushed into the streets of a few towns including Srinagar have ever seen the Army firing in and around their localities and killing people.

Yet, other than the calls for 'Azadi' that translated, as they had to, into the hoisting of Pakistan's flag in Lal Chowk on Eid in the presence of the 'moderate' separatist leader Umer Farooq, what is the most strident demand being made by protestors and separatists undoubtedly at the behest of their leaders some of whom are no more than couriers delivering fiats received from their masters and handlers in Pakistan? Remove the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) from all of Kashmir. Some mainstream politicians too have jumped onto this bandwagon, if not anything else, out of fear of getting isolated.

Odd isn't it that no one is asking for removal of the PSA and DAA that enables the police to carry out what Pankaj Mishra, in an op-ed in the New York Times, calls "brutal suppression of non-violent protests"? Even more odd isn’t it that an isolated fake encounter by the Army in remote Machchal is being blown out of all proportions by Kashmiri separatists and some Indian analysts who possibly consider it their moral duty to not only believe what separatists say but also amplify it with eloquence -- rather than filter it with elementary commonsense -- to demand from every possible forum that the 'draconian' AFSPA should be withdrawn?

Let us ask two basic questions. Why has terrorism almost disappeared from the Valley? Has the situation really changed as much as we are being led to believe?

Terrorists are on the retreat in the Valley and the LeT and HM no longer pose the combat threat that they once did. This has happened primarily because the Indian Army has relentlessly fought them for 20 years and has all but defeated and demoralised them. The fight has been bloody, with as many as 5962 soldiers killed by terrorists in J&K between 1988 and July 05, 2010. This success, at a heavy price, would not have been possible without the AFSPA. For those who may not know, the AFSPA entitles soldiers to execute military operations against armed insurgents on its own, including carrying out cordon and search of suspected militant hideouts, and opening fire as per their military judgment, without awaiting a written request from or the presence of a magistrate. It also provides legal protection to soldiers carrying out tasks assigned to them by the government which calls them in only when all other instruments available to the state to deal with a situation have failed.

Of course, there are those who are propagating the myth that terrorism has almost evaporated from the Valley because the international climate has turned against the use of violence. Some believe that Pakistan has temporarily eased off the pressure in Kashmir because of the pressure and presence of the US in its backyard. B Raman, a former RAW officer, is of the view that although Pakistan is continuing to infiltrate terrorists into J&K, it has brought down the "level of their acts of terrorism so that any escalation does not come in the way of the confidence-building process going on between the two countries as a result of initiatives taken" by the governments of India and Pakistan. No one in India, it seems, thinks that the Indian Army has anything substantial to do with it!

There can be no better barometer of a situation than the reaction of the enemy, if one can look through the smoke that he always generates to mask it. In my view, Pakistan's generals have paid rich compliments to the Indian Army for the success that it has achieved in the Valley but, in the din created by the pelting of stones, no one in India has noticed.

In response to the success of the elections in 2008 that jolted them -- don’t buy the latest spin that they were for local governance only -- had Pakistan's generals been in a position to re-crank terror, they would have not hesitated to do so. If they can brazenly play what Matt Waldman calls "a double-game of astonishing duplicity" with the US in Afghanistan by appearing to be fighting on its side while using the Taliban to defeat it, if they can tell the US to lay off saying "Kashmir is ours", can anyone believe that they will willingly exercise restraint against India?

It is because Pakistan could not reactivate Kalashnikov bearing fighters in Kashmir in substantial numbers and was convinced that this time they would be put out even faster, that it was forced to change strategy to send a loud message to Indians, including Kashmiris, that it was not throwing in the towel so easily. Developing and fine-tuning it took some time and, at the perfect moment, the stones surfaced and hit a surprised India. Former Army Chief General Shankar Roychowdhury says that the latest protests in the Valley are "too precise and calibrated to be anything but enemy action." Lt Gen HS Panag, who should know a thing or two more than frequent-flyer analysts, tweets: "Intifada is a carefully calibrated strategy of ISI & separatists & not repeat not pent up frustration of "the tormented generation" and that "we have fallen into the trap."

The real trap is perhaps not the intifada; it is what Pakistan hope to achieve through it. I don't believe that Pakistan's generals have the patience -- or trust Kashmiris enough -- to put all their eggs in the intifada basket. Pakistan is not a weak Palestine. For it, intifada is an inferior and temporary tool of necessity. That is why relentless, emotive pressure is being exerted to get the government to lift the AFSPA from the entire Valley. Sections of the government have, as per media reports, already fallen into this trap. Some just want to get rid of the problem of the moment by partially withdrawing it from some districts, including Srinagar, where the maximum fire is raging, and Ganderbal, in the Valley. The logic is that situation is now normal.

Is the situation really normal? Has infiltration stopped? Has Pakistan given up its claim on Kashmir? Has it stopped using the LeT etc as instruments of the state to achieve its objective of liberating Kashmir by force? Are the security forces in the valley operating "with an expansive mandate that is not commensurate with military necessity" as "General" S Varadarajan has concluded?

The situation looks normal because the Army has brought it under control and is working 24/7 to ensure it remains so, with more than 1000 small teams out at any given point of time, and troops guarding the LoC too. As Lt Gen Raghavan brought out in a TV show, the moment AFSPA is lifted in the whole Valley or even any part of it, within weeks terrorists will regroup and reorganise, like it happened in the North East. Pakistan also knows that once they lift AFSPA, India's leaders will not have the guts to reimpose it till the situation gets out of hand. That is what it wants!

Let us not forget that the normalcy that AFSPA has helped restore has benefited Kashmiris the most. This urban stone-pelting generation does not know what it is to sleep with the sound of bullets flying through the night and live with the smell of danger and death at every turn. How can such a generation ask on its own for the removal of an Act which has never impacted their daily lives?

Pakistan wants AFSPA out. Mere talks, it has learnt from experience, won't get it anywhere. Force, it has realised, is not something that India's leaders can either withstand or repel. It wants, therefore, to take terror to a new level, better integrated and in tandem with indigenous uprising, to get India to give more and more till nothing is left to give. For re-building capacity that takes time, a relatively safe sanctuary is required, the kind Kashmir was before AFSPA was imposed. Remember, there are no walls between districts in the Valley and no demographic differences. So, if AFSPA is lifted in even a couple of districts, it will suffice. And, as the intifada has shown, we will not get a whiff of what is happening till terror strikes again, new, improved, lethal.

India has a choice to make: AFSPA or Terror 2?