Another Attempt on Musharraf

Fuzair,

Are you saying that India has no right to demand Pakistan stop cross border terrorism because of LTTE and Mukti Bahini (I am taking your word for this. I have no knowledge of how involved India was in pre 1971 Bangladesh)?

Re: Mahesh

I see, you`ve corrected your mistakes. I suppose the LTTE no longer exists and Sri Lanka is at peace?

While the Indian government is certainly not responsible for manufacturing the Tamil grievances against the Sinhala majority (Bandaranaike, more or less, did that), the Indian government bears a great deal of the responsibility for turning the LTTE into the force it is today.

As far as the Indian scale being nowhere close to the Pakistani one, what do you call the level of (pre-December 1971) direct military involvement in E. Pakistan? What do you call the level of training and support of the LTTE (and other Tamil groups) in Tamil Nadu in the 1970s and 1980s?

Pakistan certainly did not create the Kashmir insurgency--your government was responsible for that--but it has certainly made sure that it has stayed alive and kicking. Similarly, the Indian government did not create either the E. Pakistani or Tamil insurgency but it certainly ensured that they grew and prospered.

See, there is more than enough blame to go around for everybody. Just because the Indian governments may not NOW be exporting state-sponsored terrorism doesn`t mean that it is automatically forgiven for everything it did only a few years ago. Or is this yet another example of the Indians boundless capacity for self-righteousness and hypocrisy?

Fuzair #408,

We can be righteously indignant because we corrected our mistakes. You can make a case if we were still involved in ``cross border terrorism``. Moreover, the indian scale is nowhere close to the Pakistani one.

Ref fuzair #421

[IIRC, the initial support for the Tamil separatists came from Tamil Nadu govt (as a vote-winning ploy) and not from the Central govt. The Central govt took over the issue later on...]

Correct.

[... I think very few high-ranking Indians had a personal stake in whether Sri Lanka was ruled by Tamils or by Sinhalese.]

The people of Tamil Nadu wanted equal opportunities for the Sri Lankan Tamils. But any sympathy they felt then evaporated after they saw turf wars being imported into the refugee camps in India and Indians getting killed in the crossfire.

[The Gandhi Doctrine was just about expanding Indian hegemony over the entire region, not about liberating any part of it in particular.]

In fact, India`s position is against truncating any country in the region because the same arguments can be used for carving up India. The IPKF`s primary charter was to de-fang the LTTE and bring them to the negotiating table. The fact that Sri Lankan politics compelled the government of Sri Lanka to tacitly collaborate with the LTTE by passing on intelligence information about IPKF deployments just adds another twist to this unsavory tale.

#415 Bongdongs,

At one level, you are correct. There was no sponsorship of direct terrorism in West Pakistan. However, the Mukti Bahini certainly did it in East Pakistan and the Mukti was very much Indian trained/armed/officered/manned (I recall reading accounts of how Bengali BSF troops were transferred wholesale into the Mukti Bahini; if you look at the Indian Official History of the 1971 War (available in PDF format on Bharat-Rakshak.com) there is at least one reference to an entire BSF commando group that was operating inside East Pakistan in April/May 1971 and of the excellent work they did in blowing up bridges, ambushing army patrols, assasinating senior officers, etc.). The Mukti Bahini did much worse but a large part of that can`t be blamed directly on the Indian involvement. However, given the level of Indian military involvement in the Mukti Bahini, the Indians weren`t particulary discerning either but I doubt they were responsible for the wholesale killings of Bihari ``collaborators.`` The LTTE, of course, was not particulary discerning in its choice of victims but I doubt the Indians had a direct hand in that. However, they were arming and training the LTTE....

So, with all due respect, there really isn`t much difference between the Indian export of terrorism and the Pakistani. The Indians may have been slightly more discerning in some minor way but is someone who only kills 6 people so much better than someone who kills 12?

As far as the Indians not striking back (i.e., cross border raids against insurgent camps), I don`t think it is so much `moral restraint` and knowing where to `draw the line,` as it is fear of escalating the war to a much higher level. I know for a fact that many Pakistani Army officers are convinced that the only reason why India did not launch a massive conventional attack on Pakistan after the 1998 Indian atomic tests is because Pakistan countered with its own tests. That is, if Pakistan had not conducted its own tests then, that was ``proof`` that the Pakistani weapons program was much behind the Indian`s and escalation was safe.

The Afghan example is uppermost in the minds of the Pakistani Army senior officers, most of whom were junior officers in 1979-80 when the Soviets invaded. They think that a bunch of raggedy ass mujahideen types can beat a well-armed and well-trained conventional army if given enough time. They forget that two things: (i) the Red Army conventional strength in Afghanistan never exceeded 150,000 and was usually around 100,000 or so and (ii) the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan for unrelated political reasons, not because they were militarily defeated. The Pakistani officers have forgotten the lessons of E. Pakistan and Vietnam: an insurgency cannot defeat conventional forces. It takes a superior conventional military force to do that.

TTFN

education and peace,

mushy was born in india, in delhi and he was compelled to carry out kargill invasion because of jihadi influence, due to the impact of children of TNT.
The ilks of fuzair are talking about peace in the future, when all of pakistan are children of TNT, the ilks of mushy have died out.
Then there is the talk of influence of abduls in pak society, they have no influence on honour kiling laws and hoodood ordinance, but will have tremendous influence on peace. It is time for reality check, the foreign policy of any country is only an extension of its domestic policies.
a country so much supportive of internal violence, i was reading a crime statistics, 4500 killijngs in karachi last year, 530 in delhi for the cireesponding period, much leaa in south india, cannot promote peace.
India and pakistan have different social values, and mutual coexistance can only be based on shared values.

Sadna:

IIRC, the initial support for the Tamil separatists came from Tamil Nadu govt (as a vote-winning ploy) and not from the Central govt. The Central govt took over the issue later on (can`t recall years/personalities involved). I don`t think the differenece is a military-political leadership issue but more simple than that. The Indian govt doesn`t have much of a personal stake in the Sri Lankan issue while the Kashmir issue is much closer to most Pakistanis, especially Punjabis and Pathans. For many Pakistanis, it is a personal issue. For example, General Aziz, one of the chief architects of Kargil, a firm backer of the Kashmiri militants, current Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee and an alleged ``Islamist,`` is from Azad Kashmir (Suddhan?). Former PM Nawaz Sharif is an ethnic Kashmiri. In contrast, I think very few high-ranking Indians had a personal stake in whether Sri Lanka was ruled by Tamils or by Sinhalese. The Gandhi Doctrine was just about expanding Indian hegemony over the entire region, not about liberating any part of it in particular.

bongdongs#415
From what I read in Rose and Sissoon?, the primary objective of India in getting involved in 70-71 was to ``manage`` Bengali unrest, lead it to a stable political culmination and send the 10 million refugees back(breaking up Pakistan being the bonus). If the primary purpose had been to cause Pakistan grief, India would have used another approach.

I donot know about the reasons behind initial Indian support to LTTE, but when a political exit point presented itself(in IPKF failure, in anti-IPKF Premadasa coming to power, and finally public distaste in Tamil Nadu at Rajiv Gandhi`s assassination), India took the exit.

This is just a guess but perhaps the major difference between Pakistani support and Indian support to armed insurgent groups is Pakistan having a military approach vs Indians having a political approach. The military approach gives priority to military control, and hence tends toward open-ended militaristic `keeping the pot boiling` trajectory. The political approach seeks some ultimate stable political culimination as the objective/ result of armed action.

IMO, one reason India is not currently creating counter-intelligence havoc in Pakistan to the extent it could have in the last few years to match Pakistan activities in India, is because India is still looking for a stable political culimination with Pakistan and prefers diplomacy at this time. This preference could change, of course.

re:#408 by fuzair
I agree with your assessment of the ``self rightesous`` Indian talk that would often infuriate the Western diplomats especially during the Nehruvian era. Chris Mathews of Hard Ball (MSNBC) once talked about being a victim of such talk by leaders of `` a third world non-aligned nation`` (India, who else!). During much of Nehru era, lecturing on morality substitued for sane economic policies. Nehru, despite some of his excellent qualities, was nothing but an arrogant pompous A$$.
I would have thought India would have learnt its lessons. Apparently not.
Sridhar

re:#414 by ahmadzai
The article i posted was in Guardian, a neutral British paper. Now, you think both Indian and western media are biased. What do you want? An article written by Osama Bin Laden?
Sridhar

#408 Fuzair

You are right about the Indian propensity for moral lecturing, but my feeling is that this is a relic of an earlier era and has (hopefully) died down with the current breed of diplomats.

About Indian support for separatism in the `70, yes most Indian`s are completely unaware of anything beyond government propaganda. But a point I would like to make is that we knew very clearly where the line was. I dont recall any PIA flights being hijacked, bomb blasts in Karachi or attacks on parliament even at the height of `71. The current wave of terrorism against India seems to know no bounds.

Since the `80`s as we suffered the blowback (LTTE, etc) such policies were abandoned. Perhaps the Chinese abandoning such methods in the `80 helped us reach this decision (Chinese were training the Naga`s in Yunnnan till then) and even at the height of the Kashmir insurgency we havent struck back in similar fashion.

Maybe this decade Pakistan will learn the same lesson.

Look forward to your comments

Actually on the IPKF-LTTE issue, I just started reading ``Island of Blood`` by Anita Pratap which deals with her experiences in reporting from Sri Lanka in the IPKF days.

Its an interesting read, inspite of her pro-LTTE bias. You can realize the extremely tough situation the Indian soldiers were in with a hostile population, a well armed and motivated adversary and tough ROE.

#413 by ahmadzai
//..those educated in fundamentalist Talibani Pakistan don`t use such derogatory phrases for others` religions...//

Ha Ha - you kidding - right!

Do a simple search in chowk and you will find out.

Mohar 403 and 404, etc.

``...Horrible Hindoos..``?

If you show a single post from a Pakistani (other than perhaps urstruly) where some body used the phrase of horrible Hindoos or such like, I will quit this website.

See unlike those (arjuns, jays, peeing mishras, saxenas, etc.) educated in liberal progressive India and routinely taking cheap shots at religion, those educated in fundamentalist Talibani Pakistan don`t use such derogatory phrases for others` religions.

I hope this calms you down.

:-)

Dr. Sridhar at 407:

If you recall, I always wrote the following:

1. The allegations of cross-border terrorism is baseless in the absence of neutral bodies in the Indian held Kashmir. The story you have narrated does not mean anything, because it could be under duress. Also Western newspapers had made us believe about the WMDs in Iraq and that Saddam was about to launch an attack on the USA.

2. Since Jihad is waged at State Call and the State has called it off, anyone doing violence in the name of Jihad is a terrorist. Every Pakistani is against such terrorists.

Its good that India also recognized Kashmir as a dispute. The only road forwards is bilateral talks on Kashmir and cooperation.

fuzair #408
Your anecdote is very believable. People have written this sort of thing before, of Indians being disliked and Pakistanis being supported by the US because of Indians` pious attitudes. That sort of arbitrariness was part of what I pointed out in my post #388.

I remember an exchange with a well known Pakistani columnist about 2 years ago who had written that via the Afghan war, US had arbitrarily and unfairly put its foot down on state revisionism by nonstate actors like jihadis, despite the merits of revisionism.

I wrote back to him asking why would moderate Pakistanis like him mind this, since this same principle protects them from state revisionism by jihadis who feel disenfranchised by the Pakistani state and its structure/functioning. Suffice to say I got a dose of self-righteousness in reply about how a state need not believe in a jihadi`s philosophy to use him, look at India and LTTE.

I remembered that exchange last week when another haunt of this columnist, the Daily Times brought out an editorial about the various ways jihad had undermined the sovereignty of Pakistan and the size of the de-jihadi-fication job ahead.

I wondered at the inexplicible assumption underlying all this that Indians (and uncounted Pakistanis as Jay puts it) would quietly pay with their lives while the Pakistani ruling class sorted out their intellectual positions on jihad, sovereignty, grundnorms and national interest. IMHO, THAT is amazing self-righteousness.