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After India attacks us
Khaled Ahmed’s A n a l y s i s
http://www.thefridaytimes.com/inews9.htm
The imagined BBC scenario is that the Indians have attacked across the Rajasthan border and have bisected Pakistan. The Pakistani president has told the Americans that he would push the nuclear button unless the Indians withdrew. We don’t believe that this is a credible scenario. We are sure that the Indians will not dare attack Pakistan across the international border. The last time they came up to our border we scared them off with a concealed ultimatum that worked. We believe that Lashkar-e-Tayba will not attack India inside India and that the earlier attacks on the Kashmir Assembly and Lok Sabha were hoaxes engineered by India
BBC documentary, ‘Situation Room’, ran for a week on Channel 4 last year before it was removed from circulation. It was based on a fictitious meeting in the Situation Room inside the White House in Washington between the US President and his security and foreign policy men. The crisis they discuss is an India-Pakistan war in 2004 after the assassination of the Indian defence minister at the hands of Pakistan’s terrorist jehadi militia, Lashkar-e-Tayba. The US President (Bush?) is rung by Pakistan’s President (Musharraf?) who tells him that he is about to launch his nuclear attack on India. The reason for this desperate telephone call is an advance by Indian troops across the Rajasthan border, bisecting Pakistan. Unless the Indians withdraw, he says, he would be forced to push the button, making nuclear strikes on major Indian cities.
The Situation Room is a fictitious production but the men who act in it are real. For instance, former assistant secretary of state Carl Inderfurth plays the US President (Bush?) and former US ambassador to Pakistan Robert Oakley plays the US vice president. The entire cast is composed of well-known personalities in the American administration who have dealt with the region. Before the President walks in, the Situation Room mulls over the situation in South Asia. Both India and Pakistan have made incursions into each other’s territory, but India threatens to cut Islamabad off from Karachi. The Room agrees that America’s immediate concern should be to make India agree to a ‘standstill’ ceasefire with the ultimate aim to make it go back to status quo ante or withdraw to the border.
Attack across Rajasthan: When the President arrives, the officers inform him of the situation. The CIA boss receives the information that Pakistani missiles are being fuelled. The President is shown the missiles being fuelled on the screen through images transmitted by spy satellites. He is told that the Indians have to be made to stop and if they don’t stop, they have to be threatened with American force. This conclusion is reached after the President talks to the Indian prime minister and gets no clear response from him. The Situation Room discusses two other options: the elimination of Pakistan’s nuclear programme and the cleaning up of its terrorist militias. It is agreed that America is not capable to ‘taking out’ Pakistan’s nuclear programme. There is agreement over cleaning up the terrorist jehadi militias. There is awareness in the room that Pakistan’s military president is threatened with internal revolt in the army and that his next-in-command may be acting up. Significantly, the British foreign secretary visiting Pakistan is asked to ask Pakistani President if he knows that his missiles are being fuelled.
It is decided in the Situation Room that India is to be threatened with force by America to make it cease fire. But to remove the threat of a nuclear war in South Asia the Kashmir dispute has to be dealt with now that America had become the third party in the dispute. This has happened ‘after’ the Americans have defeated Iraq a year earlier in 2003 and consequently possess significant ‘assets’ in the region with which to credibly threaten India.
Should we trust others’ perceptions? The above war-gaming is fictional, based on the perception of some of the highly placed Americans who have dealt with India and Pakistan in their official capacities. The perception of war and security in Pakistan differs. We believe that our ‘soft belly’ across the Rajasthan sector is so well protected that India cannot think of attacking us there. In fact our perception differs radically from the one that tends to preside over the BBC’s Situation Room. Is it important to take into account the perceptions about Pakistan and India arrived at outside the region? Should we ignore the somewhat scandalous scenario-building in which Indian troops are shown having crossed the Rajasthan border and cut Pakistan into two? Should we insist that our perception is that India dare not attack us conventionally across the international border? Haven’t we proved that we can deter such a possibility during 2002 when India did amass its troops on the international border but was made to run away tail-between-legs because of our credible counter-mobilisation?
There is a reason why we should take interest in the perception of outsiders. Our own perceptions of security have been proved wrong in the past. The defence-of-East-Pakistan-in-West-Pakistan was proved wrong in 1971. The theory that India won’t attack us across the international border if we seek a set-piece battle with it in Kashmir was proved wrong in1965. The nuclear deterrence-related theory that if we engage India at Kargil it won’t attack us outside of Kashmir was proved wrong in 1999 when the Pakistani prime minister became convinced that the Indians would attack from the sea. Our false perceptions spring from a ‘leap of imagination’ our military strategists have to allow in any conflict with India. Because India is many times our military superior and because we cannot strategically envision conquering it, we have to allow this ‘leap of imagination’ in set-piece scenarios. Needless to say, Pakistan gives primacy to its anti-status quo stance as a part of its national ‘mission statement’ by ignoring the fact that nuclear deterrence between India and Pakistan presumes a freezing of the status quo.
Why was the nuclear button not pressed? Now let us pursue the Situation Room fiction. If the Indian troops have crossed the Rajasthan border, it means that nuclear deterrence has not held. If the Pakistani president has not pushed the nuclear button so far, he should forget about it. The fact is that the Indians did not believe that he would use a nuclear strike and they were proved right. The ground reality is that the Indian troops are on the Indus River and have cut off the main road linking Punjab to Sindh. They are located at a place from where hey can communicate with Balochistan, Sindh and Punjab’s Seraiki area. Conventional battles are being fought while a residual nuclear deterrence bars the two from striking each other’s cities. What the Americas want is a ceasefire and they want the Indian troops to stop their advance. At least one person in the Situation Room also thinks that after the ceasefire the Indians would be asked to go back to status quo ante.
Why was the Pakistani president not able to push the button when the Rajasthan sector was about to be lost? It is quite possible that he wanted to do it but that the missiles took too long getting fuelled. We are shown that the missiles are still being fuelled as the Indians possibly sit in Bahawalpur. Our longer range Ghauri capable of reaching Madras and Bombay takes liquid fuel, which is dangerous in transport and takes long in being pumped in, as opposed to the solid fuel which fires the Indian longer range Agni missile. Dr Qadeer Khan, according to the fiction, is supposed to have made a deal with North Korea over the Ghauri and exchanged first-rate bomb-making technology for second rate missile technology. If we take into account the question the British foreign secretary is supposed to ask the Pakistani President, the implication is that the latter is being upstaged by his second-in-command who could be an Islamist officer unhappy over his boss’s delay in launching the bomb.
Signing of Simla-2: If the Americans succeed in getting the Indians to ‘freeze’ where they are, the next thing to do is to secure a signed agreement on the status quo between India and Pakistan. Such an agreement would create the ‘red lines’ that were missing as the Indians crossed the Rajasthan border, and would now assure stable nuclear deterrence between India and Pakistan. Pakistan was compelled to stage Kargil because of a lack of agreement over status quo. The Americans would get Pakistan to sign a Simla-2 with India. This time there would be no Dhars and Haskars on the Indian side thinking of the excessively tough Treaty of Versailles that actually made the vanquished rise again. This time the consensus of the American think tanks over converting the Line of Control (LoC) into international border with minor adjustments would be thrust on India and Pakistan with an assurance of some measure of real autonomy for the Kashmiris. This would stabilise the Indo-Pakistan nuclear deterrence and allow the two to normalise their relations.
As for the jehadi mercenaries that Pakistan cannot stop crossing the LoC, the signs are ominous today. The leader of Lashkar-e-Tayba who will presumably kill George Fernandes in 2004 has been released from confinement and allowed to rant and rave inside Pakistan. Hafiz Saeed is not only threatening India once again with an attack ‘inside India’ but also General Musharraf and the United States.