It would be silly to think that LK Advani's BJP would be any better at dealing with the terrorist threat than Singh & Gandhi's Congress Party. The BJP, if anything, has a history of fanning the flames of terrorism. LK Advani's presence and involvement in the destruction of the Babri mosque in Gujarat in 1992 and the parties hindutva (roughly translated as Hinduism, it is an ideology of Hindu Nationalism) politics is doing nothing to unite the country or to bring its sizeable muslim minority (120m) in from the cold. Let's be clear, although it has been claimed that the 10 gunmen that terrorised Mumbai were from Pakistan, let us not forget the spate of other bombings that has occurred in India this year. We're talking about Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Delhi, Bangalore, etc... all the work of an local Indian group known as the Indian Mujahideen. This is home-grown terrorism of the worst order and the real danger for India lies not in what comes from across the border but in its own disaffected Muslim population. 120m malcontents with Indian passports is a recipe for a civil war and the BJP's hindutva (along with their allies like the Shiv Sena) is no solution to it.
On Pakistan, Manmohan Singh has opted for a policy of support for Asif Ali Zardari's democratically-elected government which is most certainly a better option than war. Singh knows that if he were to engage Zardari in a military conflict it would mean Pakistan pulls its troops out of the North-West Frontier Province and the border areas with Afghanistan, given that these are the number one terrorist hotbeds in India, it would not be a wise move for either Pakistan or India at this stage, nor would a costly cross-border war be a good idea in this economic climate. Singh also knows that weakening Zardari's government by undermining it diplomatically will also not do any good, Zardari may be weak but he's India's only real hope in Pakistan at the moment.
Zardari is showing promising signs, his government is finally shutting down the offices of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the so-called philanthropic front organisation for the outlawed Lakshar-e-Taiba, the latter being the terrorist outfit supposedly responsible for the Mumbai attacks. However it will take a lot more work to reverse decades of backing by Pakistan's largely independent and powerful military and intelligence services. The problem with Zardari, of course, is that like his compatriot Karzai in Afghanistan, though to a much lesser extent, he is only a civil servant with a position title... not really someone with real power in Pakistan.
India should not expect either that Zardari will agree to hand over Pakistani nationals, whatever they have been accused of, to India. That would be political suicide for Zardari. People in Pakistan are already skeptical of his incredibly friendly (on a historical basis at least) attitude to India, so he is treading a fine line as it is.
It will be interesting to see what the Obama administration will do bolster Zardari and to improve the political situation in Pakistan. Hopefully they will take on a less military approach than the Bush administration and work with the grassroots in the country, bombing the crap out of it will not solve anything. Only improving law & order and governance will. Obama has repeatedly stated that he is looking for an integrated, regional solution to the problem of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India and depending on the way this would be implemented, it sounds like the way to go. Unfortunately it would not be easy as diplomatically relations between these countries are still strained.
But the focus for India should be at home, the Indian Mujahideen are proof of that and although their methods were not so sophisticated and not so brazen as those of Mumbai last week, and though the Government claims to have dismanteld their organisation... they represent the real danger for India. One would expect that there would be a breaking point for the multitudes of largely unedcuated, empoverished and isolated muslims in India... and that breaking point will not be pretty.
posted by LX @ 1:01 AM
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