khan wrote:Rudradev wrote:Kasab wasn't meant to be captured alive... all the 26/11 terrorists had instructions to avoid that at all costs. Capturing terrorists alive invariably costs the lives of security personnel who have to take greater risks to achieve such a goal. Kasab's arrest was only made possible by the sacrifice of Constable Tukaram Ombale.
Yes. Kasab wasn't meant to be captured alive. However, I find it very hard to believe that the we are killing
every single terrorist that we encounter. I am sure that there are a few people that surrender in the middle of an encounter and others that are wounded. However the IA seems to have a take no prisoners policy. That policy needs to change.
I believe your fundamental premise here is flawed. Of course, not all terrorists encountered are killed. Indian security forces do accept the surrenders of terrorists in encounters and other cirumstances, so I have no idea where your contention of a "take no prisoners policy" is coming from. Surrendered terrorists are very much a part and parcel of counter-insurgency operations... read up on SULFA, or the Ikhwans in J&K.
Rudradev wrote:Embarrassing Pakistan is a pointless exercise... how can you embarrass the shameless, especially when their financiers are equally shameless? Pakistan will simply continue to insist that the person captured alive is a representative of "non state actors" who are "also involved in terrorism against Pakistan". Its sponsors... the US, UK, China and Saudi Arabia... will collude to maintain this fiction, certifying that "Pakistan is also a victim of terrorism".
I am not talking about Pakistan and their sponsors. I am talking about public opinion on a global level. Having public opinion clearly on our side will have several advantages.
For example, it will enable us to justify using our Cold start capabilities to launch unprovoked attacks against Pakistan to "protect" ourselves from their terrorists. Creating an environment where any little terror attack against India could provoke a
justified armed response at any time will make the Paki's rethink their terror strategy.
"Public opinion" is not a well-informed, unbiased or even a powerful arbiter beyond the local political circle of the "public" concerned.
What percentage of the "global" public:
1) Has ready access to information about Paki terrorism against India that is free of spin, packaging, distortion and manipulation?
2) Is interested enough to study all the available information from all sources, sort out the truth from the propaganda purveyed by Pakistan and its sponsors, and arrive at a genuinely informed opinion on the matter?
3) Is motivated enough, once having arrived at a genuinely informed opinion, to translate this into political action of any significant sort? i.e. would a native of Kansas or Helsinki decide whom to vote for, based on his views on Pakistani terrorism against India, even if he had the same degree of knowledge as a BRF-ite?
Does that percentage constitute a significantly large proportion to change policy in any country, let alone the international community as a whole? Has it, so far?
One thing we need to understand is that waiting for international public opinion to "justify" any action we might want to take against Pakistan, is like waiting for Godot. The threshold of "justification" is completely subjective. One could argue that, for a few days after the whole world watched 26/11 on TV, many people would have thought a military retaliation, cold-start etc. by India against Pakistan was "justified". This would have included the populations of at least a few of Pakistan's "sponsors". What did that gain us?
More to the point: how is capturing Paki terrorists alive, publishing their testimony in the papers, making a song-and-dance about their trials etc. going to make any difference to our capacity for armed response against Pakistan? People will believe what they want to believe and most of them won't even care. Ultimately if the US Dept. of State. decides that India must be threatened/coerced/otherwise stopped from exercising a military retaliation against Pakistan, "public opinion" in the US won't even have a negligible impact on such policy. That goes for any other country. No senators, MPs, burghers, assemblymen or military dictators anywhere are going to lose their jobs because of their peoples' outrage about Pakistani terrorism against India... believe me.
Rudradev wrote:So who exactly are we exposing by producing live terrorists as "evidence", when the "courts" themselves have a vested interest in establishing the "innocence" of their client Pakistan?
This makes no sense to me. By "courts", I mean Indian Courts of Law.
I mean the "courts" of international opinion... not "public" opinion, but the opinion of policymaking circles in nations of the international community, which is what actually matters.
I don't know if you're aware, but Indian Courts of Law have been giving fair trials to terrorists from the days of
Maqbool Butt onwards. Not because we want other countries' public to think how great and just we are but because that is how we do things in a democracy. I don't understand where you get the idea that you're proposing anything new or revolutionary here.
Rudradev wrote:We produce POF hand-grenades used by the '93 Mumbai terrorists, but the FBI "loses" the evidence.
We arrest Ahmed Omar Saeed Shaikh for his murder of Western tourists in J&K as a Harkat-ul-Ansar operative; but the West refuses to recognize Pakistan as a sponsor of terrorism, and we eventually end up sending back Omar Saeed Shaikh in exchange for the IC 814 hostages so that he can kill Daniel Pearl and plan further terrorism against India.
Terrorists from Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and even Syria are rendered by US intelligence agencies to countries where they planned their crimes, for joint interrogation by the security services of those countries. The FBI is given free access to Kasab himself when they want to interrogate him.
But our agents go all the way to Chicago to interrogate David Coleman Headley, and are turned away empty-handed. We are told quite bluntly not to have any realistic expectations of his extradition to India.
So for whose benefit should we place Indian security personnel at additional risk to capture these pigs alive, when thanks to the "honest brokers" of the international community, their live bodies are no greater embarrassment to Pakistan than their dead carcasses would be? The only ones who would gain anything as a result are other Paki terrorists who would take Indian civilians hostage and secure the release of their captured compatriots (and a grand propaganda victory in the bargain).
This last part is a whine - unworthy of BR. The pressure any country applies on Pakistan at a given time depends on a few things:
* The countries interest in Pakistan. This we have no control over.
* Our military capability. Cold start is exactly what the Doctor ordered as far as Pakistan is concerned.
* The "atmospherics" at the given time. This is the part that we need to work on.
After the Mumbai attacks, just as after 9/11, the atmospherics where particularly favourable to the victims. India was quite justifiably outraged and if at the time India had chosen to attack Pakistan, India would have been quite justified in doing so. India would have a good 4-5 days before any international momentum built up for a ceasefire. Setting up the courts, keeping some of these terrorists alive and doing the things that I talked about will allow us to maintain an atmosphere where we can use our Cold Start capability to
credibly threaten to attack Pakistan at will. In time, creating such an environment will make the Paki's think twice about even the minor terrorist strikes. It will also force the US to pressure Pakistan to do whatever it takes to keep the peace, just like we saw after the Mumbai attacks.
Thanks for your opinion of what is BR-worthy.
I agree with the three factors you have listed that determine other countries' willingness to pressure Pakistan.
However, I think that you drastically overstress the importance of "atmospherics" compared to the other two factors. Countries with vital interests in Pakistan, and we know who they are, will protect Pakistan from Indian retaliation regardless of the atmospherics.
There is little doubt that Cold Start was a tested paradigm at the time of the 26/11 attacks. If we had thought that doing a Cold Start on TSPA at that time would have been worthwhile, we could have done it and gone away laughing.
We didn't do it because it would also have unified TSPA/ISI and their rebellious Tanzeems... most notably the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan... at a time when that rift had been erupting in a bloody and unprecedented escalation. Yes we could have slapped Pakistan hard in exchange for the 26/11 attacks, and yes "public opinion" around the world may have thought it more justified at that time than at any other... but it would have aborted the spectacular process of devolution of the Pakistani state that we have seen over the last year.
Pakistan would have recovered from our slap, and in fact they calculated that it was to their benefit if we slapped them... remember DG ISI Shuja Ahmed Pasha declaring pre-emptively that "Baitullah Mehsud and the Taliban are our most loyal defenders against India" or some such thing.
What they are going through now, they will probably never recover from, despite the best efforts of their sponsors.
So here's the thing. We can't simply wait for circumstances to hand us a "justification" so that we will have a "green signal" to attack Pakistan at that opportune moment. That amounts to handing over all the initiative to Pakistan (first the ISI has to create a terrorist incident that we can capitalize on to generate a sense of justification among global public opinion). Why should we strike at a time and place of *their* choosing?
When the time comes that we decide to do the needful w.r.t. Pakistan, we must create our own justification. That was the way it was done in 1971. The Pakis being Pakis, can be counted on to help us out with that justification at a time and place of *our* choosing.
Their goals were more modest - stated to be the taking over of Siachen, essentially to save themselves the economic and human cost of Siachen, and cock a snook at india by a quick and dirty land grab, a border war and a stalemate to give the "kashmir" problem (and thereby their relevance in pakistan) a new lease of life.
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Is there anyone or entity out there the pakis have not pleaded to use their influence to "solve" the K issue?