CRamS wrote:While I agree that a good part of INC's saffron diversion startegy is to cover up the flak it was getting on corruption & incompetence, but there is a TSP strategy too, which consists of 2 possibilities: 1) To do an equal equal and then say you get rid of your terrorists, and we get rid of ours, work well for India, because there is nothing much to give up, 2) Erase TSP crimes from Indian public consciousness and use divisions and apathy among Indians to take this to fruition.
The first strategy will fail because the last thing TSP wants to do is a tradeoff on terror which is their lynch pin. They want much, much more from India.
The second strategy suits everbody, from INC/MMS, to US, and above all to TSP.
INC/MMS will gain by having to do nothing on Mumbai and other crimes by TSP, and continue Kashmir surrender back channel under the quiet diktat from US.
US of course need not worry about irritation from Indian nationalists that there is such a thing as 'global terror' directed against India from TSP. The "extremists on both sides" narrative comes in very handy.
And finally, TSP gains big time because its colossal crimes against India, most recently Mumbai, are washed away down the Indus river in through MMS's Saffron gift. Their status quo and trump card, i.e. pigLeTs are preserved until US tucks its tail and runs away from AfPak. Then the tamasha begins.
True, and there is more to it.
Quoting S Sridhar from a few days ago:
The PA never held the jihadi brothers by the scruff of their neck or anything else, for that matter. Not then, and most definitely not now. Their only solace today is the LeT, not even JeM. LeT tried its best to ingratiate themselves with the Punjabi Taliban as the tide turned decisively towards the latter's favour a few years back. But the suspicion of them being close to the ISI acted against them and they were rebuffed. Then, they started losing their cadres due to voluntary attrition and poaching. So, today, it is my feeling that the LeT and the PA are left to each other and nobody else. Apart from this mutual accommodation, the 'holding by scruff' is (was) as usual a Musharraf perfidy-cum-bravado.
Undoubtedly, with the wise guidance of such sages as Milt Bearden, Bruce Riedel and Robin Raphel… the above truth has become an article of faith among the bright young Clintonistas who dominate today’s US State Department.
And with that wisdom will have come a realization: Because LeT is the TSPA’s “only solace”, as S Sridhar has put it, the US NEEDS the LeT to be strong and intact, if it is to gain any sort of TSPA cooperation to achieve its Afghanistan ends. LeT is the only retardant keeping at least some of the Pakjabi jihadis from being leached away by the Punjabi Taliban.
It is a much-needed buffer organization, the last bastion of Sarkari jihadism that prevents the Pakjabi jihadis from turning en masse against the TSPA and its US allies. If LeT goes over or is dissolved, a split within the ranks of the TSPA itself, comes next.
So by now, it’s safe to assume that the US State Dept. has concluded that leaning too heavily on the LeT is counterproductive for US interests. This fits in very nicely with the long standing Clinton-Wilsonian thesis that state-sponsored jihad in Pakistan is perfectly ok, even desirable, as long as its terrorism is directed exclusively against India and not the West.
There is one small problem, however. In recent years, US counter-terrorism and intelligence agencies (acting in good faith) collected evidence against the LeT’s international terror links, evidence that was instrumental in building the case that culminated in the UN declaring the LeT an international terrorist organization.
This makes things inconvenient for people in the GOTUS who want to go easy on LeT as a means to win the “war on terror”. How to justify winking at the activity of an organization previously declared an international terrorist group? Maybe, the case needs to be “unmade” a little bit, so that the erstwhile “misguided” declaration of LeT as a terrorist group can be undermined, perhaps eventually undone altogether. Foot has to be extracted from mouth. How?
One key exhibit in the case made by US counter-terrorism agencies against the LeT was the involvement of Arif Usmani, a senior lashkar operative, in the Samjhauta rail blasts of February 2007. Very inconvenient.
If the US itself suddenly declared that they were mistaken in this, for no apparent reason… and absolved LeT of any connection to Samjhauta… that would look too suspicious. Someone in the FBI might even blow a whistle.
So…something apparently “external” needs to happen in order to justify re-opening the FBI assessment of the Samjhauta attack, something that casts doubt on the case made by the US against LeT’s perpetration of that attack.
For example: something like a perfectly-tailored (and widely broadcast) confession before a magistrate taking responsibility for the attack… by someone else completely disconnected from LeT but allegedly belonging to a different terrorist group.
Such as a “Hindu” or “Saffron” terror group, which Rahul Gandhi has already cited as the main category of threat to India’s security today.
The confession extracted from Swami Aseemanand on the involvement of “Hindu terror” groups in the Samjhauta blasts… perpetrated allegedly by one Sunil Joshi who can tell no tales because he is conveniently dead… is just what the doctor ordered.
This isn’t just my idea, or a personal CT. From this Swapan Dasgupta article:
http://www.dailypioneer.com/309363/Usin ... lines.html
There is a larger international dimension as well. The US investigators have claimed, based on inputs from sources in Pakistan, that it was a Lashkar-e-Tayyeba squad under Arif Usmani that had carried out the blasts. This was an important basis for the UN Security Council decision to brand the LeT a terrorist organisation, a decision that has international ramifications. Does Aseemanda's testimony overturn these conclusions?
You see, it all works out very neatly for the protagonists.
Doubt is cast on the case made against LeT, and by extension, the UNSC's declaration of LeT as an international terrorist organization. While this may not lead to an overturning of the declaration, it adds a sufficient quantity of murkiness to justify endless delays and circumventions by the West in acting against LeT.
Thus LeT is allowed to continue flourishing as a retardant/buffer organization between the TSPA and the jihadi public of TSP. TSPA wins, LeT wins, and the West wins.
And India?
Well, as promised, the Congress GOI has gone more than half the distance, correct? Who said sellouts had to be restricted to such public utterances as in Sharm-el-Shaikh and Thimpu?
Surely there will be commensurate rewards from Washington for those who facilitated the “redemption of LeT” by apportioning the blame for Samjhauta to “Hindu terrorists” instead. After all, economic growth (subcontracted to American reactor-builders and others) is far more important than the lives of a few mango Indians taken out by the occasional LeT attack. Why should it be that important to have LeT be declared an international terrorist group?
Not only that, the Congress GOI gets to use its tremendous success against implicating “Hindu terrorists” for Samjhauta in other ways on the domestic front. It gets to embarrass the BJP. It gets to silence an anti-conversion activist. And it gets to divert public attention from its continuous, ongoing rape and plunder of the public exchequer.
All win-win for the Congress. All lose-lose for India. But when has a victory for the Congress ever failed to imply a concomitant loss for India?
On that link is only a summary with a few attacks highlighted, doesn't claim to be an exhaustive list! Kaluchak is not mentioned on this page either... neither are the Gateway of India blasts of Mumbai 2003, Akshardham 2002, Mumbai train blasts 2006, Delhi Diwali attack 2005, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Jaipur, and many other LeT triumphs.