Bharat Rakshak

shiv wrote:

sukhdeo wrote:The current Indian scenario and our ability to withstand Islamic invasions is qualitatively very different from those in the past. I contend that we are in a relatively much weaker position to withstand any new Islamic onslaught, whether it be military, cultural, economic or demographic. In none of the invasions of the past, did we have almost 40-45% of the native population of the subcontinent of Islamic faith and during none of the invasions of the past, the Islamic invaders were backed by massive, almost obscene oil wealth and during none of the invasions of the past, Islam was the most followed religion in the world providing the strategic depth to the invaders, as it is right now.

Islam today IMO is weaker than it was. It is pure GIGO to fail to make adequate assessments of current reality.

RajeshA wrote:Here's a new twist to the Chanakyan Justification Dialectic for Sharm-el-Sheikh

On August 11, 2009 Baluchistan could proclaim Independence. If this is an American-sanctioned project, one would expect some of its friends in the area to be supportive of Baluchistan's Independence and they will come out and recognize the new country. These countries could be Oman, whom Gwadar once belonged to; Qatar, may be UAE. Why would they do it? Perhaps to allow America to opt for another front in a possible confrontation with Iran, or simply to put pressure on Iran.

Muppalla wrote:

RajeshA wrote:Here's a new twist to the Chanakyan Justification Dialectic for Sharm-el-Sheikh

On August 11, 2009 Baluchistan could proclaim Independence. If this is an American-sanctioned project, one would expect some of its friends in the area to be supportive of Baluchistan's Independence and they will come out and recognize the new country. These countries could be Oman, whom Gwadar once belonged to; Qatar, may be UAE. Why would they do it? Perhaps to allow America to opt for another front in a possible confrontation with Iran, or simply to put pressure on Iran.

That is in the next 20 hours. It is already Aug 11th in Baluchistan.

Hari Seldon wrote:I take it that the 11 Aug theory stands disproved then?

http://www.balochwarna.com/modules/news ... oryid=2092

Hari Seldon wrote:I take it that the 11 Aug theory stands disproved then?

RayC wrote:Here are two articles to indicate how Balochistan is a 'paradise' for covert action.

Enemies Within the Border

However, Pakistan blaming India for its problems in Swat and in the other Taliban-infested regions has served a useful purpose. It has led to the broadening of anti-Taliban operations undertaken by the army. The idea that fighting the Taliban amounts to fighting India has created an anti-Taliban and pro-army image among the people. Anti-Taliban sentiments have also played a critical role in rallying the nationalist army to support and execute a wide range of operations to crush the insurgents. Hence, full-scale operations by the Pakistan army against the Taliban implies that the army will not be able to open similar fronts in Baluchistan.

But it has to be borne in mind that not all Islamists pose a problem for Pakistan: only those who are being commandeered, funded and guided by hostile neighbours are a threat. Hence, while the Pakistani Taliban and their Indian handlers need to be crushed, the Afghan Taliban deserve to be nurtured. Under the circumstances, how can Holbrooke expect that his demands will be met by the Pakistan establishment? {is this an Indian newspaper?}

Little wonder then that Afghan Taliban fighters cross the Durand Line with ease and manage to find safe haven deep inside Pakistani territory. Holbrooke is trying to nudge the Pakistani leaders to act against the Afghan Taliban and the Baluchistan-based terrorists by deploying more troops. But most Pakistani leaders believe that the Pakistani Taliban fighters, sponsored by the US and India, are enemies while the Afghan Taliban are their friends. Thus, Holbrooke’s worries are far from over. Difficult days lie ahead for diplomats dealing with Pakistan.

GENTEEL DEBATES
- The Indian middle class and the new Afghan war
Cutting Corners - Ashok Mitra


The Congress will, of course, not say it. Not just because polite society has its own norms, the Opposition too has skirted round the real issue in the parliamentary discussions on the India-Pakistan joint statement. That the venue chosen for the statement was a Non-Aligned Movement gathering was neither here nor there; it was signed at the prodding of the United States of America. Its contents — interpreted in India as slightly tilting towards Pakistan on account of the reference to ‘threats’ in Baluchistan — were again something Foggy Bottom must have persuaded India to, please, go along with. Both subcontinental countries are now firmly launched as strategic partners of the US, courtesy demands that subsidiary partners offer, every now and then, a helping hand when the major domo encounters trouble

And the US, indeed, is in deep difficulties. It has been laid low by the worst economic recession in eight decades. Resources are being drained away by economic fire-fighting operations at home. 9/11 was a good enough pretext for George W. Bush to overrun Iraq and capture and kill Saddam Hussein. However, the American nation is convinced that that outrage was more the handiwork of al Qaida and its alter ego, the Taliban currently entrenched in Afghanistan. The Taliban must be destroyed. Crushing them is proving to be no easy matter though. Coming on top of the seemingly inexorable entanglement in Iraq, the expedition against the Taliban, who have meanwhile spilled over into Pakistan, calls for deployment of enormous further resources, including human resources. The recession-hit US is in a jam. The Western allies are most reluctant to send their troops to be ambushed and killed in Afghanistan. The Obama administration is also under pledge to the electorate to wind down the war in West Asia. In the circumstances, the allies in South Asia have to be called upon to bail out the US. The obvious first choice, Pakistan, abuts Afghanistan and, in any case, is already a hotbed of Taliban conspiracy.

But there have been problems. Pervez Musharraf, whom the Americans had lent full support in the beginning, was losing his grip over the country’s military establishment. He was careless enough to let the Taliban penetrate into the country’s Inter-Services Intelligence, and committed the equally grievous folly of allowing them both to take control of most of the country’s mosques and set up thousands of madrasas to indoctrinate Pakistan’s younger generation. He therefore needed to be replaced. The US administration preferred Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party to Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League as the former promised a firmer anti-Taliban stand. Still, Zardari cannot fight on two fronts; there must be some sort of détente with the traditional enemy, India, before Pakistan could give its undivided attention to the task of tackling the Taliban.

Americans, appreciative of Pakistan’s argument, have gone to work. The US has enough clout to nudge a reluctant India to the negotiation table with Pakistan. The emerging Indian middle class has not only nuclear ambitions; it has also begun to weave dreams to be China’s equal in military and industrial might. The US administration is willing to humour India along in the matter and supply the much-coveted weaponry, including the strategically most sensitive ones. It is, however, going to be a conditional willingness: the contours of New Delhi’s foreign policy must not stray beyond guidelines set by Foggy Bottom. Actually, Americans are in a position to drive home another advantage. While India’s merchandise exports are declining, close to 90 billion dollars accrue to the country from software exports to the US; another 60 billion dollars are coming in as remittances by expatriate Indians serving mostly as software technicians there. This total kitty of 150 billion dollars is sustaining the comfortable, often luxurious, living of India’s affluent class, who also happen to be the backbone of support for the ruling politicians.

The US administration is thus well placed to cajole the Indian authorities into seeing reason. Not that New Delhi has not done its own arithmetic. Given the overlapping class base of the two main political parties in the country, it is not difficult to persuade them to reach a tacit agreement to abide by American advice to go somewhat easy with Pakistan. Since one of the two parties constitutes the major Opposition, it has to make the standard noises alleging compromise of national interests embedded in the Sharm el-Sheikh statement. The reference to Baluchistan is irksome, but a balancing factor is Pakistan’s admission that 26/11 was perpetrated by its citizens, to apprehend whom the Interpol has been called in. Pakistan has also banned a number of terrorist outfits named by India. The greater cause — to be on the right side of the US — needs to prevail. It is for the sake of that cause too that the odious ‘arrangement’ on end-use inspection of sensitive weaponry and materiel shipped from the US has to be swallowed. Common sense must not be taken leave of: once you have signed the nuclear deal with the US, you have already accepted the cloying provisions of the Hyde Act.

So far, so good. The Americans, however, have yet other ambitions. It is their covert desire that India should also agree to recognize the Taliban as the principal threat to its own national security. Once that realization dawns, India too, the Americans hope, will agree to form a joint front with Pakistan against the Taliban. In pure vernacular, the US wants India to bear, sooner or later, sooner rather than later, a part of the burden of fighting the Taliban. For is it not a great noble cause? South Asia, along with the rest of the world, has to be made rid of those barbarians, the Taliban, who have been terrorizing India through surreptitious attacks organized by subsidiary outfits. India should not, must not, flinch from deploying its troops and security forces to the hilt to fight the common enemy. To optimize the effectiveness of the effort, India should also explore the possibility of joint action with Pakistan under the umbrella of the overall strategy mapped out in the Pentagon.

A century and a half later, India is no longer enslaved in the technical sense. But there is such a thing as enlightened self-interest; the country’s rising middle class might still agree to share, if not in full, at least in part, the burden of America’s Taliban war. It knows which side its class bread is buttered.

Someone, some day, will perhaps have the guts to tell the US that the problem is not the pestilential ‘common enemy’, the Taliban, representing global terror; it is the American establishment which is the problem. Their overarching aspiration is to establish a global hegemony; therefore wars have to be launched in different parts of the world, people have to be killed and civilizations destroyed. The Indian middle class will have no part in such plain-speaking, at least not at this juncture when they never had it so good. The Indian parliament, it follows, will only indulge in genteel debates.

ramana wrote:
Americans, appreciative of Pakistan’s argument, have gone to work. The US has enough clout to nudge a reluctant India to the negotiation table with Pakistan.

The US administration is thus well placed to cajole the Indian authorities into seeing reason. Not that New Delhi has not done its own arithmetic. Given the overlapping class base of the two main political parties in the country, it is not difficult to persuade them to reach a tacit agreement to abide by American advice to go somewhat easy with Pakistan.

sukhdeo wrote:In what way is Islam weaker ? It has not given any ground on any front. Territorially, financially, militant wise, jihadi wise, more importantly expansion wise.

Raja Ram wrote:Gentle readers will recall that I have been critical of Indian PM for his let down in S-e-S but it has not stopped me from trying to think various probabilities to explain his action. It is important to try and do so because the actions represented such a break from the past that it is almost unbelievable. I have been thinking of an alternate hypothesis that seeks to explain the Indian gameplan. Bear with me as I explain it here under.

It is clear that Pakistan's survival is underwritten by the 3 oxygen suppliers of US, KSA and China and also to a certain extent Japan as pointed out by Sridhar sir. But there is now a delicate balance of power amongst these backers and their power centres in Pakistan. As I have indicated in the past, the three powers have a minimum common agenda of keeping the artificial state afloat, but their priorities and interests may sometime differ and even be competing.

It is clear that there is a power struggle between Gilani, Zardari, Nawaz and Kiyani. It appears to me that the US is backing Zardari and wants to keep Kiyani under pressure and make him cooperate in the operations against taliban so that the US can get some relief. To keep Zardari honest, they have used Kiyani and Gilani as a countercheck. Nawaz seems to have the backing of KSA and he is trying to get Kiyani a leverage against the US by keeping the pressure on Zardari.

Zaradari on his own wants to hedge his bets and he is reaching out to China to counter the pressure of the US and wants to keep his options open with the army by becoming the leader of choice for the Chinese regime.

In this context, India would like to back Gilani and through him Kiyani. These two represent to some extent, an independent line which is likely to resist outside pressure and may be willing to do a deal with India to gain ascendancy and breathing space. It still means that the present GOI thinks that it is better to have a somewhat stable pakistan than an imploded state. Why is that thinking? That will take a different post to explain. I will just take a small diversion. It seems to me that the imploding pakistan has been gamed and India feels that it will not be in a position to either accept parts of pakistan or back to the hilt independent nations there. At least, India does not want to do that as the primary aim is to keep relative peace and keep growing. All India wants for the next ten years or so is the terror machine inside pakistan shut down and a relative peace with India while they carry on with the downward spiral.

If this is indeed a possible hypothesis, then it explains the cutting down of a pro american and possibly pro chinese zardari and building up of Gilani who does not have a base of his own or a legacy and therefore is likely to be a Junejo and do the bidding of the army. Kiyani will need Gilani and vice versa and so these two will be able to be amenable to Indian demands. At least for the time being.

It explains why PM did what he did with Gilani and not with Zardari. It also explains the unusual steps taken by ISI to meet and talk to Indian defence attache. There have been some demands, very specific, that has been conveyed and Gilani/Kiyani combine have to deliver that.

The Indian aim is to keep slowly diminish the outside powers influence in pakistan and degrade their capability to underwrite the entity of pakistan and make it do their bidding. Because GOI has realised that the interests of the US or KSA or China will never coincide with the interests of India in the case of Pakistan. It is using the current situation to help create a new leadership there, with whom India can do business and promote its agenda there.

For this hypothesis, there should be some data points to back it up. The increased visits by Zardari to China, the cold response to Holbrook in Delhi, the slowing down of bonhomie between the US and India are pointers that India does not back US and China's man in Pakistan.

Gilani is blowing hot and cold and takes his cues from Kiyani. These two think they can play India along, get some leverage and then double cross India. That is why the trust but verify line is being touted. There are some clear markers and Indian action or support to these two hinges on the performance of these two to comply with Indian demands.

Nawaz wants to get into the act by ensuring that he becomes useful to the US in case Zaradari becomes oriented too much to China. He also wants to position himself as some one India can do business with.

News coming out of Pakistan shows some support to this hypothesis, although it sounds unlikely. The kind of muted response by the BJP and allusions by Rajnath Singh and others on the need for a stable pakistan indicate that the GOI has taken them into confidence.

This of course is by far the most optimistic take I could come up with in defence of the GOI and the PM. Personally I am not yet convinced of this myself. But I have ruminiated over it for a while and thought it best to share this in the forum so that we can have the benefit of other views by better experts and see where this train of thought leads us.

Just a ramble, gentle readers, now please tell me why this is not possible.

RajeshA wrote:Raja Ram ji,

I too believe, that India does not really have a plan for imploding Pakistan. An imploded Pakistan would possibly become an even bigger headache for India, as all powers and ideologies inimical to India would use the confusion to attack India. PRC will use Anarcho-Jihadis, The Americans will use Anarcho-Jihadis, the Wahabbis will use Anarcho-Jihadis. India is of the opinion, that considering the amount of hate that exists in Pakistan for Hindu India, India may not be able to use Anarcho-Jihadis that well, especially as India would not know for what purpose to use them.

As India does not have a plan of how to cope with post-Implosion Pakistan, it is best that it does not implode.

India however does not need to actively help in stabilizing Pakistan, as others are already knee-deep in the mud, doing exactly that, prolonging the life of a cancer-afflicted patient (let's however not develop sympathy for him).

I guess that is GoI thinking. I think you are right in your assessment.

I am not sure India is really playing any Pakistani politics here. India is keeping aloof. MMS's snub to Zardari happened, because Zardari acts like a moron, and MMS needed to prop up his image in India, and make some breathing space for himself domestically to make his gift to the Pakistanis in S-e-S.

As you said, the only thing India wants from Pakistan is for Pakistan to leave India alone. The only one who can ensure that to some extent is Kiyani. As Gilani as positioned himself closer to Kiyani, he seemed to be the best medium to talk to the Pakistani Army. A snub to Zardari further helps Gilani, somebody with whom MMS wants to warm up. Other than playing the channel of communication, Gilani cannot offer India much.

The only thing India is offering Kiyani is that considering how many difficulties Pakistan has, India is willing to leave Pakistan alone as well, and not add to his heap of problems, problems like American pressure.

Sanku wrote:

Raja Ram wrote: Just a ramble, gentle readers, now please tell me why this is not possible.

Eloquent as always RR.

However, this possibility was indeed brought up by some who were looking for justifications for SeS immediately post the event. However I suppose their past history of posts caused the same coming from them to appear more of a spin.

However irrespective of who discusses this particular alternative the same problems that were then raised against this hypothesis remain

Assuming for a minute that the above is indeed what GoI was trying to do.

1) Zardari, Kiyani etc are disposable pieces in Pakistan, none of them have any weight of strength of their own. The attempts to work with Bhutto failed spectacularly, and in a era when India had all the cards; having just defeated Pakistan, being led by an astute politician like IG and using a fairly heavy weight politician in Pakistan. This happened essentially because the attempt at the particular formulation essentially bypassed the main tenets behind the problem of Pakistan.
It would be a hubris of unimaginable proportion at least and delusion at worst for the current GoI to think that a failed scheme (due to inherent flaws and not the execution) can be used by them with any degree of success.

So even if GoI was trying this -- I think it would be very difficult for any one in GoI establishment to try a risk or this magnitude.

That alone tells me that this was not the thinking behind it.

Now the other way to look at it is, why this not possible, is as follows
2) Holbrooke apart, there is very little to tell us that any of the indicators of US and India bonhomie being over, have happened yet. Yes if MRCA goes to a non teen plane, perhaps, but till then all the signatures have been made exactly in the way the US would have liked. There is very little to actually talk of divergence.

3) It is unlikely that if S e S was not done in that way GoI expected Pakistan to collapse or if it did how meaningful that fear was in short term. (Which is not to say they have no plan)

The easiest and the most effective option in the short term was to be business as usual for GoI and this is anyway a approach that our establishment prefers.

In short I don't see why would GoI try and destabilize the perfectly comfortable operating space it had carved for itself post Mumbai V (I wont insult any one intelligence by trying to even suggest that some how GoI had a plan for getting justice for Indians who died in Mumbai V, by trying this stunt)

Gagan wrote:Raja Ram and RajeshA,
Excellent summations. Wonder if this line of thought had been brought out in the early days of the SES thread, what the reaction would have been.
It does seem like India feels constrained by how to manage an imploding pakistan, nevertheless this is an eventuality that will face us no matter what. It also means that along with Afghanistan, we will have to face the greatest brunt of that implosion-explosion.
I think we give too little credit to our netas and babooze.

ramana wrote:Aaw! Not fair you know everything about AM. The more interesting thing is Telegraph a INC rag, printed it. Why?

International Centre, the Habitat Centre and other similar places in the capital that ring with synergetic discussions on current affairs, forthright disapproval of the Sharm-el-Sheikh Indo-Pakistan joint statement began during the weekend itself as India’s senior diplomats arrived ahead of their conference.

Such disapproval will continue to be expressed in private throughout the week from Monday in the drawing rooms of the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) Apartments in east Delhi and the government’s D-1 and D-2 flats across the capital as Indian envoys on headquarters consultations are hosted by their colleagues in the diplomatic service.

In the five weeks since the controversial joint statement was issued on the sidelines of the non-aligned summit in Egypt, this correspondent has talked to scores of IFS officers, from ambassadors to counsellors to third secretaries across the world.

Speaking on background and assured of no attribution, not one — yes, not one — Indian diplomat approved of the joint statement which was issued in the name of Prime minister Manmohan Singh.

Every single IFS officer that this correspondent spoke to believes that India’s foreign policy interests were seriously damaged in Sharm-el-Sheikh.

Without even a solitary exception, they believe that the country will pay a price in the long run for the serious errors of judgement that were made during Singh’s meeting with Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani, on July 16.



Does it matter that the entire body of Indian diplomats -- going by this correspondent's informal survey, even allowing for a margin of error -- is opposed to what took place in Sharm-el-Sheikh? It does.

The unanimous view held by India's diplomatic service on Pakistan will be significantly different in its fallout from the uniform view which the IFS had on Venkateswaran’s removal. After all, it is the Prime Minister’s prerogative to take a final view on who the foreign secretary should be.

However, now, if Manmohan Singh intends to move forward in any big way on Pakistan on the lines of the Sharm-el-Sheikh statement, it is the IFS which will have to implement that policy.

Some 12 years ago, the “Gujral doctrine” of diluting Indian power in the sub-continent and going an extra mile to be “nice” to neighbours while those neighbours whipped New Delhi with impunity was comprehensively undermined by then Prime Minister I.K. Gujral’s own diplomats, working in concert with those in the home ministry, the defence ministry and the intelligence agencies who shared a common view that the so-called doctrine was a recipe for disaster.

History may be about to repeat itself if the present Prime Minister believes that the country is ready to make a big leap into changing the course of Indo-Pakistan relations.

chetak wrote:It's not all bad news post sharm el sheik.

Hopefully the IFS view also put paid to Shiv Shankar Menon's anticipated post retirement sojurn at the PMO as a special envoy.

Good riddance to a foreign sec who failed to put his country before his boss.

' Summit of discontent - Joint statement upsets IFS ’ ....................

Indian envoys meet evades talks on Indo-Pak joint statement

Indrani Bagchi, TNN 26 August 2009, 01:59am IST

NEW DELHI: Two days into an annual conference of India's envoys in the capital has seen a reverberating silence into the UPA government's most recent foreign policy affair. There has been no reference to, and almost no questions asked, about the India-Pakistan joint statement at Sharm el-Sheikh, which raised a political firestorm in the country only weeks ago. Interestingly, though privately Indian ambassadors repeatedly refer to the joint statement, at the envoys' conclave there has been a remarkable lack of curiosity about the event. ........................

Times of India

arun wrote:Hope just withered away

Brave talk aside, our Foreign Service has opted to eschew carrer limiting moves and a complete silence has enveloped the topic of Sharm-el-Sheikh:

...
Menon decided that it was discreet not to question what he was told to put into the joint statement because Singh, despite his genteel exterior, can be cutting when he needs to be, according to those who have worked closely with the Prime Minister over a long time.
...
Defenders of the Prime Minister recall a joint news conference after he met Musharraf at the New York Palace hotel on September 14, 2005. The summit-level talks had broken down and Singh made a few grim remarks. Then Musharraf, hoping to repeat his nationally televised circus in Agra in 2001, began answering a question from a Pakistani journalist. The dictator-President was into his first sentence when Singh walked off the stage. Musharraf was forced to follow as he was in Indian space and Singh was the host.

The incident is being cited to show that the Prime Minister knows what he is doing and is no pushover. Singh’s defenders insist that the Prime Minister has a clear game plan for eventually settling with Pakistan or at least having a continuous working relationship with Islamabad and that Balochistan and delinking terrorism from the Composite Dialogue are part of that plan.

...
However, these sources are not prepared to lay their cards on the table on the ground that it is premature.

Unfortunately for Singh, he does not have many supporters of any such strategy, at least as of now, with even some members of his cabinet harbouring reservations about any such plan.
...

No delink of terror from talks with Pakistan: India

Indrani Bagchi, TNN 29 August 2009, 09:03am IST …………

After the political storm over the India-Pakistan joint statement at Sharm el-Sheikh, is India still going ahead with a meeting between the two foreign ministers at UNGA?

I would presume so. We have never fought shy of meeting Pakistan’s leaders. That’s why Prime Minister met Asif Zardari in Yekaterinburg, and Gilani in Sharm el-Sheikh. The Indian standpoint has been that we will not resume the composite dialogue until we see concrete evidence that Pakistan has acted against terrorism in a manner that we feel comfortable. That position remains. I don’t see any change in that position at any time. People have tried to misinterpret the Sharm el-Sheikh joint statement.

But the statement delinked dialogue from action on terrorism, apart from a controversial reference to Balochistan. Wasn’t that a departure?

It doesn’t delink. That’s a wrong reading of the document. It’s possible that somebody may read it that way but that’s certainly not the intention. I don’t think there has been any change in our position. There was a reference to Balochistan in the document because it found a mention in the discussions. It’s possible that someone could read a meaning into it. I don’t think there is any particular meaning.

Are we heeding the Pakistan request to send the foreign secretary to Islamabad before the UNGA?

I think since the external affairs minister will be in New York for the UNGA. That would be the more appropriate place for the foreign secretaries to meet.

Times Of India

Raj Malhotra wrote:This Balochistan thingie only makes sense if MMS is telling Pakistan that we are kicking your ass in Balochistan, and you can run to Uncle Sam for all we care! And we don't mind publically acknowledging it. It is our version of "freedom fighters" tag.