Stratfor.Com Red Alert
If the Nov. 26 attacks in Mumbai were carried out by Islamist militants as it appears, the Indian government will have little choice, politically speaking, but to blame them on Pakistan. That will in turn spark a crisis between the two nuclear rivals that will draw the United States into the fray.
At this point the situation on the ground in Mumbai remains unclear following the militant attacks of Nov. 26. But in order to understand the geopolitical significance of what is going on, it is necessary to begin looking beyond this event at what will follow. Though the situation is still in motion, the likely consequences of the attack are less murky.
We will begin by assuming that the attackers are Islamist militant groups operating in India, possibly with some level of outside support from Pakistan. We can also see quite clearly that this was a carefully planned, well-executed attack.
Given this, the Indian government has two choices. First, it can simply say that the perpetrators are a domestic group. In that case, it will be held accountable for a failure of enormous proportions in security and law enforcement. It will be charged with being unable to protect the public. On the other hand, it can link the attack to an outside power: Pakistan. In that case it can hold a nation-state responsible for the attack, and can use the crisis atmosphere to strengthen the government’s internal position by invoking nationalism. Politically this is a much preferable outcome for the Indian government, and so it is the most likely course of action. This is not to say that there are no outside powers involved — simply that, regardless of the ground truth, the Indian government will claim there were.
That, in turn, will plunge India and Pakistan into the worst crisis they have had since 2002. If the Pakistanis are understood to be responsible for the attack, then the Indians must hold them responsible, and that means they will have to take action in retaliation — otherwise, the Indian government’s domestic credibility will plunge. The shape of the crisis, then, will consist of demands that the Pakistanis take immediate steps to suppress Islamist radicals across the board, but particularly in Kashmir. New Delhi will demand that this action be immediate and public. This demand will come parallel to U.S. demands for the same actions, and threats by incoming U.S. President Barack Obama to force greater cooperation from Pakistan.
If that happens, Pakistan will find itself in a nutcracker. On the one side, the Indians will be threatening action — deliberately vague but menacing — along with the Americans. This will be even more intense if it turns out, as currently seems likely, that Americans and Europeans were being held hostage (or worse) in the two hotels that were attacked. If the attacks are traced to Pakistan, American demands will escalate well in advance of inauguration day.
There is a precedent for this. In 2002 there was an attack on the Indian parliament in Mumbai by Islamist militants linked to Pakistan. A near-nuclear confrontation took place between India and Pakistan, in which the United States brokered a stand-down in return for intensified Pakistani pressure on the Islamists. The crisis helped redefine the Pakistani position on Islamist radicals in Pakistan.
In the current iteration, the demands will be even more intense. The Indians and Americans will have a joint interest in forcing the Pakistani government to act decisively and immediately. The Pakistani government has warned that such pressure could destabilize Pakistan. The Indians will not be in a position to moderate their position, and the Americans will see the situation as an opportunity to extract major concessions. Thus the crisis will directly intersect U.S. and NATO operations in Afghanistan.
It is not clear the degree to which the Pakistani government can control the situation. But the Indians will have no choice but to be assertive, and the United States will move along the same line. Whether it is the current government in India that reacts, or one that succeeds doesn’t matter. Either way, India is under enormous pressure to respond. Therefore the events point to a serious crisis not simply between Pakistan and India, but within Pakistan as well, with the government caught between foreign powers and domestic realities. Given the circumstances, massive destabilization is possible — never a good thing with a nuclear power.
This is thinking far ahead of the curve, and is based on an assumption of the truth of something we don’t know for certain yet, which is that the attackers were Muslims and that the Pakistanis will not be able to demonstrate categorically that they weren’t involved. Since we suspect they were Muslims, and since we doubt the Pakistanis can be categorical and convincing enough to thwart Indian demands, we suspect that we will be deep into a crisis within the next few days, very shortly after the situation on the ground clarifies itself.
I have to disagree with this analysis. First off, you assume that the Indian government would engage in a diversionary tactics solely to solidify power. Diversionary theories are very dubious, especially in the case of major-war initiation, partly because they reify state decision-making.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.uni-konstanz.de/FuF/Verwiss/GSchneider/lehre/Bussmann/Causes%20of%20war/Diversionary.pdf
The attacks may have had some planning in Pakistan but there is no current evidence linking the ISI or elements of the Pakistani state to Indian terror groups outside of Kashmir. Pakistan's control over its terror problem is limited. The military is fragmented over its approach for handling the crisis and the civilian government has little legitimacy in much of the country. Chastisement from foreign government officials is virtually ineffective--and the international community is beginning to come to terms with this fact. If anything , in the wake of these attacks the US would prevent any action from India that could worsen conditions in the War on Terror. In addition, contrast this week's attacks to the attacks in DEHLI in 2001 which were carried out by Kashmiri militants with direct funding from PAK/MIL elements. The 2001 attacks were seen as extension of the Kashmir conflict and cannot be solely blamed for causing the nuclear standoff.
The actions of the Deccan Mujahadeen were primarily motivated by domestic events causing mostly domestic implications. The group is likely an offshoot of the Indian Mujahadeen which launched several attacks in the past couple of years. One of the terrorists cited a popular grievance of Indian Muslim militants: the destruction of the Babri mosque and the associated rise of Hindu nationalism. Though their attack had some elements of "far-jihad" comparable to the work of Al Queda, the militants mostly attacked Indians and used Westerners as hostages to negotiate the freedom of their jailed comrades. The western world is appauled, but this is heavily an Indian tragedy.
Its difficult to say what course of campaigning the INC would take up in the wake of these attacks. Muslims have always been a central bloc in their party coalition and to lose them by acting too rashly would mean that the party would lose in upcoming elections. Again, we mustn't reify state decision-making and its likely that India will see a mass terror crackdown in weeks to come.
If I were a betting man,I'd say Muslim turnout would be low in the next elections and the Hindu nationalist opposition would pick up large margins.
The fog of war has cleared somewhat, and things are emerging, like the confession from the captured terrorist that he was working for LaT and the intel from the satphone that indicated that this was all coordinated from within Pakistan.
ReplyDeleteI think that Pakistan is going to be (correctly) seen in an indefensible position on culpability, and the real question is whether or not they will make the sort of concessions necessary to placate India.
If it destabilizes them further, so be it. If the price for stability in Pakistan is going to be paid by India in this manner, that bill is going to go unpaid.
"I think that Pakistan is going to be (correctly) seen in an indefensible position on culpability, and the real question is whether or not they will make the sort of concessions necessary to placate India."
ReplyDeleteWhat can Pakistan do? The military is already trying to take down Al Queda and the Taliban but to no avail. They are doing the best they can and we still have a country that is a hotbed for terrorism. India, the at most, would deliver harsh words but there is not much they can do to eliminate terror in Pakistan besides that. Military action within the country is simply not an option. Heck, it isn't even a viable maneuver for the US to take.
A government without sovereignty is no government. If Pakistan can't handle the Taliban, then it isn't worth dealing with.
ReplyDeleteMilitary action would be painful, no doubt, but allowing terrorism to fester and grow in Pakistan will be even more painful in the long run.