Terrorism, Pakistan and what needs to be done

FROM the standpoint of the human toll, India has seen much worse than the December 13 fidayeen or suicide squad attack on Parliament House, which was foiled by alert security force personnel who did not hesitate to lay down or risk their lives in the line of duty. Neither can it be said that there was much of an intelligence failure, considering that the Prime Minister himself was widely quoted as saying in Mumbai the previous day that reports about a plan to blow up Parliament were based on a "real threat."

It is also clear that following the terrorist attack, the investigative work has been first-rate by any international standard. Police investigators and intelligence agencies have combined forces to make a swift breakthrough in detecting the crime, including the network, conspiracy and brain behind it. Arrests have already been made of the key conspirators and of those who facilitated the crime. A hunt is on for the bigger fish in this terrorist plot to destabilise India and its democratic institutions.

The evidence in hand points to the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) as the organisation behind the attack on Parliament House. JeM is a Pakistan-based jehadi organisation led by Maulana Masood Azhar, a Pakistani national associated with the dreaded Harkat organisations who used to be in Indian custody, but is now resident in Pakistan under official protection. It may be recalled that Azhar, along with other hard-core terrorists, was released in 1999 by the BJP-led government in Taliban-ruled Kandahar by way of capitulation to the hijackers of the Indian Airlines flight IC-814. Since then, JeM has competed with the more established and better-known jehadi outfit, Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), also based in Pakistan and enjoying official patronage, in carrying out terrorist strikes in Jammu and Kashmir. JeM, it has been investigatively established, carried out the October 1, 2001 terrorist attack on the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly complex in Srinagar and now it has moved with unprecedented audacity against the democratic sanctum of India's capital.

IT is clear that the Government of India, and particularly External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh, acted ill-advisedly and clumsily when they rushed to public judgment with the claim that "technical evidence" existed to show that LeT was responsible for the terrorist attack on Parliament House, and actually made a demarche with Pakistan on the strength of this assertion. This slip-up must not be allowed to play into the hands of the Musharraf regime and all manner of religious extremists and jehadis in Pakistan who have already responded with the hare-brained suggestion that the attack by 'armed intruders' on Parliament House might have been "stage-managed" by India's intelligence or security agencies to divert attention from the government's "internal problems" and defame Kashmir's "freedom struggle." With the investigation now pointing unmistakably to Maulana Azhar's organisation, Delhi's Police Commissioner could have been engaged in a damage-limitation exercise when he suggested, in a press conference, that the December 13 terrorist attack was a "joint operation" executed by JeM with assistance from LeT under instructions from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Nevertheless, what the investigation has found about the identity of the five dead terrorists, their modus operandi and the planning and execution of the conspiracy appears to have pushed the Pakistan military regime and, in particular, the ISI towards the dock. Democratic India's demand that Pakistan must act immediately to stop cross-border terrorism and must, specifically, crack down on both JeM and LeT is reasonable and just. In the present international circumstances, the demand has an urgency and force that cannot easily be denied.

But such a recourse to firmness combined with wise moderation and a clear-headed commitment to pursuing evidence-led lawful measures does not seem to be the path chosen by the BJP-led government. The party of the Hindu Right has publicly demanded retaliatory strikes against terrorist "training camps" across the Line of Control (LoC) in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). The threatening posture of "we will liquidate the terrorists and their sponsors wherever they are, whoever they are" - adopted in tragi-comic, farcical imitation of U.S. President George Bush's aggressive military response to September 11, unleashing a brutal war on Afghanistan and other unspecified targets - is dangerously ill-advised and irresponsible.

Indian military action across the LoC may be undertaken in the name of a limited strike against terrorism. It may even seek to justify itself as a component part of the 'new global war against terrorism' waged by the United States and its Western allies. But India vis-a-vis Pakistan is a far cry from the United States vis-a-vis Afghanistan. What may start off as a 'limited' surgical strike across the de facto border - itself a non-viable, meaningless proposition - is almost guaranteed to escalate into a full-scale war. The danger will be tremendously magnified by the reality of both countries possessing nuclear weapons.

THE evidence India's police investigators and intelligence agencies have been able to gather on the involvement of Pakistan-based jehadi organisations as well as Pakistani or other foreign nationals in the grave terrorist crimes of December 13 and also October 1 must be presented as early as possible to the United Nations and the international community. India has the diplomatic, political and moral resources to convince the world of what needs to be done - on the basis of objective evidence. Pakistan's President must be called to account and tested on his pledge to take action, if evidence is produced, against those responsible for the attack on Parliament House. A White Paper documenting the terrorist activities of these jehadist organisations in Jammu and Kashmir and elsewhere in India and the structure, basing, funding, arming and sponsorship of these organisations must also be laid before the country's Parliament and presented to its people.

The BJP-led government must resist the temptation to derive chauvinist mileage out of the present situation, indulge in adventurism or push for the legislative acceptance of the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance and obnoxious measures of that ilk. It must engage in genuine consultation with the whole Opposition so that the polity as well as the people are united on the imperative of pursuing a sober, effective, just and legal path to eliminate the scourge of terrorism.