The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 6 | Issue 12 | Dec 01, 2008

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Mumbai Aftermath: U.S. Tilt Toward India Alienates Pakistanand Undermines War Prospects in Afghanistan [Updated]

China Hand

Mumbai Aftermath: U.S. Tilt Toward IndiaAlienates Pakistan and Undermines WarProspects in Afghanistan [Updated]

China Hand

The rhetoric of the Global War on Terrorappears to have lost its old magic.

In the aftermath of the horrendous Mumbaiattacks, it seems there were just as manyarticles saying this wasn’t Mumbai’s 9/11 asthere were efforts to raise the bloody flag ofAmerica’s catastrophe over the carnage.

The most conspicuous example of 9/11exhaustion is Pakistan.

According to the GWOT mythology, Pakistanexperienced its galvanizing moment in thesuicide bombing of the Islamabad MarriottHotel in September 2008, and the people andgovernment of Pakistan now stand shoulder toshoulder with the world’s democracies tocombat extremism.

However, after the initial shock of the Mumbaiattack wore of f in Pakistan—and theinternational narrative that the attackers werePakistani coalesced—there was an immediateand emotional rejection of the idea that long-suffering Pakistan should be furtherdestabilized under U.S. and Indian insistencethat the miscreants be pursued insidePakistan’s borders.

The Taj Mahal Hotel in flames

A common theme in Pakistan’s media is thatthe Mumbai attack was carried out by Hinduextremists, or even was a false flag operationcarried out by India’s Research and AnalysisWing (RAW) to provoke a conflict withPakistan.

One commenter opined, Maybe this wasn’tIndia’s 9/11. Maybe it was India’s OklahomaCity.

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That’s very bad news for the United States andits covert struggle inside Pakistan againstgovernment and public apathy concerning theWestern struggle to stabilize Afghanistan, andto neutralize pro-Taliban and pro-al Qaedaelements in the notorious Inter ServicesIntelligence directorate (ISI).

Pakistan’s Zardari government, which is eagerto please the United States, is nervouslyplaying word games about cooperating withIndia as the United States demands, whiledragging its feet in order to keep in step withits domestic constituency.

The Grand Bargain and the U.S. Dilemma

The U.S. is fully aware of the fragility of theZardari government, and popular resistance toU.S. aims in the region, and is trying to treadcarefully, eschewing the rhetoric of the war onterror.

That approach is necessary because insidePakistan the war on terror is irretrievablylinked to the United States, its failed strategy,its dubious objectives…and Islamabad’scoerced participation in a U.S.-orchestratedmilitary, political, economic, and securitydrama that threatens to rip Pakistan apart.

The result is skewed narratives, distortedpolicies, an unavoidable but counter-productiveAmerican reliance on arm-twisting instead ofpersuasion, and a visceral Pakistan oppositionto U.S. policies that is reaching the point ofdesperate revulsion.

And, triumphant Democrats be warned, itdoesn’t look like things will improve in anObama administration.

The Mumbai attacks have revealed fissures andconflicting alliances across Asia, provided newheadaches for the United States, and are an illaugury for the “Grand Bargain” that expertshoped would replace the America’s falteringmilitary strategy for Afghanistan.

T h e “ G r a n d B a r g a i n(http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20081001faessay87603-p0/barnett-r-rubin-ahmed-rashid/from-great-game-to-grand-bargain.html)” asformulated by Professor Barnett Rubin andjournalist Ahmed Rashid and purportedlyembraced by General David Petraeus, is meantto rescue the situation in Afghanistan by re-establishing the relations of the key SouthAsian stakeholders on the basis of cooperationand enlightened self-interest.

It is hoped that the U.S. would broker agenuine rapprochement between India andPakistan, sealed by a deal over Kashmir. Pakistan’s civilian democracy would thereby bestrengthened vis a vis the military andconservatives and, in its turn, make sincereefforts to crush al Qaeda and refractory Talibanelements in eastern Afghanistan and westernPakistan. Chastened moderate Taliban wouldbe welcomed into the Afghan government in aspir i t of reconci l iat ion, The Afghangovernment, possibly with U.S. diplomat (andAfghan-born) Zalmay Khalilzad as its newpresident, and assisted by the democracies ofPakistan and India, would become a bulwark ofstability in the region.

However, the aftermath of the Mumbai attackreveals that the ambitious goals for thisvigorous exercise in multilateralism areprobably unattainable. The problems are toobig—and the abilities of the United States andits international allies to project virtuous powerinto the region too small—to prevent violencefrom driving the outcome.

The horror perpetrated in Mumbai might be thework of al Qaeda, Kashmir separatists, somepreviously unknown Islamic extremist groupindigenous to India, or an obscenity committedby Indian gangsters or Hindu ultra-nationalists.

Pakistan and the Mumbai Attacks

But to me it appears to be blowback from theU.S. campaign to rein in Pakistan’s Inter

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Service Intelligence (ISI) apparatus andorchestrate an anti-Taliban/anti-al Qaedaunited front of democracies stretching fromKabul to Islamabad to New Delhi.

If the Mumbai massacres were organized orcondoned by the ISI as a provocation, I supposewe could say “mission accomplished”.

The fundamental hostility between India andPakistan has been strengthened, the inability ofthe PPP government to back up its U.S.-mandated good wishes toward India withmeaningful action has been exposed, and thewillingness of the ISI to meet challenges to itspower with brutal violence has been revealed.

And by targeting Americans, Britons, and Jews,the attack was overtly linked, not to the never-ending squabble between India and Pakistanover Kashmir, but to the U.S.-led securitypolicy for Afghanistan and South Asia

Accord ing t o Pak i s t an ’ s The News(http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=18709), the Taliban in western Pakistanresponded to the heightened tensions withIndia with a suspiciously prompt andunanimous offer (met with a suspiciouslyprompt and positive response from thePakistani military) to cease operations so thatPakistan’s army could shift its resources to theeast:

All main militant groups fighting inFata [Federally AdministeredTr iba l Areas ] , f rom SouthWaziristan to Bajaur and fromMohmand to the Khyber Agency,have contacted the governmentthrough different sources after theMumbai bombings and haveoffered a ceasefire if the PakistanArmy also stops its operations.

And as a positive sign that thisceasefire offer may be accepted,

the Pakistan Army has, as a firststep, declared before the medias o m e n o t o r i o u s m i l i t a n tcommanders, including BaitullahMehsud and Maulvi Fazlullah, as“patriotic” Pakistanis.

These two militant commandersare fighting the Army for the lastfour years and have invariablybeen accused of terrorism againstPakistan but the aftermath of theMumbai carnage has suddenlyturned terrorists into patriots.

A top security official told a groupof senior journalists on Saturday:“We have no big issues with themilitants in Fata. We have onlysome misunderstandings withBaitullah Mehsud and Fazlullah.These misunderstandings could beremoved through dialogue.”

Pakistan’s normally fract ious media(http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=18709 ) has also circled the wagons onthe nation’s behalf in denigrating the Indianallegations, earning rare praise from themilitary:

The change in the attitude of thePakistani military establishment isremarkable. Thanks to India, thesecurity officials, who used tocriticise the Pakistani media, arenow praising its role in the recentdays, saying: “You have proventhat you are patriotic Pakistanis.”

Last year, the same officials werepart of a decision to impose a banon many Pakistani TV channelsbecause of their alleged anti-statebehaviour. Meanwhile, Army ChiefGen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has

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made it clear to President Asif AliZardari and Prime Minister YousufRaza Gilani that if India escalatestensions, then Pakistan has tomove its troops from the tribalareas to the eastern borders and itwould not be possible to continuethe war against terrorism.

Top military officials conveyed thesame message to the mediarepresentatives on Saturday.

Even i f t he Mumba i a t t ack was no tchoreographed by elements within the ISI togenerate a confrontation with India and givePakistani elite and popular opinion an excuse toback out of the bloody and unpopular campaignit is pursuing at America’s behest in FATA, theresult appears to be the same.

As The News reported:

The Indian allegations againstPakistan have suddenly forced themilitary establishment in Pakistanto finally accept that they are notfighting an American war insidethe Pakistani territory.

O n a n o t h e r l e v e l , t h eparliamentary leader of the 12Fata members in the NationalAssembly, Munir Orakzai, hasexpressed optimism in this regard,saying: “I see a bright ray of peacein the tribal areas and if we comeout of the American pressure, I canguarantee that there will be peacein the tribal areas in a few daysand we will be ready to fightagainst India on the eastern borderalong with the Pakistan Army.”

Any proven involvement by Pakistani state

institutions in the Mumbai attack would be acalamity for Pakistan-India relations and, byextension, America’s strategy for South Asia.

Ceremonial changing of the Pakistani guard at theWagah India-Pakistan Border

It would provoke the immediate shift ofPakistan’s military focus and resources awayfrom a conflict it detests—the U.S. imposedcounterinsurgency in west Pakistan’s Frontierand Tribal Areas (FATA)—to an arrangementmuch more comfortable for Pakistan’s army:the familiar display of ritualized hostility andthe deployment of a conventional order ofbattle on the eastern border with India.

A U.S., Pakistan, Indian Consensus?

Therefore, despite some hard-to-explainanomalies, there is a determined effort by theUnited States, with the obliging assistance ofthe media, the approval of the Pakistanigovernment, and, it appears now, the grudgingacquiescence of the Indian government tosqueeze the Mumbai attack into a conventionalSouth Asian narrative: a brutal episode in thestruggle over Kashmir, with militants of theLashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) Kashmir independenceorganization perpetrating the latest outrage.

Indeed, LeT’s fingerprints are apparently allover the operation. The single capturedterrorist, Ajmal Amin Kamal, has beenidentified as a Pakistani citizen and LeTfidayeen. A satellite phone that had made calls

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to the LeT operations chief was allegedlyrecovered. According to details of Kamal’st e s t i m o n y(http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200812021613.htm) leaked to Indian media, hewas trained and indoctrinated in LeT camps.

However, analysts are undoubtedly wonderingwhy the LeT attackers, while slaughteringa lmost 200 random Ind ian v ic t ims ,ostentatiously targeted Americans, Britons, andJews.

And they are wondering why the attackers made no mention of Kashmir.

The e-mail taking responsibility for the attack,ostensibly from a previously unknown group,the Deccan Mujahideen, and a cell phoneconversation between an attacker and Indianmedia during the incident both couched theincident in terms of the Hindu-Muslimrelationship inside India proper: the allegedmistreatment of the head of a radical Islamicgroup, the Students Islamic Movement of India(http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/terroristoutfits/simi.htm), one Abul BasharQasmi, by the Indian police; the provocativedestruction of a mosque, Babri Masjid, byHindu national ists; and the pl ight of“mujahideen” languishing in Indian prisons.

The Deccan Plateau is, perhaps conveniently, atexactly the other end of India from Kashmir.

A possible answer to these puzzling questionsgoes well beyond Kashmir and has disturbingimplications for U.S. policy in India, Pakistan,and Afghanistan.

The Logic and Precision of the Attack

The Mumbai operation was carefully plannedover an extended per iod—perhaps ayear—apparently in Pakistan.

Targets were carefully scouted ahead oftime—the owner of the Taj Mahal Palace hotel

said the attackers knew the layout of the hotel,its kitchens, and service areas better than theIndian commandoes—and apartments androoms were rented ahead of time.

The circumstances of the alleged transit fromPakistan’s main port of Karachi to Mumbaiindicate a chilling level of planning, resources,capability, ruthlessness, and a professionalfighter’s talent for improvisation.

F r o m T h e H i n d u(http://www.hindu.com/2008/11/29/stories/2008112956020100.htm):

B a s e d o n t h e c o n t i n u i n ginterrogation of arrested Lashkarterrorist Ajmal Amir Kamal,investigators believe the 12terrorists who left Karachi on amerchant ship hijacked a fishingboat to facilitate their final assaulton Mumbai.

According to Kamal, the grouphijacked the Porbandar-registeredKuber to avoid detection by IndianNavy and Coast Guard patrols,which had a considerable presencein off Mumbai.

While one group of terrorists usedthe hi jacked boat to land atSassoon Docks on the easterncoast of Mumbai, a second groupused a fibreglass lifeboat to roww e s t t o t h e C u f f e P a r a d efisherman’s colony.

Before leaving the fishing boat, theterrorists beheaded its captain,who Gujarat authorities haveidentified as Balwant Tandel, fromUna village in the Union Territoryof Diu. There is no word on the fateof the remaining crew of five.

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To recap: the terrorists had an entire merchantship at their disposal, as well as an arsenal ofweapons. Their complex plan to evadedetection by the Indian military involvedlocating and hijacking a suitable vessel. Theygot their vessel, executed the hapless captain(and apparently his crew), and continued ontheir mission.

Further reports indicate that the attackers lefttimed explosive charges in the two taxis theytook to reach their targets, in order to kill thedrivers and further cover their tracks.

The subsequent assault culminated in nearsimultaneous attacks on multiple targets and aprotracted siege at the Taj Mahal Palace hotelwhere the at tackers he ld o f f Ind iancommandoes for sixty hours.

LeT or ISI?

Efforts to paint the attack as a free-standingLeT initiative are less than convincing.

T h e N e w Y o r k T i m e s(http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/world/asia/29intel.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss#)dutifully reported the spin provided by “U.S.intelligence and counter-terrorism officials”concerning the Kashmir angle, while admittingt h a t t h e t a r g e t s o f t h e M u m b a iattack—Americans, Britons, and Jews--don’tquite fit with the supposed objective ofadvancing TeL’s military and politicalobjectives in Kashmir:

Lashkar-e-Taiba is not known tohave singled out Westerners inpast terrorist attacks, as thegunmen in Mumbai seem to havedone. But one counterterrorismofficial said Friday that the group“has not pursued an exclusivelyKashmiri agenda” and that it mightcertainly go after Westerners toadvance broader goals.

As to how LeT could cobble together a boathijacking and a commando-style amphibiousoperation:

An American counterterrorismofficial said there was strongevidence that Lashkar-e-Taiba hada “maritime capability” and wouldhave been able to mount thesophisticated operation in Mumbai.

Kashmir is, as that counterterrorism official isundoubtedly aware, landlocked.

No wonder that people are thinking that alQaeda or Pakistan’s ISI are the only twoorganizations that could have carried out sucha massive, well-planned assault.

Clearly, the elephant in the room is Pakistan’sISI, which has nurtured, protected, andexploited LeT as a proxy in its struggle withIndia, primarily in Kashmir.

Asia Times’ veteran South Asia reporter andanalyst, Syed Saleem Shahzad, has presented ah i g h l y c i r c u m s t a n t i a l a c c o u n t(http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JL05Df01.html) of the background of the Mumbaiattack, including a narrative of al QaedaBangladesh hijacking plans for an ISI-organized, LeT-executed outrage in Kashmirand transplanting it to Mumbai:

Zakiur [LeT’s Commander in chief]and the ISI's forward section inKarachi, completely disconnectedfrom the top brass, approved theplan under which more than 10men took Mumbai hostage fornearly three days and successfullyestablished a reign of terror.

However, one can be forgiven if one wonders ifthe narrative presented is possibly a self-

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serv ing a t tempt by the IS I to sh i rkresponsibility for an attack organized not onlyunder its nose but by its own officers and shiftresponsibility for the incident that has arousedglobal outrage to the broad shoulders of alQaeda.

Historically, the ISI has not only had its ownagenda; it’s also had its own political strategyand foreign policy and the tools with which tocarry them out.

Domestically, its political section cobbledtogether a ruling coalition of conservativeparties in the 1980s and has been routinelyaccused of injecting itself into Pakistan’s raregeneral elections to promote and even selectsuitable candidates. Internationally, the ISInurtured the Taliban in Afghanistan and LeT inKashmir as suitable allies and proxies forPakistan’s interests.

By its own bloody standards, the ISI has amplejustification for intervening in the plans for aPakistan-India rapprochement and redoubledPakistani efforts against the Taliban and alQaeda on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

The ISI must be especially unhappy that theUnited States has abandoned any pretense ofeven-handedness in the Pakistan-Indiarelationship.

The U.S. Tilt Toward India

Washington has overtly tilted toward NewDelhi. An eyebrow-raising nuclear giveawaynegotiated bilaterally between the U.S. andIndia allowed India to normalize its relationshipwith the international nuclear and non-proliferation community even while the Bushadministration denied the same option toPakistan.

Even more dangerously, the United States haschosen to allow India to establish itself inAfghanistan—Pakistan’s only regionalgeopolitical asset and ally, at least when it was

controlled by the Taliban—at Pakistan’sexpense, thereby coupling a long-termAmerican presence and the fate of the Karzairegime with New Delhi’s continued influenceinside Afghanistan.

Now that the battle in eastern Afghanistan hasbecome desperate and Taliban have beenexploiting their safe havens in Pakistan’s tribalareas, the U.S. has been pulling all thepolitical, military, and economic levers at itscommand in order to compel Pakistan’s activeand effective cooperation in the struggle, andto force Islamabad to accept a securitycondominium in South Asia by which the U.S. isthe dominant power, India its ally, and Pakistana disrespected client of dubious loyalty andreliability.

A wake-up call for Pakistan was undoubtedlythe American response to the suicide bombingof India’s embassy in Kabul in July 2008.

Rather than tacitly understanding Pakistan’sright to punish Indian meddling in itsAfghan/Muslim back yard, or just shrugging itsshoulders at yet another episode in the brutalSouth Asian dance of death between New Delhiand Islamabad, the United States came downopenly and unequivocally on India’s side,dispatching a CIA official to confront Pakistanover the matter and, significantly, leaking thenews of intelligence linking the ISI to theattack to the New York Times.

With the fa l l o f Musharraf , the U.S.disenchantment with Pakistan appears to haveintensified.

When Musharraf was forced from office despiteconcerted U.S. measures to prolong his reign,the United States lost a relatively capable allywith strong links to his country’s military andintelligence services. Instead, it now findsitself forced to work through a willing butundeniably feckless and unpopular civiliangovernment led by Benazir Bhutto’s widower,Asif Zardari.

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Recognizing Zardari’s weakness, the UnitedStates has apparently made the decision toinsert itself more directly into Pakistan’sinternal affairs.

Pakistan’s sovereignty has been eroded by theUnited States to a degree that is not generallyappreciated in the U.S.

It’s not just the U.S. military incursions intoPakistan, and the drone attacks that haverecently spread beyond the tribal regions totake out Taliban and al-Qaeda elements in theNorth West Frontier Province.

It also involves the United States assertingmore and more overt direction of events insidePakistan in order to compensate for Pakistan’smanifest lack of enthusiasm for a polarizingand high-stakes battle against the Taliban inPakistan’s west.

It is difficult to look at the public humiliationthat the United States has subjected Pakistanto on the issue of an IMF loan withoutwondering if it is part of a plan to bring thecivilian government to heel.

When energy and food price bubbles, the globalr e c e s s i o n , a n d g r o s s g o v e r n m e n tmismanagement and inaction pushed Pakistanto the brink of defaulting on its foreign debt inNovember 2008, the United States forcedPakistan into the arms of the IMF—consideredinside Pakistan a symbol of national humiliationthat compromises its status as a proud regionalpower.

Indeed, in an event that is either the sign of theever-increasing militarization of U.S. foreignpolicy or a signal that international aid toPakistan must conform to America’s securitystrategy—or both—none other than the head ofthe U.S. Central Command, General Petraeus,d i s c u s s e d P a k i s t a n ’ s n e e d s(http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/world/asia/26pstan.html?ref=world) at the IMF annualmeeting.

The IMF conditions for its $7.6 billion loan,including a slate of price and tax increases in asevere recessionary environment seem certainto exacerbate the crisis and force Pakistan’sgovernment to become even more dependenton the so-called “Friends of Pakistan”, thegroup of nations that the U.S. has corralled tocontrol the flow of further internationalassistance to Pakistan.

Since Zardari’s backing from the army isalmost non-existent, the U.S. has apparentlyalso taken military matters into its own hands,coordinating its anti-Taliban strategy—anddelivering its demands for actionableintelligence—in direct meetings with Pakistan’sChief of Army Staff Ashfaq Kayani, mostmemorably summoning the general to ameeting on board the aircraft carrier AbrahamLincoln with Admiral Mullen and GeneralPetraeus in August of this year.

As Syed Saleem Shahzad pointed out in arecent article in Asia Times, a U.S. decision tobypass the Foreign Ministry and brief Pakistanilegislators directly raised some eyebrows:

Las t week [mid November2008—ed], the NATO commanderin Afghanistan, General DavidMcKiernan, visited Islamabad tobrief parliamentarians, but severalof them, including those of thedominant Pakistan People's Partyand Federal Minister RazaRabbani, refused to attend.

They called the meeting a seriousbreach of Pakistan's sovereignty asno military official of anothercountry is supposed to approachparliamentarians without theForeign Office's mediation.

Pakistan’s ISI and the Military

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The riskiest element of the U.S. strategy is aneffort to rein in the notoriously independentand pro-Taliban ISI. Taliban sympathizersinside and outside the ISI have presentedroadblocks to U.S. efforts to pursue Talibaninsurgents and al-Qaeda assets aggressively,and the United States has been looking forways to bring the refractory intelligenceservice to heel.

The Zardari government is apparently not up tothe task. Prior to his state visit to the UnitedStates in August—during which he received apointedly-leaked “charge sheet” from a deputydirector of the CIA describing ISI—Talibanlinks—Pakistan Prime Minister Gilani proudlyannounced that the ISI would henceforth reportto the civilian cabinet.

It was an assertion that he was forced toretract in the most humiliating and publicmatter imaginable within 24 hours.

A s S h a h z a d r e p o r t s(http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JK20Df01.html), reining in the ISI and itssupporters is a consistent U.S. objective:

High-level meetings between USintelligence and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) havealready been held at differentlevels to devise plans to cripple thesupport systems of the Taliban andal-Qaeda in Pakistan.

Two prominent names came underdiscussion at these meetings:retired Lieutenant-General HamidGul and a former ISI official,retired Squadron Leader KhalidKhawaja.

Gul, a former head of the ISI, issuspected of providing politicaland moral support to the Taliban-led resistance in Afghanistan. Last

year, former premier BenazirBhutto named him as a suspect forthe October 18 attack on her life inKarachi. She was subsequentlyassassinated in December.

Khawaja was the first person in thecountry to assist the displacedfamilies of Arab fighters who fledto Pakistan after the US invasion ofAfghanistan in 2001. He foughttheir cases in court, arrangedtemporary housing for them andassisted them in departing to theircountries. Khawaja is active in thecause of missing people (thosedetained without trial for years)and wants to register cases againstthe former chief of army staff andpres ident , General PervezMusharraf, and his military aidesfor abuses allegedly committedduring their eight years in power.

Tightening the noose aroundpeople such as Gul and Khawajaand the like is one way to cut offsupport for the Taliban.

The battle has begun in earnest inpreparation for next year'sshowdown

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Hamid Gul

The ISI, Afghanistan and the Taliban

Maybe the showdown over the ISI’s more-than-tacit support for the Taliban began a littleearlier than expected—in November 2008 inMumbai.

H a m i d G u l(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamid_Gul), theISI advocate mentioned in Shahzad’s article, isa genuine hard case.

Gul headed the ISI from 1987 to 1989, duringthe height of the mujihadeen insurgencyagainst the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. He has spent 20 years organizing insurgenciesand terrorism in Afghanistan and Kashmir. Heconceived and executed the ISI’s successfulcampaign to organize a right wing Islamacistparty to oppose the PPP in the 1980s. In aletter written in late 2007, Benazir Bhuttonamed him as one of the three likely organizersof her anticipated assassination. He’s violentlyanti-Indian and the architect of the Kashmirinsurgency. In the aftermath of America’sabandonment of Afghanistan in 1989 and U.S.sanctions on Pakistan’s nuclear program, he’spassionately anti-American, turning againstMusharraf when he became, in Gul’s view, too

accommodating to the United States’ GlobalWar on Terror demands.

In retirement, Gul speaks for a powerfulconservative political and military constituencythat values Pakistani independence, a hard lineagainst India, and disdain for the anti-Talibanpolicies the United States is pushing on thePPP civilian government.

Unfortunately, the strength of the ISI is morethan an object lesson of the hazards of battlinga ruthless, extra-legal elite at the heart of thePakistani state.

Gul’s off-the-wall views probably resonate morewith Pakistani public opinion than the pro-U.S./India-accommodating policies of theZardari government.

U.S. Attacks on the Taliban in Pakistan

The United States, presumably in an attempt toweaken the Taliban and improve the U.S.negotiating position, has gotten aggressiveabout going after Taliban and al Qaeda safehavens in western Pakistan.

That may prove to have been the costlieststrategic blunder in a decade that has seenmore than its share of American mis-steps.

The anti-Taliban campaign has never beenpopular inside Pakistan. Neither is the anti-Taliban Karzai government. The PakistaniTaliban responded to U.S. attacks by retaliatingagainst foreign and government targets insidePakistan, most conspicuously in the suicideb o m b i n g(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamabad_Marriott_Hotel_bombing) of the Marriott Hotel inIslamabad on September 20, 2008.

Instead of providing a rallying cry for muscularmoderates determined to defend Pakistan’sdemocracy and face down extremists, theattacks seem to have achieved theirpurpose—reminding the Pakistan public how

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much they detest both the U.S. campaign inSouth Asia and its blowback.

The Pakistani public dislikes the U.S. ledmilitary incursions and drone attacks targetinginsurgent havens in the Pashtun areas ofwestern Pakistan, and many resent America’sinsistence that the Pakistan army mountdestabilizing counter-insurgency operations insupport. This is especially true when theyconsider that all this humiliation, suffering, anddanger is in the service of a U.S. cause—victoryin Afghanistan—that the United States itselfseems to have abandoned in favor of anegotiated settlement involving Talibanelements.

In reviewing its South Asia policy—and tryingto keep the fragile rapprochement of the Indianand Pakistan governments from shattering intoa million bloody pieces in the aftermath of theMumbai attack--the Bush administration maybe acquiring a belated understanding of howfailure in Afghanistan, its overt pro-India tilt,and heavy-handed approach toward Pakistanhave combined to create an atmosphere insidePakistan charged with bad things: feelings ofpersecution, humiliation, encirclement, andperil.

With this strong undercurrent of public anger,it does not appear that anyone—inside oroutside of Pakistan—can treat the ISI or HamidGul lightly.

The equivocal and delicate position of theISI—and a popular Pakistani hostility towardIndia and, by extension, the United States thatgoes well beyond “ambivalent”—was strikinglydemonstrated even before the Mumbai siegehad ended.

India-Pakistan Clash Over Mumbai and theISI

On November 28, Indian Prime MinisterManmohan Singh asked his Pakistanicounterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani to dispatch the

Director General of ISI, one Lieutenant GeneralShuja Pasha, to India to receive Indian findingsconcerning the TeL links of the attackers and“share information”.

ISI head Maj. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha (right) withChairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike

Mullen (left) in an August 27, 2008 meeting.

Gilani agreed.

This request does not seem unreasonable,given that Pakistani citizens had apparentlyturned the center of India’s greatest city into athree-day abattoir. Nevertheless, therequest—ineluctably morphing into anintolerable “Indian demand” in Pakistani newsreports—ignited a political firestorm insidePakistan. The dominant civilian party inopposition, Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N, questionedthe government’s decision to send the DG. Islamicist parties lambasted the idea.

Even G i lan i ’ s own cab ine t p i l ed on(http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=18709), in the process displaying itsexasperation that India was getting a chance toplay the victim card even as Pakistan was indanger of coming apart at the seams:

On the domestic level, thanks tothe uncalled for Indian allegations,some ministers of the Yousuf RazaGilani cabinet got an opportunityto criticise their prime minister on

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his face for giving an assurance toIndia that the ISI chief will go toNew Delhi without consulting evenhis cabinet colleagues.

Angry ministers told Gilani clearlyin Saturday’s cabinet meeting thathis decision was not good and hes h o u l d c o n c e n t r a t e o n“institutionalised decision-making”rather than going for solo flights inthe future. Gilani was forced tochange his decision. The cabinet,after discussing the Mumbaicarnage and the Indian allegationsin detail, also advised the primeminister that no ISI official shouldbe sent to India in the near future.

It was discussed in the meeting asto why the mil itants made aridiculous demand of liberating theHyderabad Deccan (AndhraPradesh). This issue was neverraised by any hardline Muslimmilitant in India or Pakistan in thepast. Why did they not demand theliberation of Kashmir, which wasthe prime objective of bannedLashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan?

The Indian government claimedthat these militants reachedGujarat from Karachi by boatthrough a 500-km sea route. Whydid the Indian Navy fail to stop thisboat? The cabinet unanimouslyagreed that Pakistan will not comeunder any Indian pressure butefforts wil l also be made todecrease tens ions withoutannoying the public opinion.

One minister was of the view thatthe Indian media war againstPakistan had helped Islamabadindirectly as the local media

ignored all the domestic politicalissues and got involved in thetension created by India.

And who was there to throw another anvil thegovernment’s way? None other than HamidG u l(http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=18675).

“Former military dictator PervezMusharraf had bowed down to theUS immediately after 9/11 and hadlet the nation down and now thesitting rulers have humiliated thenation by bowing down to India,”said Lt-Gen (retd) Hamid Gul,f o rmer ch ie f o f IS I , wh i l ecommenting on the development.

“We are losing our position. Thedecis ion of sending the ISIdirector-general to India shouldh a v e b e e n t a k e n t h r o u g hdiplomatic channels,” he added.

Saying the preliminary informationsuggested that “some elements” inPakistan were responsible for theterror strikes in Mumbai, IndianPrime Minister Manmohan Singhon Friday asked his Pakistanicounterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani tosend ISI chief to Delhi to shareinformation on Mumbai terrorattacks.

…

The former top spymaster of thecountry said India should not havedemanded Pakistan to send the ISIchief to New Delhi. He said hadPakistan needed help of the Indianintelligence chief, they would havenever allowed it.

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“It seems there is no authority inPakistan. It is not information-sharing but in fact an interrogationof the ISI chief and the UnitedStates is doing this behind thescenes,” he said. “Washingtonwants India and Pakistan to wageits so-called war on terror,” heremarked.

Lt-Gen (retd) Hamid Gul said inview of his experience as topspymaster of the country, he couldsay confidently that it (the Mumbaiattacks) i s an ins ide job topressur ise Pak is tan . “Thesummoning of the ISI chief is apretext that is part of the greaterobjective of gett ing the ISIdissolved,” Hamid Gul said. “It is acredible institution of Pakistan andsentiments of the Pakistani nationare being hurt by making amockery of this institution,” hesaid.

The former ISI chief said he wouldalso raise the issue in the nextmeeting of the Pakistan Ex-Servicemen Society because therulers could not be allowed to playaround with an institution like theISI.

Gul used the Pakistan Ex-Servicemen Societyas a platform in his campaign to bring downPervez Musharraf, a fact of which Asif Zardariis certainly uncomfortably aware.

After the Pakistan government backed down onthe issue of dispatching the ISI DG, there was afurther flurry of activity seemingly designed toincrementally heighten tensions withIndia—and reassure the army and the ISI thatthe civilian government wouldn’t sell themdown the river for the sake of relations with

India and America’s military needs.

The actions were perhaps a demonstration thatPakistan’s government would be willing torespond with prompt—and popular—escalationto any Indian efforts to threaten Pakistanisovereignty, prerogatives, or elites with aninvestigation that strayed too far from thecomfortable assumption that the attackerswere non-state LeT actors who happened to bePakistani.

First, there was a bizarre kafuffle over anallegedly threatening call from India’s ForeignMinister, Pranab Mukherjee, to PresidentZardari, demanding action on the anti-terroristagenda “within 48 hours”. Secretary Rice triedto defuse the situation by passing the messageto Pakistan that the phone call was a hoax.

Manmohan and Zardari

However, Minister of Information SherryLehman, the Benazir Bhutto lookalike who isthe guardian of Zardari’s political fortunes and

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the relationship with the United States, refusedto let the matter rest, declaring that caller-IDtechnology revealed that the offending call hadindeed originated in India’s Ministry of ForeignAffairs, provoking an exasperated denial(http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/PoliticsNation/Pranab_takes_hoax_state_to_task/articleshow/3806209.cms) in turn from Mukherjee.

Then Pakistan’s High Commissioner in Britain,Wa j id Shams -u l -Hasan , p i t ched i n(http://www.thenews.com.pk/updates.asp?id=61902) with the unhelpful comment that anIndian offensive against Pakistan targets was“likely”.

The most interesting and revealing element ofPakistan’s campaign of what one mightcharacterize as provocative resistance has beenl’affaire Hamid Gul.

The U.S. Into the Breech

Over the weekend of December 6-7, 2008, thePakistan media was electrified by the news thatthe United States was presenting Hamid Gul’sname, along with four others, to the UNSecurity Counci l for sanct ions as aninternational terrorist…or that the UnitedStates was demanding that Gul be arrested andsent to India.

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Makhdoom ShahMahmood Qureshi, rushed to condole with Guland promised—in the inimitably squishymanner of the Zardari government—to “lookinto it”.

Interestingly, the only sourcing for the reportof this astonishing and seemingly ill-timedescalation of pressure on Pakistan by theUnited States and India came from insidePakistan.

Gul himself made the most of the rumoredaction, painting himself and Pakistan as theinjured party, framing the incident as proof ofthe Indo-Israeli-American conspiracy against

Pakistan and, in the process wrapping himselfand his agenda in the Pakistani flag whileclutching the Koran and straddling the ultimatesymbol of pride and power—Pakistan’s atomicbomb.

Certainly, the U.S.has daggers drawn forH a m i d G u l , a n d a c h a r g e s h e e t(http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=18775) against him reported by thePakistani media sounds genuine.

However, it’s doubtful that the charge sheet isa recent development. The assumption that theU.S. government would raise the Hamid Gulmatter with Pakistan—or take the inflammatorystep of forwarding his name to the U.N. forinclusion on the terror list--in the aftermath ofthe Mumbai attack is open to question.

I n a d d r e s s i n g t h e a l l e g a t i o n s(http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Pak_govt_blocks_UN_resolution_against_former_ISI_chief_Hamid_Gul/articleshow/3819301.cms),Pakistani Prime Minister Gilani said the U.S.made an abortive move to put Gul’s name onthe U.N. Terror list “soon after our governmentwas formed”--which would have been over sixmonths ago.

When contacted by The News —one-stopshopping for all the reporting on the Gulsensation—the U.S. State Department(http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=150979) basically said that Gul’s name hadnot been sent to the U.N.:

I n W a s h i n g t o n , t h e S t a t eDepartment’s Deputy SpokesmanRobert Wood had declined tocomment on earlier reports thatsuch a list had been sent to theUN. “If we decide to send names,we will let the media know,” heresponded to a question on thesubject on Thursday.

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Well, what about the report that, among otherthings, India and the United States wanted Gularrested within 48 hours?

That made it to the Washington Post.

But the sourcing?

Pakistan has agreed to a 48-hourtimetable set by India and theUnited States to formulate a planto take action against Lashkar andto arrest at least three Pakistaniswho Indian authorities say arelinked to the assaults, accordingto a high-ranking Pakistaniofficial. The official, who spoke onthe condition of anonymity becauseof diplomatic sensitivities, saidIndia has also asked Pakistan toarrest and hand over Lashkarcommander Zaki ur-RehmanLakhwi and former ISI directorHamid Gul in connection with theinvestigation. [emphasis added]

This al legation was promptly denied(http://www.indianexpress.com/news/Rice--Pak-deny-deadline-on-LeT--handover-of-Gul/395477)by Secretary R ice and the Pak is tangovernment.

Nevertheless, the WaPo report occasioneda n o t h e r o u t b u r s t(http://www.ptinews.com/pti%5Cptisite.nsf/0/3ECC372D79E174AB652575180035C798?OpenDocument) of vintage Gulism:

"It is nonsense, it is disinformationbecause (Secretary of State)Condoleezza Rice and Americawant my name to be included,"[Gul] told a private Indian channelover phone from Rawalpindi.

…Citing a top unnamed Pakistaniofficial, the Post said among thepeople India asked Islamabad toarrest and hand over is the formerISI Director Gul.

"They (the US) don't like this loudvoice in which I condemn them,their aggression, their oppression,their invasion over Afghanistanand lies in Iraq. I expose them,their 9/11 was a fraud, it was aninside job," he told NDTV.

"I want to say to the Indian publicand the Indian leadership pleasedon't fall into their trap, look atwhat they have done to us, theyare deceitful and they will use youfor their own purpose," he said.

Indian and Pakistani Maneuvers

In the December 8 New York Times, in a well-written (and presumably ghost-written) op-edentitled, The Terrorists Want to DestroyP a k i s t a n , T o o(http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/opinion/09zardari.html), President Zardari adroitlyreframed the issue away from Pakistaniculpability and managed to make the terroristattacks by Pakistanis that turned the center ofIndia’s financial capital into a war zone allabout the suffering of Pakistan…and AsifZardari.

With his trademark solipsism, Zardari relatedthe Mumbai outrage to his own travails (whilesubtly pointing out that attacks that kill andinjure hundreds inside Pakistan somehow justbecome mere blips on the international radar,while similar attacks on India turn into globalcause célèbres):

THE recent death and destruction

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in Mumbai, India, brought to mymind the death and destruction inKarachi on Oct. 18, 2007, whenterrorists attacked a festivehomecoming rally for my wife,Benazir Bhutto. Nearly 150Pakistanis were killed and morethan 450 were injured. Theterrorist attacks in Mumbai may bea news story for most of the world.For me it is a painful reality ofshared experience. Having seenmy wi fe escape dea th by ahairbreadth on that day in Karachi,I l o s t h e r i n a s e c o n d ,unfortunately successful, attempttwo months later.

…

Pakistan is shocked at theterrorist attacks in Mumbai. Wecan identify with India’s pain. I amespecially empathetic. I feel thispain every time I look into the eyesof my children.

Pakistan’s mulish insistence on playing thevictim card appears to have resigned(http://www.hindu.com/2008/12/08/stories/2008120859391000.htm) the United States tolowering the bar for an acceptable Pakistaniresponse to rather a low level:

United States Secretary of StateCondoleezza Rice has said thatthere is evidence of involvement“somehow” on Pakistan soil in theMumbai terror attacks and pressedIslamabad to act quickly to arrestsuspects to ensure there is no“follow-on attacks.”

Rice’s statement suggests that the U.S. hasgiven up hopes of a genuinely muscular

response by the Zardari government todismantle Pakistan’s terrorist infrastructureand neutralize its sponsors within thegovernment.

No further attacks and a few cosmetic arrestsmay be enough to close the books, at leastpublicly, on Mumbai.

T h e r e c e n t r a i d(http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/PoliticsNation/Pakistan_moves_to_build_bridges_with_India_/articleshow/3808480.cms) on a LeTcamp in Kashmir, the arrest by Pakistan of LeTcommander Zakiur Rehman Lakhwi (whosepotential extradition to India will undoubtedlyserve as a valuable pawn in the negotiationswith India), and a promised conciliatorymessage from the Zardari government to bedelivered by Pakistan’s High Commissioner toIndia in a few days may suffice.

The “non-state actor” narrative now appears tobe sufficiently entrenched that India willc o n f i n e i t s e l f t o i n s i s t i n g(http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Mumbai/Pak_says_it_will_ban_JuD_if_UNSC_declares_it_a_terror_outfit/articleshow/3818912.cms)that the LeT i tse l f and i ts nominal lyindependent political wing, Jamaat-ud-Daawa(or JuD) be taken out.

Since the ISI apparently anticipates and evenpredicates its strategy upon the eventualsacrifice of its extremist pawns in the never-ending struggle with India, it will presumablyacquiesce to the sacrficie of significant LeT andJuD elements.

So Secretary Rice can breathe easier thatPakistan has not been quite able to upsetAmerica’s rickety apple cart in South Asia forthe time being.

However, if the contagion of violence hasn’tquite spread to India yet, the lacklustermeasures of the United States and the Zardarigovernment will allow it to fester inside

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Pakistan and perhaps encourage the ISI to takeanother crack at destroying Pakistani-Indianrapprochement through another bloodyoutrage.

And the Indians may decide that thedemonstrably meager benefits of forbearanceare insufficient to deter them from retaliatingnext time.

That there will be a “next time” is a distinctpossibility as the one surviving LeT attackera p p a r e n t l y t o l d h i s i n t e r r o g a t o r s(http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/world/asia/10mumbai.html?ref=asia) the Mumbai squadcomprised only ten of the thirty LeT fedayinwho received the same intensive training tomount sustained assaults on Indian targets.

If another outrage occurs, India may disregardAmerican calls for restraint and independentlydemand U.N. sanctions against the ISI and notjust LeT miscreants.

That would be bad news for the success of theU.S. adventure in Afghanistan.

The real danger for U.S. interests is that, as theU.S. and India continue to lean on the weakreed that is the Zardari administration,Pakistan will opt out of a war in Afghanistanand an American security policy for South Asiathat is already a disaster for Pakistan’s military,economy, and society.

Pakistan and the Taliban

In a recent article, Asia Times’ Shahzadp r e s e n t s(http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JL05Df01.html) a worst-case scenario for Pakistanbailing out of the anti-Taliban effort that is asbad as it gets for the American adventure inAfghanistan and western Pakistan:

The situation in NWFP is spiralingout of control, with militancy

spilling over from the tribal areasinto this province.

In the past four days, militantshave abducted a record 60 peoplefrom the provincial capitalPeshawar, most of them retiredarmy officers and members orrelatives of the Awami NationalParty (ANP), which rules in theprovince. The Tal iban havebutchered many people withaffiliations to the ANP or thosewith relatives in the securityapparatus.

Meanwhile, North Atlantic TreatyOrganization supply convoyspassing through Khyber Agency enroute to Afghanistan have comeunder increasing attacks. In themost recent incident, militantsdestroyed 40 containers insupposedly secure terminals in themiddle of Peshawar.

In this anarchic situation, theJamaatut Dawa (LET), with its well-de f ined ver t ica l commandstructure under the s inglecommand of Saeed, could commitits several thousand members,virtually a para-military force, tothe cause of the anti-state al-Qaeda-linked Pakistani militants.

What has stopped the anti-Indiaorientated group from doing this isits under-riding loyalty to andsupport from Pakistan. If theauthorities start to mess with theLET, beyond the routine rhetoric,all hell could break loose inside thecountry.

Similarly, if pressure is placed onthe ISI, there could be a severe

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reaction from the more hardlineelements in that organization, aswell as in the military.

To date, the authorities have notgiven any indication of their plans.I f they do indeed resist theovertures of Mullen and Rice, it ismost likely that the Pakistaniarmed forces will withdraw fromthe Swat Val ley and BajaurAgency, leaving that area open forthe Taliban-led insurgency nAfghanistan. Militants can also beexpected to launch further attackson India, with dire consequencesfor whole South Asia region.

Yet the alternative of crackingdown on the LET is equal lyunappealing, and potentially asdisastrous.

I doubt that the United States has a Plan B forAfghanistan that involves coping with aPakistani enthusiasm deficit that is threateningto cross the line from passive resistance toactive subversion and possibly open opposition.

But for the time being, as the South Asianplayers temporize and agonize, it looks less likean emerging Grand Bargain or Great Game,and a lot like business as usual.

This is a revised and expanded version of anarticle that appeared at China Matters(http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/) under thetitle "Mumbai Paradox" on December 4, 2008.The present article was posted at Japan Focuson December,12, 2008.

Updated December 15, 2008

The "Made in Pakistan" label is by now prettyfirmly affixed to the Mumbai outrage.

The most significant development in the story,however, has been the determined efforts bythe United States, grudgingly supported byIndia and enthusiastically echoed by Pakistan,to divert any attention from the possibility thatstate actors e.g. the notorious Inter ServicesIntelligence directorate or ISI and itssupporters in the government and insidePakistan's elites were implicated in the attack.

The United States has openly stated its fearthat an understandable escalation in hostilitiesbetween India and Pakistan could providePakistan's army the excuse to abandon theunpopular anti-Taliban adventure in the west inexchange for a more traditional and much lessdestabilizing eyeball-to-eyeball confrontationwith the Indian military to the east.

Therefore, the line has been drawn, clearly ifsomewhat arbitrarily, to limit internationalcondemnation to "non-state actors" such asLashkar-e-Taibi (which supplied the manpowerfor the Mumbai attacks), while not scrutinizingpotential ISI involvement in an attack whichwas meticulously and expensively plannedinside Pakistan and did nothing to try toadvance LeT's stated goals in Kashmir.

In case India and the United States thoughtthat the pro-U.S. Zardari administration couldbe employed as an effective tool to remove thepro-Taliban/pro-al Qaeda rot inside Pakistan'sruling elite, they were quickly disabused of thenotion.

The fallout of the Mumbai siege inside Pakistanwas not a wave of sympathy. Instead, there wasa series of manufactured outrages blamed onIndia but apparently generated inside Pakistanthat allowed Pakistan to play the victim card (atleast in its own eyes) while India was stillreeling from the bloody attacks.

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Chief among these "incidents" was theapparently groundless rumor propagated bythe Pakistani media and its sources that HamidGul, the retired head of the ISI who plays theDarth Vader role in the U.S.-Pakistan saga, hadbeen targeted for arrests or sanctions at thebehest of the American and/or Indiangovernments in the aftermath of the attacks.

The story found its way into the WashingtonPost before being denied in its various forms bySecretary Rice and Pakistan Prime MinisterGilani.

To me, the primary motive of the Gul story andother rumors appears to be a shot across thebow of the Zardari administration, which hadmade precipitously conciliatory statements andoffers of cooperation with India at the behest ofthe American government.

Apparently any attempts to treat the Mumbaiattacks as a watershed moment in thePakistani-Indian relationship and Pakistan'srole as an anti-terror democracy that might a)infringe Pakistani sovereignty and b) challengethe policy and prerogatives (and deniability) ofthe ISI would excite powerful popular andinstitutional opposition within Pakistan.

When I read the stories in the Pakistani mediaabout Gul, accounts that morphed Indianrequests into unacceptable "demands", thesupposedly threatening phone call to PresidentZardari from Indian foreign minister PranabMukherjee, etc. etc., I recalled the Gary Larsoncartoon, "How Nature Says, 'Do Not Touch'".

To the warning rattle of a rattlesnake, thedistended display of a pufferfish, the hiss of anangry cat with its fur on end, and a guy on astreet corner dressed in an overcoat, ahorsehead swim tube, a shoe on his head, and abazooka, add the enthusiastic and uncriticalfulminations of the Pakistan media concerningaffronts to national sovereignty, dignity, andsecurity that haven't even occured.

The Zardari government played along with theanti-Indian agitation sweeping the media.

I expect it made its own calculation that itcould not afford (or survive) a confrontationwith its security apparatus on behalf of theIndian government and U.S. policy and, even ifit did think about standing up to the ISI, thelikely outcome would be a protracted andtraumatic process that would, among otherthings, enmesh Pakistan in the web of U.N. andU.S. sanctions and blacklists reserved forterror states.

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For now, at least, the scope of rhetoric andaction has been carefully circumscribed toencompass Lashkar-e-Taiba and a Muslimcharity. India has publicly applauded Pakistan'sactions, while grumbling about PresidentZardari's weakness.

B e f o r e w e c o n d e m n t h e Z a r d a r iadministration's spinelessness and theinexplicable pro-terrorist sympathies ofPakistan's security apparatus, we shouldremember that the U.S. security policy forAfghanistan has been a catastrophe forPakistan, corrupting its government,foreclosing its most viable options for dealingwith Pashtun unrest, exposing its citizens toterrorist attacks, and contributing to thecollapse of its economy.

All this misery has been in the service of asingle-track counter-insurgency strategy thathasn't worked in Afghanistan, and the U.S.government is on the brink of abandoningthere--but insists on escalating inside Pakistan.

Given this context, we should be saddened butnot too surprised that there is a dearth ofsympathy inside Pakistan for the United States'Global War on Terror, or for the victims ofMumbai.

For earlier China Hand contributions to JapanFocus on related issues see:

The Coming Change of Course in Afghanistan(http://japanfocus.org/_China_Hand-The__Coming_Change_of_Course_in_Afghanistan)

US Sanctions Send Iran Into the Arms of Asia(http://japanfocus.org/_China_Hand-US_Sanctions_Send_Iran_Into_the_Arms_of_Asia)

For analysis by two leading Indian andPakistani public intellectuals, see the followingarticles by novelist Arundhati Roy and physicistPervez Hoodbhoy:

Arundhati Roy, 9 is not 11. And November isn'tS e p t e m b e r(http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175013/arundhati_roy_the_monster_in_the_mirror).

Pervez Hoodbhoy, The Mumbai Massacre andPakistan¹s New Nightmares (http://The MumbaiMassacre and Pakistan¹s New Nightmares ).

Recommended citation: China Hand, “MumbaiAftermath: U.S. Tilt Toward India AlienatesPakistan and Undermines War Prospects inAfghanistan” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol.50-6-08, December 12, 2008.