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After Mumbai
This article was first published on the Stratfor website. The author, George Friedman, is chairman and CEO of Stratfor, the world’s leading online publisher of geopolitical intelligence.
Last Wednesday evening, a group of Islamist operatives carried out a complex terror operation in the Indian city of Mumbai.
The attack was not complex because of the weapons used or its size, but
in the apparent training, multiple methods of approaching the city and
excellent operational security and discipline in the final phases of
the operation, when the last remaining attackers held out in the Taj
Mahal hotel for several days. The operational goal of the attack
clearly was to cause as many casualties as possible, particularly among
Jews and well-to-do guests of five-star hotels. But attacks on various
other targets, from railroad stations to hospitals, indicate that the
more general purpose was to spread terror in a major Indian city.
While it is not clear precisely who carried out the Mumbai attack,
two separate units apparently were involved. One group, possibly
consisting of Indian Muslims, was established in Mumbai ahead of the
attacks. The second group appears to have just arrived. It traveled via
ship from Karachi, Pakistan, later hijacked a small Indian vessel to
get past Indian coastal patrols, and ultimately landed near Mumbai.
Extensive preparations apparently had been made, including
surveillance of the targets. So while the precise number of attackers
remains unclear, the attack clearly was well-planned and well-executed.
Evidence and logic suggest that radical Pakistani Islamists carried
out the attack. These groups have a highly complex and deliberately
amorphous structure. Rather than being centrally controlled, ad hoc
teams are created with links to one or more groups. Conceivably, they
might have lacked links to any group, but this is hard to believe. Too
much planning and training were involved in this attack for it to have
been conceived by a bunch of guys in a garage. While precisely which
radical Pakistani Islamist group or groups were involved is unknown, the Mumbai attack appears to have originated in Pakistan. It could have been linked to al Qaeda prime or its various franchises and/or to Kashmiri insurgents.
More important than the question of the exact group that carried out
the attack, however, is the attackers’ strategic end. There is a
tendency to regard terror attacks as ends in themselves, carried out
simply for the sake of spreading terror. In the highly politicized
atmosphere of Pakistan’s radical Islamist factions, however, terror
frequently has a more sophisticated and strategic purpose. Whoever
invested the time and took the risk in organizing this attack had a
reason to do so. Let’s work backward to that reason by examining the
logical outcomes following this attack.
An End to New Delhi’s Restraint
The most striking aspect of the Mumbai attack is the challenge it presents to the Indian government — a challenge almost impossible for New Delhi to ignore. A December 2001 Islamist attack on the Indian parliament
triggered an intense confrontation between India and Pakistan. Since
then, New Delhi has not responded in a dramatic fashion to numerous
Islamist attacks against India that were traceable to Pakistan. The
Mumbai attack, by contrast, aimed to force a response from New Delhi by
being so grievous that any Indian government showing only a muted
reaction to it would fall.
India’s restrained response to Islamist attacks
(even those originating in Pakistan) in recent years has come about
because New Delhi has understood that, for a host of reasons, Islamabad
has been unable to control radical Pakistani Islamist groups. India did
not want war with Pakistan; it felt it had more important issues to
deal with. New Delhi therefore accepted Islamabad’s assurances that
Pakistan would do its best to curb terror attacks, and after suitable
posturing, allowed tensions originating from Islamist attacks to pass.
This time, however, the attackers struck in such a way that New
Delhi couldn’t allow the incident to pass. As one might expect, public
opinion in India is shifting from stunned to furious. India’s Congress
party-led government is politically weak and nearing the end of its
life span. It lacks the political power to ignore the attack, even if
it were inclined to do so. If it ignored the attack, it would fall, and
a more intensely nationalist government would take its place. It is
therefore very difficult to imagine circumstances under which the
Indians could respond to this attack in the same manner they have to
recent Islamist attacks.
What the Indians actually will do is not clear. In
2001-2002, New Delhi responded to the attack on the Indian parliament
by moving forces close to the Pakistani border and the Line of Control
that separates Indian- and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, engaging in
artillery duels along the front, and bringing its nuclear forces to a
high level of alert. The Pakistanis made a similar response. Whether
India ever actually intended to attack Pakistan remains unclear, but
either way, New Delhi created an intense crisis in Pakistan.
The U.S. and the Indo-Pakistani Crisis
The United States used this crisis
for its own ends. Having just completed the first phase of its campaign
in Afghanistan, Washington was intensely pressuring Pakistan’s
then-Musharraf government to expand cooperation with the United States;
purge its intelligence organization, the Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI), of radical Islamists; and crack down on al Qaeda and the Taliban
in the Afghan-Pakistani border region. Former Pakistani President
Pervez Musharraf had been reluctant to cooperate with Washington, as
doing so inevitably would spark a massive domestic backlash against his
government.
The crisis with India produced an opening for the United States.
Eager to get India to stand down from the crisis, the Pakistanis looked
to the Americans to mediate. And the price for U.S. mediation was
increased cooperation from Pakistan with the United States. The
Indians, not eager for war, backed down from the crisis after
guarantees that Islamabad would impose stronger controls on Islamist
groups in Kashmir.
In 2001-2002, the Indo-Pakistani crisis played into American hands.
In 2008, the new Indo-Pakistani crisis might play differently. The United States recently has demanded increased Pakistani cooperation
along the Afghan border. Meanwhile, President-elect Barack Obama has
stated his intention to focus on Afghanistan and pressure the
Pakistanis.
Therefore, one of Islamabad’s first responses to the new Indo-Pakistani crisis was to announce that if the Indians increased their forces along Pakistan’s eastern border,
Pakistan would be forced to withdraw 100,000 troops from its western
border with Afghanistan. In other words, threats from India would cause
Pakistan to dramatically reduce its cooperation with the United States
in the Afghan war. The Indian foreign minister is flying to the United
States to meet with Obama; obviously, this matter will be discussed
among others.
We expect the United States to pressure India not to create a
crisis, in order to avoid this outcome. As we have said, the problem is
that it is unclear whether politically the Indians can afford restraint.
At the very least, New Delhi must demand that the Pakistani government
take steps to make the ISI and Pakistan’s other internal security
apparatus more effective. Even if the Indians concede that there was no
ISI involvement in the attack, they will argue that the ISI is
incapable of stopping such attacks. They will demand a purge and reform
of the ISI as a sign of Pakistani commitment. Barring that, New Delhi
will move troops to the Indo-Pakistani frontier to intimidate Pakistan
and placate Indian public opinion.
Dilemmas for Islamabad, New Delhi and Washington
At that point, Islamabad will have a serious problem.
The Pakistani government is even weaker than the Indian government.
Pakistan’s civilian regime does not control the Pakistani military, and
therefore does not control the ISI. The civilians can’t decide to transform Pakistani security,
and the military is not inclined to make this transformation.
(Pakistan’s military has had ample opportunity to do so if it wished.)
Pakistan faces the challenge, just one among many, that its civilian
and even military leadership lack the ability to reach deep into the
ISI and security services to transform them. In some ways, these
agencies operate under their own rules. Add to this the reality that
the ISI and security forces — even if they are acting more assertively,
as Islamabad claims — are demonstrably incapable of controlling radical
Islamists in Pakistan. If they were capable, the attack on Mumbai would
have been thwarted in Pakistan. The simple reality is that in
Pakistan’s case, the will to make this transformation does not seem to
be present, and even if it were, the ability to suppress terror attacks
isn’t there.
The United States might well want to limit New Delhi’s response.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is on her way to India to
discuss just this. But the politics of India’s situation make it
unlikely that the Indians can do anything more than listen. It is more
than simply a political issue for New Delhi; the Indians have no reason
to believe that the Mumbai operation was one of a kind. Further
operations like the Mumbai attack might well be planned. Unless the
Pakistanis shift their posture inside Pakistan, India has no way of
knowing whether other such attacks can be stymied. The Indians will be
sympathetic to Washington’s plight in Afghanistan and the need to keep
Pakistani troops at the Afghan border. But New Delhi will need
something that the Americans — and in fact the Pakistanis — can’t
deliver: a guarantee that there will be no more attacks like this one.
The Indian government cannot chance inaction. It probably would fall
if it did. Moreover, in the event of inactivity and another attack,
Indian public opinion probably will swing to an uncontrollable extreme.
If an attack takes place but India has moved toward crisis posture with
Pakistan, at least no one can argue that the Indian government remained
passive in the face of threats to national security. Therefore, India
is likely to refuse American requests for restraint.
It is possible that New Delhi will make a radical proposal to Rice,
however. Given that the Pakistani government is incapable of exercising
control in its own country, and given that Pakistan now represents a
threat to both U.S. and Indian national security, the Indians might
suggest a joint operation with the Americans against Pakistan.
What that joint operation might entail is uncertain, but regardless,
this is something that Rice would reject out of hand and that Obama
would reject in January 2009. Pakistan has a huge population and
nuclear weapons, and the last thing Bush or Obama wants is to practice
nation-building in Pakistan. The Indians, of course, will anticipate
this response. The truth is that New Delhi itself does not want to
engage deep in Pakistan to strike at militant training camps and other
Islamist sites. That would be a nightmare. But if Rice shows up with a
request for Indian restraint and no concrete proposal — or willingness
to entertain a proposal — for solving the Pakistani problem, India will
be able to refuse on the grounds that the Americans are asking India to
absorb a risk (more Mumbai-style attacks) without the United States’
willingness to share in the risk.
Setting the Stage for a New Indo-Pakistani Confrontation
That will set the stage for another Indo-Pakistani confrontation.
India will push forces forward all along the Indo-Pakistani frontier,
move its nuclear forces to an alert level, begin shelling Pakistan, and
perhaps — given the seriousness of the situation — attack short
distances into Pakistan and even carry out airstrikes deep in Pakistan.
India will demand greater transparency for New Delhi in Pakistani
intelligence operations. The Indians will not want to occupy Pakistan;
they will want to occupy Pakistan’s security apparatus.
Naturally, the Pakistanis will refuse that. There is no way they can
give India, their main adversary, insight into Pakistani intelligence
operations. But without that access, India has no reason to trust
Pakistan. This will leave the Indians in an odd position: They will be
in a near-war posture, but will have made no demands of Pakistan that
Islamabad can reasonably deliver and that would benefit India. In one
sense, India will be gesturing. In another sense, India will be trapped
by making a gesture on which Pakistan cannot deliver. The situation
thus could get out of hand.
In the meantime, the Pakistanis certainly will withdraw forces from
western Pakistan and deploy them in eastern Pakistan. That will mean
that one leg of the Petraeus and Obama plans would collapse.
Washington’s expectation of greater Pakistani cooperation along the
Afghan border will disappear along with the troops. This will free the
Taliban from whatever limits the Pakistani army had placed on it. The
Taliban’s ability to fight would increase, while the motivation for any of the Taliban to enter talks
— as Afghan President Hamid Karzai has suggested — would decline. U.S.
forces, already stretched to the limit, would face an increasingly
difficult situation, while pressure on al Qaeda in the tribal areas
would decrease.
Now, step back and consider the situation the Mumbai attackers have
created. First, the Indian government faces an internal political
crisis driving it toward a confrontation it didn’t plan on. Second, the
minimum Pakistani response to a renewed Indo-Pakistani crisis will be
withdrawing forces from western Pakistan, thereby strengthening the
Taliban and securing al Qaeda. Third, sufficient pressure on Pakistan’s
civilian government could cause it to collapse, opening the door to a
military-Islamist government — or it could see Pakistan collapse into
chaos, giving Islamists security in various regions and an opportunity
to reshape Pakistan. Finally, the United States’ situation in
Afghanistan has now become enormously more complex.
By staging an attack the Indian government can’t ignore, the Mumbai
attackers have set in motion an existential crisis for Pakistan. The
reality of Pakistan cannot be transformed, trapped as the country is
between the United States and India. Almost every evolution from this
point forward benefits Islamists. Strategically, the attack on Mumbai
was a precise blow struck to achieve uncertain but favorable political
outcomes for the Islamists.
Rice’s trip to India now becomes the crucial next step. She wants
Indian restraint. She does not want the western Pakistani border to
collapse. But she cannot guarantee what India must have: assurance of
no further terror attacks on India originating in Pakistan. Without
that, India must do something. No Indian government could survive
without some kind of action. So it is up to Rice, in one of her last
acts as secretary of state, to come up with a miraculous solution to
head off a final, catastrophic crisis for the Bush administration — and
a defining first crisis for the new Obama administration. Former U.S.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once said that the enemy gets a vote.
The Islamists cast their ballot in Mumbai.
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