The nuclear-armed rivals have been trying to mend their relationship, but now India suspects Pakistani militants were involved in the rampage.
By Mubashir Zaidi and Laura King
November 29, 2008
read original article at LA Times>>
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Islamabad, Pakistan -- With India casting suspicion on Pakistani militant groups in the Mumbai attacks, analysts and diplomats warned Friday that slowly warming relations between the nuclear-armed rivals could suffer a reversal, with potentially serious repercussions for the entire region.
Pakistani authorities have vehemently denied any involvement in the three-day rampage by groups of gunmen in India's commercial capital, which left at least 150 people dead. But in contrast to bellicose rhetoric in previous times of crisis with its neighbor, Pakistan coupled its denials with conciliatory gestures, including the highly unusual step of agreeing to send a representative of its main spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, to help investigate the attacks.
Pakistan, nudged along by the United States, recently sought rapprochement with India. President Asif Ali Zardari rattled his country's military establishment by asserting that India did not represent a threat to Pakistan, and by offering to repudiate first use of nuclear weapons.
This month, Zardari -- a political neophyte who inherited his leadership role from his assassinated wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto -- astounded his compatriots with a flowery declaration that in every Pakistani's heart there was a bit of India, and in every Indian heart a bit of Pakistan. That came close to heresy in a country where schoolchildren are taught that India is Pakistan's most enduring foe, and where many believe that India represents a greater threat to national security than do militant groups like the Taliban.
The moves to mend their relationship included preliminary talks on the disputed territory of Kashmir.
But relations suffered a setback in July when the Indian Embassy in the Afghan capital of Kabul was bombed, an attack that killed about 60 people. Afghanistan accused the ISI of having aided militants who carried out the bombing, a claim supported by U.S. intelligence.
And many observers contend that if there is even a hint of Pakistani involvement in the bloodshed in Mumbai, relations probably will turn chilly and mistrustful.
"It would certainly complicate everything, put things on hold, make any negotiations harder," said Terry Pattar, a counter-terrorism associate in the Strategic Advisory Services at Jane's Information Group.
Analysts said reverberations from the Mumbai attacks probably would be felt in Afghanistan, long a staging ground for India-Pakistan rivalries. Renewed enmity would jeopardize U.S. hopes that Pakistan can be persuaded to marshal its energies to fight Islamic insurgents in the tribal lands bordering Afghanistan, rather than devote massive military resources to guarding against attack by India.
"Disruption of India-Pakistan ties at this juncture entails serious fallout in Afghanistan," said a commentary Friday in Dawn, a leading English-language newspaper in Pakistan.
"Everyone's kind of holding their breath on this, because it will definitely play out here as well," said a Western diplomat in Kabul, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss implications of the attacks.
Barack Obama's incoming administration has signaled ambitions for a speedy resolution of the Kashmir question. With such an accord in place, tens of thousands of Pakistani troops patrolling the Indian frontier could be deployed to operations against Islamic militants in the tribal areas.
Such a campaign is already taking place in the Bajaur tribal region, where Pakistani government forces say they have killed hundreds of militants in an offensive that began in August. North Atlantic Treaty Organization commanders in Afghanistan say that from their side of the border, they are seeing the positive effects of the Pakistani campaign. But Pakistani military officials are already complaining about the burdens of an unpopular offensive, hinting that it cannot continue indefinitely.
For Pakistan's fledgling civilian government, however, the more immediate concern may be its own uneasy dealings with the ISI, over which it has been trying to assert greater control. Until 2001, the spy agency was the chief patron of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a now-banned militant group created in the 1980s to foment unrest in Kashmir. Some analysts have said the carefully choreographed Mumbai attacks bore some of the group's hallmarks, though no conclusive evidence has emerged.
"It's very likely this group has an involvement at some level, but it's difficult to characterize because of the murky nature of how they operate," said Kamran Bokhari, an analyst at Stratfor, a private intelligence company.
While pressure over the Mumbai attacks has the Pakistani government on edge, the public has been nearly as riveted as if the violence had taken place on home soil. Pakistanis clustered around TV sets as news networks, in cooperation with Indian channels, carried nonstop coverage of the unfolding drama. Newspaper editorials uniformly expressed shock and sympathy.
In another break from the past, the Mumbai attacks generated a near-constant stream of high-level communication between the two countries. On Friday, Zardari reminded Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of his own wife's assassination by suspected Islamic militants, appealing to the Indian leader not to let insurgents set the regional agenda.
"We should not fall into the militants' trap," he said.
November 29, 2008
read original article at LA Times>>
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Islamabad, Pakistan -- With India casting suspicion on Pakistani militant groups in the Mumbai attacks, analysts and diplomats warned Friday that slowly warming relations between the nuclear-armed rivals could suffer a reversal, with potentially serious repercussions for the entire region.
Pakistani authorities have vehemently denied any involvement in the three-day rampage by groups of gunmen in India's commercial capital, which left at least 150 people dead. But in contrast to bellicose rhetoric in previous times of crisis with its neighbor, Pakistan coupled its denials with conciliatory gestures, including the highly unusual step of agreeing to send a representative of its main spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, to help investigate the attacks.
That move was particularly symbolic because Pakistan's intelligence apparatus itself had been accused of helping Pakistan-based militant groups carry out previous attacks on Indian soil -- most notoriously in the 2001 assault on India's Parliament, which New Delhi blamed on the militant group Jaish-e-Muhammad.
In the first hours of the Mumbai crisis, India used veiled though widely understood language to suggest Pakistani involvement. As investigators began interrogating captured assailants, reportedly finding Pakistani nationals among them, the accusations turned sharper.
"Preliminary evidence . . . indicates elements with links to Pakistan are involved," India's foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, said Friday in New Delhi.
Pakistan responded with fresh protestations of innocence. "Pakistan has nothing to do with this incident, no link with this act," Prime Minister Yusaf Raza Gillani said. "We condemn it."In the first hours of the Mumbai crisis, India used veiled though widely understood language to suggest Pakistani involvement. As investigators began interrogating captured assailants, reportedly finding Pakistani nationals among them, the accusations turned sharper.
"Preliminary evidence . . . indicates elements with links to Pakistan are involved," India's foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, said Friday in New Delhi.
Pakistan, nudged along by the United States, recently sought rapprochement with India. President Asif Ali Zardari rattled his country's military establishment by asserting that India did not represent a threat to Pakistan, and by offering to repudiate first use of nuclear weapons.
This month, Zardari -- a political neophyte who inherited his leadership role from his assassinated wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto -- astounded his compatriots with a flowery declaration that in every Pakistani's heart there was a bit of India, and in every Indian heart a bit of Pakistan. That came close to heresy in a country where schoolchildren are taught that India is Pakistan's most enduring foe, and where many believe that India represents a greater threat to national security than do militant groups like the Taliban.
The moves to mend their relationship included preliminary talks on the disputed territory of Kashmir.
But relations suffered a setback in July when the Indian Embassy in the Afghan capital of Kabul was bombed, an attack that killed about 60 people. Afghanistan accused the ISI of having aided militants who carried out the bombing, a claim supported by U.S. intelligence.
And many observers contend that if there is even a hint of Pakistani involvement in the bloodshed in Mumbai, relations probably will turn chilly and mistrustful.
"It would certainly complicate everything, put things on hold, make any negotiations harder," said Terry Pattar, a counter-terrorism associate in the Strategic Advisory Services at Jane's Information Group.
Analysts said reverberations from the Mumbai attacks probably would be felt in Afghanistan, long a staging ground for India-Pakistan rivalries. Renewed enmity would jeopardize U.S. hopes that Pakistan can be persuaded to marshal its energies to fight Islamic insurgents in the tribal lands bordering Afghanistan, rather than devote massive military resources to guarding against attack by India.
"Disruption of India-Pakistan ties at this juncture entails serious fallout in Afghanistan," said a commentary Friday in Dawn, a leading English-language newspaper in Pakistan.
"Everyone's kind of holding their breath on this, because it will definitely play out here as well," said a Western diplomat in Kabul, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss implications of the attacks.
Barack Obama's incoming administration has signaled ambitions for a speedy resolution of the Kashmir question. With such an accord in place, tens of thousands of Pakistani troops patrolling the Indian frontier could be deployed to operations against Islamic militants in the tribal areas.
Such a campaign is already taking place in the Bajaur tribal region, where Pakistani government forces say they have killed hundreds of militants in an offensive that began in August. North Atlantic Treaty Organization commanders in Afghanistan say that from their side of the border, they are seeing the positive effects of the Pakistani campaign. But Pakistani military officials are already complaining about the burdens of an unpopular offensive, hinting that it cannot continue indefinitely.
For Pakistan's fledgling civilian government, however, the more immediate concern may be its own uneasy dealings with the ISI, over which it has been trying to assert greater control. Until 2001, the spy agency was the chief patron of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a now-banned militant group created in the 1980s to foment unrest in Kashmir. Some analysts have said the carefully choreographed Mumbai attacks bore some of the group's hallmarks, though no conclusive evidence has emerged.
"It's very likely this group has an involvement at some level, but it's difficult to characterize because of the murky nature of how they operate," said Kamran Bokhari, an analyst at Stratfor, a private intelligence company.
While pressure over the Mumbai attacks has the Pakistani government on edge, the public has been nearly as riveted as if the violence had taken place on home soil. Pakistanis clustered around TV sets as news networks, in cooperation with Indian channels, carried nonstop coverage of the unfolding drama. Newspaper editorials uniformly expressed shock and sympathy.
In another break from the past, the Mumbai attacks generated a near-constant stream of high-level communication between the two countries. On Friday, Zardari reminded Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of his own wife's assassination by suspected Islamic militants, appealing to the Indian leader not to let insurgents set the regional agenda.
"We should not fall into the militants' trap," he said.
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