SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 1, No. 39, April 14, 2003

ASSESSMENT

INDIA	PAKISTAN

Iraq Aftermath: Wishful Thinking
Ajai Sahni
Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management

As the US led campaign in Iraq enters the mopping up and consolidation stage, it is becoming clear even to the more obtuse in India and Pakistan that things have changed; that, even when the Coalition entered Iraq, ignoring the cacophonic and quarrelsome 'international community' and the United Nations, the strategic architecture of Asia, indeed, of the world, had been transformed.

This is now being clearly realized even by the leaders of Islamist terrorist groups, who recognize the possibility of a shift of American attention from Iraq to other areas of potential terrorist threat to the national interests of the world's 'hyperpower'. Nevertheless, it is apparent that groups based in Pakistan believe that they will still be able to conceal themselves in the interstices of 'plausible deniability' and the complexity of the South Asia situation. As Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the head of the banned Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT, now rechristened Jamaat-ud-Dawaa to get around the letter of the law), declared in an interview to The Friday Times, "Pakistan will not be next. Saudi Arabia and then Iran, possibly Syria will come first. Pakistan is a nuclear power, is very close to China, and is a nation of jehadis. This should avert disaster for some time."

This, according to Saeed, is time enough for a consolidation of the jehad: "We must fight against the evil trio of America, Israel and India," he says, "the need for jehad against India is paramount," adding further that "a suicide attack is the best form of jehad."

Saeed is not alone in his convictions. Indeed, Indian intelligence sources are abuzz with information on an estimated 4,500 jehadi assembled at launching pads in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK), ready to infiltrate into the Indian State of Jammu & Kashmir as the snows melt on the high altitude passes along the Line of Control (LoC).

At the same time, a strident competition for American attention has commenced between Islamabad and Delhi, with the latter projecting a muddled case for 'pre-emptive strikes' against Pakistan. The Indian case argues that pre-emption against Pakistan was an even more urgent imperative than action against Iraq, since Pakistan is in unarguable possession of weapons of mass destruction; has been guilty of proliferation of missile and nuclear technologies (with supplies to and from North Korea); and is a supporter and sponsor of terrorism - if not, indeed, itself a terrorist state.[India has maintained a degree of ambiguity on whether it is the US, or its own Forces, that are to execute the pre-emptive strikes. If it is the latter, this can be little more than adventurist bluster - after fifty years of pursuing a policy of military parity on its western borders, India does not have the overwhelming superiority that an effective and definitive pre-emptive strike would require.] Pakistan has responded with a call for pre-emptive strikes against India for the latter's supposed 'failure' to implement the UN Resolution on Kashmir.

Pakistan has, however, kept all its apparent options open. The Pakistani state's manifest intent to continue with the campaign of terrorism, and its missile and nuclear proliferation programmes has been repeatedly emphasised in recent pronouncements. There is, of course, a degree of divergence between the tactical perspectives of the Islamist fundamentalist and terrorist groups, on the one hand, and those of President Musharraf, on the other. While the former seek action against the 'enemies of Islam' now, Musharraf has repeatedly insisted that it is necessary for Pakistan and the Muslim Ummah to make strategic accommodations, till they have acquired sufficient power to confront and defeat the 'enemy'. There is little evidence, however, of any radical divergence in the identity of the 'enemy', or, indeed, of their eventual strategic goals. Repeating much of his September 19, 2001, speech - notorious for the parallel he drew between the tactical arrangement the Prophet Muhammad entered into "with the Jewish tribes" under the Charter of Madina (Meesaq-e-Madina), and the short term imperatives of a Pakistani accommodation of US interests - General Musharraf, in a speech at a 'Grand Assembly of the Tribal Jirga' at Peshawar on April 10, 2003, once again reiterated the need to build up Pakistan's and the Muslim Ummah's military and economic power before "showing eyes to the world" (an Urdu expression indicating the display of aggressive or hostile intent).

Both extremes of the Indian and the Pakistani position represent a high measure of wishful thinking and a failure, not only of intelligence, but even of the ability to read some of the obvious lessons of the war in Iraq. Underlying both positions is an implicit acceptance that South Asia is now far more vulnerable to manipulation by the US on the Kashmir issue. Pakistan is explicitly pushing for an enhanced US role, while India seeks to initiate another round of coercive diplomacy to which it believes it owes some past successes. And while the leadership in Pakistan believes that it can continue indefinitely to play on its 'frontline' status in the war against terrorism, even as it exploits all available ambiguities, the Indian leadership is yet to display the requisite measure of maturity and confidence in their country's democratic system and credentials. In sum, both nations remained substantially trapped in the power equations and ideologies of the Cold War, and of their own fractious history.

More significant, however, is the failure to recognize the impact of the unprecedented events in Iraq. Not only has the Coalition campaign in Iraq completely revised the character and rules of warfare in perpetuity, it has put every authoritarian regime in the world on notice. The collapse of the regime in Iraq reflected, equally, the collapse of a way of thinking. Witnessing the fallen statues and torn portraits of Saddam Hussein - beaten with shoes, spat upon, hammered, torched and shredded - every tyrant and dictator in Asia will have seen his own image and experienced a wrenching spasm of dread. In the vanishing myth of the prowess of the Iraqi Republican Guards, the fidayeen, and the rumoured armies of Arab mujahiddeen who were to rise and exact vengeance on the invading 'infidel', the hollowness and predestined failure of the Islamist terrorist enterprise has been exposed: terrorists can kill; their supporters and sponsors can inflict great suffering on the innocent; but - confronted finally, with clear determination - they cannot win. The authoritarian regimes of the Islamic world have long been threatened by Islamist extremism within segments of their own citizenry - and they have sought to channelise this incendiary potential away from themselves, and into terrorist movements across the world. They will now confront another and rising threat from those whom they oppress; those who reject their tyranny, their denial of individual freedom, and the enslavement of entire societies through institutionalised terror; those, in other words, who now demand liberty and democracy. The odious tyrannies that have emasculated the world of Islam and sapped its greatest civilisations of their creativity, their dynamism, and their abilities to deal with the universe of continuous transformations and diversity that we live in, are now all under imminent threat - and Pakistan is no exception. Dictatorships - or, less offensively expressed, authoritarian forms of government - have long been peddled as the institutional arrangement more uniquely suited to the character of the populations in the 'Muslim world'. But Iraq - and before it, Afghanistan - had already given us irrefutable evidence and stirring images that freedom is desired by all mankind. The eventual outcome of the war in Iraq will, however, be determined by the success of post-war arrangements, more specifically, of the establishment and efficacy of a successor system based on democracy.

Returning to the subcontinent, it is essential for the political leadership of this region to understand that Indian democracy - with all its imperfections and failures - is on the right side of history; and Pakistan, with its fundamentals based on an ideology of hatred and religious exclusion, is not. And to understand that it is myopic, and will eventually prove entirely counterproductive, to constantly seek international - and particularly US - intervention for the resolution of a problem that can and must be solved within the region, and within the enveloping context of the movement of history.

ASSESSMENT

INDIA

West Bengal: Fratricidal Confrontation
Guest Writer: Pinaki Bhattacharya
Special Correspondent, Kolkata, Mathrubhumi

Internecine feuds have broken out within the ranks of the Kamtapur Peoples' Party (KPP), potentially threatening its existence, and indeed its status as a spearhead for the demand for a separate state carved out of the northern reaches of West Bengal and parts of Western Assam. In a dramatic move on March 9, 2003, the party unseated its sitting president, Atul Roy, and elected Nikhil Roy as a replacement. Nikhil Roy had been hiding from the authorities for a long time and was 'appointed' president while he was 'underground'. He eventually surrendered to the West Bengal police on March 17. KPP insiders say that the undeclared battle for supremacy between the two camps has confused and divided the rank and file.

KPP demands that a separate state be created out of the Rajbongshi community dominated areas of Coochbehar, Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling, north and south Dinajpur and Malda districts of West Bengal, and four contiguous districts of Assam - Kokrajhar, Bongaigaon, Dhubri and Goalpara. Rajbongshis belong to the scheduled caste category and are socially and economically backward, even though they were the original settlers in large parts of north Bengal.

The differences between the two leaders, Atul Roy and Nikhil Roy, have been brewing for a long time, with roots traced back to 2001, when Nikhil Roy had made certain independent moves including the formation of a Coordination Committee of Kamtapuri organisations, and the call for a 72-hour bandh in March that year without the knowledge of the then president of the KPP, Atul Roy.

In turn, resentment against Atul Roy had also been brewing, ostensibly because of his "unilateral" acts, such as the dissolution of the Coochbehar and Jalpaiguri district committees of the party in 2001, and the planning of a joint sit-in with the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) in Kolkata the same year. Atul Roy's greatest failure was possibly his unsuccessful attempt to get the Election Commission's recognition for the party on the eve of the State legislature polls in West Bengal in 2001. The party also failed to garner substantial mass support even in areas of its influence, though it had contested the polls, flaunting an informal adjustment with Trinamool Congress.

This time around, on the eve of the forthcoming Panchayat (village and local council) polls in West Bengal, the KPP has declared that it is willing to tie-up with any national party opposed to the ruling Left Front in the State. This willingness to join any available bandwagon has sown ideological confusion within the KPP. Added to that is the 'surrender' drama that Nikhil Roy staged, and that attracted criticism from sympathisers of the party who suspect that Roy took the decision in response to West Bengal Chief Minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya's call to all Rajbongshi activists to come 'overground' and join the mainstream.

On the other hand, the new KPP president has reportedly claimed that he surrendered to the West Bengal police after extensive consultations with the 'central committee' members of the party. The aim of the action, he apparently claimed, was to galvanise the party organisation in the run up to local bodies election.

But KPP watchers in the State feel that this leadership row will only help the Communist Party of India - Marxist (CPI-M) led Left Front to consolidate its hold in these fractious parts of north Bengal. Some State government functionaries are even applauding themselves over the successes their 'strategy' has notched up. They feel that the two-pronged campaign launched by the West Bengal Chief Minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya - of addressing the long held feeling of alienation amongst the Rajbongshis through political and administrative measures at one level; and isolating and eliminating the armed militant threat of the more hardened Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO) cadres at another - has produced dividends.

The security agencies in the State, however, fear that the KLO may yet try to mount operations on the eve of the Panchayat polls, essentially to take advantage of the leadership crisis in the KPP ranks, and thus re-establish the KLO's domination. Security agencies are, however, satisfied with the fact that most of the top leaders of the banned KLO have been put behind bars, with the exception of Jibon Roy, who is still at large.

An interesting facet of this internal conflict in the KPP is the sub-regional influences that have come into play. The people of Jalpaiguri - educationists, intellectuals, politicians and government servants - have traditionally provided the ideological leadership of the Kamtapur movement, even though Coochbehar had the highest number of Rajbongshis in the State. But with the rise of Atul Roy and his followers within the KPP, this locus of intra-party influence had subtly shifted to those hailing from the Shiliguri sub division of Darjeeling district. This was also the time when the so-called 'middle-classisation' of the movement took place.

The clock has now been turned back, so to speak. Nikhil Roy's main support base stems from the Coochbehar and Jalpaiguri districts, while Atul Roy dominant status in Shiliguri has been challenged by such prominent KPP members of the area like Panchanan Singha and Lalit Barman. The two not only attended the 'central committee' meeting of March 9, convened at the Nikhil Roy's urging, which witnessed Atul Roy's downfall, but were also included in the newly constituted 'central committee' as members.

Reports also indicate that the KLO also appears to be in its last throes, with its mentor, the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) rife with centrifugal pressures and other exogenous influences, including the loss of a secure habitat. At the moment, approximately 50 members of the KLO are active and remain in refuge in the jungles of Bhutan. But with the Bhutanese monarchy under severe pressure from New Delhi to evict these elements, time may fast be running for the remaining rump of the KLO and their fellow travelers. What remains to be seen is whether the mainstream political elements can fill the vacuum left by the retreat of extremist forces. An opportunity missed at this juncture may prove expensive in the future.