SOUTH ASIA INTELLIGENCE REVIEW
Weekly Assessments & Briefings
Volume 2, No. 31, February 16, 2004

 

PAKISTAN

Is there a 'Plan B'?
K.P.S. Gill
Publisher, SAIR; President, Institute for Conflict Management

The present situation in Pakistan presents an urgent challenge, not only for nations within the South Asian region, but for the entire international community and the leaders of the global war against terrorism. These challenges have been underlined by a continuous succession of disturbing disclosures since 9/11, and by the near complete uncertainty of prospects for the future. Over the past months, the question has been frequently asked by a number of senior government officials and responsible diplomats from several countries: what is to be done with Pakistan? A fundamental transformation is inevitable over the coming years, but is it being facilitated by the near exclusive reliance on the questionable commitment and survival of the country's current dictator, General Pervez Musharraf?

It is useful to ask, under the circumstances, is there a 'Plan B' for Pakistan? There appears to be little evidence of any structured alternative even being considered by the 'international community', or any of its constituent nations. The world, it appears, has fallen victim to the seduction of the TINA ('There is no alternative') factor.

But the TINA argument has always been the plea of bankrupt minds. Over the past years, the world could have created an alternative, if its leaders had the capacity and the will to imagine one.

Such an enterprise at constructing, if not a programme for regime change in Pakistan, at least one for an alternative successor regime (not just a modus vivendi with whichever General grabs the presidency after Musharraf), is critical for a number of reasons. For one, the country's own leadership has proven chronically incompetent, and Pakistan is, to all effects, now being run from the outside: most of its critical decisions in the recent past have been coerced by external pressure. More significantly, the internal dynamics that obtain in Pakistan today will not survive the end of the present year, after which the tensions that already exist within the system will become unbearable. Musharraf, if he sticks to his word, will no longer be the Army Chief after the year-end. Though the new chief would be 'his man', it is not clear how long such loyalties would abide - which is why Musharraf has been extremely reluctant to relinquish the post. In any event, a duality between the President and the Army Chief would lead to further and necessary erosion in Musharraf's authority and would significantly increase political uncertainty in the country (it is useful to recall that General Zia-ul-Haq held on to the post of military chief throughout his Presidency for precisely these reasons).

Such uncertainty is already rising, and Musharraf has been immensely weakened over the past months. A dictator's authority is inevitably undermined by determined attempts at assassination, and the two on Musharraf's life last December have deeply damaged him, underlining his vulnerability in the eyes of the Pakistani people, and of his enemies. Ambivalent supporters now find it easier to distance themselves from the President, and political opportunists will be tempted to bring out the long knives. There is a concomitant loss of authority among the masses as well, and this can only worsen over time, as he becomes more isolated within a hardening security bubble, more dependent on selective inputs from a narrow coterie. The loss of authority and growing isolation is already visible in Musharraf's decision to move his residence and military headquarters from Rawalpindi to Islamabad, signalling the raw fact that the President is no longer safe among his own people. The fullest consequences and magnitude of this shift are yet to be adequately noticed. With the Al Qaeda and its affiliates targeting him, moreover, there is also the simple and brutal question of his very survival from day to day. The cumulative destabilizing impact of these factors, moreover, is multiplied manifold by the prospects of a new Administration and changing perspectives in Washington after the November 2004 US Presidential elections.

At this juncture, then, even if he survives, what does Musharraf actually control? By his own admission, he no longer controls the jehadis that he and his Army had long nurtured - and it is now clear even to his most cynical detractors that at least some of these are eager to kill him. By his own admission, again, he does not 'control' the country's nuclear programme and its nuclear scientists - since they apparently proliferate nuclear technologies without his knowledge. It is increasingly clear that he does not entirely control the fundamentalist parties - including the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), whose political ascendancy he engineered in the rigged elections of October 2002, and who subsequently forced a humiliating compromise on him, including the commitment to step down as Army Chief by the end of the current year. The character and location of December's assassination attempts demonstrate, moreover, that his control over parts of the Army itself is not altogether complete.

Yet this insecure dictator remains the world's most critical, indeed, 'indispensable', instrumentality in the war against terror, and for the stabilisation of the wider region around South Asia!

Significantly, within Pakistan, Musharraf's progressive weakening has not been accompanied by the gradual emergence or strengthening of other institutional alternatives. Indeed, all political authority in the country has suffered continuous erosion under his predatory regime. There is, of course, deep and growing resentment within the democratic parties and civil society, including the civilian bureaucracy, against the military dictatorship, but this has not crystallized into a working political opposition or a potential political alternative, because Musharraf retains sufficient control of the state's instrumentalities of repression to suppress any manifestations of democratic political dissent. The result is that, though his own grip weakens, no other national institution has been allowed to grow under his emasculating shadow.

Historically, as dictators become weaker, their reliance on external support becomes the more urgent, and such support has ordinarily been forthcoming for some of the most odious regimes in the past. Historically, again, such external support has seldom succeeded in restoring the crumbling authority of such regimes, and has often contributed directly in their erosion, and to a rising anarchy. Indeed, in Pakistan, there is some evidence that the problems are currently being compounded by their 'solutions'. Increasing international aid makes the Musharraf regime even more unpopular in a country where Islamism and hatred of America and the West have been a necessary cultural and educational ingredient for decades.

What, then, can be done with Pakistan? Militarist adventures for 'regime change', as Iraq has amply demonstrated, are not particularly efficient mechanisms to secure necessary and desirable transformations. Indeed, as Iraq again demonstrated, international regimes of sanctions and inspections could be far more efficient in curbing the more dangerous of an unhinged dictator's projects. Consequently, where there are possibilities of reforms through existing international and domestic institutions, pursuing these would be a far more desirable course of action. Pakistan does have an incipient - though sullied - democratic tradition, and in strengthening it, a long-term alternative could have been created to the present and corrosive dictatorship. There is a natural element of transparency and predictability in even the most flawed of democracies, which is totally lacking in the present order in Pakistan. Today, under the Musharraf dictatorship, no one knows what devastating secret is going to come to light next. Within a free, multi-party democratic order, at least the worst excesses of the present authoritarian system would be held in check.

Instead, there has been a tendency to uncritical indulgence of the rogue regime in Pakistan, encouraging it in its recklessness by continuous concessions. Thus, instead of being brought under a regime of harsh sanctions for illegal nuclear proliferation, Musharraf finds it possible to refuse, in no uncertain terms, to allow international agencies to investigate the proliferation network in his country. He also refuses to take any action against the principal proliferators on the plea that the offences lie in the past (but all punishable offences lie in the past), and the network has now been 'shut down' (as have, according to his claims, been the terrorist camps in Pakistan, apparently for two and a half years now). Any international investigations into the proliferation network, he argues further, would offend against Pakistan's 'sovereign' status. But it is not Pakistan and its sovereignty that are affected by these acts of proliferation. It is the world's security.

The degree to which Pakistan threatens global security remains deeply underestimated because of a peculiar characteristic of its transgressions. Despite the great evil it has wrought, there is no single, iconic figure that dominates its offences against the norms of civilization - no 'lunatic' Saddam Hussein, Muammar Qaddafi or Kim Jong Il. It is the entire state apparatus that has internalised terrorism as an instrumentality of state policy, and successive regimes and leaders have pursued the same policies, irrespective of their proclaimed political proclivities. This makes it harder, both to comprehend and to control what Bernard-Henri Levy has described as "the biggest rogue of all rogue states of today… what is taking form there, between Islamabad and Karachi, is a black hole compared to which Saddam Hussein's Baghdad was an obsolete weapons dump."

There have been ample warnings, and these have gone unheeded to disastrous effect in the past. It is the tragedy of all nations and their leaderships that they fail to learn until the bodybags come to their own doorsteps; and even then, they learn very slowly. That is why evil triumphs; not because it is stronger, but because we choose to look the other way.

 

INDIA	NEPAL

Emerging Co-operation Against Maoist Subversion
P.G Rajamohan
Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management

Two front ranking leaders of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) [CPN (M)], Matrika Prasad Yadav and Suresh Bahadur Ale Magar, were arrested in the Indian city of Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh and subsequently handed over to Nepalese immigration authorities of the far-western region on February 8, 2004. Earlier, on November 20, 2003, a reported meeting between the General Secretary of Communist Party of Nepal (UML), Madhav Kumar Nepal and top Maoist leaders, including the chief Comrade Prachanda and political wing leader Baburam Bhattarai, in Lucknow had generated much controversy and confusion, both in India and Nepal. It is after this Maoist rendezvous that Indian security forces were instructed to be more vigilant on the insurgents' incursions in border areas, especially along the States of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, and in the Siliguri and Darjeeling areas of West Bengal. At the fifth meeting of the India-Nepal Joint Working Group (JWG) on Border Management held in Kathmandu on January 30-31, 2004, both the countries decided to share intelligence on the movement of Maoist subversives along the border.

Matrika Prasad Yadav, one of the leading ideologues and politburo member of CPN (M), was also a key member of the Maoist team involved in the peace talks with the Nepalese Government through February - August 2003. He was recently appointed the chief of the 'Madheshi Autonomous People's Government', a self-styled government declared by the Maoists in Sarlahi district on January 25, 2004. Matrika Yadav is one of the 21 Maoist leaders against whom the Interpol has issued red corner notices. Suresh Ale Magar, a former university teacher, is a well-known figure in Maoist circles.

This was not the first set of major arrests of Nepalese Maoists in India. Chandra Prakash Gajurel alias Gaurav, another top Maoist leader, who was arrested from the Chennai Airport in Tamil Nadu on August 20, 2003, is undergoing trial at a Chennai court for allegedly using fake travel documents. Nepalese media reported on February 7, 2004, that Maoists injured during encounters with the security forces had been treated at Indian hospitals, including more than 128 in Uttar Pradesh and 60 in the city of Jalandhar in Punjab. According to sources, on receiving the warning signal from Interpol, security agencies in Uttar Pradesh had launched search operations in December 2003 to apprehend Nepalese Maoist leaders who were believed to be hiding in the border villages. An unspecified number of injured Nepalese Maoist cadres under treatment in Uttar Pradesh were subsequently arrested and handed over to Nepalese authorities, and a number of facilitators who have been helping them procure treatment in various hospitals were also arrested. Importantly, Bamdev Chettri an employee at Jawaharlal Nehru University and the secretary of the Maoist linked Akhil Bharat Nepali Ekta Samaj (ABNES) was arrested at Delhi on September 6, 2002, for his alleged links with Kashmiri militants and Indian extremist groups, and was deported to Nepal. Earlier, in April 2002, the Uttar Pradesh police had handed over eight injured Nepali Maoists who were undergoing treatment in private clinics in Lucknow. Similarly, the West Bengal police had arrested Abhijit Mazumdar, son of the late Naxalite (Left Wing extremist) leader Charu Mazumdar, who had emerged as the chief conduit for the infiltrating Nepalese Maoists in North Bengal. On June 12, 2002, nine Maoists were arrested in Balrampur district in Uttar Pradesh and were handed over to Nepal after a short detention. In September 2003, two Maoists including an area commander were arrested in Madhubani district in Bihar and handed over to the Nepali security forces. Eight Nepalese Maoists had also been arrested in Patna, Bihar, in February 2003. Nepali dominated settlements in border areas, including Darjeeling and Siliguri in West Bengal, as well as other major border cities, have been brought under strict surveillance by the Indian security forces. Indian concerns are accentuated by intelligence inputs regarding the growing cooperation between the Indian Left-wing extremist groups and Nepalese Maoists, and the Indian Government has decided to form a special Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) wing, comprising of 20 to 25 companies to safeguard the border areas in 53 districts seriously afflicted by Left Wing extremism. The decision was taken in a Home Ministry meeting with the Chief Secretaries of nine Naxalite infested states on November 21, 2003.

During the January Indo-Nepal JWG meeting, both the sides had expressed concern on the enduring Maoist incursions and agreed not to allow their territories to be used for subversion by the insurgents. The recent arrests/deportations are an indication of the increasing level of seriousness being attached to Maoist activities in border areas. While the Maoists are currently strengthening their position in the Terai region on both sides of the border, they have also been vigorous efforts to reinforce alliances with Indian Left-Wing extremist groupings like the People's War Group (PWG) and Maoist Communist Center (MCC) both directly and through the Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organizations of South Asia (CCOMPOSA). A Maoist 'commander' from the Mangalsen area, Jay Bahadur Gharti, who surrendered before the security forces in July 2003, disclosed during a Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) press conference on January 22, 2004, that the PWG and MCC conducted training camps for the Nepalese Maoist cadres in 1998 in Rolpa district and subsequently in years 2000 and 2001 in the same district.

A few weeks before the beginning of 'People's War' on February 13, 1996, the political front of the CPN (M) led by Bhattarai had submitted a list of 40 demands to the Nepal Government, which, among other aspects, also highlighted an anti-India agenda. The continuing anti-India posturing is reflected in their recent attacks on Indian joint ventures in Nepal, including Dabur Nepal and Surya Nepal in Birgunj. Further, on January 27, 2004, in the first ever such incident reported inside Indian territory, the Maoists had planted a powerful 'gagri' (water carrying vessel) bomb at Tanakpur in the Champawat district of Uttar Pradesh. The extremely porous 1,800 kilometre-long border, which has been maintained according to the Peace and Friendship Treaty of 1950, offers uninterrupted passage for illegal smuggling of goods, arms, ammunition, narcotics, and human trafficking, as well as the movement of civilian populations and workers from either side.

Currently, there is much to notice vis-à-vis the changing dynamics of counter-insurgency operations by the Indian and Nepalese security forces. Within Nepal, the Maoists have once again begun announcing 'liberated autonomous regions' especially in their strong holds, including the 'Madhesi autonomous republic' in the Sarlahi district and the 'autonomous region of Magarat' at Tawang village in the Rolpa district, in January 2004. However, increasing Indian patrolling along the border areas has led them to search for alternate routes from their traditional northern transit point of western Nepal to bring in arms and ammunition purchased in the open market in Uttar Pradesh. Further, the recent Indian Government's decision to exempt the nine left-wing affected States from paying the cost of deployment of Central Para-Military Forces (CPMF) is a great relief to States like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, and has helped augment the ongoing anti-incursion operations along the border.

The success of the Royal Bhutan Army's operations in December 2003 against Indian insurgent groups including the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO) and National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), operating from Bhutanese territory, has reportedly encouraged India to mount pressure on Nepal for similar strikes on hideouts of Indian Maoists across the Indo-Nepal border. According to sources, it was one of the issues taken up by the then Union Home Secretary N. Gopalaswami during his meeting with his Nepalese counterpart Ananta Raj Pandey on February 3-4, 2004. Indian forces have reportedly assured technical assistance and aircraft surveillance in case of a crackdown by the Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) on Maoist hideouts bordering the Terai region in Uttar Pradesh, Purnea in Bihar and Siliguri in West Bengal. Though India is the major supplier of military equipment to Nepal, there is no formal agreement between the security forces of the two countries. Some analysts believe that if Bhutan, with a strike force of just about 6,000 personnel, can successfully act against the insurgents, Nepal, with more than 72,000 RNA personnel, could do even better.

The active co-operation between Nepalese Maoists and Indian left-wing extremist groups has helped them expand their areas of operation even beyond the conventional Compact Revolutionary Zone (CRZ) corridor, extending from Nepal through Bihar and the Dandakarnya region to Andhra Pradesh. Increasing Indo-Nepalese co-operation could hit at the insurgents' most influential base at the top of their 'corridor' in Nepal, and could progressively weaken the movement in a southward direction.

There has always been a certain sense of insecurity and political animosity in Nepal due to the fact that it is landlocked by India from three sides. While the deportation of two Maoist leaders, as well as an increasing number of cadres, underlines India's positive intentions on the Maoist insurgency in Nepal, there is much that remains to be achieved through a sustained engagement between the two countries.