Blood and terror in Gaza
THE world is witnessing a replay of Israel’s 34-day war with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006, although with certain variations. As then, so now, the UN has been deactivated, because the US has frustrated every attempt by the other Four to agree on a ceasefire resolution. Clearly, the loss of hundreds of lives in Gaza has not been cause for universal dismay and action. As in 2006, so now, the UN is giving the Israeli terror machine time to kill as many civilians as possible. In 2006, when the Israeli air force destroyed Lebanon’s infrastructure in the name of the war on terrorists, so now Israel’s forces are reducing the Gaza Strip to rubble to punish Hamas ‘terrorists’. Just as in 2006, Israel bombed such ‘military targets’ as factories and the Qana refugee camp, so now the Israeli air force is unleashing hell on homes and mosques to ‘defend’ itself, as President George Bush and president-elect Barack Obama would have us believe. But there is one major difference between 2006 and 2009: Hamas is not Hezbollah. Based in another country, Hezbollah was better placed to organise, train and arm its soldiers; Hamas has been operating in an occupied zone, with severe limitations on its finances and training facilities. For that reason, Hamas is unlikely to give Israel the punishment and humiliation which Hezbollah inflicted on it.
The ground assault that began on Saturday has added to the civilian population’s agony: hospitals are without electricity and running water; food and medical supplies, already restricted because of a year of blockade, are running out; and the death toll has crossed 500, while the number of injured is a matter of opinion. The massacre is likely to continue because Israel’s prime minister and defence minister have indicated that the assault would last for quite some time. In brief, in a small strip of land, Israeli soldiers are practising what invading hordes have done through history on a wider scale.
Strangely enough those who support Israeli actions say they want to win the hearts and minds of Muslims. Gaza’s blood-drenched streets are certainly not the best way of doing so. The Taliban hardly need to hone their brainwashing techniques, because America and the world powers are doing an excellent job for them. The images being watched on television live by millions would move any heart, except those immune to human suffering. The fire and smoke which have enveloped Gaza’s skies serve as a better recruitment poster for the Taliban than any sermons in mosques or rallying cries emanating from Al Qaeda cells. By proudly displaying heaps of Palestinian bodies, Defence Minister Ehud Barak stands an excellent chance of winning next month’s election.
Muharram security
A NUMBER of ulema may have pledged their support but unfortunately they are not the ones calling the shots. The sectarian terrorists in our midst swear allegiance only to their controllers or the rabid ‘clerics’ that are eating away at the very soul of the country. They are not answerable to moderate members of the clergy for the simple reason that sectarianism is rooted in extremism. In the last week of December, ulema in Peshawar and Karachi assured the government of their full cooperation in maintaining peace during the month of Muharram. Sadly, their welcome words amount to little more than a gesture, however wholesome. Those who subscribe to sectarianism clearly have nothing in common with rational, thinking human beings. They thrive on undiluted hate for anyone who was born into another sect of Islam and the words of moderate clerics are more likely than not anathema to them.
It is not yet clear if the suicide bombing in Dera Ismail Khan on Sunday targeted policemen in their capacity as symbols of the state or because they were posted near an imambargah. But D.I. Khan has a history of attacks on Shias, and as such a sectarian link cannot be ruled out right away. In any case, it is clear that security personnel across the country must be extraordinarily vigilant to thwart those looking to create chaos during the month of Muharram. To be fair, it must be said that the law-enforcement agencies cannot possibly screen each and every person in a procession that may run into tens of thousands of people. A suicide bomber is almost impossible to disarm once he has reached the scene of the crime. Just as suicide bombers affiliated with the Taliban must be tracked down and caught before they can carry out their missions, what is required here are preventive measures and this is where the intelligence agencies must play their role. That said, the police and if need be other security personnel must be deployed in strength around imambargahs and other potential targets. Taking a cue from what was successfully tried last year, the law enforcers should represent the outer cordon of security. Frisking people entering a place of worship should be left to volunteers from within the community. This serves two purposes: ordinary citizens do not resent body searches by community members, and it can also be argued that volunteers may be more adept at spotting ‘outsiders’. We must strain every sinew to make this a peaceful Muharram, a time of solemn remembrance.
Banning help for the poor
THE Taliban are no friends of Pakistan’s women but neither is the government sometimes. An unfortunate case in point is the controversy over the Benazir Income Support Programme. Last week, the Taliban’s central shura in North Waziristan Agency banned the BISP on the grounds of moral corruption of local women. Since only women are eligible to receive the money on their families’ behalf, the Taliban concluded that women would have un-Islamic contact with male government representatives during the registration and disbursement process. Also informing the Taliban’s opposition to the programme is the requirement of a national identity card — which is also un-Islamic because it bears a photo of its holder. Wrong, chairperson of the BISP Farzana Raja, has shot back: the programme is “purely Islamic” and so are ID cards because a thumbprint is accepted in lieu of a picture. As if this farcical debate wasn’t enough, Ms Raja has said the government will circumvent the possibility of moral corruption by ensuring local women do not have to step outside their homes. Instead, female employees of Nadra will go door to door and help the women register. What, we wonder, will the Taliban make of female Nadra employees traipsing around North Waziristan and coming into improper contact with local men?
There are two problems here. One is obviously of a Taliban set-up in Waziristan that has grown unchecked and has become a parallel form of government. Instead of debating the propriety of the BISP, the government should be thinking about a strategy to win back the area from the Taliban. At the moment there appears to be none. The second problem is the design of the BISP. Given the conservative na ture of some parts of Pakistan, it was inevitable that the women-only stipulation of the BISP would be resisted. Was the purpose of the BISP to enhance the status of women or to help the country’s poor? Both are good, desirable aims but when a programme such as the BISP is used as a means to achieve both, often the result is that neither is achieved.
The changed battlefield
FROM Nov 26 to 29, 2008 the world witnessed 10 lightly armed men holding the elite elements of India’s security establishment at bay for 60 hours, paralysing Mumbai, and in the process, killing nearly 200 people.
The world wondered why India, which sees itself as a superpower in the making, was unable to prevent the physical and psychological damage that the 10 men inflicted on the country.
‘Incredible’ India, ‘Shining’ India should have pre-empted the attack, since it had already experienced the brutalities of terrorist attacks in the past. That is why it is incomprehensible why its state agencies were found wanting, and that is why their competence is being called into question. On the other hand, if certain other countries had encountered a similar situation, their special forces, including Pakistan’s SSG, would have ended the crisis before the dawn of Nov 27.
The Indian people are clearly angry. So is their media. They are smarting from the humiliation inflicted by the 10. In various talk shows on their television channels they vented their anger on their political leadership. When on one of these it was suggested that the politicians should be handed over to Pakistan, better still to the terrorists, there was deafening applause. The media and the people are clamouring for revenge. They are beating the war drums.
The Indian government has thus been placed in a dilemma. Elections to the Lok Sabha are coming up. If it fails to act before that, it will lose face, and perhaps the elections too. And if it acts to initiate military action, it could lead to war, and since war develops its own momentum, it could quickly get out of control. They have a decision to make, and quickly too, before time overtakes them.
In 2004, the Indian army announced the development of a new limited war doctrine to respond to what they call proxy wars by Pakistan. They call it Cold Start. The need for this was felt after Operation Parakram (Operation Victory) was terminated after a 10-month stand-off following the attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001.
The essence of this doctrine, according to Walter C. Ludwig III, a doctoral candidate in International Relations at Oxford University, is re-organising the army’s offensive power from the three strike corps, each of which is built around an armoured division, into eight combined arms divisions, out of which three to five divisional teams would be launched into Pakistan along different axes within 72 to 96 hours from the time the mobilisation order is issued.
In Operation Parakram it had taken three strike corps nearly three weeks to reach their wartime locations. Cold Start thus envisages rapid deployments and high-speed operations.
Limited war is a conflict short of general war in which the political objectives and the means employed to achieve it are limited. It was relevant during the Cold War in the context of the two superpowers. In the context of Pakistan, the dimensions of time and space assume paramount importance, because it lacks territorial depth, is opposed by a larger adversary, and lacks the resources to fight a protracted war.Therefore it is a compulsion on Pakistan to adopt the strategy of pre-emption, in the same way it was a compulsion on Israel prior to its creation of ‘strategic depth’ during the Six-Day war in 1967. But due to poor strategic thought and the defeatist minds of Pakistan’s earlier war directors, this compulsion was lost on them as they persisted with their flawed concept of trading space with time, prior to releasing their counter-offensive which never was.
Since then the 21st century Indo-Pak battlefield has undergone a radical transformation. Whereas previously, pre-emption by Pakistan entailed fire and manoeuvre undertaken more or less simultaneously, now it would have to be first with fire to neutralise the adversary’s superiority in the conventional field, then by manoeuvre .
Pre-emption by fire would entail targeting the adversary’s strike corps’ or their Cold Start divisional teams with small battlefield non-conventional warheads in their assembly areas. And should the adversary respond in a similar way that would be a portent of escalation, and inevitably, disaster for both.
The Indian army nevertheless is entitled to have recurrent dreams. In one of these they see their newly created South Western Command securing the triangle formed by Kashmore/Guddu Barrage-Reti-Rahimyar Khan, and splitting Pakistan in two; their Western Command securing Marala Headworks on River Chenab northwest of Sialkot in conjunction with a thrust in Chenab-Jhelum corridor to threaten Gujrat-Kharian; their Northern Command securing Kotli in Azad Kashmir and advancing on Mirpur to threaten Mangla.
But dreams aside, under the circumstances, the most that the Indian government can be expected to do to save face is to launch simultaneous strikes against Lashkar-i-Taiba facilities which they believe to be in Punjab and Azad Kashmir, and mount a commando raid on their facility in Bahawalpur to seize Masood Azhar and his associates, assuming they are there. Since all these are risky undertakings they ought to be wary of the fact that should these fail, they would end up losing face even more.
In the changed battlefield environment there is no scope whatsoever for a limited or general war between India and Pakistan. Therefore, it is to be hoped that, for the sake of their country, more than anything else, the Indian government would arrive at a prudent decision. n
The writer is a former brigadier of the Pakistan Army.
Obama’s damaging silence
BARACK Obama’s chances of making a fresh start in United States’ relations with the Muslim world, and the Middle East in particular, appear to diminish with each new wave of Israeli attacks on Palestinian targets in Gaza.
That seems hardly fair, given that he does not take office until Jan 20. But foreign wars don’t wait for Washington inaugurations. Obama has remained wholly silent during the Gaza crisis.
His aides say he is following established protocol that the US has only one president at a time. Hillary Clinton, his designated secretary of state, and Joe Biden, the vice-president-elect and foreign policy expert, have also been uncharacteristically taciturn on the subject.
But evidence is mounting that Obama is already losing ground among key Arab and Muslim audiences who cannot understand why, given his promise of change, he has not spoken out. Arab commentators and editorialists say there is growing disappointment at Obama’s detachment — and that his failure to distance himself from George Bush’s pro-Israeli stance is encouraging the belief that he either shares Bush’s bias or simply does not care.
The al-Jazeera satellite television station recently broadcast footage of Obama on holiday in Hawaii, wearing shorts and playing golf, juxtaposed with scenes of bloodshed and mayhem in Gaza. Its report criticising “the deafening silence from the Obama team” suggested Obama is losing a battle of perceptions among Muslims that he may not realise has even begun.
Regional critics claim Obama is happy to break his pre-inauguration “no comment” rule on international issues when it suits him. They note his swift condemnation of November’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Obama has also made frequent policy statements on the global credit crunch.
Obama’s absence from the fray is also allowing hostile voices to exploit the vacuum. “It would appear that the president-elect has no intention of getting involved in the Gaza crisis,” Iran’s Resalat newspaper commented sourly. “His stances and viewpoints suggest he will follow the path taken by previous American presidents ... Obama, too, will pursue policies that support the Zionist aggressions.”
Whether Obama, when he does eventually engage, can successfully elucidate an Israel-Palestine policy that is substantively different from that of Bush-Cheney is wholly uncertain at present.
Maintaining the hardline US posture of placing the blame for all current troubles squarely on Hamas, to the extent of repeatedly blocking limited UN security council ceasefire moves, would end all realistic hopes of winning back Arab opinion — and could have negative, knock-on consequences for US interests in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gulf. Yet if Obama were to take a tougher — some would say more balanced — line with Israel, for example by demanding a permanent end to its blockade of Gaza, or by opening a path to talks with Hamas, he risks provoking a rightwing backlash in Israel, giving encouragement to Israel’s enemies, and losing support at home for little political advantage. n
—The Guardian, London