by Dilip Hiro
It transpired later that, aside from the car accident and the ensuing mayhem, the terrorists’ plan had gone awry as a result of the quintessentially Delhi experience of sudden power cuts. Electricity failure that morning deprived Muhammad Afzal (aka Afzal Guru)—a Kashmiri Muslim, arrested later as the suspected sixth coplotter—of his task: to sit at home to watch all-news television and inform the terrorist team by mobile phone of the arrival of cabinet ministers, including Vajpayee.
So Afzal did not know that the Lower House had adjourned five minutes after opening (because of the noisy protest by the opposition over a Defense Ministry scam of paying excessive sums for soldiers’ coffins) and that Vajpayee had therefore decided to stay at his official residence. When Afzal informed the terrorists’ leader in the car of his failure to access the twenty-four-hour television news, the latter got angry and went ahead with the assault.
Later that day Vajpayee chaired an emergency meeting of the five-strong Cabinet Committee on Security comprising defense, home, foreign, and finance ministers. The government described the event as “an attack on not just the symbol, but the seat, of Indian democracy and on the sovereignty of the Indian people.” This daredevil raid stirred the people, politicians, and the media into a fury.
The US embassy called it “an outrageous act of terrorism” and “a brutal assault on the heart of Indian democracy.”28 The next morning, US ambassador Robert Blackwill, a bearlike man with a jowly visage who, as a history professor specialized in the study of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, attended the memorial service at Parliament House for those who had fallen in the line of duty. Facing a battery of TV cameras after the somber service, Blackwill declared: “The United States and India are as one in this outrage. The tragic event that occurred yesterday and that was perpetrated by terrorists was no different in its objective from the terror attacks in the United States on September 11th.”29
Delhi blamed the Pakistan-based JeM and Lashkar-e Taiba (LeT) for the audacious assault. It accused the LeT’s Hafiz Muhammad Saeed of being the mastermind. It called on Musharraf to outlaw the two organizations and freeze their assets. Pakistan condemned the attack, but, claiming that it had never allowed its soil to be used for terrorism, it rejected India’s demand. Protesting Islamabad’s foot-dragging, India reduced its diplomatic staff in Pakistan and unilaterally suspended the bilateral rail and bus links.
Official circles in Pakistan had a radically different take on the Parliament House assault. During his meeting with the visiting undersecretary of the US Army, Les Brownlee, on December 24, Vice COAS General Yusaf Khan said that he suspected India’s manipulation in this attack. He was expressing a unanimously shared view in Islamabad that it was Delhi’s policy to use its intelligence agencies to stage-manage terrorist assaults periodically to impress the international community.30
In sharp contrast to Islamabad’s laid-back attitude toward the JeM and LeT, the United States went on to ban the two groups, which, according to later White House briefings to American reporters, had been responsible for 70 percent of the recent attacks in Indian Kashmir.31
Operation Parakram
Following a full cabinet meeting, Vajpayee ordered the Defense Ministry to mobilize all three wings of the military for an offensive war. It did so on December 20 under the code-name of Operation Parakram (Sanskrit: Valor). The Indian Air Force was ready to strike at training camps inside Pakistan-held Kashmir. But mobilization of half a million army troops under COAS General Sundararajan Padmanabhan could not be achieved as rapidly as the government wished. In line with common practice in the modern military, only a part of the Indian army was organized as a strike force.
Delhi’s overarching strategy was directed at both Islamabad and Washington; it was well aware that, as the aggrieved party, it held the high moral ground. While the Bush administration, committed to eradicating terrorism worldwide, had no option but to side with India, it could not afford to get too tough on Musharraf. He had played a pivotal role in the overthrow of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and his continued cooperation was essential in destroying the remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaida.
At the same time, the Bush White House could not deflect the argument Delhi offered. India equated Pakistan’s support for the LeT and the JeM, along with its earlier backing for the Taliban, with the ISI’s Kashmir and Afghan cells, which had been the primary engines behind these jihadist entities. It reasoned that Islamabad could not wage war on terrorism on its western frontier (Afghanistan) while supporting it on its eastern border (Kashmir).
Specifically, India demanded that Pakistan hand over twenty wanted terrorists living within its boundaries, six of them being its citizens. The list included Muhammad Ibrahim Azhar, one of the hijackers of the Indian Airlines plane two years earlier. In the absence of an extradition treaty between the two nations, Islamabad refused to do so. It called on Delhi to give it the evidence against the Pakistani nationals for further action.
By early January 2002, India had mobilized some five hundred thousand soldiers and three armored divisions along its 1,875-mile-border with Pakistan, including Kashmir. It placed its navy and air force on high alert and moved its nuclear-capable missiles closer to the border. In response, Pakistan’s Yusaf Khan did the same. His orders resulted in the mobilization of over three hundred thousand Pakistani soldiers. This was the largest buildup on the subcontinent since the 1971 war.32
What particularly worried Washington was Yusaf Khan’s decision to redeploy seventy thousand army troops, constituting the Pentagon’s “anvil,” to capture bin Laden on the run from his hideout in Afghanistan into the tribal belt along the Afghan-Pakistan border to the LoC in Kashmir.
Despite the deepening crisis, on January 1, 2002, India and Pakistan exchanged lists of nuclear installations and facilities under the terms of a confidence-building agreement designed to ensure that such sites were not attacked during any conflict. “For the eleventh consecutive year, India and Pakistan today, through diplomatic channels, simultaneously at New Delhi and Islamabad, exchanged lists of nuclear installations and facilities covered under the Agreement on the Prohibition of Attack Against Nuclear Installations and Facilities between India and Pakistan,” read the press release by the Ministry of External Affairs in Delhi.33
This was all the more remarkable in view of the authoritative report in the New Yorker by prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh on November 5 that India, working with the United States and Israel, was planning preemptive strikes to prevent nuclear weapons falling into the hands of fundamentalist generals. On his part, fearful of US strikes, Musharraf had started moving critical nuclear components within forty-eight hours of the 9/11 attacks to six new locations, away from air bases, the Pentagon’s most likely targets.34
Given the crucial need to maintain Islamabad as an active member of Bush’s coalition to wage “war on terror,” Washington could not afford to pressure Musharraf publicly to rein in the anti-India terrorist organizations in his country.
Privately, though, no diplomatic effort was spared. The United States was provided a window of opportunity by the foresighted decision of General Padmanabhan. He and his planners believed that Pakistan had an interest in escalating conventional warfare to a nuclear flashpoint as soon as possible. In a newspaper interview after his retirement a year later, Padmanabhan revealed that in order to avoid creating Pakistan’s desired situation, it was essential to have Indian forces in place who could rapidly secure war objectives. “When December 13 [the Parliament House attack] happened, my strike formations were at peace locations. At that point, I did not have the capability to mobilize large forces to go across [the border].”35
According to Armitage, his boss, US secretary of state Colin Powell, a retired, four-star general born in New York to Jamaican immigrant parents, in his repeated “general-to-general” telephone conversations urged Musharraf to take visible steps to end his military’s support for
jihadists in Kashmir. Powell appealed to Jaswant Singh, his counterpart in Delhi: “Please don’t undermine our war in Afghanistan.”36 This would have happened as a result of Pakistan moving its troops from the Afghan border to the Indian frontier.
Responding to the Indian demand to see the evidence that Musharraf was dismantling the infrastructure supporting cross-border terrorism, his aides told the New York Times on January 2, 2002, that he had ordered the dissolution of the ISI section assisting pro-Pakistan armed groups in Indian Kashmir. They added that in future Islamabad would limit its support for the Kashmiri freedom struggle to the groups rooted in the territory and rely on Kashmiris to conduct their armed struggle on their own while getting only moral and political backing from Pakistan.37
Despite the deepening crisis, Vajpayee and Musharraf decided to attend the eleventh SAARC summit in Katmandu on January 5–6, 2002. Toward the end of his speech, to the surprise of all, Musharraf turned to Vajpayee and said, “As I step down from this podium, I extend a genuine and sincere hand of friendship to Prime Minister Vajpayee. Together we must commence the journey for peace, harmony and progress in South Asia.” As he moved toward the Indian leader, the latter extended his hand to Musharraf—to the thunderous applause of the assembly. In return, at the end of his speech, Vajpayee said, “I have shaken his hand in your presence. Now President Musharraf must follow this gesture by not permitting any activity in Pakistan or any territory it controls today which enables terrorists to perpetrate mindless violence in India.” Earlier Musharraf pointed out that Pakistan had joined the international coalition against terrorism. But he added that the antiterrorism campaign must also identify and examine the causes that breed terrorism, driving people to violent desperation: “We cannot address only the symptoms and leave the malaise aside.” He also argued that a distinction should be made between acts of resistance and freedom struggles and acts of terrorism.38 As a start, the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan held a bilateral meeting in Katmandu.
Returning to Delhi, Vajpayee found his cabinet ministers in two minds about an attack on Pakistan. Their attention turned to the upcoming visit of the hawkish home minister Advani to Washington, ostensibly to discuss “ways to give effect to our common resolve to defeat terrorism decisively and speedily.” During his meeting with Powell, he was shown the early draft of the speech Musharraf was scheduled to deliver on television in a few days. He compared the document against his set of demands for Musharraf: categorical renunciation of terrorism, closing of jihadist training camps and ending assistance to terrorist, stopping infiltration of men and materiel into Indian Kashmir, and handing over twenty Pakistan-based terrorists. He discovered that Musharraf was conceding the first three of his demands.
Advani’s high point came when Bush dropped by during his meeting with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice at the White House on January 10. He had a brief conversation with Bush. At the subsequent press conference Advani referred to Bush’s statement expecting Musharraf to abandon terror (as was clear from the draft of his forthcoming speech that Bush had read) and said that he felt reassured.39 No doubt Advani telephoned Vajpayee and briefed him on Musharraf’s impending address to the nation.
On the other hand, in a rare press conference on January 11, General Padmanabhan referred to Pakistani leaders, stating that “they will use nuclear weapons first should the necessity arise.” Alluding to Musharraf, he added that “if he is man enough—correction—mad enough . . . he can use it.” But “should a nuclear weapon be used against India, Indian forces, our assets at sea, economic, human or other targets, the perpetrators of that outrage shall be punished so severely that their continuation thereafter in any form or fray will be doubtful.”40
Musharraf Bites the Bullet
Compared to Padamnabhan’s words, the hour-long TV address by Musharraf on January 12 was a long sermon of peace and goodwill. “Pakistan rejects and condemns terrorism in all its forms and manifestations,” he declared. “Pakistan will not allow its territory to be used for any terrorist activity anywhere in the world. . . . No organization will be allowed to indulge in terrorism in the name of Kashmir.” He then added that Pakistan would not surrender its claim to Kashmir. “Kashmir is in our blood. No Pakistani can afford to sever links with Kashmir. We will continue to extend our moral, political and diplomatic support to Kashmiris.”41 He banned five extremist organizations, including the LeT and the JeM. While maintaining his backing for self-determination for Kashmiris—the principle that, when applied to the Muslims in British India, had resulted in the creation of Pakistan—Musharraf disengaged Kashmir from the pan-Islamist movement, as was done first by Zia ul Haq and then by bin Laden.
Washington welcomed Musharraf’s speech. After brief equivocation, Delhi responded positively. It noted approvingly his closure of 390 offices of the banned organizations and the detention of about three thousand of their activists under the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance, which authorized the police to detain a suspect for thirty days without charge. In the end, none was charged, and by March they were all released. The proscribed extremist organizations resurfaced under different names.
Equally, there was no change of heart on the part of India’s policy makers. They remained wedded to their simplistic strategy: crush terrorism through brute force. The link between cross-border terrorism and widespread Kashmiri alienation from India, which transformed into local hospitality to “guest” militants from Pakistan-held Kashmir, escaped them. Though aware that a purely military solution to terrorism was not possible, they plowed on with that strategy.
The Bush administration remained equally committed to maintaining a delicate balance in its relations with Islamabad and Delhi. It made sure not to express publicly its shock at discovering that most of the literature on guerrilla training that the Pentagon and the CIA seized at fifty sites in post-Taliban Afghanistan pertained to the training of jihadists for liberating Kashmir under the supervision of Musharraf as Pakistan’s director general of Military Operations.42 Powell persisted in pursuing the two neighbors to pull back from the brink of war. He succeeded, but the resulting thaw proved transient.
16: Nuclear-Armed Twins,
Eyeball-to-Eyeball
The Indo-Pakistan thaw ended on May 14, 2002. On that day three armed Kashmiri militants in Indian army fatigues boarded a bus at Vijaypur in the Jammu region destined for Jammu city. Just before the army camp at Kaluchak, they stopped the vehicle and sprayed it with gunfire, leaving seven people dead. Then they entered the army residential camp and killed thirty more by lobbing hand grenades and firing their automatic weapons, before they were shot dead. This daring attack on a military facility roiled the Indian government as never before.
Eyeball-to-Eyeball
On May 19 the Indian chief of army staff (COAS), General Sundararajan Padmanabhan, centralized command of the paramilitary forces, including the Border Security Force, posted along the international frontier, and the Central Reserve Police Force. That same day the Indian Navy took operational control of the coast guard. All Indian merchant ships were placed “on alert” and directed to file daily location reports to the navy. Soon after, the navy redeployed its warships from their eastern fleet home base in Vishakapatnam to the Arabian Sea, closer to Pakistan. Delhi’s strategic aim was to assert total control of the sea and deny movement to Pakistani ships and submarines.
On May 22 Indian premier Atal Bihari Vajpayee asserted that the time for a “decisive fight” had come and that India needed to be ready for sacrifices while reassuring his fellow citizens that it would be a fight to victory.1 He ordered the air force to hit training camps inside Pakistan-held Kashmir. He was told that the military lacked enough laser-guided bombs and night-vision pods to accomplish the task. His government approached the United States for fresh supplies. But President George W. Bush, anxious to cool the dangerous upsurge in the already fervid Delhi-Islamabad relations, refused to oblige. Vajpayee then turned to
Israel, which agreed. But it was June 5 by the time these munitions and night-vision pods arrived in three C-130J Hercules transporters at Delhi’s Palam airport, along with Amos Yaron, the director-general of Israel’s defense ministry.2
Alarmed by Delhi’s military moves, Bush publicly called on Pakistani president General Pervez Musharraf on May 25 to stop infiltration into Indian Kashmir. He resorted to public diplomacy after the brush-off that Colonel David Smith, the US Army attaché in Islamabad, repeatedly received from Pakistan’s generals. They would often tell him: “We are the only ones that you can rely on to get these guys in Afghanistan—you can’t do it without our help, and we’re helping you in every way we can. You’re putting tremendous pressure on us, and you’re doing nothing on the Indian side.”3 Bush’s tactic worked. He got an assurance from Musharraf that the militants’ infiltration into Indian Kashmir had ceased. The White House passed on the message to Delhi. Two days later Musharraf repeated his promise to curb jihadist organizations. But Vajpayee’s cabinet had lost trust in his word.
By the end of the month, Padmanabhan had moved eight of the ten strike divisions of the army to jumping-off points near the border. The Twenty-First Strike Force had advanced toward Akhnoor in the Jammu region and set up a forward command post. Each of the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth Corps stationed in Kashmir was reinforced with additional armored and infantry brigades to be able to switch from a defensive posture to an offensive one. While maintaining nine divisions in a holding formation, Musharraf and Vice COAS General Muhammad Yusaf Khan moved an attack force of armored and motorized infantry divisions into combat readiness positions. They redeployed two infantry divisions based in Baluchistan and the North-West Frontier Province to the eastern borders. They augmented the Kashmir front by deploying two brigades of the Rawalpindi-based Tenth Corps. Equally, they reinforced the troops along the Indian border in Punjab and Sindh.4