Convergence of regional leaders **

It has provided India an opportunity to reassert its primacy

G Parthasarathy

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2014/20140605/edit.htm#4

Given Pakistan's stated concerns about the Indian involvement in Afghanistan, New Delhi should propose a regular trilateral India-Pakistan-Afghanistan dialogue

THE presence of the leaders of India's South Asian neighbours and Mauritius at the swearing-in of Mr. Narendra Modi as India’s Prime Minister was a landmark event in South Asia’s quest for regional amity and cooperation. It provided an opportunity for India to reassert its primacy in the region, despite its economic downturn and eroding influence in the face of significant Chinese inroads. In the absence of Sheikh Hasina, the stage was dominated by Mr. Modi's meetings with Presidents Hamid Karzai and Rajapakse and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Nepal would do so much better in Indian perceptions if it set its domestic politics in order and adopted, like Bhutan, an enlightened approach to mutually beneficial energy cooperation.

The meetings of the new Prime Minister were set rolling with his interaction with the charismatic and outgoing Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The two leaders had spoken earlier, when Lashkar e Taiba terrorists laid siege to our consulate in Herat. This was the eighth attack on Indian missions and mission personnel in Afghanistan, which have included three attacks each in Kabul and Jalalabad and one each in Kandahar and Herat. All these attacks have been executed by terrorists from the Taliban, Haqqani Network or Lashkar e Taiba with clear evidence in at least three cases of ISI involvement.

With President Obama having set a firm schedule for a total withdrawal of the American combat forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2016, the stage is now set for new dynamics to developments in Afghanistan. The Pakistan military establishment will now put strategies in place for progressive takeover of the Afghanistan by its Taliban and Haqqani proxies. India's predominantly economic role in Afghanistan will accordingly have to be augmented by imaginative regional diplomacy involving Iran, Afghanistan's Central Asian neighbours, China and Russia. At the same time, the US, its NATO allies and Japan have to be approached to keep funds flowing for Afghanistan’s national security and economic development.

While in Delhi, President Karzai again alluded to his disappointment at India's response to his requests for military assistance. This can be remedied, in consultation with Russia, given the huge surpluses we have in Soviet-era equipment ranging from tanks to fighter aircraft. Given Pakistan's stated concerns about the Indian involvement in Afghanistan, New Delhi should propose a regular trilateral India-Pakistan-Afghanistan dialogue. A mere India-Pakistan dialogue on this issue would be like staging Hamlet without the King of Denmark! Strategically, an effective India-Iran-Afghanistan dialogue is also essential, for the development of Iran's Chah Bahar port providing India guaranteed and easy access to Afghanistan and Central Asia.

A PROBLEMATIC PART OF NEHRU’S LEGACY

Thursday, 05 June 2014

Claude Arpi

Those celebrating the Five Principles enshrined in the Preamble of the Panchsheel pact often forget that the the disastrous agreement with China cost India its commercial interests in and civilisational ties with Tibet

Several foreign policy ‘experts’ have suggested that India should celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Panchsheel Agreement. I always wonder if these ‘experts’ even know the name of the agreement referred to as ‘Panchsheel’. The Panchsheel Agreement is composed of two parts: The Preamble (the Five Principles) and the content. For Beijing, the title itself, ‘Agreement on Trade and Intercourse between the Tibet Region of China and India’ was the raison d'être of the accord. It was a grand victory for Beijing (and a crushing defeat for Jawaharlal Nehru): For the first time in 2,000 years, India acknowledged that Tibet was a mere “Region of China”.

India had to pay dearly, and is still paying 60 years after the agreement, for the idealist policy of it first Prime Minister, who promoted the Preamble and ignored the content. The only objective of the Indo-Tibet Agreement was to regulate trade and pilgrimage between India and Tibet. Article IV for example mentions: “Also, the customary route leading to Tashigong along the valley of the Indus River may continue to be traversed in accordance with custom.” This refers to the Ladakh road, via Demchok, which for centuries was used by the Indian pilgrims wanting to visit the Kailash-Manasarovar area. Today, the border post is closed. Why is Beijing adamantly refusing to reopen this route?

The Agreement lapsed in April 1962 and six months later, India and China fought a bitter war over Tibet, the object of the Agreement. Many clauses of the 1954 Agreement were good. For example, the agreement said that “inhabitants of the border districts of the two countries who cross the border to carry on petty trade or to visit friends and relatives may proceed to the border districts of the other party …and shall not be required to hold passports, visas or permits.” This was how relations between the Himalayan region and Tibet had worked for centuries. India and Tibet were neighbours and friends. But the spirit of the agreement was never implemented, with tragic consequences for India (and Tibet). While ‘experts’ continue to lecture about the Grand Principles, the agreement expired 52 years ago.

One of the disastrous outcomes of the agreement was that the Government of India did not use the occasion to bargain, against the relinquishment of India’s rights in Tibet, for a proper delimitation of the border. New Delhi saw these ‘privileges’ as an imperialist heritage that had to be spurned by India. For eight years, the Panchsheel Agreement resulted in the constant harassment for Indians: Officials, traders and pilgrims in Tibet. I shall mention a tragicomic incident.

In May 1959, Swami Brahmachari Atma Chaitanya, an Indian pilgrim on his way to Kailash, was arrested and quizzed by Chinese border guards, as he crossed Tibet. A complaint from the Ministry of External Affairs to Beijing explains why: “[The Swami] was harshly interrogated by the Chinese soldiers, his baggage searched, and some of his belongings confiscated. These included some homoeopathic medicines which he was accused of bringing with him with the intention of poisoning the people of Tibet.”

Geopolitical Journey, Part 2: Borderlands ***

Geopolitical Weekly

JUNE 3, 2014

Editor's Note: Stratfor's George Friedman is continuing his trip this week across the region, including the countries of Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Poland, Serbia, Turkey and Azerbaijan. This report on the same region was written in 2010, as he was returning from a similar journey that explored the geopolitical imperatives of those nations. The observations and forecasts then in many ways mirror the reality today, four years later.

By George Friedman

Founder and Chairman

Source Link

A borderland is a region where history is constant: Everything is in flux. The countries we are visiting on this trip (Turkey, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine and Poland) occupy the borderland between Islam, Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity. Roman Catholic Hapsburg Austria struggled with the Islamic Ottoman Empire for centuries, with the Ottomans extending northwest until a climactic battle in Vienna in 1683. Beginning in the 18th century, Orthodox Russia expanded from the east, through Belarus and Ukraine. For more than two centuries, the belt of countries stretching from the Baltic to the Black seas was the borderland over which three empires fought.

There have been endless permutations here. The Cold War was the last clear-cut confrontation, pitting Russia against a Western Europe backed -- and to a great extent dominated -- by the United States. This belt of countries was firmly if informally within the Soviet empire. Now they are sovereign again. My interest in the region is to understand more clearly how the next iteration of regional geopolitics will play out. Russia is far more powerful than it was 10 years ago. The European Union is undergoing internal stress and Germany is recalculating its position. The United States is playing an uncertain and complex game. I want to understand how the semicircle of powers, from Turkey to Poland, are thinking about positioning themselves for the next iteration of the regional game.

I have been accused of thinking like an old Cold warrior. I don't think that's true. The Soviet Union has collapsed, and U.S. influence in Europe has declined. Whatever will come next will not be the Cold War. What I do not expect this to be is a region of perpetual peace. It has never been that before. It will not be that in the future. I want to understand the pattern of conflict that will occur in the future. But for that we need to begin in the past, not with the Cold War, but with World War I.

The dangers of a non-secular state

June 5, 2014

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-dangers-of-a-nonsecular-state/article6082666.ece?homepage=true

MARKANDEY KATJU

Given the tremendous diversity in the Indian subcontinent, only a secular state is feasible

Is Pakistan rapidly degenerating into a Jurassic Park? Consider the following events:

On May 7, an eminent lawyer and human rights activist, Rashid Rehman Khan, was shot dead by some assailants while he was sitting in his office. He was apparently killed because he was representing a university teacher, Junaid Hafeez, in a blasphemy case. During the trial proceedings, Mr. Khan was threatened by some lawyers with death unless he withdrew from the case.

In Pakistan, lawyers and witnesses for the defence in blasphemy cases are almost invariably threatened with death unless they agree to withdraw from these cases. Many judges are afraid to hear such cases or acquit the accused even if there is no credible evidence against him/her.

Mr. Khan was a very active human rights worker and a coordinator of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Whenever a person died in custody, he would take up his case. If acid was thrown at a woman, he would rush to get her medical help. He fought against ‘honour killing’ of young girls. He trekked across the backward tribal area of Dera Ghazi Khan and documented the misery of people living there. He went to that part of Rahim Yar Khan where low caste Hindus live without any rights, and reported their plight. He was the first to take up Mukhtaran Mai’s case. He fought Sherry Rehman’s persecutors up to the High Court level. He had a special interest in the welfare of peasants, and demanded land reforms and tenants’ rights (much of Pakistan landlordism still prevails).

Climate of fear

Despite all this, consider what followed his murder — journalists in his home town Multan did not dare to write about his murder, judges in the Lahore High Court are avoiding hearing Asia Bibi’s appeal, Multan police are not seriously investigating the murder, and there have been no serious protests against this dastardly crime. Most Pakistanis remain mum, obviously out of fear.

What India’s Newest State Means for its Future

THE PULSE

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

http://thediplomat.com/2014/06/telangana-indias-29th-state-is-finally-born/

Telangana, India's 29th State, is Finally Born

By Akhilesh Pillalamarri

June 04, 2014

This Monday, India’s 29th and newest state, Telangana, officially came into being, having been split off from the state of Andhra Pradesh, the rump of which has retained that name. This is the culmination of one of India’s longest and most contentious domestic political movements, the agitation of several groups in Telangana for separation from Andhra Pradesh. These efforts finally came to fruition this political cycle, mainly because of the political calculations of the ruling Congress Party rather than any sympathy on the part of the central government for the cause of Telangana.

The creation of Telangana is especially notable because it is the first time an ethnolinguistic group — the Andhra or Telugu people — have been divided into multiple states outside of the vast Hindi speaking belt in northern India (Bengali speakers make up the majority in two states, West Bengal and Tripura but that is due more to recent demographic shifts in Tripura, which was not originally a Bengali majority region). This itself was seen as contentious as it sets a precedent for the reversal of the logic that has governed India’s states since the States Reorganization Act in 1956, which aimed to create one state per major language, with the exception of the vast Hindi belt. One of the many criticisms of the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh came from Telugu nationalists who did not want their people to be divided into two states.

The genesis of Telangana lies in India’s complicated political history which has ensured that many ethnic groups have spent little time united under the same administrative unit. In the case of the Telugu people, the last time they were arguably united under a single administrative structure was during the Kakatiya Dynasty, which fell in the early 14th century to the Delhi Sultanate. Afterwards, most of today’s Telangana came under Muslim rule under the Bahmini and Golconda Sultanates before eventually coming under Mughal rule and its successor state,Hyderabad. Various sources have described the socioeconomic situation of Telangana during the past few centuries as exploitive and feudal, a situation culminating in a Communist-led peasant revolt before the Princely state’s annexation into independent India.

Defence industry, MoD hunker down for FDI battle

http://ajaishukla.blogspot.in/2014/05/defence-industry-mod-hunker-down-for.html

By Ajai Shukla

Business Standard, 31st May 14

After the UPA tried unsuccessfully since 2010 to raise the 26 per cent cap on foreign direct investment (FDI) in defence production, a move that indigenous defence companies and former Defence Minister AK Antony resisted staunchly, the new government has initiated a fresh attempt along the same lines.

In 2010, the department of industrial policy and promotion (DIPP) --- at the behest of Commerce Minister Anand Sharma --- had pushed to raise the FDI cap to 74 per cent. This time, under Nirmala Sitharaman, the DIPP has mooted three separate options in a cabinet note --- proposing 49%, 74% or 100% FDI.

Commerce ministry sources say that, given the new government’s focus on promoting manufacture to generate employment, and with a new defence minister who is less protective of indigenous defence industry, the international defence industry’s longstanding demand to lower entry barriers into India might well be granted.

Even so, there will be stout resistance from the department of defence production (DDP), and from an indigenous defence industry that worries that the unfettered entry of international vendors would wipe out fledgling Indian defence companies.

“Please name one country that allows foreign defence companies unfettered access to the market. America theoretically allows 100 per cent FDI, but its laws mandate that every single employee must be a US national and the company must operate exclusively on US soil. India hasn’t the means to enforce such rules, and foreign companies will take full advantage,” says the CEO of a major Indian private sector defence company.

So watertight are the US laws that the Tel Aviv based president & CEO of, say Israeli company Elbit is required to take Washington’s permission before he can visit his own company facilities that operate in the US.

Furthermore, say defence industry CEOs, there is no evidence that increasing FDI provides any benefit to an industry. They cite the example of telecom, where permitting 100 per cent FDI has failed to galvanize the emergence of telecom manufacture. To this day, there is no significant Indian manufacturer of telecom equipment.

In 2001, the DIPP permitted private sector participation in the defence industry, vide Press Note No 4 of 2001, which notified several measures for liberalising the FDI regime of that period. Paragraph (iii) of that notification said, “The defence industry sector is opened up to 100% for Indian private sector participation with FDI permissible up to 26%, both subject to licensing.”

Interpreting the Egyptian mandate

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/interpreting-the-egyptian-mandate/article6082841.ece

SUDHEENDRA KULKARNI

Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s election confirms that Egypt has a military-guided democracy. But this should not make us jump to the conclusion that it is not democracy at all

Egypt has a new President. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who was the country’s Army chief and Defence Minister, has won a landslide victory in the presidential election held in the last week of May. He defeated his opponent, Hamdeen Sabahi, by securing 96.91 per cent of the votes polled.

Mr. Sisi, 59, is Egypt’s sixth President (not counting interim heads of state), and the fifth with a military background, since the country became a republic in 1953 following the removal of King Farouk by the Army. The only non-military person ever to become Egypt’s elected President was Mohamed Morsi, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, and now in jail. Mr. Sisi’s election marks both a closure and, perhaps, partial continuation of the strong socio-political turbulence that has gripped Egypt for over three years. It began with a popular uprising in 2011, known as the January 25 Revolution, which brought Mr. Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year-long dictatorial reign to an end. Mr. Morsi was elected in June 2012, only to be unseated from power in July 2013, when he became the target of an even bigger, popular uprising.

 A majority of Egyptians are against religious extremism and prefer peace, safety and stability. 

The yearning for a strong leader

Mr. Sisi’s victory was a foregone conclusion going by the immense popularity he gained after he, as Army chief, backed the huge countrywide protests against Mr. Morsi. He earned the reputation of being a strong leader when he served Mr. Morsi an ultimatum to resign within 48 hours. When the Muslim Brotherhood protested angrily by staging indefinite sit-ins in Cairo squares, he ordered a crackdown by security forces in which nearly a 1,000 of Mr. Morsi’s supporters were killed. He was the de-facto ruler of Egypt even during the reign of the post-Morsi interim government, when a new Constitution was adopted. This is when the Muslim Brotherhood was outlawed and declared a “terrorist organisation.” In the run-up to the presidential poll, Mr. Sisi went to the extent of saying that the Muslim Brotherhood would cease to exist during his presidency.

His election confirms that Egypt has a military-guided democracy. But this should not make us jump to the conclusion that it is not democracy at all, simply military rule in a civilian garb. This is unlikely to happen. The tumultuous events since the overthrow of the hated Mubarak regime have shown that there has been a democratic awakening and activism on a scale unprecedented in Egypt’s history or even Arab history. This mass awakening cannot be suppressed. After his victory, Mr. Sisi has sought to quash apprehensions on this score by saying, “We know that some people fear a return to the past, but this will not happen, there is no going back and we will move forward.”

Japan Prime Minister Signals Assertive Asian Security Role at Shangri-La Dialogue 2014: Analysis

Paper No. 5715 Dated 02-Jun-2014

http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/node/1533

By Dr Subhash Kapila

Introductory Observations

Japanese Prime Minister Abe in his keynote Address on May 31 2014 at the Shangri-La Dialogue signalled Japan’s intentions to play an assertive role Asian security role. Implicitly, the target was China though not so named.

The all-pervasive theme at Shangri-La Dialogue was strategic concerns over China’s destabilising the South China Sea region and its recent provocative actions against Vietnam and the Philippines.

The Indo Pacific region is at strategic cross-roads with the United States not going beyond rhetoric on South China Sea and East China Sea conflict escalation by China. Similarly, Russia as an equal stakeholder in security of the region is a passive spectator as China goes on an imperial rampage recklessly trampling all international laws, conventions and refusing to submit to conflict resolution processes.

Against this contextual backdrop, one has been recommending in my past Papers that Asian strategic coalitions must emerge to make a beginning in the direction of ensuring peace and stability of the Indo Pacific region. In a recent Paper one had advocated the imperatives for “Japan-India –Vietnam Strategic Trilateral”.

Japanese PM Shinzo Abe’s assertions at Shangri-La Dialogue 2014 therefore are timely and welcome as Japan along with India are ‘pivots’ on which an Asian Coalition’ can emerge.

Japan’s Intentions to Adopt a New and Assertive Security Role to Preserve Peace and Stability in Asia

“The “New Japanese” are Japanese who are determined ultimately to take on the peace, order and stability of the region as their own responsibility” so declared PM Shinzo Abe. It is a pointer towards the imperatives of an indigenous Asian Strategic Coalition which could provide some semblance of countervailing power against China’s hegemonistic designs in Asia conscious of the strategic dithering that the United States and Russia display when it comes to China.

“Japan intends to play an even greater more proactive role than it has until now in making peace in Asia and the world something more certain.” This is an emphatic declaration worth noting as there are many connotations attached to it.

“Proactive Contribution to Peace”- a new banner for such a “New Japan” – is nothing new other than an expression of Japan’s determination to spare no effort or trouble for the sake of peace, security, and prosperity of Asia and the Pacific, at even greater levels than before.” Peace and prosperity cannot come about when there is no security or security and stability are threatened. Evidently, the Japanese PM was signalling that Japan is ready to contribute significantly in the security of Asia so that peace prevails.

Japan will “Reconstruct the legal basis pertinent to the right of collective self-defence and international cooperation.” Japan has a bilateral security alliance with the United States and presumably the Japanese Prime Minister perceives a multilateral Asian security cooperative construct. PM Abe is already engaged in efforts to remove the many shackles that the post -Second World US -imposed Peace Constitution restricts Japan from assuming a rightful and assertive role in Asian security.

FDI IN DEFENCE

3 June 2014

Can 100% Foreign Investment Help India’s Defence Sector?

http://www.ipcs.org/article/india/can-100-foreign-investment-help-indias-defence-sector-4493.html

Aakash Brahmachari

Defence Risk Consultant 

E-mail: aakash@cantab.net

India’s Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion has proposed raising the bar on foreign direct investment (FDI) in India’s defence sector from the current 26 per cent to 74 per cent and possibly 100% in select high-technology areas. The latest bid to revive India’s stagnating defence sector is characteristic of the new government’s urgency to revive investor confidence. The defence sector in particular has been hampered by policy paralysis, that, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has been openly critical of. The decision to boost FDI in the sector, if approved, will be marked as an example of the new government’s commitment to implement important reforms at a quicker pace. 

Old Wine in a New Bottle? 

In 2010, the United Progressive Alliance government had considered the same proposal. At that time, the consensus from the defence industry was that the 26 per cent FDI cap had done more harm than good. It had deterred foreign investors who did not see any financial incentives and had limited control over their joint ventures (JV) with Indian partners. This implied less control over intellectual property – which is a key differentiator in the defence sector and is often developed at great expense. 

Shortly after the proposal was tabled, a survey by the Confederation of Indian Industry found that over half its members preferred a 49 pe cent FDI cap along with an Indian JV partner for foreign firms. Though the companies surveyed favoured raising the FDI cap to 74 per cent for select projects, they felt restricting it to 49 per cent would ensure a level playing field for domestic manufacturers. 

Given that the Indian defence sector was opened to private companies only in 2001, most domestic firms in a JV with a foreign partner benefitted from access to technology without heavy investments in research and development (R&D). With the new proposal, there is a real concern that Indian firms will be unable to compete with international corporations that have much deeper pockets and an established R&D base. Instead of benefitting from a JV, Indian companies may find themselves crowded out of the market. 

5 QUESTIONS WITH CHRIS PREBLE ON ALLIES, AFGHANISTAN, AND FREE MARKET COCKTAILS

June 2, 2014

http://warontherocks.com/2014/06/5-questions-with-chris-preble-on-allies-afghanistan-and-free-market-cocktails/

This is the latest installment of our 5 Questions series, in which we feature an expert, practitioner, or leader answering — you guessed it — five questions on topics of current relevance in the world of defense, security, and foreign policy. Well, four of the questions are topical. The fifth is about booze. We are War on the Rocks, after all.

This week I spoke with Christopher Preble, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. He is the author or editor of several books, including The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free and Terrorizing Ourselves: Why U.S. Counterterrorism Policy is Failing and How to Fix It. Preble was a commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy, and served onboard the USS Ticonderoga (CG-47) from 1990 to 1993. He holds a Ph.D. in history from Temple University.

1. Since President Obama’s foreign policy speech at West Point last week, you’ve written about the gap between his hopes for greater burden-sharing by America’s allies and the contribution that they’re actually likely to make. Can you explain why this is the case? Is there anything that the U.S. can do to encourage our allies to carry more of the weight of shared strategic challenges?

Our allies are unlikely to pick up the slack unless the United States pulls back on its promises to defend others from harm, and reshapes its military accordingly.

This has been clear since at least the mid-1960s, when Mancur Olson and Richard Zeckhauser first articulated an economic theory of alliances. Because there is a general tendency for smaller nations to free ride on the security assurances of larger ones, Olson and Zeckhauser predicted that “American attempts to persuade her allies to bear larger shares of the common burden are apt to do nothing more than breed division and resentment.” Their predictions have proved more accurate than they could have guessed: As the infographic posted here clearly shows, Americans continue to spend far more on the military than our European and Asian allies, notwithstanding countless attempts to cajole them into doing more.

As for what we can do to change it, I tend to agree with MIT’s Barry Posen who explains in his new book, Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy, that America’s allies “make their defense decisions in the face of extravagant United States promises to defend them. They will not do more unless the United States credibly commits to doing less.” (Another plug: Posen will be discussing his book at Cato on June 12th.)

2. Beyond that issue, do you have any specific thoughts on the speech? Did it live up to expectations? Were there any missed opportunities?

I had pretty low expectations going in, so I wasn’t disappointed. I was briefly concerned that the president might embrace a new interventionist agenda, bowing to his critics, and pledging to send U.S. troops into the middle of more civil wars around the world, or risk a major confrontation with Russia or China.

But he obviously didn’t do that. I suppose he learned his lesson the hard way when he tried to intervene militarily in Syria last summer. Even though this operation was supposed to be “unbelievably small” in Secretary of State John Kerry’s words, the public was still overwhelmingly opposed. And I think the public’s concerns were well-founded. There was not a compelling U.S. national interest at stake in Syria, and there wasn’t an obvious mission for the U.S. military. Neither of these facts have changed since September of last year. Arming the Syrian opposition (to be precise, those members of the opposition who are not linked to al Qaeda now, or might be in the future) is unlikely to tip the scales decisively against Assad’s forces. I do worry that aid to those who could get through the vetting process could eventually draw the United States into precisely the sort of deeper involvement that the public opposes, as this paper explained, but that seems pretty unlikely right now.

The Next Attack on India from Pakistan

04/06/2014

R S N Singh

E-Mail- aruna_rsn2000@yahoo.co.in

http://www.claws.in/the-next-attack-on-india-from-pakistan-r-s-n-singh.html

The attack on the Indian Consulate at Herat in Afghanistan just two days before the swearing-in of Shri Narendra Modi as India’s Prime Minister along with his cabinet colleagues on 26 May 2014, had the portend to cast a sinister shadow on the momentous event. The attack being the handiwork of Hafiz Saeed’s Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) was corroborated by none other than the President of Afghanistan, Dr Hamid Karzai. Subsequently, it emerged that the plan was to kidnap the Indian Counselor. The LeT has been teaming up with the Taliban in attacking Indian interests in Afghanistan. It may be recalled that in August 2013, the Indian Consulate in Jalalabad was also attacked by suicide bombers, wherein the Counselor and the Consulate staff did not come in the harm’s way, but nine innocent people that included six children were killed. Such is the nature of Pak sponsored terror. This attack was in the wake of assumption of office by Mr Nawaz Sharif on 05 June 2013.

Apart from the Pakistan Military’s nervousness over the uncertainty of evolving contours of Pakistan-Afghanistan-India strategic triangle due to the envisaged withdrawal of ISAF from Afghanistan, the terror attacks on Indian Consulates, therefore has also much been engendered by the internal institutional rivalry and dynamics within Pakistan. Like the recent attack in Herat, the targeting of Jalalabad Consulate by the ISI backed LeT was in a way a stark reminder to Nawaz Sharif about the strategic imperatives and priorities of Pakistan Military. This was also to disrupt any possible rapprochement between the then Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and Nawaz Sharif on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session in the following month.

These acts of desperation by Pakistan’s military-intelligence complex can best be explained through the evolution of the three major jihadi outfits impinging on the strategy and security of Pakistan. The respective areas of influence and operations of these three jihadi organisations, i.e. Afghan-Taliban, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) is given in the map below:-

The Afghan-Taliban and TTP, it should be remembered have the same roots. Till very recently, the TTP considered Mullah Omar as its figurative and inspirational head. Both the Afghan-Taliban and the TTP have avowed to establish Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan an Islamic Emirate of Pakistan respectively. Both have avowed to implement Sharia Law in the respective territories. However, while the master and benefactor of Afghan-Taliban benefactor, i.e. the military-intelligence complex of Pakistan has no qualms about the politico-religious objectives of its protégé in Afghanistan, it is loathe to brook the same agenda in Pakistan and is therefore locked in a fierce and intractable counter-insurgency war with TTP. It is this naked contradiction that the Pakistan’s military establishment is finding impossible to reconcile. Jihad and jihadi groups sponsored by Pakistan cannot have different religious impetuses, i.e. one for Afghanistan and the other for Pakistan; one for strategic reasons and the other for domestic considerations. The third protagonist in the jihadi dynamics within Pakistan is the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). The LeT, as is comprehensively established, is the irregular arm of the Pakistan military, exclusively for use against India and Indian interests. At one time it did decide to become part of global jihad to target western interests but its designs were nipped in the bud by timely action by the American Intelligence. In this project, David Headley played the key role. He succeeded, but the price was 26|11, paid by India. It is reckoned that the LeT, in terms of the strength of personnel has reached two-third levels of the Pakistan Army.