From Stratfor

 

Red Alert - Possible geopolitical consequences of the Mumbai attacks

27 November 2008

 

Summary

 

If the Nov. 26 attacks in Mumbai were carried out by Islamist militants as it appears, the Indian government will have little choice, politically speaking, but to blame them on Pakistan. That will in turn spark a crisis between the two nuclear rivals that will draw the United States into the fray.

Analysis

 

At this point the situation on the ground in Mumbai remains unclear following the militant attacks of Nov. 26. But in order to understand the geopolitical significance of what is going on, it is necessary to begin looking beyond this event at what will follow. Though the situation is still in motion, the likely consequences of the attack are less murky.

 

We will begin by assuming that the attackers are Islamist militant groups operating in India, possibly with some level of outside support from Pakistan. We can also see quite clearly that this was a carefully planned, well-executed attack.

 

Given this, the Indian government has two choices. First, it can simply say that the perpetrators are a domestic group. In that case, it will be held accountable for a failure of enormous proportions in security and law enforcement. It will be charged with being unable to protect the public. On the other hand, it can link the attack to an outside power: Pakistan. In that case it can hold a nation-state responsible for the attack, and can use the crisis atmosphere to strengthen the government’s internal position by invoking nationalism. Politically this is a much preferable outcome for the Indian government, and so it is the most likely course of action. This is not to say that there are no outside powers involved — simply that, regardless of the ground truth, the Indian government will claim there were.

 

That, in turn, will plunge India and Pakistan into the worst crisis they have had since 2002. If the Pakistanis are understood to be responsible for the attack, then the Indians must hold them responsible, and that means they will have to take action in retaliation — otherwise, the Indian government’s domestic credibility will plunge. The shape of the crisis, then, will consist of demands that the Pakistanis take immediate steps to suppress Islamist radicals across the board, but particularly in Kashmir. New Delhi will demand that this action be immediate and public. This demand will come parallel to U.S. demands for the same actions, and threats by incoming U.S. President Barack Obama to force greater cooperation from Pakistan.

 

If that happens, Pakistan will find itself in a nutcracker. On the one side, the Indians will be threatening action — deliberately vague but menacing — along with the Americans. This will be even more intense if it turns out, as currently seems likely, that Americans and Europeans were being held hostage (or worse) in the two hotels that were attacked. If the attacks are traced to Pakistan, American demands will escalate well in advance of inauguration day.

 

There is a precedent for this. In 2002 there was an attack on the Indian parliament in Mumbai by Islamist militants linked to Pakistan. A near-nuclear confrontation took place between India and Pakistan, in which the United States brokered a stand-down in return for intensified Pakistani pressure on the Islamists. The crisis helped redefine the Pakistani position on Islamist radicals in Pakistan.

 

In the current iteration, the demands will be even more intense. The Indians and Americans will have a joint interest in forcing the Pakistani government to act decisively and immediately. The Pakistani government has warned that such pressure could destabilize Pakistan. The Indians will not be in a position to moderate their position, and the Americans will see the situation as an opportunity to extract major concessions. Thus the crisis will directly intersect U.S. and NATO operations in Afghanistan.

 

It is not clear the degree to which the Pakistani government can control the situation. But the Indians will have no choice but to be assertive, and the United States will move along the same line. Whether it is the current government in India that reacts, or one that succeeds doesn’t matter. Either way, India is under enormous pressure to respond. Therefore the events point to a serious crisis not simply between Pakistan and India, but within Pakistan as well, with the government caught between foreign powers and domestic realities. Given the circumstances, massive destabilization is possible — never a good thing with a nuclear power.

 

This is thinking far ahead of the curve, and is based on an assumption of the truth of something we don’t know for certain yet, which is that the attackers were Muslims and that the Pakistanis will not be able to demonstrate categorically that they weren’t involved. Since we suspect they were Muslims, and since we doubt the Pakistanis can be categorical and convincing enough to thwart Indian demands, we suspect that we will be deep into a crisis within the next few days, very shortly after the situation on the ground clarifies itself.

It seems that any doubt that the attackers were Muslim radicals has been removed. Pakistani government involvement is another matter.

 

From my experiences in Saudi Arabia, I've learned that there is little any government can do to control these guys. The Wahabi's in the KSA helped Abdulazziz gain control of the Kingdom at its original formation, and the Al-Saud clan is still stuck with them. I don't know about Abdullah, but Fahd said more than once he'd like to be rid of them, but couldn't find a way to accomplish that.

 

I doubt the Pakistani government will do much better.

 

Buddha

I doubt that there's much the Pakistanis will be able to do to assuage the concerns of the Indians either, but these things do tend to take on a life of their own sometimes. And these two have serious history.

I doubt that there's much the Pakistanis will be able to do to assuage the concerns of the Indians either, but these things do tend to take on a life of their own sometimes. And these two have serious historynox : emphasis mine.

 

Makes the Crusades and all Islam/Judeo-Christian (not the West, strictly speaking the Arabs are an integral part of the Western world, it's actually a misnomer to call our culture Judeo-Christian when it's Judeo-Christian-Islamic, otherwise forget science...) conflicts look like kindergarden : it's been raging on for close or over 1000 years, the hatred and religion wars between Islam and Hindhis.

And with spurring events since the birth of India and Pakistan/Bangladesh

Compared to that, the total enmity we see between Israel and Islam is very recent (it was an on and off thing thoughout Islam's history, bouts of vociferous intolerance alternating with an enlightened society : we came out of the Dark Ages thanks to such an era)

Can be very scary (or interesting) to reflect on this too deeply

Although you'd probably be hard pressed to find one of these fanatics knowledgable enough about history to be aware of it, the Arab/Israeli conflict is a matter of politics, not religion. In Islam, Christians and Jews are considered to be "People of the Book", and therefore to be respected.

 

There is no Islamic prohibition against intermarriage, for instance. The only requirement is that the man must either be Muslim or convert, since the father's religion is controlling as far as children are concerned. (I had a coworker in the KSA who married an Egyptian woman, and conversion is quite an ordeal, including learning a lot of Arabic).

 

The root of the hostility was the creation of the state of Israel, making it less than 100 years old. Although there has been some ongoing friction between the different religions, as there always is between people with conflicting views on matters of faith, Israel's founding really kicked things off. The '67 and '73 wars certainly didn't help matters any either, especially the Arab's humiliation in '67.

 

Buddha

Although you'd probably be hard pressed to find one of these fanatics knowledgable enough about history to be aware of it, the Arab/Israeli conflict is a matter of politics, not religion. In Islam, Christians and Jews are considered to be "People of the Book", and therefore to be respected.

 

There is no Islamic prohibition against intermarriage, for instance. The only requirement is that the man must either be Muslim or convert, since the father's religion is controlling as far as children are concerned. (I had a coworker in the KSA who married an Egyptian woman, and conversion is quite an ordeal, including learning a lot of Arabic).

 

The root of the hostility was the creation of the state of Israel, making it less than 100 years old. Although there has been some ongoing friction between the different religions, as there always is between people with conflicting views on matters of faith, Israel's founding really kicked things off. The '67 and '73 wars certainly didn't help matters any either, especially the Arab's humiliation in '67.

 

Buddha

 

That's why I said Judeo-Christian-Islam civilization : those 3 religions are 3 separate, but closely related, cults of the same god : YHVH is God is Allah

And Islam, in the words of the Prophet himself, inspired itself from both the Hebraic faith and Christianity.

Hence the special place for Christian and Jews, and why in theory there can be no Jihad against the West : we're already "converts" for Muslims true to Mahomet's words, no need to proselytize, in that we believe and pray to the same One God. To Islam, we might be wrong in our ways to do so, but it's still the right God, so no enmity in theory from questions of piety or theology.

Sadly, politics entered the equation, and the Crusades changed this once and for all, so far.

 

In the early 13th century, Spain was the most enlightened culture in the West, being a mix of pre-Roman Sepharadic Jews settlements, various Iberic and Goths mixed with Roman, all under the benign mantle of mixed ethnical Islam : Arabs and Moors and African (black), all Muslim, most enlightened.

One of the greatest scientist of the era was Ben Maimonides, a Jewish doctor, who thrived under the auspices of various Muslim patrons.

Personal interest, as we don't know if we (my family name) are an antique Sepharadic Jewish family turned Catholic under the Inquisition and then ennobled in the next century or so, or Moors, who also became Catholics during the Inquisition, and hence part of the old, but small time (hidalgo) Spanish aristocracy.

 

I mentioned science (calculus/algebra are Islamic legacies) : thanks to Islam, we have old copies of many classical texts, 'cause the Christian authorities destroyed most of our past (hence the Dark Ages...), including our religious texts and 90+% of our translations from Latin and Greek.

 

Yet, we (all humans) still manage to bank on our innate fears of the different to fight "religious" wars...

Sad, ain't it ?

 

Now, the visceral hatred of Hindhi and Islam, I know much less about, and is most likely a much more pressing problem in the modern world, than "West-Islam" tensions...

Not to forget that a sizeable part of Western Europe will be under a homegrown Muslim majority population around 2030, a lot faster than previously thought (this are documented numbers, some European politicos of the whole spectrum are already using them in scare mongering tactics, and not just the ones with right wing agendas), so the dangers of a gigantic Unified Islam confrontation against the West are just "fantasies", since in all irony, it would be against itself.

The most militant islamists only have to realize that they have already "won" (nothing can be really done about the demographic changes, whatever anyone says), if they can only wait less than a generation : they'll be in power in Germany, UK, France, Spain, Italy, etc.

Democratically so to boot

I believe some Muslims feel that people who are not "Of the book" deserve less respect than those who are. The Taliban blowing up the ancient Buddha statues in Afghanistan was another example of this.

 

Also, the fanatics seem to get really fired up when they are out of the Islamic element of the ME. I knew literally hundreds of Muslims when I worked in the KSA, and only one guy ever tried to convert me. I told him I could lose my job for discussing politics or religion, and I never heard another word about it.

 

I sometimes wonder how things would be if the European powers had left the whole area from Algeria to Bangladesh to their inhabitant's own devices instead of carving it up into colonies and then bailing out and leaving the borders they had created behind. Would this whole situation exist if there were never an India, E.Pakistan, and W. Pakistan?

 

Buddha

I sure wouldn't want to be the one guy the Indians captured alive right now. I don't doubt they'll make him wish he'd been killed, if they haven't already.

 

Well deserved, if you ask me.

 

Buddha

I sure wouldn't want to be the one guy the Indians captured alive right now. I don't doubt they'll make him wish he'd been killed, if they haven't already.

 

Well deserved, if you ask me.

 

Buddha

 

Haven't seen or read the news blurb myself, but I saw on a naval wargame list that it's rumoured the Indians have killed the Captain and "disappeared" the crew of a foreign ship suspected of launching the terrorists dinghies.

If that prisoner is still alive, he won't regret his actions for long : just enough time to "confirm" it was Pakistani sponsored (sic)

Going to get a lot worse before it gets better I fear

Well I'm going to throw in my two cents here....

 

The timing is interesting, the American's have a President Elect who has stated he will be going back after the Taliban and Al Qaida(sp?) in Afghanistan and willing to make pin point attacks into Pakistan. The Pakistani army/government has made some progress in getting some of the tribes to turn against thier former 'guests'.

Now the potential for a major confrontation with India will draw the Pakistani army to it's western border and away from the strongholds of Al Qaida/Taliban.

There's also the pressure that America is already putting on the current government of Pakistan over this issue along with numerous missile strikes in the eastern region.

I wonder if Al Qaida/Taliban didn't help train/finance Lashkar's nasty attack on India.

 

A win-win situation for Al Qaida and the Taliban....

 

 

Kelly (there's a conspiracy in everything) Crawford

Now the potential for a major confrontation with India will draw the Pakistani army to it's western border and away from the strongholds of Al Qaida/Taliban ... A win-win situation for Al Qaida and the Taliban....

 

Thats an interesting angle, for sure. But were the Pakistani forces really doing anything worthwhile in the area of the strongholds anyway?

More analysis from Stratfor

 

Pretty serious suggestions, and we should hope that he's wrong. Emphasis mine.

 

Strategic Motivations for the Mumbai Attack

December 1, 2008

By George Friedman

 

Last Wednesday evening, a group of Islamist operatives carried out a complex terror operation in the Indian city of Mumbai. The attack was not complex because of the weapons used or its size, but in the apparent training, multiple methods of approaching the city and excellent operational security and discipline in the final phases of the operation, when the last remaining attackers held out in the Taj Mahal hotel for several days. The operational goal of the attack clearly was to cause as many casualties as possible, particularly among Jews and well-to-do guests of five-star hotels. But attacks on various other targets, from railroad stations to hospitals, indicate that the more general purpose was to spread terror in a major Indian city.

 

While it is not clear precisely who carried out the Mumbai attack, two separate units apparently were involved. One group, possibly consisting of Indian Muslims, was established in Mumbai ahead of the attacks. The second group appears to have just arrived. It traveled via ship from Karachi, Pakistan, later hijacked a small Indian vessel to get past Indian coastal patrols, and ultimately landed near Mumbai.

 

Extensive preparations apparently had been made, including surveillance of the targets. So while the precise number of attackers remains unclear, the attack clearly was well-planned and well-executed.

 

Evidence and logic suggest that radical Pakistani Islamists carried out the attack. These groups have a highly complex and deliberately amorphous structure. Rather than being centrally controlled, ad hoc teams are created with links to one or more groups. Conceivably, they might have lacked links to any group, but this is hard to believe. Too much planning and training were involved in this attack for it to have been conceived by a bunch of guys in a garage. While precisely which radical Pakistani Islamist group or groups were involved is unknown, the Mumbai attack appears to have originated in Pakistan. It could have been linked to al Qaeda prime or its various franchises and/or to Kashmiri insurgents.

 

More important than the question of the exact group that carried out the attack, however, is the attackers’ strategic end. There is a tendency to regard terror attacks as ends in themselves, carried out simply for the sake of spreading terror. In the highly politicized atmosphere of Pakistan’s radical Islamist factions, however, terror frequently has a more sophisticated and strategic purpose. Whoever invested the time and took the risk in organizing this attack had a reason to do so. Let’s work backward to that reason by examining the logical outcomes following this attack.

 

An End to New Delhi’s Restraint

 

The most striking aspect of the Mumbai attack is the challenge it presents to the Indian government — a challenge almost impossible for New Delhi to ignore. A December 2001 Islamist attack on the Indian parliament triggered an intense confrontation between India and Pakistan. Since then, New Delhi has not responded in a dramatic fashion to numerous Islamist attacks against India that were traceable to Pakistan. The Mumbai attack, by contrast, aimed to force a response from New Delhi by being so grievous that any Indian government showing only a muted reaction to it would fall.

 

India’s restrained response to Islamist attacks (even those originating in Pakistan) in recent years has come about because New Delhi has understood that, for a host of reasons, Islamabad has been unable to control radical Pakistani Islamist groups. India did not want war with Pakistan; it felt it had more important issues to deal with. New Delhi therefore accepted Islamabad’s assurances that Pakistan would do its best to curb terror attacks, and after suitable posturing, allowed tensions originating from Islamist attacks to pass.

 

This time, however, the attackers struck in such a way that New Delhi couldn’t allow the incident to pass. As one might expect, public opinion in India is shifting from stunned to furious. India’s Congress party-led government is politically weak and nearing the end of its life span. It lacks the political power to ignore the attack, even if it were inclined to do so. If it ignored the attack, it would fall, and a more intensely nationalist government would take its place. It is therefore very difficult to imagine circumstances under which the Indians could respond to this attack in the same manner they have to recent Islamist attacks.

 

What the Indians actually will do is not clear. In 2001-2002, New Delhi responded to the attack on the Indian parliament by moving forces close to the Pakistani border and the Line of Control that separates Indian- and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, engaging in artillery duels along the front, and bringing its nuclear forces to a high level of alert. The Pakistanis made a similar response. Whether India ever actually intended to attack Pakistan remains unclear, but either way, New Delhi created an intense crisis in Pakistan.

 

The U.S. and the Indo-Pakistani Crisis

 

The United States used this crisis for its own ends . Having just completed the first phase of its campaign in Afghanistan, Washington was intensely pressuring Pakistan’s then-Musharraf government to expand cooperation with the United States; purge its intelligence organization, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), of radical Islamists; and crack down on al Qaeda and the Taliban in the Afghan-Pakistani border region. Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf had been reluctant to cooperate with Washington, as doing so inevitably would spark a massive domestic backlash against his government.

 

The crisis with India produced an opening for the United States. Eager to get India to stand down from the crisis, the Pakistanis looked to the Americans to mediate. And the price for U.S. mediation was increased cooperation from Pakistan with the United States. The Indians, not eager for war, backed down from the crisis after guarantees that Islamabad would impose stronger controls on Islamist groups in Kashmir.

 

In 2001-2002, the Indo-Pakistani crisis played into American hands. In 2008, the new Indo-Pakistani crisis might play differently. The United States recently has demanded increased Pakistani cooperation along the Afghan border. Meanwhile, President-elect Barack Obama has stated his intention to focus on Afghanistan and pressure the Pakistanis.

 

Therefore, one of Islamabad’s first responses to the new Indo-Pakistani crisis was to announce that if the Indians increased their forces along Pakistan’s eastern border, Pakistan would be forced to withdraw 100,000 troops from its western border with Afghanistan. In other words, threats from India would cause Pakistan to dramatically reduce its cooperation with the United States in the Afghan war. The Indian foreign minister is flying to the United States to meet with Obama; obviously, this matter will be discussed among others.

 

We expect the United States to pressure India not to create a crisis, in order to avoid this outcome. As we have said, the problem is that it is unclear whether politically the Indians can afford restraint. At the very least, New Delhi must demand that the Pakistani government take steps to make the ISI and Pakistan’s other internal security apparatus more effective. Even if the Indians concede that there was no ISI involvement in the attack, they will argue that the ISI is incapable of stopping such attacks. They will demand a purge and reform of the ISI as a sign of Pakistani commitment. Barring that, New Delhi will move troops to the Indo-Pakistani frontier to intimidate Pakistan and placate Indian public opinion.

 

Dilemmas for Islamabad, New Delhi and Washington

 

At that point, Islamabad will have a serious problem. The Pakistani government is even weaker than the Indian government. Pakistan’s civilian regime does not control the Pakistani military, and therefore does not control the ISI. The civilians can’t decide to transform Pakistani security, and the military is not inclined to make this transformation. (Pakistan’s military has had ample opportunity to do so if it wished.)

 

Pakistan faces the challenge, just one among many, that its civilian and even military leadership lack the ability to reach deep into the ISI and security services to transform them. In some ways, these agencies operate under their own rules. Add to this the reality that the ISI and security forces — even if they are acting more assertively, as Islamabad claims — are demonstrably incapable of controlling radical Islamists in Pakistan. If they were capable, the attack on Mumbai would have been thwarted in Pakistan. The simple reality is that in Pakistan’s case, the will to make this transformation does not seem to be present, and even if it were, the ability to suppress terror attacks isn’t there.

 

The United States might well want to limit New Delhi’s response. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is on her way to India to discuss just this. But the politics of India’s situation make it unlikely that the Indians can do anything more than listen. It is more than simply a political issue for New Delhi; the Indians have no reason to believe that the Mumbai operation was one of a kind. Further operations like the Mumbai attack might well be planned. Unless the Pakistanis shift their posture inside Pakistan, India has no way of knowing whether other such attacks can be stymied. The Indians will be sympathetic to Washington’s plight in Afghanistan and the need to keep Pakistani troops at the Afghan border. But New Delhi will need something that the Americans — and in fact the Pakistanis — can’t deliver: a guarantee that there will be no more attacks like this one.

 

The Indian government cannot chance inaction. It probably would fall if it did. Moreover, in the event of inactivity and another attack, Indian public opinion probably will swing to an uncontrollable extreme. If an attack takes place but India has moved toward crisis posture with Pakistan, at least no one can argue that the Indian government remained passive in the face of threats to national security. Therefore, India is likely to refuse American requests for restraint.

 

It is possible that New Delhi will make a radical proposal to Rice, however. Given that the Pakistani government is incapable of exercising control in its own country, and given that Pakistan now represents a threat to both U.S. and Indian national security, the Indians might suggest a joint operation with the Americans against Pakistan.

 

What that joint operation might entail is uncertain, but regardless, this is something that Rice would reject out of hand and that Obama would reject in January 2009. Pakistan has a huge population and nuclear weapons, and the last thing Bush or Obama wants is to practice nation-building in Pakistan. The Indians, of course, will anticipate this response. The truth is that New Delhi itself does not want to engage deep in Pakistan to strike at militant training camps and other Islamist sites. That would be a nightmare. But if Rice shows up with a request for Indian restraint and no concrete proposal — or willingness to entertain a proposal — for solving the Pakistani problem, India will be able to refuse on the grounds that the Americans are asking India to absorb a risk (more Mumbai-style attacks) without the United States’ willingness to share in the risk.

 

Setting the Stage for a New Indo-Pakistani Confrontation

 

That will set the stage for another Indo-Pakistani confrontation. India will push forces forward all along the Indo-Pakistani frontier, move its nuclear forces to an alert level, begin shelling Pakistan, and perhaps — given the seriousness of the situation — attack short distances into Pakistan and even carry out airstrikes deep in Pakistan. India will demand greater transparency for New Delhi in Pakistani intelligence operations. The Indians will not want to occupy Pakistan; they will want to occupy Pakistan’s security apparatus.

 

Naturally, the Pakistanis will refuse that. There is no way they can give India, their main adversary, insight into Pakistani intelligence operations. But without that access, India has no reason to trust Pakistan. This will leave the Indians in an odd position: They will be in a near-war posture, but will have made no demands of Pakistan that Islamabad can reasonably deliver and that would benefit India. In one sense, India will be gesturing. In another sense, India will be trapped by making a gesture on which Pakistan cannot deliver. The situation thus could get out of hand.

 

In the meantime, the Pakistanis certainly will withdraw forces from western Pakistan and deploy them in eastern Pakistan. That will mean that one leg of the Petraeus and Obama plans would collapse. Washington’s expectation of greater Pakistani cooperation along the Afghan border will disappear along with the troops. This will free the Taliban from whatever limits the Pakistani army had placed on it. The Taliban’s ability to fight would increase, while the motivation for any of the Taliban to enter talks — as Afghan President Hamid Karzai has suggested — would decline. U.S. forces, already stretched to the limit, would face an increasingly difficult situation, while pressure on al Qaeda in the tribal areas would decrease.

 

Now, step back and consider the situation the Mumbai attackers have created. First, the Indian government faces an internal political crisis driving it toward a confrontation it didn’t plan on. Second, the minimum Pakistani response to a renewed Indo-Pakistani crisis will be withdrawing forces from western Pakistan, thereby strengthening the Taliban and securing al Qaeda. Third, sufficient pressure on Pakistan’s civilian government could cause it to collapse, opening the door to a military-Islamist government — or it could see Pakistan collapse into chaos, giving Islamists security in various regions and an opportunity to reshape Pakistan. Finally, the United States’ situation in Afghanistan has now become enormously more complex.

 

By staging an attack the Indian government can’t ignore, the Mumbai attackers have set in motion an existential crisis for Pakistan. The reality of Pakistan cannot be transformed, trapped as the country is between the United States and India. Almost every evolution from this point forward benefits Islamists. Strategically, the attack on Mumbai was a precise blow struck to achieve uncertain but favorable political outcomes for the Islamists.

 

Rice’s trip to India now becomes the crucial next step. She wants Indian restraint. She does not want the western Pakistani border to collapse. But she cannot guarantee what India must have: assurance of no further terror attacks on India originating in Pakistan. Without that, India must do something. No Indian government could survive without some kind of action. So it is up to Rice, in one of her last acts as secretary of state, to come up with a miraculous solution to head off a final, catastrophic crisis for the Bush administration — and a defining first crisis for the new Obama administration. Former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once said that the enemy gets a vote. The Islamists cast their ballot in Mumbai.

If they were capable, the attack on Mumbai would have been thwarted in Pakistan. The simple reality is that in Pakistan’s case, the will to make this transformation does not seem to be present, and even if it were, the ability to suppress terror attacks isn’t there.

 

The author assumes that with the Pakistani powers that be ability to stop attacks, there would be a will to do so. Not much more uncertain than that, is there ?

 

This would definitely make it even more "interesting" than it already is for our troops in rotation in Kandahar.

This will be an interesting situation to see how the fallout plays itself out. Seeing reports on Yahoo that the United States passed along a warning recently about a waterboarn terrorist attack on the city of Mumbai.

 

Maybe both Pakistan and India governments won't survive this episode....