The Abbottabad Raid--A Lesson For India?

Last week, one or another of the assorted chiefs of the Indian armed services assured the press of the country that India could replicate the American raid which ended the career and life of Osama bin Laden.  While the statement must have sounded good in the ears of many Indians, it was one showing remarkable economy with the truth.

India has been baffled for years on how it should respond to the numerous attacks mounted by terror groups supported, trained, equipped, commanded, and controlled, and, in some cases, created by the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI.)  The default response within the realms of journalism and politics has been to demand air strikes, a limited armored thrust, general war, or, on occasion, a "covert" operations.  The default response of the government since the terrorist attack on India's parliament by Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad in December 2001 and the consequent US brokerage has been a combination of diplomatic notes and "restraint."

After the May 2002 attack by Pakistani assets of the violent political Islamic nature, the US engaged in months of coercive diplomacy with the result that then Pakistani chief of state Pervez Musharrif offered the most sincere and official assurances that never more would any terrorist operate against India from any soil controlled by Pakistan.  The assurances were guaranteed by then Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.  The government of India bought the Pakistani promises because and only because they were backed by the words of the US.

There were six more Pakistani backed terror attacks on India over the next several years, most notably the Mumbai Affair in November 2008.  In the last event, the Indian government presented Pakistan with reams of carefully documented evidence of involvement on the part of Pakistani nationals operating on Pakistani territory.  The accompanying requests for extradition of the named suspects were studiously ignored by the government of Pakistan.  So were Indian demands for investigations, reports, and judicial action.  Recently a government spokesman yawned off renewed requests for extradition as "familiar and outdated."

The Indian government has demonstrated a remarkable desire for a peaceful end to the ancient conflict with Pakistan.  The Indian president, Manmohan Singh, has invested his prestige as well as tremendous effort in this direction.  The pursuit of a peaceful end to the Kashmir conflict as well as the plethora of other matters on which Pakistan and India differ mightily has come to nothing.

Nor is it likely to do otherwise in the foreseeable future.

The Pakistan government, army, ISI, and their supporters or hangers-on in the elite need the ongoing pseudo-war with India to survive in power and prosperity.  Without the forever war against India, the current structure of government, military, spooks, and jihadists would collapse.  The greatest enemy of the status quo in Pakistan is peace with India.

While there is no reason for India to abandon the fruitless search (it helps assure good relations with the US if nothing else), the folks in New Delhi have to consider other options.  And do the consideration very, very rapidly.

No matter how the specifics of the aftermath of the shooting of Osama bin Laden play out with respect to US relations with Pakistan, there is no reason to conclude that the ISI and army will abandon the jihadist weapon in the necessary war with India.  Since the war must continue in order for the status quo to survive, it is requisite that the conflict be fought with means militating against vertical escalation.  The Pakistanis have no real desire to see escalation as such would run the very high risk of crossing the nuclear threshold.  Both India and Pakistan did learn that the risk of unwanted escalation runs high with the rapidly blooming crisis following the December 2001 parliament attack.

The Indians evidently learned more than did the Pakistanis as is demonstrated by their having continued to stay the course of pro forma protests over the run of Pakistani sponsored if not ordered terrorist outrages down to and beyond the Mumbai massacre.  The Pakistanis seem certain that India will stay with this approach into the future, so the risk of any response from New Delhi more robust than a sternly worded Note is perceived to be very low.

Unless and until the Indian government and military demonstrate the political will to mount armed responses commensurate with the provocation, there will be no end to the use of the jihadi weapon by Islamabad.  This translates into two specific actions, at least one of which would be very visible to the public at large.

The first, and most self-evidently public of these, is the creation of a legal framework which would serve to justify and make legal any Indian action, overt or covert, armed or not, directed against terrorists and their sponsors or facilitators located anywhere in the world.  This sort of act, like the American prototype, assure a patina of law for any retaliatory actions outside the "hot pursuit" paradigm.

Behind the scenes the Indian military must develop a low signature capacity for special operations of the same sort as that conducted by the US in Abbottabad.  It would also be necessary to demonstrate the new capacity publicly so as to dispel the impression of total incompetence generated in Mumbai by Indian commandos who took a vast number of hours filled with highly visible missteps to subdue the handful of terrorists.

Admittedly, the Americans by coming in the "back door" from Afghanistan had an easier task than would any Indian raiding party given that they would have to come via the heavily guarded "front door."  (One factor which seems to have eluded all of the legion which has argued the Paks had to be in on the Abbottabad operation is the simple one that very few of Pakistan's defenses, air or ground, face the direction of American penetration.)   This gives additional saliency to the contention that India must give some public show of a very high level of competence in special operations so as to obtain the necessary deterrent capacity in the estimate of the Pakistanis.

It is also stipulated that the creation and development of the necessary capacity in special operations of the Abbottabad sort will take money.  This means the Indian budget makers will have to make more tough decisions of the sort exhibited recently with the reprogramming of money from buying more aircraft carriers to supporting anti-piracy operations in the Indian Ocean.

However, it should be noted that the robust, not to say aggressive, stance taken by India regarding the pirates provides a platform for demonstrating both political will and military capability to Islamabad.  The Indian navy has taken a leading role in offensive moves against the pirates--a move which surprised many observers even though the importance of Indian Ocean maritime commerce to India is well known.  A judicious use of the anti-piracy mission will allow further development of the special operations capabilities including intelligence, command and control, coordination of assets, rapid response, and low visibility.

As new capacities are developed and firmly in place, the Indian government can make use of its assorted minor insurgencies to put a public face on them.  In a way it is to India's benefit that it has several insurgencies in progress out in the boonies; they provide both good exercise for special operators and excellent opportunity to allow adverse parties to gain a hint of what might befall them or their proxies.

In the meantime, don't brag, no matter how good the words sound in your ears--they might come back to bite you in an anatomically unpleasant location.