Insight: As Afghanistan endgame looms, a deadly edge to India-Pakistan
rivalry
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/13/us-india-pakistan-afghanistan-insight-idUSBRE97C06M20130813
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By Frank Jack Daniel and Sanjeev Miglani
BARAMULLA/NEW DELHI, India | Tue Aug 13, 2013 7:43am EDT
(Reuters) - Pakistan-based militants are preparing to take on India across
the subcontinent once Western troops leave
Afghanistan<http://www.reuters.com/places/afghanistan>
next year, several sources say, raising the risk of a dramatic spike in
tensions between nuclear-armed rivals India and
Pakistan<http://www.reuters.com/places/pakistan?lc=int_mb_1001>
.
Intelligence sources in India believe that a botched suicide bombing of an
Indian consulate in
Afghanistan<http://www.reuters.com/places/afghanistan?lc=int_mb_1001>,
which was followed within days last week by a lethal cross-border ambush on
Indian soldiers in disputed Kashmir, suggest that the new campaign by
Islamic militants may already be underway.
Members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant outfit in
Pakistan<http://www.reuters.com/places/pakistan>,
the group blamed for the 2008 commando-style raid on Mumbai that killed 166
people, told Reuters they were preparing to take the fight to India once
again, this time across the region.
And a U.S. counter-terrorism official, referring to the attack in
Afghanistan <http://www.reuters.com/places/afghanistan?lc=int_mb_1001>,
said "LeT has long pursued Indian targets, so it would be natural for the
group to plot against them in its own backyard".
Given the quiet backing - or at least blind eye - that many militant groups
enjoy from Pakistan's shadowy intelligence services, tensions from a new
militant campaign are bound to spill over. Adding to the volatility, the
two nations' armies are trading mortar and gunfire across the heavily
militarized frontier that divides Kashmir, and accusing each other of
killing troops.
Hindu-majority India and Islamic
Pakistan<http://www.reuters.com/places/pakistan?lc=int_mb_1001>
have fought three wars since independence in 1947 and came close to a
fourth in 1999. The tension now brewing may not escalate into open
hostilities, but it could thwart efforts to forge a lasting peace and open
trade between two countries that make up a quarter of the world's
population.
"With the Americans leaving Afghanistan, the restraint on the Pakistani
security/jihadi establishment is going too," said a former top official at
India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), the external intelligence arm.
"We are concerned about 2014 in either scenario. If the jihadis (Islamist
militants) claim success in Afghanistan, they could turn their attention to
us. Equally, if they fail, they will attack in wrath."
But Pakistan, which has a border with India to the east and with
Afghanistan to the west, has concerns of its own. It sees India's expansive
diplomacy in Afghanistan as a ploy to disrupt it from the rear as it
battles its own deadly Islamist militancy and separatist forces. Vying for
influence in a post-2014 Afghanistan, it worries about India's assistance
to the Afghan army, heightening a sense of encirclement.
"I'm shocked by these allegations. Pakistan has its own insurgency to deal
with. It has no appetite for confrontations abroad," said a Pakistani
foreign ministry official referring to the Indian charges of stirring
trouble in Afghanistan and on the Kashmir border.
"If anything, we are looking at our mistakes from the past very critically.
These accusations are baseless. India needs to act with more maturity and
avoid this sort of propaganda."
Both U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry spoke
during visits to India recently of the need for New Delhi and Islamabad to
resume their stalled peace process as the region heads into a period of
uncertainty.
FULL-SCALE JIHAD
At the core of that uncertainty is the pullback of militants from
Afghanistan as U.S. forces head home.
Hafiz Sayeed, founder of the LeT, has left no doubt that India's side of
Kashmir will become a target, telling an Indian weekly recently:
"Full-scale armed Jihad (holy war) will begin soon in Kashmir after
American forces withdraw from Afghanistan."
The retreat of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989 brought a wave of
guerrillas into Kashmir to fight India's rule there.
This time the additional risk will be the rivalry between India and
Pakistan over Afghanistan itself, one that threatens to become as toxic as
the 60-year dispute in Kashmir. The LeT has said it is fighting Indian
forces in Afghanistan as well.
A senior LeT source in Pakistan told Reuters: "It is correct that the LeT
cooperates with the Afghan Taliban (insurgents) when there is a question of
attacking Indian interests."
Tensions between India and Pakistan escalated last week after five Indian
soldiers were killed close to the de facto border in Kashmir. India says
Pakistani special forces joined militants to ambush a night patrol, a
charge Pakistan denies.
Just days earlier, three men drove an explosives-laden car towards India's
consulate in the Afghan city of Jalalabad, near the border with Pakistan.
The blast missed its target and killed nine civilians, six of them young
Islamic scholars in a mosque.
It is too early to say conclusively who was behind these and other attacks,
but Indian and Afghan officials see in them the handiwork of the LeT and
its allies. Such groups have doubled their attempts to cross into
Indian-controlled Kashmir this year, according to Indian defense ministry
statistics.
The result has been the first increase in Kashmir militant violence since a
2003 ceasefire on the border, which led to a decline in attacks, partly
because Pakistan and the jihadi groups were preoccupied with Afghanistan
during this time.
In the first eight months of this year, 103 casualties in militant-related
violence were recorded in Indian Kashmir, compared to 57 in the same period
of 2012, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, a think tank.
$10 MILLION BOUNTY
LeT was founded in 1990 in eastern Afghanistan by Sayeed, a Pakistani
Islamic scholar whom India accuses of masterminding the rampage in Mumbai.
The United States placed a $10 million bounty on his head for his alleged
role in the attack, but he remains a free man in Pakistan, where he
preached to thousands last week.
Although the group has global ambitions, LeT's primary aim is to end
India's rule in Muslim-majority Kashmir. India and Pakistan each control a
part of the heavily militarized land of lakes and orchards once known as
"paradise on earth" and both assert claims over the whole Himalayan
territory.
LeT has been working this year with several other Islamist outfits to train
and push more Pakistani militants over the heavily guarded border into
India's side, a veteran LeT fighter told Reuters in Pakistan.
"Jihad is being stimulated and various militant outfits are cooperating
with each other under the platform of the United Jihad Council," said the
veteran, referring to an umbrella body.
Pakistan's new prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, came to power in May vowing to
improve ties with India and - until last week's flare-up along the Kashmir
border - the two sides looked set to resume talks. Their prime ministers
were planning to meet on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New
York next month.
The trouble is, says a retired senior Pakistani diplomat, there are
"spoilers" on both sides who are not interested in seeing a rapprochement.
In Pakistan, these include the militant groups, which he said operate
independently.
"They don't seem to be able to control other non-government actors like the
LeT. So that's the biggest worry," he said.
The Pakistan military's refusal to dismantle groups such as LeT infuriates
New Delhi and fuels hawkish demands for the kind of tough action that would
risk escalation.
The senior LeT source in Pakistan denied the group was involved in the
failed consulate strike in Afghanistan, but officials in New Delhi - citing
intelligence intercepts - said they had been forewarned about LeT-trained
hit squads plotting the attack.
Pakistan, whose intelligence agency is regularly accused of quietly
supporting Afghan Taliban insurgents, says India's aid and missions are
cover for carrying out covert operations there.
"Jalalabad was a message from the ISI in a long line of such messages,"
said an Indian intelligence official, referring to Pakistan's spy agency,
the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).
TIGHT SECURITY
Further east, on the line dividing Kashmir between Pakistan and India,
ceasefire violations are up 80 percent compared to last year, according to
India. On Friday night, the two armies exchanged 7,000 rounds of mortar and
gunfire, according to Indian media.
Anti-Indian sentiment in Kashmir provides fertile ground for groups seeking
to revive the militancy that roiled the region through the 1990s, but New
Delhi has two things in its favor.
First, despite the uptick, violence in the state is still close to the
record low it reached last year. Second, the Indian army has to a large
extent sealed the rugged, fenced and land-mined border that divides
Kashmir, leaving militants with a critically small number of cadres and
weapons.
"We cannot send jihadists into India in big numbers like in the past
because of tight security at the Indian side," the LeT source in Pakistan
said.
Speaking on the lawn of his official bungalow in the restive Indian town of
Baramulla, J.P. Singh, the police chief for northern border operations,
told Reuters the army and police had stopped most attempted militant
crossings this year.
Still, India is preparing for an influx.
"(Pakistan's) agents and their protégés, the militants, are getting
disengaged from the Afghan border and they have nowhere else to keep them
and engage them, other than to push them to Kashmir," Singh said. "Their
presence inside Pakistan is dangerous for the internal security of
Pakistan."
(Additional reporting by John Chalmers in NEW DELHI, Maria Golovnina,
Mehreen Zahra-Malik in ISLAMABAD, Abu Arqam Naqash in MUZAFFARABAD, Hamid
Shalizi and Jessica Donati in KABUL and Mark Hosenball in WASHINGTON;
Editing by John Chalmers and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
--
Peace Is Doable
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