About the 4GW between India and Pakistan

Larry Kummer, Editor

15 years ago

I strongly recommend reading this analysis of the 4th generation war between India and Pakistan. This is one of the world’s great flashpoints. The last few paragraphs should send a chill down the spine of every reader.

This is an excerpt; the article deserves to be read in full. Hat tip on this to Marc Faber. Tomorrow I’ll post some of my speculation about this 4GW.

“Building war hysteria to cover up failure on home front“, MD Nalapat, Organiser, 21 December 2008 — An excerpt appears below, with background about the author and the Organiser following.

A note about the accuracy of Nalapat’s story

Much of current events lie in the realm of hidden history, revealed only a generation or two later. For instance, the military history of WWII we learned in school was largely false. The reputation of UK and US generals was trashed with the revelation in the 1970’s of Enigma (we read almost all their coded messages) and the treason of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris (head of the Abwehr, military intelligence). During the war Canaris gave the UK most of Hitler’s war plans, which they ignored.

So despite Nalapat’s distinguished reputation, his detailed account should be considered speculation. How accurate, I have no way of knowing.

Excerpt

Summary: Why did the Pakistan army make its terrorist ancillaries go this far? Clearly, the generals were determined to punish Washington for continously prodding the Pakistan army to take action against its ally, the Taliban.

Kayani wanted an Indian mobilisation. He should not get it. War is not the option, at least for the present. And it is surprising that Senator John McCain sought to generate the sort of hysteria that the Pakistan army was seeking by claiming that the Manmohan Singh government was very close to such a course.

That an attack on Mumbai was being planned within the highest echelons of the Pakistan military was no secret to the US, Saudi Arabian and Chinese secret services. The Saudi state has traditionally valued the interests of the Pakistan army above those of the 156 million Muslims of India, while the PLA has since 1958 been in favour of any action by any source that it sees as weakening India.

… Why did the Pakistan army make its terrorist ancillaries go this far? Clearly, the generals were determined to punish Washington for continously prodding the Pakistan army to take action against its ally, the Taliban. Angered by the constant US pressure to act in less than the present deliberately ineffective way in FATA, senior generals within the Pakistan services led by (the US-approved) Ashfaq Parvez Kayanidecided to take revenge on the US and its closest European ally, the UK, by choosing locations where nationals of both countries congregated, the Taj and Trident hotels on Mumbai’s waterfront. The training of the “terror commandos”, their equipping and the entire logistics of the operation was handled by the Pakistan army, acting through officers “on leave”.

The expectation within the Pakistan military was that such a show of vulnerability of their own nations would divert the attention of the US away from its focus on the western border of Pakistan to fight the Taliban towards the traditional Pakistan army project of creating a Talibanisedstate in Kashmir with US-EU help. In other words, towards a repeat of Kosovo. The Mumbai attacks would be used by the Pakistan establishment to illustrate “the cost of not solving the Kashmir issue” to the advantage of the Pakistan army, and would thus assist policymakers in the US receptive to the Pakistan army in making President-elect Barack Obama keep his promise of pressuring India to change the status quo in Kashmir.

… Fortunately for the country, Manmohan Singh’spacifist nature (which renders him unable to respond withforce even if faced with a nuclear attack) for once proved to the correct medicine, as his spokespersons made it repeatedly known that war was not on the table. A mobilisation of troops towards the Pakistan border would have played into the hands of the Pakistan army, which is eager for an excuse to move away from the Afghan to the India border, aware that its policy of talking tough against the Taliban while secretly helping them prevail in the field has become visible even to the most moonstruck admirers in the US and the EU-and these are many-of “Jehad” Kayani and his merry men.

Given the propensity of these self-proclaimed “pious Muslims” towards the hedonistic lifestyle, had the US made the UN impose sanctions on the pro-jehad generals in the Pakistan army, most would have abandoned the path of terror rather than forsake the comforts of London and New York. Sadly, rather than be reviled and shunned, “Jehad” Kayani and his team are feted by their very victims.

… War is not the option, at least for the present. … On the contrary, India needs to give upto 36 months (or 24, depending on the frequency and scale of future attacks) to Washington in that ally’s efforts to steer the Pakistan military away from its policy of helping jehadis attack India.

Should the US fail to achieve such a result during this timeframe, India should launch a war against the Pakistan army. This can be initially confined to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in the first instance, and against military targets only, including of course terrorist infrastructure.

Should Pakistan respond by retaliating against India beyond military targets in Kashmir, our counter-attack should be expanded to cover the whole country, again initially with only military targets being selected. Should the Pakistan military at any stage respond with an attack on civilian areas, an all-out offensive should be launched, designed to ensure the shutting down of rail, road, sea and air traffic in Pakistan, to demonstrate the costs of nurturing terrorists. In the unlikely event that a nuclear device will be deployed against an Indian target, the top 10 cities in Pakistan should be automatically and repeatedly bombed with nuclear weapons. Massive nuclear retaliation is the only sane response to such an escalation of aggression by the generals in Pakistan.

While India needs to hold its military fire now, the entire country must begin preparations immediately for war with Pakistan within 36 months, should US effiorts fail.

Should Washington fail to defang the jehadi beast that it still believes to be its ally rather than the single biggest present threat to international security, there would be no other option other than war for India, if the country is to avoid the deadly bleed caused by jehadist violence that has been the country’s fate since the 1980s, and which has accelerated since Sonia Maino took over its fortunes (in some senses, literally) in 2004. The public in India needs to be prepared for the prospect of a war that could see the end of Pakistan, possibly at the cost of significant destruction in India. However painful this may be, it is nevertheless preferable to suffering jehaditerror indefinitely, and this time, the war needs to end only with the dismantling of the terror camps (in the scenario where the Pakistan army responds rationally to the limited Indian offensive and conducts only a limited response) or the destruction of Pakistan as a viable country (in the event that a nuclear device get used by Pakistan). This has to be the final India-Pakistan war.

About Madhav Das Nalapat (from Wikipedia)

{He} holds the UNESCO Peace Chair and is a Director of the Department of Geopolitics at the Manipal University, an elite private university in Southern India. A one-time resident editor of the Times of India, Prof. Nalapat writes extensively on security issues and international affairs, and is a columnist for UPI. Nalapat has no formal role in the Indian government, although he influences policy at the highest levels.

About the Organiser (from its website):

ORGANISER, one of the oldest and most widely circulated weeklies from the {India’s} capital, first hit the stands in 1947, a few weeks before Partition, Edited and enriched by eminent personalities likeA.R. Nair, K.R. Malkani, L.K. Advani, V.P. Bhatia, Seshadri Chari and now R.Balashanker to name but a few, ORGANISER has come to believe that resistance to tyranny is obeisance to God.

REPEATED attempts to muffle its voice and the motivated opposition to it by some powers did not succeed.

GURUJI Golwalkar (the second Sarsanghchalak of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) once said: “For clear, straightforward, impartial views on subjects of national and international importance and for imbibing unadulterated patriotism, it is useful to readORGANISER. It will fulfil the expectations for correct guidance in all current affairs.

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