Hare, hound & India

“We’re telling the Americans: you have to trust the ISI or you don’t. There’s nothing in between”
— ISI to American media in Washington (New York Times, April 12, 2011)

So, did the Americans finally trust the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), at least at some level, for the coup de grace which eliminated Osama bin Laden on May 2?

Given the steadily worsening state of US-Pakistan relations, this would seem highly improbable at first sight, but how else to explain what appears to be a flawlessly-executed American heliborne operation at Abbottabad, a historic garrison town deep inside the Pakistani heartland, and home to the Frontier Force Regiment of the Pakistan Army? What explanations, amongst others, can be offered for the total lack of reaction from the local Pakistani garrison even as a noisy heliborne intrusion, followed by an hour-long firefight got under way at a compound which must have been designated as a super-sensitive, specially-protected target? Or did the local garrison receive instructions to see nothing, hear nothing and do nothing even as the attack unfolded before their eyes and ears?
Bin Laden was an enemy of India, so no tears need be shed over his demise, in this country at least. In fact, it can be speculated that with his diminishing operational utility, Bin Laden might well have become a suitable pawn of sufficient symbolic significance to be offered to the Americans as quid pro quo for their withdrawal from Afghanistan, a country which Pakistan considers to be within its sphere of influence, region of strategic depth, and gateway to Central Asia.
US President Barack Obama, too, due for re-election in 2012, wishes desperately to pull America out of Afghanistan before the body-bag count brings out larger numbers of anti-war protesters and tilts the anti-incumbency scales further against him. Bin Laden’s demise has created a win-win situation for both, the US as well as Pakistan. Mr Obama can now claim, with a substantial degree of justification, that 9/11 has finally been avenged on his watch, an achievement which will undoubtedly pay handsome dividends to the Democrats in the forthcoming presidential campaigns.
The watershed moment signalled by the Pasha-Panetta talks in Washington on April 11, between ISI chief Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha and Leon Panetta, current grey eminence in the Central Intelligence Agency (and by all accounts the next defence secretary of the United States), has come full circle. Pakistan had, in effect, announced at this meeting that it was taking over the steering wheel in the war in Afghanistan, taking charge of the end game to shape it to its own interest when the Americans depart.
Discussions between intelligence agencies never find their way into the public domain, but the agenda here was leaked extensively by the ISI, with the aim of making it clear that it would henceforth place its own agenda first, and operate on its own terms and priorities, whether in Afghanistan or anywhere else. Pakistan had demanded that the future scope of the CIA-ISI activities must be formally defined and the CIA drastically reduce its activities in the country, particularly its drone operations, except with prior concurrence of the Pakistan Army. In addition, over 300 CIA operatives functioning inside Pakistan (allegedly 40 per cent of the strength) were to be withdrawn. The ISI tries hard to control America’s Af-Pak policy, giving very limited leverage to the United States with the Pakistani power centres in the ISI and military establishment. So when Pakistan’s demand for cessation of drone strikes against militants was rejected by the US, especially in respect of North Waziristan, Pakistan turned the screws in retaliation, by almost summarily expelling CIA personnel from airfields at Shamshi, Jacobabad and Pasni in Balochistan, which had been made available earlier by President Pervez Musharraf’s government as operational bases for the CIA’s force of Predator drones. Drone operations from Pakistani territory, a key component in the American strategy against Taliban, are likely to be severely affected as a result, if not terminated altogether.
The elimination of Bin Laden has to a great extent restored America’s position as senior partner in the US-Pakistan relationship. If necessary, the US can now publicly wash its hands off the whole process, pick up its marbles and go home with a justified sense of victory.
India on its part must now very carefully examine how the fallout from the Washington meeting will square off against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s effusive bonhomie towards Pakistan. The Mumbai terror attacks of 26/11 are being pushed into oblivion, and it remains to be seen how India’s latest gambit of cricket diplomacy will reconcile with the revelations made in a Chicago court by Tahawwur Hussain Rana and Daud Gilani, aka David Coleman Headley.
There is a strong revival of radical Islam in Pakistan, and any surface calm brought about by Dr Singh’s unilateral initiatives is superficial, even deceptive. The currents of fanaticism and hatred towards India run deep in Pakistan, even amongst the common people, most recently seen in the mass demonstrations in support of Mumtaz Qadri, the bodyguard and assassin of Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab who was murdered on January 4 this year. This was followed by the murder of the minority affairs minister Shahbaz Bhatti on March 2 by assassins who still remain untraced.
India on its part must never be lulled into a false sense of complacency by the elimination of Bin Laden. There should be no doubt that India will continue to remain the primary long-term target of the ISI regardless of the latter’s current preoccupations in Afghanistan. The ISI is confident it can handle both.

Gen. Shankar Roychowdhury is a former Chief of Army Staff and a former Member of Parliament