Raymond Barrett

Sunday Business Post
By Raymond Barrett

Following the terrorist attack, the incoming US administration has signalled greater support for India and a shift away from Pakistan, writes Raymond Barrett in Trivandrum, India.

Condoleezza Rice, US Secretary of State, made a whistle-stop tour of the Indian and Pakistani capitals last week against a backdrop of mounting tension between the two countries over Pakistani links to the recent attacks in Mumbai, which left more than 170 people dead.

Speaking at a press conference in New Delhi, Rice called on Pakistan to cooperate fully with India in hunting down those responsible for the slaughter in India’s financial capital. ‘‘Pakistan needs to act with resolve and urgency, and cooperate fully and transparently.

That message has been delivered and will be delivered to Pakistan,” she said.

The Indian government has demanded that Pakistan extradite around 20 suspects it accuses of coordinating multiple attacks on Indian soil over the last decade.

Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari rebuffed allegations of culpability, stating that India had yet to provide hard evidence that Pakistani nationals were responsible, this is despite growing evidence that former officers in the Pakistani security services trained the Mumbai attackers for several months before the military-style operation.

Successive Pakistani governments have trained and financed militant groups. Many commentators in the Indian press derided Zardari’s statement, while also questioning his ability to control the country’s all-powerful military.

Zardari, the husband of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto – who was assassinated by Islamic militants last year – has been in office for only a few months and many experts doubt his ability to tackle extremist elements within his country’s military and intelligence services. One of the key men on the Indian government’s list is Dawood Ibrahim- a noted Mumbai underworld figure labelled a ‘global terrorist’ by the US government – who has lived openly in Karachi for the last decade. Ibrahim is the main suspect behind the bombing of the Mumbai underground system in 1993 that killed more than 200 people.

The level of impunity enjoyed in Pakistan by suspects wanted by the Indian government has been widely criticised in the Indian media. Referring to Ibrahim, the Times of India reported last week that ‘‘the don was so confident that he would not be touched by the Pakistani establishment that he had made no changes in his daily routine’’.

Rice’s visit may well be the last by the Bush administration’s senior State Department official and brings into question the effectiveness of Washington’s foreign policy towards the region over the last eight years.

Since the September 11 attacks in 2001,Washington has tolerated Pakistani-sponsored violence against India in return for ‘help’ chasing senior al-Qaeda leaders in the border regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Regional experts such as Ahmed Rashid – the author of several books on Islamic extremism – insist that Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service continues to support militant groups such as Laskar-e-Toiba, which have been linked to the Mumbai attacks, despite statements from senior Pakistani officials to the contrary.

In a book published this year, Descent into Chaos: How the war against Islamic Extremism is being Lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, Rashid describes how Washington was repeatedly misled by Pakistan over the issue of Islamic extremism.

Despite repeated criticism from Pakistani officials, militant groups have continued to operate openly and find support from within the country’s security forces.

The facts now point to a failed US policy of appeasement.

The Taliban are resurgent in Afghanistan; al-Qaeda’s two most senior figures – Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri – are still at large, presumably in Pakistan, and attacks by Pakistani-based Islamic militants in India are on the rise.

The incoming administration of president-elect Barack Obama has promised an improved policy towards the region and has already called for closer links with India, ‘‘a fellow democracy’’. At a press conference last week announcing the appointment of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, Obama signalled greater support for India and a shift away from Pakistan.

Throughout his presidential campaign, Obama differentiated himself from John McCain by insisting that the US military in Afghanistan should strike al-Qaeda and Taliban targets inside Pakistan without prior approval from the authorities in Islamabad.

Asked if India also had the right to attack targets in Pakistan he replied: ‘‘I think that sovereign nations, obviously, have a right to protect themselves’’.

It was under the watch of former president Bill Clinton that the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, funded and armed by two key ‘allies’ of the US government – Pakistan and Saudi Arabia – transforming the region into al-Qaeda’s global headquarters in the process.