India is increasingly coming round to the view that it is the Pakistani Army that encouraged and plotted the terrorist attack on Mumbai.
India is increasingly coming round to the view that it is the Pakistani Army that encouraged and plotted the terrorist attack on Mumbai. New Delhi is convinced that the Lashkar-e-Taiba was carrying out the military’s agenda.
While the army had gone along with general Pervez Musharraf’s "managed peace" with India, it was unwilling to support the democratic government's hope to transform relations between the former foes.
In fact, every time president Asif Ali Zardari announced radical ideas about peace with India, the military hit back. Sources believe there was a consistent pattern to this. Statements like putting Kashmir on the backburner annoyed Pakistan's powerful military establishment.
In retrospect, the signs were there for all to see. Early in the year, attempts at infiltration were noticed. By April, the Line of Control became live and firing was reported several times. This was followed by the attack on the Indian mission in Kabul, which succeeded in cooling the warmth. But Manmohan Singh and Asif Zardari met in New York and decided to continue with the peace moves.
Now, with the Mumbai attacks, the military has hit back, not just at India but at Zardari and the democratic government. The army's strategic objective was to create a situation similar to the one after the attack on Parliament in 2001, when India mobilised its troops on the border.
The Pakistani Army wants to be out of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), and so do the jihadi groups based in that deadly border region. The army would rather be diverted to the Indian border, and mobilisation of troops by India would result in that.
When that did not happen, plan B was kicked into action. A massive disinformation campaign about an imminent Indian attack and mobilisation followed. The refusal to send the ISI chief to Delhi, the hoax call (supposedly by Pranab Mukherjee) to Zardari, the alleged air intrusion and war hysteria being created there are part of the design of the Pakistani armed forces.
Much of it has worked. The army is calling the shots, the people have rallied round the military in what is projected as a national crisis. Sadly, many in Pakistan now believe that acting against groups like the Jamaat-ud-Daawa is akin to giving in to India. In all this, the Mumbai carnage has been forgotten.
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