India must now be on guard against Pak jihadi provocation

By B Raman A dangerous mix of humiliation and desperation: that sums up the prevailing mood in the Pakistani Armed Forces and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the wake of the killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad by US naval commandos. For the ISI, the sense of humiliation arises from the fact that bin Laden was living undetected at Abbottabad for over five years. The international community and even large sections of public opinion within Pakistan believe that without the complicity or the silent connivance of the ISI, he could not have lived that long in that area. [caption id=“attachment_11527” align=“alignright” width=“380” caption=“The Director-General of ISI, Ahmed Shuja Pasha, tried to shift the blame for ISI’s failure to trace bin Laden on to the  Intelligence Bureau. AFP”]  [/caption] In his secret testimony before an in-camera session of the Pakistan Parliament on May 13, Lt-Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the Director-General of the ISI, tried to shift part of the blame for this huge intelligence failure on to the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the police, both of which come under the control of the Ministry of the Interior. His efforts have failed following allegations by leaders and officials of  Khyber Pakhtoonkwa province (where Abbottabad is located) that the responsibility for intelligence collection and security in garrison towns vested exclusively with the ISI and that the IB and the police had no role in the matter. For the armed forces, the sense of humiliation arises from the fact that neither the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) nor the Army was able to detect and prevent the intrusion of the US choppers into Abbottabad to kill bin Laden and their subsequent departure with bin Laden’s body and a large quantity of documents, computer material and other evidence that could ultimately help the US intelligence, inter alia, to trace bin Laden’s links with influential people in Pakistani civil society and government. The armed forces and the ISI have managed to force the political leadership into expressing its solidarity with them, despite their shocking sins of commission and omission. Yet, their credibility has been badly damaged in the eyes of the people of the country as well as of the international community. The Army and the ISI have thus far managed to avoid any out-of-house enquiry into the huge intelligence failure that could have arisen from suspected complicity of serving and retired officers of the ISI.  The only comprehensive enquiry by an independent commission to which they have agreed is into the security failure that enabled the US to conduct its spectacular commando raid right under the nose of the Army and the Air Force. Why India is vulnerable The professional reputation of the Pakistani Army, the Air Force and the ISI is in ruins. They are now desperate to salvage their severely-damaged reputation in the eyes of the Pakistani people and junior- and medium-level officers of the armed forces. There is a danger of the military and the ISI leadership concluding that without an external adventure against India, they may not be able to salvage their reputation and restore the morale of the armed forces and the ISI at junior and senior levels. The Indian government should be alert to the danger of such an adventure directed against India through the usual surrogates of the ISI such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba or the so-called 303 Brigade of Ilyas Kashmiri or other anti-India jihadi organisations. The Pakistan Army and the ISI might calculate that reviving terrorism against India in Jammu and Kashmir and beyond might benefit them in two ways. It could help salvage their reputation and restore the morale of their personnel; second, it could direct the anger of the LeT and other jihadi organisations at India rather than towards the Pakistani armed forces. The jihadi organisations appear to suspect that the spectacular raid at Abbottabad by US commandos may not have been possible without the knowledge, if not the complicity, of the Pakistani armed forces. This anger directed at the armed forces has already led to two acts of suicide terrorism by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) against a group of young recruits to the Frontier Constabulary, a paramilitary unit, on the day they completed their training at a centre in Charsaddha district of  Khyber Pakhtoonkwa province. To avoid more such attacks on the Pakistani security forces, the anger of the jihadi organisations may be diverted towards India. There is considerable anger against the US in the Pakistani armed forces as well as civil society. This anger could dilute the ability of the US administration to exercise any restraining influence over such adventurous actions directed against India. The prevailing mindset among senior Pakistani officers was evident from a reported claim by Pasha at an  in-camera session of Parliament that any Abbottabad-like attack by India would invite a befitting response from Pakistan as targets inside India “had already been identified” and a “rehearsal” carried out. It could just be bravado, but one should not minimise the danger of the Pakistani armed forces and the ISI provoking border incidents in order to give themselves an opportunity for a retaliatory strike against India. There is a need to mobilise and step up our intelligence collection efforts so that we are not taken by surprise. The US chopper-borne commando raid in Abbottabad will be studied not only by the special forces groups of other countries, but also by terrorist organisations in order to see whether similar raids could be organised on Indian territory. Indian targets that could be vulnerable to chopper-borne commando-style raids have to be identified and action taken to reduce their vulnerability. B Raman is Additional Secretary (Retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, and   is currently Director of the Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. Reprinted with permission from the Chennai Centre for China Studies.