Ignore Indian Events at Our Own Peril
by Richard L. Benkin (April 2010)
For the past year, I have been saying that the
political center in India is collapsing. The re-election of the
left-center Congress Party last year only masked this inevitable decline
and had more to do with political dynamics in India and the fact that
India has remained relatively unscathed from the recent world economic
collapse. The finale might not come this year, or maybe even next;
but it is coming, and when it does it will be with an explosion heard
around the world. I was in India for just over two weeks in February,
and during that time alone noted:
• Relations with fellow nuclear power Pakistan deteriorated in a hail of
harsh rhetoric and threats such that the Obama administration sent
Senator John Kerry to try and “calm” tensions.
• Pakistan first refused to join in scheduled talks with India about the
former’s involvement in a 2008 terror attack that killed almost 200
Indians.
• A few days later, they agreed to talks only if they focused on
Kashmir—a territorial dispute between the countries that has sparked
skirmishes, continued terror and counter-terror operations, and all out
wars between the two. Like the Muslim players in the Middle East,
Pakistan refused to budge on its unreasonable demands about scheduled
talks, and the Indian government ultimately caved, resulting in talks
that were fruitless even before they began. The Obama
administration urged the Indians to acquiesce to the Pakistani demands.
• While this was happening, Islamists launched another deadly terrorist
attack, this time on Pune, a major Indian city of over 5,000,000 people,
that at last count took 13 lives and left over five dozen injured.
• Initial investigations identified the terrorists as Indian citizens,
known as Indian Mujahedeen who are committed to replacing India with an
Islamic state.
• Subsequent investigations confirmed that
fact and added that the operation likely was directed from Pakistan.
• The Indian government announced that
American Islamist David Headley gave his captors information about the
“Karachi Project” that was carried out by Pakistan’s intelligence
agency, the ISI. He said the ISI brought sympathetic Indian Muslims to
Pakistan, trained them in terrorist techniques, and returned them to
India where they were to await further instructions to carry out
terrorist attacks.
• Communist insurgents, known as
Naxalites, abducted a government official in the state of Bihar and
refused to release him until the government caved into their demands,
one of which was for the Indian government to end its, very effective,
military crackdown on the Maoist revolutionaries.
• Naxalites carried out a half dozen
military operations against the government and people of India. Among
the many terror operations were at least two of particular note. They
launched a particularly gruesome attack on an unarmed paramilitary camp
in which more than two dozen soldiers were shot or burned alive; and an
unknown number of wounded were seized and taken to undisclosed locations
as hostages. They also attacked an unarmed village in the Jamui
district of Bihar because its inhabitants refused cooperate with their
insurgency. They murdered several villagers, including some who were
burned alive when the Maoists torched homes in the village.
• Islamists carried out several terror
attacks, mostly in Kashmir, but in other areas of India, as well. The
attacks killed both civilians and military personnel indiscriminately.
• The government’s anti-terror squad
prevented another half dozen Islamist terror attacks, seizing 200
kilograms of ammonium nitrate, 600 detonators, and 200 gel sticks from
known Muslim terrorists, in one raid in Gujurat (a state that has been a
rallying cry for Islamists after violence there in 2002. The government
also detained two British nationals caught at a hotel near the
international airport with high-tech devices for monitoring and tracking
air traffic.
• Students rioted—and as of the time I
left were still rioting—at an Indian university in Hyderabad in the
South of the country At the time I left India, one student was near
death after self-immolating as part of the protest.
Imagine the media coverage if any one of those things occurred in the
United States. Yet, from what I could glean from the Internet and
other sources, it appears that our own media (except for a few journals
that ran my articles) devoted far more ink to Tiger Woods than to all of
these events combined. India is a nuclear power, as is the United
States. India, like the US, is a major target of international jihadis.
Its other primary adversary also has nuclear weapons as do many of the
United States’ foes. Both countries are among the largest and most
populous nations on earth. Both are among the world’s most important
economic powers. And both countries are critical fighters if Islamist
and communist imperialism and terror are to be defeated.
During
my stays in South Asia, I have questioned current and former members of
the military and intelligence services, as well as elected and
appointed officials on all sides of the issues. I also have spent a
great deal of time with anti-jihadi and anti-communist activists; and
even took my camera into Delhi’s bustling Connaught Place to interview
everyday Indian citizens. Americans should be troubled. More
and more Indians—as well as anti-jihadi Muslims in places like
Bangladesh—are questioning the United States' reliability as an ally in
the war against radical Islam. Indians are especially troubled over our
continuing aid to Pakistan--aid which even former Pakistani strongman
Pervez Musharraf admitted had been channeled for use against
India. Most Indians find it incomprehensible and cannot explain it
without relying on cynicism about domestic and international
politics. Moreover, the Obama administration's policies have led
most anti-Islamists to conclude that his administration would sacrifice
allies like Indian and Israel if it meant even a superficial friendship
from America's worst enemies. On the other side, active Islamists
and more importantly, Muslim leaders have concluded that they are far
more likely to wring concessions from the current occupant of the White
House than they are to face any consequences for tolerating—or even
supporting—those groups that would “love” nothing more “than another
9/11.”
Finally,
the Indian government’s embarrassingly weak actions in the crisis with
Islamist Pakistan and the Bihari state government’s caving into
communist Naxalite demands highlighted the growing gulf in the way
Indians view their current crises. While there were those who
praised the Indian government’s “statesmanship” and others who backed
the Biharis because it meant the safe release of a hostage; many more
Indians disagreed with these decisions. The latter sentiments seem to be
gaining ground in India. For instance, when Indian Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh pledged to broker the crisis with Pakistan in an
“Obama-like” fashion, it was met with little more than sarcasm and
jeers. Even the mainstream media, which is much more openly leftist
there than in the United States, treated the PM’s statement largely
with contempt. (This is the same media that screamed angry
headlines about Pakistan showing “its true colors,” during the immediate
crisis, but turned its attention to cricket as it ended to India’s
disadvantage.)
Many
in the growing opposition expressed additional suspicion about what the
government secretly agreed to give up out of weakness in its deal with
the communists. Prior to these events, the Indian government had
been conducting a harsh and rather successful offensive against the
Naxalites, who had wrested control over several parts of the
country. The communists in fact said it was the very reason for
their stepped up terror and abduction. But since these events, the
offensive has been notably absent; a situation not unlike the end to
India’s successful anti-terror offensives against Islamists in Kashmir
after heavy pressure from the Obama administration last spring.
For
most Indians, it is no longer clear on which side the United States
will be when the inevitable explosion comes. Nor is it clear to
this American.
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