What Would India Do If Pakistan Plunges Into Civil War

How Will India Respond To Civil War In Pakistan? -- Sunil Dasgupta, East Asia Forum/UMBC and Brookings Institution

In 1971, India intervened militarily on behalf of Bengalis in the civil war in East Pakistan, dividing the country in two and helping to create Bangladesh.

In 2013, prospects of another civil war in Pakistan — this time one that pits radical Islamists against the secular but authoritarian military — have led once again to questions about what India would do. What would trigger Indian intervention, and who would India support?

In the context of a civil war between Islamists and the army in Pakistan, it is hard to imagine Pakistani refugees streaming into India and triggering intervention as the Bengalis did in 1971. Muslim Pakistanis do not see India as a refuge, and Taliban fighters are likely to seek refuge in Afghanistan, especially if the United States leaves the region.

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My Comment: I agree with the author's conclusion that if Pakistan plunges into a sectarian civil war .... India would prefer to stay out. But the problem is .... and will be .... Pakistan's nuclear weapons and WMDs. If radical Jihadists are on the verge of seizing these .... staying on the sidelines may not be an option for India .... or for anyone else including the U.S..

U.S. - India Relations -- A Commentary

Barack Obama, US president, talks to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Pittsburgh, where leader agreed to give emerging economies a greater role. Photo: Getty

Obama Is Ruining India’s Security Climate -- The Pioneer

He may not relish the comparison but it is now becoming increasingly obvious that Mr Barack Obama is the most hostile American President for India since Richard Nixon. In the eight months he has been in office, Mr Obama has snubbed India more than once. He has sent repeated signals that New Delhi is not integral to his Asian security architecture. Partly as a result of his country’s economic crisis, he has bent over backwards to accommodate China. His open advocacy of protectionism has been most visibly targeted at outsourcing of technology jobs to India. He headlined anti-trade legislation by saying it would punish those who created jobs in Bangalore rather than Buffalo, a special mention that was extraordinarily impolitic and did not go unnoticed in India.

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My Comment: Since no one is going to publish this commentary in North America .... I decided to do so.

Two Big Victories In South Asia

From IBDeditorials:

Geopolitics: South Asia has hit two milestones bound to change the subcontinent for the better: a huge electoral victory in India and a decisive military victory in Sri Lanka. Both bring clarity, direction — and hope.

It's not often good news comes in such swift sequence. But amid a global financial downturn and the renewed threat of terrorism, two nations in South Asia took major steps to drive through the force of prosperity and peace.

India's 700 million voters came together for the first time in their democratic history to elect the Congress Party to carry on full speed ahead with India's free-market, free-trade opening to the world.

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India Is In Peril. Obama Is Making It Worse -- A Commentary

Flames and smoke gush out of the historic historic Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai on November 27, 2008, one of the sites of attacks by militant gunmen. Picture: AFP

From The Spectator:

Brahma Chellaney says that India is indeed ‘the sponge that protects us all’ from terrorism emanating from Pakistan. The new President’s strategy is compounding the Af-Pak problem

One of the most striking things about the larger Asian strategic landscape is that India is wedged in an arc of failing or troubled states. This harsh reality is India’s most glaring weakness; its neighbourhood is so combustible as to impose a tyranny of geography. Today, Pakistan’s rapid Talebanisation tops India’s concerns. After all, the brunt of escalating terrorism from Pakistan will be borne by India, which already has become, in the words of ex-US official Ashley Tellis, ‘the sponge that protects us all’.

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India’s Deft Diplomacy -- A Commentary

Indian Military Parade (From the BBC)

From Newsweek:

By resisting the temptation to respond to the Mumbai attacks with force, New Delhi has avoided a pointless confrontation with Pakistan.

On Dec. 13, 2001, a group of terrorists later found to be members of the Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Lashkar-e-Taiba, both Pakistan terrorist organizations, attacked the Indian parliament. In the ensuing battle all of them were killed along with a small handful of security personnel. In the aftermath of this attack, the right–of-center Bharatiya Janata Party-led government embarked upon a massive military mobilization along the Indo-Pakistani border designed to coerce Pakistan to comply to a set of Indian demands including the handover of at least 20 people accused of carrying out acts of terror on Indian soil. This military mobilization lasted several months and mostly yielded pious promises of compliance from Pakistan. Not a single person was handed over to the Indian authorities and the relevant terrorist groups were allowed to flourish within Pakistan with impunity, albeit under new names. The Lashkar-e-Taiba, for instance, became the Jammat-ud-Dawa.

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Memo: Don't Rely On The Brits During A Battle

From Times Online:

Never mind our colonial past. Confidence in the Armed Forces is the biggest threat to the special relationship.

Tony Blair used to say that the British voters wanted him to have a Love Actually moment - and tell the President of the United States to get lost, as the Prime Minister played by Hugh Grant does in the film. As Barack Obama prepares to move into the White House, Gordon Brown is more likely to find himself in a Mamma Mia! situation. He is one of several people competing to be the political equivalent of the father of the bride.

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My Comment: The British failure in Basra, Iraq .... coupled with their inability to control their part of Southern Afghanistan .... has resulted in having the British military lose respect and reliability in the eyes of their allies.

Robert Gates is only voicing what many are not saying in public.

India's 'Other' Terrorism -- A Commentary

From Times Online:

Where, after a terrible year, does Pakistan go from here? The position of President Zardari, Benazir Bhutto's widower, is weakening fast after a year in which he has failed to demonstrate political credibility or economic competence.

That of Nawaz Sharif, the former Prime Minister, is strengthening, from his stronghold in Punjab. And the army, as always, is intact and remains one of the few pillars of Pakistan still solidly upright.

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Mullah Omar's Designs On India -- Editorial

From Rediff:

Did you hear what Sitaram Yechury told the Rajya Sabha during the debate on the tragedy in Mumbai?

'With the Indo-US nuclear deal, with the strategic partnership that you are building with the United States of America, are you prepared to face the threats of Taliban and Al Qaeda reaching our shores, not that Indian Muslims will be converted but the attacks will come from outside India because you are seen as a strategic ally of the USA? Has this even entered our radar of thinking that because of this nuclear deal and the strategic relationship we are exposing ourselves to new types of terrorist threats, which did not exist in India earlier?'

First, I hope Comrade Yechury was merely letting his dislike of the United States come through. If he was sincere in what he said, doesn't that amount to handing a veto over Indian foreign policy to the likes of the Taliban?

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The Monster In India's Mirror -- A Commentary

From Asia Times:

We've forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage in Mumbai raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed us that we were watching "India's 9/11". And like actors in a Bollywood rip-off of an old Hollywood film, we're expected to play our parts and say our lines, even though we know it's all been said and done before.

As tension in the region builds, US Senator John McCain has warned Pakistan that if it didn't act fast to arrest the "bad guys", he had personal information that India would launch air strikes on "terrorist camps" in Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing because Mumbai was India's 9/11.

But November isn't September, 2008 isn't 2001, Pakistan isn't Afghanistan, and India isn't America. So perhaps we should reclaim our tragedy and pick through the debris with our own brains and our own broken hearts so that we can arrive at our own conclusions.

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Arming India Against Terrorism -- A Commentary

From The Wall Street Journal:

For three bloody days, just 10 determined killers held a city of 18 million hostage. The sheer ignominy of this fact has jolted Mumbaikars -- and Indians -- out of their fabled chalta hai (anything goes) attitude, and into a burst of citizen activism. Even Mumbai's business community has shed its habitual political timidity and filed an extraordinary public-interest lawsuit demanding that the government fulfill its constitutional obligation to protect its citizens.

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