50 Days - ACT NOW!

50 Days.

50 days have passed since 26/11, a blatant violation of a sovereign India and the ideas she stands for.
Increasingly it is clear, that Pakistan has been equivocating all the time and terror is a key instrument of their state polity and policy. All we have been witnessing is stalling, fudging and denials using semantics, and Oscar Worthy performances of injured innocence from a pathetic cast of cardboard crew.

Pakistan shall do as is its wont.

The pertinent question before India and Indians is: What do we, as a nation do now ?

Let us admit that we have carried our vain Nehruvian follies too far, and also acknowledge the fact that Pakistan is a hostile neighbour that is at war with us even if by unconventional means.

The state policies in Pakistan are unlikely to change towards any known benchmarks of civilization any time soon. It is a long way off from economic or socio-political stability and needs an external threat to string together its notion of nationhood and if that can weave in Islam too, so much the better since they then have a connect with Jinnah and his rationale for their nationhood. Kashmir or any issue handy would do very well, thank you.

What would a country do when at war with another?

Cease all exchanges, diplomatic, trade, cultural and raise its defences.

The defences that we need to build up in this kind of conflict would need to be built around predicting, preventing and also remedying terror. This means a completely different level of sensing, equipping, training of forces and military and political leadership.

Let us also recognize that the Taliban and Al-Qaeda stand just 450 Kilometres from Srinagar (NOT the border or LOC ) and that is a very small distance from an unconventional and toxic enemy that has the ability to recruit, arm, support and propel fighting units into our territory in any guise.
The talk of any let up in Kashmir is plain stupidity on our part.

This malignant force is fully capable of displacing civil administration in Pakistan with active collusion of state forces in any part of Pakistan and is not bound by any conventional limitations.

Let us also not discount their willing accessories in Pakistan and India in the form of the underworld and the other anti national forces operating on the principle of enemy's enemy being a friend.

Let us also recognize another key force multiplier readily available to this enemy.

The Indian underworld with is epicentre in Mumbai is an ardent facilitator of no ordinary means, that makes things possible for them. It enjoys a very high level of political patronage in India, which is obvious from the fact that we have been utterly unsuccessful in extraditing or taking out Dawood and his henchmen who remain safely ensconced in the same neighbourhood as Mr.Zardari and his gang in Karachi.

Not only that, they still manage to control a crew in Mumbai, what should essentially be hostile territory for them. It is plain common sense that these desperadoes are able to do so only because they are secure in the knowledge that they have an umbrella over them.

Isn't it ludicrous that Indian intelligence and security forces are unable to drive mortal fear into these operatives when they can easily do so for other citizens of this country? The identities of these key operatives are well known to the law enforcers who in other cases can be a law unto themselves.

Contrast this with the retrieval of Nazi war criminals by Israel from all corners in the world when it counted and subjecting them to trials in Israel.

The focus of common citizens of this country needs to be decriminalizing the politics of our country and getting rid of these hyenas who protect these desperadoes, through the ballot. This is going to be the acid test for us as ordinary Indians this coming poll.

The media needs to play a very important role in asking the right questions without fear or favour to help the public identify these treacherous individuals in the guise of politicians and public servants, who for their vested interest have been nurturing these criminals.

This is the clear and present danger.

No longer can we abdicate our responsibility and expect the rest of the system to deliver what they have been encouraging either by omission or commission for all these years.

As for dealing with Pakistan, let us not allow it to occupy undeserved mind space and
Just deal with it as we would with an enemy until it shows any serious intent of following a policy of mutual respect and accepts internationally accepted norms for responsible nations as the benchmark for its conduct.

Supporting civil movements in uncivil countries in no ones obligation and cannot be demanded as a divine right. Let them do the right things before acting righteous.

Let us also deliver a brief but mighty reminder that we shall support our intentions with actions and deliver justice to them at their doorstep if forces inimical to peace choose to engage us or our anywhere in the world through violence.
Justice too needs a calling card when the other party is deaf and delinquent.

Sacrce Sanity

Here is a letter to the editor of DAWN from a reader in Pakistan.
I hope there are more such voices in Pakistan.

Quote
Thinking outside the box


By Shandana Khan Mohmand

IF there is anything that the Mumbai terror attacks have made clear, it is that it’s time to think outside the box.

The manner in which we in Pakistan have thought, spoken and acted so far has led us here. If we want to move away from this spot, the same conventional thought process and attitude is no longer going to work. A dramatic shift is now required in the way we perceive our region and conceive our identity.

First: we need to be less defensive. There are many reasons for this, not least of which is the fact that it simply makes us look stupid. It is one thing to insist that you need more evidence in order to initiate action. It is quite another to question each piece of mounting evidence, especially in the face of a general popular acceptance of the fact that there are organisations here in Pakistan that openly purport the ideology that they are being accused of, about which we choose to do little.

Imagine this: a Pakistani organisation is so implicated in such activities that the United Nations actually sees fit to declare it a terrorist organisation, but we sit around and let it operate freely and openly until we get news of this declaration, at which point we spring into action.

What were we thinking until now? The banners hanging from most lamp-posts in Lahore for the last few weeks, asking people to contribute their “qurbani hides” to the organisation should demonstrate well the unfettered operations that this group enjoyed.

Being defensive, however, may be a hard behavioural trait to alter because it is firmly embedded even in our everyday social interactions. Mohammad Hanif , the brilliant author of A Case of Exploding Mangoes made a fantastic reference in a BBC article to “that uncle that you get stranded with at a family gathering when everybody else has gone to sleep but there is still some whisky left in the bottle” in describing Musharraf’s behaviour when he announced his coup against himself last year.

Taking this analogy further, this quintessentially Pakistani uncle has two other very familiar traits. One, he is extremely defensive about every one of his own identities — nationality, religion, sect, class, career — and has a deep distrust of all those who inhabit the realm of the “other”. And two, he resolutely believes that the only verification any fact needs is for it to be emitting from his mouth. Musharraf suffered heavily from this delusion, but so do so many of our other uncles, those in our homes, those at our parties, and those currently issuing statements on TV.

Second, we need to stop acting in a merely reactionary manner. The “if they were in our place they would have behaved in the same way” attitude isn’t going to get us very far. Many of us tried to point that out to the Pakistani government all the way back in May 1998 when India first tested its nuclear bomb.

Our government thought for about two weeks and then chose to act in exactly the same way, rather than to secure its position on the moral high horse by backing away from such childish tit-for-tat arguments and games.

Our ‘outside-the-box’ collective thinking now needs to demonstrate that though it may be true that if some other country had been in our position they may have acted with misguided nationalist bravado, we are capable of acting differently, not because it is demanded or expected of us, but because this is the right thing to do and because we take such terrorist attacks very seriously, both at home and abroad. The moral high horse may be the only thing that Pakistan can have going for it right now, and yet, even that is being squandered away by the defensiveness of those who claim to speak on its behalf.

Third, Pakistan needs to accept a very harsh reality — it is not the equal of India, and the belief that we can be compared has stunted our development no end. We cannot win a war against it, we cannot compare the instability of our political system to the stability of theirs, we cannot hope to compete economically with what is a booming economy well on its way to becoming a global economic power, and we certainly cannot compare the conservativeness of our society to the open pluralism of their everyday life.

Accepting these realities may allow Pakistan to give up its nationalistic bravado and posturing, and may actually allow it to accept its more realistic role in this region — one that requires that it live in peace with India, that it not unnecessarily provoke its wrath and that it understands that its most beneficial economic strategy would be to get in on the boom next door.

For that we need to think outside the box — outside the box of the two-nation theory, outside the box of the violence of 1947, and outside the box of the ill-conceived wars of the last six decades.

The writer is a doctoral candidate at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.

Unquote

What do we do now?

Here is what I think are our best options:

01.Cease all diplomatic and any kind of relations with Pakistan NOW.
02.Let the Pakistani people sort out their internal problems one way or another - it isn't our divine duty to help those who can't help themselves, Even god doesn't.Fortify ourselves and address our security issues immediately , while treating Pakistan as a hostile nation who has declared war on us.We could learn lessons on this from the US and others who have successfully precluded these since 9/11
03.Make sure that we eradicate the underworld threat in India which will deprive such fractricidal forces from a fertile playground. Choke their money flows and the drug trade by going for its jugular.
04.Call Pakistan's bluff by letting US deal with the Terror camps - let us not be distraction and also allay our friend's Nuclear trepidations

Wake up and smell the coffee!

A letter outlining a roadmap sent out by a business assciate and a friend and above all a concerned Indian: Manish Dhanuka

Dear All,

If Indian government really cares for the Indians and if it has any pride left, then this is the time to react. If USA can react and bomb Afghanistan and Pak borders in retaliation to the terror strikes in their country, India should immediately send a sortie of 50 Jet fighters and bomb all training camps of LeT and Jaish e Mohd, in PoK. I am confident that International community will understand the situation right now.

This will clearly give a message to the terror organisations also. We are willing to sacrifice more lives and we are willing to take more terror strikes but not without retaliation. This is a war like situation and the government must act. I suggest the following immediate measures to be taken by the government.

1. Air strikes on all the training camps, destroy them completely.

2. Use the technology, keep a close surveillance on the suspect locations in Pakistan through satellite surveillance.

3. Immediately incorporate an (Anti terror Security Organisation controlled by the Central Govt.) to be headed by the chosen officers from the Army, Navy and Air force. This organisation to have few hundred commandos ready at all times in all 25 major cities of India. This group to have power to order any state police officer including the commissioner of police. All CISF personnel guarding the security of Air Ports to be under the control of this organisation. The officers of this organization to be deployed in plain clothes at all key locations in major cities.

4. All Police stations in the country to have computerized central data storage mechanism, just like the ports. All intelligence data on the FIRs and reports to be easily accessible to the security forces.

Regards,

Manish Dhanuka