SOUTH ASIA: Blasts Impact Indo-Pakistan Peace Process

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

NEW DELHI, Jul 17 2006 (IPS) - The series of eight bomb blasts that killed close to 200 train commuters in the western port city of Mumbai, on Tuesday, has impacted a peace process between India and Pakistan.

At a cabinet meeting on Thursday, India’s national security advisor M.K. Narayanan said there were grounds to suspect a Pakistani hand in the blasts. According to media reports of the meeting, Narayanan had suggested that the blasts were related to the pro-democracy movement in the neighbouring country and possibly ordered by elements within the establishment that favoured continuance of army rule.

Immediately after the blasts, a diplomatic row started up over remarks made by Pakistani foreign minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri in Washington, that apparently sought to link the long-standing dispute over the territory of Kashmir to the blasts.

“If you have these disputes, it enables negative forces in both the countries to blame the other country and exploit the sentiment and you cannot be certain (who is behind the blasts). So I think we should try and take advantage of this improved atmosphere and resolve outstanding differences, particularly the core issue of Jammu and Kashmir,” Kasuri told the CNN television channel.

Reacting, India’s foreign office called Kasuri’s remarks “appalling”. But on Thursday a Pakistani foreign ministry official clarified in Islamabad that Kasuri’s statement had been misinterpreted and that he had “emphatically and unequivocally” condemned the terrorist attack in Mumbai. ”Pakistan does not tolerate terrorism and the country is in the forefront of international efforts to fight this menace,” the official said.

“I think Kasuri shot his mouth off but he echoed the sentiments of the Pakistani establishment; many in the Pakistan government think along such lines but do not say so publicly,” Indranil Banerjie, executive director of Security and Political Risk Analysis (SAPRA), an independent thinktank, told IPS.

India and Pakistan have fought several wars over complete possession of Kashmir ever since the two countries were partitioned on the basis of religion in 1947. Wars in 1965 and 1971 failed to settle the dispute and the territory has remained divided between the two countries along a fenced and embattled Line of Control (LoC).

In 1998, both countries armed themselves with nuclear weapons and then fought an undeclared but bitter war on the LoC at Kargil, the following year. In 2002, they came to the brink of an all-out war, before finally settling down to a ‘composite dialogue process’, under pressure from the U.S. – then already leading the ‘war on terror’ in neighbouring Afghanistan, using Pakistani bases.

An important part of the peace process is a series of confidence building measures (CBMs) between the two countries which have had some success and seen the reopening of long-closed transport links across the common border and the LoC.

Banerjie said Pakistan’s involvement in the Mumbai blasts could be reasonably assumed once it is confirmed that the explosives used in the blasts were RDX-based. RDX, he said, can only be produced in designated factories. In most countries only the government and the military have access to it.

The chemical name of RDX is cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine, a white, crystalline solid, that is stable in storage but, when mixed with other chemicals, makes it one of the most powerful explosives ever known.

The police chief of Maharashtra state (of which Mumbai serves as capital) P. S. Pasricha said, going by the “style of attack” – the blasts took place in eight different trains within a span of eleven minutes – it would seem plausible that the operation had been engineered by the Lashkar-e-Toiba (Soldiers of God), a militant outfit based in Pakistan and banned by the United States for its affiliation to the al-Qaeda network.

”The blasts are likely to be related to the fact that militant groups, including al-Qaeda, now perceive India to be an ally of the U.S.,” Afsir Karim, a retired major general in the Indian army and an acknowledged expert on terrorism, told IPS.

Karim pointed out that the al-Qaeda and its affiliates have been known to be active in the neighbouring countries of Pakistan and Bangladesh and have carried out terrorist strikes in these countries as well as on the soil of close allies of the U.S. such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Spain and Britain.

Karim, however, believes that considerations other than Kashmir were behind the Mumbai attack. ”I don’t think the Kashmir dispute was what motivated the bomb blasts in Mumbai, but the nuclear deal that India has struck with the Bush Administration in the U.S.,” Karim told IPS.

In July 2005, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed an agreement with President George W. Bush that would legitimise India’s nuclear weapons and also facilitate resumption of civilian nuclear commerce, hit by technology embargoes since India first exploded a nuclear device in 1974.

Pakistan – which like India is a non-signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and a self-declared nuclear weapons state -requested a similar deal with the U.S. but was denied it by Washington because of its past record of nuclear proliferation to countries such as Iran, Libya and North Korea.

A major hurdle to the peace process, according to Indian officials, has been the failure of Pakistan to bring to a halt ‘cross-border terrorism’ that involves infiltration of jehadi elements across the border to carry out bombings and acts of sabotage, especially in the Indian part of Kashmir.

These attacks that ran through 1990s, included the March 1993 serial bombings in Mumbai which left 257 people dead, injured more than 1,500 and devastated the stock exchange in the city.

The worst of these attacks was an attempt, in December 2001, by a five-man suicide squad to blow up India’s Parliament, using a car packed with explosives while the house was in session. Twelve people, including the assailants, were killed in a gun battle that broke out as security forces engaged the heavily armed jehadis outside the house.

That attack resulted in the two countries massing troops along their common border, downgrading missions in each other’s countries and banning overflights of civilian aircraft. A thaw began only in January 2004, during a regional summit when Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf made a solemn assurance that there would be an end to acts of terrorism.

But, in spite of the initiation of a composite dialogue and the institution of CBMs, Pakistan has not delivered on its pledges, say Indian officials. For its part, Islamabad has been complaning of slow movement in resolving the Kashmir dispute.

A major sore point is Pakistan giving asylum to Dawood Ibrahim, a gangland leader who was based in Mumbai until the March 1993 serial blasts, for which he was charged by Indian courts. While Pakistan officially denies it, media reports in that country say Ibrahim is not only based in Karachi but also runs a mafia-like operation out of that port city. Interpol has issued notices against Ibrahim and the U.S. administration has declared him a ‘terrorist’.

Tuesday’s blasts have resulted in the government delaying secretary-level talks that were to have taken place this month. ”Dates will be given at an appropriate time,” said Anand Sharma, India’s minister of state for external affairs. ”CBMs and the peace process have to be reciprocal. Pakistan has not delivered on its assurance that its territory will not be used for terror against India.”

”India was participating in the peace process, in the first place, because of American pressure,” said Banerjie. ”The question now is whether India should continue talking to Pakistan in the same spirit as it has been doing so far.”