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If that happens, Pakistan will find itself in a nutcracker. On the one side, the Indians will be threatening action — deliberately vague but menacing — along with the Americans. This will be even more intense if it turns out, as currently seems likely, that Americans and Europeans were being held hostage (or worse) in the two hotels that were attacked. If the attacks are traced to Pakistan, American demands will escalate well in advance of inauguration day.

There is a precedent for this. In 2002 there was an attack on the Indian parliament in Mumbai by Islamist militants linked to Pakistan. A near-nuclear confrontation took place between India and Pakistan, in which the United States brokered a stand-down in return for intensified Pakistani pressure on the Islamists. The crisis helped redefine the Pakistani position on Islamist radicals in Pakistan.

In the current iteration, the demands will be even more intense. The Indians and Americans will have a joint interest in forcing the Pakistani government to act decisively and immediately. The Pakistani government has warned that such pressure could destabilize Pakistan. The Indians will not be in a position to moderate their position, and the Americans will see the situation as an opportunity to extract major concessions. Thus the crisis will directly intersect U.S. and NATO operations in Afghanistan.

It is not clear the degree to which the Pakistani government can control the situation. But the Indians will have no choice but to be assertive, and the United States will move along the same line. Whether it is the current government in India that reacts, or one that succeeds doesn’t matter. Either way, India is under enormous pressure to respond. Therefore, the events point to a serious crisis not simply between Pakistan and India, but within Pakistan as well, with the government caught between foreign powers and domestic realities. Given the circumstances, massive destabilization is possible — never a good thing with a nuclear power.

This is thinking far ahead of the curve, and is based on an assumption of the truth of something we don’t know for certain yet, which is that the attackers were Muslims and that the Pakistanis will not be able to demonstrate categorically that they weren’t involved. Since we suspect they were Muslims, and since we doubt the Pakistanis can be categorical and convincing enough to thwart Indian demands, we suspect that we will be deep into a crisis within the next few days, very shortly after the situation on the ground clarifies itself.

LISA Analysis

The date 26th of November (11/26) may well turn out to be a watershed in the history of South and Central Asia because it marks a turning point in the clandestine war on Pakistan waged by India, America and Afghanistan. This war began with the invasion of Afghanistan in November 2001. Seven years later, the occupation forces are far from being in control. But it has taken that long for the people of Pakistan to realise that America has been in control all these years. The thousands of servicemen and civilians killed were hit either by American missiles or by ‘suicide bombers’ recruited by the Afghan Intelligence, operationally under the control of India’s RAW, and paid for by the CIA.

Now that the cat is out of the bag, the clandestine operations against Pakistan are not so clandestine any more. The military strategy as well as the overall strategy is being changed. The military strategy is to reinforce the troops in Afghanistan (on the pattern of the ‘surge’ in Iraq), intensify operations on both side of Afghan-Pakistan border, declare victory and withdraw the bulk of the troops from Afghanistan leaving India in charge. India has sent about 15,000 combat troops to Afghanistan but it is dragging its feet on sending more. Among the several objectives that the USA want to achieve from 11/26 is to get India involved in a war on Pakistan’s soil. India has reasons to hesitate.

1. India has been engaged in three types of internal wars ever since it came into existence in 1947: 1) a caste war, 2) a class war, 3) a war on members of minority faiths – Muslims, Christians and the Sikhs. All these wars have become hotter after the rise of the BJP and 9/11. It is not because of any ideological or physical link; it is because of the aggressiveness of the Hindutva ideology and the audacity of 9/11. India had been able to use low castes in pogroms against the poor people of minority faiths. Not any more. The poor classes, the lower castes, and minority faiths now realise that their enemy is the same. The residents and occupants of the posh houses and hotels on the marine drive of south Mumbai represents the enemy. Many in India mourned but many more were secretly pleased. The Indian state is run by the upper class upper castes but not every soldier, policeman or civil servant is from the upper crust. India was frozen into inaction not merely by the audacity of the attack but also by doubts who it could trust? Despite clear evidence that every one of the attackers was Indian, the Government chose to blame Pakistan hoping that the people of India will unite in hate for Pakistan. But India is more petrified than vengeful. The ruling castes/class always feared but hoped that would never happen. More important, India’s foreign friends understand it even less. Strategic blunders are not just possible but are very likely.

2. Pakistan has just had a regime change. The new government is of secular political parties eager to please both America and India. It is intensely despised for not standing up to the US and to India to protect Pakistan’s interests. The attack on Marriot Hotel was carried out by RAW but the government did not make the information public. India has denied Pakistan its rights on water of Rivers Sutlej, Ravi, Chenab and Jhelum but the Zardari regime has not even made a protest. If Pakistan is bombed more aggressively by the USA as suggested in the STRATFOR analysis, the people are not going to wait for the next elections to get rid of the Zardari regime. Armed cadres that exist in every province of Pakistan will take the law into their hands. A revolution is likely to fill the vacuum that emerges from Pakistan becoming a ‘failed state’. Those who hope that Pakistan would break up would be disappointed. Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq broke up despite the wishes of the occupiers. The unity among the people in Pakistan is much stronger than those two countries. If the armed forces and the Banking System survived the revolution, Pakistan will emerge stronger and united. And Revolutions recognise no borders. It is India that may break up because the atrophy of the society in that country is much more advanced.

3. India has made its continued occupation of Muslim majority state of Jammu and Kashmir a matter of honour and prestige. Sikh majority Punjab and the federal state of the seven sisters of Assam (some of them with Christian majority) are next in the queue to become sovereign independent states. USA and India have raised hopes in these independence movements by supporting self-determination in Baluchistan and Pashtunistan. The situation having been unfrozen, all these freedom movements would achieve legitimate and popular objectives once the regular armed forces of both countries falter and fail as is very likely in consequence of Indo-US efforts. The Pashtun being in the vanguard of the Islamic Movement, and the secession of Baluchistan being supported by three out of fifty tribes of Baluchistan, it seems very unlikely that the US plans against Pakistan would succeed. However, it is more likely that older and more popular independence movement in India might succeed. Destabilisation resulting from Indo-US plans against Pakistan would produce results much more surprising than in Iraq or Afghanistan. Can India take that risk? The ‘Immediate’ Fights the’ Ultimate’ in South –Central Asia By Usman Khalid

The Immediate would largely conform to the STRATFOR analysis. But the Ultimate is much more interesting. If India does not reinforce its garrison in Afghanistan, America would lose interest in what India has to offer. The USA would undertake a ‘surge’ and everybody including Pakistan want it to succeed because that is a part of its ‘exit strategy’. After USA scales down its forces in Afghanistan, India will be chased out if it did not leave even earlier than the US. Pakistan will be bombed much more by the Americans as well as the ‘resistance’ in consequence of 11/26. The rest is very uncertain because the narrative would not be written by any ‘state’ but by the ‘resistance’. I mean ‘resistance’ in Pakistan that has the ruling parties – the PPP, the ANP, and the MQM – in its sights. ++