WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 (UPI) -- Behind the terrorist outrages of Mumbai's tragedy lies a simple and deeply ironic reality. It is now plain that India's deepest national interest requires it to support and strengthen the elected and civilian Pakistani government.
This is what U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tried, very carefully, to explain to the Indian government during her visit, aware that this was a hideously difficult time for her hosts to stand back from the carnage and public outcry over the 174 deaths and think the problem through.
So far, the indications are not promising. Pakistan Sunday denied a Washington Post report that it had agreed to a 48-hour deadline set by India to deliver three members of Lashkar-e-Toiba, widely blamed for the attacks. Nor does India sound at all conciliatory.
"Pakistan cannot term the terrorists operating from there as non-state actors. It will have to act tough on terrorists and terror camps there," India's Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal said Sunday.
Perhaps understandably, there have been calls in India for drastic military reprisals. At a closed meeting of one of the political coalitions in India's Parliament on Nov. 30, the Samajwadi Party is reliably reported to have suggested it was time to "bomb Islamabad!" Similar calls have been heard routinely on India's flood of cable TV stations.
There are three main problems with such an approach. First, the Indian military is being reorganized and modernized, and its current theoretical frontline strength of 40 squadrons of warplanes is in reality down to about 30, and too many of them are obsolescent Mig-21s. India probably would win a conventional war, but then what?
That brings us to the second problem. The war might not remain conventional. Pakistan is a nuclear power. Faced with defeat, and with a war giving the military great weight in decision-making, Pakistan might well threaten to use the nuclear option. One demonstration explosion somewhere in the Indian Ocean probably would suffice to force a cease-fire, and the entire international community would use every scrap of political, strategic and economic influence to urge India to accept one.
The third problem is even more telling. Suppose the war remains conventional, the nuclear option is not used and India defeats the Pakistani forces and occupies Islamabad. In its attempt to eradicate terrorist camps and bases, does India go on to occupy the whole country? How exactly does one occupy a country of 150 million people, many of them armed, militant and deeply hostile to foreign invasion? The mother of all guerrilla wars would be unlikely to go well for India.
The Pakistani government has been unable to impose its will on the most militant areas along the Afghan frontier beyond Peshawar and Quetta. The Indians are unlikely to do much better. And unless India can pacify those regions, the prospect of more terrorism in India may well be increased. Faced with Indian invasion, the Pakistani military certainly would seek to tie down Indian forces by provoking and supporting a second front in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
And while India's minority of some 150 million Muslims are overwhelmingly loyal and have shown little inclination to support Islamist extremism, large parts of the Indian army would have to remain on watch at home, just in case.
In short, there is no military solution for India. One idea that has been canvassed, for India to launch (possibly with Israeli support) a pre-emptive strike on Pakistan's nuclear arsenal and its research facilities, suffers from the same kinds of difficulties that U.S. planners have confronted when pondering such a strike against Iran's nuclear capabilities.
There is no guarantee the intelligence is perfect and the locations of all the storage sites are known. And even non-nuclear retaliation, in the form of massive terrorist attacks, would be appallingly costly and desperately damaging for the Indian economy. Moreover, China is Pakistan's ally and has been the source for much of Pakistan's nuclear and missile technology. China would not wish to see its ally crushed and humiliated and India become dominant across South Asia, and Beijing may well decide its interests require Pakistan to retain a nuclear deterrent.
But if India has no sensible military option against Pakistan, it certainly has diplomatic and economic options, to rally a maximum of international pressure against Pakistan to require it to suppress and disarm the terrorist organizations and bases operating from its soil. The problem is that this would require the Pakistani government, its military (including the shadowy Inter-Services Intelligence military intelligence arm) and Pakistani public opinion to support and pursue such a course.
And the tragedy of Pakistan is that no civilian government (nor the last quasi-military government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf) has ever had the authority to control the military and the ISI to such an extent.
That brings us back to the irony of India's real interests. India needs a stable, reliable and capable Pakistani government that commands real authority and legitimacy within the country; that means a civilian government with clear democratic credentials and public support. No other agency can be expected to govern Pakistan in such a way that the terrorists are neutralized.
India needs to work with the current government of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, who already has proposed a free-trade zone with India and seems to be trying to rein in his rogue intelligence services, replacing the Islamist sympathizer Gen. Nadeem Taj as ISI chief and announcing the closure of the ISI's shadowy political wing.
There are voices in India urging such a cooperative course. Writing in Outlook, India's top current affairs weekly, Saikat Datta urged, "This is also the time to build partnerships with those elements in Pakistan who recognize the fact that the idea of Pakistan is in greater danger from these terrorists than its declared enemies."
