analysis: Imperatives of counter-terrorism —Dr Hasan-Askari Rizvi

Any surgical airstrike, limited war, or Cold Start will drag the region into full war. Neither India nor Pakistan can afford a full-fledged conventional war or even the kind of eyeball-to-eyeball military brinkmanship they engaged in 2001-02The post-Mumbai strategies of India and Pakistan reflect their immediate political concerns rather than long-term, coherent and shared perspectives on counter-terrorism. India is trying to extract maximum diplomatic dividend against Pakistan by activating multilateral channels and applying direct pressure. Pakistan is engaged in damage control in an extremely difficult diplomatic situation created by the Mumbai attacks.Pakistan has banned the Jama’at-ud Dawa, sealed its offices and arrested several of its leaders and activists. One wonders why the government had to wait for a UN Security Council resolution and prodding by the United States to act. Pakistan’s intelligence agencies must have enough information on the activities of hard-line and militant groups, as well as on their linkages with the Taliban. It is also well known that a good number of non-Pakhtun Pakistanis are involved in the Pakistani Taliban movement. Similarly, Pakistani agencies would know if JuD was a front for banned terrorist group Lashkar-e Tayba.The present Pakistani government and military top brass view the Pakistani Taliban and other militant groups as a major threat to Pakistan’s internal political and societal stability. This is a shift from the past when General Pervez Musharraf’s regime pursued a dual policy of taking some action against these groups but leaving them enough space to continue with their activities in a low-key manner.The present government asked the military to launch the ongoing operations against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in some tribal agencies, and the operations have made significant gains in Bajaur and Khyber. Militants were also pushed back in Swat, though they are far from being fully contained. Given that the security forces had their hands full in the tribal areas, the government did not want to open a new front against militants in mainland Pakistan.However, consensus at the international level on the involvement of a Pakistan-based group in the Mumbai attacks left Pakistan with no credible option but to take immediate action against militant groups in the mainland. These groups are transnational and use all possible means, including violence, to pursue their agenda with total disregard to the imperatives of Pakistan as a nation-state in the comity of nations. They want Pakistan to be subservient to their agenda, and do not respect Pakistan’s sovereign status and territorial boundaries.Should these movements be allowed to impose precarious foreign policy situations on Pakistan? If Pakistan is to function as a coherent and effective state, it cannot allow non-state actors to engage in violent and disruptive activities inside or outside its boundaries.Pakistan’s policymakers need to do some hard and realistic thinking on the current situation and terrorism-related issues. Indian policymakers need to do the same. They need not descend into traditional India-Pakistan polemics to deflect criticism of internal security lapses and the probability of terrorism having domestic roots.The Indian government has not blamed the Pakistani government of direct involvement in the Mumbai attacks, but maintains that a Pakistan-based group planned and executed them. This places indirect responsibility on the Pakistani government, given that it is seen to have allowed such a group to use Pakistani territory for a terrorist attack abroad.However, semi- and non-official Indian circles rarely maintain this distinction and project Pakistan as an irresponsible terrorist state. They find encouragement to adopt this position in India’s official effort to extract the highest possible diplomatic dividends against Pakistan at the international level. As citizens of a number of states were killed in the attacks, India has found it easy to mobilise support. It is interesting to note that Indian expats in the US are fully involved in the campaign to get Pakistan designated as a terrorist state and to get UN approval for Indian airstrikes in Pakistan.A review of this ongoing Indian diplomatic campaign gives a strong impression that India is more interested in undermining and isolating Pakistan at the international level to further India’s wider regional agenda rather than evolving a shared regional counter-terrorism strategy. The present strategy may meet India’s immediate domestic needs, but it does not serve the long-term need of countering terrorism holistically and effectively. This long-term objective cannot be achieved without working with Pakistan.A large number of people in India’s official and non-official circles want to emulate the United States: the argument is that if the US can launch airstrikes in Afghanistan and invade Iraq in response to attacks on its soil, India can do the same to counter terrorism originating in Pakistan.As early as April 2003, while commenting on the US invasion of Iraq, Yashwant Sinha, the then Indian external affairs minister, described Pakistan as a ‘fit case’ for Iraq-like military action because Pakistan possessed weapons of mass destruction, sheltered terrorists and lacked democracy — a charge-sheet similar to the one issued against Iraq by the US. A couple of days later, he made a similar statement in the Rajya Sabha, India’s upper house of parliament, that Pakistan should be tackled with pre-emptive airstrikes.Similar ideas are now being advocated in India that it should launch surgical airstrikes against ‘terrorist training camps’ in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and mainland Pakistan. There is also talk of trying out what Indian strategic experts describe as ‘Cold Start’ to occupy some Pakistani territory at more than one point through a coordinated, swift and massive ground and air operation. This will, it is argued, enable India to deal with Pakistan from a position of strength.Any surgical airstrike, limited war, or Cold Start will drag the region into full war. Neither India nor Pakistan can afford a full-fledged conventional war or even the kind of eyeball-to-eyeball military brinkmanship they engaged in 2001-02 as both face enormous economic challenges. Further, as both possess nuclear weapons, a conventional war could escalate into a nuclear exchange, with devastating consequences for both countries. Therefore, war is not an option.The major reason, then, why some people in India are talking of the military option against Pakistan is the tendency to overestimate India’s capacity to wage a successful war and underestimate Pakistan’s capacity to defend itself.Pakistan’s effort to control Islamic militancy will be strengthened if India provides it with some credible evidence of the involvement of Pakistani groups in terrorist acts in India. This evidence can be combined with the evidence available in Pakistan to endure judicial scrutiny of action against militant elements.Terrorism is a threat to both India and Pakistan. More people have died in Pakistan during 2007-08 by terrorists than in India by so-called Islamic Pakistan-based terrorists. Both countries need to cooperate to deal with the terrorist threat, else they will both not succeed.Further, India should also investigate its domestic sources of terrorism. There are several alienated groups in India, including a significant section of its huge Muslim population that appears to have lost confidence in the Indian political system. The sooner India recognises this reality and deals with it, the better.The imperatives of counter-terrorism, therefore, are cooperation between India and Pakistan; consistency in Pakistan’s efforts to contain militancy within its boundaries; and Indian efforts to cope with domestic sources of terrorism.

Dr Hasan-Askari Rizvi is a political and defence analyst

Is Pakistan ready for a no-first use?

Is Pakistan ready for a no-first use?

Rabia Akhtar
The POST
Dec 05, 2008

The comments on Pakistan's nuclear no first use made by President Asif Ali Zardari, Chairman National Command Authority (NCA), in his address at the Leadership Summit by the Hindustan Times, New Delhi warrant serious contemplation. Not because such vague statements are subject to various interpretations adding to the ambiguity that already surrounds Pakistan's nuclear doctrine but because it signals a departure (if it is in fact) from Pakistan's current nuclear use doctrine. Regardless of whether President Zardari's statement was intentional or unintentional, it has gained considerable attention. What needs to be addressed is whether Pakistan is ready for a declared No First Use (NFU) policy as opposed to the current ambiguity which can be termed as a No No First Use (NNFU) posture?Pakistan's nuclear doctrine rests on the pillar of unpredictability whereby Pakistan has achieved strategic parity vis-à-vis India beyond the traditional theatre of war. Pakistan's nuclear red lines are ambiguous at best leaving the adversary in disarray as to when does nuclear first strike stand warranted and that has precisely been the advantage over the decade of overt nuclearisation. The very uncertainty of a Pakistani response limits the Indian room for manoeuvre thus imposing strict limitations on New Delhi's willingness to take risks. Drawn in an asymmetric relationship with India, in the absence of negative security assurances by the international community, it seemed justified to have resorted to an ambiguous no first use posture as a measure of credible deterrence. Pakistan's ambiguity about a NFU comes from that fact that superior Indian conventional forces make the nuclear option imperative to save Pakistan in an event where India launches a debilitating conventional military attack on Pakistan. If India does not cross the un-stated but understood nuclear thresholds and continues engaging Pakistan in a peace process, then what President Zardari has stated stands its ground that we hope 'we never get to that position' of using nuclear weapons at all. As for the current strategic environment prevalent in and around Pakistan, the ambiguity about NFU is integral to Pakistan's nuclear doctrine. It stands as a viable policy and it is rational to keep pursuing it for times to come. Various factors contribute to the viability of this doctrine and its continuity as a solution in the shape of offence/defence balance to our security dilemma. First, the Indo-US nuclear agreement has raised enough controversies worldwide and according to various studies and estimates, the deal provides India the leverage to use its domestic uranium reserves for nuclear weapons build-up. Second, the statements that have originated post Indo-US nuclear agreement with respect to India's sovereign right to nuclear testing, hold considerable policy and doctrinal implications for Pakistan especially because India proposes to graduate its deterrence from a minimum position once it acquires a significant number of nuclear weapons that are beyond the current 'minimum' stockpile. It could very well be that since Pakistan's minimum deterrence posture is relative to that of India, an increase in India's nuclear weapon stockpile coupled with its prospects of acquiring a ballistic missile defence would demand an increase in Pakistan's nuclear stockpile to manage and sustain deterrence as well as strategic parity. Pakistan since 9/11 is in a precarious position surrounded with both short and long term threats. Various threats need to be analysed which include US nuclear submarines patrolling the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) with an operational 'first use' doctrine; NATO's future role in the IOR with an operational 'first-use' doctrine coupled with US/NATO joint force presence on Pakistan's western borders. Moreover, the prospects of being sandwiched between a nuclear India and a nuclear Iran suggest an 'offensive defence' doctrine that rests on a NNFU policy. Given the rapidly changing international environment, it will only be rational that Pakistan should not revise its current ambiguity about its NFU policy at any cost. Under the prevailing circumstances, it could very well be that Pakistan might need to enter into multilateral deterrent relationships besides the existing bilateral one with India in times ahead.

The writer is Chair Department Defence and Diplomatic Studies at Fatima Jinnah Women University, Rawalpindi

Mumbai Terror: Evidence being deliberately ignored!

Strange that none of the media (TV or Print) have picked this up at all. Or have they been deliberately ignoring it?

Have a look at the above picture of one of the terrorists. [Another angle]

Notice the orange thread / band on his right hand.

Tying a red thread or cord around the wrist is a Hindu practice and it is unlikely a Muslim, especially one politicized enough to carry out an attack such as this, would observe it. I think this provides more evidence that this was a false flag operation or at least an attack by a non-Muslim group. For more information about the significance of the red thread see wikipedia and this blog post. [Thanks to Uruk]

Additionally, the terrorists inside the Nariman House Building were reported to have stocked up on supplies on Wednesday evening, buying not just food items but liquor, among other things, from a local store [Source]. Again, it is highly unlikely that a Muslim, let alone a 'Mujahid', and especially one politicized enough to carry out such an attack, would consume liquor in normal life, let alone hours before his inevitable 'martyrdom'.

Don't let them ignore it. Circulate this to as many people as you can as we strongly believe it wouldn't have been ignored if the terrorists were carrying a copy of the Qur'an, or a taveez.

KalavaFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kalava (Sanskrit: कलावा) is the sacred Hindu thread. It is worn while performing Hindu rituals like Yajna or Puja. It is tied by a priest on the wrists of all the people attending the prayer ceremony. Kalava is tied on right hand of males and unmarried females, and on left hand of married females. Sometimes it has small yellow parts in between the mostly red string. It sometimes has knots which are tied up while reciting Sanskrit mantras to invoke God and is worn to ward off evil from the person

Are Indian N-Assets Safe?

Are Indian N-Assets Safe?

Two of the crown jewels of the Indian nuclear program and a number of other sites that possibly house Indian nuclear material are a stone throw’s away from Mumbai, where ten young me infiltrated the city, patrolled its streets, killed India’s top antiterrorism official, and faced off hundreds of India’s elite soldiers for 60 hours. The question is: How safe are India’s n-assets?

By Akhtar JamalMonday, 1 December 2008.
WWW.AHMEDQURAISHI.COM

ISLAMABAD – If one is to believe the Indian claim that ten young militants engaged more than 3000 of India’s top commandoes, intelligence and police officials for 60 hours and killed 200 people in Mumbai city, then we must seriously be worried about the safety of India’s nuclear arsenal, radioactive material, and nuclear power plants. Two prominent experts on Pakistan and India today expressed their fear that if ten militants in their early twenties can hold a city of 15 million people, which houses a number of sensitive nuclear and radio-active plants, then how safe are India’s nukes. Speaking to TVOneNews program, ‘Siyasat aur Pakistan’, strategic experts Zaid Hamid and Ahmed Quraishi also warned that Hindu hawks may try to grab India’s nukes. According to reports, two of India’s most important nuclear installations are located near Mumbai. Tarapur’s two 160 MW nuclear plants are already functioning near Trombay while two more 500 MW PHWRs power plants are under construction near Mumbay itself. These two plants are designed to work as fuel fabrication facilities and are not safeguarded under the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) nor effectively protected.

India’s Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and a number of other nuclear plants and uranium conversion facilities (UF6) are also not part of IAEA safeguards. A fuel fabrication facility is also not far from the city and is considered unsafe by most accounts. What surprised India experts is the fact that militants reportedly entered the city on boats crossing the eyes of the Indian navy and marines and carried not only heavy arms but also tens of kilograms of military- standard RDX explosives. According to an article published Monday in the Washington Post, “In just minutes, Mumbai was under seige” by young gunmen. After landing, the gunmen fanned out across the city, most likely in groups of two or three. Within half an hour, they had hit about five sites: the city's main rail station, a Jewish center at the Nariman House, the Leopold Cafe, and the Oberoi and Taj hotels.

Washington Post quoted a photographer for the Mumbai Mirror newspaper, Sebastian D'Souza, as saying that, "There were armed policemen hiding all around the station, but none of them did anything,” D'Souza told reporters afterward. "At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, 'Shoot them! They're sitting ducks,' but they just didn't shoot back." Mr. Jamal can be reached at PakPressATYahoo.com

An Indian in Every Pakistani?

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Shireen M Mazari

The writer is a defence analyst

Lack of formal education and sheer ignorance does not by definition imply an innate sense of stupidity. On the other hand, formal education in itself is no guarantee of an intelligent and rational human being – just look at the American leaders over the years! As for mental stability, that has little to do with formal education or education of any sort whatsoever. What is true is that leaders who are intelligent and not overwhelmed by a sense of their own greatness and the autocratic "I", realise their limitations and seek guidance. That is why while many commentators attribute President Zardari's bizarre pronouncements very charitably to a lack of information or knowledge, the reality is that there is an ominous design in it all. After all, he is surrounded by not only his sycophants but also the whole state machinery with its bureaucrats, intelligence networks and so on. So why do statements that damage the nation in the long run continue to pour forth from the present leadership? Does no one dare to advise the president, or does he see himself as all-knowing even as he is all-powerful? Or is the reality that his advice is actually linked to a US agenda targeting Pakistan? Whatever the case, let us see if a pattern can be traced in all his shenanigans, at least in the realm of foreign and security policies where he has managed to reduce us to a collective absurdity and a vile joke. First, there is suddenly a furore over a truncated map of Pakistan that is only now being examined by a wider Pakistani audience. But the reality is that the map first appeared in the US Armed Forces Journal in July 2006, written by a retired US intelligence officer, Ralph Peters and entitled, "Blood Borders". Some of us had pointed out at that time that this was now part of the US agenda for the so-called "Greater or Broader Middle East Project", but at that time few paid notice. This has been part of the problem here in Pakistan – we never see far enough ahead and now the US design is in the midst of being operationalised and we have a leadership that has come with a seeming commitment to aid this nefarious US design of destabilising Pakistan through increasing military incursions through the tribal belt and moving beyond – and we have already had that with the US attacks on Bannu – and multiple efforts to eventually roll back our nuclear capability. Now let us look at our own leadership's antics. No one from the presidency has forcefully refuted US media claims that in September this year President Zardari gave the US a nod to continue predator attacks against Pakistan. Meanwhile, we had the "absurdity" of the president claiming that the US had not violated Pakistan's sovereignty since only aerial attacks were being conducted! Then we had the farce of the parliamentary consensus resolution on terrorism which demanded the government take action against the predator attacks. The government has so far not moved an iota on any of the substantive demands of this resolution. Instead, to make us look even more ridiculous than we already were looking, our leadership hopes that Obama will stop the attacks. Have they looked up Obama's statements and his potential secretary of state's viewpoints? From any rational perspective, given the manner in which the US is behaving it is now a hostile if not an enemy state for us, but we have that strange minister of defence continuing to state that if the US stays here for three decades it will be good for Pakistan! Does he think we will survive in any viable form after three decades of bombings by the US and the retaliatory lethal and non-discriminatory suicide attacks against this nation? But then so many of the present leadership, in keeping with past tradition, have homes and rich setups abroad. So what do they care? Parallel to our continuous conceding of ground to the US, we are also now complying with the US agenda of establishing India as the regional hegemon. If we see no threat from India and we want a nuclear-free zone in South Asia, eventually we may have a declaration by this president that he hates nukes and we will renounce ours unilaterally – that is unless the US has created enough instability to seek a UN Security Council intervention regarding control of our nuclear assets! Yes, it may seen far-fetched to some, but look how so many unthinkable developments have hit us in a short space of time – beginning right from the present occupant of the presidency itself.So when President Zardari offers a "no-first use" (NFU) of nuclear weapons to India, there is a design behind it – a US design. The problem is we have short memories and have forgotten that India has actually reneged on its limited NFU declaration it had made earlier in its overt nuclear life! When India declared its strategic doctrine and stated its intent of using nuclear strikes against any WMD threat from anywhere, it effectively adopted a "first use" doctrine similar to that of the US.As for Pakistan, given our limited conventional capability, we cannot afford to remove the ambivalence we are maintaining regarding NFU. In this we are no different from the much mightier NATO. Is it not time for our security managers and strategists to inform the president that one does not bandy about NFU offers whimsically or because one hates the idea of nuclear weapons. No one loves nukes and no one loves war – apart from Mr Bush and the neocons – but there are realities that need to be considered; and one does not bandy about strategic doctrines simply as appeasement tools. Our declared posture of nuclear weapons as weapons of last resort and a deliberate ambivalence on NFU must not be compromised. As for the idea of a South Asian Nuclear Weapon Free Zone (NWFZ), it is the Indians who have always rejected the idea, just as they rejected the zero missile idea and now with India acquiring Missile Defence from the US, we cannot continue to support notions that we floated before May 1998. Of course, if the Indians had conceded to a NWFZ and renounced their grandiose nuclear weapon programmes, their fears regarding China (or so their pretext goes) could easily have been handled in a protocol attached to the treaty similar to the protocols attached to and an integral part of the Latin American NWFZ treaty – the Tlatelolco Treaty. But all that was in the past – as was the no-war pact which Pakistan kept pushing for with India. Now all that is truly feasible in the nuclear domain with India is joint nuclear power generation and an ongoing strategic dialogue to maintain the nuclear balance. But then that is not part of the nuclear agenda of the US. The US continues to seek a rollback of Pakistan's nuclear programme as part of its long-term negative agenda towards Pakistan.As for the new, more so-called informed US media on Pakistan, it is high time they realised that our suspicions and hostility towards the US have nothing to do with illiteracy or Talibanisation – Jane Perlez's analysis notwithstanding. Instead, it has everything to do with US policies towards Pakistan. It is that simple. But our greater issue is with our leadership that seems to be hand in glove with the US. After all, we can certainly counter the predator or the impending grim "Reaper" attacks now on the cards. When will our missiles prove their worth? Or, if our military feels insecure with a direct military response, how about more simple actions easier to accomplish? Here are some suggestions: halt the transit logistic supplies; suspend high-level diplomatic relations; opt out of the trilateral commission; reduce the number of US personnel in Pakistan; take back all the bases. That should be enough to send a resolute message of Pakistani intent to the US and its NATO allies. Finally, Mr President, I have searched intensely within myself to discover a little Indian within my Baloch, Punjabi, Seraiki and Pathan heritage, but all I see is an intense Pakistani, born in the sovereign state of Pakistan. For me India is as foreign a country as any other. Sorry Mr President, but you are wrong on this count too.

Email: callstr@hotmail.com

Policy in Wonderland-Ejaz Haider

INSIGHT: Policy in Wonderland —Ejaz Haider

Mr Zardari has offered no-first-use (NFU) to India. This is new. But its newness notwithstanding, it shows he knows next to nothing about the issue and was either not briefed on it or decided, of his own bat, to charge down the pitchPresident Asif Ali Zardari’s address to the Hindustan Times Summit 2008 through video-conferencing from Islamabad reminds me of HL Mencken’s line that “Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince”.Good intentions are the stuff of poetry, but realpolitik works and survives on the basis of capability and power projection and that is the stuff of prose. The prosaic line was delivered by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, which quickly made clear that the remarks were not official and that change of Pakistani policy would have to be seen on the ground first. End of story.

Let me make the positive assumption about Mr Zardari, however — i.e., he really wants to break new ground. That’s good news. The bad news is that, like wars, the areas where some good can be done must be chosen carefully.Exhibit A: Let South Asia be a nuclear free zone (NFZ). Sure. Why just South Asia? The entire world should be an NFZ. Indeed, Article VI of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty talks about disarmament as one of the three pillars of the treaty, the other two being non-proliferation and the right to fuel cycle.But Article VI has not happened and is unlikely to consummate anytime soon unless the new US President-elect can begin to stitch back the tattered non-proliferation regime, do so without discrimination and move from non-proliferation to disarmament. Whether such is possible after the India-US civil nuclear deal is not something on which I shall wager my meagre resources.India has never pegged its nuclear capability on Pakistan, citing global reasons. That may be bunkum given its deployment patterns and force configuration but who can deny it its Foucauldian discourse which has informed its policy since the NPT came up for discussion. Over time, it has used both the nuclear capability and other sinews of national power to add value to itself. Why would it do poetry when prose has worked fine for it?Plus, this is not breaking new ground at all.

Pakistan first talked about a South Asian NFZ during General Zia-ul Haq’s time. We were of course developing our nuclear capability, as was India! We offered it, they rejected it and it was business as usual.Incidentally, on this note of history, let me pre-empt Mr Zardari on something he might also offer India thinking it is new ground — a no war pact. That too we offered India; that too was rejected. So yes, Mr President, it won’t be new.Exhibit B: First use of nuclear weapons. Mr Zardari has offered no-first-use (NFU) to India. This is new. But its newness notwithstanding, it shows he knows next to nothing about the issue and was either not briefed on it properly or decided, of his own bat, to charge down the pitch. If the first, he was obviously not briefed by the Strategic Plans Division. If the second, he needs to learn to play himself in before attacking. Let’s consider.NFU is for the birds, Mr President. Even India, which began with a declaratory NFU policy has let it drop quietly. Our nuclear capability and first use had rather simple premises. We needed the weapons capability because we were/are conventionally inferior. That being the case, we needed to, and still do, project the capability and the will to use it — and do so first and early into a conflict.But this still does not solve the problem of NFU. So here goes.

NFU is insubstantial in military terms unless it can be verified. Since Indian and Pakistani capabilities remain opaque, it is impossible to verify that the forces on one or both sides are configured for an NFU policy.Simply declaring NFU intent is merely a political statement. While nuclear weapons have a political purpose, they are also military weapons. Indeed, it is the military side — projection of capability and the will to use it — that allows a nuclear-weapon state to draw political mileage out of them.But if verification that a force is configured for NFU is important for the policy declaration to have any military meaning, are there any parameters through which this can be achieved?Li Bin, a Chinese expert, has presented five important parameters through which a state can project its NFU intent and which can be verified by rival states: the size of the nuclear force; the composition of that force; the number of warheads on each missile; the accuracy of nuclear weapons (whether counter-value or counter-force targeting); and the strength of the conventional forces. (For a detailed discussion of these points see Ejaz Haider, “First use and nuclear risk-reduction”; Daily Times, June 22, 2004.)Let it be said, however, that I raise the above points and objections strictly within the ambit of nuclear strategy and to show that Mr Zardari talked about a non-issue. Both Pakistan and India now face other forms of threats that need to be countered and they require cooperative strategies. It would be more useful, while nuclear weapons hold the inter-state balance, to offer concrete and workable proposals in those areas. Exhibit C: Mr Zardari also expressed the desire to trade with India and said that he looked forward to an economic union. No one can contend against the idea of trade per se. That, therefore, is not the issue. There was a time Pakistan used non-economic arguments to shoot down trade with India. Now there is a rush, without looking into what can be traded and to what extent and end, to trade. It has become a shibboleth.

I cannot do better than to draw the president’s and the government’s attention to work done in the area by Moeed Yusuf and his colleagues. See Yusuf, “Peace trade-off?” Daily Times, November 20, 2006; Yusuf, “Using Trade as a Driver of Peace: Prospects in the Indo-Pak Context,” Criterion, Vol 2, No 3, July-September 2007; Khan, Shaheen and Yusuf, “Managing Conflict through Trade: The Case of Pakistan and India” in Regional Trade Integration and Conflict Resolution: Southern Perspectives, Shaheen Rafi Khan, ed. (London, Routledge, 2008); Khan, Yusuf, Bokhari, and Aziz, “Quantifying Informal Trade Between Pakistan and India” in The Challenges and Potential of Pakistan-India Trade, Naqvi and Schuler, eds. (Washington, DC, The World Bank, 2007). This is an area that, more than good intentions, requires solid work. There are other economists who strongly favour trade. At the minimum there should be informed debate on the issue. And that brings me to the conclusion.The last time Pakistan tried its hand at a coherent national security policy was with the 1976 White Paper. Since then there has been no attempt to formulate a coherent NSP and/or set down some mechanism to review it annually, biennially or quinquennially etc. New opportunities and dangers have emerged; the world has changed in many ways. Yet, we trundle along like we are sleepwalking through all this.Mr Zardari will do the country much good if he could get down to the task of doing this review which could then become a basis for policies in various areas.As the situation stands, here’s an offering from Alice in Wonderland, the dialogue between Alice and the Cheshire Cat:“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. “I don’t much care where –” said Alice.“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

Ejaz Haider is Consulting Editor of The Friday Times and Op-Ed Editor of Daily Times. He can be reached at sapper@dailytimes.com.pk

Nuclear South Asia

Daily Times 25 Nov. 2008