Taliban or RAW-liban?

The Taliban have mounted major terrorist assaults in Kabul and Peshawar this week, claiming over a hundred innocent lives in just one day. The Kabul bombing targeted the U.N. because of the organization's role in organizing the country's presidential election on Nov. 7 -- a second-round runoff that insurgents have threatened to disrupt by killing election workers. The Peshawar attack targeted the Meena Bazar full of women shoppers, maximizing civilian casualties. As a result, the bulk of the loss of civilian lives occurred on the Pakistani side.

Significant differences in the organizations, objectives, strategies and tactics are beginning to emerge between the Afghan and the Pakistani Taliban with the intensification of violence on both sides of the border. The Afghan insurgents generally have shown greater concern about avoiding civilian casualties, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Unlike the Pakistani Taliban who deliberately target to maximize civilian deaths, the main targets of the Afghan Taliban have been the foreigners who they see as occupiers, not the ordinary Afghan civilians.

The long-running insurgencies on both sides of the border usually operate independently. Pakistani and Afghan Taliban leaders occasionally cooperate, but the differences in their objectives, strategies, tactics and targets point to the possibility of different sources of support and funding for the two organizations.

The Pakistani Taliban movement grew out of some of the Afghan Taliban that took refuge in Pakistani tribal areas on the border following the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan. Organizationally distinct from the Afghan group, Pakistani Taliban rose up in 2002 in response to the Pakistani army's incursions into the tribal areas to hunt down militants. In 2008, Pakistani security forces clashed with pro-Taliban militants in the tribal area near Peshawar, jeopardizing peace talks between the militants and the government. With the recent dramatic rise in horrific suicide bombings in Pakistan this year, the Pakistani military has undertaken a major offensive in South Waziristan to flush out the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan militants and stop the daily carnage in Pakistani cities and towns. There is good organization, effective planning, working supply lines, significant funding, and the fierce resistance by the TTP greeting the Pakistani military onslaught in South Waziristan, raising strong suspicions of Indian Intelligence agency RAW's involvement with the Pakistani Taliban in the current crisis.

Here's what Christine Fair of Rand Corporation thinks about Indian involvement in destabilizing Pakistan via its growing presence and influence in Afghanistan:

I think it would be a mistake to completely disregard Pakistan's regional perceptions due to doubts about Indian competence in executing covert operations. That misses the point entirely. And I think it is unfair to dismiss the notion that Pakistan's apprehensions about Afghanistan stem in part from its security competition with India. Having visited the Indian mission in Zahedan, Iran, I can assure you they are not issuing visas as the main activity! Moreover, India has run operations from its mission in Mazar (through which it supported the Northern Alliance) and is likely doing so from the other consulates it has reopened in Jalalabad and Qandahar along the border. Indian officials have told me privately that they are pumping money into Baluchistan. Kabul has encouraged India to engage in provocative activities such as using the Border Roads Organization to build sensitive parts of the Ring Road and use the Indo-Tibetan police force for security. It is also building schools on a sensitive part of the border in Kunar--across from Bajaur. Kabul's motivations for encouraging these activities are as obvious as India's interest in engaging in them. Even if by some act of miraculous diplomacy the territorial issues were to be resolved, Pakistan would remain an insecure state. Given the realities of the subcontinent (e.g., India's rise and its more effective foreign relations with all of Pakistan's near and far neighbors), these fears are bound to grow, not lessen. This suggests that without some means of compelling Pakistan to abandon its reliance upon militancy, it will become ever more interested in using it -- and the militants will likely continue to proliferate beyond Pakistan's control.

Here's another, similar view of India's involvement with the Taliban to foment trouble in Pakistan as seen by Laura Rozen in her article in Foreign Policy Magazine:

The former (American) intelligence official strongly supported the regional approach to Afghanistan suggested by US special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke. "Afghanistan is a classic power vacuum," the former official said. "Neighbors see it as point of instability to guarantee their own stability or an opportunity to score points."

While the U.S. media has frequently reported on Pakistani ties to jihadi elements launching attacks in Afghanistan, it has less often mentioned that India supports insurgent forces attacking Pakistan, the former intelligence official said. "The Indians are up to their necks in supporting the Taliban against the Pakistani government in Afghanistan and Pakistan," the former (US) intelligence official who served in both countries said. "The same anti-Pakistani forces in Afghanistan also shooting at American soldiers are getting support from India. India should close its diplomatic establishments in Afghanistan and get the Christ out of there."

"None of this is ever one-sided," he added. "That is why it was so devastating and we were so let down" when India got taken out of Holbrooke's official brief.

There are strong indications that the Indian security and intelligence establishment has finally launched the covert war in Pakistan that they have been planning for about a year. The Indian officials have been seething since last year because of their inability to "punish" Pakistan following the Mumbai terrorist attacks that they blamed on Pakistan. They shelved the idea of lightning air strikes strategy dubbed "Cold Start" against Pakistan for fear of sparking a major war. But they have continued to talk about covert actions by Indian agents to destabilize and balkanize Pakistan. Former RAW chief B. Raman has argued that India appoint a covert ops specialist as the new head of RAW. He said last December that “at this critical time in the nation’s history, RAW has no covert action specialists at the top of its pyramid. Get a suitable officer from the IB or the Army. If necessary, make him the head of the organization.”

Vikram Sood, another former top spy in India, has elaborated on Ind ia's covert warfare options to target Pakistan in the following words: "Covert action can be of various kinds. One is the paramilitary option, which is what the Pakistanis have been using against us. It is meant to hurt, destabilize or retaliate. The second is the psychological war option, which is a very potent and unseen force. It is an all weather option and constitutes essentially changing perceptions of friends and foes alike. The media is a favorite instrument, provided it is not left to the bureaucrats because then we will end up with some clumsy and implausible propaganda effort. More than the electronic and print media, it is now the internet and YouTube that can be the next-generation weapons of psychological war. Terrorists use these liberally and so should those required to counter terrorism."

K.C. Verma, a former IB official and a RAW outsider, was appointed earlier this year as the new head of RAW, regarded as one of the top intelligence agencies along with Mossad, ISI, SVR, MI6, and the CIA. This choice appears to have been made at the suggestion of intelligence hawks like B. Raman to appoint an outsider, in spite of significant resistance from within the agency. Mr. Verma has been tasked with rapidly building strong covert ops capabilities within RAW. It is not a coincidence that the terrorist attacks in Pakistan have dramatically increased since Verma took the reins of RAW.

Indians have demonstrated that they have the strong motives and the means to hurt Pakistan. They have established a powerful presence in Afghanistan along the border with Pakistan and deployed significant resources to carry out a very violent covert war inside Pakistan, and they appear to have now found the opportunity among the willing allies in the Pakistani Taliban faction in Mehsud tribe.

Given the strong probability of Indian involvement in the current crisis, the Pakistani security and intelligence establishment can not rely on counterinsurgency operations alone to stop the civilian carnage on Pakistani streets. The counterinsurgency operations must be supplemented with serious efforts to cut off support and funding for the TTP, and disrupt the Indian intelligence network operating out of Afghanistan. It will require superior intelligence and significant counter-intelligence operations, as well as an effective diplomatic offensive to put pressure on India to stop its covert war being waged on Pakistani soil.

Related Links:

CFR's View of the Taliban

World's Top Intelligence Agencies

Twin Bombings in Kabul, Peshawar

India's Israel Envy

Ind ia-Israel-US Axis

India's Covert War in Pakistan

India and Balochistan

O bama's New Regional Strategy

Webchat On Obama's New Regional Strategy

Obama's Afghan Exit Strategy

Pakistan: On the Edge of the Precipice

Oba ma's Interview with CBS 60 Minutes

Can India "Do a Lebanon in Pakistan?

20th Anniversary of Soviet Defeat in Afghanistan

Taming the ISI: Implications for Pakistan’s Stability and the War on Terrorism

Growing Insurgency in Swat

Afghan War and Collapse of the Soviet Union

US, NATO Fighting to Stalemate in Afghanistan?

FATA Faceoff Fears

FATA Raid Charades