An obvious question for India, which springs up again on the disclosures of WikiLeaks — whether there will be any major change in US President Barack Obama’s Pak or AfPak policy — perhaps becomes redundant, as there is probably nothing in WikiLeaks about Pakistan that is not known to those in the American establishment who are dealing with these affairs.
As far as India is concerned, while WikiLeaks, like its maiden version, has no surprises, they only accentuate its apprehensions about Pakistan. And particularly so in view of Pakistan Army Chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, not supporting President Asif Ali Zardari’s plan to adopt a “no-first-use” nuclear weapon policy, as revealed vide a secret US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks.
As reported in this daily, although the cable from former US ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson said Gen. Kayani “remained silent on the subject”, the Pakistan Army Chief “does not support President Zardari’s statement last year to the Indian press that Pakistan would adopt a ‘no-first-use’ policy on nuclear weapons”. Despite increasing financial constraints “we believe that the military is proceeding with an expansion of both its growing strategic weapons and missile programmes,” it added. “We should recognise Pakistani casualties in the fight against militants, praise General Kayani’s support for the democratic government in Islamabad, reiterate US commitment to support Pakistan, and thank him for agreeing to send his intelligence chief and director of military operations to the Holbrooke/Riedel US-Pakistan strategic review meeting. We should also thank Kayani for the government of Pakistan’s effort to ensure that US/Nato continues to deliver fuel and dry goods through Pakistan for our forces in Afghanistan,” it said.
The last sentence of ambassador Patterson’s statement exceeds in diplomatique and is indeed ironic, in view of the large number of successful attacks on the US/Nato convoys ferrying essential requirements.
The next part of Patterson’s statement reads: “But we need to lay down a clear marker that Pakistan’s Army/ISI must stop or tacit support for militant proxies (Haqqani network, commander Nazir, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba)… Given the government of Pakistan’s surrender of Swat to local Taliban, we need to press Kayani to commit his now reluctant Army to retake the area after the peace deal inevitably fails… We should press for Pakistani prosecution of the Mumbai suspects…”
This bit may not amount to much for India considering Patterson’s earlier part of the cable and a reported “united front” presented by her successor, Cameron Munter, visiting Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani at his residence in Islamabad and both playing down the significance of the leaked dispatches.
But the fact is that WikiLeaks cables do reveal the fragility of the US-Pak relationship strained by subterfuge, suspicion and worries over the safety of Pakistan’s expanding nuclear arsenal. While Gilani said Pakistan’s national interests “would not be compromised by such mischief in any manner”, and Munter said: “Working together, we will get past the WikiLeaks problems.” So far at least, the US and Western governments seem to have deliberately played the ostrich about the serious threat of Pakistan’s feverish nuclear proliferation and the strong possibility of nuclear terrorism.
Some of the damning WikiLeaks exposes were that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the US, (a) allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organise networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, (b) hatches plots to assassinate Afghan leaders and (c) Pakistani military has acted as “both ally and enemy, as its spy agency runs what American officials have long suspected is a double game — appeasing certain American demands for cooperation while angling to exert influence in Afghanistan through many of the same terrorist networks that the Americans are fighting to eliminate.
The implications of WikiLeaks pertaining to the security status of Pakistan’s nukes coupled with significant indications about Kayani’s “differences” with Zardari and thereby the increasing probability of the former becoming Pakistan’s fifth tinpot dictator in the future, are far more worrisome for India. Because the cables clearly reinforce that Pakistani terrorist groups that might want to seize nuclear material, such as the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and the Taliban, still enjoy covert support from the military as proxy forces against India.
Shaun Gregory, a Bradford University professor who has studied Pakistani nuclear security, is reported to have said that there are multiple chinks in the country’s armour. “The military elements of this are fairly robust. But on the civilian side, where the fissile material is processed and the weapons produced, levels of safety and security are much lower.”
To obfuscate and obscure the implications of its further exposure by WikiLeaks, Pakistan’s military has again turned the screws on its media. Initial reports in the Pakistani print media following WikiLeaks read: “US diplomats described senior Indian generals as vain, egotistical and genocidal; they said India’s government is secretly allied with Hindu fundamentalists; and they claimed Indian spies are covertly supporting Islamist militants in Pakistan’s tribal belt and Balochistan.” “Enough evidence of Indian involvement in Waziristan, Balochistan” etc., read the front-page story in a leading Pakistani English-language daily and an almost identical story appeared in its leading Urdu-language daily. These fake reports, bearing the typical signature of Pakistani military propaganda machinery, were however soon retracted as not authentic. One of the dailies was quoted that it “deeply regrets publishing this story without due verification and apologises profusely for any inconvenience caused to its valued readers”. Another admitted that the story filed by a news agency about purported WikiLeaks cables disclosing India’s involvement in Balochistan and Waziristan, carried by them, and many other Pakistani newspapers, has been widely criticised as not being accurate. “The story was released by an Islamabad-based online news agency and was run by us (and some others) with the confidence that it was a genuine report and must have been vetted before release. However, several inquiries suggest that this was not the case,” the paper added. It added that when contacted, the owner of the agency and some of the editorial staff were “themselves unclear about the source of the story and said they would investigate the matter at their end.” Another daily conceded that “on further inquiries, we learnt from our sources that the story was dubious and may have been planted.”
Reportedly prompted by warnings from the US diplomats and Hillary Clinton, the Pakiatan Army launched a pre-emptive strike against the leak before it went public. A widely read English newspaper quoted a top general briefing senior journalists on December 6, as saying that Pakistan had “transited from the most sanctioned ally of the US to the most bullied ally… The real aim of US strategy is to de-nuclearise Pakistan.”
That nuclear capacity, which is a matter of great concern to India, should be so to the US too.
Pakistani officials reportedly predicted that the revelations would damage Islamabad’s ties with the outside world. Cyril Almeida, a Pakistani daily’s columnist, said: “They show just how dangerous the transition to democracy is in Pakistan, how powerful the Army is and how much clout outside powers wield.” Almeida added that the cables “lay down a public marker about just how bad relations are between the various players… It confirms that, far from being a place where any one player or institution pulls the strings, we have various power centres jockeying for power — with uncertain outcomes.”
David Albright of the US-based Institute for Science and International Security opined: “What is surprising is that the United States doesn’t have more leverage. We’re not getting enough for our money… Hiding the truth can’t be the basis for a long-term policy.”
While wider questions raised by the cables are whether the revelations will upset Pakistan’s delicate balance of power and substantial US arms and monetary aid to Pakistan, for New Delhi, reeling under a series of scams, they should be seen as an important wake-up call being reiterated. And that is that it must not remain lulled by the complacence of whatever India’s nuclear arsenal and missile capability is. There are critical deficiencies in India’s conventional weapons modernisation/replacements pr-ogramme, which must be expedited.
Anil Bhat, a retired Army officer, is a defence and security analyst based
in New Delhi