generalspeaking

India-Pakistan Peace Accord

India, in its disagreement with Pakistan over ownership of Kashmir, has launched no terrorist raids against Pakistan. Pakistan, however, has undertaken a good number of violent covert operations against India in its zeal to displace India and claim Kashmir as its territory. The two nuclear countries came perilously close to war not long ago, and one can only hope that had it occurred it would have been a war with conventional weapons, although both own nuclear warheads.

It is not official India that conspires against the security of Pakistan, but official Pakistan that has encouraged and supported and armed unofficial violent militants to continually attack India.

There have been many small-scale attacks against Indian possessions and Hindus, by Islamist terror groups with links to Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence Agency and its military. The dreadful Mumbai attack of 26/11/08 was only the latest of the Pakistan-government-inspired attacks against India. Then came a broad-daylight ambush attack by Pakistani Islamists against visiting Sri Lankan cricket players on their way to Lahore's Gaddafi Stadium.

Cementing India's decision to postpone further peace talks with their neighbour.

The countries who have to date fought three major wars live uneasily as neighbours. The Pakistan military finally was forced to admit that it was involved with the masterminds of the Mumbai attacks that held India to ransom for 60 hours. Indian security forces were sadly remiss in their response, agonizingly tardy and neglectful of properly protecting one of their economically most vital cities.

If India is a stable democracy, doing its utmost with the infrastructure and manpower at its disposal to protect its citizens from attack by its neighbour, Pakistan can be characterized as unstable, unreliable and incendiary. The confidence building measures that the two countries had attempted to arrive at on their way to building a consensus toward a tentative peace accord was demolished by the Mumbai attack two years ago.

It is interesting to note how the two countries interact with another of their neighbours; Afghanistan. India is doing all in its power to aid and assist Afghanistan in establishing the required infrastructure to administer its vast territories, under difficult conditions.

Whereas Pakistan is known as the instigator and supporter of Taliban that have wrought chaos in Afghanistan, bringing al-Qaeda under the umbrella of protection of the Afghan-established Taliban. After their rousting by U.S. and NATO forces, along the isolated tribal border areas between the two countries.

Pakistan finds itself in a perilous state of being now that their own Taliban have risen to challenge the government for Islamist supremacy. Pakistan has been incapable of pacifying, let alone controlling its own Islamist monster.

Whether purposely and by design, or through sheer incapability aided by unwillingness, Pakistan has been unable to restrain its Frankenstein from further terrorist launches against India, and a new one has left the recently re-initiated attempts to forge an eventual peace agreement between India and Pakistan in shreds.

A popular restaurant in India's technology, educational and real estate city of Pune, was the scene of an explosion when a bomb hidden in a bag was dropped off at the German Bakery restaurant, a site obviously carefully chosen as one popular with foreign tourists and particularly Jewish and European visitors.

The restaurant was chock-full of tourists when the bomb went off, leaving nine people dead and 32 wounded. Among the dead were Sudanese, Iranian and German tourists. This was no Mumbai attack which killed 173 people, but it is a significant one.

India's Home (Interior) Minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram informed reporters that the Beit Chabad house in Pune "has been on the radar [of terrorists] for quite some time", believing that it, like the Beit Chabad house in Mumbai was slated for attack. In fact, the Indian government has installed a permanent security station at the Beit Chabad houses, indicating its clear awareness of these places as targets for attack by Islamists.

There has as yet been no statement claiming responsibility for the attack, and an investigation which will be launched will certainly have the purpose of clarifying - if no celebratory declarations of success by the group responsible occurs - precisely who was involved. Including an enquiry whether linkage still remains between the the ISI and terrorist Islamist groups such as Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT).

And if so, further talks leading to an eventual peace agreement between the two countries will inevitably be put off yet again. Likely, even without a lead between the government agencies and the terrorists Indian authorities will be loathe, given the ongoing attacks, to grant leniency of forgiveness to a country that continues to conspire against it.

Labels: India, Terrorism, Traditions

posted by Pieface @ Sunday, February 14, 2010