New Delhi
18 September 2006
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistan President General
Pervez Musharraf's decision to put in place an India-Pakistan anti-terrorism institutional
mechanism to identify and implement counter-terrorism initiatives and investigations
has outraged and baffled diplomats and security analysts alike. Naive and ill-advised is
how they chose to describe the joint statement that has been thrust upon an
unsuspecting nation barely a few weeks after the Mumbai serial blasts.
"Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seems to have been smitten with the Stockholm
Syndrome ever since the Mumbai blasts of July 11, in which 184 suburban train
commuters were killed by suspected members of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba, a Pakistan-
based terrorist organisation and a member of Osama bin Laden's International Islamic
Front," according to Mr B Raman, a retired additional secretary in the Cabinet
Secretariat. The expression Stockholm Syndrome, which came into vogue in 1973, refers
to a psychological condition in which a victim of terrorism, finding himself powerless in
the hands of a terrorist, starts empathising with the terrorist.
"At a time when a growing number of Western analysts and policy-makers have begun
doubting the sincerity of Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf and suspecting that he
has been playing a double role -- openly as a front-line ally in the war against terrorism
and covertly as a supporter of Pakistan-based jihadi terrorists -- our prime minister has
sought to play down the extent of Musharraf's perfidy with regard to jihadi terrorism
directed against India from Pakistani territory with the help of organisations such as
Lashkar which operate under the control of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence," Mr
Raman has said.
Mr G Parthasarathy, a former high commissioner to Islamabad, wondered how anybody
could equate a country like India, which faced the problem of terrorism, with a country
like Pakistan, which sponsored terrorism. "[The move] is ill-advised," he asserted, "Four
days ago, in Brussels, General Musharraf said that violence by militants will continue till
the Kashmir issue is resolved. To pretend that [a change will happen] is naive and
misplaced." India, he reminded, faced a threat from the terrorists trained by the Inter
Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan and it was inconceivable how the ISI or General
Musharraf would "cooperate with us". Asked whether the joint initiative has come about
without help from the United States, Mr Parthasarathy said the Americans have been
making such suggestions. He nevertheless felt no initiative can deliver positive results
until there was "change in the political intention" to stop the use of terrorism.
However, there were some like strategic analyst K Subrahmanyam who supported the
decision announced by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistan President General
Pervez Musharraf in Havana. He was of the opinion that once a joint mechanism was in
place, India can give Pakistan whatever evidence India has of terrorists operating from
Pakistan. "They (Pakistan) have to now answer specific allegations and charges,"
Subrahmanyam said. "It's a step forward .... Pakistan has accepted that terrorism is a
problem between the two countries. It has accepted that terrorism exists on its own soil,"
he added.
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