Indian Conspiracies Collide
Pakistan is a natural land of conspiracies. With a glut of external forces dipping into what feels like an eternal power struggle, rumors of Western mischief are a dime a dozen. They also turn out to be true more frequently than usual.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates attempted to flip this impression during congressional hearings over President Obama’s war in Afghanistan. Gates described growing links between al-Qaeda and Lashkar-i-Taiba (LeT), the group behind the Mumbai attacks and allegedly supported by Pakistan’s Inter Intelligence Service (ISI).
“Al-Qaeda is providing them with targeting information and helping them in their plotting in India - clearly with the idea of provoking a conflict between India and Pakistan that would destabilize Pakistan,” Gates warned.
Meanwhile the White House has presented Islamabad with an expanded strategy to target Afghan Taliban inside Pakistan territory through the CIA and JSOC. Pakistan has so far balked. Gates could very well be correct in assessing a link between al-Qaeda and LeT, but he’s also leveraging their relationship to pressure Pakistan into action against Afghan targets like Mullah Omar and the Haqqani network.
Only then, argue American officials, would Pakistan be secure from external threats like al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and India. Except Gates has a problem.
“India is involved in the terror incidents in the country,” Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rehman Malik recently told reporters at Karachi airport. “Arms and ammunitions are being smuggled into the country from Afghanistan.”
Two days earlier Malik said truck loads of Indian arms and ammunition had been seized in the Bara region of North West Frontier Province (NWFP), and he wasn’t the first high-ranking official to make such claims. Early in November, Army spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas said a large quantity of Indian arms, ammunition, literature, and medical equipment had been recovered from ongoing operations.
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