Indian Army troops of the famed Gurkha Rifles on parade

A flurry of reports in the Indian, Pakistani and Western media indicate that both India and Pakistan are taking serious steps to prepare for a new conflict between the two nations, which have fought three wars since 1947, in the wake of the November 26 terror attacks in Mumbai.

According to reports from both sides of the border, Pakistan has cancelled all military leaves, put its forces on high alert, and is moving troops from the west to the frontier with India.  At least two corps of Indian Army troops are also on the move in what officials called “annual exercises.”  And Indian Prime Minister met for the second time in a week with India’s top military officers in a widely publicized gathering to review “defense preparedness.”

Meanwhile, the Indian government is warning its citizens not to travel to Pakistan, and both sides are ratcheting up their war of words.  Over the past week, India has increased its pressure on Pakistan to take concrete action against the Pakistan-based groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, that India and U.S. intelligence officials believe were responsible for the Mumbai attacks.  India pointedly delivered a letter from the sole surviving Mumbai attacker to Pakistani authorities, contending that it constitutes the evidence demanded by Pakistan of the terrorists’ Pakistani ties.  But Pakistan has refused to consider the letter as sufficient proof.

The United States continues to call on both sides to avoid a conflict that could seriously harm the American-led war against the Taliban in Afghanistan by diverting Pakistan’s armed forces from west to east. A parade of high-ranking U.S. officials has descended on Pakistan and India in recent weeks, making no bones about their strong interest in a Pakistani crackdown on Kashmiri terrorists and Indian forbearance.  However, Indian officials have harshly scolded the “international community” — which in this case can be taken to mean chiefly the United States — for not doing enough to “deal effectively” with a terror threat in Pakistan that India regards as the “greatest danger” to the world.  While pushing for heightened international pressure on Pakistan, India is also laying the groundwork to be able to say it exhausted international channels to solve the problem before deciding to strike.

In what might well be a propaganda move designed to counter India’s claims about the Mumbai attackers and rally Pakistanis behind their flag, Pakistan said Thursday that it had arrested three Indian nationals for a bombing in Lahore and linked them to an “Indian spy.”  India immediately dismissed the charge as a “ploy.”

Referring to the kind of precisely targeted Indian attack along the lines I speculated about a few days ago, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani and Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi warned that Pakistan would retaliate for any such attack.  Their statements were presumably designed to convince India and others that any Indian military action — even a “surgical” strike against one or more of the Kashmiri separatist training camps located within the Pakistan-administered portion of Kashmir — would lead to a wider war.

I, for one, don’t doubt that.  The Mumbai attacks have put both sides between a rock and a hard place.  Anger over the attacks is so widespread among large segments of India’s population that India’s governing Congress Party must extract significant concessions from Pakistan of a kind that no Pakistani government, civilian or military, has ever been able to give and still survive.  There is no chance that Pakistan’s weak civilian government will arrest and extradite to India anyone associated with the attacks.  It’s even unlikely that Pakistan will directly punish lower-level militants or take serious steps to break up Lashkar-e-Taibi or Jaish-e-Muhammed.  The simple fact is that the minimum needed to placate India is more than the maximum that any Pakistani government can afford to do.

Of course, the U.S., NATO, and the Afghan government have a major stake in seeing that Pakistan’s army is not drawn away from the North West frontier, but as the stand-off between India and Pakistan goes into its second month, it’s not clear what more any of them can do to avert a clash.

I’m just guessing, but my guess is that India will launch a targeted strike sometime soon.  If so, President Barack Obama will face another serious crisis just as he assumes office.

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Above: Indian Air Force Sukhoi Su-30 MKI multi-role strike fighter

As the luxury Taj and Trident hotels prepared to reopen for the first time since the November 26th terrorist attacks in Mumbai, The Times of India reported that India is “keeping the military option alive and kicking in face of Pakistan doublespeak on the crackdown on terror.” According to the report, “a top-level meeting was held on Saturday evening to review the security situation in the region and the state of defence preparedness of the armed forces.” Similar accounts of high-level security meetings have appeared elsewhere in the nation’s press over the past couple of days. More ominously, another leading newspaper, The Telegraph, quoted “top government sources” saying that the Mumbai attacks were “the direct handiwork of Pakistan’s military that trained and armed the militants and planned the strike in detail.”

Meanwhile, on both sides of the Indo-Pakistan border, stories about apparent border incursions by air continue to appear, including an Indian report of “massive practice by Indian Air Force planes in Jamnagar” a city in western India a short jet hop from Pakistan.

This should not come as a surprise. Since the Mumbai attacks, Pakistani authorities have gone through the motions of rounding up the usual suspects associated with the Kashmiri terrorist outfits, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, that U.S. intelligence officials believe were responsible for the attacks. But Pakistan resolutely refuses even to concede that Pakistanis were involved in the attacks, much less crack down hard on the Kashmiri groups it has long sponsored and supported.

The Mumbai attacks shook Indian society and the Indian leadership to the core. Unless it gets some hard concessions from Pakistan that are politically difficult or impossible for any Pakistani government to make, India’s governing Congress Party government simply cannot afford to kick up a little dust and hope the matter will go away. It will likely lose the next national election.

Speculation about a possible Indian strike has centered on air attacks on Kasmiri separatist training camps inside the Pakistani-administered portion of Kashmir. There is no shortage of such targets. A “surgical” strike against them might satisfy India’s need to make it’s point and cause Pakistan some pain without risking escalation into a major conflict.

However, the independent intelligence analysis firm, Stratfor, points out that such strikes might be largely symbolic, since the Indian Air Force lacks the heavy bombing capability needed to do significant damage to facilities of this kind. Stratfor theorizes that India may decide to attack a key Pakistani governmental facility in Islamabad, such as the headquarters of the Pakistani intelligence agency, ISI, which India has long identified as instrumental in creating, training, arming and supporting the Kashmiri Islamist groups.

The the Indians have the resources needed for such a mission, according to Stratfor:

 

The Indian air force increasingly has been regarded as professional and capable by American pilots at Red Flag exercises in Nevada. India has modern Russian fighter jets and probably has the capability, with some losses, to penetrate deep into Pakistani territory.

Just two days ago, Stratfor confirmed its belief that India is preparing for a strike.

Hitting the ISI would send a clear, loud message. Pakistan would want to retaliate but have few serious options to do so, lacking much of an air punch. And the Pakistan military leadership might be forced to conclude that further Mumbai-style terror attacks inside India are not worth the trouble they bring.

If India is contemplating a military strike, the next week or so would be a ideal time to carry it out. The United States has been working hard to restrain India while pressing Pakistan to make tougher concessions. But the U.S. is in the midst of a government transition, and this coming week, both the outgoing and the incoming administrations will be on vacation, along with most of the rest of us. The coming holiday period may be a critical time.  

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After last week’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai, many feared India would respond by using its military to escalate tensions with Pakistan. Now, reports indicate India will take a diplomatic approach.

Because there is not substantial proof that Pakistan coordinated or sponsored the attacks, India does not want to make a move that could put the civilian Pakistani government in a difficult position. Any military action by India would likely increase the Pakistani military’s power, weakening civilian control. Additionally, Pakistan would likely respond to Indian aggression by redeploying troops from the tribal areas along the Afghanistan border to the Indian border — a move that would play into Taliban and al-Qaeda hands.

The hope is that Pakistan will fully cooperate in the investigation to uncover the ringleaders behind the Mumbai attacks. The shear brutality of those attacks should give Pakistan plenty of cause to round up the perpetrators who are likely hiding within Pakistani territory. This attack is not like previous assaults on Indian governmental establishments. This was a horrific and indiscriminate attack on civilians. I would hope there would be little sympathy for the attackers and little desire to help them remain hidden.

Many militants would like nothing more than a war between Pakistan and India. As of now, it doesn’t appear either nation is going to fall into that trap.

The media chains are are at it again, and this time it’s affecting people in my hometown.

From Associated Content:

Plenty of Kansas Citians are up in arms over a recent announcement that The Kansas City Star is outsourcing all of the jobs of those who are in the advertising services department – in fact, their entire digital advertising team, according to one blog – to India. The jobs are being outsourced to Infosys Technologies in Bangalore, India. The employees were notified by memo, and the following day The Kansas City Star included a brief in the paper in the business section. The news reported that nine employees were laid off, however in fact there were several more in total. One of the released employees is a very old friend of mine who had been with the company for a number of years.

Now, as if this weren’t enough of a blow, the kicker is this: the employees will retain their employment until after their replacements – who are being flown in, and put up here in Kansas City – have been trained by the displaced employees. And furthermore, according to a blog comment from the best friend of one of those laid off, The Kansas City Star is not giving letters of recommendation to those being let go! Talk about serious insult to injury.

Now folks, I’m all for a global economy, but as the title suggests this is happening elsewhere in the McClatchy network, and if they’re simply making the jobs cheaper then that means somebody higher up isn’t able to monetize their online advertising effectively.

What does that mean? The ad production staff isn’t why they’re not making enough money…it’s their news strategy and the amount of clicks they’re getting. So you really have to love that a big wig or two can make a call to lay off dozens of employees instead of losing their jobs because they’re not able to get people to read McClatchy’s stories. Granted, I could be wrong about that, but that’s how this outsourcing game is usually played.

One last note…these are very good jobs being lost. Digital ad production and “digital” jobs in general are careers we want to keep in the states. In other words, this isn’t like moving a customer service call center to Bangalore, although I’m sure one could argue that those are good jobs for certain Americans too.

And so it goes…