The tough pacifist: Why Manmohan chose diplomacy over war

By Sanjay Kapoor

Congress leader Manish Tewari has stoked a controversy that has not really gone away even 13 years after the terror attack took place on the high value targets of Mumbai on November 26, 2008. His question is obvious: Why did the Indian government under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh not retaliate against this terror strike in 2008?

There has been plenty that has been written about it, but informed sources claim - despite the suggestions to the contrary by some retired defense officialsthat the Indian army top brass was not ready for a full scale war. Shiv Shankar Menon, who was the foreign secretary in 2008 informed in his book- Choices: The making of Foreign policy”. that he was keen that India attack Pakistan at the headquarters of the Lashkar-e-Taiba at Muridke- blamed for the terror strike- to wash off the shame of looking so helpless against an attack by terrorists in Mumbai. Despite extended discussions, the decision makers chose another strategy. Menon said, “why India did not immediately attack Pakistan is that after examining the options at the highest levels of government, the decision makers concluded that more was to be gained from not attacking Pakistan than from attacking it.” As is usually the practice, the right wing lobby was quoting examples from Israel or US to suggest that military retaliation was the only deterrence, but the Singh’s government realized that the muscular response of Israel was mostly against nonstate actors and not against countries. And it could boomerang against a country like Pakistan, which was also a nuclear power. Later, Israel bombed Syria too, but that was after it had lost its firepower and split up in different directions.

In his book, Menon goes into great detail to revisit the circumstances in which the government chose to give precedence to exercising diplomatic options over a military strike. He also reminds those who exercise fake bravado that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh did not want to go to war to derail our economic growth at the time when the world economy was melting after the 2008 Lehman brothers collapse. How Manmohan Singh and the RBI managed to preserve the economy at that time is largely forgotten, but India did a sterling job surviving that crisis. Also ignored in a great hurry is that a war on Pakistan would have resulted in the ouster of a fragile civilian government in Islamabad and return of the army. The Indian government was cognizant of what was being attempted by the non-state actors that were keen on derailing the democratic process at the behest of the deep state. In fact Manmohan Singh had recognised the contradictions in the Pakistan society and how terror elements supported by a section of the defense forces were undermining democratic impulses.

India realized that a war with Pakistan would also contribute in minimizing the enormity of the 26/11 attack- 166 innocent people died in it- and also complicity of those agencies within Islamabad’s security apparatus that operated in the grey zone. It was believed then that a diplomatic squeeze would give a greater dividend to the country than a military strike. It would also show India as an aggressor that chose to enter the neighbour’s territory due to a terror strike executed by perpetrators whose identity could not be conclusively established at the time when the violence took place. Later, the civilian Prime Minister of Pakistan Syed Yousuf Raza Jilani confirmed the identity of the terrorist. In fact further corroboration came from Pakistani media and even by their Federal Investigating Agency. Their probe was fair and indeed remarkable. Accompanied by the FBI investigation, it became apparent that there was a shadow state that existed in Pakistan that used drugs, gun running and other devises to sustain the terror network. In the US, the FBI probe did not go beyond David Coleman Hadley to establish his links with the Pakistan state. The Indian government, though, persisted in its demand to punish the guilty figures of 26/11, but at some stage the momentum was lost and the deep state had reclaimed their own.

In many ways, Pakistan lost plenty after 26/11.They were perceived as a terror state and that proved to be their undoing. Since then it has slid in world esteem struggling to prove to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) that it is not a launderer of money. Even now it is in the grey zone, which means it is a heartbeat away from being blacklisted as a country, which would entail that it cannot raise funds or loans from the market. Even the International Monetary Fund shows reluctance to give loans to bail out the economy. In many ways the decisions that were taken by the government of Manmohan Singh against Pakistan State not just de-legitimized it but also brought it to a point when its present Prime Minister Imran Khan claims that it has no money to ru