When compared with past confrontations between the two nations, India and Pakistan demonstrated considerable restraint in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks. The countries’ already precarious relationship was significantly stressed by the terrorists’ links to Pakistan at the time of the attacks in November 2008, and diplomatic disputes continue over bringing suspects to justice and the breakdown of the peace process. In the midst of this turmoil, however, the two nations continued to cooperate in exchanging information on nuclear facilities and refrained from direct military confrontation. While in the short-term it appears the governments of India and Pakistan have managed the fallout from the Mumbai attacks, the long-term implications of the incident for both countries’ nuclear and security strategies remain unclear.

This article examines opinions within both India and Pakistan on the strategic implications of the attacks, including an analysis of the terrorists’ links to Pakistan, trends in strategic dynamics in South Asia, and domestic responses to the attacks. A review of these opinions demonstrates the delicate balance both sides must strike to avoid direct military confrontation while simultaneously demonstrating resolve and strength in their respective security strategies and in their dealings with one another. This balance is influenced by lessons from past conflicts manifested in the aftermath of Mumbai and it demonstrates an evolving pattern in the strategic and nuclear policies of both countries in response to South Asia’s evolving security environment and a growing threat from terrorism.

Links to Pakistan
Following the bombing of commuter trains in Mumbai in 2006, Indian security expert Sundeep Waslekar, President of the Mumbai-based Strategic Foresight Group, assessed the attacks as “part of a new pattern emerging in the terror map of South Asia,” and argued that “it is likely that such attacks may be repeated in different forms in the future.” [1] Unfortunately, this prediction proved disturbingly accurate. On November 26, 2008, ten terrorists with grenades and machine guns launched a series of attacks on major commercial and financial targets in Mumbai. It took three days for Indian security forces to defeat the terrorists, nine of whom were killed. The remaining terrorist revealed the details of the operation under questioning as well as the terrorists’ links to Pakistan: their point of origin was Karachi; they all lived in Pakistan; and many of them were trained by the terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which is purported to have links to Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s security agency.

Evidence continues to surface pointing towards Pakistani involvement in the Mumbai attacks, yet experts in both countries stress caution on India’s part to avoid a “knee jerk reaction” to blame and directly confront Pakistan. On January 5, 2009, India presented a dossier to Pakistan with information proving the terrorists were of Pakistani origin and requested that Islamabad respond by outlawing LeT, the terrorist group responsible, along with Jamaat-ud-Dawa, its political and charitable front organization. Indian officials pointed not only to physical evidence suggesting the terrorists originated in Pakistan, but also, based on the terrorists’ tactics, concluded that they were in some way linked to the ISI. In a January 6 speech before a conference of ministers, Prime Minister (PM) Manmohan Singh said, “Given the sophistication and military precision of [the] Mumbai attacks, some official agencies in Pakistan must have supported them.” [2]

Recently released audio tapes provide additional evidence pointing to involvement by the ISI. The tapes document cell phone conversations between the terrorists and their controllers in Lahore over the course of the siege. The conversations explicitly identify the terrorists’ goals and relationship with their handlers. Implicitly, however, the tapes reveal information about the terrorist’s training activities and the structure of LeT. Sajjan M. Gohel, a terrorism expert who analyzed the tapes, stated the controllers in Lahore had “military training which went beyond basic terrorist preparation.” [3]

India remains dissatisfied with Pakistan’s progress in bringing to justice suspected terrorists with links to the Mumbai attacks. Islamabad claims to be continuing its investigation and pursuing cases against suspects, but trials are conducted in secret and have thus far failed to assuage the concerns of the Indian government or build confidence in bilateral relations. For its part, Pakistani officials reject these claims of negligence. Abdul Basit, a spokesman for the Pakistani Foreign Office, stressed his government was investigating and prosecuting suspects to the best of its abilities. He chastised New Delhi for using this complaint as a pretext to cut off the peace process: “At the end of the day, whether we like it or not, we have to come to the negotiating table and, from our viewpoint, the sooner the better.” [4]

Indian experts suggested two potential motives for the attacks. First, the terrorists wanted to create instability and spark a military confrontation in Kashmir that would draw Pakistani troops away from the war against the Taliban. If India responded to Pakistan in a manner similar to the way it did after the 2001 terrorist attacks on the Indian Parliament and built up a troop presence on the border (discussed in greater detail below), Pakistan would have been forced to respond in kind and shift troops from its western to its eastern border, thereby diminishing its support to NATO operations against the Taliban. [5]

According to K. Subrahmanyam, an Indian security expert, a second potential motive for the attacks was that Pakistan is “envious of India’s economic and technological performance.” This motive explains the choice of Mumbai, India’s financial and commercial center. [6] Ashley Tellis, a RAND security expert, similarly noted that the terrorists chose banking, western, and commercial targets to shake confidence in the Indian economy. [7] Pakistan revealed its economic weakness two weeks before the Mumbai attacks when it received an IMF loan for $7.6 billion after its foreign reserves shrank by 75 percent. [8] In comparison, India has the world’s fifth largest foreign reserves, and its economy grew at a rate of 7.3 percent in fiscal year 2008 (India’s economic growth has since slowed). [9] Moreover, the Singh government solidified a civilian nuclear agreement with the United States and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which likely fueled the sense of competition within Pakistan. [10]

Possible economic motivations coincide with Pakistan’s evolving strategy vis-à-vis India. As a result of the 2001 confrontation following terrorist attacks in New Delhi, the Pakistani government realized it was unlikely to be successful in openly engaging India militarily. In response, it shifted its focus away from the conflict in Kashmir and toward the economic disparities between India and Pakistan. [11] The strategy was designed not to confront India through direct military means, but rather to continue to support terrorist groups in a proxy war to weaken confidence in India’s security environment and both physically and psychologically damage its economic infrastructure. [12] Terrorist attacks on financial centers, such as those in Mumbai, would seemingly contribute to this strategy.

Following India’s accusations of Pakistani involvement in the Mumbai attacks, Islamabad noted that India reflexively blames Pakistan for its security woes without considering other possibilities, such as a homegrown terrorist threat. [13] In a December 9, 2008 New York Times op-ed titled “The Terrorists Want to Destroy Pakistan Too,” Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari called for restraint, diplomacy, and continuation of the peace process. But even in the midst of his heartfelt plea for diplomacy, the President expressed frustration with India’s immediate reaction to lay blame on Pakistan. He cautioned against “hasty judgments and inflammatory statements,” and urged Indians to “pause and take a breath.” [14] Even K. Subrahmanyam warned that blaming Pakistan “should not be a knee-jerk reaction.” [15] A full year after the attacks, Pakistani leaders such as Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi continue to deny Islamabad’s involvement in the attacks. Qureshi and Pakistan experts have recently responded in kind by accusing India of supporting terrorist activities in Baluchistan. [16]

In urging caution on the part of India, Pakistanis note that their country is also a victim of terror and their own President lost his wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, to a terrorist attack. [17] Terrorists threaten the stability of the Pakistani state and have seized control of one-third of the country. Considering the potential consequences, terrorism poses a greater danger to Pakistan than it does to India, and Pakistan’s involvement with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in operations against the Taliban has aligned the survival of the state with response to terrorism. [18] Shuja Nawaz, a Pakistani security expert and author of Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its Army, and the Wars Within, argues that by blaming Pakistan, India is only increasing the threat of a military confrontation that would empower extremists and militants in Pakistan, thereby jeopardizing the survival of the civilian government. [19]

While Pakistan has supported terrorist attacks in the past, the threat from homegrown terrorism within India, as noted by Pakistani security experts, is growing due to the oppression of Muslim communities, state-sponsored discrimination, and communal violence. [20] While the Mumbai attacks were in progress, Nawaz predicted that the perpetrators of the attacks would prove to be a homegrown terrorist group. He pointedly noted that in India, 38 percent of Muslims in urban areas and 27 percent in rural areas live below the poverty line, creating a situation ripe for indigenous terrorism or insurgencies. [21] A report by the Indian government confirmed his statistics and noted that at least a third of rural Muslim communities have little or no access to education and medical facilities. [22] Many Pakistanis also point to the 2001-2002 Kashmir conflict as an example of India using Pakistan as an excuse for aggression. [23] Former Pakistani Foreign Minister Durrani characterized India’s mobilization in 2001 in response to alleged Pakistani-supported terrorism as “convenient…for reasons of domestic and political compulsions,” and he suggested it was part of a greater effort on the part of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government to have Pakistan declared a terrorist state and distract the international community from social injustices within India. [24] However, as Ashley Tellis has noted, while many Pakistanis would be eager to blame homegrown Indian terrorist groups, Muslim Indian groups have never demonstrated the capacity for planning or coordination evidenced in the Mumbai terrorists, suggesting ISI assistance in those attacks.

Lessons in Restraint and Evolutions in Strategy
The 2001-2002 Kashmir confrontation left a lasting impression on governments in both New Delhi and Islamabad and made the case for avoiding direct military confrontation in favor of a balanced approach in the aftermath of a terrorist attack, as occurred following the Mumbai attacks. In 2001, after a terrorist attack on the Indian parliament, India mobilized 500,000 troops along the Line of Control in Kashmir in Operation Parakram. Pakistan responded with 120,000 of its own troops in what became the largest military build up in the region since the 1971 war. [25] In the months that followed, the international community made numerous attempts to defuse the situation, but the standoff continued. The turning point came in June 2002, when Indian PM Jaswant Singh reiterated India’s policy of no first use (NFU) of nuclear weapons, and then Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf responded by saying Pakistan would retain the option to use nuclear weapons first in a confrontation with India. Within weeks India began to withdraw its troops from the region.

India and Pakistan, which appeared to be on the brink of war in 2001-2002, stood down in the context of a new security paradigm resulting from the presence of nuclear arms and an increased threshold for armed conflict. India first tested a nuclear device with a “peaceful nuclear explosion” in 1974, but it was not until its 1998 tests that India made its nuclear weapons capability public. In March 1998, the nationalist BJP was elected and the new PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee immediately scheduled a test date. [26] Within weeks of the Indian tests, Pakistan tested its own nuclear weapons. After the tests, the regional dynamic changed from one of constant tension to increased prudence in the face of confrontation. For example, India’s response to Pakistan’s troop mobilization in 2001 may have been less conciliatory had Pakistan not had nuclear weapons. As noted by experts in both countries, nuclear weapons seemed to have a stabilizing effect on the region by demanding caution from all sides. [27] Security dynamics in South Asia continue to be shaped by the presence of nuclear weapons. Both Indian and Pakistani security experts agree that the Mumbai attacks were unlikely to lead to a military confrontation because of the danger of escalation to nuclear war.

In response to the 2001-2002 conflict, India and Pakistan adjusted their military doctrines
and developed strategies to avoid a military confrontation. While the events of 2001 had the positive effect of not leading to a military conflict, they left India embarrassed for approaching the brink of war and deciding to stand down. Many Indian experts have noted that this leaves India’s enemies, including Pakistan, with the impression that India is unwilling or unable to punish or deter Pakistan from its proxy attacks. [28] This sense of humiliation led to major changes in military strategy, culminating in the Cold Start Doctrine, which envisions Indian conventional forces launching swift strikes into Pakistan to gain a strategic advantage. [29] Indian strategists assess that Pakistan would only respond with nuclear weapons to a large-scale ground attack. They argue that India has a superior conventional capability for the shallow operations required by Cold Start. [30] Indian analysts such as Gurmeet Kanwal and Bharat Karnad point to India’s capability to survive a nuclear strike better than Pakistan as evidence that it can succeed with a Cold Start Doctrine. [31]

The flaw with Cold Start, as noted in a RAND report on the Mumbai attacks, is that in any military operation with the potential for strategic-level effects, India risks miscalculating Pakistan’s red lines. [32] While the objective of Cold Start is to avoid nuclear war, any Indian attack on Pakistan proper (as opposed to Pakistan-controlled Kashmir), runs the risk of being seen as a threat to the survival of Pakistan, a perception that could increase pressures to escalate to nuclear war. Assuming Pakistan interprets the threat from India to be existential, it does not likely perceive nuclear weapons use in terms of “limited war” but in a war for survival. [33] Other Pakistani experts are critical of Cold Start and see it as Indian “brinkmanship and adventurism.” [34] Shuja Nawaz concludes that in the event of a military confrontation or the launch of Cold Start, it is likely that only immediate and decisive intervention by the international community will restrain Pakistan. [35]

Since the attacks in November 2008 there have been calls for additional changes to Indian strategy, particularly the country’s nuclear policy. A handful of Indian nuclear experts have repeatedly called for a return to nuclear testing, arguing that India’s 1998 test of a thermonuclear device was not a complete success and the country needs to continue to develop its nuclear capabilities in the face of growing threats from China and Pakistan. Other nuclear experts have suggested India revisit its No First Use policy. These calls are primarily in response to the information recently released by the United States that Pakistan has 90 nuclear weapons and is continuing to produce fissile material. New Delhi has yet to decisively respond to these calls, but experts such as K. Subrahmanyam note that such a change in declaratory policy would only further destabilize the relationship, shift focus from nonproliferation opportunities such as information sharing, and would not impact the strategic reality that India is still vulnerable to a decapitating first strike. [36]

Since the 2001-2002 conflict, Pakistan appears to have shifted focus to developing a covert strategy vis-a-vis India, involving support for terrorist groups in what many experts call “proxy wars.” [37] Nuclear weapons reinforce Pakistan’s strategy of low-level conflict and proxy wars because they are seen to minimize the likelihood of conventional military confrontation between the two nations. [54] This strategy allows Pakistan to continue to support proxy wars through multiple layers without the threat of retaliation. [38] In strategic terms, the first use option appears to be the logical choice for Pakistan because it is conventionally inferior to India. However, the actual use of a nuclear weapon would be accompanied by an international outcry sufficient to counterbalance any strategic gains, were Pakistan to survive an Indian second strike. Also, Indian experts are aware of the existential threat to Pakistan from a nuclear exchange and assess that it is sufficiently deterred by India’s conventional capabilities. Vijai K. Nair, a retired Brigadier from the Indian army, warns that “it would be a serious miscalculation on the part of Pakistan…to infer that India is deterred from initiating a conventional strike to wipe out terrorist camps…by Pakistan’s nuclear weapons capability.” [39] Many Indian military specialists note that despite increases in Pakistan’s military spending and its efforts to move toward conventional parity, India still maintains a nearly two to one conventional advantage in manpower and firepower. [40]

In an interview only days before the Mumbai attacks, President Zardari appeared to reverse Pakistan’s policy of maintaining a nuclear first use option when he said that Pakistan would not be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict with India. Changing Pakistan’s nuclear policy, however, would require the cooperation of the Parliament, and more importantly the military. [41] In the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, with increased tensions between New Delhi and Islamabad and political unrest in Pakistan, no steps have been taken to garner domestic support or further explore the possibility of reversing its nuclear policy. This may make Pakistan more likely to maintain its reliance on proxy wars. [42]

In the year since the Mumbai attacks Pakistan’s nuclear program has come under increased scrutiny from the international community. While this attention is primarily due to the increased Taliban presence in places such as Swat, it is also a result of suspected links between ISI and terrorist groups. This topic is worthy of its own comprehensive analysis, but for the sake of this article it is important to note that by failing to address its terrorism problem, including reluctance to bring to justice terrorists linked to the Mumbai attacks, the Pakistani government is exposing its nuclear program to international criticism and calls for action in confronting its terrorism problems.

Domestic Pressures and Calls for Action
Domestic responses in both India and Pakistan to the Mumbai attacks ranged from calls for military action to seizing the attacks as an opportunity for cooperation and strengthening relations. From the hawkish perspective, the New Delhi government continues to be heavily criticized for its tempered approach to Pakistan. According to Vikram Sood, a former head of the Research and Analysis Wing of India’s intelligence agency, if terrorist groups continue to launch attacks on India from Pakistan, India’s restraint will have proven to be a severe miscalculation in the long-term for the sake of short-term peace. [43] Such critics argue that the government is falling into a Pakistani trap by focusing more on the aftermath of the attack than on the roots of the guilty terrorist group. [44] According to this view, targeting the roots of terrorism in Pakistan will require attacking not only terrorist training camps, but also curbing the role of the Pakistani military and intelligence services in terrorist activities that aim to destabilize India. [45] In order to prevent yet another terrorist attack on its soil, and on Mumbai in particular, Indian experts are urging the government to seize this opportunity to send a decisive message that terrorist attacks or the use of terrorists in proxy wars will prompt a military response against Pakistan. Indian military expert Gurmeet Kanwal, for example, proposed a multi-pronged response to the terrorist threat from Pakistan including surgical strikes, covert operations, and an increase in defense spending to at least 3.5 percent of GDP per year. [46]

Despite these vocal critics, the overwhelming number of Indian experts and politicians praised the Singh government for its restraint in confronting Pakistan rather than succumbing to security hawks’ calls for a military response. Instead, experts and politicians proposed non-military solutions for India’s security policy to target future threats. [47] On December 11, 2008, for example, Indian Home Minister Chidambaram outlined a plan for improving India’s intelligence system, including increased use of human intelligence and improved counter-insurgency and anti-terrorism training. [48] Indian experts such as C. Raja Mohan noted the political instability in both countries and a terrorist threat they both confront as reasons for cooperation and restraint. [49]

It remains unclear how long the Indian public will remain quiet in the face of attacks. Some in India’s ruling Congress Party worry that the response to the Mumbai attacks could give the impression that the Party is weak on national security issues, which is generating growing anger among the Indian populace. [50] The Congress Party is under pressure to take a tougher stance against Pakistan and terrorism, particularly by the nationalist BJP, the champion of “Hindu chauvinism.” [51] Many critics of the government response to the attack point to previous attacks on Mumbai in 2006 and attacks on New Delhi in 2001 and argue that, after both cases, the Indian government failed to prevent future attacks. India has made no overtures to defeat militant factions within Pakistan, including those in the ISI. Indian hawks, such as Gurmeet Kanwal, see the government’s reaction as an “ostrich-like approach” that will allow Pakistan to continue to use terrorist organizations in a proxy war against India. [52]

Just as in India, the Pakistani Government has been trying to strike a balance between competing policy demands. While President Zardari has proven willing to break some of Pakistan’s political taboos by remaining conciliatory towards India and avoiding a military confrontation, he has also been compelled to balance this response by demonstrating defiance towards the west and India. His release of A.Q. Khan, a man recognized by the international community as a major weapons proliferator, but seen as a national hero within Pakistan, is one of the best examples of this balancing act. [53] Critics of the current relationship call for a more dynamic strategy incorporating tools to address the threat from terrorists, particularly if they are supported by the Pakistani government. [54] Experts argue that getting to the root of the threat will require convincing Pakistan’s middle class that it has a stake in defeating terrorism and rooting out the historical tendencies of the Pakistani military to support Islamic extremists and terrorist activities against Pakistan’s enemies. [55]

As President Zardari demonstrated, many Pakistanis are inclined to cooperate with India and exercise restraint despite continuing frustrations and historical enmity. Many military analysts recognize that India is superior in conventional military forces, less vulnerable because of its size and geography, and has a more robust infrastructure to withstand a nuclear war, and therefore escalation of tensions would be unfavorable to Pakistan. [56] Considerable discontent exists with the civilian government in Pakistan, as was demonstrated in the Lawyers Movement and political demonstrations across the country. This criticism expands to national security in that the military has not taken seriously calls to crack down on militants, and the judiciary has failed to prosecute terrorists to the full letter of the law. [57] Pakistan also confronts an economic crisis and insurgencies in the western provinces that preclude initiating a conflict against India, as noted by Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist. [58] At the same time, the Zardari government is under pressure from the military and the public to stand up to India and take a tough stance. Former Pakistani Foreign Minister Durrani summarized the position of the government and the people by noting that Pakistanis “want peace with India provided (this means) peace with honor.” [59] The majority of Pakistani experts have stressed restraint on the part of the military, with the exception of a few outliers and conspiracy theorists. [60]

Conclusions
The aftermath of the November 2008 Mumbai attacks demonstrated restraint on the part of Indian and Pakistani leaders in the face of an international crisis with the potential to escalate to nuclear war. Both sides appear to have learned from the 2001-2002 conflict, which was ignited by a similar terrorist incident but quickly escalated to the brink of war. Changes to their military strategies were clearly manifest in their reactions to the most recent Mumbai attacks. These events suggest the threat of escalation to nuclear war actually prevented either side from declaring war. Indian and Pakistani security experts suggest, however, that the balance of historical tensions, evolving military strategies, and domestic pressures on security in South Asia make it too early to determine whether or not nuclear weapons have had a stabilizing effect as leaders in New Delhi and Islamabad must continue to balance their internal and external security needs. If Pakistan continues its apparent use of terrorist proxies, pressure could mount in India to pursue increasingly dangerous strategies to prevent and respond to these threats,

Heather Williams – Institute for Defense Analyses