There's no doubt that the Mumbai terror attacks were organised from within Pakistan says South Asia expert Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, Senior Fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. In an interview with Rupert Fisher of asianaffairs, the strategic analyst from India, however, maintains that there's still a question mark over which elements from within Pakistan were involved since both the Pakistani president and prime minister seem to have been unaware of the attack in advance.

AA: What impact did the Mumbai terrorist attacks have on you?
RRC: Well, I think three things. First, they were really unprecedented in the nature and audacity of the attack, how bold and brazen the attackers were, how coordinated and well planned it was in terms of the multiplicity of targets, the training that went into it. That's the first thing. The second is to see where the evidence leads. There are indications that elements in Pakistan were involved. One of the attackers apprehended says he's from Pakistan and trained at the Lashkar-e- Taiba camps. We're still waiting for more details emerging. The key is that this could point to a hybrid terror organisation with ideologies and multiple links emanating from Pakistan, but also with support from within India itself. So that's the second issue, along with the sense that such an organisation could have an Al Qaeda mindset in targeting foreign nationals and the Jewish centre. The third issue for me as an analyst is the absence of an international response on terrorism. There's so much that people talk about individually and countries talk about nationally in terms of terrorism. We see the global war on terrorism clearly, but we haven't seen sufficient international, multilateral cooperation against terrorism in any form or shape. I'm not talking about a UN convention against terrorism that India is trying to lead — that has limited success — but more actual operational support, intelligence cooperation on the ground. That's still something not in sufficient supply.

AA: Is there any doubt that the attack was organised by a group or groups from within Pakistan?
RRC: There's no doubt in my mind that it was organised from within Pakistan. The key is as to what elements within Pakistan organised it and that is still a question mark. My own sense if you look at it from top to the bottom is that the political leadership of the Pakistani government — the president and prime minister — were unaware of the attack and it clearly came as a shock and a surprise to them. If you go down a peg and look at the military intelligence establishment, l think that one could at this stage assume that the head of the ISI may also not have been aware of the attack taking place. But a step lower if you look at elements within the ISI, these are elements at the operational level in and with Laskhar camps, within Pakistani territory, it is highly unlikely that they were not aware of it. These are the elements of the Pakistani military and it's very unlikely that they would not have been aware of it, or would not have been involved in some aspects of planning etc. Whether they communicated this to the top levels of the ISI and to the chief of the ISI, General Ahmed Pasha is not clear.

AA: Deniability is a very convenient excuse. There's the precedent of the Kargil war when, to begin with, we were told that the then prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, was unaware of war preparations. Later we were told that he was briefed in advance.
RRC: I think this case is different and the reason is that we have a civilian government in Pakistan for the first time in nine years and we have a government that has tremendous tensions with its military. The military supports it but has opted to stay in the background and not get as involved as is used to in government affairs. We have a political leadership that does want to improve relations with India. When Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met President Zardari in New York, from all accounts the body language was unprecedented. Dr Singh's message to Mr Zardari on his election as president was: 'Mr President, you are a good friend of India.' So at the top political level of the leadership it's a very different scenario that we are looking at today.

AA: What is the worst that could happen in the months ahead? Could there be another war between India and Pakistan?
RRC: One of the lessons, the single lesson that India learned from the 2000-2001 crisis and military brinkmanship was that mobilising your armed forces from 0 to 99 per cent, and putting them on a high state of operational readiness, especially the armoured units, doesn't provide you with the political leverage you are looking for in the short term. The key question is how we focus diplomatically. Depending on the diplomatic outcome there could be some movement towards the armed forces deployment. But on the ground what we are seeing is that India's diplomatic response to Pakistan in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks was to call the Pakistani high commissioner, give him a dressing down, and give him a list of 20 names that India wants extradited. The response to that was President Zardari saying he required evidence, that he, in any case, even if the 20 were apprehended would not be sending any people to India; they would be tried in Pakistan. So the ball is back in India's court.
India will gradually put diplomatic pressure on Pakistan. The reason I say is that this track has two significantly aspects. One is that the public outrage in Mumbai is unprecedented. We never saw this with the 2001 parliament attack. Secondly, this is a period of ongoing elections, state elections, general elections, so the key will be really the amount of political pressure that the Congress party and its allies put across to the government in order to make sure there's a visible diplomatic response to Pakistan. My sense is that the pressure will be ratcheted up. The other thing is the pressure on diplomatic relations, the peace process particularly. I think you will see the composite dialogue being cancelled, the foreign secretaries at some stage will not meet, and I think there will be pressure again on communications linkages between the two countries. The key for Delhi would be to get some movement with Pakistan on the diplomatic front. If it is not able to do that in the next few weeks, I think as we come closer to a general election, there will be some sense of focusing on the military. I'm not saying there will be a war, but the pressure will be ratcheted up diplomatically by India.

AA: How has a crisis like this affected the nuclear postures of the two countries?
RRC: At the moment we haven't seen anything that indicates nuclear forces are being deployed, or that they have been moved out of their traditional bases. We've had no reports from the Indian or Pakistani sides. The Pakistani president has in fact given a statement that his country's nuclear forces are under control etc; so I think that at the moment the nuclear forces of both countries are in the same state of operational requirement as they were before 26 November. I don't think there has been any change on the nuclear front.

AA: Does the U.S. know where India and Pakistan respectively keep their nuclear arsenals?
RRC: No outside country can be sure 100 per cent. The Americans could, for example, feel they know 80 per cent of where Pakistan's nuclear weapons are located. But 80 per cent is not good enough, because in terms of operational requirements 80 per cent is as good as 0 per cent. Unless you know where every weapon is stored there's no real operational value.

AA: Are we looking at each country holding 50-60 nuclear warheads?
RRC: Well, it varies. Based on reports coming out of the U.S., we are looking at 50-60 nuclear bombs that Pakistan has and India has about 80-90, but there's concern in Pakistan that the U.S.-India nuclear deal opens up the possibility for India to divert its nuclear supplies to additional weapons. So there's possibility that India is a looking at a broader strategic frontier today. It's not just Pakistan, but it's broader than that. My sense is that we have nuclear deterrence between India and Pakistan and that is really not going to change until and unless either country is able to establish that they would have the capability of a first strike. A few days ago Zardari has openly indicated that Pakistan would move from its policy of first use to no first use. I'm not sure it's going to be implemented, but it's an interesting indicator.

AA: Who is the head of Pakistan's nuclear strike command?
RRC: The head of what is called the Strategic Planning Division of the National Command Authority of Pakistan is Lieutenant General Khalid Ahmed Kidwai. General Kidwai has been in the Pakistani military for over 35 years. He's an impressive individual who's in charge of Pakistan's nuclear forces for the last 10 years, ever since Pakistan carried out its nuclear tests in 1998. He singlehandedly has been responsible for ensuring command and control over nuclear forces in Pakistan and also sees to it that there's no political pressure from the administration to give jobs in sensitive nuclear establishments to relatives of senior politicians.

AA: Who is General Kidwai's Indian counterpart?
RRC: Yes, in India there's a chief of the Strategic Forces Command. This is a rotational position that was established in 2001, a few years after India tested its nuclear weapons. This rotational position moves among the army, navy and air force. In the last seven years there have been four chiefs of India's Strategic Forces Command. The first two were from air force, the third was from the army and the current chief is a naval officer. His name is publicly available, he's of the rank of Vice Admiral and reports directly to the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee through what is known as the Chief of Integrated Service Command, another inter- services organisation.
The concern on the Indian side is    that in India there are other various powerful stakeholders in the nuclear business, especially the Department of Atomic Energy, the Defence Research and Development Organisation, the political leadership that takes the final decision, and also the military. There seems to be a requirement for better coordination among these varied groups. Pakistan does not have that problem. There's one man in charge who has executive control authority over all other agencies involved with nuclear issues.

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