Out: ISI 26/11 Mumbai attack link & other secrets

New Delhi: Pakistan's use of terrorism as state policy wasn't unknown to veteran diplomat Husain Haqqani, but Islamabad's then ambassador to the US was left shocked and perturbed in the winter of 2008 by twin admissions from the country's spy chief. Terrorists had targeted hotels, a railway station, cafes and a Jewish centre in Mumbai days earlier, killing over 160 people and leaving India and Pakistan on the verge of a possible military conflict. The US had summoned Ahmed Shuja Pasha, chief of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), and Central Intelligence Agency director Michael Hayden had presented his Pakistani counterpart with evidence that the Mumbai attackers had come from across the border.

Then, at Haqqani's official residence in Washington, Pasha turned to his native tongue Urdu, confirming not just that the Mumbai terrorists had ISI links but that the spy agency was losing control over them. "Bandey hamare thay, operation hamara nahi tha (The people were ours, but the operation wasn't)," Pasha told a stunned Haqqani, who responded: " Agar hamare log bhi hamare qaboo mein nahin toh agey kya hoga (If we have no control over our own people, what is our future)?" The conversation is among a series of juicy anecdotes that pepper a new book authored by the now-retired Haqqani and published by Juggernaut Books. Its pages present a rare, front-row view of some of the tensest moments in India-Pakistan ties over the past 25 years. But in India vs Pakistan, the diplomat has also turned to his formal training in history to offer examples of miscalculations and mistakes both countries have made since Partition, in the process challenging some traditional narratives on both sides of the border. Pakistan's use of "irregular warfare" - the formal code in that country for what India calls terrorism - is rooted not in the Afghan Mujahideen's fight against the Soviet Union but in the 1948 excursions into Kashmir, the book argues. Haqqani insists that India's refusal to address Pakistan's lifelong survival angst and patronising statements by its leaders starting with Jawaharlal Nehru have allowed the opponents of peace to accuse New Delhi of harbouring hopes of reintegrating the subcontinent. Adding "new layers of issues", as the Narendra Modi government has done by calling off talks because of meetings between Pakistani officials and Hurriyat leaders, hasn't helped. "We are neighbours forever," Haqqani told The Telegraph in a Skype interview from London. "My expectation is that by laying out the history in one book, I hope people will see the sheer silliness and cussedness of the way we have both approached each other." That cussedness began with the deep distrust born during Partition, and fears on each side that the other had expansionist intentions. Haqqani quotes a statement Nehru's defence minister Krishna Menon made to a British interviewer, where he called Partition Pakistan's idea of a "jumping-off ground to take the whole of India". Nehru's repeated criticism of Partition instead of accepting Mahatma Gandhi's terminology of "estranged brothers" fed into similar fears in Pakistan, according to the diplomat. But the cussedness persists on both sides almost seven decades later, Haqqani said, citing as an example the Modi government's insistence that Pakistani representatives not meet Kashmiri separatists. "The new layers of issues distract and create frustration. Then the talks become about talks," Haqqani said in the interview. "We have made it an absolutely psychological relationship." A key part of the problem, Haqqani argued, was a trap India and Pakistan had pushed their relationship into. "Should we build friendship as a means of solving disputes, or should we insist on solving disputes before we become friends?" is a question, Haqqani said, the two countries frequently find themselves contemplating. "In my view, the first option is the right one to pursue." Haqqani's book reveals a 1992 exchange of letters between Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's Prime Minister then and now, and James Baker, the secretary of state under US President George H.W. Bush. Baker, in a terse letter in May 1992, asked Sharif to take "steps to make certain that Kashmiri and Sikh groups and individuals who have committed acts of terrorism do not receive support from Pakistani officials", says Haqqani, a key aide to the Pakistani Prime Minister at the time. "According to Baker, the US had 'information indicating that ISI and others intend to continue to provide material support to groups that have engaged in terrorism'," Haqqani writes. "He warned that he took such information very seriously because 'US law requires that an onerous package of sanctions apply to those states found to be supporting such acts of international terrorism'." Baker asked Sharif to "affirm that the Government of Pakistan assumes full responsibility for ensuring that no training, weapons or other support is provided in Pakistan or Azad Kashmir to Kashmiri or Sikh groups that have engaged in terrorism". Sharif replied a month later, with the foreign office, ISI and the Pakistani army all weighing in on its contents, Haqqani says. In the June 20 letter, secret till now, Sharif listed Pakistan's repeated support for the US during the Cold War, and then articulated his grievances. "Given this long and resonant association, I feel we can expect a fair and even-handed attitude from the United States," Sharif wrote. "For instance, when Pakistan is accused of assisting terrorism in Kashmir and Punjab, silence on the state terrorism being carried out by the Indian government in Kashmir is difficult to understand." Sharif then made commitments that are familiar to observers because of the number of times they have since been repeated. "I assure you that my government is firmly opposed to terrorism in all its forms," Sharif wrote. "I would be grateful for any information which indicates evidence to the contrary as it would help me stamp out any unauthorised activity in contravention of express orders." That suggestion of ignorance about terrorism from Pakistani soil has few takers today, Haqqani said. He writes about a meeting then US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice had with Pakistan's national security adviser, Major General Mahmud Durrani, in Haqqani's presence soon after the Mumbai attacks. Rice bluntly told Durrani that Pakistan had all the information it needed to shut terrorist operations down forever. "After 24 years, that faux shock has lost its value," Haqqani said in the interview. "We can't turn around and say, 'Give us more evidence'. It does not reflect well on Pakistan." Many in Pakistan still blame the US for the role the Afghan war played in the establishment of the terror infrastructure in the country, he said. "You can't blame someone else for coming to your home and lighting a cigarette when you have a fire burning 28 years later," Haqqani said. For its own sake, Pakistan should have dismantled the terror infrastructure in the country decades ago, Haqqani said. That realisation is belatedly dawning on many Pakistanis too, he said as he quoted a Persian proverb. " Har ke dana kunad, kunad naadaan; Lake baad az kharabi-e-bisyaar (What the wise man does, the unwise does too, but after much malfunction)," Haqqani said. Haqqani is convinced that Sharif and much of the civilian leadership that has ruled Pakistan on both sides of General Pervez Musharraf's nine-year rule "want reconciliation with India". "The problem is there is a South Asian cultural reluctance to accept mistakes," he said. "My fear is that the 'not our fault' lobby in Pakistan has delayed a decision on taking on these groups for so long that the price Pakistan pays for this will continue to mount before we can reach a conclusion." Haqqani's book faults Mohammed Ali Jinnah's Muslim League for not preparing better for Kashmir's future in Pakistan after Partition, and ultimately resorting to infiltration by militia to grab a part of the state. He cites the tense negotiations former US President Bill Clinton held with Sharif during the Kargil War amid American fears that the conflict could escalate into a nuclear battle. But Haqqani also insists that the Kashmir dispute, terrorism and the nuclear weapons the two sides host aren't the real problem in the relationship. "To me, Kashmir, nuclear weapons and terrorism are not the cause of the ills but the symptoms of what ails India and Pakistan," Haqqani said. "The ailment is the smallness of hearts towards one another." -The Telegraph Calcutta