'India remains vulnerable to spectacular attacks'

Michael Krepon, the co-founder of Washington, DC-based think tank Stimson Centre, believes that the horrific 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai set the bar very high for the next India-Pakistan crisis.

Krepon, co-author of The Unfinished Crisis: US Crisis Management After the 2008 Mumbai Attacks, predicts that 'another spectacular attack and another crisis can be expected', and argued that as in 2008 and earlier in 2001-2002, there permeating thread that continues to run through was that "India remains quite vulnerable to spectacular attacks."

He says that 'remedial steps have been identified, preparedness lags'.

Krepon also says that the current attempts between Indian and Pakistani leaders, and officials to resurrect the peace process between the two countries and the success it has been having in recent months, which has led some policy wonks in Washington and even in administration circles to say that India-Pakistan relations are today much better than US-Pakistan relations, once again made the time ripe to Pakistan-based terrorists to carry out another strike on some of India's iconic targets.

He recalls that "in both the 'twin-peaks' (Pakistan-based terrorist attacks in India in 2001-2002) and the 2008 cases, the attacks occurred after attempts by political leaders in Pakistan and India to improve relations".

Thus, he argues that the attacks 'were designed in part to prevent an improvement in relations, and in both cases -- 'twin peaks' and in 2008 -- India political leaders gave continued, unimpeded economic growth a higher priority than retaliation."

Krepon acknowledges, "Obviously, there were also concerns about escalation control. There were targeting dilemmas that will not go away for the Indian leadership. The targets that are most accessible if you will and that are least prone to escalation, are not very worthwhile targets. And the targets that are worthwhile are very prone to escalation."

He says that in both cases and both these crises (in 2008 and 2001-2002), "the United States and India had weak leverage on Pakistan", and declared, "This is likely to continue, particularly with the civil-military divide in Pakistan, which does not look like it is going away anytime soon."

"And in both cases," he says, US and Indian leaders had "low expectations that Pakistani military leaders would accept responsibility and take remedial action. So what is different?"

Krepon says that while there is a lot in common between these two crises, "one real important difference is that US ties with Pakistan have deteriorated over the past decade while ties with India have grown stronger. This has implications for crisis management in the subcontinent."

"The United States is a lot less of an honest broker now than we were in 'twin peaks' and as we were even in Mumbai n 2008," he says.

Krepon says that in all these crises, one constant was that 'the perpetrators are tied back to Pakistan -- they are Pakistani nationals, they have been trained in camps in Pakistan, they belong to groups with long-standing ties to Pakistan's intelligence services."

He says that due to the 'murkiness in both cases about the knowledge of higher-ups of these planned attacks, it is very hard, if not impossible, to pin down this connectivity and the chain on command without revealing sensitive sources and methods if these sensitive sources and methods are indeed available'.

Krepon says that the perennial denials by Pakistan only pointed to either incompetence or complicity by Pakistan's military intelligence leaders, but that 'either way, the implications for Pakistan, for the United States and for India are grim'.

"What can be said with certainty is that the Pakistani military intelligence, political and judicial authorities have been unable or unwilling to take steps to punish those responsible and to take preventive measures."

Krepon says that as in the past, future targets would be those that "the attackers find most objectionable -- India's political establishment, its economic growth, cosmopolitanism and connectivity to the world, and ties with the United States and Israel in particular."

Consequently, he said, "There are a large number of targets that meet this criterion -- repeat targets and new targets."