By INDER MALHOTRA
IT is totally incomprehensible why the UPA government, assisted by a section of the media, is trying to deceive itself and mislead the country over the case of David Coleman Headley. As is well known, this Pakistan-born American national was deeply involved in the planning and execution of the savage terrorist attack on Mumbai on November 26, 2008. He had travelled in India extensively to identify the targets as well as landing places for the Lashkar-e-Taiba thugs. On the night of the horrendous attack he was in touch with the assailants’ handlers in Pakistan. Indian intelligence, unsurprisingly, knew nothing about this. It was the American FBI that eventually arrested Headley and put him on trial. Indian intelligence agencies that rushed to America to interrogate him were denied access to him. What has happened now is far worse, indeed insulting.
As a result of a plea bargain in a Chicago court, Headley’s American prosecutors have achieved all they ardently wanted. He would not be extradited to India and no further trial of him can take place in the US so that he cannot disclose the dirty secrets about his role in 26/11 and widespread contacts with not only the LeT but also intelligence agencies of America and Pakistan that would gravely embarrass the US and jeopardise its close relations with Pakistani allies. His reward is that he would be spared the death sentence. Why is the US so anxious to maintain such tight secrecy about Headley’s reprehensible terrorist activities against India? For two simple reasons, of which the first is that the man was not merely a functionary of the LeT but also an agent of three American agencies, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the FBI and the CIA, and therefore America does not want anyone to know what he had told the US intelligence. Secondly and this is more sinister–Washington does not want Headley’s testimony to establish any connection between the LeT attack on Mumbai and the ISI and thus with the Pakistan government.
Against this backdrop, it was only natural that most Indians felt offended and angry. Some have pertinently asked how would America have felt if we had in our intelligence services someone who was involved in 9/11 and we had had a plea bargain with him on the lines that the US has had with Headley–a deal President Obama’s Attorney General endorsed personally.
Offended Indians
Yet, New Delhi, for reasons best known to it, has chosen to downplay the American letdown, to put it no more strongly than that. It said that the Chicago court proceedings were ‘no setback’ to India because the plea bargain did not block Indian access to Headley. One newspaper saw it fit to crow that India had four reasons to smile! The assumptions about access were correct but only technically. For this right only means that Indian authorities can question Headley. But this can be done only when he is in the FBI custody, and that, too, between now and Headley’s conviction and imprisonment for whatever period the Chicago court decides whenever. The FBI has the incontestable right to disallow any question not to its liking.
The other argument of the government, swallowed by the media, is that Headley’s conviction by a US court ‘strengthens’ India’s case on 26/11 vis-à-vis Pakistan. Surely, it does, but to what end? Pakistan has treated all the painstaking dossiers India has given it with contempt. Its foreign secretary, speaking on Indian soil, called them ‘more literature than evidence’. It would treat exactly in the same way whatever we might say on the strength the Chicago verdict.
This, of course, is not the end of the story. The Americans knew that the government’s spin and the media’s gullibility did not represent the real Indian sentiment. So it got busy smoothing ruffled feathers. Mr Robert Blake, assistant secretary of state for South Asia, on a visit to Delhi told various audiences that, apart for the right of access to Headley, India could also hope to ‘interrogate’ him in the US but only if New Delhi could furnish fresh and plausible charges other than those for which he has already been tried in Chicago. No wonder there was a spate of fresh reports lauding the aftermath of the Chicago plea bargain.
What Mr Blake did not reveal (whether the American attorney general did to Home Minister, Mr Chidambaram during his phone call or not) is that the right to seek a fresh trial can become operational only after Headley has finished his present sentence, yet to be awarded, which could even be for life, which means 15 years at least.
US Indifference
As if this was not enough, there has come another bolt from the blue from Washington on the eve of a strategic dialogue with Pakistan. Secretary of State, Ms Hillary Clinton is leading the American delegation. The Pakistani team is led nominally by Foreign Minister, Mr Shah Mehmood Qureshi but actually by General Ashfaque Kiyani, Pakistan’s army chief. The US has made it clear that it is now prepared to at least consider Pakistan’s persistent demand that it be given the same kind of civilian nuclear deal as it has already signed with India.
When Islamabad first raised this issue in the time of President, Mr George W Bush, he had replied tersely: "Each country is different and has a different history". This was a polite reference to Pakistan’s appalling record in the matter of nuclear proliferation for which the Pakistani government tried to blame the notorious A Q Khan alone without being able to carry any conviction.
Up to now the Obama administration, too, was refusing to heed Pakistan’s entreaties on the subject because of its worries over even the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, leave alone the prospect of proliferation. This makes the sudden change in American stance highly significant. Clearly, the reasons for this are rooted firmly in America’s predicament in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s firm belief that it can demand whatever price it wants for its cooperation with the beleaguered US. General Kiyani said so blatantly after the London Conference on Afghanistan where the US and British policy coincided with Pakistan’s. For instance, the Conference chose ‘reintegration’ of the Taliban in the ‘political mosaic’ of Afghanistan and reconciliation with them. It brushed aside the view of India and several other countries that there are no ‘good Taliban or bad Taliban’, and that if the war on terror has any meaning all Taliban along with Al Qaeda have to be ‘defeated and destroyed’, in Mr Obama’s words. Pakistan lost no time in telling the US that it alone could bring about a settlement with the Taliban. This complex subjects merits a separate analysis.
For the present it would suffice to say that even if a US-Pakistan nuclear deal never goes through, America’s willingness to discuss it represents a major change in its policy towards South Asia to Pakistan’s advantage. It also symbolises, like the dismal Headley affair, indifference towards India. For New Delhi to ignore or underplay this would be an act of folly.
