Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said Dec. 11 that war is not a solution to the problem of Pakistan-based Islamist militants launching attacks in India, adding that New Delhi will deal with the issue by pressuring Pakistan to act. Mukherjee's statements do not mean India has completely ruled out using force against Pakistan. They do, however, underscore the Indian concern that a conflict with Pakistan would make matters worse for New Delhi. Should any conflict with India ultimately arise, Pakistan will rely on its irregular assets in a bid to compensate for the inferiority of its conventional military capabilities. This is not a new strategy, as Pakistan has employed nonstate actors in combat with India since the both nations gained independence. Given the Pakistani state's current weakness, however, such Pakistani reliance on irregular forces in armed conflict with India could see Islamists increasing their influence not just in Pakistan, but in the region as a whole.

Pakistani Nonstate Actors

The country is home to a wide array of different types of both indigenous and transnational jihadist actors. Because of the way the country's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate cultivated Islamist militants for use in India and Afghanistan, there are two main categories of groups. On one hand are the Taliban (the larger pool of militants) and on the other are the Kashmiri militants. The Pakistani-based Taliban are subdivided into two broad categories, the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban. It is unlikely that the former group, which is engaged in the insurgency in Afghanistan, will shift their focus to the Indian-Pakistani frontier. In fact, conflict between India and Pakistan will provide an opportunity for the Afghan insurgents to make gains in the Afghan theater. The Pakistani Taliban (those challenging the writ of the Pakistani state) in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), by contrast, can be expected to participate in an India-Pakistan conflict significantly, even though at present these Pashtun militant forces are battling Pakistani troops. Reports have appeared in the Pakistani press quoting both Pakistani government and Taliban officials that in the event of a war with India, the Taliban groups will set aside their quarrels with Islamabad and instead will focus on dealing with the external challenge. The term Pakistani Taliban refers to a broad array of groups operating in various parts of the FATA/NWFP region. While there has been an attempt to bring them under a single umbrella called the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan lead by Baitullah Mehsud, these groups operate more or less independently in their respective regions across Pakistan's Pashtun-majority areas. And the price that the state would have to pay for these groups' services in a war with India is government recognition of them as players within their respective regions. Potentially limiting Pakistani-Taliban participation in an Indo-Pakistani war is the threat that U.S. and NATO forces could exploit the diversion of Pakistani forces to Pakistan's border with India. The United States and its allies can in fact be expected to increase the tempo and geography of their operations in the event of a shift in Pakistani-Taliban forces to the Indian border. Therefore, these Taliban forces will have to divide their attention between eastern and western Pakistan. This is not a problem for the Kashmiri militants, who are based in Pakistani-administered Kashmir, Punjab province, the non-Pashtun eastern districts of NWFP and Indian-administered Kashmir. Those on the Pakistani side of the border can be deployed in battles against Indian forces, while those within Indian-administered Kashmir can be activated to attempt to launch an insurgency. Most notoriously, these groups include Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which shot to prominence after the December 2001 attack on the Indian parliament, and has been much in the news since the Nov. 26 Mumbai attack. Founded by Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, it is one of several such groups created by Pakistani intelligence. Jasih-e-Mohammed (JeM), led by Maulana Masood Azhar, is another such group. Both have long had a relationship with the Pakistani state and al Qaeda. Whereas LeT and JeM and other smaller groups focus on terrorist tactics, the Kashmiri Islamist rebel group posing the greatest military threat to India is Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), led by Syed Salahuddin. HuM has guerrillas on both sides of the Line of Control (LoC). HuM is also the lead group in the Kashmir Islamist alliance, the United Jihad Council (UJC). At a time when LeT and JeM have asserted their autonomy from Islamabad, HuM/UJC remains firmly under Pakistani control. The Kashmiri militants and both branches of the Pakistani-based Taliban primarily operate in specific geographic areas. This is especially true of the Taliban, which are based in the country's northwest. But by teaming up with the Pakistani army, they can use military facilities to expand their geographical reach.

State and Nonstate Cooperation Before Mumbai

An early instance of this occurred in 1948, when Pashtun tribesmen from FATA/NWFP fought alongside the army against India. Pakistan seized much of the territory that later became the Federally Administered Northern Areas (FANA) and Azad Jammu and Kashmir during this conflict. The 1965 Indo-Pakistani war resulted from Operation Gibraltar, a covert Pakistani army operation to infiltrate troops and irregulars across the LoC to stir up an uprising against Indian rule in Indian-administered Kashmir. In the subsequent Indo-Pakistani war in 1971, in which East Pakistan seceded to become Bangladesh, the Pakistani army worked with two groups of irregulars to prevent Bangladesh's secession. These were al-Shams and al-Badr, paramilitary organizations formed by Pakistan's best organized Islamist political party, Jamaat-i-Islami (JI). These two groups fought alongside the Pakistani army against Mukti Bahini, the separatist vanguard of the Bengali ethnic community in East Pakistan, which was backed by Indian forces. Decades later, during the reign of former Pakistani leader Gen. Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq, the Pakistani army worked to develop plans to use Pashtun irregulars in Kashmir after their preferred Afghan Islamist rebel group Hizb-i-Islami — led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar — was firmly in power in Kabul after the pullout of Soviet forces. Hekmatyar's group was Pakistan's main proxy among the seven Afghan resistance groups that formed the U.S.-Saudi-Pakistani-backed mujahideen alliance. Hizb-i-Islami received the most support from the ISI, which served as the main conduit for U.S. weapons, Saudi money and Pakistani logistic assistance. But by the time Hekmatyar eventually become prime minister in the interim Afghan government formed after the 1992 overthrow of the Marxist regime, the Afghan mujahideen alliance had begun to fall apart. The subsequent intra-Islamist Afghan civil war derailed Pakistan's plans, forcing it to search for a new proxy to consolidate its influence in Afghanistan. The Taliban would become that new proxy, but by that time al Qaeda had also entered the mix, complicating Pakistani plans. Despite this setback, the Pakistani army kept working on its plans to use irregulars in Indian-administered Kashmir. When he was a two-star general and the Pakistani army's director-general of military operations, former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf played a lead role in refining this plan. The strategy was put into effect during the 1999 Kargil War between India and Pakistan. This struggle, which occurred between May and July 1999, broke out after thousands of Kashmiri Islamist guerrillas backed by Pakistani troops crossed the LoC in the Kargil area and occupied high-altitude positions. It did not spread beyond Kashmir, and ended after Pakistan withdrew its forces after Indian successes against Pakistani and irregular forces and U.S. pressure. Until 9/11, the ISI continued to support Kashmiri Islamist militant groups, especially groups like LeT. After the Sept. 11 and the Pakistani crisis with India that began in December 2001, the ISI pursued a policy of indirect support for Kashmiri militants. (The ISI could not bring itself completely to mothball the Islamist militant proxy project.) The transition to an indirect relationship, however, became a key factor behind the ISI's loss of control over the Kashmiri Islamist groups, which became increasingly autonomous. By this time, al Qaeda's relocation from Afghanistan to Pakistan had been completed, giving groups like LeT a new ally after the Pakistani state was forced to freeze operations in Kashmir. This not only signaled the beginning of the break between Islamabad and many of its Islamist proxies, it also saw the internal discord within the Pakistani military-intelligence take root. Musharraf and his closest generals decided to cut their losses and adjust to a world where they had to part ways with the Taliban regime and scale back the Kashmiris. They acted out of fears of a U.S.-Indian alignment and a U.S. designation of Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism. Many others within the Pakistani military — and especially the ISI — saw this as an unacceptable cost. The removal of then ISI Director-General Lt. Gen Mahmud Ahmed on Oct. 8, 2001, within hours of the U.S. attack on Afghanistan, underscored the tensions within the Pakistani state very early on. One way in which Musharraf tried to deal with these internal tensions was to push the idea that Islamabad would cooperate against al Qaeda, but resume support for the Taliban and the Kashmiri militants once the external pressure was off. But the Pakistanis underestimated the degree to which al Qaeda's influence in their country had grown, and that the United States was not about to calm down so soon given the nature of 9/11. Meanwhile, as the U.S. war to topple the Taliban was still in progress, Kashmiri Islamist militants staged two major attacks in India. The first occurred in October against the state legislature in Srinagar, the capital of Indian-administered Kashmir; the second struck the Indian parliament in New Delhi in December 2001. Still reeling under U.S. pressure, Pakistan now also faced the wrath of India. The Musharraf government was forced to ban LeT and JeM. The freezing of Islamist militant operations in Kashmir only further alienated many former state assets that were already being attacked for betraying the Taliban. More troubling, al Qaeda's relocation to Pakistan after the destruction of its facilities in Afghanistan facilitated the gravitation of many instruments of Pakistani state policy toward the global jihadist organization. Thus, many from within the ISI found themselves orbiting between Islamabad and al Qaeda.

Pakistan After Mumbai

In the event of a war, however, the Pakistanis hope that all these elements currently battling Islamabad will turn their guns against Indian forces. Though this is likely to happen, these nonstate actors will be acting not as instruments of the state, but to advance their own position in Pakistan. Since the military no longer has the clear upper hand in the relationship, the Islamists can assume a leading role in any conflict and post-conflict scenario. Non-Islamist forces continue to dominate the Pakistani political scene — something that became evident in the rout of the Islamists in Pakistan's February election. At the social level, there has been an increase in religious conservatism in recent years, however, as a consequence of the state's use of Islam for domestic and foreign policy purposes. And religion is a powerful motivator in times of war, especially in Pakistan — a state founded on the basis of religious nationalism. The non-Islamist forces in the country — aside from the Karachi-based ethnic party Mutahiddah Qaumi Movement — do not have the power to fire up the man on the street that the political Islamists and the jihadists have. Though not very popular, JI remains the best-oiled political machine in the country. It has vast networks throughout society and deep experience at mass mobilization techniques through its powerful student wing, the Islami Jamiat-i-Talaba. The largest Islamist party, the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam, has considerable presence in NWFP and Balochistan. And the political front of the LeT — Jammat-ud-Dawah, which the United Nations declared a terrorist organization Dec. 10 and which has since been banned by Islamabad — maintains a vast social network of schools, hospitals and charities. There are also a host of other smaller religious-based political factions and a host of nonpolitical religious groups in Pakistan, and the last three decades or so have seen a proliferation of religious seminaries in the country. All of these forces are in addition to the Taliban/jihadist phenomenon that plagues the country. Though the bulk of the 168 million people of Pakistan are not of Islamist orientation, the Islamists constitute a significant minority. This cross-section of society can be expected to play a leading role in any conflict with India. Further complicating the situation is the historical schism over the role of Islam in public life. The debate over the nature of the Pakistani republic, which began even before the country's birth in 1947, has only become more intense, as is evident from growing extremism in the South Asian country. More than ever, Pakistan is polarized over whether the state should be secular or run along Islamist principles. Islamabad expects that a conflict with India could help rein in the various centrifugal forces pulling the country apart at present. But a war in fact is likely only to further exacerbate these forces. This is due to the weakness of the state, which will prevent Islamabad from making use of the crisis. A weakened state will thus become heavily dependent on the various nonstate Islamist players within the country, which will be empowered by their lead role in the conflict. This is not to say that Islamists will seize control of the country, only that their influence would greatly increase.