INDIA TARGET OF PSYWAR

[Guest guest]

INDIA TARGET OF PSYWAR

 

by B. Raman

 

 

India has been the target of a psychological warfare (PSYWAR) being

waged against it not only by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, but also by the

West.

 

2. The PSYWAR of Musharraf is evident in the hot-again- cold- again

statements of Musharraf, his ministerial colleagues and officials on

the nuclear issue and in the recent missile firings. As pointed out

by me in my two articles on the missile firings, which are available

at www.saag.org, the Pakistani PSYWAR has the following purposes:

 

* To reassure his own Armed Forces and people about Pakistan's

nuclear capability.

 

* To create nervousness and confusion in Indian public opinion.

* To create alarm in the international community about the prospects

of a nuclear war in this region.

 

3. The evidence of the Western PSYWAR could be seen in the wide

dissemination of a Pentagon study about the effect of a possible

nuclear war on the civilian population and in the orchestrated

advisories to Western citizens to leave India.

4. Why should the West carry on a PSYWAR against India? Because it

apparently feels that despite the considerable advance made by it

towards accepting the Indian position on the role of Pakistani

terrorists in Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), India is not reciprocating by

showing some flexibility on the question of deescalation. Another

reason is that the West, particularly the US, is genuinely worried

about the impact of the continuing confrontation on the war against

terrorism in Afghanistan.

 

5. Western advisories to their nationals not to visit or to leave

conflict-prone areas are not new. The US and Canada issued

advisories to their citizens not to visit India after the Mumbai

blasts of March,1993, but those advisories did not ask their

citizens already living in India to leave.

 

6. Before issuing the advisories relating to India, they had issued

similar advisories relating to Pakistan, but there is a qualitative

difference between those issued with regard to Pakistan and those

issued with regard to India.

 

7. The advisories relating to Pakistan were issued in a low-profile

and routine manner by junior officials in order not to cause any

panic. The advisories relating to India have been issued in a

disturbingly high-profile manner, with the co-operation of the BBC

and the CNN. Jack Straw, the British Foreign Secretary, himself

issued the advisory in a special media conference convened for this

purpose.

 

8. The advisories became the subject of "Breaking News" bulletins

and the BBC and the CNN led with it for nearly 24 hours, with the

BBC showing dramatic visuals of foreigners leaving India. There

were two tell-tale indications in the comments of those leaving who

were interviewed by the media. A British national said: " We have

been ordered to leave." A UN official was quoted as saying: 'There

was considerable pressure on the UN by the USA and the UK to issue

similar advisories in respect of UN officials and their families."

 

9. Two weapons in their PSYWAR arsenal, which the Central

Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the MI-6, the British external

intelligence, often use are such malignly-orchestrated advisories

and inducing nervousness in the foreign institutional investors

(FIIs) in order to make them withdraw their money from countries on

which they want to exercise psychological pressure.

 

10. In a piece on the possibility of the use of such PSYWAR weapons

against India on the nuclear issue written in 1996 ("Business

Line" , May 22, 1996), this writer had said: " What better way of

pressurising than to create a bust in the stock market through

obliging FIIs and prevent international institutions from going to

the aid of India as they did in the case of Mexico, unless and until

it (India) agrees to co-operate with the US on the nuclear issue?

These are the games which the external powers, and more particularly

the US, have not hesitated to play and it is better to remain

sensitised to this danger, even if the above-painted scenes may seem

far-fetched."

 

11. After the stock and currency markets collapsed in Thailand and

Indonesia in 1997, responsible leaders of the ASEAN had suspected

that the collapse was engineered by the USA by inducing George Soros

to withdraw his FII investments from the region in order to punish

the ASEAN for disregarding the US pleas not to admit the military

regime of Myanmar into the ASEAN. These are standard PSYWAR

techniques adopted by the CIA and the MI-6 on the instructions of

their Governments.

 

12. India has scored significant successes in its diplomacy against

Pakistan and the entire world has come to the support of India on

the Pakistan-sponsored terrorism issue. The diplomatic pressure has

to be kept up, but has the time come for showing some positive

response to Western concerns over the de-escalation issue?

 

13. India's post-December 13, 2001, mobilisation has paid

dividends and the capability of our Armed Forces to keep up this

state of mobilisation for some more months is not in doubt, but at

what psychological cost to our economy?

 

14. Economically, Pakistan has nothing much to lose from

continuing tension. It has hardly any FII investment and the direct

investment has dried up for the last two years. Its foreign exchange

reserves, even after the tremendous cash flow since October 7,2001,

are only US $ 5.25 billion as against India's US $ 50 billion plus.

 

15. While everybody should support the Government if it decides to

take the military option, before taking such a decision the

Government should keep in view that exclusive reliance on the

military option has rarely put a definitive end to terrorism. The

US airstrike on Libya in 1986 could not prevent Lockerbie. The US

Cruise missile attacks on the terrorist infrastructure in

Afghanistan in August, 1998, could not prevent the attack on the US

naval ship Cole in October, 2000, and the terrorist strikes of

September 11, 2001, in the USA. Israel's counter-terrorism

operations were most effective when it relied on covert actions as

it did against Black September and the PLO infrastructure then based

in Tunisia, but became increasingly ineffective after it started

relying on direct military strikes. Despite the USA's immense

financial and military resources, its military strikes in

Afghanistan for nearly eight months now have not ended terrorism.

 

16. In the case of religiously-motivated suicide terrorism, direct

and open military strikes have often the contrary effect of

strengthening the motivation of the terrorists and adding to their

irrationality.

 

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat,

Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical

Studies, Chennai. E-Mail: corde