INDIA TARGET OF PSYWAR

06-04-2002, 04:03 PM

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@...