Poonam I Kaushish
Yawn! Another terror attack. So very predictable. As India woke up to a Jaish-e-Mohammad fidayeen assault on Pathankot Air Force base on Saturday, the second major attack on Punjab after Gurdaspur in February last. Also humdrum was India’s prosaic response. Asserted Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, “We will give a befitting reply even as we want good relations with Pakistan.” Sic. A ritual drama, whose script is familiar after every strike and draws the same cynical reaction —- more and more of the same.
True, New Delhi had prior intelligence inputs about an impending attack and post the Punjab’s SP carjacking incident on Friday security was upped in Punjab followed by a spate of high-powered meeting by Defence Minister Parrikar, three defence Chiefs and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval. All five terrorists have been shot dead and a hunt is on for others.
Undeniably, the attack which comes exactly a week after Prime Minister Modi’s dramatic Christmas day Lahore visit to wish his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif happy birthday and his high-stakes bid to make peace with Islamabad is facing a trial by fire.
Indeed, Pathankot once again raises several questions about how serious Pakistan is about reining-in anti-India terrorism —-the keystone of initiating a durable peace process. More so, after a secret terrorism-focussed dialogue between Doval and his Pakistani counterpart, Lt-Gen Nasir Janjua, which reportedly had the army’s backing.
Think, every time Indo-Pak leaders have taken a step forward to break the ice, it is immediately martially tested from across the border. In fact, since Mumbai 26/11 all attacks have been traced back to Pakistan and interrogations of arrested terrorists has shown the hand of the ISI. Raising the quintessential query whether the Pak generals support dialogue or are busy subverting it.
In the immediate Modi faces a Catch 22 situation: Calling off the Indo-Pak foreign secretaries’ talk on 15 January and measured retaliation or riding the opposition storm on his Pakistani gambit and continued engagement. Of course, New Delhi will demand stringent action against the perpetrators like it did vis-à-vis the Lashkar-e Toiba Mumbai carnage in 2008. No matter, its mastermind Hafiz Sayeed continues to roam scot free.
Look at the irony. Jaish-e-Muhammad Chief is Maulana Masood Azhar, yes one of the three hijackers we exchanged in the Kandhar fiasco(hijacking of Indian Airlines flight 814) who is also responsible for Parliament’s 2001 attack, has till date never been prosecuted and continues his close links with the ISI.
Anyway one looks at it, Pathankot, exposes the tenuous links in the troika that rules Pakistan —- Establishment, Army and ISI. New Delhi, times out of number forgets that its neighbour has been nurtured on a military psyche whereby it views India as an ideological, not solely military problem. Succinctly, described by late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as “bleeding India with a thousand cuts.”
For the Pak Generals acquiescing to initiating a peace process with India would tantamount to not only defeating the purpose of the Army, but also, fundamentally eroding the legitimacy of the Pakistani State. For the ruling troika seeped in armed tradition along-with its jihadist proxies, the ‘core’ issue of Kashmir is an article of faith.
Besides, it is not in the realm of impossibility that their agenda is to keep New Delhi permanently off balance, damning India for not talking and damning it if it tries to. It is no secret that both the Army and ISI are opposed to any normalisation of bilateral relationship based on a practical and pragmatic resolution of long-standing disputes. Alongside, the jihadis too are against any reconciliation between India and Pakistan.
As it stands, both cannot afford for the sub-Continent to once again become a flashpoint. Arguably, if Islamabad really has had a change of heart, for starters it needs to take legal action against perpetrators of violence against India, Messers Sayeed, Azhar, Salauddin et al, dismantling the LeT’s, JeM’s Hizbul Mujahideen’s military infrastructure and stopping all aid to them.
Interestingly, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval had blasted as “a myth the widespread belief that the terrorists strike anywhere, at any time and any target,” in one of his articles a few years back. In his view, they strike where their intentions and capabilities meet the opportunities.
Thus the success of counter-terrorism lies in degrading their capabilities, forcing them to change their intentions and denying them opportunities to strike. New Delhi, he then felt, needed to think of ways to neutralise their fast-growing domestic base, availability of hardware and human resource, collaborative linkages with organized crime, gun runners, drug syndicates, hawala operators, subversive radical groups etc.
For any anti-terrorist operation to succeed one needs to be focused on the vitals, keeping a watch on the essentials and leaving the desirables till the vitals have been achieved and essentials addressed. He also has a timely message for India’s polity. “For those who govern, let political interests, at best, fall in the category of desirables.”
Bonhomie, guftagus and friendship is all very well but when this is misread as going soft, New Delhi must make clear that protection to terrorists by Islamabad is unacceptable. They need to be smoked out and bombed, a la US seals of Osama bin Laden at Abbottabad and South Block of NSCN(K) terror modules in Myanmar, if it values dosti.
It is high time we enact a new anti-terror policy and give sharp teeth to our anti-terror laws. The only way forward is for our security agencies to be one step ahead of the jihadis, strike back and carry the fight into the militants’ camps in Pakistan effectively. It is not enough to assert “we have might and muscle.” One has to display that power.
We need to be proactive not defensive. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Former Punjab Governor, the late Dharma Vira was ever so right when under a spell of President’s rule during the height of Sikh militancy in the State he directed: “I have no use for live terrorists!”
Already prolonged inaction has proved much too costly. The Centre must launch major offensives to drive home the message that terror is not a zero-sum game and India has no use for a live terrorist. Much depends upon the Government’s willingness to acknowledge without any sugar-coating that India is ensnared in terror’s vicious grip.
India needs to learn that this terror dance is just the beginning —- worse will follow. In this age of real politik, we will remain at the mercy of terrorist organizations which will always have the upper hand in choosing the time and place of the next attack. Hence, the Prime Minister should match his muscular words with action and remember that wars are not games born in the minds of men and won peacefully by waving the white flag.
In sum, notwithstanding Islamabad’s tall promises of de-fanging Let, JeM, HM and its ilk in the long term by initiating them in politics, it remains to be seen if the Pakistan’s ruling troika will honour it’s post-dated cheque — and whether it is worth the paper it is written on. —– INFA
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