PERFIDY IN PATHANKOT

By

SUSHANT SAREEN

            Grand diplomatic gestures can certainly play a big role in breaking logjams between countries, provided you are dealing with a normal country. Since Pakistan doesn’t quite fit the bill of a normal country by any stretch of imagination, the extremely unconventional and bold gambit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ‘drop in’ on his Pakistani counterpart in Lahore was always fraught with risk. And as the Pakistani perfidy unfolded in Pathankot, it became clear that what was always being feared – a stab in the back – had come to pass. Of course, that Pathankot happened within a week of the PM’s stopover in Lahore is quite breath-taking in terms of the audacity of betrayal. But this too is true to Pakistani pattern – remember how within weeks, the clouds of hope and optimism that arose after the Lahore Bus diplomacy of Prime Minister Vajpayee came crashing down on the cliffs of Kargil?

            Frankly, even though a big terror attack was always on the cards after the flurry of meeting between Indian and Pakistani leaders – Paris, Bangkok, Islamabad, Lahore – that it would happen so soon did come as a bit of a surprise. The timing is important because if this attack took a few weeks, even months, to prepare, it means that even as the smiles and handshakes were taking place, the Pakistanis were sharpening their knives to stick in India’s back – Kargil 2.0? Alternatively, if the visit of Mr Modi was the provocation, then the fact that the Pakistani terrorists and their handlers have the capability to launch such a major attack within a week of the visit should set alarm bells ringing, nay shrieking, in the Indian security establishment.

Perhaps, the ‘spoilers’ were seriously spooked by the somewhat surreal bonhomie that was on display and thought that the longer they took to sabotage the engagement process, the more difficult it will become. Strangely enough, even though everyone is talking about the ‘spoilers’, no one in any position of authority has so far taken the trouble to identify who these guys are. All sorts of alibis are being offered – ‘rogue elements’, ‘enemies of humanity’, and what not. Again, nothing new here. After 26/11, the UPA persisted with the fiction of ‘non-state actors’ and ‘elements within the Pakistani state’ being responsible for that act of mass murder, just so that some space was left for re-engaging the Pakistanis. This despite the fact that it was quite clear that that attack wasn’t possible without the active involvement of the Pakistani military establishment.

Clearly, like Mumbai in 2008, Pathankot in 2016 is inconceivable without the connivance, complicity and even cooperation of the Pakistani military establishment. The nature of attack, as well as the target – Air Force base – leaves little doubt about the involvement of the dirty tricks department of the Pakistani state. It is, of course, entirely possible that details of the plot were not shared with some people in the top echelons of the Pakistani establishment. If so, it still doesn’t mean that this was a rogue operation. Information about such operations is shared only on a need-to-know basis. More importantly, officials and leaders are often kept out of the loop so that they can appear genuine in their denials when they meet their interlocutors from other countries. In any case, we only fool ourselves by drawing a distinction between ‘state’ and ‘non-state’ actors, civilian and military establishments, ‘rogues’ and ‘regulars’. They are all one and the same and play good-cop-bad-cop as the situation demands.

Even though India keeps talking about what it will do in the event of ‘another 26/11’, it is highly unlikely that the Pakistanis will repeat 26/11 or the Parliament attack. But Pakistan will continue to carry out high impact attacks to keep testing and probing India’s resolve and preparedness, as also the threshold of tolerance. In the case of Pathankot, the attack could also be a test to check India’s sincerity and commitment in re-engaging Pakistan. An even more sinister, serious, and scary angle to not just the Pathankot, but also the Gurdaspur attack a few months earlier, is that both these attacks were a qualitative jump in what they could have resulted in. In Gurdaspur, if the bombs on the railway track had blown up a train there would have been mass casualties, and if in Pathankot, a few aircraft or choppers had been damaged or destroyed, it would have literally pushed the two countries to the brink of war. So is Pakistan deliberately trying to provoke war?

The Modi government confronts a Hobson’s choice: walking out of the talks will appear a churlish, even knee-jerk, reaction and is unlikely to get much traction internationally, and will hardly be a punishment for Pakistan; but going ahead with the talks comes with its own complications, not just political but also security. The Pakistanis might well come to the conclusion that its business as usual and henceforth talks and terror will go together. Therefore, not doing anything is also not an option. The challenge for the Modi government will be to use the talks as a test of Pakistan’s sincerity and hold its feet to fire on the issue of terrorism. Hollow commitments and pro forma condemnatory statements won’t be enough; visible action must be seen to be happening. And if Pakistan doesn’t deliver, as is more likely, then to use it’s perfidy as a tool to not just disengage but also change India’s tired old template of talks followed by no talks with a more robust, hard-hitting, unrelenting, uncompromising policy to inflict punishment on Pakistan and its proxies.

THE TALKS TRAP vs THE TALKS TACTIC

By

SUSHANT SAREEN

            In a funny sort of way, Pakistan is a prime example of what is often called continuity in foreign policy, and also in domestic politics. Every government, regardless of which party it belongs to, falls back on the same old template of remaining engaged with Pakistan and dialoguing with them even though they know nothing much is likely to come out of it. And every opposition, regardless of the party, takes a more strident stand and accuses the government of the day of being soft on Pakistan. In the aftermath of the terrorist attack on the Pathankot air base, which came within a week of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s very bold move to informally drop in on Nawaz Sharif in Lahore, Indian foreign policy and domestic politics is following the familiar trajectory – the ruling party defending its outreach to Pakistan, and the opposition excoriating the government policy towards Pakistan.

            Strangely, even the logic used and alibis given to defend the government policy has a continuity to it, albeit with minor changes in the terminologies used. For instance, there is the whole nonsense about ‘we can choose friends but not neighbours’ and that ‘we must have good relations with neighbours’. The thought is nice, in theory at least, but doesn’t quite take into account what sort of a neighbour you have and what that neighbours concept of relations with his neighbours is. It is, of course, India’s great and abiding misfortune to have an ‘international migraine’ (to use former US Secretary of State Madeline Albright’s evocative phrase) like Pakistan as its neighbour, even more so because in Pakistan the neighbour is often considered an enemy and the philosophy guiding relations with neighbours is that you must bring down the walls of the neighbour’s house even if you come under! Surely, the Punjabis in Mr Modi’s cabinet – the Finance Minister and External Affairs minister – are aware of this.

            Then there are the alibis. After Kargil, the then NDA government continued with the fiction that Nawaz Sharif wasn’t taken in the loop on what the Pakistan army was up to. Later, it became very clear that while all the operational details may not have been shared with Nawaz Sharif, he was aware of the army’s plans to make an ingress into India and hold territory which would force India out of Siachen and might even give Pakistan a leg up in Kashmir. After 26/11, the UPA government came up with the term ‘non-state actors’ to absolve the Pakistani state (which was clearly hand in glove with the terrorists) of responsibility so that the engagement process is not damaged beyond repair. After Pathankot, no one in government is ready to name the real culprits. Instead terms like ‘rogue elements’ and ‘enemies of humanity’ are being used.

Quite aside the fact that if we are not even willing to call a spade a spade, and rather than feel embarrassed or feel that it will spoil the atmospherics, use our candidness as a leverage in talks, we prefer to provide even more alibis. Even though the Pakistanis insist that the civilian government and the all-powerful military are on the same page as far as India is concerned, we insist they are not! This is almost like what the Pakistanis do with the Taliban: the Taliban claim responsibility for an attack and the Pakistanis keep saying that it wasn’t done by the Taliban and that just because the Taliban have claimed responsibility doesn’t mean they actually did the act.

Clearly, India makes a mistake by making a distinction between the civil and military, or between the Pakistan army and ISI. This gives Pakistan the wriggle room to play good-cop-bad-cop and doesn’t really give any comfort to India. After all, if the elected Prime Minister of Pakistan is a non-entity, then no purpose will be served by talking to him; and if he is the Chief Executive of the state, and he is as interested in a rapprochement with India as he claims, then he must prove this by taking action against the so-called spoilers, especially since it is inconceivable that an attack like Pathankot could have happened without the connivance and complicity of the Pakistan army (which includes the ISI).

There is also the myth that successive Indian governments have subscribed to, which is that talks can become a tool to tamper down, even end, terrorism being exported from Pakistan. The track record of talks indicates otherwise. In fact, every time India has taken the initiative to open talks with Pakistan, terrorism has been ramped up; and every time talks have been broken off by an angry India, incidents of terrorism or military adventurism have fallen. The 1999 Lahore bus diplomacy was followed by Kargil incursions; the 2001 Agra meeting was followed by the attack on J&K assembly and then the Parliament; the 2004 peace process saw the Mumbai serial train blasts (over 160 dead) in 2006 and then 26/11 in 2008; the Sharm-el-Sheikh meeting in 2009 was followed by the German Bakery blast in 2010 and Zaveri Bazaar blasts in 2011; after Ufa, we had Gurdaspur and Udhampur; and now after Lahore, there is Pathankot. An in-house study by the External Affairs ministry revealed that between 2004 and 2008 when relations between India and Pakistan were supposedly better than they had ever been in decades, there were 18 major terror attacks with a Pakistani fingerprint on them; In the four years after 2008 (26/11), there were only about half a dozen big attacks. Ergo, not talking to Pakistan keeps Indians safer than talking to Pakistan.

But with the PM having gone out on a limb and invested a lot of political and diplomatic capital to engage Pakistan in an attempt (the umpteenth one actually) to ‘turn the course of history’, Pathankot confronts India with a Hobson’s choice: if they break off the dialogue as a reaction to Pathankot, it will appear churlish, especially since everyone expected the ‘spoilers’ to try and sabotage the talks. Even the international community (for whatever it is worth) will not show any understanding for India’s predicament; on the other hand, if the government persists with the dialogue, it will have serious domestic political repercussions and worse, it will be seen in Pakistan as a sign that India has reconciled to talks and terror going side by side. In other words, Pakistan will see it as a license to continue with business as usual, which is one of the reasons for the attack. The Pakistanis are testing both India’s seriousness in engaging Pakistan, as well as India’s resolve to now allow terrorism going unanswered. This means India can’t be seen to be not doing anything. But what can it do is the billion dollar question.

Perhaps, for now the only option before the government is to carry on with the talks and when the foreign secretary visits Pakistan to discuss modalities he can insist on visible action by Pakistan against the people responsible for Pathankot. If the Pakistan's deliver (unlikely) India can go on with the engagement; if they stonewall, India can get out of this desultory dialogue.

PAKISTAN: ENIGMA OF ENGAGEMENT ENSNARES MODI

By

SUSHANT SAREEN

            If there is one thing that distinguishes Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s style of diplomacy from that of his predecessors, it is unpredictability. His highly personalised and unconventional foreign policy initiatives have left the army of Delhi’s ‘know-it-all, seen-it-all’ analysts and journalists watching with ‘shock and awe’ as he pulls one surprise after another in the diplomatic domain. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his dealings with Pakistan. Equally, no other place has been as impervious to his go-getting attitude than Pakistan.

Clearly, after the Pathankot terrorist attack, which came within a week of Mr Modi’s extremely bold move of ‘dropping in’ impromptu on his Pakistani counterpart in Lahore to wish him on his birthday, even Mr Modi would have been left scratching his head over how to handle a country like Pakistan with which nothing – neither estrangement nor engagement, neither aggression nor amicability – seems to work. All of Mr Modi’s predecessors were confronted with the same enigma, and bowed out of office without finding an answer to India’s Pakistan problem. And if recent events are anything to go by, Mr Modi’s Pakistan gambit is unlikely to fare any better.

            Since assuming office, Mr Modi has demonstrated that he is not afraid to swim against the tide. This has left practically everyone guessing as to what he will do. Everyone expected him to be resentful of the West which had treated him as a pariah, but he went out of his way to befriend the West; everyone thought he will be soft on Nepal, but he played hardball when the Nepalese tried to play too clever by half on the issue of the constitution; and everyone thought he will take a very hard line on Pakistan, but he has gone out of his way to reach out to Pakistan. The blow-hot-blow-cold state of ties between India and Pakistan – four initiatives in the last eighteen months interspersed with war of words (bilaterally and in the UN) and aggressive posturing on the ground, especially along the LoC in J&K – has come under severe criticism for inconsistency, even lack of clarity and coherence, in policy.

And yet, Mr Modi has persevered. He hasn’t let either the pressure of media or even that of public opinion and the political opposition detract him from whatever he is trying to do with Pakistan. Of course, what exactly he is trying to do remains fuzzy, because once you cut through the cosmetics (which are new), the sum and substance of his effort is no different from that of his predecessors. To be sure, Mr Modi has managed to wrest control of the narrative by doing the unpredictable – calling up Nawaz Sharif when least expected and calling on him when it was beyond anyone’s imagination. But controlling the optics is only part of the equation and doesn’t quite address the question of addressing the substantive and apparently intractable issues that bedevil relations between the two countries. This is important because there is nothing in the public domain to indicate how these issues are proposed to be tackled. What compromise formula has been worked out, what will be the give-and-take, and will Mr Modi and his Pakistani counterpart be able to sell this formula (if at all it exists) to their peoples, political opposition and, most importantly, their establishments.

The other problem is that while Mr Modi can manage things on the Indian side, there isn’t much he has in his store to influence Pakistan in the way he wants. This means that while Mr Modi might believe that optics is substance and if the optics can be managed long enough, the substantive issues will become irrelevant and therefore amenable to solution, the Pakistani side might be on a totally different wavelength and would want to keep giving rude reminders to India that it continues to wield a gun and occasionally isn’t averse to firing it on India. In other words, while Mr Modi might have felt that the optics – Lahore visit – will bind Pakistan’s hands and make it difficult for them to spoil the atmospherics, the Pakistanis might come to the conclusion that Mr Modi’s optics strategy has in fact tied his hands and will make it difficult and deeply embarrassing for him to go into a sulk if they do what they do – Pathankot. In a sense, this is precisely what happened in Kargil: India assumed that after both countries went nuclear and war wasn’t an exercisable option, the path for peace and a grand reconciliation was open; Pakistan came to the conclusion that because there could be no war, it opened up space for a Kargil type operation. Ergo, for Pakistan perversity isn’t an irrational response, but a default response to any Indian initiative. This lesson of history appears to have been ignored by Mr Modi in his bold outreach, and inexplicable keenness, to engage with Pakistan.

Mr Modi must have known that reaching out to Pakistan was a high risk gamble. If he had succeeded, he would be hailed globally; but there was far higher probability that he would fail, in which case he would be condemned and dragged over hot coals by both his opponents and many of his supporters, more so because his political rhetoric on Pakistan was at total variance with his diplomatic initiatives. It is in this sense, Pathankot is not just a litmus test to check Pakistan’s sincerity and seriousness on wanting a dialogue with India, but also a test for Mr Modi’s policy on Pakistan. Not doing anything isn’t an option.

A lot will now depend on whether the Pakistanis act on the information and intelligence that has been shared with them. If they do, Mr Modi’s gamble would have paid off and Pakistani action against terrorists operating against India would effect a change in the paradigm between the two countries; But given how unlikely it is that we will see any serious action by Pakistan, even then Mr Modi’s gamble would have paid off, at least in a small way. He can use Pakistan's perfidy to good effect with the international community and try and re-build international pressure on Pakistan on the issue of terrorism. Of course, in the event things come to such a pass, the Indo-Pak track would be back to square one. But given Mr Modi’s proclivity to surprise, he might once again do something no one expects. What that will be is anyone’s guess.