India had no choice in selecting its neighbours. Radcliffe scarred India’s map and Pakistan came on its western and eastern borders. And since its advent Pakistan has been behaving like a spoilt brat out to bully to achieve whatever it be rightfully or wrongfully. First it sent Pashtuns along with its soldiers to annex Kashmir. They were driven back by the Indian Army, which was sent on the request of Kashmir Maharaja, after he signed the instrument of accession to India.
The Army would have driven the raiders out in 48 hours, but in his wisdom Jawaharlal Nehru went to the UN, agreed to an immediate ceasefire. The rest is history. We have to suffer military and terrorist adventures from our neighbour with irritating regularity and listen to crap from its prime minister.
Pakistan is now behaving like a pupil at one of the schools in inner cities -- more he is counselled, the more his conduct worsens. How can one drill some sense in the pupil whose fate is controlled by Generals. And every time these Generals suffer a setback, they get more radicalised and get more morbid desire to avenge.
The failure to capture Kashmir in 1948 has possibly made successive crop of Generals more berserk, and they have been taking greater risks to annex it. Same thing happened after it got defeated in Bangladesh war. Instead of learning any lessons from the defeat, they have got more aggressive. They have got more incensed after Baluchis were encouraged by what Narendra Modi said in his Independence Day address. Uri is in reaction to it. Nawaz Sharif’s speech at the UN was also unusually full of self-goals one makes when one is very upset.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s speech at UN blasted Nawaz Sharif’s lies in UN. Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s speech on Kashmir in UN was arguably the most inflammatory ever delivered by a Pakistani leader. It hailed slain terrorist Burhan Wani, who, assault rifle in hands, called for a global caliphate. He made no reference to India’s concerns on terrorism, nor his own promise, publicly made in January, to act against the perpetrators of the Pathankot Air Force base attack. Instead, the speech argued that normalisation of India-Pakistan relations was impossible without agreement on Kashmir, and went on to call for United Nations intervention. He even suggested Pakistan would continue to expand its nuclear arsenal in response to India’s conventional superiority, a programme that defies rational explanation and is causing concern across the world.
For most UN member countries, it will be hard to reconcile this Nawaz Sharif with the one Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who staked so much political capital on flying to visit him in December to the dismay of his own hawkish constituency. Swaraj herself was greeted with affection when she visited the Sharif country home. The sad truth, however, is that Pakistan’s external policy is shaped by its Generals. Army chief General Raheel Sharif, who is reported to have helped draft his prime minister’s speech, believes hostility with India is a strategic imperative. In the army’s view, it unites the country around the army, and cements the reconciliation between the state and its estranged jihadist proxies. Though this thinking is short-sighted, Indian policy will have to contend with the fact that it will not change.
How, then, must India proceed? For one, it is important not to get embroiled in the kind of verbal brawling recent days have seen. This rewards Pakistan’s hawks, allowing them to proclaim to their followers that they have taken on India’s Hindu nationalists. Dignified silence will serve India’s ends better, signalling to the world that it is an emerging power with a true global agenda that can deal with its neighbourhood unaided.
A strong retaliation was demanded by the country and the government assured that a strong action will be taken but the time and place will be of its choice. We have seen the more Pakistan is ‘fixed’, the more stupidly it reacts. Living with a neighbour like Pakistan is not easy, but shouting insults and threats across the garden fence will not bring peace.
Pakistan is host to Ivy League of terrorism, and Uri attack is part of continuous trail. Against this backdrop, India did well to isolate Pakistan diplomatically. Even the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) members joined chorus against Uri attack.
The OIC is the most critical international grouping,l which has been vocal on the Kashmir situation in the past and has been toeing Pakistan’s line on human rights violations over the last two months.
With all the P-5 countries — the UN Security Council’s five permanent members — condemning the Uri attack, New Delhi is now working the phones to garner the support of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) member countries. This is a key element of India’s diplomatic offensive, as Delhi tries to stitch together broad international support in its aim to isolate Pakistan.
So far, New Delhi’s diplomatic outreach has yielded statements from some of the major players in the OIC grouping — Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain. Some of them like UAE and Bahrain have, in their statements, even supported any action by India to confront, eradicate and fight terrorism — at a time when Delhi is discussing a range of military, diplomatic, political and economic options to retaliate against Pakistan.
Besides, three of India’s neighbours — Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Maldives — have already condemned the attack. In fact, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani called up Prime Minister Narendra Modi to convey his condemnation and support to India in the fight against terrorism. All SAARC member countries, including Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, have also condemned the attack. Government sources said the idea behind getting OIC members to condemn the attack is to portray Pakistan as the perpetrator of terror attacks and isolate it diplomatically.
The UAE, another supporter of Pakistan, has also “condemned” the attack and expressed “solidarity and support to all actions it (India) may take to confront and eradicate terrorism”. Although Qatar, another key member of the OIC, has condemned the attack, it has called it a “criminal attack”, while reiterating its “stance rejecting violence and terrorism in all its forms and manifestations”.
South Block officials pointed out that Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited all these three countries in the last two years. Bahrain, which has a strong Indian expatriate community, has also expressed “full support” to India in its “actions to counter terrorism, renewing the kingdom’s firm position against all forms of terrorism and calling for concerted efforts to eliminate it and cut off its funding”. Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena also called up the PM to condemn the terror attack.
Cure your backyard before venturing out
The Secretary of State John Kerry’s meeting with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, which was perceived as an endorsement of New Delhi’s position. John Kirby, the US State Department spokesperson, said Kerry “reiterated the need for Pakistan to prevent all terrorists from using Pakistani territory as safe havens”. He said Sharif and Kerry “expressed strong concern with recent violence in Kashmir — particularly the Army base attack — and the need for all sides to reduce tensions. Kerry also stressed the need for restraint in nuclear weapons programmes.
Apart from the P-5 countries — US, UK, France, Russia and China — countries like Germany, Japan, Canada, South Korea and Mauritius are among the countries which have condemned the attack so far. More importantly, China’s clarification that it has told Pakistan that Kashmir is a bilateral issue between it and India is a major diplomatic triumph.
For almost over a week now, India has been looking at its potential response to the grave provocation by Pakistan through the premeditated sneak attack on the Uri garrison, which led to the death of 18 soldiers. The surmises that have emerged after deliberations of experts and government are important to recount.
As a commentator put it, first, there must not be any knee-jerk reaction because that will pay no dividend and could force us to do exactly what the terrorist leadership or Pakistan’s deep state wishes. Second, we must respond with a clear cut strategic aim at a time and place that we choose, and not be forced to do so. Third, the use of both the diplomatic option to isolate Pakistan, exploiting the ongoing UNGA session and the military option with a choice of actions from a given spectrum, has to be part of India’s strategy.
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Interestingly, some issues on the above strategy have arisen in the process of detailing it. Can there be a purely military retribution to punish Pakistan without having to mix it with a diplomatic offensive? After 26 years of proxy militancy/terror why hasn’t our diplomacy given us the dividend of seeing Pakistan isolated and under sanctions?
This needs an explanation of both Pakistan’s notoriety and strategic significance. Little is it realised that the territory of Pakistan is one of the most important strategic real estates of the world. It is the confluence of five civilisations; Indian, Chinese, Central Asian, Persian and Arab. Each of the regions making up these civilisations has a strategic interest connected with Pakistan. Big power interests also abound.
The support of Afghanistan is an imperative. Iran’s guaranteed neutrality robs Pakistan of its perceived strategic depth. The US, perhaps the most important player in the game, is also the most helpless. Its interests in Afghanistan have to be retained through Pakistani guarantee. Fifteen years of effort must witness a conflict termination on terms advantageous to the US and not to the Taliban.
The Russian diplomatic angle cannot be wished away. Recalling 1971 would reveal Indira Gandhi’s prudence in signing the Indo-Soviet Treaty and the diplomatic offensive she undertook to shape the situation in India’s favour. That facilitated the strategy to win the war. Our retribution should examine every component of the spectrum and the mixing should afford us flexibility. The game of diplomacy is crucial in this.
Pakistan in every way is a rogue state. Perhaps we underplayed it. Now that most major countries are concerned about the ease of movement of terror resources, finances and narcotics, accompanied by a credible military threat and a potential nuclear exchange, the international community must be jolted into being interested.
While public excitement and passion exist for a military option, precious little has ever been done regarding sensitisation about the effects of all out or even calibrated conflict. The public remains oblivious of the adverse economic effects and dangers of nuclear escalation. But even more important is that contingency planning seems to be underway once the contingency has arrived and is well on the way to passing over. Such planning must be done well in advance and updated through yearly war games.
Response to instigated proxy conflicts of the low intensity variety usually must lie in the dimension of comprehensive national power. Since the response is calibrated, diplomacy and military power can alternate in primacy to achieve the common goal. That is the only way to deal with a rouge state.
by Vijay Dutt
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