The fidayeen strike at Pathankot is an obvious
attempt to derail the resumption of dialogue between India and Pakistan.
If Prime Minister Vajpayee’s Lahore yatra was followed by Kargil, Prime
Minister Narendra Modi’s surprise stopover at Lahore has led to
Pathankot. Within a day of the fidayeen attack on the Pathankot airbase,
terrorists also attacked the Indian consulate at Mazar-e-Sharif in
northern Afghanistan.
Just to recall, a similar attack had taken place at the Indian
consulate in Herat immediately after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif came to
Delhi to attend Modi’s swearing-in ceremony. It is obvious this is not
the isolated work of a rogue non-state actor but a planned dirty tricks
response by ISI, possibly with full backing of the Pakistan army.
This has caused a lot of confusion at policy levels. Questions have
been raised about Modi’s unusual display of bonhomie with Sharif and
Congress has expectedly cried foul. This is not the time for rancour. As
a nation, India needs to get its act right on Pakistan.
To stop talking to Islamabad after an attack like Pathankot has not
yielded results. India has looked its immature best whenever it has done
that, especially when it has been pressurised into resuming dialogue
again. Calling off talks after a terror attack may help the party in
power play to the gallery and stave off opposition criticism or it may
help the opposition score brownie points to embarrass the ruling party,
but it does not help India get its act right with a troublesome
neighbour.
And it surely does not help those in Pakistan who are equally
desperate to talk to India. Political parties, civil society, business
and trade circles, academics – India must interact with them. We should
get student exchanges going big time. More scholarships for Pakistani
students, more youth festivals, more culture festivals – we should have
it all.
In fact, we should take this opportunity to put huge pressure on the
US to get Washington to pile pressure on the Pakistan army to turn off
the terror tap. There is no way we can talk to the army – we should
leave that to the Americans who pressurise India to talk to Pakistan.
India should talk to the sane and friendly elements in Pakistan, through
regular and track-2 channels. Disengagement only helps the
military-ISI-jihadi nexus.
But while continuing to talk to the civilian government, even if it
is lame and weak, and pressurising the US to rein in the Pakistan army
and ISI, we need to simultaneously develop a third element in our
Pakistan policy – one involving an appropriate riposte on Pakistani
military assets using proxies.
As a former RAW official, frequently on TV panels these days, said,
proxy war has to be fought by proxy war. By all indications the
Pathankot attack or the one before that in Punjab not only had ISI’s
blessings but there is even evidence of ISI planning behind the attack.
Definite intelligence on a meeting between ISI handlers and radicals of
Jaish had led to a security alert generated by RAW’s intelligence.
India should prepare for a tit-for-tat response, but ensure that does
not lead to unnecessary civilian casualties. Innocent Pakistanis should
not pay for the mischief of their men in uniform. India needs to
develop and activate its assets inside Pakistan to be able to target
military bases or facilities in response for Pathankot style attack.
It is not that this was never done. RAW’s legendary B Raman has said
in his book ‘Kaoboys of RAW’ that India’s secret counter-offensive in
Sindh in the late 1980s managed to force Pakistan to call off its
hostility in Indian Punjab. He even said that if Rajiv Gandhi had
remained prime minister for a few more years and A K Verma had remained
RAW chief as well, this tit-for-tat would have brought Pakistan to its
knees.
So, much as India should continue to engage with saner elements in
Pakistan, we need a dual policy of simultaneously paying back the
Pakistani military in their own coin. In NSA Ajit Doval, India has a
spymaster eminently capable of special operations. Others heading the
agencies are also capable of making things costly for Pakistan.
Tiny Tripura has pursued this policy of ‘appropriate response’ –
during Khaleda Zia’s government, it used surrendered militants and
Bangladeshi mercenaries to attack rebel bases inside Bangladesh, but
with a friendly Sheikh Hasina in power, it is surging forward to
strengthen its connectivity and relationship with Dhaka on all fronts.
Here is something on which Modi can take a clue from Manik Sarkar,
who may remain tight-lipped on secret operations unlike Modi’s garrulous
ministers, but is ever willing to adopt the tough line at the slightest
signs of hostility from the regime across the border. In fact, though
insurgency in Tripura is history, Sarkar keeps reminding the very
friendly Hasina regime of ‘17-18 bases’ the rebels still have in
Chittagong Hill Tracts. There is no slackening of vigilance, no room for
complacency.
Pakistan is a nation of many elements. So a broad brush approach will
not help. We need a general policy of engagement but a specific policy
of counter-action to terror strikes like Pathankot – and we need
politicians to keep their mouth shut and not own up trans-border
strikes, unlike the chest thumping after the Myanmar raids in June.
Secret operations deliver results only when kept secret because
deniability and doublespeak are crucial for the success of such action.
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