The Peninsula Foundation

Tag: Pulwama

  • The Politics of Balakot

    The Politics of Balakot

    Deepak Sinha                                                                                                        March 29, 2019/Op-Ed

    There is something about old proverbs. Take, for example, an old adage by Abraham Lincoln: “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time”. Certainly, this maxim is spot-on with regards to the Pulwama tragedy and its repercussions. Despite Pakistan’s best efforts to steer the narrative to its advantage, the truth that is emerging — though in dribs and drabs — paints a very different picture from what it would have wanted us to believe.

    For example, take a look at perceptions in Pakistan about the suicide attack itself. Not only most of us, but also much of the world, especially analysts focussing on this region, had little hesitation in accepting the involvement of Pakistan-based terrorist group, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), in the suicide bombing attack, especially since the JeM itself publicly claimed responsibility. Yet, let alone the Pakistani establishment, not even one respected journalist or analyst over there uttered a word of condemnation against the JeM for this heinous act. Instead, they insisted that the attack was motivated by the brutal treatment meted out to Kashmiri locals by the Indian security forces.

    This is contrary to what has widely been reported about Pakistani Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed, a senior politician and former Cabinet minister, who quite categorically stated that “what happened in Pulwama in February, in my view, was Pakistan’s finest hour after the nuclear tests of 1998.” Moreover, while Pakistan’s Foreign Minister acknowledged JeM chief Masood Azhar’s presence in Pakistan, the Director-General of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) blandly contradicted him a day later, unequivocally stating that the JeM does not exist in Pakistan as it is a “proscribed terrorist organisation”.

    Similarly, with regard to the Indian response, the ISPR spokesperson was the first one to admit that the Indian Air Force (IAF) had crossed the Line of Control (LoC) and carried out a strike in the vicinity of Balakot. He, however, attempted to mislead and obfuscate the issue by hinting that this attack was in the vicinity of the village, in close proximity to the LoC in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), and not the town by that name in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, deep inside Pakistan, where it actually struck. While the IAF claimed to have hit the terrorist training camp, the spokesman insisted that no damage or casualty was inflicted to the “seminary” located over there. However, the cordoning of the area by the Pakistani Army and its refusal till date to allow any access raises questions and suggests an attempt to cover up.

    Finally, there was the confusion about two Indian fighter aircraft having been shot down with both pilots taken prisoners. It, however, turned out that the IAF’s claim at that time of having lost one MIG-21, piloted by Wing Commander Abhinandan after he had downed a Pakistani F-16, was correct. Bizarrely, not only has Pakistan continued to deny the loss of its own aircraft, it even insists that the F-16s in its possession were not involved in operations in this sector. This despite the IAF having produced evidence.

    Clearly, obfuscation and deceit are embedded in the DNA of Pakistan, especially in the manner it deals with India and the international community. We have been experiencing this since decades. Remember, Pakistan denied any connection to the so-called “raiders”, who nearly captured Srinagar in 1948 or to the “militants”, who occupied the Kargil heights in 1999, only to recant and accept its involvement subsequently. It isn’t as if it reserved such treatment for India alone as Iran and Afghanistan have also found to their cost. Therefore, in the present instance, to have expected Pakistan to behave any differently was sheer fantasy, especially given that the military uses proxy war to retain its pre-eminent role within the country and the region.

    The sad truth is that its very foundation was built on the British construct — that it was religious antagonism and not its requirement for a pliable state that would help protect its interests in the region — which resulted in the horrors of partition. The formation of Bangladesh put paid to the two-nation theory and secret Cabinet documents in the UK, subsequently declassified, showed up the deceitful lengths the British had gone to in furthering their own interests.

    Leaving aside Pakistan’s desperate attempts to change perceptions what should be of immense concern to all right-thinking people, here is the horrendous manner in which this issue is being used by politicians and the media to gain attention for their selfish agenda even if it is at the cost of the nation’s interest. Neither free speech nor the looming elections justify such crass behaviour, especially since it is impacting the credibility and apolitical nature of our armed forces.

    While Prime Minister Narendra Modi deserves credit for his bold decision to aggressively respond in the manner that he did, it is no excuse for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to use the strike to tom-tom its nationalistic credentials, going so far as to shamefully depict Wing Commander Abhinandan in posters used for election rallies. Prime Minister Modi may well scream ‘Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan’ from the rooftops but it has not in any way stopped his Government from refusing to grant One Rank One Pension (OROP) to military veterans or opposing the grant of Non Functional Upgrade (NFU) in the Supreme Court using all manner of lies. That the NFU is already authorised to the Civil Services and the Central Armed Police Forces, thereby changing long-standing civil-military parity, has been deliberately ignored. Their efforts to humiliate and lower the prestige and standing of the armed forces continues unhindered.

    It isn’t as if other political parties, including the Congress, have behaved any less hypocritically. On the one hand, they have “officially” supported and praised the action of the IAF, while at the same time senior leaders of these very parties have questioned the efficacy of the attack, despite the Air Chief having clearly stated that the targets selected were destroyed as they had planned. It appears that they believe that the only manner in which the steadfastness and strength of character ‘Modi’ displayed on this occasion can be negated is by deliberately destroying the credibility of our military’s achievements. While we may be uncertain of who will succeed at the hustings, there is absolutely no doubt that our armed forces have lost out yet again.

    Brigadier Deepak Sinha (retd), an Army veteran, is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the TPF and is also a Consultant at ORF, New Delhi.

    This article was published earlier on March 19th, 2019, on The Pioneer.

    Image Credit: Google Maps

  • Reaping the Whirlwind: Pulwama and After

    Reaping the Whirlwind: Pulwama and After

    Deepak Sinha                                                                                                         01 Mar 2019

    It was the military disaster of 1971 that forced the Pakistani establishment, the military which runs the country for all practical purposes, to face up to the fact that it could never win a conventional war against India. If it was to avenge its humiliation and cut India down to size, it had little choice but to fight through proxies, bleed India through a thousand cuts.

                This idea must surely have germinated from its successful employment of Islamic militants, the forerunners of the Taliban, used to oppose the rule of the Marxist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) that had deposed President Mohammed Daud Khan in what came to be known as the Saur or April Revolution of 1978, It was this Pakistani fomented insurgency which finally led to the Soviet intervention and occupation of Afghanistan in Dec 1979. Incidentally, while conventional wisdom would have us believe that it was the CIA that came up with the idea of using militants to fight the Soviets, facts show that they came to the party much later and only added their considerable resources to the techniques perfected by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence in the use of irregulars for its own ends.

                Thus from the early Eighties Pakistan commenced its support for secessionist elements within India that were involved in fighting against the State, firstly the Khalistan Movement and subsequently, with greater success, in Jammu and Kashmir. It clearly had advantages as there was credible deniability, economy of effort with the dirty work being done by proxies keeping Indian Security Forces tied down and finally, the most important of all, creating fear and anxiety within the general population that impacted every aspect of our democratic way of life.

                There is of course one major disadvantage of using proxies, they tend to have a mind of their own and often times respond inappropriately and at cross purposes to what its mentors may be wishing to achieve. The Pulwama suicide attack falls in this category. There have been numerous statements over the past four years that have made clear that Pakistan prefers to deal with Indian Governments run by the more “liberal and secular” parties compared to having to deal with the more conservative, Hindutva driven BJP. With elections around the corner and with the BJP facing the very real likelihood of a serious decline, if the recent state elections were any indication, it would have been in Pakistan’s best interest to maintain a low profile.

                Masood Azhar, the Jaish- e- Mohammed supremo, obviously had a different view. Not only did his organization carry out the suicide attack that led to the death of 45 policemen, but also went on to claim credit for the action. Thus, in one thoughtless act he not only destroyed the Pakistan Government’s attempts at deniability, but he also made Imran Khan’s call for India to provide credible evidence infructuous. Most importantly, the timing of the devastating attack left the Modi Government with little choice but to respond overtly and with speed, if it was to still retain any hope of doing well at the hustings. There was also the possibility that if India responded in an effective manner to the outrage, the Governments stock would go up rapidly and that would enhance Mr. Modi’s reputation and chances of return to power, just as the earlier cross- border strike helped the BJP in the Uttar Pradesh elections. This could hardly have been to Pakistan’s advantage and in the event it was facilitated by the Army, then General Bajwa has certainly made a serious miscalculation.

                Regardless of the number of casualties that the Indian Air Force’s attack on terror camps deep inside Pakistan may have caused, the very fact that the Indian Government displayed the intent to take on terrorists inside Pakistan has clearly changed the narrative prevalent for the past four decades. It has also shown up Pakistan’s repeated threats of a nuclear riposte as sheer hyperbole and bluster. More importantly the initiative has finally shifted in India’s favour along with world opinion which has had enough of Pakistan’s duplicitous behaviour. Moreover, any escalation above a perfunctory retaliation, which was to be expected to assuage domestic opinion, by Pakistan, would destroy the fig leaf of deniability it has used over the years. Most importantly, it would force their military into a direct confrontation, something that the proxy war waged by them over the years allowed them to avoid.

                In this context one can only hope better sense will prevail and we will be able to avoid a serious escalation of the conflict which can hardly help either side given the huge challenges that we face in lifting vast swathes of our population out of the twin evils of poverty and illiteracy.  However, it must be emphasized that true progress will only occur as and when Pakistan starts to wind up the Jihad factory it has built over these years. In any case the Indian cross- border raid cannot be a one- off affair and we must be willing to do all that it takes to neutralize the Jihadi network and its vast army of financiers, mangers and facilitators.

                Finally, while all our attention may be taken in dealing with the issue at hand, the fact as to what led to the Pulwama attack must not be lost sight off. For this serious lapse on the part of our intelligence services, it is imperative that heads must roll. There have also been clear indications that despite increasing numbers of militants being neutralized in the Valley the Army and other Security Forces were being increasingly marginalized, especially in South Kashmir, because of popular discontent. They had consequently lost their ability to dominate the countryside, thereby losing out on intelligence. These aspects continued to be ignored by the Central Government and the military hierarchy. Little thought was given to the necessity for reviewing either counter insurgency strategies or tactical procedures and the leadership continued to be swayed by tactical successes with little attempt to resolve the growing disillusionment and radicalization within the population, especially the youth. This must certainly change.

     

    The writer, a military veteran is a Consultant with the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi and Senior Visiting Fellow with The Peninsula Foundation, Chennai.

    This article was also published in the Pioneer https://www.dailypioneer.com/2019/columnists/stifle-the-jihadi-network.html. Opinions expressed in the article are those of the author alone.