 |
| Three neutralised terrorists |
The attack on the Pathankot Air Force Station was expected. I am sure
the Indian Government and its security agencies must have anticipated it. It
had to happen as it had always happened after every initiative for talks
between India and Pakistan. One wonders whether the perpetrators of these are
really so dumb as to believe that their nefarious designs would not be
anticipated despite the historical background. It is, of course, sad that five
well-trained young men from the Pakistani terror stable and seven young Indian
soldiers lost their lives just for the reason of one-upmanship of the Pakistani
Army and its Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). Life is cheap across the border
as there is an assembly line that produces fidayeens
and the military establishment makes use of them whenever the occasion
demands. They are the cannon fodder that they raise with the objective of
inflicting “1000 cuts” on India. The cream of their youth is being sacrificed
for achievement of an objective that is, at best, delusional. Curiously,
however, the ISI, which patronises the anti-India terrorist groups, used this
time Jaish-e-Mohammed of Maulana Masood Azhar instead of its favourite Hafiz
Sayeed-led Lashkar e Taiba. Perhaps the idea was to put the cognoscenti in
India off the scent.
It seems the Pakistan military establishment felt that the country’s
prime minister was getting to be too big for his boots and that he needed to be
cut down to size. How could he agree to a visit by an Indian Prime Minister
without their clearance? Regardless of the admiration that Modi’s diplomatic masterstroke
evoked across the world, the Pakistan Army had to show to the world, if at all it
had to do so, that in so far as relations with India were concerned it was they
who took the initiatives and not the democratically elected civil government or
the prime minister. Helming the India-Pakistan proceedings for long – in fact
since the birth of the country – it could not let go of the authority it had acquired
and had been wielding just because an upstart prime minister of the sworn enemy
suddenly decides to descend at Lahore. Greeting Nawaz Sharif on his birthday is
one thing, parachuting down to Lahore hogging publicity and disturbing the status
quo quite another.
That there are two power centres in Pakistan and that the one that is
housed in the General Headquarters (Pakistan Army) in Rawalpindi generally gets
better of its civilian counterpart in many respects, especially in respect of
relations with neighbouring India, is known the world over. This was pointedly
brought out in a delightful autobiographical narrative by the ex-RAW (Research
& Analysis Wing) chief AS Dulat in his book “Kashmir – the Vajpayee years”.
He was probably one top sleuth who talked and talked to all the Kashmiri
militants. He recounted how one of them told him that nothing in Kashmir could
happen unless it was cleared by the ISI. He was categorically told that in
Kashmiri militancy it was the ISI that called the shots. But, it is well known
that 26/11 Mumbai attack, far away from Jammu & Kashmir, was planned and
executed by none other than the ISI. The Pathankot operations next to its border
with India could not also have taken place without precision planning of the
spy organization.
Quite clearly, the Pakistani security establishments will never allow
peace initiatives with India to fructify. India is their enemy and they seem to
be totally against peaceful relations with it. This, as a Pakistani journalist
Mehmal Sarfaraz said, is their “world view”. They upstaged the peace
initiatives in late 1990s by capturing the Kargil heights and then planned and
executed 26/11 Mumbai attacks in 2008 to undo whatever had been achieved
towards only commencement of talks. And, now that Modi muscled in and
established a personal rapport with the Pakistani Prime Minister the latter’s
Army would have none of it. Within 8 days of Modi’s Lahore visit they broke
into the Pathankot Air force Station. Although planning for such an attack
would take months but, most probably, the script was ready and they thought
this was the best moment to put it into operation.
Pakistan has
condemned the attack as if some other country had carried it out. So soon after
a huge bear-hug with Modi Nawaz Sharif, perhaps, had to say something. But the
pity is he did not assure of preventing a repeat attack. He could not have, in
any case, as he has no control over his rogue army. It is a very rare kind of
situation where the civil authority talks peace and its army wages war. This
has happened not once, not twice but a number of times. Pakistani democracy is,
therefore, a sham with an army that works in the international arena at cross
purposes with the civilian authority. It has become so powerful and has
developed such enormous vested interests in keeping Indo-Pak tensions high and
the civilian government under its boots that no democratic process perhaps
could ever shake it away.
No wonder, what the
Afghan President Ghani did first thing after landing in Pakistan was to make a
beeline for Rawalpindi. Even the US does business with the Pakistan Army as
evidenced by the extended visit by its chief to the country. In matters of its
concerns the feeling in the US is that it is not the Prime Minister but the
Army Chief who can deliver. The latter has, therefore, eclipsed the Prime
Minister. Besides, the current Army Chief has quickly acquired a “cult hero”
status by battling terrorism and bringing in relative peace in the generally
violent city of Karachi. Self-confessedly, the Army Chief plays a wider
“soldier-statesman” role given the inability of the democratically elected
government to govern effectively. He has opened a front against the jihadists
operating in the West but opening a front against those operating in the East
against India is another matter. These jihadists are his assets for inflicting
those “1000 cuts”.
The pity, however, is
that this attack has come so soon after the “détente” arrived at official talks
held between the National Security Advisers and the foreign secretaries of the
two countries at Bangkok early in December 2015. The first of the several take-aways
from these talks was engagement with each other after years of harsh language
and diplomatic sulk. Another take-away was the agreement reached to hold talks
on Kashmir and terrorism. Th disengagement happened at Pathankot even before
the ink used for the agreement could dry up. If a country could renege so
quickly after arriving at an agreement at such a high level, perhaps, there
would be no point in having anything to do with it.
Having invested so
much in his ‘peace-mongering’ with Pakistan the attack on Pathankot should be a
serious setback to Modi. The Opposition Congress is likely to tear him to
pieces though its efforts over the last few decades did not yield anything much.
The alternatives for Modi would seem to be only two - to go ahead with his
peace initiatives either with the civil authority or with the Pak Army Chief or
to take an about-turn and severe all relations (to the extent possible) with
Pakistan. Already shrill voices are pitching for the latter course of action.
It perhaps would be unwise but seems right at least in the immediate aftermath
of Pathankot.
*Photo: from internet
No comments:
Post a Comment