Category Archives: Pakistan

Calling Pakistan’s Escalation Bluff

29 Thu Sep 2016

Posted by in India, Pakistan, Security, South Asia

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On Thursday morning, the Indian Army announced that it had conducted several strikes on terrorist camps across the Line of Control. According to the statement by the Director General for Military Operations, Lt Gen Ranbir Singh, operations took place in four sectors along the LoC – Bhimber, Hotspring, Kel, and Lipa – at 00 30 on September 28 and destroyed seven terrorist bases that were used to stage infiltrations into India. All facilities were between 500 and 3,000 metres from the LoC. Casualties are reported to include two Pakistani soldiers and 38 terrorists. Commandos were dropped at the LoC from where they crossed over into Pakistani-occupied Kashmir under the watchful eye of Indian drones. The action was undertaken after receiving “credible and specific information” about terrorists at the locations planning attacks on major Indian cities.

Pakistan’s initial reaction has been to deny these strikes, citing “usual” Indian cross-border shelling instead as the cause of death of two of its soldiers. This buys their leadership time to decide on how to respond, especially in light of the United States’ prompt statement expressing support for Indian counter-terrorism efforts. Though worded vaguely, its timing and general import leaves little doubt that Washington knew about and approved of India’s military actions Wednesday night.

The Indian strike is truly genius – while representing almost nothing tactically, it has truly set the cat among the pigeons diplomatically and strategically. At an empirical level, India’s action is a cross-border strike only by the grace of semantics – its special forces penetrated into Pakistani-held territory only just beyond a good sniper’s range and killed 38 terrorists, a number that could probably be replaced in hours. Normally, a cross-border strike evokes memories of Neptune Spear, Ajax, Moked, or Thunderbolt. Nonetheless, this is nothing to be scoffed at – I had written in a previous article that India cannot hope to dissuade Pakistan from terrorism with cross-border strikes and should instead attrit Pakistan and its terrorist allies. Wednesday’s strike fits the mould perfectly.

The ingenuity of India’s move comes in its diplomatic package. First, it sought to persuade the United States of the justness of its cause – Washington can be a moralising bully as much as India’s early prime ministers were. Second, it announced the strike publicly and reiterated that the operations were limited and had been halted – this dampened any escalatory opportunism by Pakistan. Furthermore, it was a booster shot for national morale, sagging after decades of receiving blows from across the border. Third, Delhi briefed the envoys of 22 nations, including the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council,  through its foreign secretary S Jaishankar on Wednesday’s mission. This would consolidate international opinion behind Indian actions, especially since Pakistan has a glowing reputation for supporting terrorism. The briefing was presumably to also reassure the global community that the military action was indeed limited, the conviction of which would lead to their diplomatic pressure on Islamabad to abjure from further provoking Delhi.

Strategically, India has called Pakistan’s bluff that it would respond with nuclear weapons if the former dared to conduct raids into the latter’s territory. Wednesday’s raid is so small and insignificant that a nuclear response would seem insane by any standards. As several analysts in favour of striking back at Pakistan, including myself, have argued earlier, India must utilise the conflict space below Pakistan’s nuclear threshold if it is to have any hope of curbing Pakistani shenanigans. This is exactly what Delhi has now done, challenging Islamabad to actually defend in public terrorists with nuclear weapons. And it seems, Islamabad has blinked.

There is no reason this bluff could not have been called earlier, but previous administrations imagined – and Pakistan allowed them to do so – that even the slightest response to the asymmetric war being waged from across the LoC would incur Pakistani nuclear retaliation. The Narendra Modi government has understood that the threshold had to be higher than that for it to have any meaning. Yet in all caution, Modi authorised only very shallow strikes at first – if Pakistan fails to live up to its rhetoric, future strikes may be even deeper and more significant as India improves its capability to conduct such strikes. Wednesday’s raid has disregarded Pakistan’s nuclear red lines and in all likelihood, pushed them back a bit.

Why did Modi not act earlier? Perhaps because he wanted to, on the world stage, give diplomacy a chance; perhaps the Indian military was not ready in the first two years of the Modi administration; or perhaps he wanted to dispel the stereotypes about him for domestic political reasons. This is all speculation and irrelevant to the national security debate. What matters is that the Indian government has finally acted boldly – and wisely – on the Pakistani-sponsored terrorism question and it is a much appreciated breath of fresh air.

This post appeared on FirstPost on September 30, 2016.

Modi’s Balochistan Gambit

20 Tue Sep 2016

Posted by in India, Pakistan, South Asia

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s mere mention of Balochistan in his Independence Day speech probably caused more flutter than any actual Indian policy ever has. An earlier reference to the western Pakistani province by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval at the 10th Nani Palkhivala Memorial Lecture in February 2014 had already set the tone – in rhetoric, at least – of the Modi administration towards misadventures from its western neighbour. In the wake of the terror attack in Uri, these comments have acquired greater salience among the public.

To be sure, these utterances represent some bold and out-of-the-box thinking by anyone in the Indian government. However, supporting an insurgency – in whichever country – is a complicated and messy affair that cannot be dismissively relegated to a mere talking point. There is interest in many quarters about the feasibility of Indian support to Balochistan, especially since it appears at first glance to be analogous to the situation in Kashmir. Yet appearances can be deceptive and if Modi & Co. are serious about the option, there are some questions they must first consider.

Henry Kissinger is famously said to have asked, “Who do I call if I want to call Europe?” The same is true for Balochistan. Whom does the prime minister – or his national security advisor – call if he wants to call the Balochi rebels? The Balochi struggle, such as it is, remains deeply fractured and it is difficult to identify one clear leader or even someone who could potentially unify the different factions against their common oppressor. Needless to say, Islamabad would have picked off such a person at the earliest had one emerged.

Uniting factions in service of a common cause is not easy as even the United States with its several carrots found out in Syria. Even supporting the two or three major factions is a recipe for disaster as intra-faction fighting can quickly sap international sympathy and India’s patience.

Even if the Baloch were able to come together, what would India’s aid look like? The rebels would be committing suicide with small arms alone and heavy arms would only encourage the Pakistani Army to bring in even heavier arms such as armour and air support; Delhi can hardly supply the rebels commensurately. Yet India’s struggle to even overtly train and arm the Afghan Army puts the country’s role as an arms supplier to the Baloch in question.

There is also this to be considered: who stands guarantee to the suitability of Baloch targets? So far, India has had the advantage of international confidence that it does not distinguish between good and bad terrorists. Were Balochi fighters to target Pakistani civilians, especially schools or hospitals, it could tarnish India’s reputation for no apparent gains. This is not an unlikely situation – Baloch anger at their harsh treatment by Islamabad so far would only naturally boil over and lash out at the first instance it can strike where it hurts. Wars seldom remain kosher for long.

An armed and active Baloch insurgency would cause alarm in the neighbourhood – Tehran, Kabul, and Beijing at the very least. Historically, the Baloch people have lived in what is today western Pakistan, eastern Iran, and southwestern Afghanistan. If the insurgency were to excite dormant aspirations among Balochis outside Pakistan, it would very well sour India’s relations with Iran and Afghanistan. Baloch leaders would have to promise to abandon any dreams of an akhand Balochistan and even if they were to, could they be trusted? For how long?

Beijing would have its own concerns with a Baloch uprising. After having invested heavily is propping up a teetering state like Pakistan, China would be loathe to see its interests washed away. First, they would lose the strategically important port of Gwadar; second, they would have to abandon their economic corridor into Pakistan; third, and most vitally, their dagger pointed at India’s back would be blunted. It is highly unlikely that China’s leaders would sit idly by for long if Baloch fighters gained momentum against Islamabad’s forces, with or without India’s help.

The international community would have its own nightmares – it is not often that a state possessing nuclear weapons succumbs to such a virulent separatist movement. There would be immense pressure on India – if links were established – to cut all support to the Baloch rebels and to do so quickly.

Allowing for the moment that a Baloch insurgency is successful and Kalat regains its independence, how would it benefit India? Pakistan would lose approximately five percent of its population and 45 percent of its territory; electoral results suggest that it is unlikely that this would excite other separatist movements such as in Sindh. Will the new Balochistan tilt towards India? Delhi’s experience with Bangladesh in 1972 suggests that even this is not a given.

The nuclear arsenal, India’s primary concern, will in all likelihood remain in Punjabi hands. Punjab, the brightest ember in Pakistan’s fire of anti-India hatred, will emerge even more concentrated and certainly in no mood for negotiations henceforth. While the new situation may affect the tactical military situation, there would be little impact strategically except perhaps to lower the nuclear threshold even more and make the subcontinent an even more dangerous place.

Finally, if answers to all these convolutions do already exist somewhere in South Block, is it really wise to announce Indian support for an independent Balochistan so publicly? Declaratory wars have not been in fashion for over a century now. Plausible deniability is a very effective strategy; if Indian fingerprints were indeed found on a resurgent Baloch insurgency, there is no guarantee that it will not cross Pakistan’s nuclear threshold…especially if the insurgency makes initial gains.

None of this is to say that Modi should not extend support to the Baloch. The first step, however, might be to regularly highlight their plight on the international stage. If indirect funding could be made available for the diaspora and others to produce documentaries, organise conferences, and lobby important politicians in major capitals, it would create momentum around their cause. Exaggeration and too shrill a tone, however, would only set back the cause. A model one might learn from is how Armenians got the massacres of 1915-1917 internationally recognised as genocide. Such recognition opens several legal avenues for concerned states as well as affected people to take against Islamabad’s policies.

If aid were to ever include weapons, the Indian government would do well to closely consider the impediments to their action, potential fallout, and certain blowback.

This post appeared on FirstPost on September 21, 2016.

No Options After Uri

18 Sun Sep 2016

Posted by in India, Pakistan, South Asia

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On September 18, terrorists suspected to belong to the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan attacked an Indian Army camp at Uri in a pre-dawn raid, killing 17 soldiers. The South Asian commentariat has gone into its usual and predictable tizzy, some quarters demanding military action while others urge a firm reprimand, international pressure, ‘strategic restraint,’ and talks. A good dose of recrimination on past policies and (in)actions is also available. In a few days, perhaps a week, calm will return and all will be forgotten…until the next terrorist attack. Ultimately, 17 soldiers would still be dead and the country still hapless about its own defence but the commentariat would have inched closer to reaching their monthly writing quota.

There is nothing new in the terrorist attacks at Uri, either in the terrorists’ methods and capacity to acquire intelligence and materials or in what India might have learned about the intentions of its western neighbour and its proxies; nor is there anything new in what has been produced in the newspaper columns and television studios across the country. It would have probably been easier and cheaper to simply recycle the columns and video clips from the previous terrorist attack.

Despite an avalanche of advice from armchair as well as erstwhile military strategists, Delhi’s response to terrorism with Pakistani fingerprints has always been to bluster and bear it. India accuses Pakistan for conducting terrorism from behind a nuclear shield and though Islamabad has not changed the situation in the last two decades, there does not seem to have been much movement either intellectually or materially from India’s side either. Simply put, India has been and still is without an option against Pakistan.

The first option is talks; unfortunately, talks on terrorism have never yielded anything positive for India. At best, it is a colossal waste of time and money and at worst, symbolism in the name of security. It is difficult to fathom even to whom India should talk: not only have civilian governments in Islamabad repeatedly been proven to be unable to rein in the military but have often even been kept in the dark about certain policies and programmes by the armed forces.

As even Pakistani commentators have noted, the country’s unhealthy obsession with Kashmir and its very existence rooted firmly in an anti-India ideology, the military is unwilling to negotiate to remove its raison d’etre. With the civilian government ineffective, Delhi has no partner for peace in Islamabad.

India’s second option is diplomacy: Delhi could use its international influence to isolate Pakistan politically and hinder its economics. Though theoretically sound, India simply lacks the clout to embark on such a policy. China, of course, will continue to nurture the thorn in India’s back, and few of India’s trading partners see the South Asian country as so important to their national interests as to upset Pakistan without any tangible gains in return. Delhi has neither the economic, political, nor military influence to persuade even a few states important to the Pakistani economy to scale back on relations with Islamabad or impose intrusive anti-terrorism conditions on bilateral relations.

Admittedly, the Indian economy has grown in the last two decades but it is not yet an indispensable component of vital global supply chains. Delhi’s reticence to involve itself in international affairs, not just beyond its immediate region but even in its neighbourhood, has meant that it has a small diplomatic and military footprint. This has shown little sign of changing in the near future, and as Delhi has often found in the past, moral arguments are not always convincing in international affairs.

Finally, the third option that many have been urging is the use of military force. Though no one serious advocates war, there is nonetheless a clamour for conducting limited yet punishing cross-border strikes on Pakistan’s vast asymmetric warfare infrastructure. This, however, remains the least feasible of options. As the much publicised raids into Burma slightly over a year ago showed, the Indian military lacks the capabilities to undertake covert operations into enemy territory in terms of planning, material, and training. Until recently, even the political will to acquire these capabilities was lacking. Since 2014, there has been rhetoric but actions are yet to match the bombast.

Worse, Indian conventional superiority over Pakistan has been steadily eroded over the years. India’s much vaunted military modernisation notwithstanding, Pakistan has worked assiduously to counter India’s military planning and advantages. While Delhi remains locked in negotiations for a mid-level aircraft for its air force and the low-level indigenous effort is not yet in sight, Islamabad has increased the range of its missiles as well as acquire tactical and cruise missiles specifically meant to blunt rapid Indian advances into Pakistan. In conjunction with recent horror stories about the Indian military’s operational readiness – after the November 2008 attacks in Bombay, for example – Pakistan may prove more of a challenge to India than is generally appreciated.

Thus, India has no plausible response to Pakistan’s provocations for the time being. This view, though hotly contested, appears to best explain India’s utter inaction at each juncture. The real question after Uri is not how India should punish Pakistan but whether Delhi has moved – fast – on addressing these strategic and tactical lacunae. Even a modest retaliatory capability would take a decade to develop but has the government started on that road yet?

To be fair, all is not glum: the United States and Britain have swiftly condemned the attack and observers believe that, though neither country named Pakistan in their statements, they agree with the Indian assessment of the origin of the attacks, something that was unthinkable in the hyphenated era just a few years ago. India’s diplomatic visibility – utility? – has clearly grown but Delhi is still a long way off from using diplomacy and economics as supplementary options to military force.

This post appeared on FirstPost on September 20, 2016.