Ineffective offensive

Our present masters at Raisina Hill and their foreign policy pundits have displayed an extraordinary gluttony for punishment in their interactions with Pakistan, and l’affaire Masood Azhar. 

The ‘dialogue process’ with Pakistan has been punctuated with slight after slight, the most recent being the announcement of the ‘suspension’ of talks by the Pakistani High Commissioner at Delhi, Abdul Basit, almost immediately after the visit of the Pakistani Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to Pathankot. The JIT included military officers as well as a representative of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), the very agency that India has long been blaming for Pakistan’s campaigns of terrorism on Indian soil, and which is also thought to have engineered the attack on the Indian Air Force base at Pathankot — the object of this ‘joint investigation’. To add further insult to the many insults following the injury of the terrorist attack on a critical strategic target, Pakistan then informed the United Nations that it was India that was not “forthcoming” on “resuming the comprehensive dialogue” — an accusation that appears to have been taken quite seriously by the ‘international community’. It is, indeed, a matter of enduring astonishment that, despite decades of support to terrorism and a footprint of malfeasance that extends across the globe, Pakistan is still able to project itself at international fora as the aggrieved party; and India can only fret and fulminate.

In the present case, however, India was quickly and easily reassured by the Pakistani foreign ministry spokesperson rather vaguely asserting that “dialogue is the best option”. This sent the Indian ‘intelligentsia’ into analytic paroxysms about the state of Pakistan’s power equation and the fraught relations between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (on whose behalf the foreign ministry is presumed to have spoken) and the military leadership (whose position Basit is thought to have represented). Such analytics have long kept many in the intellectual and policy establishment in India in diligent employment for many years and decades, through the numberless swings of the policy pendulum between talks and no talks between India and Pakistan. At each new turn, we begin again, as if there is no record of history. 

That is also the problem of the Pathankot attack and our keen pursuit of Azhar in its wake. This is only one of the many hundreds of attacks on Indian soil that Azhar, as the head of the Jaish-e-Mohammad, has engineered in India. No specific reason is adduced that makes this particular attack unprecedented or pivotal to the India-Pakistan relation. Indeed, Azhar has featured in India’s “List of Most Wanted Fugitives from Justice” in Pakistan since the ritual of presenting this list to Islamabad was established in 2008 — when the list contained just 20 names, and not the 50 now included. Indeed, the fact that Azhar merits a tiny paragraph in this list identifying him as nothing more than a “key conspirator” in the Parliament attack of December 13, 2001, indicates the utterly cavalier manner in which this whole business is approached. 

There is something entirely disgraceful, from an Indian perspective, that New Delhi should have unconditionally approached Pakistan to ‘help’ in the Pathankot investigation; and it is, equally, unsurprising that Pakistan has virtually shut the door in our face for any reciprocal investigations on Pakistani soil. 

But disgrace has become a habit here. So, begging for a little more punishment, we went along asking for Azhar to be placed on the UN terrorism list on the grounds that the organisation he leads is already on this list. Never mind that a Chinese veto has blocked such moves in the past and, regardless of India’s initiatives, could be expected to do so again. We are quite satisfied to rush about with an air of injured morality after the event, when our actions prove entirely fruitless.

But it doesn’t quite stop here. Some particularly bright light in Government decided that it would be a good idea to leak information regarding a US-sponsored jamboree in Dharamshala — planned months before China’s veto of the Azhar listing — as India’s ‘riposte’ to Beijing’s veto on the Azhar issue. The Dharamshala conference hosted (between April 28 and May 1) a number of critics of the Chinese, including several dissidents. The leaky buckets in New Delhi were particularly eager to tell their favoured planters in the Press that the invitees included Dolkun Isa, an Uyghur dissident proclaimed a ‘terrorist’ by China, and against whom an Interpol Red Corner notice has been issued on Beijing’s request. The Dharamshala conference was, of course, and was likely intended to be, a bit of a red rag for Beijing — and there can be no extraordinary objection to waving an occasional red rag at an adversary who resorts to rather frequent provocations against us. It is advisable, however, before undertaking such a course, to be confident of one’s own testicular resilience. As events thereafter have borne out, such confidence was either lacking, or was grossly misplaced, and New Delhi cravenly withdrew Isa’s visa, turning the entire affair into another humiliating farce. Even as India was eating humble pie on the Isa issue, China contemptuously directed New Delhi and Islamabad to “resolve” the Azhar issue through “direct and serious consultations”. 

To return, then, to Azhar and our sorry and impotent posturing, what do we intend to communicate? The general idea is that by throwing the ball into the Pakistani court, we will ‘shame’ Islamabad in the eyes of the world. Really? Is there not enough evidence globally and openly available, and available to the intelligence agency of any self-respecting country, regarding Pakistan’s role in terrorism? And have we not, over the decades, learned that Pakistan is well beyond shame?

Further, if Pakistan goes through the motions of initiating a legal process against Azhar — as it did against Hafiz and other Lashkar-e-Taiba conspirators in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks — and nevertheless continues with its support to other acts of terrorism, what will we then do? And, while such a charade is ongoing, are we to forget all about that other charade, the 9/11 trials in Pakistan? And all the thousands of murders Pakistan’s proxies have committed in India? And the hundreds they continue to commit each year? 

There is a critical error in making a single case, Pathankot, and uncertain action against a single individual, Azhar, sufficient proof of Islamabad’s intentions, even as the entire infrastructure of terrorism on Pakistani soil is kept in reserve, and Pakistani mischief on India’s soil continues on a daily basis. Crucially, moreover, there is a strategic error in pinning all our hopes on talks, and failing to evolve, for decades now, any alternative strategies, levers and capacities.

The truth is, the Pakistanis have honed their skills as minimal satisfiers; and the Indians have dedicated themselves to mastering the art of being most easily satisfied.