#dnaEdit: Border flare-ups

It is unusual offensive even by Pakistan army’s norms of belligerence: heavy mortar shelling in Jammu sector, killing five civilians, injuring nine, and forcing 20,000 villagers to flee their homes, apart from targeting 40 of Border Security Force (BSF) outposts, and that too on Eid on Monday. It is the seventeenth episode of shelling in the first week of October. The Indian forces, according to reports, responded suitably. The situation forced convalescing defence minister Arun Jaitley to speak out in restrained language, saying that this will not be conducive to improving relations between the two countries. It is interesting and ironic that Pakistan’s chief of army staff Raheel Sharif asserting on his tour in Waziristan that Pakistan army will root out terrorism on the Eid day, according to a Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) release as reported in Pakistan newspaper, The News. The newspaper reported the army as saying that there were six violations since October 1 from the Indian side and that Pakistan has lodged a protest with Indian through diplomatic channels.

Pakistan has always been a troublesome neighbour and it will remain one for a long time to come. This fact should be the key component in India’s Pakistan policy perspective. It is hard to imagine an un-militarised border between India and Pakistan as in the case of the United States and Canada, though it is an ideal situation that the two countries ought to strive for. In the interregnum, there is need for a practicable response mechanism. It would be futile for India to be agitated with this needling and these irritants. They cannot be ignored. There is need for a response, and it would have to be a cool, calibrated and effective, localised one. Islamabad will have to realise that it cannot hope to draw New Delhi’s attention by these acts or even antics. Pakistan will have to decide the kind of relationship it would want with India. It cannot hope to have a big dialogue through these small provocative acts. As for India, Pakistan should be reduced to a marginal factor in the country’s foreign policy. The country has more important challenges, including technological progress and economic growth. India will remain the centrepiece in Pakistan’s foreign policy because its entire strategic perspective is built on the imagined military threat that India poses. As a matter of fact, there is a big internal threat to Pakistan from the Islamic militants inside its own borders. For its part, India cannot be tied down to Pakistan. 

There are Chinese incursions on the Line of Actual Control (LAC), and it might appear that India has this insuperable of fighting on two fronts at the same time. Pakistan is rather eager that this should indeed be the emergent scenario in the region. There is however a difference. Compared to the border flare-ups with Pakistan, the Chinese incursions will not escalate into a diplomatic stand-off. At least this has been the experience since the 1962 India-China war. There has been a long drawn-out border dialogue which has been underway for the last 20 years, and China is not obsessed with India the way Pakistan is. Like India, China’s focus is on economic growth and on how to improve the lives of its billion-plus population. Chinese border incursions will not disrupt economic cooperation between the two Asian giants. The Indian policy along the borders with Pakistan and China will have to be one of aggressive local containment which should not seriously impact the macro-relations with them.