#dnaEdit: Pak’s uneasy response

It has to be said that despite rancorous calls for action, which really meant retaliatory strikes at the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and Hizbul Mujahideen (HuM) camps in the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK), on television news channels and in many Indian newspapers, which was, in a way, a reflection of the popular mood in the country, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi had not taken peremptory action nor did it indulge in perfunctory remarks.

The Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) did meet, and the Prime Minister seems to have asked for the facts establishing Pakistan’s complicity in the attack on the Uri military base on Sunday. It has become obvious that the government would not want to be seen as scoring brownie points through a knee-jerk reaction. The question whether the Uri attack would remain answered is certainly a tricky one. In the wake of the attack on the Pathankot military base in January this year, India shared intelligence with Pakistan and it has even allowed a Pakistan intelligence team to visit the base. The Uri episode has not generated the same sense of common concern in the two governments, however superficial it may be. It is due to the fact that the Uri attack comes in the middle of unrest in the Kashmir Valley for nearly two-and-a-half months, and Pakistan feels that it is the handiwork of militants inside Kashmir on the Indian side. 

Pakistan has not maintained a neutral stance in the matter. Unlike Pathankot, Uri falls in Kashmir, and Pakistan views Kashmir as a disputed issue. Its support for Burhan Wani, the supposed Hizbul Mujahideen commander, is peevish at best because it does not in any way strengthen Islamabad’s case on Kashmir. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s reference to Wani in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday has only degraded the quality of Islamabad’s rhetoric on Kashmir. The Kashmir strategists in Pakistan have committed a cardinal error of supporting a militant of an organization which is considered terrorist as pointed out by India’s first secretary in the Permanent Mission at the United Nations, Eanam Gambhir, in her response to Sharif’s speech.

It has also become clear that Pakistan is anticipating military action from India when as a matter of fact no decision has been taken in the matter. It appears that Pakistan officialdom follows the Indian media closely and seems to believe that India’s plan of action is being articulated by the newspapers and the television news channels. It is quite amusing to read the comments of Pakistan’s ambassador at the UN, Maleeha Lodhi, and foreign secretary Aizaz Chaudhury, who were found arguing at a press conference in New York that the United States should restrain Indian from taking a military step, and that India should not resort to nuclear strike. 

The burden of Lodhi and Chaudhuri’s argument is that it is not right that the United States should preach restraint to Pakistan and not to India. The fact of the matter is that even if India is planning military action, it cannot be interpreted that New Delhi will reach out for its nuclear option, and it is also quite immature on the part of Pakistan, as did Pervez Musharraf in 2001 after the attack on Indian Parliament, that Pakistan will deter any military incursion from India by deploying tactical nuclear weapons. It is quite strange that both Pakistan and the international media should talk of how India and Pakistan cannot go to a war because they are nuclear weapon states.

There will be inter-state conflicts, and they will have to remain conventional. Pakistan should not be talking of defending the non-state militant groups based on its territory by resorting to nuclear weapons. It would expose Pakistan’s utter irresponsibility.