Some senior officers of the Indian intelligence establishment feel this was done to provoke the Indian defence establishment and political opposition to retaliate, thus undoing the India-Pakistan peace dialogue.
The Pathankot attack may have been masterminded by the Pakistan Army's General Headquarters (GHQ) in Rawalpindi, according to an assessment by a top Indian intelligence official, says a prominent daily.
According to a senior intelligence official, the Pakistan GHQ is puzzled and angered by the positive reaction of the international community and media to PM Narendra Modi's Lahore diplomacy and Nawaz Sharif's hospitality. The army has been feeling left out of the issue.
Though there were suggestions that the Pakistan army had backed the recent peace outreach, the intelligence official disagrees. It appears, rather, that ISI too is of the view that Modi's surprise visit to Lahore created a favourable sentiment in Pakistan towards the civilian 'pro-peace' regime.
The Pakistan Army and ISI this time did not use their preferred Lashkar e-Taiba (LeT) responsible for 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Instead, they chose Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM_, a less known terror group, to hit Pathankot. This, they felt, would ensure more deniability, says the report.
Headed by Maulana Masood Azhar, one of three terrorists swapped to end the IC-814 hostage crisis of 1999, JeM has been resurrected over the past few years.
The Pathankot attackers were part of the Bahawalpur group of JeM and spoke in Multani dialect, common to south Punjab, during phone calls with their Pakistan-based masterminds. Four calls were made in the intervening night of Friday and Saturday, three to terrorists' Pakistan-based Jaish handlers and one to a family member of a fidayeen. The calls were intercepted by Indian agencies, which is how the plot was unearthed.
While one of the fidayeen has been identified as Nasir, the two handlers who were heard instructing the attackers to blow up aircraft at Pathankot airbase were called Maulana Ashfaq and Haji Abdul Shaqur.
In 2008, the 10-member LeT attack module, including Kasab, was instructed in a similar way by their handlers from a control room in Karachi as they carried out the carnage in Mumbai.
Sources said the objective of the Pathankot attack was to cause damage to IAF assets and technical assets and kill as many personnel as possible. Some senior officers of the Indian intelligence establishment feel this was done to provoke the Indian defence establishment and political opposition to retaliate, thus undoing the India-Pakistan peace dialogue.
This would, in turn, also help bring back focus on the Pakistan military's propaganda painting their country a victim of terrorism, facing an aggressive eastern neighbour (India) and an Afghanistan that is heavily pro-India.
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