No More Waffling

Make Proxy War Costly for Pakistan

By M D NALAPAT
The Times of India (Editorial)
1-18-2000

IF Pakistan is trapped in its ``hate India'' syndrome, so is New Delhi in its reflexive dismissal of all Pakistani demands. An example is General Pervez Musharraf's demand that India should address the root of the problem between the two countries -- namely Kashmir. Rather than shy away from this, New Delhi needs to give the General what he claims to seek, a policy that addresses the causes of Islamabad's hostility towards its eastern neighbour.

The ``roots'' of Pakistan's covert war began on January 1, 1949 when Jawaharlal Nehru agreed to a ceasefire that enabled Pakistan to retain a third of Kashmir. Military experts say that the onward advance of Indian troops would have enabled them to recover the entire territory within four to five months more from December 1948. Despite this, Nehru agreed to the ceasefire, a year after the first mistake of taking the Kashmir conflict to the UN. This gave Pakistan the confidence that Indian weakness in victory (sometimes called magnanimity) could be relied upon to prevent any severe costs being levied on that newborn country by New Delhi.

It is this Pakistani confidence in the inability of India to bring itself to deliver a telling blow that has inspired its repeated forays into India. Just as Prithviraj Chauhan's idiocy allowed the escape (and subsequent reappearance) of Mahmud Ghori, India's repeated forgiving of Pakistan may one day let that country succeed in its ruthless drive to vivisect this country. The 1949 ceasefire was preceded by the surrender over the Pakistan balances in 1947 and followed by concessions over Kutch in 1965, diplomatic retreat at Tashkent (1965) and Shimla (1972), followed by the 1999 Kargil episode, when for the first time New Delhi conceded the Pakistani demand that any conflict between them should get localised to the region of infiltration. Small wonder then that the ISI masterminded the hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight, a move which buried any immediate prospect for peace in Kashmir.

Not-so-Covert War

Islamabad will continue with its policy of covert war on India till such time as it rids itself of the belief that New Delhi will not retaliate in any serious way. It is this perception that is at the root of the tension between India and Pakistan, a state of affairs caused by Islamabad's not-so-covert war against New Delhi. Only when this perception is replaced by fear that India will retaliate in force to such mischief will the ISI stop its terrorist activities.

In the hijacking episode, both Islamabad and its Taliban satellite were aware that the Vajpayee government would not resort to force against them, not even a show of it. Thus they were able to secure three terrorists instead of the one they had originally demanded. By giving a clean chit to both Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Vajpayee regime lost its only bargaining chip, which was to hold both countries accountable for any harm that the hostages may suffer. Destruction through artillery fire of militant camps across the Line of Control, as well as a full alert across the entire India-Pakistan border, would have serve to concentrate minds in both Lahore and Islamabad. New Delhi could have announced that it was planning to supply armaments to the Northern Alliance, as a way of forcing the Taliban to disown the ISI operatives who had committed the act. Instead, Mr Jaswant Singh ruined years of principled opposition to a regime linked with both narcotics and terror, for returns that are not evident at the moment.

Unipolar Diplomacy

Given the fundamental hostility of Pakistan's security establishment towards India, the worry is that such a show of weakness may tempt Islamabad into one day using the nuclear devices that it has been supplied with. Such crude ``weapons'' are unlikely to do much harm, at which stage India can expect the Pakistan-centric establishments in Europe, North America and Asia to put pressure on it not to retaliate, in order to prevent the conflict from escalating. From 1948, each time the pressure has been solely on India to contain escalation, just when it finally gets into position to deliver a telling blow against its tormentor. The Vajpayee team's tough talk has been proved to be mere rhetoric especially after the hijacking episode.

What is alarming is the manner in which Indian security interests have been compromised to win brownie points with the Talbotts and other sub-Cabinet level US functionaries with whom the Vajpayee team interacts. Such pusillanimity has resulted in the intensification of the covert war against India. Unless this is corrected, it can lead to a nuclear attack. In a situation where Pakistan has been given both nuclear devices and the means to deliver them, India can no longer afford the Nehruvian policy of turning the other cheek. The gains of Pokhran II have been squandered by subsequent unipolar diplomacy. As during the Narasimha Rao period, all confidence-building measures were undertaken by India, with the result that Islamabad got further emboldened to raise the stakes ever higher, confident that Mr Bill Clinton would bring the Indians to heel no matter what punishment was meted out to them.

Narcotics Gang

Unless Pakistan is given a practical example of how the costs to it will rise to unbearable levels, should it continue with its covert war, the aggression against India will continue. It is foolish to separate covert from conventional war into two compartments. War is war, and should be tackled by all available means. As long as Pakistan continues to arm and send desperadoes to India, its borders need to feel the heat of an Indian military response, that keeps alive the possibility of hot pursuit. Its covert war has to be fought back with the conventional ratcheting of responses along the borders. At the same time, help needs to flow to both the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan as well as to the oppressed sections of society in Pakistan. They need to be given oxygen to enable them to force the ISI narcotics gang out of power and convert Pakistan into a genuine democracy. Simultaneously, the full scale development of both the nuclear deterrent as well as carrier systems needs to be undertaken, to guard against the possibility of a nuclear attack by overconfident generals in Islamabad. India needs to convince Pakistan that, after 50 years of waffling, it finally means business.