Any doubt that the Pathankot attack bears the Pakistani military’s imprimatur has been demolished by reports that Pakistan will seek more evidence from India to carry forward its investigation
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif did not air something unimaginable when he said recently that the Pathankot attack of January 2 disturbed the peace process between India and Pakistan that was moving in the right direction. That significant sections in Pakistan’s Army and rogue spy service, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, would do anything to scuttle any peace effort between the two neighbours promising success, is no secret. Any doubt that the Pathankot attack bears their imprimatur has been demolished by reports that Pakistan would seek more evidence from India to carry its investigation into the incident forward. Clearly, a replay of the fraudulent investigations into the 26/11 attack, where the ploy has been shamelessly used, is under way.
The fact is that, in the last analysis, it is the Army that calls the shots in Pakistan. Any Prime Minister, who seeks to pursue a course disapproved by it, ends in the wilderness. The reasons for its refusal to countenance the prospect of peace with India are no secret. First, peace will undermine its claim of being the protector of Pakistan’s safety against India’s ‘designs’, which has been its rationale for its stranglehold on the country’s political life. The loss of this stranglehold may, in turn, eventually put at risk, among other things, the huge financial empire it has built up, an empire whose dimensions have been revealed in detail in Ms Ayesha Siddiqa’s Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy. This empire, as she shows, is run not in the country’s interest but for the personal benefit of members of its officers’ cadre, particularly those in the higher echelons, and to expand their hold over the country’s political system.
The second reason is the Pakistani military’s bitter and relentless hostility toward India, primarily as a result of the reverses it suffered in the 1947-48 Kashmir War, the wars in 1965 and 1971 and the Kargil War of 1999. It is particularly obsessed with avenging its comprehensive defeat at this country’s hands in 1971 as the final denouement of Bangladesh’s liberation struggle.
The question arises: Why then hold talksIJ Those favouring a dialogue will argue that it may further show to the international community New Delhi’s commitment to seeking peace with its belligerent neighbour despite the latter’s continuing provocations. Second, detailed and persuasive presentation of evidence during the talks of Islamabad’s involvement in cross-border terrorism against India will have an impact on Pakistan’s public opinion and help in building up a demand for peace. Third, it may one day lead to a situation where the country’s civilian leadership may be able to convince the uniformed services of the need to bury the hatchet in Islamabad’s own interest, particularly if countries like the United States and China join in the process, and if a civil war unleashed by Islamist fundamentalists forces it to abandon its confrontation with India to concentrate solely on fighting the domestic menace.
None of the reasons is particularly convincing. The international community has had enough evidence of Pakistan’s complicity in terror strikes against India, particularly in dastardly attacks like the one that began on 26/11/2008 and the most recent outrage at Pathankot. Yet that has not stanched the flow of aid, and/or military supplies, to Pakistan. The United States has continued to pour money knowing full well that the bulk of it is being used to buy weapons for use against India and not the Pakistani Taliban. The unvarnished reality, repeatedly underlined in history, is that countries will pursue their own interests. They will not protect the meek from being trampled upon nor act against the guilty unless it benefits them to do so. Recall, for a moment, the disgraceful betrayal of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany in the Munich Agreement of September 1938.
As for public opinion, the surge in the number and militancy of Islamist fundamentalists in Pakistan makes the chances of voices of sanity being heard increasingly slim. The assassinations of Pakistani Punjab’s Home Minister, Shuja Khanzada, in August 2015, of Salman Taseer, Governor of the same Province, and Shahbaz Bhatti, Minister of Minorities in the Federal Government, in January and March, 2011, respectively to say nothing of Benazir Bhutto’s in December 2007 — have sent a chill down the spines of Pakistan’s moderate politicians who are increasingly reticent in their speech.
It is not just politicians. The civil society has been terrorised by murders like those Dr Rubina Khalid, lecturer in radiology in Karachi’s Dow University of Medicine and Professor Khalid Khan of Pakistan’s National University of Modern languages in Islamabad, in November 2014, of the distinguished Islamic scholar, Professor Shakeel Auj of Karachi University and one of his colleagues, visiting lecturer, Maulana Masood Baig, in September 2014, and Karachi University’s Dean of Medicine, Dr Jawaid Iqbal Qazi, in February of the same year.
The message sent by the torture and murder of Syed Saleem Shahzad, Pakistan’s outspoken journalists by, according to all indications, the ISI, in May 2011, and the murder of Sabeen Mahmud, Pakistan’s prominent human and women’s rights champion in May 2015 and the attempted murder in April 2014, of Hamid Mir, noted journalist and anchor, who survived with gunshot injuries, is clear: One can only challenge the Army, the ISI and the fundamentalist terrorist organisations at the risk of one’s life. Brave voices are still heard but the number of people prepared to speak out has fallen sharply. In such situation, the argument that a critical public opinion may one day persuade the Army and other hardliners to seek peace with India, can only indicate either unbelievable naivete or abysmal ignorance of the conditions in Pakistan.
India will have to depend on its own military strength in dealing with Pakistan’s unconventional war against it through cross-border terrorism. For this, it needs not only adequate military hardware but an effective strategy, including the launching of unconventional operations that compel Pakistan to abandon its aggression by steeply increasing its cost.
Volunteering to talk in the face of repeated rebuffs, and without Pakistan fulfilling the conditions set by India after an outrage like 26/11 or Pathankot, only suggests New Delhi’s lack of resolve to stick to a hard line. This, in turn, encourages Pakistan to persist with its unconventional war against this country and the West to turn a blind eye to it.