The situation along the line of Control and the International Border is set to worsen. A war with Pakistan cannot be ruled out
Breath-taking statements that Pakistan's intensifying shelling of Indian territory across the line of Control in Kashmir and the International Border along Jammu, is due to New Delhi calling off the Foreign Secretary level talks with Islamabad, scheduled to have started from August 25, ignores the real reason: Pakistan's internal turmoil. At the time of writing, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's confrontation with Mr Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf and cleric Tahir ul-Qadri's Pakistan Awami Tehreek, seems set to cause widespread disorder. To Mr Khan's insistence that Mr Sharif step down for 30 days during which an independent body would complete investigating charges of widespread rigging in the last election, which brought the incumbent Prime Minister to power, Mr Qadri has now added the further demand that Mr Sharif resigns within 48 hours.
While Mr Sharif is clearly in no mood to oblige Mr Khan or Mr Qadri, the Pakistani Army, which does not enjoy a very friendly relationship with the Prime Minister, is watching. It has not made any statement that might indicate a move toward a coup but has made it clear that it wants the civilian Government to share political space with it.
The presence of terror groups like the lashkar-e-Tayyeba, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and Afghan Taliban, seriously complicates matters. Of these, the TTP is at war with the Pakistani Government, the Afghan Taliban acts as an instrument of the latter against the Afghan Government but gives sanctuary and assistance to the TTP. The leT is a spawn of the Pakistani Government — in particular, of the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate — and has close ties with it. Prime Minister Sharif and his brother, Mr Shahbaz Sharif, have very good relations with its chief, Hafiz Saeed. The Government of Pakistan's Punjab Province, run by the Pakistan Muslim league (Nawaz), provided the Jamaat-ud-Dawa’ah, leT's parent body, a grant-in-aid of more than Rs6.1 crore, another allocation for Rs35 crore in the budget for fiscal 2013-2014.
These were not the only allocations. In between 2009 and 2010, the provincial Government provided more than Rs8.2 crore for the administration of JuD facilities. In fiscal 2010-2011, Chief Minister Sharif, using his discretionary powers, allocated Rs7.98 crore for six organisations at Markaz-e-Tayyeba and a special grant-in-aid of Rs30 lakhs for the JuD's Al-Dawa school system in several districts of Punjab. It is important to remember all this because there are three ways in which the present situation in Pakistan conduces to a ratcheting up of tensions with India. First, serious clashes along the international border and the loC, threatening to escalate into a full-fledged war, tends to divert attention from the crisis at home. It also enables the Government to ask people to rally behind it in its confrontation with India and a chance to accuse its opponents of dividing the country when it needs internal cohesion against an external enemy.
Second, in such a situation, the leT can be expected to sharply escalate its terror strikes against India to oblige the Government and also further its own cross-border designs. Third, the Pakistani Army has every reason to encourage the leT not only because it is pathologically hostile to India, but sees in escalating border clashes with the latter an opportunity to divert attention from its own dismal failure in its war against the TTP and reinforce its self-projection as the sole defender of Pakistan's unity and integrity. In fact, escalating tensions with India will be useful to rationalise a coup on the ground that the country will not be safe in the hands warring civilian politicians at a time of national crisis!
Clearly, the situation along the loC and the international boundary is set to worsen and one cannot rule out a full-fledged war with Pakistan. The country must not be caught unprepared.