Caught in the terror-talk paradigm, India can choose to engage with Pakistan or ignore its troublesome neighbour or engage while imposing heavy costs for terror attacks. Unfortunately, all three will be ineffective due to India’s own failings and incapacities
Perhaps the moment sustained re-engagement with Pakistan began, we all were aware of the fact that something like the attack in Pathankot was bound to happen. Similarly, we also knew that if India persisted in its policy of not talking to Pakistan, a big attack was due. India’s dilemma, therefore, is: Talk and get killed or don’t talk and get killed. So, what should India do and is there a clear path forwardIJ
As usual, public response to this dilemma is deeply divided. On the one hand, people want India and Pakistan to talk, as if nothing happened. On the other hand, realising the futility of the situation, many believe that talks with Pakistan will be futile in entirety.
The middle ground sees opinions that rather crudely paraphrase former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s declaration, “Make peace like there was no war, fighter terror like there is no peace”. So, which of these three paths hold up on the basis of factsIJ
First up is the argument that the talks should continue irrespective. There is some logic to this. Well-structured talks can be an important source of signalling and intelligence-collection, especially when such data is systematically collated over years.
Imagine my surprise when interacting with a couple of think-tanks in Washington, DC and london, I found that they had created a superb map of shifts in positions, talking points, and priorities over the last 20 years or so by simply engaging in Track II talks with the Pakistanis. They are even able to correlate such information with periods of increased violence, and have developed this into a highly reliable template.
This is nuanced intelligence gathering that India’s foreign service has proven remarkably inept at. Badly trained, our diplomats have all the superficial trappings of competence, but they lack the ability to gain real intelligence or build up a high fidelity tactical picture for the political leadership.
Consequently, their ability to understand the adversary’s subtle shifts and be meaningful in any engagement is zero. The benefits of talking to Pakistan, therefore, are non-existent, not because Pakistan doesn’t use structured talks to transmit messages, but because we are institutionally incapable of understanding those messages if and when they are transmitted.
However, the negatives of talking are evident. As American scholar C Christine Fair puts it: “Engagement comes with a price”. In India’s case, this price is much heavier than the price of not talking. Consider this: Every major attack that India suffered, be it numerically or symbolically, has come about during a thaw in relations. Hence, talks have their advantages and disadvantages. In the India-Pakistan case, the disadvantages are too high; and whatever advantages we can reap, we are in no position to benefit from.
Does this then lead us to the inescapable conclusion that not talking with Pakistan is probably the best way forwardIJ Not really. The problem with not talking to our neighbour is that the longer the frostiness continues, the more the Pakistani generals feel that they need to do something to shake up the status quo.
There is another motive to such attack: Periods of disengagement mean periods of ignoring Pakistan. This is when India pays little to no attention, and the military threat from India to Pakistan loses its prominence.
In order for the Pakistan Army to maintain its primacy, the India threat has to be consistently highlighted and, therefore, tension must be triggered. Even a cursory glance at the statistics will tell us that attacks during times of high tension have claimed fewer Indian lives than attacks in times of low tension. That said, Indians are still going to die, and die in droves. The conclusion then is: Ignoring Pakistan can be a highly successful strategy, except for India’s inability to protect itself internally.
The success of ignoring Pakistan, and not talking with it, depends on the ability of India’s police and internal security forces to thwart attacks. The string of failures that led to the Pathankot attack as well as the botched response to it, indicate that we are in no position to protect ourselves effectively.
The third option then is the middle path. let the talks continue unabated, but also have severe reprisals against Pakistan. The question is: With what exactly do we carry out these reprisals, and against whomIJ We cannot bring ourselves down to the level of the Pakistanis and attack civilians.
This is not because of some misplaced notion of morality, but rather that the Pakistani military doesn’t care about its own people. After all the Inter-Services Intelligence’s terror spawn have killed more Pakistanis than they have Indians, but the military shows neither remorse nor regret, nor is it willing to back peddle on democracy.
The notion of attacking ‘terror camps’ is absurd because terror camps do not function the way we imagine them to — there are no dormitories, or concentration of people that lend themselves to decisive targeting, either by air or on the ground. This is one of the reasons US drone strikes end up killing more civilians than terrorists.
The option of targeting the Pakistani military also ends up being unfeasible owing to two reasons. First, is the way the Indian civilian bureaucracy has gutted the military to the point of making it hopelessly dysfunctional. Second, is the way the Indian Army has used its institutional clout to gorge on meagre resources and starve the Air Force.
Making all our response options Army-centric — be it a cold start, or commandoes — means that serious blows against the Pakistani deep state and what it cares about are impossible. At best, the Indian Army can inflict superficial damage at the periphery. It is only air power that can target the deep state and hit assets that the Pakistan Army cares about. But as long as the political and civilian leadership see ground, and not air power, as the primary means of a response, military options are utterly futile.
So what do we end up withIJ Talks are futile because of an incompetent and untrained foreign service; ‘No-talks’ is unfeasible because of a rotten internal security architecture; and ‘Talk-while-you-hit’ is off the table because of Army-centrism and the step-child treatment of the Indian Air Force. In the end, it seems we really don’t have any option, except to plod along.