By Brig. Arun Bajpai
Recently Prime Minister Modi gave an interview in which he spoke on almost all subjects including Pakistan. When asked as to why cross border terror has not stopped despite surgical strikes two years back, he said that it will take more time for Pakistan to mend its ways. The problem with Indian political masters is that for reasons best known to them they keep either a bureaucrat or a policeman as their National Security Advisor. In the current case it is NSA Ajit Doval a policeman who is all in all. He even heads the Strategic Planning Group where the three Services Chiefs are members along with the Defence Secretary. Needless to say in a country where instead of a military man planning strategy based on external threats, a policeman is planning strategies resulting in these flip-flops in foreign policies which are now quite common. But then they will definitely hurt future of the country.
Prime Minister Modi took over the command as PM of India in May 2014. From 2014 to 2016 PM Modi’s approach to Pakistan veered from warm embraces to sudden put downs. He suddenly decided, while returning from Afghanistan to land at Lahore to wish the then Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif a happy birthday on December 25, 2015. Pakistan (read Pakistani army), replied this good gesture by launching a jihadi attack by its sponsored jihadis on Pathankot Air Base in the first week of January of 2016. This started the hot cross-border exchange of fire. The entire 2016 to 2017 was consumed in cross-border firings, physical attacks and a surgical strike. During this period Modi rightly said that terrorism and dialogue cannot go together. There is no doubt that Indian foreign policy success has been in isolating Pakistan on terror. Nevertheless these efforts did not work out in terms of foreign policy with Pakistan. The case in point is that the surgical strike was meant to deter Pakistan from cross-border jihadi attacks, but that did not happen. Just two months after the surgical strike, a far more serious jihadi attack was launched by Pakistani Army in Nagrota. This was a much more serious attack than the one at Uri whose counter was the surgical strike. However instead of launching another surgical strike India did not retaliate. Similarly there was no response to Pakistani Army sponsored Jaish Mohammed jihadi attack in 2018 in Sunjuwan.
Hence the message that has gone across is that Indians are afraid and not capable of launching more surgical strikes! Meanwhile Pakistani Army BAT teams are functioning as usual; the latest being their failed attempt on December 30, 2018. For a strange reason the Indian ardour for surgical strikes cooled down after one such strike in 2016 and in order to curb cross border violence, India agreed to re-implement with Pakistan the 2003 ceasefire accord, which Pakistani Army keeps on breaking every second day and we keep on launching protests with Pakistan. After the new Pakistani PM, Imran Khan took over the reins of Pakistan in 2018, India even agreed to a dialogue with the country but then later called it off.
On surgical strikes, a minor military operation which Indian Army is capable of launching daily, whatever PM Modi might say, it was his party which politicised this operation. It was BJP which disclosed it, eulogised it and then used it as an election agenda in the UP elections. This surgical strike was celebrated in the entire length and breadth of the country in all schools and universities as Surgical Strike Day. Needless to say Modi’s Pakistan policy lacks consistency. God knows what advice he is getting and from whom, but whatever advice he is getting lacks coherence. Things happen and experiments take place as if decided on a daily basis. There is nothing long term that can be called a policy. Compare this with Pakistan. In 1971 after loss of half of Pakistan as Bangladesh, thanks to Indian Armed Forces, the then PM of Pakistan, Bhutto said, “We will eat grass but we will make a nuclear bomb,” which they did by the late eighties. In 1988 Pakistan started the proxy war on India with the specific aim of bleeding India with a thousand cuts. After 30 years they are unflinchingly carrying on with that agenda while we keep on changing our Pakistan policy at the drop of a hat.
The time has come in India also for our political masters to realise that they also must now appoint the right people in the right place. NSA must be from the Armed Forces. The Chief of Defence Staff system which was sanctioned since 2003 must be put in place. One surgical strike is no deterrent to dissuade Pakistan from cross- border terror. Every cross-border activity of Pakistani jihadis must be retaliated by a surgical strike by India which must kill Pakistani soldiers because killing jihadis has no meaning. These jihadis are canon fodder for Pakistan. India must understand that Pakistan (read Pakistani Army) will never be our friends. Hence all this talk of friendship must be dumped. Agreed that all our surgical strikes will not always be successful but then that is part of the game. At times we will have to suffer casualties and attrition. In their hatred for India, Pakistan has already become a colony of China especially after CPEC. So let us be practical. Pakistan must be broken into four independent states starting from Baluchistan and Sind. The earlier our political masters understand this the better it is for India.
(The author is a retired Brigadier of the Indian army and can be reached at [email protected]).