Pakistan-sponsored and assisted terrorist attacks in Jammu and Kashmir have a steady, repetitive course. The regular toll of lives of civilians and security personnel barely make headlines. Every few years, there is an attack in Kashmir or elsewhere in India whose scale, brutality, visibility and toll triggers enormous national pain and rage. Even by the standards of the barbaric attacks we have seen, Pahalgam crossed many lines.
Every major attack draws a set of measures from India. The Parliament attack in December 2001, coupled with Kaluchak in May 2002, led to one of the largest military mobilisations, Operation Parakram; downgrading of diplomatic, commercial and people-to-people ties; and intense diplomatic effort for international censure of Pakistan. By January 2004, an agreement between Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and President Pervez Musharraf that committed Pakistan to stop cross-border terrorism led to restoration of ties and a period of peace. The 26/11 terror attack in Mumbai in 2008 shattered that. India responded with the familiar steps to freeze bilateral ties and launch a massive international effort against Pakistan, but a major military response was eventually not pursued.
After 2014, India’s approach has been a more aggressive mixture of counter-terrorism operations and heavy, disproportionate and unpredictable firing across the LoC, coupled with diplomatic initiatives, including the UNSC and FATF. At the same time, like the prime ministers before him, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a strong effort for an end to terrorism and peace through dialogue.
The attack in Pathankot followed his spontaneous stopover in Lahore. The government gave Pakistan an unprecedented opportunity to demonstrate that it was not complicit in terrorism and was prepared to stop it. That failed. With Uri and Pulwama, India once again took the usual diplomatic measures. But its military response was a departure from the past and demonstrated its willingness to retaliate beyond the boundaries of anticipated and war-gamed steps.
The global context and international responses also changed over time. It was not until the Kargil and the Chittisinghpura in 2000 that the US and others began to accept the existence of cross-border “militancy” from Pakistan. It took the Srinagar Assembly attack in October 2001 and the Parliament attack to acknowledge the reality of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. Engaged in a war in Afghanistan through Pakistan, the US priority was to do enough to pressure Pakistan, assuage India and prevent a war that would derail its own Afghan war. For much of that decade, including after the Mumbai attack, Pakistan used its leverage on the Afghan war to insulate its India policy from larger punitive Western measures.
The recognition of Pakistan’s perfidy in Afghanistan, the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Pakistan’s rapidly diminishing strategic value and the weariness of the Gulf countries that faced their own terror threats from radical Islamist groups, have reduced tolerance for Pakistan. China remains its principal external lifeline. The world, preoccupied with geopolitical shifts, has low patience for the dangerous distraction of cross-border terrorism. On the other hand, India’s global stature has continued to grow. International support for India after Pahalgam has been the strongest ever. The world will not want a war in South Asia, but neither will there be the earlier sympathy or support for Pakistan.
India is at a moment of reckoning again. The obvious measures to further downgrade an already low level of contact with Pakistan were announced immediately. The major escalation is the decision to keep the Indus Water Treaty in abeyance. That is not a surprise. India has already called for its review, as it feels stymied by Pakistan in exercising its legitimate rights under the Treaty and the premise of good neighbourly relations doesn’t exist. India is not obliged to have a treaty with specific provisions. Globally, many transboundary rivers have no arrangements or have non-treaty based mechanisms under international conventions, including in the basin from the Tibetan plateau in China to South Asia. There will be both immediate and long-term consequences for Pakistan. India, and especially Jammu and Kashmir, can benefit, especially as discharges in the rivers have been affected by climate change.
India will also mount a massive diplomatic outreach to a receptive world. Beyond expressions of support and solidarity, India will call partners and friends to take concrete steps, such as cutting off military assistance to Pakistan, including the US F16 upgrade programme, and supplies of spares and components; curtailment of non-humanitarian assistance; review of multilateral funding; freeze on projects in POK; fresh listing in UNSC sanctions committee; extradition of wanted Pakistan terrorists; demand for effective dismantling of terrorism infrastructure in Pakistan; and, renewed FATF strictures.
Prime Minister Modi has unambiguously signalled to Pakistan and the world the security response with a two-fold objective: To bring the perpetrators and supporters to justice and to go after the terrorism network.
The first order of business will be to pursue the terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir while protecting the civilian population. The timing, target and method of a response to Pakistan will be carefully thought through and may not be as speculated. It will take into account our preparedness and Pakistan’s capabilities, avoid repetition, contain an element of surprise, draw intelligence support from some of our partners and, at its most expansive level, include a comprehensive set of military and non-conventional measures. We have learnt lessons from the past and are better equipped. Our immediate achievements may be short-term, tactical and publicly visible, but the long-term objective will be pursued relentlessly.
Pakistan’s withdrawal from the Simla Agreement follows decades of disregard for its provisions and repeated violation of the LoC. If Pakistan seeks to change the status quo on the ground, it will make a big mistake. Reckless nuclear threats are just that. In the Ukraine war, Russia signaled nuclear retaliation if certain red lines were crossed, but did not follow through. Nuclear weapons are normally not instruments of war, but guarantors of survival of the state. Global eyes and ears will track any movements for preventive steps. Pakistan would also be aware of a possible response to even the limited use of tactical nuclear weapons, let alone a strategic one.
Even though a war is a result of escalation of miscalculations, in response to any Indian action, Pakistan may not want a long-drawn full-scale war. Pakistan’s war objective, given its constraints, may be to trigger a limited conventional war that would invite international mediation, re-hyphenate Pakistan and India and re-internationalise the Kashmir issue. As it has happened in the past, at a difficult time internally, the Pakistan army will use this crisis to shore up its position and image as the only guarantor of the security of Pakistan.
But we must not let Kashmir’s quest for peace and progress, or the kindness of its people, be a victim of Pakistan military’s design, nor fall for its enduring objective of lighting the communal fire.
More than military force, the elimination of terrorism from Pakistan would require the world to come together to strengthen the democratic forces and loosen the military’s grip and militants’ sway on the country.
Meanwhile, an honest appraisal should be followed by enhanced security presence in Jammu and Kashmir. Boots on the ground are needed along with technology enablers. At the same time, as the dust settles on this brutal tragedy, the much-needed security, defence and military upgrade, including on technology and equipment, should not continue to be lost in bureaucratic confusion and paralysis.
Nor should the passage of time lead us to stop reflecting on a long-term solution that has eluded us or on the destiny of South Asia, to which our own fortunes are linked. The region needs more attention than we have been giving it.
The writer is a retired Indian ambassador
