The abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019, the effective handling of the coronavirus pandemic and India’s bounce back from a difficult economic situation have led to an exponential increase in its strategic confidence and its ability to handle sensitive and tricky foreign policy and security challenges. The Ukraine war, for example, has drawn the right level of commitment from New Delhi. However, the renewed threat from China, genuine and justifiably worrying, has diverted much of the strategic attention towards the Line of Actual Control (LAC) along the northern borders and also created a dilemma regarding the emerging order’s international dispensations, US-Europe-Japan and China-Russia. India’s strategic reorientation, while managing the emerging world order, may have inadvertently made the country vulnerable. The old threats, that had seemed to have been neutralised, are evidently back. The crude and ideologically driven pinpricks in J&K, involving Pakistan-sponsored terror strikes on our establishments, soldiers and vehicles are like an anti-climax to the Indian public’s imagination, especially because in recent times it had started to treat Pakistan as a pushover state.
The Poonch terrorist attack on April 20 that killed five soldiers in the line of duty is a crude wake-up to reality. Without resorting to fault-finding, chest-beating and rhetoric, this analysis harps on a profound truism: J&K remains an albatross, whether India wins or loses. India has done well to secure an advantage and neutralise many of the threats that existed for 30 years or more. However, the Pakistan strategy is of low-intensity conflict (LIC), characterised by hybrid war. An old adage states, “an LIC does not go away until it actually goes away”. Experience shows that there is little scope for a clear-cut victory and defeat in the LIC that has existed in J&K. An LIC does not just disappear, it lingers and provides sufficient scope for a bounce back. It is the people who ultimately decide their fate. And, that moment takes time and energy to arrive at; it’s not easy when there is a wily adversary such as Pakistan waiting to reconvene resources and strike “appropriately” to message a will to continue the fight. It need not be a Pulwama-type attack with dozens of fatalities but just something to draw attention and an attempt to show the flag. Pakistan desires a waypoint in the matrix of the current march back in J&K — Poonch was that waypoint.
When the strategic environment of the proxy conflict zone, and beyond, is rapidly changing and the sponsor state (Pakistan) is itself going under, there is a tendency on the part of the victim state (India) to play down the potential threats from the sponsor. This is nothing strange. However, successes in handling LIC are mostly temporary — assuming victory may be a mistake.
A nation on the rise will often lose sight of the ground below. It’s for its strategic community to rectify national thinking and the media should be a part of this process. The government’s efforts towards better integration of J&K have been laudable but the public seems to be veering towards complacency — fuelled by a lack from the media which rarely understands LIC or hybrid war and the accompanying characteristics. The Army remains in a dilemma to accept the existence of threats that it has supposedly overcome and neutralised, not realising that there is nothing permanent in this until LIC fades.
The Poonch attack was unexpected to the extent that any pragmatic analyst would presume that a Pakistan teetering at the edge with a collapsing economy, would not risk the possibility of an unpredictable conventional Indian response to a provocation. Pakistan has just exited the FATF Grey List, risking a re-entry would not be in its interests. Yet strike it did, living up to its reputation of being irrational in decision-making. It tried to exploit a situation in which it probably assessed that India as the chair of the G20 is wont to avoid complications on its borders this year.
Two events perhaps spurred the decision to launch the strike. First, the G20 Tourism Meeting at Srinagar in the third week of May 2023. Disrupting the event and having it cancelled is probably Pakistan’s aim, especially because the meet is an opportunity for India to showcase an integrated J&K to an important forum. The second and more complex event is the SCO Foreign Ministers Meeting at Goa on May 4-5 for which Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto accepted the invitation. There is speculation of a sinister Sino-Pak collaboration engineered to embarrass India if New Delhi takes back the invitation to the Pakistan minister as a result of the Poonch attack. If it does not, Bhutto’s presence could well embarrass India should he choose to make awkward statements on Indian soil.
India must not do anything in a hurry despite the cynicism that will aim to target the government. Foreign policy has been well-handled and no major decisions are required when there is an international strategic churn in progress, and nothing major is at stake. Recalibration to balance out the attention between the northern and western borders will ensure greater pragmatism and the proper security focus. The strategic community and the media must assume a larger and more pragmatic role instead of pressuring the government into any hurried decisions.
Operationally, the area south of Pir Panjal perhaps needs a review in terms of the density of troops but the more important imperative pertains to mindsets. The terrain, the target’s proximity to the LoC and a mix of population keep the area in a state of higher vulnerability – it’s this vulnerability that terrorist groups aim to target.
Hopefully, an incident-free May will ensure further security but while the international strategic churn exists and Pakistan’s current status of despair remains, a pragmatic well-thought-out mechanism of response must be evolved — and it need not be only kinetic. The non-kinetic has many options that could help place Pakistan on the mat.
The writer, a former corps commander of the Srinagar-based 15 Corps, is chancellor, Central University of Kashmir
