It’s high time India gets a grip of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism once and for all. This can be done by internationalising the problem at every forum
An episode of the American animated sitcom The Simpsons was aired in 2010 in which the titular family visited Israel. In that chapter, Marge admonishes Jacob, their Israeli tour guide: “You people are so pushy!”, to which Jacob replied, “I’m pushy? Please! You stay there surrounded by your great enemy, Canada — try Syria for two months and then we’ll see who’s pushy!” Or, as in India’s case, try Pakistan for over 70 years and see how pushy you get! Except since the Kargil war of 1999, India has not been pushy and has indeed shown an incredible amount of restraint. Perhaps, even too much restraint. Anyone who believes in democracy will always give precedence to diplomacy and talks as the perfect way to sort out problems between nations. Even now, after tensions between the two nations escalated, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has trotted the “let’s talk” line, albeit with a veiled threat about how neither he nor Prime Minister Modi would have control of the situation if it were to escalate further. But this is disingenuous.
Even if Khan himself is not personally complicit, he is well aware that the deep state within Pakistan, operating through the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), not only actively supports fundamentalist terrorist groups such as the Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba but also has had its part to play in their creation. That Pakistan has ostensibly banned these outfits — mainly for the purpose of respectability on the world stage — is laughable. It was not just a bizarre coincidence that the head of the terrorist organisation Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, was found hiding (or not really even hiding, more hanging around) not in any remote/difficult to search federally administered tribal areas but in Abbottabad, half a mile away from Pakistan’s premier military training academy. How long does India — and the world — intend to allow Pakistan to carry out acts of state-sponsored terrorism and get away with it?
Remember, Pakistan is a state built on being in opposition to India. It is in Islamabad’s interest to continue with an unpleasant and irritating asymmetric war along the Line of Control because it gives it strategic depth. Otherwise, it becomes a small, unimportant country (albeit one with nuclear weapons) with very little relevance on the world stage. So, it does what seems rational to it: Create problems in the area so that its leaders can then pretend to assist in sorting them out. Skirmishes with Indians also play well domestically: Nothing makes Pakistanis as happy as making Indians miserable. Now that’s all well and good in a game of cricket but it is downright reprehensible when Islamabad’s actions result in unnecessary injury and death. The lack of a moral anchor in the Pakistani administration is exemplified by its relationships with its closest allies: Saudi Arabia and China, two countries not known for their human rights record. Granted, plenty of Western democracies still do business with Saudi Arabia but when the Saudi state brazenly murdered dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi (who wasn’t even that much of a dissident) in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, there was international outcry.
And what did Pakistan do? Rather than taking necessary steps to reform the failure of its economy, it glossed over the incident and went to the Saudis with a begging bowl in hand. What about China? Beijing, which has detained up to a million Muslim minorities, mainly Uighurs in grim concentration camps in Xinjiang, as part of the Chinese war on Islam, extends support to Pakistan on the understanding that it would look away from its “home-grown” crisis. So let’s not pretend that the Pakistani Government puts Islamic brotherhood above its own tactical interests. And what can we learn from this? Simply that the Pakistani Government cannot be trusted to do what is right.
Now, India can carry on as usual. It could say it’s not backing down in the face of Pakistani terror and still carry out air strikes. There could be some fretting about the deleterious outcome of an escalation between two nuclear powers and then, after some tension, the whole thing could fizzle out. Or India could get to grips with this problem once and for all. How? By internationalising the problem. India is a major world power — and a cooperative and democratic one at that — and it certainly has friends in countries like the US, UK, France, Canada and so on. Whereas a few years ago, the US and UK might have been reluctant to enter the fray, mistakenly believing that they needed Pakistani’s help in combating terrorism in the region, they now know that Pakistan is a hindrance and not a help. India, together with other democracies, can make sure that the Pakistani Government feels the consequences of its actions, be it through diplomatic isolation, economic sanctions, or should those not work, military action. This is not war-mongering. This is bringing a notoriously recalcitrant country in line with international norms of negotiation and behaviour. There is strength in numbers. So let India and its allies read out the riot act: Enough is enough.
(Biswas is the author of The Antagonists)
