It would be naive to expect the Pakistan military to be chastised with just one surgical strike. The Indian response must be holistic and all-encompassing
Maj Gen (retd) Dhruv C Katoch
The killing of two Indian soldiers on May 1 by the Pakistan Army’s Border Action Teams (BAT), near the Line of Control (LoC) in the Krishna Ghati sector of J&K, has once again brought the issue of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism to the centre stage as some Pakistan-trained terrorists were also believed to be operating with the BAT personnel of the Pakistan Army. This was an act of aggression and deliberate provocation, and any country would have been justified in replying with a firm military response. But what further aggravated the situation and rubbed salt on India’s wounds was the mutilation of the bodies of the dead soldiers —one a JCO of the Indian Army and the other a Head Constable of the Border Security Force.
The Pakistan Army is known for the brutality it has inflicted on its own people, so such unsoldierly conduct is perhaps explained as part of its training and ethos. They have killed thousands of their own citizens in Baluchistan, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA—and rendered millions homeless in the various military operations they have conducted and continue to carry out against their own people. Whole townships have been razed to the ground and the lethal force applied against innocent civilians included fighter aircraft, helicopter gunships and heavy artillery.
In 1971, the Pakistan Army had been brutalised to an extent that its actions in killing lakhs of Bengalis, defiling women and looting property of the local people rivalled the depravity of the killer squads of Nazi Germany, the murderous goons of Pol Pot or the evil regime of Idi Amin. To expect civilised behaviour from such a depraved army, is presuming that a leopard can change its spots! This is not likely now or in the future, unless the Pakistan Army is forced to pay a heavy price for its depravity and taught a lesson that would be hard to forget. This is not the first time the Pakistan Army has desecrated the bodies of the dead. It is unlikely to be the last, unless severe punishment is inflicted on it and it is made to bear the pain.
On September 29, 2016, India, for the first time, responded to the continued acts of aggression of the Pakistan Army with a surgical strike across the LoC. The strike at multiple points was successfully executed without any damage to own troops. A number of terrorist camps in Pakistan occupied J&K were destroyed and a large number of terrorists and some Pakistan military personnel were killed in the process. Pakistan, lacking a suitable response, denied the attacks, but perhaps was biding its time to once again create disturbances in the Kashmir Valley. The May 1 dastardly action by its military personnel was perhaps a part of this larger Pakistani design.
The question that now arises is, how should India respond? Indian public opinion is justifiably aflame and a military response will most certainly follow. The Indian Army has gone on record to state that it will strike at a time and place of its own choosing, and, like the September 29 surgical strike, this will happen. But the moot question is, will a second surgical strike be adequate deterrent or are sterner measures called for? It would be naive to expect the Pakistan military to be chastised with just one surgical strike. Therefore, the Indian response must be holistic and all encompassing.
A military response by India will most certainly be responded to by Pakistan. Therefore, India must be ready to first, escalate the conflict and second, to bear the pain which escalation will undoubtedly cause. The response must be based on a doctrine, wherein the levels of reprisal and escalation are clearly worked out and enunciated. This fact should be made known to the enemy, lest Pakistan be under any false illusion about the will of the Indian state.
A multitude of military options exist, ranging from surgical strikes against specific targets to destruction of terrorist camps, elimination of terrorist leadership and capture of posts along the LoC, to prevent infiltration by the enemy. Alongside military measures, must go hand in hand, a string of other measures, in the political, diplomatic, economic and social spheres.
Politically, India must give support to fissiparous tendencies within the Pakistani state. There is a groundswell of public opinion within the affected Provinces of Pakistan against Punjabi domination and this needs to be exploited. Both the Sindh and Baluchistan provinces are clamouring for freedom and India must extend full diplomatic and moral support to the suffering people in these provinces. India must also strive for the unification of the Pashtuns, who have been artificially divided by the Durand line.
Diplomatically, Pakistan has been reduced to the status of a pariah in the comity of nations, but she has not been isolated, largely because of Chinese support. China views Pakistan as a tool to keep India confined to South Asia and it uses Pakistan as its proxy to keep India engaged in conflict, so that Indian influence is restricted to its own shores. The US also extends limited support to Pakistan as it requires Pakistani help to progress its war in Afghanistan against the Afghan Talibans. Russia too is not hostile to Pakistan as its sees in that country, a ready market for its defence products. So isolating Pakistan is a difficult task, but efforts along those lines must continue. A start could be made by declaring Pakistan as a terrorist state and reducing the level of diplomatic engagement with that country from the present High Commissioner level to a step below.
Economically, India must rethink its grant of Most Favoured Nation(MFN) status to Pakistan. It must also seek to revoke the unequal Indus Waters Treaty and see that India gets its fair share of waters from the upper rivers. But perhaps the most telling effect must come from civil society. We must cease all relations with that country—whether it be in sports, culture or any other form of civil contact. The time has long gone for any soft measures against a rogue state. The India state must now stand up and be counted, informing the world that it can deal with threats in its own backyard. It hardly behoves India to seek a seat in the UNSC, when it fails to confront a rogue state which happens to be its neighbour. A concerted push against Pakistani perfidy at multiple levels is perhaps the need of the hour and a call which may eventually bring peace to the subcontinent.
(The writer is a Director of India Foundation and an editor of SALUTE Magazine)
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