As dust at the Line of Control settles and the gun gets cold with ceasefire rolling over to hold a fragile peace, but thinking that peace would last for long is a miscalculation. Pakistan will not learn its lessons and will turn its guns towards the LoC. India has spectacularly demonstrated its credible offensive under Operation Sindoor, pushed Pakistan against the wall, and forced it to de-escalate. However, India must realise the larger risks and flashpoints that will recur after Operation Sindoor and must prepare a new, calibrated offensive.
Slate Always Remains Blank For Pakistan
Pakistan’s obsession with India and extremist ideologies has strongly motivated Pakistan’s security apparatus to engage in misadventures against India. Even in wars, especially from 1971 to 1999, Pakistan chose not to learn its lessons and instead attempted to instil a fabricated peace or step up its anti-India rhetoric. Decades ago, the Indo-Pakistani relationship was shrouded in the shadows of fabricated peace driven by coldly calculated diplomacy. Post-2016, Pakistan stepped up its anti-India rhetoric and began to aggressively re-adjust itself through fundamentalist approaches and weaving complex terror webs against India.
Pakistan knows that it won’t be able to match India’s firepower, and significant asymmetries exist. Still, despite that, Pakistan takes the risks of misadventures and engages in limited fighting to counter India’s response. After the conflict threshold becomes unbearable, Pakistan pushes back, and a brief silence and diplomatic rendezvous on the global stage are set in motion. Two years after the Kargil Agra Summit, a process was set in motion to normalise the tensions and open an effective channel of dialogue and peace, but it failed, and after six months, the Parliament attacks happened. India responded with large-scale deterrence measures under Operation Parakram, which led to a standoff between the two nations and a ceasefire agreement in November 2003. Just after two months of ceasefire in January 2004, two Fidayeen (suicide squad) terrorists attacked the Jammu Railway Station, killing four soldiers, injuring nine others, and six civilians.
In April 2005, India and Pakistan agreed to open up the frontier dividing Kashmir, capping a landmark visit to New Delhi by Musharraf. A Peace bridge was also inaugurated, making a first bus service across Kashmir in almost 60 years. Just after two months, five LeT terrorists attempted to attack Ram Janmbhoomi, and after three months of a failed attempt, serial blasts went off in Delhi. All this happened within almost five months, as India and Pakistan opened their first land route in 50 years.
Pakistan’s Deceptive Peace Strategy
Pakistan knows very well that sustenance on the battlefield against India is limited, and they have weak conventional measures to deter India from stepping up offensive or seizing territory. Therefore, Pakistan needs a strategic pause to shift gears from the conventional front to the sub-conventional front. This pause is also essential for Pakistan to minimise or stop the continued conventional losses against India. As a pause is set in motion, Pakistan maintains a deceptive peace by pushing for negotiations and diplomacy. Such tactics tend to cool the hot environment and help Pakistan avoid battlefield humiliation.
Pakistan’s deceptive peace strategy has four elements that provide some advantage
First- Gather Diplomatic Outreach and Support on the global stage
Second- Repair damages by seeking financial and defence support
Third- Prevent Isolation and Erosion in the region by seeking diplomatic engagement and ties with India
Fourth- Time to shift gears against India from conventional front to subconventional front, i.e waging terror strikes in India as a retaliatory mark
Pakistan’s security calculations have special space for strategic pauses in shaping strategic depth against India through Afghanistan. Pakistan has woven out a Triple R strategy, echoing the former Indian Air Force Chief Anil Chaudhary’s three years back. Triple R means rearticulate, reorganise and relocate. The Triple R strategy bears a strong resemblance to Pakistan’s deceptive peace strategy.
Shift to Sub-conventional After Kargil
While ceasefire talks and diplomacy were at work following the Kargil conflict, Pakistan was shifting gears backstage. After a humiliating defeat in 1999, Pakistan used a deceptive peace strategy to paint a smokescreen of normalisation. Still, in reality, Pakistan was shifting its review of its terror strategy against India and moved from cross-border terrorism to radicalisation and psychological war strategy to disrupt communal harmony and radicalise Indian Muslims, especially the youth.
The strategy was an initial success as Pakistan successfully deceived India with peace and weaved out a terror group(Indian Mujahideen in the backdrop of final ceasefire talks in 2003. Pakistan was able to re-adjust the SIMI cadre, which was in a diminishing stage, and developed an offshoot in a new outfit- Indian Mujahideen (IM). Notably, Pakistan’s terror group and affiliate of Al-Qaeda, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami’s Bangladeshi branch, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami Bangladesh, played a crucial role in founding IM.
The Indian Mujahideen soon became a security nightmare for India. The terror group carried out 10 bombings across India in almost five years. The beginning was the Varanasi bombing at Varanasi’s Dashashwamedh Ghat.
Deceptive Detente
The 2015 period was a brief detente moment in Indo-Pakistan relations, during which Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a surprise visit to Pakistan on Christmas. This visit developed a moment of detente between the two countries; however, under the backdrop of detente, Jaish-e-Mohammed revived itself, which was under pressure from Nawas Shariff’s government when Shariff ordered counter-terror department of Pakistan to crack down on the organisation, but the then Army Chief General Raheel Sharif’s intervention softened the crackdown. Weeks after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Visit to Pakistan, Jaish carried out its first post-revival attack on India, the Pathankot Airbase attack in January 2016. Cut to September 2016, Uri attacks happened. India responded with surgical strikes targeting Jaish’s key launchpads. After two months of surgical strikes, Jaish attacked Nagrota Army Base, killing seven soldiers. Surprisingly, Nawaz Sharif changed their tone and issued a warning to India by saying, “Pakistan is also capable of Surgical Strikes and don’t mistake silence for weakness” Such statements put the dent in the back burner and redefined the Indo-Pakistan relationship. In 2018, Pakistan’s security establishment attempted to establish backchannel talks with India to avoid regional isolation, as India was accelerating its strategic rise in the region. Surprisingly, under the backdrop of diplomatic outreach to India, 3 J&K Policemen were kidnapped and killed by Hizbul Mujahideen, even putting their videos out warning J&K Police that police officers in J&K should resign or prepare to be killed. This incident led to India’s immediate rejection of peace talks with Pakistan.
Sub-Conventional Retaliations With Deception
Overall, Pakistan has adopted a subconventional way of counter-retaliation to India’s retaliation against terror. This strategy gets more dangerous when it is masked with deceptive peace. While Pakistan uses a deceptive peace strategy to gain a pause and put a status quo to the deteriorating situation against India, in the backdrop, it aims to bleed India to keep its relevance and fundamentalism against India alive. The attempts of detente with India should not be serious if it goes that way; it will either be sabotaged by terrorists or by the Army, so peace should be deceptive so that Pakistan can have a reasonable time to respond in its way- terror strikes. India’s Operation Sindoor has spectacularly displayed its renewed power and resolve with a credible offensive through in-depth strikes going beyond Pakistan-occupied J&K and even targeting Pakistan Air Force’s key air bases. While Pakistan first approached for a ceasefire, this surrender from Pakistan’s side shouldn’t be taken as a genuine attempt to de-escalate and negotiate. It is, again, a deceptive peace strategy to buy time and pause the deterritorialisation and humiliation of Pakistan.
The Threat Is Real and India Must Not Stop
Asim Munir’s promotion to Field Marshal and Munir’s recent statement that “Water is Pakistan’s red line”. India has set strong conditions for negotiations that Pakistan, for apparent reasons, will not be able to fulfil. Then, what are Pakistan’s options if there is no scope for holding on to a ceasefire or negotiations? Pakistan will resort to sub-conventional retaliation with deception, which means there is the possibility of another terror attack in J&K or any other part of the country. Notably, Masood Azhar’s youngest brother, Talha Al-Saif Alvi, has issued a warning to India in Jaish’s in-house digital magazine. He is pressuring Pakistan to allow Jaish to launch full-scale jihadist operations against India. He further warned Pakistan military and ISI that “We are hurt, we are bleeding, we are covered in the blood of our dead and mad with our grief. If you seek to stand in our way now, you will be wiped from the face of the earth.” Jaish’s operations in charge and brother of Masood Azahar has said Prime Minister Narendra Modi, listen, if you do not stop the massacres of ordinary Muslims, the Fidayeen of the Jaish will raid your streets and lanes, and unleash rivers of blood. For every dead Muslim, we will leave behind the bodies of ten dead Hindus.”
India’s options
An assessment of Pakistan’s retaliatory and deceptive behaviour suggests that the threat is almost imminent. Therefore, India must aim to strategically paralyse Pakistan by weakening its will to engage militarily and even by subconventional means. India must harness its covert strike capabilities and carry out pre-emptive covert strikes inside Pakistan. This will significantly weaken Pakistan’s capacity to shift gears towards subconventional means of retaliation, as the current Pakistan leadership, especially the military, is more dangerously deceptive and extremist, and is ready to take any insane risks to retaliate against India.
