Pahalgam attack: Pakistan wants a never-ending war, let’s give it one

Security personnel patrol Srinagar-Pahalgam highway | Praveen Jain | ThePrint

Does Narendra Modi have any choice but to order some form of retaliation for the Pahalgam terror attack? I don’t think he does. He has to act.

But let’s do this step by step.

First, who would he retaliate against? The answer has to be Pakistan. Every major terror attack in India, especially in Jammu and Kashmir, has its origins in Pakistan. Even if Pakistani soldiers or agents themselves are not involved—though the terrorists of 26/11 were, in fact, all Pakistanis—the group that carries out the attack is always Pakistani-sponsored or has its headquarters in Pakistan. Its members are trained and financed by Pakistan.

So it’s quite easy to work out who to retaliate against: Pakistan.

Two: Do we know that it was the Pakistan government/establishment that was behind the Pahalgam attack? In recent years, countries that sponsor terrorism often hide behind the claim that non-state actors were responsible for the violence.

In Pakistan’s case, this is a lie. And anyway, what constitutes the Pakistan state? Is it the government? Is it the army? Is it the ISI? Is it the dozens of terrorist groups that Pakistan trains, finances, and maintains?

The it-wasn’t-me excuse has been used so often by Pakistan that it has stopped being a joke. When the Kargil incursions were discovered, then-PM Nawaz Sharif said his government had no idea what was going on and that the army was behind it.

Perhaps this was true, but it only proves the point: in Pakistan, the concept of what constitutes the state and how power is wielded is so confused that there is no point in wasting time in figuring out what a non-state actor means in Pakistan.

If the violence originates in Pakistan, then Pakistan is responsible.

The 26/11 miscalculation

Three: If there is such an obvious target to retaliate against, then why should India not go ahead?

Well, because we often funk it.

After the 26/11 Mumbai attack, the Manmohan Singh government ignored the angry voices demanding retribution on the grounds that a war would not benefit anyone, including India. This view was eagerly supported by many Western countries that were terrified of a nuclear escalation.

At the time, this restraint was hailed as statesman-like. But in hindsight, it looks more and more like a terrible miscalculation. Nobody who plotted the siege of Mumbai has been brought to account. We have all heard the chilling tapes in which Pakistani handlers instructed the terrorists to kill more and more civilians.

Well, thanks to the government’s ‘statesman-like’ restraint, those handlers are still roaming free and probably still chuckling over the success of their bloody mission.

Nobody has been held accountable. The message to other terrorists was: India will do nothing.

Four: Will the world let us retaliate? Well, can it really stop us when America itself lets no terror attack go unpunished and hunts down and executes its perpetrators?

And if world opinion is so powerful, then why doesn’t it stop Pakistan from launching terror attacks against India?

Besides, if our retaliation is short, swift, and effective, it will be over long before world opinion has a chance to respond.

The 2019 Balakot airstrike may or may not have been particularly effective (depending on which version you believe), but we managed to execute a military response regardless of world opinion.

We can easily do so again.

There will be no opposition from Trump’s US

Five: There is the Trump factor to consider. Until now, US foreign policy has been largely bipartisan, even if different administrations have had varying priorities.

That consensus has now broken–to the extent that there are questions about whether NATO itself can survive. We do know that Donald Trump has no interest in Pakistan and is openly hostile to Islamabad’s sponsors in Beijing. We know that once you take trade out of the equation, Trump is broadly pro-India.

This gives us a perfect opportunity to strike against Pakistan. Trump is not Bill Clinton, who called Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the middle of the night to get India to back down during the Kargil War. Trump’s White House aides and cabinet members are not like those who asked Manmohan Singh to refrain from retaliating after the Mumbai attacks.

Any action against Pakistan that doesn’t go against American interests will not face resistance from Trump.

It would be crazy if India did not take advantage of this opportunity.

Six: Manmohan Singh was confident that India’s problems with Pakistan could be settled through dialogue. General Pervez Musharraf encouraged this naive misconception and ran circles around him. The current consensus in Delhi is that while there is no harm in talking now and then to defuse tensions, no amount of dialogue will solve the basic problem.

Instead, we have relied on pressure and–so say the Pakistanis–clandestine operations inside Pakistan.

The trouble with clandestine operations is that two can play that game. And it is clear, especially after the massacre of innocent civilians in Pahalgam, that Pakistan is prepared to be far more ruthless and bloodthirsty than we have ever been.

Some people have linked the sabre-rattling speeches made by Pakistan Army chief Gen Asim Munir to the attacks on Pakistani military targets by Baloch separatists. When a passenger train was hijacked, Pakistan blamed India and promised retaliation. Perhaps the murder of hapless civilians in Pahalgam was that retaliation.

I don’t dispute that clandestine operations are an effective way of needling the Pakistan Army. But when an attack of this magnitude occurs, neither dialogue nor sabotage is enough.

We need an exemplary display of military power.

Why Pulwama-type response matters

Seven: Narendra Modi is politically astute enough to know that there are two ways a government can react to a terror attack. The first is to go on and on about a security failure and sack your own people. That’s the approach Manmohan Singh opted for after 26/11. The home minister, Shivraj Patil, was sacked. So was the chief minister of Maharashtra, Vilasrao Deshmukh. Eventually, even the national security advisor, MK Narayanan, whose failures were crucial, was also forced out.

This kind of approach is high-minded and moralistic, but it is politically self-defeating because, rather than using public anger as a sword to punish Pakistan, you use the sword to stab yourself.

Contrast Manmohan Singh’s approach with the way Modi handled the Pulwama massacre. Of course, there were massive security and intelligence failures in that case too. But rather than dwell on them, Modi went after Pakistan. The success of the Balakot strike may be disputed, but there’s no doubt it totally transformed the public mood. Even though an Indian plane was shot down and its pilot captured, Modi turned that to his advantage by getting Pakistan to release the pilot and treating it as a personal triumph. Pollsters tell us that Modi’s actions gave the BJP what was called a Balakot bump in the opinion polls and contributed to the massive victory in the 2019 general election.

Given all of this, can Narendra Modi afford not to retaliate? His supporters expect him to respond and all of India is looking for retribution.

More crucially, I believe a strong military retaliation is not just politically astute, it is also the right thing to do. India needs to show Pakistan that terrorism has a price. It cannot murder Indian civilians and expect to get away with it.

And retaliation against Pakistan would serve another purpose. It’s clear that one of the agendas of the terrorists was to deepen the Hindu-Muslim divide in India. That’s why they reportedly made such a show of asking people their religion before shooting them.

To some extent, this is working. Social media is full of BJP-RSS supporters blaming Muslims and attacking secularism.

We need to make it clear that this is not about Hindus or Muslims. This is about Pakistan and its never-ending war against India.

So let’s identify the enemy and make it pay. If it wants a never-ending war, let’s show Islamabad what India is capable of. It’s about time.

Vir Sanghvi is a print and television journalist, and talk show host. He tweets @virsanghvi. Views are personal.

(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)