JAMMU and KASHMIR, India — Cursory observers of political events in South Asia must be surprised at how quickly India-Pakistan relations, once seen to be on the upswing after a new government took over in India in 2014, have gone downhill in the last fortnight.
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi unexpectedly invited all heads of South Asian nations for his swearing in, almost all eyes were on the cordiality between him and Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif. Similarly, when he decided to drop by Lahore last December to wish Sharif birthday wishes as he flew back from Afghanistan, Modi appeared to signal a resolve to address the perpetually vexed relations between the two nations.
Modi’s visit to Lahore was followed by an attack on an important Indian air force base in the north Indian city of Pathankot by Jaish-e-Mohammad, or JeM, an outlawed militant group based in Pakistan. The Pakistan government’s condemnation and its offer to assist with the investigations was seen to be an important step in recognition by the country’s civilian establishment of Indian concerns regarding terror groups operating out of Pakistani soil. India accepted the offer by granting access to a Pakistani investigative team to the air base.
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So what exactly happened between 2014 and this autumn for the current situation to come to pass?
As the events around the attack in Pathankot unfolded, there was a grudging realization that the grand gestures that the Indian prime minister had undertaken were merely that, since no groundwork had been laid before and after those high-profile events and meetings. Indeed, immediately after the air base attack, the scheduled diplomatic talks between the two countries were postponed. India expressed concerns that the terrorists came from Pakistan, while the latter responded by asking India to not accuse it, as the country itself is one of the greatest victims of terrorist attacks.
Soon reports in Pakistani media suggested that the investigation team that had visited the air base had concluded that the Indian government staged the attack to defame Pakistan. Additionally, the Pakistan government did not fulfill its promise of facilitating a reciprocal visit of the Indian investigators to their country. By this past August, the Indian government had ruled out any prospects of further dialogue with Pakistan until it showed its willingness to act against the perpetrators of the Pathankot attack.
The tense situation could be measured by the way the Indian home minister rushed back from a regional summit of countries he had attended in Islamabad after delivering a speech on why Pakistan should not make martyrs out of terrorists.
August is the month in which the two countries obtained their independence from the United Kingdom. It is usually marked by Pakistan’s government advocating for self-determination in Jammu and Kashmir, the state that has been a source of contention between the two neighboring countries since they gained their political freedom. What was conspicuous this time was the ratcheting up of the rhetoric around Kashmir by the Pakistan government by dedicating its independence day to Kashmir’s freedom. In turn, in an unprecedented move, Modi used his Independence Day speech to mention Pakistan’s restive province of Baluchistan, and Gilgit and the regions of Jammu and Kashmir administered by Pakistan.
Commentators and observers noticed that Modi had alluded to issues that were outside the ambit of what would normally be considered acceptable for an Independence Day speech. The war of words didn’t remain that when on Sept. 18 an Indian army brigade headquarters in the Kashmiri town of Uri, next to the Line of Control separating the two parts of Jammu and Kashmir, was attacked by suspected JeM terrorists. Nineteen soldiers were killed in one of the worst terrorist attacks on the Indian army.
In what was seen to be a retaliatory exercise, the Indian Director General of Military Operations announced on Sept. 28 that the army had undertaken surgical strikes on terrorist “launch pads along the LoC.” The statement was carefully framed to indicate that the action was against the terrorists and not the Pakistan army, and that the same had been conveyed to his counterparts in Pakistan.
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Since the announcement, there has been discussion about whether the strikes were indeed undertaken, with the Pakistani establishment accusing the Indian government of making up the incident. The Indian ruling establishment, in the meantime, has gone overboard taking credit for what it claims to be the first ever such action. In this time of heightened emotions led by social and visual media, a possibility of outbreak of full-fledged conflict between the two neighbours has become a concern for the international community.
In India, a break from the past
In India, the government, led by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, came to power promising a radical break from policies of the old guard. This was the first time that a self-declared rightist nationalist party unfettered by pressures of coalition politics was in power; most of its politics had been oppositional in nature. The BJP represented a new party with a new leadership unencumbered by politics of the past. That gave it the capacity to make bold moves.
But that also meant that it couldn’t use or, in many cases, was unwilling to use institutional knowledge that was available to engage with longstanding problems. This was especially visible in its handling of relations with Pakistan and in dealing with the politics of Jammu and Kashmir, which both influences and is influenced by relations between the two countries.
So despite the right-wing anti-Pakistan rhetoric, Modi made ambitious overtures of friendship to the Pakistani leadership. Personal ties between individuals, however, only matter to a point in international relations. They have to be undergirded by a foundation of common interests, sustained engagements and dialogue. It is a slow process, especially when one is dealing with a country such as Pakistan, in which Indian leaders find it difficult to gauge which side the civil-military pendulum swinging at any given point in time. The BJP government’s gestures were flamboyant, but lacked substance. And, therefore, were quick to lead to disappointment.
A similar dynamic was visible in how the BJP government handled politics in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. For the first time in its history, BJP became part of the state government, by virtue of its wins in the state elections that immediately followed the national elections. It partnered with a local Kashmir Valley-based People’s Democratic Party (PDP) that for a long time was considered soft-separatist with a primary Kashmiri Muslim base.
Thus, two opposite ends of the political spectrum came together, promising an alliance catering to all the constituencies. Interestingly, they came up with a consociational-type arrangement with the BJP exclusively dealing with issues related to Hindu areas of the state, where it had won all of its electoral seats, and PDP with the Kashmir Valley and other Muslim-majority regions.
The direct result of this coalition was polarization in the state and a deep political vacuum. The inexperience of the new political dispensation led them to ignore the warnings of observers (and state institutions) that the young of the Kashmir Valley, the epicenter of separatist movement, were showing alarming signs of dissatisfaction. They were ill-prepared to deal with the situation that arose after a local militant leader, a popular recruiter for the Kasmiri separatist group Hizbul Mujahideen, was killed on July 8. Subsequent spontaneous protests and government’s knee-jerk response resulted in an unprecedented number of killings and injuries.
The protests, clashes and the unrest continue today. More than 90 people have died; around 14,000 have been injured. The government seems to have run out of imagination and it seems, from all indications, to be waiting for fatigue to set in for the street protests to disappear.
It was in this context that Pakistan highlighted the Kashmir issue on the international stage. Yet it wasn’t able to obtain much support. The world remains guarded given the Pakistani state’s ambivalent relationship with terrorist organizations operating on its soil. India by contrast — especially after 9/11 — has been successful in linking the Kashmir problem with Islamic radicalism and, in the process, winning indifference from the powers that matter.
The broad contours of the issue and the different parties’ stands remain the same. What has changed is the political guard in India, and increasingly radicalized political groups in the country. The BJP government came to power on a mandate of a muscular nationalism and when its overtures for peace didn’t yield expected results, instead of disappointing its constituency, it decided to undertake surgical military strikes. As many commentators and retired army officials indicated, such actions have been undertaken earlier too, but the political establishments decided against claiming them.
By making an open declaration the Indian government has done two things: first, assuage the belligerent nationalists, most of who form BJP’s core base; and second, set a new normal for response of the Indian government to actions undertaken by Pakistan-based non-state actors or renegades from within its army.
Another strike like Uri or Pathankot will force the Indian government to respond. It has decided to ride the tiger. Time will tell for how long and with what ramifications for the two nuclear neighbors.
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Blow hot, blow cold: India-Pakistan relations originally appeared on usnews.com
