By Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty
Pakistan’s army chief Raheel Sharif railed against India recently, saying Pakistan will give a “befitting response” to any aggressor. He also warned that there will be no peace in South Asia unless the Kashmir issue is resolved in accordance with the UN resolutions.
Lest he sounds too aggressive, the army chief added that Pakistan desires peace and regional stability on the basis of mutual respect and dignity.
This is jaded rhetoric from Pakistani army generals and rabble-rousing politicians in the current context of continuing ceasefire violations by the Pakistani armed forces along the Line of Control (LoC) and the International Boundary (IB). The 742 km LoC that divides Jammu and Kashmir is not an international boundary. It is a de facto boundary. India controls around 60 percent of the state and Pakistan controls around 30 percent, while 10 percent is controlled by China.
Beyond the LoC, what India calls the International Boundary or the IB, Pakistan calls it the “Working Boundary” to maintain its position that the India-Pakistan boundary is not final. The LoC, a product of the 1972 Simla Agreement, is a modified version of the Ceasefire Line (CFL), delineated in the 1949 Karachi Agreement brokered by the UN.
Pakistani forces have targetted civilians deliberately on the Indian side. India’s robust response may have surprised the Pakistani establishment. The first time Prime Minister Narendra Modi surprised Pakistan was when he invited Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to attend his swearing in ceremony. Intermittent firing by Pakistani forces continues. India’s leadership has warned Pakistan to desist from such provocations and authorized Indian forces to retaliate massively.
Earlier, India avoided responding to Pakistani provocations sometimes in order to maintain the sanctity of the ceasefire. This left Pakistan with the freedom to choose the time and place for ceasefire violations. India has clearly made a course correction.
Deliberate targeting of civilians, primarily Hindus, living in Jammu along the LoC and others living along the IB reflects Pakistan’s rising frustration in failing to elicit any response globally on the Kashmir issue. Prime Minister Sharif’s attempt to raise the Kashmir issue and seek the UN’s intervention fell flat. The harsh reality is that the world is not interested in Kashmir, and this was reinforced when Pakistan’s subsequent appeal to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was also rebuffed. The UN spokesperson told Pakistan to discuss the Kashmir issue with India bilaterally.
Rebuffed internationally, Pakistan has resorted to the option of ceasefire violations, combined with rising domestic political rhetoric about taking back every inch of Kashmir and hinting darkly about Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities. Additionally, Pakistan is mobilizing its diaspora in the UK, through its agents in the immigrant community, to organize marches against so-called human rights violations by India in Kashmir.
This has provoked India to warn the UK to stop such demonstrations. The UK has always played a dubious role on the Kashmir issue. Even when the Khalistani issue was at its height in the 1980s it gave asylum to various Khalistani leaders, thereby giving encouragement to some Sikhs to resort to violence. Under the fig leaf of peaceful right to protest, UK’s role has always been dodgy.
For Pakistan, the primary anxiety is that the Kashmir issue has lost its salience internationally. Even Pakistan’s consistent patrons, China, Saudi Arabia and the USA appear to have lost interest in Pakistan’s obsession with Kashmir. Heating up the LoC and IB draws global attention, which is the objective of Pakistan’s ceasefire violations.
Disrupting the coming elections in Jammu and Kashmir and pushing in terrorists are also factors. Apart from a few anodyne statements by some countries urging India and Pakistan to start negotiations, there has been no other international development.
On the domestic front, the Kashmir issue is a hardy perennial for the army to incite public opinion, particularly jihadi elements. It is also a convenient tool that the Pakistan army uses to keep the civilian government on a tight leash on bilateral engagement with India. If it is Pakistan’s intention to bring India to the negotiating table under pressure, then Pakistan has been seduced by its own flawed logic. India has made it clear that its neighbourhood policy is anchored in seeking good relations with all neighbours, but with Pakistan there can be no normalization as long as Pakistan continues to use terrorism as a tool of it foreign policy and uses ceasefire violations to pressurize India.
While Pakistan may not be deterred in so far as ceasefire violations are concerned it will not seek to escalate and risk a full blown war with India. But circumstances are ripe, at least in the Pakistani strategy to meddle in Kashmir again in the backdrop of the forthcoming withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan. Arguably, the most dangerous aspect is Pakistan’s intention of mounting terrorist attacks in India using jihadi elements and Al Qaeda. The video recently released by Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri exhorting jihad against India is a clue to Pakistan’s future intentions.
The video itself could be quid pro quo for allowing Zawahiri to continue staying in Pakistan under ISI protection, like Osama bin Laden in Abbotabad before he was snatched by American Special Forces, killed and buried in the high seas. Pakistan seems to have misread Prime Minister Modi’s initial friendly gesture in inviting Nawaz Sharif to the swearing in ceremony. Over several decades India has engaged Pakistan in the hope of normalizing relations, but it seems increasingly clear that the terms of engagement have to change and Prime Minister Modi’s government has decided to do just that.
(Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty is a former Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs and has served as India’s Consul-General in Karachi. He can be contacted atsouthasiamonitor1@gmail.com)
No comments:
Post a Comment