LoC conflict: How to deal with a rogue state like Pakistan
by Venky Vembu Jan 14, 2013
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The compulsions of international diplomacy occasionally require even countries that are locked eyeball-to-eyeball in confrontation to couch their belligerence in the language of moderation. Yet, Indian interlocutors, from External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid downwards, signal only fecklessness of a high order when they appear overeager to restore a sense of “normalcy” along the Line of Control with Pakistan despite the latter’s act of provocation – and its pointed unwillingness to repent.
Ahead of Monday’s flag meeting of officers of the two armies, Pakistan has persisted with firing across the Line of Control, evidently to provide cover for terrorist infiltration into Jammu and Kashmir. And yet, the Indian political response has been to tread on eggshells in order not to be seen to be yielding to popular pressure to avenge the brutal beheading last week of an Indian soldier by elements of the Pakistan Army or its proxy arm.
Going even farther, the Indian side has already signalled that it will not allow the current border confrontation to derail the ongoing bilateral dialogue. Media accounts, quoting government sources, have indicated that while the Indian side may delay the scheduling of proposed Secretary-level talks on a range of bilateral issues, the government will not suspend the talks in their entirety.
The Manmohan Singh government is rewarding Pakistan’s bad behaviour. Reuters
Such a unilateral concession, even before the representatives of the two armies have met to address the current confrontation, amounts to revealing one’s hand while preparing ostensibly to play blind man’s bluff with a neighbour that has proved recalcitrant in the extreme. Khurshid’s manifest attempts to tamp down on demands for retaliatory action of some sorts, articulated most forcefully by India’s Air Chief NAK Browne, have only conveyed to Pakistan that its provocative action in beheading an Indian soldier and mutilating another will go unchallenged, at least for the moment.
No useful purpose is, of course, served by spoiling for a fight, but there is something perverse about India’s excessive concern about not wanting to see the conflict escalate, particularly when that concern is not shared across the border by Pakistan. The dynamics of power require one to carry a big stick even while speaking softly, but the UPA government’s disproportionate interest in making peace overtures – even when the sentiment has gone unrequited – only shows up India as a soft state that can be pushed around by even the puniest of its neighbours.
Much of this springs from a failure on the UPA government’s part to read the power dynamics within Pakistan correctly. The emphasis all along has been on tango-ing with the Pakistani civilian government in the belief that the woolly-headed Aman ki Asha aspirations are reciprocated – and, more critically, that the Zardari government will rein in the Pakistani “deep state”, including the Pakistani Army and the ISI.
Such expectations have proved hopelessly unrealistic, but the message appears to have been lost on the Manmohan Singh government, particularly the Prime Minister who evidently wants to earn a place in the footnotes of subcontinental history as a peacemaker who went the extra mile. Peacenik aspirations are not illegitimate in themselves, but the yearning for peace at any cost – even overlooking monstrous acts of cross-border terrorism – is perverse in the extreme and effectively sells India short.
If the past is prologue, it was always known that India would be vulnerable to cross-border violations and terrorism particularly during moments of seeming reconciliation. To that extent, the cruel beheading of an Indian soldier and the mutilation of another were virtually written into the script when the “cricket diplomacy” initiative got under way.
Yet, the Indian government’s failure to take the heat to Pakistan for such transgressions, and to make that jihadi nation pay even a nominal price for its repeated acts of perfidy, has only enhanced India’s vulnerability. Khurshid is, however, being more than a little disingenuous when he dismisses demands to make Pakistan pay as being overly bellicose.
There’s a lesson from the teachings of wise men that is illustrative in this context. A snake, which had a disconcerting habit of harassing and biting cowherds on a whim, was counselled by a sage to instead seek salvation through non-violence. The snake turned pacifist overnight, but since it no longer posed a venomous threat, it became the target of attack by the cowherds. Beaten near to death, the snake presented itself before the sage to complain bitterly that his counsel had proved ruinous. “You asked me not to bite anyone, but now I’m being beaten to death,” it said. To which the sage responded: “I merely asked you not to bite anyone: did I tell you not to hiss at anyone to protect yourself?”
It is nobody’s case that India’s best interests lie in escalating the conflict with Pakistan. But the Manmohan Singh government, and Khurshid, appear to have concluded that the alternative to not biting a bothersome neighbour is to curl up and die – in the way of the pacifist snake.
There are ways of protecting your interest without being the neighbourhood bully. With its unnuanced narrative on conducting relations with a troublesome neighbour, the Manmohan Singh government is rewarding bad behaviour on Pakistan’s part – and opening up India to yet more vulnerabilities.
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