The single most important strategic challenge for India in the past three decades has been reforming the Pakistan state’s behaviour. Ever since Islamabad decided to go down the path of using non state actors to inflict terror in Kashmir and the rest of India, Delhi has grappled with a policy dilemma. How do you get a neighbour, which is willing to throw rules of civilised inter-state behaviour out of the window, export terror, and use nuclear blackmail, to mend its ways?
India has tried a range of tools. It sought to educate the international community about the dangers of Pakistan’s patronage to terror groups and how there can be no distinction between “good” and “bad” terrorists. It was only after 9/11 and Islamabad’s double game in Afghanistan — of pretending to be a US ally while simultaneously backing the Taliban — that the world woke up to India’s message. But even then, Pakistan has been too important for the west to diplomatically isolate it. The fact that China’s backing for the regime in Pakistan has only grown has given it yet another external insurance policy. India has also tried coercive diplomacy. Operation Parakram in 2001-02 was an example, but it did not yield desired results. Delhi has attempted talks, with composite dialogue as well as multiple summit level meetings. And both quietly, and after Uri publicly, India has attempted limited cross border strikes to dismantle terror camps.
But as Pulwama has shown, none of this — from dialogue to coercive diplomacy, from international lobbying to military strikes — has changed the Pakistan deep state’s calculation. This calculation is simple: the benefits of inflicting terror on India outweigh the costs. It helps the military-intelligence complex in Pakistan stay dominant; it creates a security challenge for India and keeps it destabilised; and it inflames the situation in Kashmir. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made it clear that post-Pulwama, there will be a price to pay. India has to, therefore, devise a response which changes this calculus in Pakistan. Whatever tools it deploys now — military or diplomatic or both — must make it enormously costly for Pakistan to engage in this behaviour again, and end its prolonged flirtation with asymmetric warfare. That would be the real tribute to those killed by terror groups over the decades.
First Published: Feb 18, 2019 07:44 IST