Living under the shadow of terror

Disparate incidents last week - the explosion in the Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad, the bombing in Quetta targeting polio workers, the terror strike in Jakarta, and the harassment of a Muslim couple by a gang of vigilantes in Bhopal - can all be knit together to reveal the pattern of emerging dangers.

The attack on the Pakistani consulate is an indication of how much the ground has slipped from under Islamabad’s feet in the country it had hoped would provide it with “strategic depth” against India.

Blowback 

Just the week before, an ISI-organised attack had targeted the Indian consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif, in the name of Afzal Guru. 

The damaged Pakistan consulate in Jalalabad, Afghanistan

Indeed, there have been several ISI-directed attacks on Indian diplomatic facilities in the country, usually executed by Pakistani proxies of the Haqqani network. 

But Pakistan itself becoming the target is a sign of the new times. Islamabad is being made to realise that just as arming religious zealots to prosecute its policy aims in India and Afghanistan led to a blowback in the form of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, similarly, its policy of attacking Indian facilities is being copied by elements inimical to its role in Afghanistan. 

Pakistan has to understand that its continued duplicity on the issue of using religious proxies for its proxy wars could well lead to the rise and consolidation of Islamic State (ISIS) elements in the AfPak region.

US President Barack Obama warned about the possibility of instability in Pakistan lasting decades, which could enhance the sanctuaries and training facilities of jihadis. Many will pay the price, but perhaps the biggest price will be paid by Pakistanis themselves, as is evidenced by the Quetta attack which sought to prevent the dissemination of the polio vaccine. 

In the past 35 years, the high tide of violent religious extremism has overwhelmed a large part of the world. Two major countries with large Muslim populations had been relatively immune - India and Indonesia. Now both are being buffeted, but for different reasons.

Deterioration 

In Indonesia, it is a case of attrition. Islamists have been active for decades, and there have been horrific terror attacks through the 2000s. However, complacency and lack of effective political leadership has led to an overall deterioration resulting in last Thursday’s incident. 

The incident near Bhopal where a Muslim couple travelling in a train were attacked by a gang of vigilantes who alleged they were carrying beef are yet another sign of the emerging danger that confronts India. 

It is no longer “intolerance” but an insistent effort to marginalise and humiliate the Muslim community. No community in whatever a majority cannot coerce a minority into obeying its diktat. 

The vigilantes of the Gau Raksha Samiti may be outliers, but they are very much the product of a movement led by the RSS which seeks to “Hinduise” India by establishing their twisted version of Hindu norms across society. 

Destabilising the largely peaceable Muslim population of India could lead to the development of something that has been absent so far- a large-scale domestic Islamist militancy. 

Radicalism 

We are at a point of inflexion where it comes to the threat of Islamist radicalism. Countries that were relatively immune like India and Indonesia could be under threat. And countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, which sought to export their problems to their neighbours, could well go under. 

In the last decade all of us - India, Indonesia and Pakistan - have sought to counter radicalism in our own way. Pakistan has been a late entrant, but you should not doubt the scale of its effort that has led to thousands of its security personnel being killed. Since the threat seems to have metastasised, there is need for unified action against it. 

PM Modi is right, the international community needs to urgently conclude the international convention against terrorism. In the past two decades efforts to work one out have stalled on the issue of differing definitions of terrorism. 

This is the moment when Indonesians, Indians and Pakistanis can understand that those who target civilians, as in Mumbai in 2008, Bali in 2003, and Peshawar in 2014 are the same kind of people, regardless of what they call themselves. 

Pakistan, of all countries, needs to realise that cracking down on the Jaish-e-Mohammed is not about kowtowing to India, but about the future of Pakistan. Regardless of India, Pakistan will have to end that distinction between good and bad jihadis, because it is all too easy to contaminate the former with the latter. 

Likewise India needs to see that every step that Pakistan takes is not a victory for India, but a victory for both - New Delhi and Islamabad.

Mail Today January 17, 2016

Mufti Mohammad Sayeed (1936-2016): From 'soft-separatist' to 'collaborator'

I first met Mufti Mohammed Sayeed in 1986. He had just been purged from Jammu & Kashmir because of the Congress-National Conference accord and appointed Union Minister of Civil Aviation and Tourism. Puffing away at a cigarette in a style you no longer see, he wryly told me about his difficult years in a state where the National Conference had been the dominant party. “It has not been easy to be a Congressman in Kashmir,” he said, “You have to develop a thick skin for the abuse and difficulties heaped on you.”
Over the years, I met him several times, though I cannot claim to be any kind of a friend or even an acquaintance of his. Ours was a purely professional relationship of a journalist and a politician. But besides Civil Aviation and Tourism, Kashmir itself was suddenly rising in the national consciousness.
A fateful shift
Mufti Saheb did not stick long with the Congress, especially with the neophytes around Rajiv Gandhi who were running it. He quit with VP Singh and joined the Jan Morcha in 1987, a development which was to have fateful consequences for the country.




Typical of his style, where symbolism triumphed over substance, VP Singh decided to “solve” the simmering Kashmir problem, which had just led to a near total boycott of the 1989 General Election in the Valley, by appointing a Valley Kashmiri as the Union home minister in his government. The unintended result flowing from this was the detonator which triggered the Kashmir explosion. In a bid to free their colleagues, some militants of the Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front kidnapped his daughter Rubaiya. Social pressure almost persuaded the JKLF to release Rubaiya but the Cabinet Committee on Security jumped the gun and agreed to the kidnapper’s earlier demands and ordered the release of the JKLF leaders in exchange. Two senior ministers – Inder Kumar Gujral and Arif Mohammed Khan flew down to Srinagar to compel a reluctant Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah to implement the decision. The sight of New Delhi caving in transformed the Kashmiri protest and triggered off the militancy.
Ups and downs
Like most Valley Kashmiris, Mufti, who was born in 1936 and educated in Srinagar and the Aligarh Muslim University, began political life as a member of the Democratic National Conference founded by G.M Sadiq in 1957 in opposition to the NC being run by J&K Prime Minister Ghulam Mohammed Bakshi. But central pressure forced Sadiq to re-merge his DNC with the National Conference in 1960. Mufti contested and won the Bijbehara legislative assembly seat in 1962.
However, after Bakshi lost support and was removed and later arrested in 1964, Sadiq became the Chief Minister and in 1965 merged the NC with the Congress. Sayeed who won the Bijbehara seat again, was appointed Deputy Chief Minister of what was now the Congress party government. In 1972, as a member of the Legslative Council, he became the Minister for Public Works in the state government headed by Syed Mir Qasim who had succeeded Sadiq. In 1975 he became the leader of the Congress legislature party in J&K. However, the carpet was swept under the feet of Congressmen when Indira Gandhi signed an accord with Sheikh Abdullah in 1974, paving way for the return of an NC government, confirmed by its victory in the state assembly elections of 1977 in which Mufti lost in his Bijbehara constituency.
Given this experience, Mufti and his fellow Congressmen never really liked the periodic flirtation of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi with the National Conference. They were happiest when ham-handed efforts by New Delhi to force Farooq to contest the 1983 State Assembly election in an alliance collapsed. But the National Conference swept the election and so, the following year, Mufti and Arun Nehru plotted to bring about the fall of the Farooq Abdullah government in 1984 through the instrumentality of the latter’s brother-in-law Gul Shah. But by 1986, Rajiv Gandhi reinstated the Congress-National Conference alliance and Farooq Abdullah returned as chief minister.
To facilitate the alliance between the Congress and the National Conference, Mufti was exiled to New Delhi.
Following the Rubaiya fiasco, and through the high-tide of militancy in the 1990s, Mufti lay low. He rejoined the Congress, he did put forward his daughter Mehbooba who won the 1996 state assembly election from Bijbehara on a Congress ticket when the National Conference won the election and Farooq Abdullah returned once again as chief minister. Mufti himself won the Anantnag Lok Sabha seat in 1998.
‘Soft-separatism’
In 1998, father and daughter walked out of the Congress, and founded the Jammu & Kashmir People’s Democratic Party and in a high voltage campaign contested and lost to Omar Abdullah for the Srinagar Lok Sabha seat in 1999.
But her hard work and Mufti’s shrewd politics resulted in the PDP forming the state government in coalition with the Congress following the state assembly elections of 2002, considered the fairest ever held in the state. Mufti’s big challenge was to create space for two mainstream regional parties in Jammu and Kashmir and he succeeded through a strategy dubbed “soft separatism” by his adversaries. At the outset, he called for an unconditional dialogue between the government of India and the Kashmiris to resolve the Kashmir problem. He emphasised the need for a healing touch in the state, called for action against custodial deaths and human rights abuses. However, as per the coalition arrangements, Mufti served till 2005, when the Congress nominee Ghulam Nabi Azad took over.
Mufti walked out of the Congress alliance over the Amarnath land transfer decision in July 2008 and the line up in the state assembly elections which were due later in the year, saw PDP gains, but not enough to offset the combined power of the National Conference and Congress.
The second innings
After a stint in opposition, the PDP, now well-established in the Valley, made a comeback winning 28, the largest number of seats in the 2014 state assembly elections. However, riding on the Modi wave, the Bharatiya Janata Party surged to 25 seats. Observers wondered just how the circle would be squared considering that the BJP famously stands for gutting whatever is left of Kashmiri autonomy, rather than enhancing it. Mufti decided to bite the bullet and go in for a coalition with the BJP.
The negotiations between the coalition partners were intense and lasted more than two months. The BJP decided to go out of its way to reassure the nervous Valley politicians and even gave up the idea of rotating the chief ministership and accepted Mufti as the chief minister for the full six-year term. Issues like Article 370 and the idea of removing the Armed Forces Special Powers Act were kicked to a committee. Mufti took office for the second time as chief minister on March 1, 2015.
As Mufti’s record shows, he changed his allegiance many times and has been called an opportunist. But he also had qualities of dogged determination as borne out by his leadership of the Congress party when it was not easy to be a Congressman in the Valley – the heyday of Sheikh Abdullah.
The PDP, founded by him and established by his daughter, has introduced a stabilising element into Kashmiri politics by ensuring that the National Conference does not see itself as the default party of the Kashmiri Muslims. More important, it is, like the National Conference, rooted in the belief that Jammu and Kashmir is very much a part of India. There can be little doubt that talented politicians like Mehbooba Mufti who will succeed him as chief minister, are far more gifted than the collection of leaders who call themselves the Hurriyat.
Scroll January 7, 2016

Attacks won't stop, but neither can talks

The Pathankot attack has brought out a lot of shortcomings in our system, from the quality of our border management to that of local policing and counter-terrorism response. One aspect has been the indication that the whole response is being directed from the very top by NSA Ajit Doval. If so, this is wrong, and Doval must not confuse his role as a strategic leader of India’s national security system with that of a tactician.

 As the supervisor of the intelligence agencies, he runs the loop and must, of course, keep the PM in it. But when it comes to actual ground action, he should leave it to pre-designated people along assigned lines of authority. The problem is, as the Pathankot events have revealed, there does not seem to be a clearly laid out line of command to deal with such events.

In the past two days, we have seen the base commander Air Commodore JS Dhamoon and NSG Major-General Dushyant Singh, brief the press in Pathankot, while in New Delhi, Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi and Air Marshal Anil Khosla (Director General Air Operations at Air Headquarters) spoke to the media. Earlier, we were told that the Air Officer Commanding in Chief of the Western Air Command, Air Marshal S B Deo, had reached Pathankot on the evening of January 1, several hours before the attack. So who was in charge?

With the Pathankot attack having dragged on for the third day, we need to ask questions about our counter-terrorist strategy and tactics. First, the strategic aspect: The attack was not entirely unexpected. Every time efforts are made for normalisation, there is a push-back by forces opposed to it. The question is whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surprise visit to Lahore was carefully thought through? Was there any effort to assess the mood of the Pakistan Army? Because you can be sure that the attack was ordered by the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate of the Pakistan Army, which does not seem to be particularly happy about the Nawaz-Modi meeting.

Then there is the question of the Indian response. This is the fifth attack since September 2013, following a near identical pattern. A small group of militants in army fatigues cross the international border in Jammu & Kashmir, which runs roughly parallel to the National Highway 1A in a south-easterly direction from Jammu to Kathua, and then loops south at the Ravi river to Pathankot and Gurdaspur. After crossing the border they make their way to the highway, hijack a passing vehicle and attack their target, usually a police station or an army camp.

In the case of the Pathankot attack — from available reports — it seems the attackers crossed the international border and audaciously hired a taxi around 8 pm on December 31. When it had an accident, they hijacked the car of the SP of Gurdaspur, Salwinder Singh, near Dinanagar, and used it to reach the Pathankot air base. They hid out through the entire day of January 1 and launched the attack in the early hours of January 2.

Remarkably, by the evening of January 1, the authorities knew that an attack was imminent and the government had dispatched an NSG unit under Major-General Singh to Pathankot, along with the Western Air Command chief. Reportedly, two companies of the Army were also sent to the base.

Officials initially said that four attackers and seven security personnel had been killed by midday January 3. But subsequently, they said that some of the attackers may still be around and operations continued through till Monday, when the remaining militants were killed some time around noon.

There are many questions about the manner in which the attack was handled. Why, despite the SP and his driver alerting the Punjab Police, was nothing done by way of search and arrest operations through Friday? The Mehrishi press conference indicates that the NSG was only deployed after the attack was launched in the early hours of Saturday. Dhamoon acknowledged that the attackers had managed to reach the mess of the base, where unsuspecting jawans — possibly unarmed — were killed while readying for breakfast.

The biggest question really relates to the ability of the Pakistani teams to penetrate the border, which is supposed to be fenced, floodlit and surveilled with TV cameras and heavily patrolled by the BSF. True, the terrain is riverine and heavily serrated, but successive attacks should have led the authorities to raise their level of surveillance capabilities, perhaps adding thermal imagers, motion sensors and the like to their arsenal. In the history of recent and troubled relations between India and Pakistan, such terrorist attacks take place whenever there are efforts to improve relations. It would be downright foolish to play into the hands of these people and stop the process of normalisation. Sustained engagement is the only way to neutralise them.

But knowing that such attacks will occur whenever we try to improve relations with Pakistan, it becomes all the more important to anticipate them and be prepared.

Mid Day January 5, 2016

Questions We Must Ask About the Pathankot Attack

Some things about the attack on the Pathankot IAF base are obvious. First, something is seriously wrong with our border management in the area. Despite the fencing and presumably heavy patrolling, Pakistani militants seem to get through with surprising ease. This is the fifth attack in the area since September 2013, which follows a near identical pattern. A small group of militants, dressed in army fatigues, crosses the international border in Jammu & Kashmir which runs roughly parallel to National Highway 1A in a south-easterly direction from Jammu to Kathua and then loops south at the Ravi river to Pathankot and Gurdaspur. After crossing the border they hike – and in this case, they apparently summoned a taxi and later hijacked an official vehicle – to get to the highway which is some 10-15 kms away and head for a target, usually a police station, an army camp and in Pathankot, the airbase.
This is heavily serrated riverine terrain which is not easy to police, but surely by now India should have gotten its act together. It is not clear whether the Border Security Force has thermal imagers in the area; they do have low light TV surveillance equipment, but it is often unserviceable.
Second, the attack is almost certainly instigated by elements of the deep state, which means the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate of the Pakistan Army. Five or six armed men cannot simply walk through the heavy Pakistani defences in an area which formed part of a major military thrust by India in the 1971 war.
The third issue is the poor quality of the policing in Punjab. Despite the July 2015 attack on the Dinanagar police station, very near to the point where Punjab Police SP Salwinder Singh was abducted, the police response was worse than flat-footed. They took anywhere between 12-14 hours to come to the conclusion that their SP’s account of his abduction meant that a serious national security emergency was on hand.

 

Whatever scattered accounts of the incident we have been getting indicates that its handling, too, has been flawed, if not downright shoddy.
Government officials themselves admit that they had enough advance information of a possible attack. Punjab police chief Suresh Arora acknowledged that the presence of the militants had been confirmed by Friday And thereafter 168 NSG commandos led by Maj-Gen Dushyant Singh had been flown in from New Delhi.
There were also reports that two columns of the Army, roughly 260 men, had also been sent in along with the Punjab Police SWAT team. Yet, even after 35 hours, at the time of writing, the militants have not been eliminated. It is not enough to say that they have been isolated or contained or whatever, because according to the report, they also had mortars which can easily cause mayhem in a half-kilometre range.
There are many unanswered questions here.

Multiple security lapses
First, why did the terrorists let the SP off, considering he was a senior police officer ?
Second, why were the security forces unable to locate the militants in the 20 hours or so they became aware of their presence?
Third, despite prior intelligence and the presence of the NSG, Air Force commandos, aerial surveillance using thermal imaging, how were the militants able to actually breach the base perimeter defences? Had they already breached the perimeter and were hiding out till they launched their attack on Saturday morning ? Is the perimeter fencing and surveillance upto the mark in the first place. This is an important consideration given the importance of the Pathankot airbase and its proximity to a very active border.
Fourth, why were lower end forces like the Defence Security Corps (DSC), who are mostly retired service personnel, allowed to come in the way of danger when it was clear by Friday evening that highly trained militants were targeting the base which had already received high quality forces like the NSG? According to reports, five of the seven security personnel killed were from the DSC.
Fifth, despite a series of attacks across the international border in this area, why are the security forces unable to effectively seal the border? True, the terrain is a problem, but surely by now, enough technological solutions like motion sensors, thermal imagers and low light TV are available to deal with the problem.
Sixth, did the NSG follow the standard protocol in recovering the body of the militants? I ask this because booby-trapping bodies is standard terrorist tradecraft in such cases and special equipment is supposed to be used to ensure that the body is not wired. Was the NSG sent minus their sophisticated bomb defusing robot ? This may have led to the tragic loss of Lt Col Niranjan.

New strategy?
There are several other issues that will need to be worked out in the coming days. For example, the issue of the number of the militants. If Salwinder Singh’s account is accurate, there were four. Then from where did the two additional militants who were discovered on Sunday come from? Is there another group hanging around somewhere, or was their local connivance?
In sum and substance, the Pathankot incident means that the Pakistan Army is keeping its options open when it comes to the efforts being made by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi to normalise relations between the two countries. This too ought to have been expected. Every time efforts are made for normalisation, there is a push-back by forces opposed to it. In that sense, this is an old story in the India-Pakistan relationship.
There is a carefully thought through strategy in the attacks on military or police camps in the border areas of J&K and Punjab. After all, the militants could easily hit civilian targets like bazaars, schools, railway and bus stations, but they don’t. The reason is that while these events do create headlines when they occur, they are quickly forgotten, but mass civilian casualties would generate massive world-wide attention and bring pressure on Pakistan. The goal of the attacks is to keep the Jammu & Kashmir pot simmering, without letting it boil over.
The attack suggests that elements in the Pakistan establishment are out to sabotage the latest Modi-Sharif initiative to de-freeze relations. It would be foolish to play into their hands and stop the process of normalisation. On the other hand, sustained engagement is the only way to neutralise them. That said, there is need on the Indian side for the country to get its defensive act in order. The manner in which the Pathankot attack was handled leaves a lot of unanswered questions about the ability of the security forces –  the police, the BSF and the military – to anticipate challenges and react to them swiftly and decisively.
The Wire January 4, 2016

Pathankot ambush keeps pot simmering

The attack on the Indian Air Force’s (IAF) Pathankot base by a gang of armed Pakistani terrorists was not entirely unexpected. 

After all every time efforts are made to push for normalisation, there is a push-back by forces opposed to it. In that sense, this is an old story in the India-Pakistan relations. 

Five attackers hijacked the car of the Gurdaspur Superintendent of Police (SP), Salwinder Singh, near Dinanagar, and used it to reach the gate of the IAF base, where they were eventually contained and eliminated. 

There are three problems here.First, why did they let the SP off, considering he was a senior police officer. 

Second, this is the area near Gurdaspur, which was attacked on July 27, 2015, and which was itself unusual because it is in Punjab, not Jammu & Kashmir where most of the attacks take place. 

And the third is why was the police not able to locate the militants even though they knew about the SP’s abduction, 24 hours before the Pathankot attack. 

Modus operandi 

This is the fifth attack since September 2013, which follows a near identical pattern. 

A small group of militants, dressed in army fatigues, crosses the international border in Jammu & Kashmir which runs roughly parallel to the NH1A in a south-easterly direction from Jammu to Kathua and then loops south at the Ravi river to Pathankot and Gurdaspur. 

After crossing the border they hike to the highway which is some 10-15 kms away and hijack a passing vehicle and head for a target, usually a police station or an army camp. 

This is heavily serrated riverine terrain which facilitates small groups penetrating the border cordon which is maintained by the BSF in this area. 

September 26, 2013: A couple of days ahead of the Manmohan Singh-Nawaz Sharif meeting in New York, militants dressed in army fatigues struck a police station at Hiranagar near Kathua killing several policemen, later they attacked an army camp before being gunned down. A total of 12 persons, including an army officer were killed. 

November 27, 2014: Just as Prime Minister Narendra Modi was meeting his Pakistani counterpart at Dhulikhel, Nepal, four gunmen who had come across the border, ran into an army patrol in the Arnia sector of Jammu. They were killed in the ensuing encounter which left three army men and five civilians dead. 

March 28, 2014: Two days after a Modi election rally near Jammu, three militants in army uniform hijacked a vehicle killing a civilian and injuring another and then attacked an army camp at Janglore and killed a jawan, before being shot. 

July 27, 2015: Three gunmen dressed in army fatigues fired on a bus at Dinanagar, near Gurdaspur.They had hijacked a car to reach the local police station - the target of the attack. Three civilians and four policemen were killed along with the three militants. 

There were two points about the attacks that are not easy to explain. 

First, the attackers seem to have come from the Jammu side and then made their way into Punjab, when they could have hit many targets in Jammu. 

Second, they planted five bombs in a railway track near Dinanagar, which were found and defused. In other words — the aim was to create mass civilian casualties. 

Patterns 

August 5, 2015: Two militants launched an attack on a BSF convoy near Udhampur, killing two BSF personnel. 

One of the militants was killed, while the other, Usman Khan, was captured. 

Unusually, the two came through northern Kashmir, crossed the valley and targeted the convoy. The attack was also unusual in that it was the first in the Udhampur district, in over a decade.

The common pattern in these Army personnel stand guard at the IAF base in Pathankot attacks is that they typically do not really target civilians. Many of the civilian casualties are collateral damage. 

The main targets of the attackers are police, paramilitary and army camps or posts. Of course, the bombs on the railway tracks in Dinanagar, do not fit into the pattern. 

Strategy 

There appears to be a carefully thought through strategy in the attacks on military or police camps, because these events do create headlines when they occur, but they are quickly forgotten. 

Mass civilian casualties generate huge negative attention. In this case, it appears that the attacks are aimed at keeping the Jammu & Kashmir pot simmering, but not allowing it to boil over. In that sense, you can be sure that there is ISI connivance, if not control, in the attacks. 

This means that the Pakistan army is keeping its options open, despite the efforts being made by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi to normalise relations between the two countries. 

Mail Today  January 3, 2016

Love in Lahore – Modi has personally invested in the Pakistan policy, with all its attendant risks

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh must be both chagrined and pleased. He had wanted to breakfast in Amritsar, lunch in Lahore and have dinner in Kabul. Here, in reverse order, his successor, Narendra Modi, has done just that. Modi’s maiden visit to Pakistan would be especially galling, since Singh had set his heart on going there, with a detour to his old hometown of Gah. Despite a decade long tenure, which in 2004-2007 gave us a hint of the entente that is possible, Singh failed.
But he should also be happy, because Modi, despite his professedly muscular approach towards Pakistan, is following policy lines set by him and Atal Bihari Vajpayee: bear whatever Pakistan throws at you with fortitude, and press on with engagement with a view of “normalising” Pakistan.
A high-voltage event in Lahore cannot by itself change things. True, but symbolic events, too, have a function. The move has confounded Pakistani hawks who had the darkest thoughts about an Indian PM being feted in Kabul. Instead, on his way back, the Indian leader dropped by in Lahore and presumably briefed his Pakistani counterpart. Equally, the drama has sent an important signal to his bhakts, ever ready to do battle with anything Islamic. Modi has now personally invested in the Pakistan policy, with all the attendant risks that come with it.
Modi’s great advantage is the Nixon effect. Only the dyed in-the-wool anti-communist Richard Nixon could have sought détente with the Soviet Union, and entente with China. So, the periodic firing and infiltration on the international border in Jammu will go on, as will occasional cross-border attacks; there could even be another big terror strike. But that will not dent Modi’s image in the way a reference to Baluchistan in a joint statement did in the case of Singh in 2009.
Modi’s policy lines may have been set by his immediate predecessors, but today’s ground situation, as well as Modi’s own personality, will give it its own shape. Developments in the region – Pakistan’s fight against its own Taliban, as well as the developments in Afghanistan – are a big factor here. New Delhi is confronted with a situation where the US, China and Russia want Islamabad to facilitate the peace process in Afghanistan. Far from an isolated Pakistan, it is India which appeared to be left in the cold.
Modi has now discovered that the road to Kabul lies via Islamabad. “Dropping in” on Nawaz Sharif in Lahore, after declaring in Kabul that India does not intend to compete with Pakistan, is a masterstroke. By his outreach to Kabul, underscored by the first-ever export of lethal weapons systems from India, and the Lahore visit, Modi has reintroduced India into the Afghan equation. This role, crafted so as not to get Islamabad’s back up, will be cemented by the Heart of Asia conference that New Delhi will host next year. Actually on Afghanistan, the pressure is now on Islamabad to deliver the promised ceasefire and peace talks.
In the past year, Modi has learnt just how transformative change is, whether at home or abroad. It is to his credit that he shifted tracks on his Pakistan policy when he realised it was not working. It took a while to overcome the resistance of some of his own advisers, and possibly his own inclinations. But when in July in Ufa he accepted the invite to attend the 19th Saarc summit to be held in Islamabad in September 2016, Modi laid out the markers on the ground, the rest has been a matter of detail. His statement during the recent Combined Commanders Conference, that he was “engaging Pakistan to try and turn the course of history” may be hubristic, but it also promises a policy of determination and vigour for which Modi is known.
Powerful forces remain ranged against an India-Pakistan entente: the Pakistan Army, Islamist groups like Lashkare-Taiba, the Taliban’s Haqqani and other assorted bad guys. Sceptics abound in India as well as the antediluvians of RSS, who still speak of “Akhand Bharat”, when Saarc and Safta are already on the table.
But, as the adage goes, “nothing ventured, nothing gained”. Modi’s political capital remains sky high and as he shapes India’s foreign policy, he is spending some of it because he has understood the importance of getting over the Pakistan limitation. If India is to break out of South Asia and play a larger role in Eurasia and the world, the Pakistan jinx must be broken.

Times of India December 29, 2015