From brinkmanship to de-escalation

To our relief, messages have been exchanged between India and Pakistan to not further escalate a volatile situation in the Subcontinent. Are we still ready to accept the limits of our brinkmanship?

A clear pattern is now discernable in Indo-Pak periodic tensions across the Line of Control: it shoots up at a glaring provocation and gradually recedes after causing further depletion of mutual confidence to new lows. The last two decades provide enough evidence to draw lessons on how not to react in a potentially provocative situation and how far we must not go to provoke the other side an excuse to raise the ante?.

Even if the self-escalatory nuclear doctrines of mutually assured destruction continue to keep the two countries on a precarious edge, the thresholds continue to narrow down in a cyclical fashion as leaders get bogged down under the burden of rhetoric they themselves create. Yet the strong war lobbies are able to realise the necessity to retreat from the precipice and have learnt not to cross the new-found redlines, despite becoming prisoners of xenophobia they create – magnified by a media in a mad race for higher ratings.

In fact, due to dependence on domestic audiences and being clients of national security states, the media has become an unbridled magnifier of war hysteria in the Subcontinent. Like the infinite spiralling of nuclear-deterrence, the propensity of the media as a multiplier has also become quite enigmatic.

Engaged in a desperate proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the tendency to explore theories of limited wars or cold-start offensives and counter-limited wars or tactical nuclear deterrence have not stood the test of the testing times. When conventional and nuclear theatres of war are intermingled, then no strategy worth the name can stand the test of unpredictability. Although the political leadership on both sides were inclined towards wriggling out of an undesirable conflict, they became, though differentially, a victim of their public resolve to ‘teach a lesson’ to the adversary and under variable pressures from their respective military establishments.

India has learnt under its three authoritative prime ministers – from Atal Bihari Vajpayee to Manmohan Singh to Narendra Modi – how to build disproportionate reaction and then bring down the standoff in a well-calibrated manner. This has happened four times. When the Indian parliament was attacked in 2002, Vajpayee deployed forces on the border not for war but for inflicting a greater cost of attrition on the adversary. Against the terrorism in Mumbai in 2008, Manmohan Singh had to react very sharply and was restrained from going to war in return for Islamabad’s promise to bring the perpetrators of mass murder to justice. This was for the first time these two hostile countries engaged, howsoever reluctantly, in a mutual investigation with, of course, no results.

For the third time, when Pathankot happened, the two sides showed greater caution and cooperated with no result in sight yet. And the fourth time, after the Uri attack, a communally-inspired nationalist prime minister has –after a fiasco of surgical strikes – put on hold an otherwise escalatory path.

In at least in three instances, Kashmir was not a point of reference. It was blatant terrorism that Pakistan officially condemned and offered joint investigation. However, in all these four instances the provocation was attributed to terrorism allegedly perpetrated by not-so-banned terrorist outfits that the international community accuses Islamabad of keeping a soft hand on as the ‘good Taliban’.

Outweighed in conventional military terms, General Zia used these non-state terrorist actors in Afghanistan. Despite Pakistan’s relentless fight against the scourge of terrorism, certain non-state actors have survived and remain active. They have the potential to provoke a conflict between India and Pakistan and invite the wrath of the world powers for their freelance work with international terrorist outfits.

In the instances mentioned above, those who exclusively held the reigns of security had tried hard to put the onus back on India, even though the international community didn’t buy their arguments. Rather than entirely revisiting the cold-war period paradigm of using proxies to achieve certain convoluted national security and foreign policy agendas, the powers that be turned their guns on who had turned against their benefactors.

In the process of the war against terrorism, if General Musharraf followed a policy of running with the hare and hunting with the hound, General Raheel Sharif vowed to fight against all kinds of terrorists, and to not let Pakistani territory be used against any country. A measurable progress has been made, but much remains to be done. In fact Kashmir is such an emotive issue that some people lose their sense of proportion without realising that their indulgence is now counter-productive and damages the indigenous struggle for democratic rights.

It is quite laughable that on conflict resolution, both Pakistan and India take the course of further fuelling the conflict rather than first creating a conducive environment for the peaceful resolution of bilateral disputes. It was General Musharraf who realised this and assured Vajpayee of putting an end to cross-border terrorism, as reflected in the January 6, 2004 Islamabad statement. This confidence-building measure, consequently, paved the way for an unprecedented productive dialogue over Kashmir that resulted in an agreement over the broad outlines of a mutually adjustable solution also acceptable to Kashmiris.

But, perhaps, the stronger war lobbies in both countries were and are not inclined towards finding a solution. It is not surprising that India has taken a position over terrorism similar to what Pakistan takes on Kashmir. Why should these two issues hinder the talks despite the realisation on both sides that war is not a solution? Pakistan agreed to discuss terrorism in Russia and India also agreed to resume the comprehensive dialogue. They did start with a lot of fanfare, but failed to take off.

In a unique realisation at Tuesday’s two national security meetings, the political and military leadership have recognised that with the diversion of attention to the eastern front against India, Pakistan will, consequently, lose its focus on terrorism being a principal concern. A timeframe is emphasised to implement the unattended points of the National Action Plan, including effectively implementing the ban on banned outfits, madressah reforms and developing a counter-extremism narrative.

The developments needed are: a) an agreement between Pakistan and Afghanistan to stop the use of respective territories against each other; b) a demonstrable end to cross-border terrorism – from the Pakistani side this should include the demand for an end to India’s proxy war against Pakistan; c) steps to ensure the success of a joint probe into terrorism being allegedly committed by both sides; and d) resumption of Indo-Pak dialogue on both tracks of security and other issues, with Kashmir on top of the agenda.

If the clouds of war are receding, all sides should be aware of any kind of provocation. In the meanwhile, India must stop the excesses being committed against the Kashmiris. Both sides must send their hawks, especially the war media, on leave to let us enjoy the good movies produced in the Subcontinent and play cricket.

The writer is a senior journalist.

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