Pathankot Attack: The Specter of Impunity

On January 2^nd 2016, a group of heavily armed terrorists dressed in Indian army uniforms attacked the Pathankot Air base. India having prior intelligence of the attack responded to the situation with a defensive operation aimed at neutralizing the threat. The attackers managed to enter the base and cause seven casualties to the Indian forces but no civilian casualties were suffered. The final stages of combing operations were still ongoing at the time of writingwith all assets secured at the base.The attack was aimed at the strategic assets at the base which is closest to the Indian border. The purpose was to establish the primacy of the Pakistani military establishment in all security related issues concerning India. The oft-labeled deep state within the Pakistani military establishment is not for cordial relations with India which might lower their indispensability to Pakistan. Graham Allison’s organizational theory[1] is being propounded which says that organizations follow the logic of self-sustaining rationality and their own institutional histories.

The usual narrative of Pakistan Army backing has resurfaced with JeM[2] suspected behind the attacks. The first ramification of the attack has been the reinforcement of the fact that non-state actors continue to enjoy the impunity of the Pakistani security establishment in being able to plan and execute these attacks against the grain of diplomatic engagement.  Since the Pakistan foreign office was quick to ‘condemn the attack’ and ‘promising cooperation in jointly battling terrorism’, the Indian PM condemned the attack calling the terrorists ‘enemies of humanity’ and avoiding a direct reference to Pakistan in his statement. The impunity per se may thus seem to be contested but for the Indian public, the specter of impunity is hard to falsify.

Former Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal^[3]had earlier noted in a New Year piece[4] that Pakistan seeks dialogue because it makes it look responsible, deflects attention from its terrorism credentials, compels India to overlook its provocations in order to preserve a positive atmosphere, and wears down India’s political will. If there is another major terrorist attack linked to Pakistan, PM Modi will have to justify his remarkable personal outreach to Pakistan. 

External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj[5] in her visit to Islamabad had remarked that the two NSAs had discussed all issues related to the bilateral relationship which was followed by a stopover in Lahore by the PM. It was also decided that foreign secretaries will meet in January 2016 to discuss the details of framework of talks. This was followed by a stopover in Lahore by the Indian PM where the two PMs met. How is that PM’s Lahore visit is responded with such an undertaking barely days after. If the Pak military was onboard on the negotiations that took place between NSAs in Bangkok[6] which the EAM, in her Islamabad statement described as held in a candid, cordial and constructive atmosphere, What was the pressing need for such a disruption? The supporters of engagement with Pakistan argue that India needs to continue to follow a twin strategy- engagement with the civilian government and responding in coin to Pakistani security establishment. Let’s wait and pause at this point to consider the strategic significance of such attacks and viability or non-viability of such a strategy.

The terrorists and their backersin sub conventional operations hold the factor of surprise as shown by two of them maintaining tactical silence for the first night and continuing this operation the morning after. Offensive strategies will always be ahead of defensive strategies when it comes to non-conventional operations over a large area but critics[7] have reasonably questioned standard lapses if prior intelligence was available. However, the government has denied such lapses[8]. Some experts have insisted this is another opportunity to create capacities and improve border management. The issue of coordination among agencies has resurfaced with some in the armed forces remarking that the intelligence wasn’t received early enough. Fighters all over the world like to be on the offensive in such dangerous situations and not be reacting all the time. The Indian Army’s Myanmar operation and the US’s operation Geronimo are other similar examples.

The response to proxy war with proxy war has also been touted as another option but prudently it remains far from institutionalization as government policy. It requires an element of fanaticism to run and back an organization like the Jaish which is quite undesirable for a nation like India even if it appears to be a tactical response. It would constitute bad strategy for national interests and domestic politics in the long term. Walter Ladwig[9] in an article in theJournal of Strategic Studies has argued that Air strikes on camps close to the border can be undertaken but they won’t achieve much in deterring Pakistan in the future beyond symbolism. One counter argument to that is that the point is not unilaterally deterring Pakistan; the point is raising the cost of the ease at which elements seem to radicalize youth and use them. It is still uncertain as to how far Pakistan is willing to go in protecting its proxies in case of a firm response. The same nuclear rope that ties India's hand regarding disproportionate response ties Pakistan Army's as well.  An interesting example is when the US raised the costs for the Haqqani network with Pakistan’s tacit neutrality; the Haqqani network started attacking Pakistani assetsfollowing which the Pakistan army started hitting them harder recently. Pakistani Army, similarly, cannot deter any Indian government from peace. It wants to raise the cost of peace for the Indian leadership. And no Indian leader can plan acomprehensive and constructive peace process before getting some tacit cooperation from the Pakistani Army on a rough agreement on the framework for talks on Kashmir and Terrorism under the current situation. The civilian government and the civilians in Pakistan are besides the question and dilute the main problem. They have never been the people India has been fighting. It’s their military establishments who engage in persistent revisionism and sub-conventional warfare in balancing India even with the history of the conventional wars. That is the logic of interstate competition but modern inter-state competition is about state-building and not just conflict.

The challenge, therefore, for the Indian government is to resolve thespecter of impunity that Pakistani non-state actors operate under. International isolation and improving Indo-US relations is one likely option but institutional bias towards strategic autonomy and the quid-pro quo involved in strengthening any international strategic relationship are important questions to consider. A relationship of tangible verbs is different from a relationship of adjectives which the Indo-US relationship has remained so far. That would signal an important change in the standard start-stop policy amidstfresh improvement of Pakistan-US relations along with warm Russian-India, US-India and Sino-Russian ties which have remained long standing features of the same status quo.

Another option available for the Indian government is to keep arigorous back channel open with Pakistan committing hours and days of negotiations before declaring the comprehensive dialogue to be back on track. Examples like Talbott-Jaswant Dialogue on the Indo-US nuclear question and Tariq Aziz-Satinder-Lambah on 4-point Kashmir plan come to mind. Nascent initiatives devoid of long term rigorous back channel negotiations have often invited such disruptions in the history of India-Pakistan relations.