PAK’S DESPERATE DIPLOMACY
The constitutional developments of August 5, which revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, effectively demolished the efficacy of the slogan ‘Kashmir banega Pakistan’. Not surprisingly, Pakistan is hitting out wildly, trying to find a suitable narrative and an action plan that can force India to reverse the decision and also assure its own people that the government and the army are doing something about it.
Pakistan’s focus has been on diplomacy, peaking at the just-concluded session of the United Nations
Human Rights Council (UNHRC), where the Pakistani foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has led the charge. It will get another boost at the forthcoming session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) later this month.
Despite this, imperceptibly, Pakistan is also considering the hard-core terror and military options.
The national security advisor Ajit Doval told journalists that some 230 terrorists had been spotted across the LoC; the Indian naval chief warned that an “underwater wing” of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) was “training people to carry out attacks from water”; the Southern Army Commander has talked about a possible terror attack in southern and peninsular India; media reports suggest that the JeM chief, Masood Azhar, who had been taken into protective custody after the February Pulwama attack, has been secretly released from custody—the implication being to plan terror attacks in India; media inputs also indicate that Pakistan is planning “big action” in the Sialkot-Jammu and Rajasthan sectors and that there has
also been deployment of additional Pakistani troops along the border near Rajasthan.
These developments have taken place against the backdrop of Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s vehement tirade against India, threatening the ‘fullest possible response’ to India’s moves in J&K. The Pakistani army chief has also chipped in, with the assertion that they were prepared to ‘go till any extent’ and ‘fulfil our duty till the last bullet, last soldiers and last breath’.
The scale and diversity of the inputs do suggest that Pakistan, in an act of desperation, is perhaps trying to resort to its familiar tactics of fomenting terror in India. The purpose would be two-fold: one, to reassure its domestic constituency that Pakistan was retaliating to safeguard its ‘jugular’, as Kashmir has been referred to; and second, to draw in international intervention to prevent the bilateral situation from getting out of hand. This, it hopes, will force India to negotiate and reverse the changes.
Pakistan is clearly miscalculating here. As the Balakot strike showed, India is determined to retaliate against any Pakistani misadventure at a time and place of its choice. Moreover, Pakistan is currently under the watchful eye of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which will be analysing Pakistan’s performance on a set of parameters pertaining to Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/ CFT). Its affiliate, the Asia Pacific Group, has already put Pakistan on an ‘Enhanced Expedited Follow-Up List’ for failing to meet the requisite standards. Any terror strikes would put Pakistan in grave danger of being ‘blacklisted’ by the FATF, which would send shock waves to its already beleaguered economy.
Pakistan also faces a setback with US President Donald Trump pulling back from a deal with the Taliban, which would eventually have led to a reduction in US troops in Afghanistan and a likely Taliban takeover in Kabul. Pakistan was hoping that this would enable them to relocate ‘strategic assets’ towards India. This plan has been stymied, for the moment.
Despite this, Pakistan is known to be irrational when it comes to India. In the coming days and weeks, this is something the Indian security establishment will have to guard against. ■
Despite its focus on diplomacy, Pakistan is also quietly considering terror and military options