Why the fear?
This is a very strange game being played
This is a very strange game being played. PHOTO: FILE
With the failure to defeat Pakistan militarily in the conventional war domain, India has been focusing attention on hybrid warfare which includes subversion, terrorism, support for separatist groups, heightening ethnic and sectarian tensions, connecting Pakistani state to social unrest and terrorism in India, using international organisations like the APG, FATF, IMF and World Bank to deny support and create hurdles in the way of Pakistan’s economic development. Militarily, cross-border firing and adopting threatening military deployments are intended to keep Pakistan on tenterhooks, thereby incurring needless expenditure on forced deployments. Diplomatically, trying to isolate Pakistan by falsely raising issues of terrorism action and financing originating from there. Indian military and political leaders have on numerous occasions expressed the intent and strategy to weaken Pakistan internally and internationally. In short, India has done more to harm Pakistan than the opposite. Yet it gets away with everything while branding Pakistan as a state sponsoring terrorism.
The failure of the Indian Air Force (IAF) operations on February 26 and the success of the ones conducted by the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) on 27th heaped a lot of embarrassment on the Indian government and its air force while leaving them with apparently no options to strike back at Pakistan without taking undue risks. Consequently, their fall-back position to ameliorate the situation has had two elements: one, to shift emphasis on hybrid, non-military warfare; and two, to spread the impression of victory through falsehood on the media and spokespersons. They seem to have succeeded in both domains. Terrorist activities in Pakistan have seen a significant rise in the number of events as well as their violence, as incidents — to cite the main ones — in Lahore Data Darbar, coastal highway at Ormara, Pearl Continental Hotel at Gwadar and Quetta markets have demonstrated.
There has currently been no internal dispute within Pakistan at the moment between the state and militant groups in Balochistan. There is only partisan, non-violent political cacophony in the provincial and federal legislatures which certainly is not the cause of increased terrorist activities. If anything, the peculiarly-governed Provincial and Federal Tribal Areas, i.e. Pata and Fata, have been successfully merged with the rest of the country to grant their people rights equal to other citizens. Their mainstreaming augurs well for national integration and cohesion even though the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) is the red herring liable to be exploited by anyone, especially India. It’s so strange that an incident at Uri or Pulwama provokes a storm of condemnation globally and the earlier mentioned incidents in Pakistan invoke no reaction or notice. Foreign countries and their leaders may have vested economic and political interests in supporting the Indian falsehoods but what is astounding is that our Foreign Minister, speaking in the National Assembly on May 13, just alluded to ‘inimical forces’ behind these terrorist actions. Why can’t we name them? Is there a mystery to it? The ruling party and Foreign Office spokespersons adopt a stance that they are acting responsibly and would not like to blame some country without evidence. India doesn’t wait for evidence to link the Uri or Pulwama incidents to the state of Pakistan. If we don’t have the evidence, we should try to find them or is it that we don’t want to present the same because we want to purportedly protect the sources of evidence? We seem to be worried about peripheral issues while we are ready to ignore the core ones. The fact is that the Indian leadership has threatened to ‘teach Pakistan a lesson’ and they are actually doing it while Pakistan doesn’t do anything and yet volunteers to deny responsibility. This is a very strange game being played. Why the fear?
What needs to be done is to identify elements of Indian hybrid warfare and the consequent actions carried out in Pakistan through Indian collaborators and mercenaries. Compile a list of terrorism and subversion incidents and develop their link to India. RAW’s involvement should be exposed. This information should be presented to the United Nations, global leaders and international media. Whenever India suffers a setback, the internal strife in Pakistan increases. This is not co-incidental. Even a section of our media is complicit in this dirty game. It also blames our own security and intelligence establishment for failure rather than pointing a finger at the RAW-NDS combine. All our neighbours, except China, exercise freedom to blame Pakistan whenever and however they want. They don’t hesitate to do this or try to find the evidence to support their blame game, while we avoid naming our tormentors and perpetrators of terrorism against us. This needs to change and change quickly. As a minimum, our electronic and print media must highlight Indian contribution to strife in Pakistan, and statements must emanate from political and military leadership at regular intervals. Just condemning and expressing sadness at the loss of life resulting from these terrorist activities is neither sufficient nor helpful.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 28th, 2019.
The failure of the Indian Air Force (IAF) operations on February 26 and the success of the ones conducted by the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) on 27th heaped a lot of embarrassment on the Indian government and its air force while leaving them with apparently no options to strike back at Pakistan without taking undue risks. Consequently, their fall-back position to ameliorate the situation has had two elements: one, to shift emphasis on hybrid, non-military warfare; and two, to spread the impression of victory through falsehood on the media and spokespersons. They seem to have succeeded in both domains. Terrorist activities in Pakistan have seen a significant rise in the number of events as well as their violence, as incidents — to cite the main ones — in Lahore Data Darbar, coastal highway at Ormara, Pearl Continental Hotel at Gwadar and Quetta markets have demonstrated.
There has currently been no internal dispute within Pakistan at the moment between the state and militant groups in Balochistan. There is only partisan, non-violent political cacophony in the provincial and federal legislatures which certainly is not the cause of increased terrorist activities. If anything, the peculiarly-governed Provincial and Federal Tribal Areas, i.e. Pata and Fata, have been successfully merged with the rest of the country to grant their people rights equal to other citizens. Their mainstreaming augurs well for national integration and cohesion even though the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) is the red herring liable to be exploited by anyone, especially India. It’s so strange that an incident at Uri or Pulwama provokes a storm of condemnation globally and the earlier mentioned incidents in Pakistan invoke no reaction or notice. Foreign countries and their leaders may have vested economic and political interests in supporting the Indian falsehoods but what is astounding is that our Foreign Minister, speaking in the National Assembly on May 13, just alluded to ‘inimical forces’ behind these terrorist actions. Why can’t we name them? Is there a mystery to it? The ruling party and Foreign Office spokespersons adopt a stance that they are acting responsibly and would not like to blame some country without evidence. India doesn’t wait for evidence to link the Uri or Pulwama incidents to the state of Pakistan. If we don’t have the evidence, we should try to find them or is it that we don’t want to present the same because we want to purportedly protect the sources of evidence? We seem to be worried about peripheral issues while we are ready to ignore the core ones. The fact is that the Indian leadership has threatened to ‘teach Pakistan a lesson’ and they are actually doing it while Pakistan doesn’t do anything and yet volunteers to deny responsibility. This is a very strange game being played. Why the fear?
What needs to be done is to identify elements of Indian hybrid warfare and the consequent actions carried out in Pakistan through Indian collaborators and mercenaries. Compile a list of terrorism and subversion incidents and develop their link to India. RAW’s involvement should be exposed. This information should be presented to the United Nations, global leaders and international media. Whenever India suffers a setback, the internal strife in Pakistan increases. This is not co-incidental. Even a section of our media is complicit in this dirty game. It also blames our own security and intelligence establishment for failure rather than pointing a finger at the RAW-NDS combine. All our neighbours, except China, exercise freedom to blame Pakistan whenever and however they want. They don’t hesitate to do this or try to find the evidence to support their blame game, while we avoid naming our tormentors and perpetrators of terrorism against us. This needs to change and change quickly. As a minimum, our electronic and print media must highlight Indian contribution to strife in Pakistan, and statements must emanate from political and military leadership at regular intervals. Just condemning and expressing sadness at the loss of life resulting from these terrorist activities is neither sufficient nor helpful.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 28th, 2019.