The 1965 war between India and Pakistan may have been perceived as an aberration by India. Pakistan had successfully kept Kashmir alive as an issue awaiting resolution but had not gone to war over it. Between 1948 and 1965 sufficient time had elapsed and both nations had apparently found their mean despite periodic din.
But India's 1962 war with China, and the passing away of Nehru, India's perpetual and formidable leader leaving behind a vacuum, and the news that India had embarked on a nuclear program in 1964 after her loss to China to make up for the inadequate military muscle to face off a powerful opponent, may have triggered the thought that now was the moment against a weakened enemy to win back the part of Kashmir which had remained under Indian occupation.
The stirrings in Kashmir which preceded the full-fledged war and the war that followed would shed the conception that the two nations would not go to war, even on Kashmir. To India the April 1965 skirmish in the Rann of Kutch may have been an anomaly but was a testing ground for the Pakistani forces to judge how badly had the 1962 defeat from China impacted Indian army's resolve and capacity to withstand another war.
Indian higher command was under intense scrutiny for non-performance in the China war and blame was being traded profusely between the generals and the ministry and within the army impacting the morale and the fighting spirit in the army. Pakistani forces fared well in the Kutch skirmish exciting prospects that it surely was the moment to put Operation Gibraltar into effect.
The war was a stalemate. Pakistan did not win all of Kashmir even if it performed better and fought gallantly against a much larger force. The positives in the relationship though were gone and the negatives adversely coloured the already passable relations between the two countries. It may be surmised that shocked by Pakistan's initiative in Kashmir India began putting checks in place to avoid being surprised in future. Lal Bahadur Shastri, India's PM after Nehru, was replaced with Indira Gandhi, Nehru's daughter, who began an earnest effort to cut Pakistan to size euphemistically and literally as events evinced in 1971. How it developed though is instructive and goes to show a definite stratagem which kept evolving with time.
'Ganga', an Indian Airlines Fokker, was hijacked by two Kashmiri separatists and flown to Lahore in January 1971. ZAB, in his exuberance as the torch bearer for the Kashmir cause garlanded them on arrival. The hijackers released all passengers and the crew and set fire to the aircraft which had been resurrected for just this one sortie from the boondocks where it was dumped for being out of life and service.
Better that it was put to fire in Lahore giving ample reason to close the Indian airspace to all Pakistani commercial aircraft. The closure of the Indian airspace physically disconnected the two wings. The Colombo option came later much to the dismay of India for which Sri Lanka paid a price in its relationship with India till it could make amends and repair its relationship. Come December 1971, keeping troops supplied became a logistic nightmare.
India successfully dismembered Pakistan and East Pakistan became Bangladesh. Cut to size and comprehensively overwhelmed, Pakistan, India hoped, will keep to its station.
Instead, Pakistan returned the favour with a counter-stratagem. By now both declared nuclear powers, and conventional wars were a remote possibility. That left space for only unconventional and irregular warfare at the lower end of the spectrum. This tool has been the most frequently resorted to option when fighting low risk wars against stronger forces.
Kashmir got agitated with another uprising in the valley which forced India to commit troops heavily to retain territorial integrity. From a long-dormant issue lying unattended in the UN files Kashmir came front and centre as a nuclear flashpoint which India could only face off with force. More force in the valley meant fiercer resistance from the freedom fighters. Of which there were now heroes and icons in a generational struggle. India began alleging interference from Pakistan labelling it with terrorism.
The Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 1996 and imposed Sharia. They were the second Islamic government after Iran to become a theocratic state. Kashmir freedom struggle and Pakistan began being conflated with this neighbourly trend to instill a foreboding as India struggled to control the insurgency. Nine-eleven later came to India as a boon on which to build on the bogey of Islamic terrorism.
The 1998 nuclear blasts by both India and Pakistan changed the dynamics of engagement between the two forever. AB Vajpayee made the stately act of visiting Lahore in February 1999 to restore relations under the new strategic overhang. Somewhere in this milieu someone in Islamabad decided to launch Kargil. Later it was termed a riposte to how India had vitiated the trust by violating the ceasefire and occupying Siachen in 1984. It wasn't a strong argument, and Kargil will go down as a strategic blunder that cost the subcontinent its peace for the next few generations till another Vajpayee is born.
It was time for another hijacking of an Indian plane. Indian Airlines IC814 was hijacked this time by Islamic militants while on a routine domestic flight. What were Islamic militants doing at mainstream Indian airports is difficult to discern. Yet, they did all that they did and flew the aircraft to Kandahar via landings first in Lahore — to stamp Pakistan on it — and then Dubai.
It was only convenient that a terrorist act was so easily linked to Kandahar under the Taliban, routed through Lahore to page Pakistan in, and then asked for the release of three Islamic militants/terrorists with roots in Pakistan but jailed in India. Wrap your head around it if you can and laud the stratagem. T
he hijackers killed a passenger to establish their credentials and then left behind a tale which must have first knitted in a fertile mind. If terror and terrorism was to be labelled on Pakistan and groups allegedly supporting the freedom struggle in Kashmir there wasn't a better way than playing the drama on TV screens around the globe.
If Ganga in 1971 had contributed to Indian war design, IC814 labelled Pakistan and Kashmir with terrorism where Afghanistan played a proxy. Those that hijacked and those that were released from Indian jails for hostages will reemerge again and again in the Indian narrative on terrorism in the months and years to follow. India will use it to great effect as a part of its grand design.
(To be continued)
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