State of the Union: The geopolitics of Pathankot

Why was Ufa followed by Gurdaspur and Lahore by Pathankot in double quick time? The easy answer is that the permanent establishment in Pakistan does not want peace with India for a variety of reasons that have been analysed to death. However, the more important question is what emboldens the generals in Pakistan to act with such impunity. The key lies in the changed geopolitics of the region.

But before this, it is important to unscramble as to how Pakistan had everything to gain by walking away from Ufa and why diplomacy on the hop is not a great idea. For 10 long years the Bharatiya Janata Party was in the Opposition and it kept saying that terror and talks couldn’t go hand in hand. It strongly critiqued every attempt that its predecessor government made to engage with Pakistan — be it in Havana in 2006 or Sharm el-Sheikh in 2009, or even thereafter. As the wheel of electoral fortune turned, the BJP came into government on its own in 2014.

Pakistan that loves to portray itself as a victim of terror notwithstanding that it is the principal exporter of terror, sensed an opportunity to insidiously obtain equivalence with India on this issue. The previous government had smartly denied Pakistan this congruence for long by promising to engage across a spectrum of outstanding bilateral issues, but caveating it by insisting that the export of terror from Pakistan would have primacy in the pecking order of subjects on the table.

To get out of this box that Pakistan found itself in, especially after the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai in 2008, it sold the Government of India a pup by offering an exclusive format of talking primarily about terror in Ufa, Russia. Without looking at the teeth of the gift horse on offer, the BJP government accepted it. With one stroke Pakistan achieved its strategic objective of changing the BJP’s position from no talks till terror abates, to talking about terror.

In 2006, the joint anti-terror dialogue was pegged at the level of additional secretaries in the ministry of external affairs of both the nations. The NDA government elevated it to the level of national security advisers, thereby giving it a far higher profile.

Having got equivalence on the question of terror, Pakistan had nothing further to gain from Ufa and, therefore, even before the ink had dried on the joint statement, Pakistan trashed the follow up process and consigned the document to the dustbin of history. To make sure that the phantom of Ufa did not resurface, Pakistan buried it by ordering their proxies to perpetrate the attack in Gurdaspur.

The Indian Prime Minister should have realised that his government has been played for a song and should have been more careful the second time around before embarking on the Lahore trip. Again, the only objective behind this entrapment by holding out the bait of “out of box” diplomacy was to get an Indian Prime Minister to visit Pakistan — something that had not happened in the past 10 years.

For such a visit provides a semblance of respectability that Pakistan desperately craves. This myth of differences between the civilian government and the military establishment in Pakistan is a “good cop, bad cop” act that Pakistan has perfected to play the international community and blindside India. The empirical evidence of this over the decade is too overwhelming to ignore. All that is required is to connect the dots.

What gives Pakistan the confidence to carry out this duplicity? It is the changed international environment in the region. Despite American anger at the harboring of Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar and other leaders of the Quetta Shura, support to the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani network and other Mujahideen groups, America figured out that it needs to keep Pakistan on its side if it does not want Afghanistan to slide into a morass like Iraq, Syria and Libya post its withdrawal from that country.

Realpolitik dictated that they needed to deal with the Pakistan Army. That is the reason why Americans rolled out the red carpet for Pakistan Army Chief Gen. Raheel Sharif when he visited Washington DC some months ago. For they knew that he is the real “sheriff” in Pakistan.

China has a long-standing relationship with Pakistan. In fact, the kernel of the relationship is between the People’s Liberation Army of China and the Pakistani Army. The recent pronouncement by China to make Pakistan an integral part of the “one belt one road” (OBOR) initiative, by committing to invest $46 billion in Pakistan, has only consolidated the relationship further.

Even Russia — that till not very long ago had a non-existent relationship with Pakistan — has not only made overtures at the highest level, but even reversed its long-standing embargo with regard to arms sales to Pakistan. India should have read the tea leaves when it was offered membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) along with Pakistan, thereby demolishing the construct of de-hyphenation that India had assiduously attempted to cultivate over all these years.

Even the Ashraf Ghani-Abdullah Abdullah combine in Afghanistan has been warmer to Pakistan by taking a different line from the one espoused earlier by former President Hamid Karzai. It is only recently that the tilt is being partially corrected, though even today India remains a non-player in Afghanistan.

All this deludes Pakistan into believing that from a geo-strategic standpoint, it is in an exceptional sweet spot. Something that is a far cry from the pariah status it had achieved post-9/11 when Americans threatened to bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age. This villainy only got reinforced after the Abbottabad raid that killed Bin Laden.

Because of these transformed geopolitical imperatives, the Pakistani establishment feels reassured that it can continue to indulge in its game of bleeding India with a thousand cuts without any hindrance, while outwardly presenting a veneer of eagerness to extend the dubious hand of friendship.

It is this altered power dynamic that is giving Pakistan the temerity to follow up Narendra Modi’s Lahore visit with the Pathankot attack. It is much like the nuclear tests of 1998 which led to the freezing of power balance in South Asia into perpetuity and encouraged Pakistan to follow former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s Lahore visit with Kargil.

For Pathankot, Pakistan deliberately chose Jaish-e-Mohammed to do the evil deed for its founder, Maulana Masood Azar, is a special red rag to some influential eminences in this government. Exactly 15 years ago, they were witness to the ignominy of the then minister of external affairs Jaswant Singh, having to escort this terrorist to Kandahar to secure the safe release of passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines flight IC-814 as they stood helplessly on the desolate tarmac of that godforsaken airport.

India would have to work at transforming this geopolitical landscape if it wants any forward movement with Pakistan. For notwithstanding the attack on Army public school attack in Peshawar last year, and the January 20 attack on Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, both of which left scores of innocent students and teachers dead, Pakistan continues to be hell bent upon nurturing snakes in its backyard.