Dealing with the Neighbour from Hell – Slandering the Indian Army

PP Shukla 

(Joint Director, VIF)

Since the recent episodes on our side of the Line of Control in January 2013, there has been a spate of articles seeking to justify and somehow explain the Pakistani actions, even if many are prefaced with the pro-forma demurral that the beheadings – this time and in the past - were condemnable. Many of the spurious arguments used by the appeasers of Pakistan have been disposed of in earlier writings; one of the newer ones has been that the Indian Army has done similar things. Happily, Raksha Mantri Antony has denied these allegations, and so has the former Army Chief, Gen Malik. But this has not settled matters. Proof of the culpability of the Indian Army, as adduced in some sections of our media, is that Pakistan has lodged several such accusations against the Indian Army with the UN Military Observers Group for India and Pakistan [UNMOGIP] over the last decades. This latter body has, in turn, taken this up with India, but has received no reply.

There is a history to all this, and it would be important for the unbiased reader to be aware of this and draw the correct conclusion regarding these kinds of arguments. There was a time when UNMOGIP played an active role along the Cease-Fire Line, as it was called before the 1972 Simla Agreement, and India was dealing with this body on a continuing basis. The last time that it played a substantive role was in 1965, especially in the run-up to the war that broke out in the autumn of that year. The events that led to war were, as usual, precipitated by Pakistani action in sending infiltrators across the LOC, while denying any role in this. By now, this is Standard Operating Procedure, but then it was relatively new, having been done only once before, in September-October 1947.

Accordingly, both sides complained to UNMOGIP in August 1965. That body was then headed by an Australian, Lt Gen Robert Nimmo, who had been its head since 1950. He enquired into the charges made by both sides and submitted his report to the UN Secretary General, U Thant. The latter made a report to the full Security Council on 3 September 1965, and reported as follows.

“UNMOGIP received an Indian complaint of Pakistani shelling, on 1 September, of pickets and a battalion Headquarters in the Chamb area of the Jammu-Bhimber sector of the Cease-Fire Line. The complaint stated that at 0230 hours on that date one and a half Pakistani tank squadrons crossed the Cease-Fire Line in this area supported by artillery. Pakistani artillery was also said to have fired on a battalion Headquarters in the Punch area from 1630 on 1 September and on an Indian battalion Headquarters in the Jangar area. The substance of these complaints was subsequently confirmed by United Nations Military Observers. A Pakistani complaint reported that Indian soldiers had crossed the CFL in strength in the Kargil, Tithwal, and Uri-Punch sectors as reported above. Pakistan, in this complaint also affirmed the crossing of the CFL by Pakistan troops in the Bhimber area on 1 September as a defensive measure to forestall Indian action, asserting also that in this sector the Indian Air Force had taken offensive action against Pakistan troops. Also on 1 September armed infiltrators ambushed an Indian convoy at Gund north-east of Srinagar on the Leh road and both sides sustained casualties. On 2 September the Jammu team of UNMOGIP received an Indian complaint that Pakistan aircraft had attacked the road between Chamb and Jaurian during the morning of 2 September and that Jaurian village was in flames. The air attack on Jaurian village was confirmed by UN Military Observers.” [Emphasis added].

The purpose of this long quote and the added emphasis is to demonstrate that the Indian complaints were confirmed by Gen Nimmo, while the Pakistani complaints were not. This is important, because, as mentioned above, the charges against the Indian Army in recent years rest on the record of Pakistani charges against it, and lodged with the UNMOGIP. It is another of Pakistani SOP’s to make such false charges, and the events of 1965, which were subjected to comprehensive scrutiny by UNMOGIP and the UN Security Council, testify to this.

Gen Nimmo died in January 1966 in Islamabad, apparently of a heart attack, this being the very day that the Tashkent Conference began. Prime Minister Shastri died at the end of the Conference.

There is more: this may be seen in the statement made by Secretary General U Thant, which again deserves to be quoted at length.

“In mid-June of this year [1965] for example, Gen Nimmo reported that during the five months, a total of 2231 complaints from both sides charging violation of the Cease Fire had been submitted to UNMOGIP. Most of these involved firing across the CFL [Cease Fire Line], although some concerned crossings of the Line by armed men. As of that date, 377 violations in all categories had been confirmed by the Observers…”.

The point to note is that there was a gross exaggeration in the number of incidents alleged to have taken place. This was at a time when India used to maintain contact with UNMOGIP, and there was the danger that charges would be proved false, as did indeed happen regularly. Today, when India no longer deals with that body’s complaints, it would be tempting for Pakistan to make even more charges than in 1965. It is safe therefore to conclude that the charges being purveyed in the media today are wild exaggerations.

The Nimmo Report itself was never made public. The records show that Prime Minister Shastri wanted it made public, but found no support among the principal actors – USSR, USA and the UK. He acknowledged that the Report had some negative things to say about the conduct of India too, but its conclusions were unequivocal and placed the blame on Pakistan. It is probably not too late even now for our Ministries of Defence and External Affairs to upload these on their websites, and fulfil Shastri’s wishes.

To sum up, what the record shows is that Pakistan has been habitually misrepresenting the facts to the international community, and it should not surprise anyone that this continues today. Both in terms of the number of charges, and, more importantly, in terms of the veracity of the allegations, the historical record shows that reports made by Pakistan to UNMOGIP were just not true. The dishonesty was taking place right from the start, of course, but they were being made even at a time when there was the serious risk of their being challenged and proven false. Today, India no longer has any truck with UNMOGIP, and it is therefore much safer to trump up charges against it. For Pakistan, it is a safe bet: India will not answer, and so the appeasers in India can repeat and endorse the allegation. Alternatively, India is forced to answer, and thereby brings UNMOGIP – and by extension, the UN – back into play on the Kashmir issue.

There is an important tail-piece to the 1965 episode described above. The Security Council meeting of 3 September was followed by a debate on 6 September at which the Indian Foreign Secretary, CS Jha, [and a representative of Pakistan] was also present. The speech of the Indian representative contains the following passage. He was responding to the Pakistani charge that India was in Kashmir as a colonial power.

“If there is colonialism, it exists in Pakistan. The Pashtuns, the Baluch, and the East Pakistanis, are being ruled without any regard to their civil rights, to their fundamental human rights and freedoms. This is colonialism as the world understands it.”

Events since then, with the emergence of an independent Bangladesh and the on-going resistance in Baluchistan, certainly provide a ringing endorsement of the Indian Foreign Secretary’s judgement.

As to UNMOGIP itself, the fact is that Shastri wanted its numbers to be increased in 1965, so that it could do a more thorough job of monitoring. This did not happen, unfortunately, and after 1972, India stopped all dealings with UNMOGIP. The important thing is to see this to completion, and wind up the operations of the body on the Indian side, even if Pakistan will not agree to this on its side.

There remains the question of why the appeasers and pro-Pakistan elements are so gullible as to buy into any allegation against the Indian Army. The motive behind such reports requires to be examined and understood, so that the public at least is not misled.

Time to end Unilateral Concessions

Kanwal Sibal 

(Member, VIF Advisory Board) 

Prime Minister Shri Manmohan Singh’s remark that there can be no business as usual with Pakistan after its troops mutilated the bodies of two Indian soldiers they killed, and that those responsible for this crime will have to be brought to book, is unexceptionable in so far as it goes. But to interpret this as indicating a radical reversal of our policy towards Pakistan would be a mistake. 

The prime minister has made tough sounding statements before on Pakistan’s linkage with terror threatening the peace process and the imperative need to bring to justice those responsible for the Mumbai carnage, without this affecting the fundamental decision to engage Pakistan despite provocations. The beheading incident is not more intolerable than the killing of a large number people in cold blood in the Mumbai attack, and yet after a pause we resumed the dialogue with Pakistan, the justification being that we have to live with it as a neighbour and closing the doors to a dialogue is not an option. We say that we need peace with Pakistan to realise our goals of high economic growth and poverty alleviation. The argument that as the bigger and stronger country we should be more generous with Pakistan entices us. The fluidity of our convictions and general reluctance to take hard decisions makes us choose soft options, which we wrap in the cloak of moral superiority, statesmanship and our vocation for peace.

If we could disregard the intense provocation of the macabre dance of death in the Mumbai attacks and engage in hope-filled diplomacy with Pakistan subsequently on the assumption that its propensity to bleed us through terrorism could be contained by goodwill gestures on our part and that relations with it could be normalized as between two civilized and rational countries, then to believe that all our earlier arguments in favour of a sustained dialogue have now lost all relevance would be wrong.

Defence minister Antony has called the recent events a “turning point”, which is strong phraseology but doesn’t necessarily mean a change of direction in our policy towards Pakistan. The Air and Army Chiefs have spoken of options India will use at the time of its own choosing, but these seem aimed more at boosting the morale of our forces rather than any concrete plan of action for the future. The Army Chief has in fact clarified intentions by speaking of tactical action, not any strategic change of course. The anxiety to salvage the dialogue even as accountability is demanded of Pakistan comes out in the External Affairs Minister’s statements. The seeming robustness of our statements sits ill with our proposal for a flag meeting with the Pakistani military, as if we are more nervous than Pakistan about escalation. This request appeared all the more anaemic as it was made despite the obnoxious Pakistani reaction to national outrage in India.

Pakistan is unbothered by the statements coming out from New Delhi. Its Foreign Minister , Hina Rabbani Khar, is conspicuously defiant in her tone, “appalled” as she is at the “absolutely unacceptable” Indian charges. She has added insult to injury by suggesting UN involvement, knowing our allergy to any such proposal. Assuming an ill-fitting mantle of peace, she has accused India of war-mongering. She has clearly signalled that Pakistan has no intention to “bring to book” those responsible for an incident which its own enquiry shows did not occur in the first place. Pakistan has not brought to book even after four years those responsible for the Mumbai attacks, whose occurrence at least Pakistan could not claim to be contrived by India. 

For the moment we have curtailed sporting and cultural exchanges with Pakistan. If, as the Prime Minister says, it can’t be business as usual with Pakistan after its outrageous conduct, we should act on the business front and postpone the visit of the Pakistani Commerce Minister due this month. The operationalizing of the visa agreement can be delayed too. In response to Pakistan seeking to involve the UN, we should state that the only issue for discussion is Pakistan’s withdrawal from the territory occupied by it illegally. We should bite the bullet on UNMOGIP and expel it from Indian territory as a signal to Pakistan and the separatists in Kashmir. We should avail of this incident and Pakistan’s truculence to cease equating ourselves with Pakistan as victims of terrorism and expressing our helplessness by affirming that we have no other option but to talk to it come what may.

The government’s decision to curtail sporting and cultural exchanges for the time being is appropriate, but it is being contested by some who want to sing and play with Pakistanis even as their army brutalizes inhumanly our soldiers defending our frontiers. It is true that invidual Pakistani artists and sportsmen are not involved in this barbarism, but their country is. Our people to people relations with Pakistan, good or bad, are mediated by the state and are not autonomously established at individual level. The army is defending our territory not because of a personal compact but because they discharge a function enjoined upon the state. If, as individuals, we must share the grief of the families of our soldiers mutilated on the Line of Control, indivdual Pakistanis must bear the burden of their army’s heinous conduct.

Unfortunately, it is Pakistan’s habit not to accept responsibility for violating agreements and codes of civilized conduct. In its eyes, the other party is always wrong or manipulative and Pakistan is the victim of the conspiracies of others. It is very difficult to deal with such a mind-set. We continue to nurture the false hope that Pakistan will see it in its own interest to behave differently, to discard its policies to promoting jihadi terrorism that is recoiling on the country itself, to accept that it has to live in peace with its larger and more powerful neighbour for the sake of the welfare of its own people and not cling to notions of parity and revenge fired by religious fervour. While we should not underestimate the difficulties of the government in dealing with such a recalcitrant country, we should not exaggerate the possibility of winning Pakistan’s trust by well-meaning unilateral concessions.

LoC Ceasefire Violation: Talking Peace only to Undercut The Dialogue by Other Means

Sushant Sareen 

(Senior Fellow, VIF) 

The flag meeting between the local Indian commander and his Pakistani counterpart has concluded in an utterly predictable fashion: India has protested the repeated violation of the LoC ceasefire by Pakistani troops and strongly took up the issue of barbarity displayed by Pakistani soldiers who crossed the LoC, killed two Indian soldiers and mutilated their bodies, carrying away the head of one soldier as a trophy; Pakistan has brazenly denied all the Indian charges and hurled counter-accusations at the Indians. 

Despite this talking at each other, the flag meeting could possibly have achieved the limited purpose for which it was being held viz. cooling down things so that hostilities don’t spiral out of control. Of course, how long the temperature remains lowered is another matter altogether. Sooner or later, efforts will be made from the Indian side to even the scores – the morale of the troops who are seething with rage over the savage actions of Pakistani soldiers depends on this. As far as the Pakistanis are concerned, they could well violate the ceasefire again, either to push in infiltrators and terrorists or in response to an Indian retaliation, or even in pursuit of some larger strategic game-plan which could very well have been the reason why tensions were ratcheted up in the first place. 

Basically, there are two possible explanations for the cross-LoC adventurism by the Pakistani forces at this stage. The benign explanation is that it was a routine ceasefire violation which spiralled out of control. In other words, it wasn’t part of any premeditated plan. Once the firing started, the two sides went up the escalation ladder with no easy way of defusing the situation because of political compulsions of all the main players. The civilian government in Pakistan is already coming under pressure of the Islamists and the military establishment for going soft on India and opening up trade and relaxing travel between the two countries. With general elections round the corner, the civilian government in Islamabad doesn’t want to appear as having backed down from giving a muscular response to an alleged Indian provocation along the LoC. 

The military leadership in Rawalpindi is also facing dissension within its rank and file for re-engaging with the Americans and opening up NATO supply lines post the Salala incident in which 26 Pakistan Army soldiers were killed in bombing by US aircraft in November 2011. For the Pakistan Army chief Gen Ashfaq Kayani to now appear as adopting a pusillanimous approach towards India will be quite disastrous. What is more, the Pakistan Army probably feels that it needs to send out a signal to India to not think that it is on its knees because of the myriad problems within Pakistan. In other words, the Pakistan Army wants to convey that it still has a lot of fight left in it and India shouldn’t think it can trifle with Pakistan just because it is in a tight spot on both the western front and internally. 

The predicament of the Indian political leadership is no less. Already seen as a weak, vacillating and extremely corrupt and incompetent government which is also seen as bending over backwards to appease Pakistan, the UPA-II finds itself in an unenviable position. It doesn’t want hostilities along the LoC to spread and would like to cool things down but without being seen as having thrown in the towel. Adding to its problems is the seething rage in the armed forces which cannot tolerate the thought of letting the extreme provocation by the Pakistan Army go unanswered. The manner in which the Indian government is trying to resolve the matter is by playing good cop – the political leadership playing down the incident and taking a soft approach – and the military leadership talking tough to cool down the soldiery – the air chief talking about ‘other options’ and the army chief warning of an ‘aggressive’ response to future violations of ceasefire and assuring his troops that India will respond to the outrage of mutilation of its soldiers at a time and place of its own choosing.

The bottom-line as far as the benign explanation goes is that neither side wants things to go out of control and the ceasefire to collapse. Despite India taking the issue of the treatment meted out to its soldiers extremely seriously, it doesn’t consider the matter to be of a level over which it is willing to either suspend the dialogue with Pakistan or start a general shooting match along the LoC. Of course, the incident has once again laid bare Pakistan’s treacherous conduct – talking peace and cooing sweet nothings on the one hand and displaying barbarity and indulging in unprovoked firing on Indian soldiers on the other hand. But India has somehow come to expect this sort of treachery from Pakistan and at least the current dispensation is more than happy to live with it. 

Before we touch upon the second and more plausible, if also more sinister, explanation of the entire LoC affair, it is important to disabuse ourselves of the nonsense that the Pakistan army is a professional and modern army which doesn’t engage in the mutilation of corpses of its adversaries. The fact of the matter is that despite all the trappings and traditions of the old British Indian army, the mindset of the Pakistan army is that of a medieval Islamist or Jihadist army. The only difference between the Pakistan army and its illegitimate offspring, the Taliban, is that the former is a uniformed force while the latter is not. None other than the former leader of opposition in Pakistan, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, has revealed that the Pakistan army would hurl living Taliban fighters out of helicopters flying from a height of a 1000 feet and more to instil fear and terror among the Taliban ranks. During the 1990’s, Pakistani Urdu press were full of stories and pictures of beheaded Indian soldiers which were displayed as trophies by the jihadist proxies of the Pakistan army. 

Apart from the mutilation of Limit Saurav Kalia and his men during the Kargil conflict, there is also the incident of Gen Pervez Musharraf felicitating the terrorist commander Ilyas Kashmiri after the latter presented him with the severed head of an Indian soldier. A former Indian general has revealed that during the 1965 operations in Chammb, the Pakistan Army severed the ears and noses and even genitals of dead Indian soldiers. And for anyone to suggest that in this latest incident, it was perhaps some jihadist force which carried out the mutilation is nothing but an apology, if not an alibi, for the Pakistan Army. The simple fact is that given the saturation presence of the Pakistan Army along the LoC, it is inconceivable for a jihadist force to operate without the permission and assistance of the Pakistan army. Therefore, there is no way that the Pakistan Army can be absolved of this dastardly and barbaric act which was carried out as part of a larger game-plan to deliberately increase tension along the LoC and the Eastern front.

This is where the second and more sinister explanation comes in. Ever since 9/11 and the subsequent US-led NATO occupation and operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan has been trying hard to convince the Western bloc and the international community that the road to Kabul goes through Kashmir. But until now, this ploy hasn’t received much traction, partly because India reacted very emphatically against drawing any such linkage and partly because Pakistan’s own double-speak and double-game in Afghanistan lost it all support and sympathy of the West. Now however, with the Afghan endgame unfolding – ISAF troop withdrawals from Afghanistan moving into a high gear, reconciliation moves with the Taliban gathering pace and the US desperate to leave behind some semblance of order before it quits Afghanistan – Pakistan senses another opportunity to draw the attention of the West to solve the Kashmir issue in accordance with Pakistan's wishes and holding out the threat that unless this is done Pakistan would be forced to divert its focus on the eastern front with India leaving the Western forces in the lurch in Afghanistan. The perceptible US tilt in favour of Pakistan is also emboldening the Pakistanis to indulge in some sabre-rattling and indeed adventurism on the eastern front under the belief that if things get heated up on the Indian front, the US and its other Western allies will be left with no choice but to intercede on Pakistan's behalf against India. 

The timing of the latest provocation along the LoC also makes sense because Pakistan is holding the presidency of the UN Security Council in January and tensions in Kashmir allow Pakistan to try and internationalise the Kashmir issue at the UN. The alacrity with which the Pakistani officials proposed involving the UNMOGIP to investigate the entire incident suggests premeditation behind the cross-LoC raid. Not only has the Pakistan foreign office been trying hard to get the UN involved, it has also launched a diplomatic offensive with the American and EU ambassadors to internationalise the issue. 

As far as India is concerned, it needs to operate at two levels to scotch this Pakistani move. India must react strongly to any provocation along the LoC, something that the Army Chief Gen. Bikram Singh has indicated in his press conference. At the diplomatic level, it is important that India convey to the US that while we understand their compulsions in Afghanistan and the fact that the Americans will want to protect their interests in the Af-Pak region by reaching out to Pakistan, India has also its own vital interests to protect and there are certain red-lines the breach of which India will never allow. The US cannot expect India to surrender its vital interests for the sake of the Americans. Once India makes clear to the international community where it gets off, the so-called pressure that is likely to be brought on India will disappear. 

India needs to keep in mind the lesson of Kargil. Once hostilities started, the international community tried to pressure India against responding forcefully to Pakistani aggression, holding out assurances that they will try and resolve the matter. Had India agreed, the Pakistanis would have been still sitting on the heights they occupied with the international community twiddling its thumbs. But once India responded with force and refused to listen to the self-serving advice of the international community, the boot was suddenly on the other foot and Pakistan was seen as the aggressor and all the international pressure was then on Pakistan to vacate its aggression. This then is the reality of international politics and soft-peddling on issues of vital interest will only lead to surrender of these interests.

How We Lost the Peace

Kanwal Sibal 

(Member, VIF Advisory Board)

 

The ceasefire violations occurring on the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir are not abnormal. Such incidents occur when two armies with a history of fighting each other face each other in contested territory. It is the act of the Pakistani army in mutilating the bodies of Indian soldiers killed by them that is abnormal. So is the response of the Pakistani government to this deplorable incident.

Pakistan, true to form, has denied the mutilation charge. Its foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, is “appalled” at India’s outlandish claim, as their internal investigation shows that no one from Pakistan crossed the LOC and killed Indian soldiers. She made the worthless proposal for joint investigation, having already announced the result of Pakistan’s own enquiry. She then deliberately tweaked us by proposing an investigation by UNMOGIP whose role India does not recognise since 1971.

The Pakistanis claim that the highly “professional” army would do no such thing as mutilation. But then, is it normal for a professional army to have “jihad” in its motto, along with “faith” and “piety”. Is it a professional army or a religious army of the faithful whose profession is to fight for Islam?

Once again, in the face of Pakistan’s provocation India is at a loss to react effectively. We wonder what Pakistan gains by such an act when the overall relationship is improving, forgetting that this has happened before, with Kargil, various acts of terror against our cities, pilgrimage centres, and economic institutions, and finally, the Mumbai attacks taking place even while the dialogue process was on. For those behind such provocations the “gain” is political and psychological- of mobilizing anti-Indian elements behind the army, boosting the morale of the Pakistani armed forces by demonstrating that Pakistan can take on India, and expose the latter’s inability to exercise any military option.

Pakistan looks strong as a result. The intention may also be to prevent the thinking of the rank and file from being overly influenced by the positive momentum of the peace process. It may also be to show contempt for the fuss made in India lately over the mutilation of the body of Lt. Kalia during the Kargil war and show that such acts can be repeated with impunity. The Pakis-tani side knows that taking the case to the ICJ is not an option as Pakistan has to agree to the reference.

India has stated many times at the highest levels that it has no option but to continue the dialogue with Pakistan, acknowledging publicly our helplessness. We have shown to Pakistan in recent years that we can absorb serious provocations without retaliating. We did not break diplomatic ties even after the Mumbai attacks; doing so now would seem an over-reaction. It is extremely difficult for the government to reverse course as that would be an avowal of a dramatic failure of its Pakistan policy.

In the face of the defiant Pakistani attitude in the present case, we could take some steps that will not be seen as an over-reaction, but will help to retrieve some ground that we have lost in our over-eagerness to engage Pakistan, as if we need to placate them.

We should cease saying that we have no option but to negotiate with Pakistan; we should change our discourse that both countries are victims of terrorism, as we are not responsible for terrorism in Pakistan. We must forbid visits by Hurriyat leaders to Pakistan and insist that Pakistani leaders will not meet Hurriyat leaders in Delhi. We should postpone for the present any exchange of visits and delay the convening of the next round of the composite dialogue. We should not encourage sporting exchanges.

We could review some of our decisions, depending on developments. Cross LOC trade and movement is incompatible with our interests as we are unnecessarily encouraging the Kashmiris on our side to feel connected and have a sense of solidarity with Pakistani Kashmiris, which is a dynamic that Pakistan can control better than us.

On Kashmir our position should be that there is nothing to discuss except Pakistan’s interference in J&K, and this should be said in private and in public. We should remove Siachen from the dialogue agenda as having it there implies that Pakistan has some locus standi in the matter. The Hurriyat leaders, after their visit to Pakistan, are warning of the fall-out of the Afghan problem in J&K after 2014. We could be less squeamish about Baluchistan and consider permitting invitations to go to separatist Baluch leaders by Indian think-tanks.

As a smaller, more vulnerable country, wracked by extremism and violence, in economic distress, over-stretched by its ambitions, militaristic in thinking, adept at cynically exploiting its geopolitical position, capable of extreme obduracy, animated by fear and defiance of India and attitudes distorted by its Islamic vocation that makes it resort to terrorism as an instrument of state policy, Pakistan is not like us.

Unless we are willing to understand that, we will continue to make mistakes in our Pakistan policy. It is not our responsibility to save Pakistan from itself.