By Air Marshal B.K. Pandey (Retd) Former Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Training Command, IAF

The unscheduled visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Lahore on Christmas day while on his way back to Delhi from Kabul just to greet Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on his birthday, served to generate a fresh wave of optimism about the possibility of success in the efforts by the NDA government to bring about some change in the perpetually troubled relations with Pakistan. However, the brazen attack by Pakistan-based terrorists on January 02 on the Indian Air Force base at Pathankot barely eight days after Prime Minister Modi’s sojourn in Lahore, has once again cast an ominous shadow on the future of relations between the two nations. This latest misadventure carried out by members of the Jaish-e-Mohammed of Pakistan, has also raised serious doubts about the foreign policy perspective of the NDA government with regard to this hostile and intransigent neighbour. Personally for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, this episode has emerged as a major challenge to his initiative to revive dialogue with Pakistan. It has also provided the opposition parties with fresh ammunition to target the Prime Minister and his policy towards Pakistan.

Keeping relations between India and Pakistan on even keel has been a major challenge as well as a dilemma that successive governments in India have been confronted with and have consistently failed to make any headway. The question that has often been raised is whether terror and dialogue can go together. Policy challenges before successive governments in India in dealing with Pakistan have so far proved to be daunting and have been rendered more complex by the multiplicity of power centres existing in that country. In Pakistan today, there are five distinct power centres namely the President, the Prime Minister, the Pakistan Army, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and the religious fundamentalists which consists of the various terrorist groups that have evolved over the years and have sustained the terror campaign against India and particularly in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Each of these five power centres has its own agenda and the internal dynamics of the mutual relationship amongst them in the fractured society in Pakistan, are variable, unpredictable and not clearly defined.

In accordance with international diplomatic protocol, the Indian political leadership would be expected to communicate and interact with the political leadership in Pakistan and has indeed been making efforts to do so. Unfortunately, the efforts of the Indian government have been neutralised each time by militant action by the terrorist groups designed to frustrate the efforts by both governments at the diplomatic and political levels. It should be quite obvious that while the elected government in Pakistan is in office, it is certainly not in power. Real power in Pakistani today is exercised by the military, the ISI and the terrorist groups either singly or in combination which varies depending on the context or the situation. This successfully frustrates efforts at dialogue between the two nations at the diplomatic and political levels.

The problem fundamentally lies with the Indian security establishment including the Indian armed forces that today are in a considerably emasculated state. This should be evident from the fact that despite the size of India, its population of 1.3 billion and its global economic status, the nation’s armed forces and other security agencies are unable to serve as an effective deterrent to the proxy war being waged against India by even a tiny country such as Pakistan that has often been described as a “failed state”. Any political or diplomatic dialogue with Pakistan can be effective only if conducted from a position of strength. Given the much degraded operational capability of the Indian armed forces, no dialogue with Pakistan can be expected to yield tangible results. The fact that the Indian armed forces are not equipped well enough to fight a full-scale two-front war, is not a closely guarded secret. As Pakistan is also not in a position to launch a large scale offensive against India, it finds the option of a proxy war to be more expedient. Thus for the nation to deter Pakistan from misadventure against India that has been witnessed for decades by way of cross-border violations and terrorist attacks even deep inside the country, it would be necessary to provide the Indian armed forces with the equipment, technology, competent human resource and the required degree of freedom to not only deliver swift and devastating blow to the enemy when warranted but also take on both Pakistan and China in a full-scale war.

A terror war can only be neutralised by brutal response and not by dialogue. Unfortunately, as of today, the military neither has the capability nor is backed by political will to take on Pakistan and given the chaotic political situation in the country, prospects for the future appear somewhat distressing. In this regard India has a lot to learn from Israel.

At the outset, there is a need hasten the process of procurement of military hardware and provide the armed forces with cutting edge technologies. In this respect the record of the Indian government has been dismal especially in recent times. For example, the tender for 126 Rafale jets was cancelled after eight years of effort and the contract to procure 36 aircraft through an inter-governmental agreement entered into in April 2015, is yet to be inked. In stark contrast, Egypt initiated a case for the purchase of 24 Rafale jets from France in February 2015 and the first three aircraft were delivered to the Egyptian Air Force in July 2015. India certainly has a long way to go!

Illustration: Anoop Kamath / SP Guide Pubns