Pakistan’s old playbook in a new crisis

THE meadow massacre of innocents on April 22 at Pahalgam and the Pakistani responses to the dastardly terrorist attack are eerily reminiscent of the past. With 50 per cent of India's population being younger than 25 years, young Indians may view the crisis as unprecedented. Statecraft, however, is as old as the ages. The tools states use tend to endure beyond the here and now. The options chosen are often pulled off the toolkit on the shelf. As Mark Twain said, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes."

Pakistan's army chief, General Asim Munir, harking upon the two-nation theory in his speeches of April 16 and 26, has antecedents to ideologues since the nineteenth century. His reference to Jammu & Kashmir as the jugular vein of Pakistan is a refrain echoed since Jinnah articulated it in the 1940s.

The connection of the present strongman to the primal roots of the Pakistani state runs deep, despite the two-nation theory having long faltered with the birth of Bangladesh in 1971 and Pakistan's jugular vein remaining in Indian hands more than seven decades after Pakistan's birth and Jinnah's death.

As a relatively weaker power keen to alter the status quo, Pakistan's perpetual quest has been to draw international attention to India-Pakistan tensions, especially during the visit of a foreign dignitary to India. The hope is to move beyond the bilateral paradigm. It was US Vice-President JD Vance's first visit to India this time. Did it draw from the playbook of the Chittisinghpura massacre during President Clinton's visit to India in March 2000?

Let's take another example: the disdain with which terrorist attacks are insensitively portrayed in Pakistan as a 'false flag' action is a staple. The jailed PTI supremo Imran Khan posted on April 29 on X that the Pulwama terrorist attack, which resulted in the killing of 40 Indian security personnel, was a false flag action. Inside or outside prison, civilian or military leaders, the refrain is the same as it has always been — denial, deceit and deception.

Just like the Jaish-e-Mohammed first claimed responsibility for the Pulwama attack and then recanted, The Resistance Front, too, denied a few days after claiming responsibility. Such tools have enduring value in the Pakistani tool kit.

The Pakistani Information Minister's press conference past midnight on April 30 made media headlines in India. However, crying wolf past midnight in crises is not new for the Pakistani establishment. I recollect that in 1998, the then UN Secretary General's staff officer had regaled me with anecdotes of how Pakistani officials had summoned numerous diplomats, including the UN representative, past midnight to tell them that they had credible information about India and Israel planning to launch an imminent attack on Pakistani nuclear assets. Attaullah Tarar, too, has drawn from the same playbook of the past.

It is obvious that, diplomatically, Pakistan is continuing with its old playbook — asking for a neutral inquiry, threatening to take the matter to the UN Security Council (which last discussed the India-Pakistan question formally in 1965), seeking mediation from states friendly to both India and Pakistan and calling on the international community to restrain the Indian response. For old-timers like me, there is a pervasive sense of deja vu.

It is possible that a Pakistani recounting of the past can well draw up a similar listing of Indian diplomatic responses not being very dissimilar from the current approach, give or take a few unique features — for example, holding the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance.

Since the diplomatic space for India and Pakistan to engage openly through diplomatic envoys is more circumscribed than during similar crises in the past, is there anything in the playbook of the past that can be helpful? Perhaps, there may be something?

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi was first sworn in in 2014, his bold move to invite all South Asian leaders took us by surprise while working in the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi. Several were sceptical of the initiative. Yet, it succeeded. There was a key ingredient to that success. Back-channel contacts beyond diplomatic front offices.

In India-Pakistan matters, back channels have, at times, proved effective. As a counsellor in the Indian High Commission in Islamabad in 1999, I was privy to the quiet way in which RK Mishra and Ambassador Vivek Katju passed on the tapes of the 'Kargil' conversations of Pakistani generals to the then Pakistani political leadership. The current Indian National Security Adviser, AK Doval, too, has engaged in back-channel efforts with Pakistan in the past. Also, the ceasefire understanding of February 2021 that has continued till now is said to have been arrived at with some prior informal to and fro. Is this a play worth emulating?

The old playbook is usually a discredited way of doing business in fraught situations. However, there may also be some narrow pathways that can be explored before all options are exhausted. Is there space for such a quiet, beyond-the-radar initiative between India and Pakistan? Or, has that time passed?

In statecraft, there is always more time for grand decision-making bargains than one has imagined. Whether it is before or after any other action that is being contemplated is a matter of detail.

Syed Akbaruddin was India’s Permanent Representative to the UN and also served in India’s High Commission to Pakistan