The challenge of deterring Pak is complex

Manoj Joshi

Distinguished Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi

On May 5, five soldiers were killed and an officer injured in Rajouri's Kandi forest region while conducting a search operation. Almost certainly, the attacks were executed by jihadis who have come across the nearby Line of Control (LoC) from Pakistan.

Two weeks earlier, on April 20, five Indian soldiers belonging to the Rashtriya Rifles had been killed in an ambush on a road from Bhimber Gali to Surankote in a nearby area.

The only official reaction we have had so far are the External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar's fulminations at the SCO summit in Goa and a visit by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh to condole with the forces who suffered the casualties. Even though it is election season, there has largely been silence from the Prime Minister and the Union Home Minister.

Recall that four years earlier, on February 2019, in retaliation for a bomb blast that killed 40 jawans in Pulwama, India had launched a retaliatory air attack on Balakot in Pakistan. An event that triggered a sharp India-Pakistan aerial battle that led to the shooting down of a Pakistani F-16 and an Indian MiG-21.

Likewise, in 2016, a Pakistani attack on an Indian brigade headquarters near the LoC in Uri that killed 19 Indian soldiers led to simultaneous cross-border raids 11 days later. But these were passed off as pre-emptive ‘surgical’ strikes, rather than retaliatory action by the Indian Army.

So, can we expect an Indian retaliatory strike in the coming days? Despite the fact that this is election time, the incidents don't seem to figure in the Karnataka campaign rhetoric, unlike the Uri and Pulwama terror attacks that played a significant role in campaigning for the 2017 UP Assembly and then the 2019 General Election.

What is the government's calculation in choosing to retaliate or not to do so? Is there a threshold? As for the numbers, the death toll of 10 in the past two weeks or so looks no less substantial than that of 19 in Uri and 40 in Pulwama, and all the attacks are attributed to Pakistani jihadis. Or, is the process entirely subjective, driven by political compulsions of the day?

If the goal of the Indian Army is to deter Pakistan from attacking our forces in J&K, surely it would warrant retaliation every time a major attack takes place. If Pakistan gets the impression that retaliation is not automatic, its calculation will be simple — go ahead and take a chance.

Unfortunately, the pattern in the past decade reveals India’s confused signalling on the subject. The Indian reaction to similar incidents has ranged from indifference and passivity to aggression, with no clear redlines visible.

Two months after the so-called surgical strikes, in November 2016, the Jaish-e-Mohammed launched a strike at Nagrota, the headquarters of the Indian Army’s 16 Corps, near Jammu, killing 10 soldiers. There was no reaction by India.

In 2017, there were several cross-LoC Border Action Team (BAT) attacks by Pakistan, resulting in the killings of Indian soldiers, but again there was little response. In early 2018, there was an attack on the Sunjuwan camp near Jammu, housing soldiers and their families. As many as 11 soldiers and a civilian were killed, but still there was no reaction.

Trying to connect this to the government’s Pakistan policy is a bit of a challenge. Let us begin with the Prime Minister’s outreach at the time of his installation in 2014, when he invited Nawaz Sharif to attend. This was followed the next year by his surprise visit to greet Sharif on his birthday on December 25. Then, following the January 2016 Pathankot attack, came the big shift.

In Kashmir, the Army initiated Operation All Out to crush the insurgency, and the 2003 ceasefire along the Line of Control began to break down with numerous instances of violations. In 2018, the ceasefire had broken down and had to be renewed by the Directors General of Military Operation of the two sides. In February 2021, this ceasefire was yet again renewed and has been largely holding since.

Relations have been in deep freeze. The heads of government have not met since 2015. No official-level talks have taken place for nearly a decade. Terrorism has become a major item of India's global toolkit. It figures in almost every bilateral or multilateral summit, even though terrorism is no longer a significant threat in India, but cross-border attacks are.

There have been recent reports that speak of efforts made by Modi to develop a backchannel in 2017 which clearly didn’t work. Later, NSA Ajit Doval and former Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Bajwa went along a backchannel that led to the LoC ceasefire of 2021. But these efforts have foundered and their thrust seems to have been more at conflict management than conflict resolution.

True, the challenge of deterring Pakistan is a complex one. It ranges from dealing with nuclear weapons, large-scale conventional threat and groups of proxy warriors who carry out small-scale cross-border attacks. While on the nuclear and conventional front there is a measure of stability, we have not been able to devise a formula for getting Pakistan to cease and desist from conducting the last named type of attacks. The botched Balakot strike, where we lost a fighter jet and a helicopter to ‘friendly fire’, has not helped.

The options before us are two. First, to undertake a policy of relentless retaliation against cross-border attacks and be prepared for any escalation that could come with it. Or, second, to work through a mix of diplomatic and kinetic means to reduce violence on the borders and hope it can be completely eliminated over time. What we cannot afford to do is to muddle along and simply hope for the best. 

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