Discordant notes

The Border Security Force Assistant Commandant, Vinay Prasad, is the latest casualty of the unsettled bilateral ties between India and Pakistan. Prasad was shot at 11 am by a sniper from across the border as he was patrolling the International Border. It was daylight, there was no cause for mistaken identity and it was the International Border, which is not contested like the LoC where mishaps are frequent. These technicalities aside, though they suggest premeditated, cold-blooded murder of an Indian security official, it is galling that violence on the border continues while Pakistan PM Imran Khan chants the peace mantra.

Just a couple of months back, his foreign minister had described the Kartarpur corridor inauguration as Imran’s googly to inveigle Indian ministers into visiting Pakistan. Islamabad’s positioning was that of a peace messiah out to coax a sulking India which had walked into a diplomatic cul de sac by repeatedly turning down its offer of talks. The unusual sight of the Pakistani army chief at the ceremony was meant to reassure that for once, the army and civilians were not pulling in different directions. In the past, attacks like at Pathankot and Uri were sought to be explained as the army’s discouragement to the civilian leadership from rushing into mending fences with India.

Now that the Pakistan PM and the army chief supposedly have identical views, no such dissonance ought to blight Islamabad’s foreign policy. And the single benchmark for that is ending the abetment to violence in India. Prasad’s killing was not an isolated incident. The body of a BSF soldier was mutilated in the same area in September, crucially just before an India-Pak cricket match in Dubai that Imran Khan was supposed to attend. This betrays the same pattern of muddying the waters whenever the governments of Nawaz Sharif and his predecessors sought to mend fences with India. Such an approach continues to sow doubts about Pakistan’s sincerity in trying to resolve discord by mediation and discussion. For Kartarpur to be the scaffolding for a resolution, bilateral ties need complete redemption from the blood deliberately spilt on the border.