Talks with Pakistan? First set terms of engagement
As Prime Minister Narendra Modi basks in the Obama afterglow, one takeaway from the US president's visit is the dehyphenation of India and Pakistan. Islamabad barely figured in the Modi-Obama talks. And yet, like a recurring migraine, India will need to confront this question: Should it re-engage with Pakistan?
India of course already "engages" with Pakistan at three levels: Diplomatic through the two countries' high commissions; militarily through the director general of military operations (DGMO); and economically through cross border trade. The only communication link that has been broken - and rightly so - is at the political level when foreign secretary talks were cancelled last August.
A clamour is now building up for resuming talks with Islamabad at both foreign secretary and foreign minister levels. India's let's-be-soft-on-Pakistan lobby, lubricated by back-channel incentives, is active again.
Look, says this lobby, Pakistan post-Peshawar has turned over a new leaf. It has banned the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), frozen its bank accounts and muzzled Hafiz Saeed. We must engage with Pakistan now that it has learnt its lesson and is keen on peace. But of course it hasn't and it isn't.
The JuD hasn't been banned. Its bank accounts haven't been frozen. Hafiz Saeed hasn't been muzzled. Reports suggesting all the above have proved erroneous. The Pakistani military and ISI are engaging in their favourite sport: double-dealing. They planted rumours in newspapers just before US President Barack Obama's visit to India that they were serious about ending proxy terrorism and that the JuD would be proscribed (for, incredibly enough, the third time since 2001). Nothing of the kind has happened. Rawalpindi's tongue remains forked.
In this chicanery, the US is complicit. It put a bounty of $10 million on Hafiz Saeed and then did nothing. Saeed waddles around Lahore in full sight of CIA operatives who could take him out in a second if they wanted to. They haven't.
Osama bin Laden was a more elusive target but US special forces assassinated him because he masterminded the killing of nearly 3,000 people in America during the 9/11 terror attack. He posed a threat to US interests. Hafiz Saeed poses no such threat. His target is India, not the US. And Washington, besides the few ameliorative assurances it gave New Delhi on fighting terrorism during the Obama-Modi meet, will do nothing to pursue Hafiz Saeed or Lashkar-e-Taiba's Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi.
India must tackle Pakistan on its own. The strengthening India-US strategic partnership certainly adds a dimension to the India-Pakistan story but it is a relatively anodyne dimension.
What then are India's options? Since we continue to have "normal" relations with Pakistan at the diplomatic level and cross-border firing has lately quietened, how should further engagement proceed?
To bolster the robust action the Border Security Force (BSF) and the Indian army are taking to neutralise terrorism and infiltration across the Line of Control (LoC), rebuilding our covert operations capability is vital. This capability was steadily built up during Rajiv Gandhi's prime ministership but was eroded in the mid- and late-1990s. Defence minister Manohar Parrikar was referring to this gradual deterioration in India's "deep assets" capability - a combination of on-the-ground human intelligence, covert networks behind enemy lines, penetration of hostile cyber communications, and the ability to launch limited surgical strikes on specific targets across the border.
With National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval's hands-on experience in covert operations, revitalising moribund covert networks of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) has already begun. It is a long-term but vital project to successfully neutralise terror threats from sleeper cells inside India monitored from Pakistan as well as from over 40 terror camps currently active in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).
As India rebuilds its deep assets, modernises its armed forces and continues to respond robustly to ceasefire violations by Pakistan, the conditions for resuming a structured dialogue process could emerge. The agenda though must be set by India:
One, there will be no withdrawal from Siachen.
Two, Sir Creek can be resolved to both countries' satisfaction.
Three, people-to-people contacts can expand as crossborder terrorism contracts. Not before.
Four, trade can flourish but on the basis of reciprocity. India granted most favoured nation (MFN) status to Pakistan in 1996. Pakistan has not yet reciprocated.
Five, Pervez Musharraf's proposal of porous borders in J&K is dead. Porosity implies a free run for terrorists and a gradually destablised, radicalised Kashmir Valley - a takeover by Pakistani elements through the back door. It is fortunate this insidious scheme, devised by Musharraf - and endorsed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's back-channel emissaries - was buried along with Musharraf's tenure as president of Pakistan.
Meanwhile, India must engage in smart lateral diplomacy with Pakistan's three geopolitical crutches: Saudi Arabia, China and the US. New Delhi has gradually built bridges with Riyadh. Though Sunni Saudi Arabia remains one of the world's most regressive countries, its newly crowned King Salman bin Abdulaziz is likely to be less inclined to turn a blind eye to extremism than the late King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz who died last Friday.
Saudi Arabia was an early promoter of the Sunni Islamic State (IS) to counter Shi'ite Iran and Alawite Syria. Pakistan sponsors terror groups against India and has faced a blowback from the environment of terror it created. To avoid a similar blowback, Saudi Arabia is sealing its border with southern Iraq with a 600-mile wall to prevent an out-of-control IS attacking it.
The wall will have chain link razor wire fencing, watchtowers with videos and thermal night vision surveillance.
China too is facing serious Islamist violence in its Xinjiang province where Muslim Uighurs form 45 per cent of the population. It is reconsidering several infrastructure projects in Pakistan due to security concerns following terrorist attacks on Chinese workers.
The US continues to battle IS and al-Qaeda across the world. After the Charlie Hebdo attack, the good terrorist-bad terrorist theory Washington advanced to mollycoddle Pakistan is all but dead: John Kerry's strong speech against Islamist terrorism at Davos recently read out the last rites of this disingenuous thesis.
Smart Indian diplomacy means leveraging Saudi, Chinese and US fears to cauterise Pakistan's proxy terror war. To defeat terrorism from a neighbour, we need to combine such lateral diplomacy with modern military assets, covert capabilities and economic strength.
As Prime Minister Narendra Modi gets back to work following President Obama's departure, that should be at the top of his agenda.