Modi's fault lies in trusting Nawaz Sharif with India's security
One can't but find merit in Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) supremo and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal's scathing tweet:
मुँह में राम बग़ल में छुरी। BJP/RSS वाले मुँह से "भारत माता की जय" बोलते है और ISI को बुलाकर भारत माता की पीठ में छुरा भोंक देते हैं।
— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) April 5, 2016
The report of the Pakistani joint investigation team (JIT) probing the Pathankot Air Station attack in January that the "attack was a drama staged to malign Pakistan", has provided ammunition to Kejriwal and Opposition parties which have questioned the wisdom of the government to allow the JIT to visit India.
The JIT, which had an Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) official on the team, has also concluded that the standoff between the Indian Army and terrorists ended within hours after the attack, but "the Indian authorities made it a three-day drama to get maximum attention from the world community in order to malign Pakistan".
The JIT was expected to say as much and nothing else. Only Prime Minister Narendra Modi and national security adviser Ajit Doval foresaw a change of heart in Pakistan's India policy.
Now Modi's Pakistan policy stands exposed and indicted. Expectedly, the Opposition parties have hit out at the government. The Congress' Anand Sharma has said, "What was claimed as a triumph of diplomacy has been seen as a failure."
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| The exercise of sending the JIT to probe the Pathankot attack was merely a charade on the part of Pakistan. |
Modi's gamble has failed, nay, boomeranged. BJP spokesman MJ Akbar's statement that Kejriwal has "exposed his own lack of knowledge, his own ignorance of the nuances of foreign policy and relationship with a neighbour with whom we have a complex history" will not make Modi's Pakistan policy less futile and farcical.
The fact is, there is nothing surprising about the JIT response. The entire exercise to send the JIT was merely a charade on the part of Pakistan to distract the world's attention from its culpability in the Pathankot attack. Modi fell into Pakistan's trap.
The main reason behind the Modi government's failure is its inability to see and treat the Pakistani government and its powerful army as two distinct entities, and to separate the state and non-state actors (terrorist groups) from each other.
The reality is that Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif has no say in his country's foreign policy. He has ceded all powers to Pakistan's chief of army staff (COAS) General Raheel Sharif. And the army and the ISI, as India has always maintained, are the sponsors of anti-India terrorism.
While Pakistan maintains the charade of putting Nawaz Sharif in the forefront, the other Sharif pulls the strings from behind. In all matters relating to foreign, defence and security policies, Raheel Sharif calls the shots.
It's a reality that the international community dealing with Pakistan is well aware of. Countries such as Saudi Arabia, China, Iran and even the US have been directly engaging with Raheel Sharif in bilateral issues concerning foreign and defence policies.
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| Army chief Raheel Sharif (left) calls the shots in Pakistan. |
In the last one year or so, there has been no important bilateral foreign tour where Nawaz Sharif has gone without his army chief. They went to Saudi Arabia and Iran on the same flight. Even when Nawaz Sharif had had the opportunity to engage with world leaders in one-on-one meetings, Raheel Sharif had made it a point to follow up with his own visits.
In 2015-end when Nawaz Sharif visited the US for a meeting with president Barack Obama, Raheel Sharif didn't accompany him. But within a month, he was in the US carrying out diplomacy. Obama fobbed off Raheel Sharif to send a symbolic message that he still would like to engage with the elected leadership.
But US vice-president Joe Biden, secretary of state John Kerry and the Pentagon engaged with Raheel, realising that the Pakistan army chief was the real boss in his country's corridors of power.
A Pakistani security expert Hasan Askari Rizvi was quoted at that time saying that. "The military doesn't want to assume power directly because that has lot of problems. The military wants a civilian face in front, and Nawaz Sharif has agreed to be that civilian face."
The Wall Street Journal wrote after Nawaz Sharif's visit, "Next month, top American officials will hold talks with the man many people say calls the shots on the issues Washington cares most about: Gen Raheel Sharif."
Among the many factors, there are two that need to be mentioned why Nawaz Sharif has ceded powers to his COAS. Firstly, when Nawaz Sharif was facing crisis as a result of Imran Khan-Tahirul Qadri joint protests Islamabad in 2014 demanding the government's dismissal, Raheel Sharif is known to have come to his rescue by persuading the agitators to lift the blockade. In the bargain, the two Sharifs reached an agreement that foreign and defence affairs would be shifted to the army's control.
Secondly, the Pakistan army's relative success in the battle against terrorists in North Waziristan during the "Zarb-e-Azb" campaign and its success in Karachi against the extremists and the underworld have made Raheel Sharif a "cult hero" in Pakistan. His popularity has been soaring in the country.
It's not surprising, therefore, that the JIT has accused India of "staging a drama to malign Pakistan" in the Pathankot attack. It has also alleged that Indian National Intelligence Agency (NIA) officer Mohammed Tanzil Ahmed's murder showed that the "Indian establishment wants to keep the matter under wraps". The Pakistani army's India policy has not changed.
So, one needs to ask who the Modi government is engaging with. Who in Pakistan is Modi's interlocutor? Is it Nawaz Sharif or Raheel Sharif? Governments in other countries, which know that real power rests with the army in Pakistan, have directly engaged with Raheel Sharif on important bilateral matters.
Why does Modi maintain the pretence of engaging with Nawaz Sharif knowing fully well that the Pakistan prime minister follows a script written by his army chief and has no powers of his own?
Modi must come clean on the issue and end the farce of his Pakistan's outreach.