P E R S P E C T I V E

Indo-Pak ties
Fighting back, mortar for bullet
By Ajay Banerjee

The October 5 flare-up at the LoC and IB seems to have sent the message to Pakistan that from now on, the Indian Army will not hold back and it will be tit for tat.

On July 13, 1948, Secretary General of the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sir Girja Shankar Bajpai, meeting the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP) at New Delhi, warned on the situation in Kashmir: "The sands of time are running out. If the problem is not resolved by reason, the sword will find the solution".

Sixty-six years since, his words have proved prophetic. A solution is still elusive. Guns and mortars have cast a shadow on the lives of people living along the divide in Jammu and Kashmir. In the first week of October, India effectively and relentlessly fired back at Pakistani posts after facing heavy fire from across. More than 30,000 Indians in villages close to the border shifted to safer locations and nearly a dozen died. Islamabad claims similar number of civilians faced Indian firing and fled their homes.

On October 2, just a day before Dasehra, top echelons of India’s security architecture saw through an attempt by the edgy neighbour to open up three fronts all along the 749-km LoC and the 198-km section of the International Boundary (IB) that runs through J&K.

Starting the night intervening of September 30 and October 1, and in the following 72 hours, the Pakistan Army and its Chenab Rangers had upped the ante and opened up massive firing along three fronts, each located more than a couple of hundred kilometres away from the other and separated by geography and demographics.

It had began just four days after Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had yet again raised the Kashmir issue at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York on September 26, saying: "Right of self-determination of people of Kashmir is Pakistan’s historic responsibility and a commitment".

Violating peace

The Rangers opened fire at villages of Arnia in the RS Pora sector along the IB, killing people and pounding dozens of BSF posts. Some 250 km north of that, the Pakistan army planted an IED in Indian territory, killing Akshaya Godbole of the Indian Army1 Mahar regiment, who was in the patrol party at Balnoi in Poonch district along the LoC. Further north-east of Poonch, across the Pir Panjal mountains, the Pakistan Army opened fire in North Kashmir’s Gulmarg sector along the LoC, an attempt to allow militants to sneak in.

Islamabad had tried to engage all along the divide and across geographical terrain. So was it deliberate? "The IB is largely peaceful, but this time firing from across had spread across almost 50-70 km swathe along the IB south of the Chenab," says a serving Army officer.

New Delhi’s military response was intense and diplomatically terse. "Keep responding to Pakistan firing. No flag meetings till Pakistan stops firing", were the orders to military commanders from South Block that houses the Ministry of Defence, PMO and Ministry of External Affairs. The period between October 3 and October 9, when the BSF and the Army launched an intense counterattack on Pakistan’s positions along the IB and LoC, it was a retaliation ordered and controlled from New Delhi. The BSF warned the Rangers not to vitiate peace by opening unprovoked firing or else face retaliation, after which the troops opened fire.

On the night of October 5, the Director General of BSF, DK Pathak, had been asked to relocate from New Delhi to Jammu to coordinate the response with explicit instructions from National Security Adviser Ajit Doval to return fire with equal measure. Along the IB, the BSF responded with relentless fire from 81-mm mortars and a liberal use of the light and medium machine guns. Indian attacks focused on the Sialkot sector, "chicken’s neck" and northern parts of the Shakargarh bulge. Pakistan cried hoarse saying 35 people had been injured on its side and thousands had fled their homes. Further north in Poonch, troops of 1 Mahar, after losing their man, opened fire and effectively quietened the Pakistani guns.

By October 5, the firing from the other side focused only along the IB, the BSF retaliated with greater impact and thousands of mortars were launched, even as politically the right noises emanated. On October 4, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who controls the BSF, at a political rally in Kalayat, Haryana, warned: "Pakistan must understand... now it is a strong BJP government. We will not tolerate any ceasefire violation by Pakistan".

In New Delhi, Ajit Doval, a former Director of the Intelligence Bureau, conducted daily briefings with senior officials and Intelligence Bureau chief Syed Asif Ibrahim, coordinating the military response as it was played out live on television screen in millions of homes.

Vikram Sood, who headed the Research and Analysis Wing in 2000, says: "Pakistan was startled at our response. I am satisfied with it. They probably expected a polite response or maybe have the DGMOs (Director General’s of Military Operations) speaking over the phone."

Diplomacy waits, guns boom

People clear debris from their damaged home following cross-border firing at Arnia village, 30 km from Jammu. A file photo

As the Indian military response peaked, the Ministry of External Affairs, that is mandated to speak on Pakistan after ceasefire violations, maintained a stoic silence. It was a signal that diplomacy will wait and the forces will talk, literally through the "barrel of the gun".

The MEA broke its silence only on October 10 — after the firing subsided — when its spokesperson Syed Akbbaruddin said "while we will not talk out of fear, we have no fear of talks". India was convinced Pakistan wanted to start talks by escalating the firing as it suited —for varied reasons — Sharif and the newly appointed Pakistan army chief Gen Raheel Sharif.

Wilson John, an avid Pakistan watcher and vice-president of the New Delhi-based think-tank, Observor Research Foundation, says: "It was a message, we can talk, that is inevitable, but you cannot force us to talk through firing."

A senior functionary in the government said "a controlled military response" was the message and it was driven home when Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing an election rally at Dhamangaon in Maharashtra on October 9, said: "Pakistan has got a befitting lesson. They will not dare to repeat it again. Our jawans have shut their mouth".

Vikram Sood warns: "It has upset Pakistan’s calculation for the time being, but we should expect them to try something else. And they will. It’s in their DNA".

Dispute needs modern outlook

New Delhi and Islamabad could learn lessons from history to untangle the vexed situation. Kashmir was used as a pawn in the past 200 years by various powers.

First, during the "great game" — the 1814 onwards power struggle between Britain and Russia to control Kashmir, Afghanistan, Xinjiang and Central Asia — and then during the Cold War. Pakistan was allied with the US and even joined the Baghdad Pact and later the CENTO backed by the US and UK to stall the Soviet march into West Asia. India was with the USSR and had signed, in August 1971, the Indo-Soviet Treaty on Peace, Friendship and Cooperation. The battle for India and Pakistan was always Kashmir.

"Times have changed. Pakistan does not have the credibility on western capitals as it had during the Cold War," says Wilson John as he advises "India now starts on the front foot and must negotiate in areas of interest".

In his book "The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of Partition of India", Narinder Singh Sarila, ADC to Lord Louis Mountbatten when he was the Governor General of Independent India, narrates the events and argues: "Partition of India (including the Kashmir dispute) may not have been totally unconnected with British concern that the great game between them and the USSR was likely to recommence with even greater gusto after the Second World War and to find military bases and partners for the same".

"The support for Pakistan that developed in the UN Security Council in January 1984 (three months after Maharaja Hari Singh of Kashmir acceded to India) was mainly the result of British lobbying", he writes in his book.

Sarila backs this with another example of British interest in somehow controlling Kashmir or a part of it. In Gilgit, on November 2, 1947, a week after the accession, Major Alexander Brown of the British army unfurled the Pakistan flag. He was not reprimanded by London as Kashmir had acceded to India, but a few months later, he was decorated with the Order of the British Empire, wrote Sarila, who died in 2011.

A UN-brokered ceasefire of 1949 along the present LoC was announced and the UNMOGIP came about but and has lost its relevance despite having offices in New Delhi, Srinagar and Islamabad. India gives no credence to it. As the recent burst of firing ended, Akbaruddin described the UNMOGIP as: "(It) performs no practical function along the LoC and seems to exist only to waste scarce resources. As far as we are concerned, tools of a bygone era are not going to resolve issues that we confront today."

Indian response not knee jerk

Since the Modi-led BJP government came to power, its resolve was being tested by Pakistan with regular killing of Indian troops along the LoC and in one case even the IB. There have been five incidents since the election results were announced on May 16.

On May 18, a soldier was killed in a suspected Pakistan attack in the Jogwan forward area on the LoC in the Akhnoor sector. On June 12, Shanker Singh of 20 Jat Regiment, was killed and seven Army men, including a Major, were injured in the Balakote sector of Poonch in "IED attacks". The IED was planted on a foot-track between Chira and Pir posts and was detonated using a remote control.

On July 22, Naik Mongchon B of the Naga Regiment, was killed after a group of militants intruded 700 metres inside the Indian territory in the Pallanwala area of the Akhnoor sector. The Indian Army gave it back to the Pakistan army as per its articulated policy stated by Army Chief Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag on August 1: "Our response to any such act will be more than adequate in the future... It will be intense and immediate".

The July 16 incident was the most audacious, and on the IB segment. Constable Som Raj of the BSF was hit by a sniper shot from across the border. Som Raj’s colleague Sanjay Dhar, who went to evacuate him, was also hit and he died. The BSF had been smarting and when it flared up in the week of October it was no holds barred.

Pak attempt to internationalise issue

A man displays a part of a mortar shell. PTI

After Sharif’s address to the UNGA, Pakistan made the next attempt in the first week of October, when it complained against India to the UN about the cross LoC-IB firing and called upon the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) to play a more active role. This failed as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon encouraged India and Pakistan to resolve all differences through dialogue.

In New Delhi, Syed Akbaruddin reminded Pakistan that all issues have to be resolved bilaterally under the 1972 Simla Accord and the 1999 Lahore Declaration. “The road runs from Islamabad to New Delhi via Lahore…if you divert to New York (UN headquarters) or elsewhere (it) will not serve any purpose…there is no place for third party in India-Pakistan relations,” he advised Pakistan. His counterpart in Pakistan, Tasneem Aslam Khan, retorted from Islamabad: “UNMOGIP were taken to the LoC and the working boundary to show the damage and the pattern of fire from the other side”.

Far away in Washington, the US echoed what India has been saying for years on Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. On October 7, Leon Panetta, former CIA chief and former Defence Secretary of the US, released his book “Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace”, in which he wrote: “...it was an open secret that Pakistan's intelligence agency (ISI) had ties to terrorist groups — that, after all, was a major part of our rationale for not sharing our Osama bin Laden intelligence with the ISI”.

How Pak army stumped Nawaz

The Rangers are headed by the Pakistan army and in hindsight, the unbridled firing along the IB sector by its troops meant the “other forces” in Pakistan were not happy with Nawaz Sharif’s peace overtures towards India. Firing between Indian and Pakistan forces remains largely restricted to the LoC while the IB is peaceful as villages and hamlets are located less than a km on either side.

Dr Ashok K Behuria, Research Fellow at the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses, explains: “Firing across the IB or the working boundary (as Pakistan calls it) was an indication that the spoilers in the Pakistan army and outside of it, wanted to disallow Sharif to extend a hand of friendship to India and stall the proposed talks on ramping up trade and commerce”.

The September 28 statement of Sartaj Aziz, adviser on national security and foreign affairs to Pakistan PM, saying the timing of a meeting between Hurriyat leader Shabir Shah and Pakistani High Commissioner to India Abdul Basit was “probably not right”, could be the trigger, Dr Behuria says. India had cancelled the August 25 talks after that meeting.