India should take additional economic sanctions that hurt, initiate a few covert actions and expect some fireworks on the LoC. The government must do what it has to do, without remorse or without pity. The endgame is important.
NEW DELHI: I was barely eleven years old when Pakistan launched its pre-emptive air strike on 3 December 1971, which lead to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declaring on All India Radio that ‘India is at War with Pakistan’. Huddled around our radio sets, the entire country knew the gloves were off and what had been on the cards for a few months, was then a reality. The ground shook as the big guns opened up both in the eastern and western sectors, and six years after the two countries had been involved in a slugfest, war had been thrust upon India by Pakistani generals yet again. No matter how one looks at it, just what were Yahya Khan, Tikka Khan and the redoubtable AAK Niazi smoking, remains a mystery, for despite their big talk, they not only shot themselves in the foot but succeeded in blowing off East Pakistan from the world map. Bangladesh was liberated in 14 days, and 93,000 Pakistani officers and men, were sitting behind barbed wire fences in various POW camps across India. And yet, the Pakistani army once again escaped censure in the eyes of their own people.
The enigma that became Pakistan based on a forced ‘two-nation’ theory continues to baffle. That the British played us as a people is a well-established fact, and once they zeroed in on personal ambitions and individual greed for power on both sides of what would become the Radcliffe Line, it was a cake walk for them to split the Subcontinent. Yet, the final nail in the coffin was hammered in by our own people. Ironically, Bengal, which during the INA trials had shown an unprecedented degree of solidarity when Congress and Muslim League flags had flown from the same poles in Calcutta, became a battle ground as Jinnah’s call for a Direct Action Day saw horrific communal violence at an unprecedented scale.
Ironically, the subsequent Provisional elections, then saw the Bengali Muslim population endorse the two-nation concept when the rest of India barring Punjab and Sind rejected the idea. Pakistan in a manner of speaking, was created on the Bengali vote. Almost immediately, the Pakistani Punjabi psyche came to the fore. The fact that tribal lashkars were brought into play militarily almost immediately after Independence by Jinnah to ‘settle’ the Kashmir dispute, set the tone. It gave the Pakistani Army a legitimacy to exist. With the Quaid-e-Azam or Baba-e-Qaum, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, dying in November 1948, it was a matter of time before Pakistan’s civil leadership would suffer from collective genuflection before the Army.
Strangely, even though it was the Bengali vote which finally allowed the British master plan of dividing India to fructify, East Pakistan allowed itself to adopt a fairly submissive stance when it came to the feudal and aristocratic Punjabi population of West Pakistan. As the likes of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto tried to align the population with the Arab world, contempt and a sort of racial hatred began to set in. ‘Sada Punjabi, Saala Bengali’ would be the underlying sentiment that would influence Pakistan’s immediate destiny.
The first blow to the ordinary people of Pakistan was dealt in 1953 when the third Governor General Ghulam Muhammad dismissed the government of Prime Minister Khawaja Nazimuddin who at the time had the support of the Constituent Assembly. The next year the governor general went a step further and dissolved the Assembly itself, but he in turn was replaced by the then emerging all powerful army with Major General Iskandar Ali Mirza, who was from East Pakistan. As the musical chairs intensified, nomenclatures and posts kept changing at an incredible speed.
In 1956 the country became the ‘Islamic republic of Pakistan’ and Mirza became the last governor general and the first president of the country. In 1958, Mirza yet again dissolved the Constituent Assembly and the government of Prime Minister Feroz Khan Noon, inviting instead General Ayub Khan to take charge as the Chief Martial Law Administrator. Two weeks later, Mirza got booted out and Ayub declared himself the President of Pakistan. The fledgling country, its people struggling to find an identity, were condemned to be citizens where an Army had a Nation. Sixty-seven years down the line, this unique distinction continues to hold good, and despite repeated bungling by the generals who control their destiny, the people continue to be just pawns in a game.
Ayub (made himself a Field Marshal as well) was an enigma. As a soldier, despite his 5-star grading, he had been accused of cowardice during World War II and was not thought of highly as a soldier. Not overly jingoistic, Ayub focussed more on developing Pakistan and to a great extent, he did a fairly good job. But the wheels in his case started to come off with emergence of Bhutto, whose pathological hatred for India went back to his father’s plans for Junagadh being foiled by the Indian Army’s Kathiawar landings in February 1948.
Having rigged the Presidential election against Fatima Jinnah in 1964 (Ayub would have perhaps won anyway), it was Bhutto who as the Foreign Minister of Pakistan, who started to emerge as a loose cannon and he along with Chairman Mao of the PRC, masterminded Op Gibraltar. Bhutto was dealing directly with Major General Akhtar Hussain Malik, the GOC of Pakistan’s 12 Infantry Division and for all practical purposes, had bypassed both Ayub and GHQ (see my book, 1965: A Western Sunrise).
With Pakistani propaganda somehow painting the 1965 defeat as a victory, though Ayub gave way to General Yahya Khan, the Pakistan Army’s grip on the country remained. What Yahya Khan did to his own people is now history, but despite its dismal track record against India, the Army continued to not only feather its nest, it became a deadly mercenary card that was used by western countries to suit their end. The Geo-strategic position that Pakistan occupies on the world map and its pivotal role vis a vis China during the Nixon- Kissinger era continued to strengthen the Army’s position.
Over the decades that followed, the Tikka Khans, Zia-ul-Haqs, Musharrafs, Kayanis and Bajwas continued to ensure that whatever the state of Pakistan economically or otherwise, the Pakistan Army (which includes their Air Force and Navy) would not be affected.
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General Munir Asim has simply played the time-trusted Kashmir card yet again, driven perhaps by the deteriorating security situation within Pakistan. His speech extorting going for India’s jugular in Kashmir followed by the Pahalgam massacre was calculated to provoke India into retaliating, for in his calculations, that would help unite a fragmented Pakistani society yet again behind the Pakistani Army. India, on the other hand, having adopted publicly a more aggressive stand post Uri and Pulwama, would in Asim’s assessment, be forced into a limited kinetic (a new term that sure hides the ugly consequences of an all-out war) action.
So what should India do? First and foremost, the Indian leadership must define its end goal, which to my mind, has to be the reduction of Pakistan’s war making ability and help liberate the people of Pakistan from the cynical clutches of the army. That of course is easier said than done, for the Pakistan Army in the public perception, does two other things apart from placing its own interests first; it also guards its borders (territorial integrity) and more importantly, protects the very ideology that created Pakistan, which was based on the two-nation theory. For generations of Pakistanis, these two factors will always make them look the other way even if they are to become cannon fodder in this deadly game, which is the survival of the Pakistan Army. However, even if India does not have the capability to bring about this change, the aim should be to diminish the aura of the Pakistan Army in the eyes of its own citizens. There is enough festering undertones there that go back seven decades which will sooner or later come to the fore.
Right from the day the shots echoed across the Pahalgam meadows, I have been advocating the use of Indian Naval power to impose an economic stranglehold, which will choke Pakistan. The revoking of the Indus Water Treaty (whatever that means on the ground) and other measures need to be adopted to keep Pakistan guessing, but let the economic pressure of something akin to a blockade create a situation where the people of Pakistan wake up to the reality of what their army has done and has been doing for decades.
If you can fight a war and win without firing a shot, it is your best option. Given Pakistan’s situation and its track record, the Army and IAF must be prepared for pre-emptive strikes and other provocative moves. If indeed the situation arises where India is forced to cross the Rubicon, then she must smash the walnut with a sledgehammer. However, that must remain our final option, but in the meantime, let the Indian Navy and the diplomats, even if they do not have a bandwidth at the bilateral level, do their job to isolate Pakistan. The cracks should then emerge soon enough.
India must also keep an eye on the eas from all indications, the Bangladesh/ Myanmar region is also going to emerge as a battleground in the near future, if it hasn’t already. This is indeed the ultimate litmus test for India’s leadership for the game is no longer about optics anymore. We also must remember Pakistan’s economy does not reflect the state of its army. It’s an hydra-headed monster, and only the people of Pakistan can choke off its oxygen supply. Already even a beleaguered Imran Khan, probably stretched across primitive torture contraptions similar to the Spanish Inquisition, is making statements supporting Pakistan’s military. India on the other hand, has to tighten up and keep its own interests at the fore. This is an opportunity to clean out Fortress India’s own stables as well.
India’s focus with the Chinese threat especially since 2020 has created an imbalance that has adversely affected the edge that we needed to have on the Western Front and this needs to be rectified. It is unlikely that China will fight a war with India, but if they do, it is more likely they will coax Pakistan, their cat’s paw, to do so. Prime Minister Modi’s widely publicized remark that the army, air force and navy now had a free hand, is also somewhat akin to Nehru announcing in 1962 that he had asked the army to throw the Chinese out of NEFA. In this game where there are all sorts of undercurrents and vested interests, India must choose its options wisely.
India also needs to tone down the rhetoric especially on TV channels. Wars are not won by screaming at the enemy, but by squeezing the choke points, often in a silent and quiet manner. The government and the people of India must realize there are no quick fix solutions and that the confrontation is indeed a long haul and eventually India will prevail.
Presently, India should take additional economic sanctions that hurt, initiate a few covert actions and expect some fireworks on the Line of Control. The Indian government must do what it has to do, without remorse or without pity. The endgame is important. Everything else is a sideshow!
Shiv Kunal Verma is the author of 1962: The War That Wasn’t and 1965: A Western Sunrise in addition to other books on Military History as also on other genres.