The capture of fidayeen Mohammad Naved alias Qasim Khan — call him Qasab II — during a terrorist attack in Udhampur, just days after the assault on Gurdaspur, is a significant achievement of the security forces and village defence squads. It also shows the determination of the handlers in Pakistan to disrupt and derail the 68th Independence Day celebrations and the proposed NSA-level talks and test the new government's tolerance threshold.
In a significant policy shift the government has not called off the NSA talks as it is determined to confront Pakistan with the live evidence of a Qasab II. However, the element that has been missing from India's policy of combating cross-border terrorism for decades is retribution.
While deeply analytical, the mention of an Indian deterrent to fend off such terror attacks from Pakistan is conspicuous by its absence in recent articles on the Gurdaspur attack. It is this missing ingredient of India’s internal security policy that has encouraged Islamabad to expand the geography and frequency of cross-border terrorism beyond J&K to Punjab, for the first time after the 26/11 strikes on Mumbai in 2008.
No deterrence Speaking in Mumbai this week on the use of hard power, National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval emphasised the need for India to have a “deterrence against attacks on its soil”. This rephrasing of similar comments made earlier suggests that an appropriate but belated response is in the making.
In his very erudite article, M. K. Narayanan, a former NSA, writes at length about the challenges posed by terrorism emanating from Pakistan. He proposes that as cross-border terrorism intensified in J&K, it declined in Punjab. Now, he says, as terrorism has declined in J&K, it may return in Punjab, where conditions are ripe for an escalation . He is right. The linkage between Kashmir and Khalistan was made by the ISI in its famous “K2 Project” attempted in early 1990s but the idea of Khalistan was nipped in the bud by the Punjab police.
However, while Mr Narayanan makes an inventory of defensive measures, there is not a whiff of how to punish Pakistan. The steadfast pursuit of “not losing an inch of land” has, sadly, bred a passive and defensive mindset among Indian security forces.
In the run-up to the hanging of Yakub Memon, the word 'deterrent' was dropped by political leaders and intellectuals like confetti at a wedding. Retribution has a sobering effect on sponsors of terror and Pakistan's indefatigable pursuit of it has been whetted by the absence of a response. The attacks in Gurdaspur and Udhampur are stark reminders of this.
Policy dead end Despite a strenuous spin to its Pakistan policy, portrayed as more muscular than that of the UPA , it is becoming clear that the new government has hit a cul de sac . After raising the bar for resuming the dialogue process, it has had to make a dramatic climbdown. As the international border and LoC resonate with artillery, there is no sign of restoration of calm.Terror and talks will go hand-in-hand when the two NSAs, armed with their respective dossiers on Gurdaspur and Udhampur, and R&AW meet on August 23 and 24 at New Delhi.
What has changed is the language of warnings to Pakistan. Home Minister Rajnath Singh has threatened to give a 'befitting reply'. In a chaotic Rajya Sabha, over the din, he vowed “an effective and forceful response” to the Dinanagar assault by the Pakistani fidayeen whom he referred to as “enemies of India”. Earlier, Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar had made a generic remark that the response to terror will be “disproportionate and unpredictable and at a time and place of our choosing”. Be it Dinanagar or Udhampur, the charade of a “befitting reply” is repeated ad nauseum on Indian TV channels, where supercharged anchors, accompanied by their over-enthusiastic panelists, pay back their Pakistani counterparts in high decibels with choice invectives, recounting the history of treachery in fouled battles and clandestine campaigns. Calling Pakistanis 'cowards' appears to be the acme of retribution.
We are told that new fences and walls are to be put up to prevent terrorists from swimming across the Ravi river that the fidayeen crossed last month to surprise the Dinanagar police station. In the past we have built canals and ditch-cum-bunds, erected minefields and smart fencing on the IB and LoC and adopted anti-and counter-infiltration and counter-insurgency grids by thickening troop density. These measures have contained insurgency in J&K, but not brought an end to it. The focus now, as in the past, is strengthening defensive measures.
Forceful language Is India being self-deterred from delivering a befitting reply? Over the last several months, signals emanating from NSA Ajit Doval and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar were very encouraging. Mr Parrikar spoke about using terrorists to remove terrorists and re-creating deep assets dismantled by default earlier. Mr Doval has been urging Pakistan to end terrorism and at least once warned: “you do another Mumbai, you lose Balochistan”.
One must assume that the befitting reply — effective, forceful, disproportionate and unpredictable — is in the making, to be delivered at a time and place of India's choosing. Translating words into an actionable deterrent is the challenge for policymakers.
Two other aspects require attention: prevention of and a quicker response to the fidayeen assaults. The guru of counter-terrorism K .P.S. Gill, under whose charge Khalistan terrorism was ended in Punjab, stated after the Dinanagar attack: “You don't prepare for terrorism after it has happened.” Fidayeen infiltrate across the LoC/IB, strike targets in Jammu and some even get away. Over the years, the Indian security forces have frequently dealt with terrorists holed up in villages and hideouts in the Srinagar vallley and elsewhere. All the operational experience to end a crisis situation has been assimilated but not institutionalised for re-use. That is why units take inordinately long to finish the operation.
The lackadaisical deportment of personnel at the Dinanagar police station showed the absence of operational readiness and preparedness despite the general alert. Counter-terrorism skills, acquired by the Punjab police in early 1990s, were obviously not passed down; else the response would have been more professional and the police post would not have caved in. It took all of 12 hours for Punjab police's SWAT team, trained in Israel, to overcome three fidayeen . As one watched on TV the melee of troops, police and onlookers, it was obvious that the lessons of Mumbai had not been heeded: of no live coverage of counter-terrorism operations. Closure was brought half a day after the attack, with the fidayeen given live coverage and the ultimate oxygen of publicity. An American woman trapped in Taj Mumbai during 26/11 on her rescue at the end of the operation while exiting the hotel angrily told a police officer: “there were six terrorists. And you took three days.”
In Dinanagar and Udhampur, Pakistan was testing India's response to a terror attack, the first outside J&K after Mumbai. Some government sources are claiming that the civilian government in Pakistan was unaware of these attacks. That is possible, even probable. However, the autonomy of the Punjab-based terrorist groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba or Jaish-e-Mohammad acting independently of the ISI is unlikely. Either way, it ducks two questions: how will India respond to the next big attack sourced in Pakistan; and why is the deterrent overt or covert or both, taking so long to materialise? Is it the lack of political will? Because the man on the street is asking “ iska kuchh hoga ” (will something be done of this) to end cross-border terrorism. The government must give a befitting reply.
(Maj. Gen. Mehta (retd.) was a founder- member of the Defence Planning Staff, now the Integrated Defence Staff.)
