Uri attack: What should be India’s response?

The attack on an Army cantonment at Uri, reminiscent of the Pathankot attack, in Jan 2016, by Pak based terrorists, perhaps, of the JeM (Jaish – e Mohammed) resulted in 17 soldiers taken down – burnt in tents to be precise;  one more succumbed to his injuries a day later. Not taking any action would be an act of cowardice said MoS Jitender Singh while the BJP General Secy., Ram Madhav, advocated a jaw for a tooth; sadly a day later their voices were more nuanced leading one to wonder if it was not merely rhetoric. That the Govt. is yet unmoved alludes either to the absence of a strategy or presence of an ineffective one, not executed to prevent embarrassment; neither depict India, with great power ambitions, in great light. A country with expectations of being acknowledged as a “World Power” cannot be tagged even as a “Regional Power” if it cannot tame an intransigent neighbour. Should India not have anticipated such bellicose acts from Pak & planned an effective response beforehand?

The Indian response should be based on only one criterion

Are the Pak armed forces getting weakened by out acts?

Pak for long has been ruled vide a military dictatorship & even in the presence of a civilian administration, the ISI & the army form the real power centre. Talks with a civilian administration are therefore ineffective since they lack the power to execute the promises. Indo-Pak talks have been most effective when a military ruler was in power & it needs no rocket science to assert that negotiation from a position of strength is always a preferred option.

The suggested responses

Diplomatic Options

(1)Withdrawal from the SAARC summit – India should either withdraw from the SAARC summit, planned in Pak this Nov, downgrade it to a ministerial representation  or attend it & along with Afghanistan & Bangladesh – both at the receiving end of Pak’s stick –  wreak the summit. While it shall cause diplomatic embarrassment to Pak, it shall not weaken the military.

(2)Downgrade Diplomatic Relations with Pak: India can expel the Pak High Commissioner or the Defense attache - who definitely must be from the ISI - & withdraw its own Ambassador from Pak before there is reciprocal action from the other side. The effect, unfortunately, shall only be cosmetic.

(3)Declare Pak a terrorist state – India has raised the issue of Pak support to terrorism at the G20 & has urged the UN to include non-state actors too while defining terrorism.  However, all major powers have a dubious history when it comes to supporting terror to achieve geopolitical objectives & hence have cold shouldered the proposal. Any Indian resolution to declare Pak a “terrorist” state is unlikely to find support at the UN, because of the lack of support from the Muslim Ummah - the 57 member OIC (Organization of Islamic Countries) & the GCC (Gulf Co-operation Council) - or torpedoed through a Chinese veto. Even the US would be loath to pursue the option for fear of pushing Pak, further, into a Chinese embrace, losing whatever little leeway it has over the country today.

(4)Push Major powers to stop joint military exercises, military aid or arms sales to Pak – The Russians have cancelled the first ever joint military exercises, planned with Pak; incidentally, plan to sell MI 35 attack helicopters & military exercises was a consequence of India moving closer to the US, much to Russian chagrin, in the recent past. The military sales could still go through. No western country would stop defense sales to Pak unless threatened with denial of bidding into our annual defense capital purchases market, worth about Rs. 70000 crores – amongst the top 2 in the world, with Saudis giving us company. The Chinese, however, would continue to prop up Pak just as they have supported the International pariah, North Korea, nullifying our expected gains.

(5)Support Baloch liberation: Granting asylum to Brahumdagh Bugti & others fighting for the Balochi cause while helping them travel to world capitals to canvass for Baloch independence & bring sharper focus on the human right violations in Balochistan would help; however the collateral damage would be risking a focus on Kashmir. Just as Kurdish Independence from Iraq - Turkey- Syria is not getting international acceptance, Balochi independence too would suffer a similar fate; even the US believes that Balochistan is a indisputable part of Pak. Therefore, but for needling Pak & causing it some headache, this strategy would not take us far unless we use this to wreck the $46 billion  CPEC (China Pak Economic corridor)

(6) Stop Visas & cancel People to people engagements: This is the softest but the most foolhardy option that is generally exercised which merely succeeds in some “signalling” without achieving any strategic goals. When supported by jingoism, prompting the digging of cricket pitches during an Indo-Pak match or forcing the cancellation of the Gulam Ali show, perpetuated by the Shiv Sena, in Mumbai, evoke nothing but discord & sends wrong signals to the international community. It is prudent to allow Pak citizenry to continue to come to India to create a constituency in the civil society of Pak.; offering citizenship to interested personnel, without national security implications, as was done in the case of  Adnan Sami, could start a discussion back home in Pak, creating a better appreciation of India.

Economic Options

(1)Stop trade with Pak or withdraw the MFN status – Annual Trade with Pak is about $7.5 billion, of which 2/3^rd flows through informal channels vide Dubai; India has a trade surplus. Stopping trade would push the entire basket through Dubai & hence shall not pinch Pak; withdrawal of the MFN status shall not help either. Incidentally, the Kashmir fruit trade that happens across the LOC would be severely dented effecting the economic conditions in the valley further. Damaging Pak’s export economy by forcing its largest trading partners EU & the US, by dangling our defense import or the large domestic Indian market carrot, shall help. But this shall be a medium term plan which could be torpedoed if China plays white knight

(2)Threaten China with Trade sanctions: To prevent China from supporting Pak,  India could threaten sanctions. The China – India annual trade is about $70 billion with a trade surplus of about $50 billion in favour of China. But are we in a position to threaten china – a $10 trillion dollar economy, 5 times our size?; the latter could very well put its strategic interests above the trade ones & call our bluff.  Enticing China by granting greater access to the Indian market if they forsake Pak could be a better option; but it would not sail either since an Indo-Pak narrative & not an Indo-China one is seen by China as being in its long term interest.

Military/Covert options

(1)Declare War on Pak: This is unlikely despite our conventional weapon superiority.  While India has the 4^th largest military in the world at 1.3 million with about  $40 billion annual budget, Pak has the 11^th largest military in the world at 0.55 million with a military budget of $7.6 billion apart from being  a nuclear power & hence no pushover. It is unlikely that they would use the nuclear trigger since it would invite Pak’s annihilation too. Mao once called the western bluff, on nuclear war, by asserting  that even if 400 million Chinese perish in the act, the remaining 200 million would continue to build a greater China; Does India have the gall to take a similar stand?

(2)Attack terrorist training grounds: India had attacked the PLA, a Meitei outfit’s camp & NSCN (K) site in Myanmar, as retaliation for the ambush killing of 18 soldiers in Manipur last year. However the sites were deserted when the attack happened, aver some strategic analysts; Pak too keeps changing the locations of the training camps & unless India has concrete information on the sites, a punitive strike would be counter-productive for the diplomatic fallout would most likely dent India’s reputation as a “responsible power”. Pak has a fairly robust air defenses too as per the analyst Cristian Fair.

(3)Take down ISI’s prized assets: Finishing off Dawood, Hafeez Sayeed, Mahsood Azhar et al would cool, partially, the pent up public opinion. This action has to be executed covertly either by our RAW agents or hired mercenaries. Genaral Roy Choudhary wants “non-state actors” to be created to sharpen our covert machinery while VP Malik has confirmed that such an arm was disbanded in the mid 1990’s on political directions; Manohar Parrikar statement in 2015 that a thorn has to be removed by a thorn alludes certainly to some thinking in that direction even as it confirms absence of such capacity today. The point to remember is that such actors could recoil on their patrons, perhaps, creating a Frankenstein monster – as has happened in Pak now; therefore, hiring is always desirable. A covert plan hatched by using hired mercenaries – Pashtuns or the Balochis – should be immediately executed to finish the JeM chief.  

Other options

(1)Cancel the Indus water treaty:  The Indus Water Treaty, signed between India & Pak in 1960 reserves 80.52% of the river water to the lower riparian state; such largesse was, perhaps, meant to be a barter for the still elusive peace. Pak has used the international dispute resolution mechanism to stop India from constructing dams while simultaneously proceeding with its own - the Bunji & the Basha dams with Chinese help. Strategic expert - Brahma Chellaney- argues for annulling the treaty under clause 62 of the Vienna Convention by reason of a fundamental change of circumstances of exporting terror & causing palpable harm to an upper riparian state. Unfortunately, this would hit the people of Pakistan & not the military. This strategy also could depict India as a country which does not respect international treaties & perhaps force China to squeeze the Brahmaputra effecting water flows into the NE.

(2)Cyber Warfare: Being an IT powerhouse, India's capability in this space is miles ahead of Pak. However, sensitive assets, in Pak, must be currently protected through isolation, defeating our strategic resolve. Desecrating more than mere websites should be our aim & that could take time. Since attacks of such nature can never be owned publicly, the  heightened public angst cannot be subdued. Some form of saber rattling in this space could be expected.

Conclusion

None of the options listed above weaken the Pak Military industrial complex.  Even if Pak economy is weakened, affecting the annual budget of Pak military, they are cushioned by the Fauji Foundation which has assets of $20 billion; thus other options like keeping the Pak army engaged in internal disturbances in Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa & Sindh, to stress them out, need to be explored. Balkalization of Pak might not help since the Pak army & the ISI are largely drawn from Punjab; disruption in Paki Punjab shall genuinely weaken the Pak army which is what India should target.

For details see http://meetrk.blogspot.in/2016/09/is-balkanisation-of-pak-effective.html

Alas, all these are medium to long term strategies & that perhaps, explains why the Indian govt. is still silent despite the carnage. Gen. Jaswal has argued for taking down a few Pak army pickets, immediately, post the attack; that even such a tactical act was not implemented is surprising for it would not have elicited a more than proportionate response from the other side. With every passing hour the element of surprise is getting lost & patrolling on the other side shall get more robust, reducing the possibility of a retaliation further. It is unlikely that any action would be initiated post the UNGA session comes to a close. Many in the govt. would like us to believe that just as the Indian Armed forces prepared for a few months before launching a war in 1971, a similar exercise is currently underway. Hopefully, the don't do something before the Punjab or the UP elections to gain some advantage as the cancellation of talks with Pak was done earlier to gain an advantage in the then impending J&K elections.

Post the 1971 defeat, in the Indo-Pak war, that led to the creation of Bangladesh, Pak spent the next decade in capability building to launch a blitzkrieg in Punjab in the 1980’s  & Kashmir in the 1990’s. Col Ajai shukla avers that currently India & Pak capabilities are symmetric & the consequences of an attack are far worse than what is generally assumed. China is bound to intervene if they sense the annihilation of Pak; hence we need to be prepared for a war on 2 fronts. Perhaps, India should cease rhetoric, plan adequately & reciprocate in the same coin.