The challenge before India is to raise global consciousness about Pakistani terrorism so that it is pressurised to control it – Firstpost

India’s foreign policy and strategic planners have to take note of Pakistan’s persistent efforts at building an anti-Indian narrative both at home and abroad, especially in the Islamic countries. The main planks of their story are:

• India is engaged in fomenting terrorism in Pakistan through its proxies the Balochi insurgent groups and the Tehreek-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan. This is being emphasised especially by the Pakistan army. (More on this later in this article)

• India did not give any proof to Pakistan or the world about the links to Pakistan about those who undertook the Pahalgam terrorist attack. Despite that it launched unprovoked military action against Pakistan. (This is incorrect. India has named ‘The Resistance Front’ an outfit of the Lashkar-e-Toiba to be responsible for the attack).

• Pakistan’s defence forces got the better of India in the military engagement; hence, India approached the US to intervene to end the conflict. Pakistan agreed to do so in the interests of peace. (This is false. It was Pakistan that sought the cessation of hostilities0.

• Any military confrontation between nuclear countries carries with it the extreme danger of escalation to the level of a nuclear war with all its unimaginable consequences. (More on this later in the article)

• India’s holding the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in abeyance is contrary to its treaty obligations and is unacceptable to Pakistan which is critically dependent on the waters of the Indus Rivers system. (Pakistan cannot have it both ways; take advantage of the IWT and seek to damage India continuously).

• Pakistan wishes to have a dialogue with India which will have to include the Jammu and Kashmir issue, the Indus Waters trade and terrorism. This is the line being taken by Pakistan’s civilian leadership. (India has made it clear that the dialogue will be on terrorism and Pakistan’s return of Indian territory under its illegal control0.

• India is in a grip of war hysteria which is being promoted by the anti-minorities (especially the Muslims) BJP government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Behind the government is the BJP’s parent organisation the RSS which has always been virulently hostile towards Muslims and Islam. (India has countered these allegations but more needs to be done on this account).

• The international community must compel India to address the root causes of India-Pakistan problems so that international peace and security is maintained.

These points are surely being made by Pakistan Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif on his ongoing visit to some Islamic states. He has already been to Turkey and Iran and Azerbaijan and will be in Tajikistan on May 28-29. The recently and farcically promoted Asim Munir to the Field Marshal rank is accompanying Sharif on this trip. The clear object of his accompanying Sharif (though in terms of Pakistani reality it should be said to be the other way around) is to show that the country’s military and civilian leaderships are on the same page on India, even if there are some differences in focus of the two, on issues of war and peace with India. In accompanying Shahbaz Sharif, the newly minted Field Marshal is perhaps setting a precedent because Pakistani army chiefs do not accompany Prime Ministers during their visits abroad. These points will also be made by the Parliamentary delegations that Pakistan has announced it will send to major world capitals.

While some of these points are oft repeated by Pakistan, India has to focus especially on the stress the Pakistani army has been giving to India’s so-called involvement in terrorism.  It is essential to turn to the joint the media briefing held by Pakistan’s Interior Secretary and the Director General of the Inter Services Press Relations (DG ISPR) on May 23 after the Khuzdar attack in which some children died to understand Pakistani propaganda against India on terrorism. The actual briefer was DG ISPR though the Interior Secretary made some points to show that military and the civilian government hold the same views.

The Interior Secretary said inter alia, “Our initial findings confirm that this attack [Khuzdar] is in continuity of wider pattern of violence sponsored by India through the Fitna al Hindustan operation under the tutelage and patronage of Indian agency RAW.” There are two points that need to be made straightaway.

First, the Pakistani allegation that India is behind the Baloch insurgency is sheer nonsense. This is fifth insurgency since Pakistan amalgamated the state of Kalat and, in doing so, merged Baluchistan with it in 1947. The majority of the Baloch people have never accepted Pakistan and view the Pakistani army as an occupying force which has facilitated the massive exploitation of Baluchistan’s natural resources especially for the benefit of Pakistan’s only province that matters—Punjab.

Second, the use of new term for the Baloch insurgent groups that has been coined by Pakistan is ‘Fitna al Hindustan’. The word Fitna is of Arabic origin and has different meanings. It has been used in the Koran in different contexts. One of the connotations of Fitna is rebellion against legitimate political authority, including by heretics. By using this term for the Baloch insurgent groups Pakistan is seeking to give a religious colour to what is essentially a political matter.

It is seeking to convey that the Baloch insurgent groups are heretics (those who have abandoned Islam) and are acting at the behest of India which, as noted earlier, the Pakistanis are propagating, is under the control of an anti-Muslim government. Clearly, Pakistan wishes that the Baloch insurgents and India are discredited in the eyes of the Islamic ummah. The term Fitna al Hindustan is also directed at the Afghan Taliban for Pakistan accuses it of permitting the Baloch groups the use of Afghanistan’s territory as sanctuaries.

In this context it can be mentioned that since last year Pakistan has begun to call the TTP as ‘Fitna al Khawarij’. Most Muslims use the Khawarij as a pejorative for those who, according to them, have deviated from the path of true Islam, and have rebelled against legitimate state authority. Thus, the connotation again is that the TTP consists of heretics who are taking the help of India. At least till now the use of this term for the TTP has not made any change in the interim Afghan Taliban government towards it.

The DG ISPR used the media briefing which stretched for more than an hour and a half to try to make the point that India, after being frustrated by the ‘failure’ of its Operation Sindoor, had activated its proxies to intensify terrorist attacks in Pakistan and it was now targeting innocent and small children too. He claimed that Pakistan had given irrefutable evidence of Indian involvement in Balochistan to the Indian government. All this is of course Pakistani propaganda but Indian policymakers have to devise methods to refute this propaganda if and when they feel that it is beginning to make some impact in the major powers and Islamic countries that are well disposed towards India.

The international community recognises that Pakistan is engaged in using terror. However, terrorism does not resonate in a world which is pre-occupied in dealing with the upheavals caused by President Donald Trump in global geo-politics and geo-economics since he assumed office on January 20 for the second time. The challenge before India is to raise global consciousness about Pakistani terrorism so that it is pressurised to control it.

The point made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi that India will not be cowed down by Pakistan’s nuclear blackmail has to be co-related to its terror activities so that nuclear doctrine begins to recognise that the first step on an escalatory ladder is a terrorist attack and not a kinetic response to it. India’s strategic thinkers and diplomats must emphatically spread this idea.

The writer is a former Indian diplomat who served as India’s Ambassador to Afghanistan and Myanmar, and as secretary, the Ministry of External Affairs. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.