India-Pakistan military conflict will not end terrorism in J&K

Given the army’s high profile in Pakistan, it was unlikely to call it quits after its government made unconfirmed claims that it had downed five Indian fighter aircraft and a drone. So, the missile attack on military sites on May 8 would have come as no surprise to India.

It is quite possible that the military action may go well beyond calculated and restrained retaliation, and force India to take countermeasures — initiating a dangerous climb up the escalatory ladder.

As India assesses Pakistan’s possible next steps, it needs to review its strategic achievements so far, and assess whether they will have lasting consequences for curbing terrorism originating from Pakistan against India.

Pakistan claims that it has brought down three Rafales, one SU-30, and a MiG-29 of the Indian Air Force, if true, will bring losses running to a few thousand crores. A day later, news reports quoted government sources that India had downed three Pakistani jets — one F-16 and two JF-17s made in China.

The Pakistan Army has, through its retaliation, saved face and bolstered its sagging public image. India, on the other hand, has released videos of the night sky in Jaisalmer being lit up with anti-aircraft gun fire on the night of May 8.

In the fog of war and its accompanying psyops, it is difficult to ascertain these claims by the respective governments. But if one were to believe them to be true, both sides have inflicted sufficient damage on each other already. Nor can either side claim military success in terms of the number of dead. The number of deaths in India and Pakistan does not seem to differ by any order of magnitude as of now.

What has India achieved strategically and in terms of deterring terror strikes facilitated by Pakistan?

Among them is the thwarting of Pakistani drone and missile attacks on military targets. It has also destroyed nine terrorist training hubs and launch pads — some of them well-known, such as the Jaish-e-Mohmmad’s hub in Bahawalpur and Lashkar-e-Toiba’s base at Muridke. Others were mostly based in and around mosques. These sites were a critical part of the terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan.

There are also reports of 10 family members and associates of JeM chief Masood Azhar being killed in the missile strikes at Bahawalpur’s Subhanallah Mosque and of some LeT leaders at Muridke, outside Lahore. However, in the long run, such killings achieve little or nothing.

Mosques and/or terrorist training centres can be easily rebuilt through public donations, given the nationalistic and Islamic fervour generated by Pakistan playing up a so-called targeting of mosques. More importantly, their destruction may lead to a surge in volunteers wishing to join the ranks of jihadi organisations targeting India.

To eliminate future terrorist strikes against India in J&K and elsewhere, India would also have to destroy the terrorist ecosystem in Pakistan — the brains behind the terrorists, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of the Pakistan armed forces. Till then, neutralising one Masood Azhar or some other terrorist will only create replicas from the reserve army of brainwashed madrassa-educated, unemployable youngsters in Pakistan.

As long as the ISI and its mindset of ‘bleeding-India-through-a-thousand-cuts’ exists, terrorism in J&K at least, will continue. It is an inescapable fact that the roots of terrorism against India are in the differences with Pakistan over Kashmir. To put India’s killing of terrorists through missile strikes in perspective, in all, 26 (Pakistan’s estimate) to over 100 (India’s estimate) people were killed on the night of May 6-7. On average, Indian security forces have killed 70-190 terrorists in J&K per year in the last three years.

After the present tit-for-tat military exchanges, the Pakistani terrorists who have already infiltrated into J&K will lie low for a while under advice from their facilitators. However, they are there waiting for orders and pose a long-term threat.

Fortunately, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Srinagar on April 19 to flag off a Vande Bharat train, traversing the 272-km Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Line, was postponed due to bad weather. The Pahalgam terrorist strike took place just three days later, on April 22, suggesting that the terrorists had already entered J&K and were waiting to strike.

The test of the success of India’s missile strikes in curbing terrorism will come during the Amarnath Yatra scheduled to begin on July 3. Only if the J&K administration and the Centre are confident that the pilgrims will not be targeted by terrorists will the pilgrimage begin.

India is not Israel and must not model its reaction to acts of terrorism against it on the Israeli playbook — because if there is another terrorist strike in J&K a few months later, India would be forced to escalate. If attacking terrorist infrastructure within Pakistan is going to be the established practice, then the next time around it would have to attack more than nine sites in Pakistan. This spiral of escalation may become difficult to control.

International pressure and dialogue with Pakistan will remain important in attenuating, if not eliminating, terrorist facilitation against India by the Pakistan military.

In retrospect, one can see how the Manmohan Singh government chose this strategy over military action after the 26/11 terrorist strikes. It was able to bring enormous international pressure on Pakistan to change its behaviour, and even the situation in J&K improved after that. There was even a glimmer of hope in a possible solution to the Kashmir issue through diplomatic means. The Modi government did not give its diplomatic efforts or police investigations enough time to bear fruit and opted for military action.

One must recognise, however, the unusually bold and unilateral move by the Modi government to abrogate the provisions of Article 370 and 35A of the Constitution on August 5, 2019, revoking the special status of the state of J&K, seem to have provoked not only Pakistan but also China.

India’s foreign policy will have to work on reducing these hostilities with its neighbours. That is the only way to eliminate terrorism, even if it requires a lot of patience and hard work.

(Bharat Bhushan is a New Delhi-based journalist.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.