Will killings in Pakistan affect peace in India?

On May 6, Paramjit Singh Panjwar, Khalistan Commando Force chief and a terrorist, became the latest to be shot dead in a recent series of mysterious killings of anti-India terrorists sheltered by Pakistan. Many targeted killings have taken place in Pakistan since the beginning of 2023. If its establishment were to attribute the killings to India, one can expect retaliatory terrorist strikes to follow.

A pattern of tit-for-tat responses between the two countries has been set in the past. On June 23, 2021, a car bomb exploded outside the home of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) founder and Jamaat-ud-Dawah chief Hafiz Saeed, in Johar Town, in Lahore. Pakistan blames India for the three people killed and 24 critically injured by the explosion. Four days later, two explosive-laden drones crashed into the technical area of Jammu Airport under the control of the Indian Air Force. Strategic affairs experts speculated that this could have been a joint venture of the Pakistan army and the LeT as a retaliatory gesture. The Pakistan establishment must save face with its terrorist proxies by undertaking such retaliatory measures.

Panjwar was among the 50 most-wanted fugitives on a list India handed to Pakistan in 2011. He was killed on May 6, while on a morning walk. On February 20, unknown assailants shot dead a founding commander of the Hizbul Mujahideen, Bashir Ahmed Peer, outside a shop in Rawalpindi.

Three other anti-India terrorists were killed in February and March, including one in Afghanistan. Ejaz Ahmed Ahangar, a Kashmiri functionary of the Islamic State Hind/Khorasan Province who was on the most-wanted list of terrorists in India, was killed on February 14 in Kabul by the Taliban. Syed Khalid Raza, a former commander of Al Badr, once active in J&K, was killed outside his house in Karachi on February 26. Syed Noor Shalobar, an alleged recruiter for terrorist organisations in J&K was killed on March 3 in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. A similar killing took place on March 1, 2022, when unknown assailants gunned down Mistry Zahoor Ibrahim, one of the five hijackers of the IC-814 aircraft of Indian Airlines.

Pakistan may not be able to attribute all these killings to Indian intelligence agencies. But some allegations will certainly be directed towards them as these killings benefit India. They are certain to enhance an image carefully cultivated by the current dispensation.

After the Balakot air strikes, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared in a rally in Ahmedabad, “Yeh hamara siddhant hai ki hum ghar mai ghus kar maarenge...Main lamba intezaar nahin kar sakta (It is our principle to hit the enemy inside his territory..... I cannot wait for long)”. He added: "Chun-chun ke hisaab lena, ye meri fitrat hai... woh agar saatven pataal mein bhi chupe hon, toh kheench kar nikaal kar maarunga (It is my temperament to make each of them account for his misdeeds…. even if they were to hide in the deepest spot under the Earth, I will prise them out and punish them)."

Were Pakistan to see the recent attacks action against the terrorist fugitives on its soil in this light of such rhetoric, it would be compelled to react regardless of its consequences for Pakistan’s political and economic stability. It is uncertain whether such possible retaliatory action will be confined to J&K or be more widespread. The ambit of responses for Pakistan may, however, be circumscribed by it having managed to exit the grey list of FATF (Financial Action Task Force) last October.

However, terrorist attacks have occurred in Poonch and Rajouri which point towards a newly infiltrated group of terrorists from Pakistan. Five soldiers were killed on April 20 in Poonch when terrorists ambushed an army truck. On May 5, five more soldiers were killed in Rajouri, when presumably the same group triggered an IED blast. This is just the beginning of the summer season in J&K when infiltration from across the border becomes easier.

What might be the political consequences of such terrorist strikes in J&K or in other parts of India? If they take place at all, they will break the relative peace prevailing in most parts of India barring J&K. They will also take place when India prepares for the 2024 general elections.

The Government of India on its part has failed to prosecute and punish some high-profile cases of terrorism, especially those allegedly involving Hindutva activists. It gave an opportunity for Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari to allege that India had failed to do justice to Pakistani citizens who were victims of the Samjhauta Express blasts. He was thereby positing an equivalence between Pakistan and India’s sheltering of terrorists.

Political leaders on both sides of the border benefit from heating up such a discourse. At the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Goa, Zardari threatened that Pakistan might not hold back if India held a G20 event in Srinagar in J&K: “Waqt aane par aisa jawab denge jo yaad rahega (when the time comes we will give a response that (India) will not forget). Such swagger seems to have done his image a world of good in Pakistan. His Indian counterpart S Jaishankar equally is being hailed in India for ‘shaming’ Zardari as a “justifier (and) spokesperson of a terrorism industry.”

The 2019 general election campaign adequately demonstrated that terrorism can be instrumentalised for votes. Any further raising of the ambient temperature between the two countries by so-called retaliatory killings could be leveraged for the 2024 general elections. It is handy for the ruling dispensation to be both a victim of terrorism and demonstrate a tough stance against it. The emerging communal rhetoric will be able to mobilise nationalism, a far stronger idea than the sectional one of religion, such as asking voters to chant ‘Jai Bajrang Bali’ in the Karnataka polls.

(Bharat Bhushan is a Delhi-based journalist.)

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