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Ceasefire violation: How India is misreading the 'suicidal

logic' of Pakistani army
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By Sreeram Chaulia, ET Bureau | 12 Oct, 2014, 04.00AM IST

The week-long exchange of heavy artillery and machine-gun fire between the armies of
India and Pakistan, causing 30 civilian deaths and displacing tens of thousands of petrified
people, has rewound the clock to habitual animosity and fear. Craters and blown-up roofs
of homes have erased the euphoria about positive vibes between Prime Minister Narendra
Modi and his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, in May this year. The sparring and
poking that historically govern bilateral relations have sadly reasserted themselves.
Despite the plethora of Pakistan watchers in India and India experts in Pakistan, the
tragedy of the latest flare-up along the Line of Control (LoC) and the international border
(IB) is that neither party knows which factors are really driving the other side to behave so
fiercely.

Although Pakistan may be inferior in conventional military

terms and economically broke, the belief that India can
pummel and compel it to become benign is misguided.

DK Pathak, director general of the Border Security Force (BSF), has expressed puzzlement
to The Times of India as follows: "We have inflicted heavy damage on them, but they keep
firing. I do not understand why." In a mirror image, the Pakistani major general

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commanding the forces, Javed Khan, is quoted by the BBC as saying, "I just want to know
the reason from the other side. We are not finding the answer."

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Whenever the ceasefire agreement of 2003 is battered by an uptick in cross-border firing, India and Pakistan resort to boilerplates for
explaining the violence. Pakistan connects our belligerence with domestic elections and the competitive patriotism of ruling and
opposition parties in India. We focus on the civil-military balance of power in Pakistan and believe that its mighty armed forces use
periodic confrontations with India to straighten elected politicians who may stray in quest of amity.
Indeed, the last few months have witnessed a steady erosion of Nawaz Sharif's authority under the pressure of so-called civil
disobedience campaigns of opposition parties of Imran Khan and Tahir ul Qadri, both of whom enjoy tacit blessings of the Pakistani
military. By relying on the Army for securing critical state institutions against the protesters' threats of physical takeover, Sharif conceded
that the military is Pakistan's ultimate arbiter and saviour.
To use a perceptive classification of the Pakistani intellectual Babar Sattar, the "de facto system" that struts in khakis has taught a lesson
to the "de jure system" of Parliament and the elected prime minister. Raising the tempo at the LoC and IB, with Nawaz Sharif donning an
embarrassed silence, is a way of reconfirming that Pakistan's India policy will not be allowed to transfer from the military headquarters in
Rawalpindi to the prime minister in Islamabad.
Here, it is imperative to recall the psyche of the Pakistani military. Georgetown University's Christine Fair's recent book, Fighting to the
End: The Pakistan Army's Way of War, argues that its strategic culture is a Kamikaze-like will to weaken "Hindu-dominated" India, come
what may. Fair writes, "Pakistan will suffer any number of military defeats in its efforts to do so, but it will not acquiesce to India." For the
Generals, any accommodation with India is "genuine and total defeat."
Warnings by India's leadership in the wake of the border clashes that "times have changed" and that we would raise the costs of
Pakistani adventurism to "unaffordable" levels by hitting back strongly misread the suicidal logic of the Pakistani army. Pakistan is
certainly inferior in conventional military terms and economically broke vis-a-vis a rising India, but expecting the former to respect this
power disparity and back off from provocations is to forget former Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's dictum: "Even if we have
to eat grass, we will make nuclear bombs" to match India.
If the Pakistani state is not guided by rational costbenefit thinking, the belief that we can somehow pummel and compel it to become
benign is misguided.

10/12/2014 10:43 AM

Ceasefire violation: How India is misreading the 'suicidal logic' of Pakista... http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/ceasefire-v...

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Even Israel, which enjoys massive advantages over Hamas and Hezbollah in conventional military means, has not succeeded in
silencing the guns of its rivals by means of disproportionate force. Be it Pakistan or combatants in the Middle East, the death-defying
jihadist mindset is not cowed down by conventional superiority of the opponent.
So, what might actually produce the "credible deterrence" from attacks that Indian defence minister Arun Jaitley is touting? It has to be a
mix of unconventional covert missions that blunt hardline Islamists and their allies in the Pakistani military, combined with routine political
dialogue.
Much of the bad blood at the LoC is linked to infiltration of jihadists into India from Pakistani terrain under the cover of official army
shelling. India has to take the battle to the launching points and supply-chain trail of these mujahideen inside Pakistani territory.
This would entail a westward shift of the point of kinetic action away from the LoC and IB, sparing innocent civilians in precarious border
areas who are presently bearing the brunt of the two armies.
Simultaneously, dialogue channels with Sharif and some sections of the Pakistani military are essential, even if no solution or settlement
is likely. Negotiation with intractable and camouflaged foes is necessary to glean valuable insights into bargaining tactics, bottom lines
and authority structures of the adversary. As winter sets into Kashmir, the high-calibre weapons will head for their seasonal rest. The
intelligence operations and diplomacy must go on.

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10/12/2014 10:43 AM