The international community’s unwavering declaration of sympathy with India in its fight against terror and its loud denunciation of the horrifying terrorist attack on tourists in the Pahalgam district of J&K are both comforting. There should be no reason to celebrate, though, as history has shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that it would be futile to expect anything significant to come from the loud, international discourse that erupts following every terrorist assault.
According to India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), US President Trump “strongly condemned the (Pahalgam) terror attack and expressed full support to India to bring to justice the perpetrators of this heinous attack” during a phone conversation with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Trump conveniently distanced himself from this horrific terrorist attack involving religious profiling by claiming that “India and the United States stand together in the fight against terror” and then adding that “they’ll (India and Pakistan) get it figured out one way or the other.”
Hamish Falconer, the Foreign Office Minister of the United Kingdom, seemed more direct. “We want the perpetrators to be held to justice properly, and we will be supporting India to do so,” he declared. He added that the British authorities believed that “this was a horrific terrorist attack,” even if the BBC had called the attack “militancy.” However, Falconer attempted to provide some credibility to this barefaced terrorist act by tying it to the Kashmir dispute and urging India and Pakistan to settle it through “direct dialogue,” ostensibly in an effort to appease the British Muslim population.
Since the international community has openly permitted Pakistan to (in the words of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) keep “snakes” in the backyard for biting neighbors, the country has remained defiant despite sponsoring terrorist organizations and using them to wage proxy wars against its eastern neighbor for more than thirty years.
One example of US double talk regarding its commitment is the fact that Hafiz Saeed, a terrorist designated by the UNSC and carrying a USD 10 million reward announced by Washington under its “Rewards for Justice” program for masterminding the horrific 9/11 Mumbai terrorist attacks, was allowed to roam freely in Paki
stan for seven years.
“We have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars at the same time they are housing the very terrorists (Afghan Taliban) that we are fighting,” Trump said in 2018, exposing Pakistan’s deceit. However, Washington did nothing against Pakistan in spite of housing the Taliban, Osama bin Laden, the founder of Al Qaida and the architect of the 9/11 attacks, and numerous other known international terrorists.
Taking links to terrorists Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the former president of Pakistan and head of the army, openly acknowledged that his country was funding terrorist organizations in a 2015 television interview. “The freedom struggle (sic) began in Kashmir in the 1990s,” he disclosed. Eleven or twelve more organizations, including Lashkar-e-Taiba, were established at that time. While they were fighting in Kashmir at the expense of their lives, we provided them with training and support.A journalist brought up Islamabad’s “long history of backing and supporting and training and funding these terrorist organizations” to Pakistan’s defense minister, Khawaja Asif, a few days ago. In addition to freely acknowledging that “we have been doing this dirty work for the United States for about three decades, you know, and the West, including Britain,” Asif even had the audacity to claim that “Pakistan’s track record… was an unimpeachable track record if we had not joined the war against the Soviet Union and later on the war after 9/11.”
Additionally, Ishaq Dar, the foreign minister of Pakistan, publicly displayed Islamabad’s ongoing support for terrorist organizations the other day when he revealed that the UNSC statement on the incident had omitted any mention of The Resistance Front (TRF), which claimed responsibility for the Pahalgam attack on tourists. Even yet, he defended TRF by arguing that it was only a “forum” and hence not a terrorist organization.
It is mystifying that the international community has remained silent about Pakistan’s institutionalized patronage and these cold-blooded murders, even though Islamabad has publicly supported a terrorist organization that slaughtered tourists after subjecting them to religious profiling. It also demonstrates that, despite rhetorical platitudes about opposing terrorism in all of its manifestations and upholding human rights, the world either doesn’t care about or doesn’t want to get involved in combating the escalating threat of terrorism.
Although New Delhi has been appropriately upping the diplomatic ante against Pakistan’s proxy war through its supported terrorists masquerading as “freedom fighters,” this strategy is pointless because Islamabad is immune to any polite discussion. Since it is the only language it appears to comprehend, India must take other harsh measures that harm Pakistan in addition to diplomacy. For a number of reasons, it is necessary to resist the urge to limit these methods to kinetic measurements alone.
First of all, attacking terrorists and the facilities they rely on would only momentarily stop their operations. Therefore, even though kinetic actions are undoubtedly effective deterrents, Rawalpindi is not particularly harmed by them for two reasons: first, it has no duty to the surviving relatives of terrorists; second, the loss of fighters is inconsequential because there are many young people who are unemployed and radicalized to take their place. Second, the infrastructure in terrorist training and billeting camps is primitive and can be restored with minimal effort and financial investment.
Second, ISI has begun establishing terrorist camps near populous regions since the Balakot airstrikes, which significantly raises the possibility of collateral harm. Even if this doesn’t occur, the ISI can easily plan something similar following any punishing attack. Furthermore, with opportunist partners like China, Islamabad would be able to have its way, and Pakistan would be able to play the victim card and paint India as a reckless, muscle-flexing nation through frequent retaliatory strikes.
Thirdly, assets (both individuals and equipment) being used for punitive strikes per se run the risk of attrition, no matter how well planned and professionally executed with advanced the technology the strikes may be, and the downing of seven state of art US drones including M9 Reapers by Houthis in Yemen during the last six weeks is a case in point. Hence, while the prospect of losing assets shouldn’t be a limiting factor, the financial ramifications and psychological damage in such a scenario needs to be carefully evaluated against the benefits being acquired.
Although using the proper amount of force to stop a provocative behavior can have some positive effects and calm public outrage, it rarely resolves the issue permanently. As governments attempt to quench their citizens’ unquenchable desire for vengeance, this strategy really frequently degenerates into a never-ending cycle of violence. Physical retaliation thus becomes an essential component of every nation’s national policy, notwithstanding its drawbacks.
Therefore, India ought to think about taking retaliatory measures against Pakistan for both planning the Pahalgam atrocity and supporting the criminals. But India’s anti-proxy war strategy must be based on using indirect means to punish Pakistan for a long time. New Delhi’s historic decision to put the Indus Water Treaty on hold is a big step in that direction because it will surely hit Pakistan where it hurts the most.
Many analysts and experts think that this action lacks legal legitimacy and have pointed out that New Delhi’s purpose of not letting a drop of water to reach Pakistan is unrealistic as India doesn’t have the needed capacity to store the diverted water. Although this explanation has value, it would be a serious error to dismiss it on the grounds that it is not legally sound.
IWT might not contain any clauses allowing for unilateral action. But isn’t India perfectly entitled to identify and take advantage of legal loopholes to counter Islamabad’s evil plans by keeping IWT in abeyance, given that Pakistan has been flagrantly breaking international law and UNSC resolutions by harboring banned terrorist organizations and groups and fighting a proxy war in J&K?
Nishant Sirohi, a Law and Society Fellow at Transitions Research, asserts that “the language of ‘abeyance’ is deliberate” and highlights the fact that “India has paused procedural cooperation-using law, not water, for leverage—rather than withdrawing from the (IWT) treaty or changing river flows.” He emphasizes that “India has not withdrawn from the treaty; nor has it diverted water flows or breached allocation quotas,” referring to this as “Legal diplomacy, where restraint amplifies impact.”
Nishant Sirohi, a Law and Society Fellow at Transitions Research, asserts that “the language of ‘abeyance’ is deliberate” and highlights the fact that “India has paused procedural cooperation-using law, not water, for leverage—rather than withdrawing from the (IWT) treaty or changing river flows.” He emphasizes that “India has not withdrawn from the treaty; nor has it diverted water flows or breached allocation quotas,” referring to this as “Legal diplomacy, where restraint amplifies impact.”
Allocating and positioning its Special Forces and advanced military equipment so they may launch quick, punitive strikes across the Line of Control (LoC) is another feasible option for New Delhi. Presenting a genuine and ongoing “threat in being” should be the goal in order to exhaust the Pakistani army and wear down its equipment through extended deployment, requiring it to spend a significant portion of its limited foreign reserves on importing advanced military hardware in order to combat this threat. At the same time, steps must be done to further strain Pakistan’s already precarious economy.
In the end, New Delhi must communicate with Islamabad in the language it can comprehend!
Since diplomacy hasn’t been able to address the problem of Pakistan-sponsored cross-border terrorism, New Delhi needs to broaden its arsenal with a number of measures that will force Islamabad to make sense by enforcing unbearable punishment that is long-lasting.
Although the proverb “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” suggests that a person becomes more amiable when they are satiated, doesn’t an empty stomach also make individuals more amiable?
