The Modi government’s Pakistan policy remains intriguing. We have seen the flip-flops of 2014 and 2015, ranging from border bombardments to hearty embraces and cold vibes.But the direction it is taking now is baffling. In
international meeting after meeting, the prime minister has attacked
Pakistan’s support of terrorism and the need to sanction Islamabad.
Rhetoric
Take the past week for instance.On September 4, in Hangzhou, addressing fellow BRICS
leaders, Modi said that there was need to intensify joint action against
terrorism which had become the primary source of instability and
biggest threat to the world.Alluding to Pakistan he said, “Clearly someone funds and arms them.”On September 5, Modi intensified the attack saying that “one
single nation” in South Asia was spreading terror and that there was
need for that nation to be sanctioned.
Why has Modi taken the mantle of the leader of the global crusade against terrorism? (Photo credit: PTI) |
On September 7, addressing the ASEAN summit in Vientiane,
Modi declared “one country has only one competitive advantage: exporting
terror”. And again reiterated the need to “isolate and sanction” the
country which was a threat to everyone.
Two days later on September 9, foreign secretary S
Jaishankar followed it up in a speech to a US think tank in New Delhi
where he said that the fight against terrorism could not be segmented
and that no country could escape responsibility by ascribing terrorist
actions to non-state actors.
These are only the most recent broadsides, in the past six
months, whether addressing the nation on Independence Day, the diaspora
in Kenya or Belgium, or the US Congress, Modi has not hesitated to raise
the primacy of terrorism as an issue.It’s not clear whether there is some other strategy behind
this relentless assault on Pakistan. Accompanying his attack has been
his criticism of the UN for its inability to come up with appropriate
responses.
Addressing the G-20 in Istanbul in the wake of the Paris
attack in November 2015, Modi had called for an international convention
on terrorism, an old idea that New Delhi has pushed to little avail
since the 1990s.
Timing
What we do know as of now is that the Modi government’s assaults on Pakistan are only verbal.
There are no reports of any Balochistan liberation
organisations or Taliban-ambushing Pakistani forces, or any unexplained
bomb blasts which could suggest that India was hitting at Pakistan in
other ways.
The obvious question is: does the Modi government believe
that a verbal bombardment in world capitals will force Islamabad to
surrender?
Pakistan has played a cynical game for so long and has done
so many bad things ranging from training and arming terrorists to
killing innocent people to exporting nuclear weapons technology, that to
think that they can be shamed into giving up the use of the terror
weapon appears naïve, to say the least.
Had India been reeling with the kind of terrorist attacks
the French are witnessing, or the ones that hit Kabul or Baghdad every
day, Modi’s zeal could have been understandable. Fortunately, since November 2008, India has been spared a mass-casualty terrorist strike.
Then why has Modi taken the mantle of the leader of the
global crusade against terrorism? The only conclusion we can come to is
that the goals are domestic. Attacking Pakistan plays well with north Indian voters and
keeps the other parties off-balance and unable to focus on the fact that
his government’s achievements have been meagre, compared to the
extravagant promises that had been made in 2014.
Diplomacy
Perhaps, Modi’s economic plan will bear fruit in the
future, but Modi cannot afford to allow the political support he got in
2014 to slacken, at least not before the UP elections next year, and
hence, the terrorism plank.There is no surprise element here, or across the world; terrorism has proved to be a good plank for politicians.Of course, throughout this period, Modi is being extended
help by the hawks in Islamabad, who find it difficult to get off the
tiger they mounted in the 1990s.
It is not that the Pakistani deep state is afraid of the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad. They probably have them, to use the famous words of General
Aziz Khan, by their “tooti” (collar). It is that they cannot
contemplate giving up what they consider their most useful instruments
of policy.In part, dealing with them does, require them to do what
Modi and his men are doing. But instead of verbal barrages, there is
need for deft diplomacy to isolate Islamabad.
Here, of all the tasks, the most difficult is to persuade
Beijing to join in. And this is where we find that the Modi plan lacks
stamina because, as the foreign secretary’s Friday statement on China
revealed: the government has the ability to state the problem, but not
the wherewithal to do something about it, expect complain.
Mail Today Sep 12, 2016
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