By Imtiaz Gul
Any conversation on whether and how to improve Indo-Pakistan relations will remain incomplete without a peep back to statements by political stalwarts to grasp the mindset and strategy that PM Narendra Modi and national security advisor Ajit Doval brought with them in 2014, i.e. how to deal with Pakistan. What strategy did they adopt to punish the country seen as the backer of the Kashmir militancy and those who staged the Mumbai attacks?
Context
India Today (late October 2009) held a round table of security experts under the title BEST (best experts on security and terrorism). Ajit Doval and G. Parthasarthi, a former high commissioner to Pakistan, were among the 12 experts on the session on “how to tackle an obstinate Pakistan.”
(https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/cover-story/story/20091109-how-to-tackle-an-obstinate-pakistan-741229-2009-10-28)
The security dialogue yielded interesting observations and recommendations.
Some of the key points put on the table by Ajit Doval read:
We secured Bangladesh and handed over to them to run their own country. So that is one… You can never deal with any obstinate enemy unless you have brought it to your terms… To do that, don’t let either side win. Pakistan is in turmoil, there are two sides to it, their army is seriously engaged, so let it continue.
Parthasarthi, considered as a hardliner on Pakistan and China, had the following to say:
It (Pakistan) has fault-lines which may be exploited by India as they have to realise that. The fact that Pakistan is having problems in Afghanistan, they are also with Iran. These are things we need to work on.
Parthasarthi went on to insist that
“Pakistan has to be made to realise that it will pay, not just a diplomatic price (the Kerry Lugar Bill being one manifestation of that)[1] but also a price otherwise for what it is doing and therefore raising the costs for Pakistan’s covert overt needs to be an essential ingredient of policy.”
Another participant, Ved Marwah, former Governor, Jharkhand, offered a similar recipe”.
“I think our leverage with Pakistan we should know where we have our level. We have our leverage in Balochistan, and in some other parts of Pakistan, but even then, it’s very limited and it has its negative consequences. What we need to really convey to Pakistan is that if they commit a blatantly anti-India act on the military ground or otherwise, it will have the repercussion.”
Back in December 2016, Home Minister Rajnath Singh issued a direct threat.
“Pakistan has been divided into 2 countries (in 1971). If it does not stop cross-border terrorism, it will soon be in 10 pieces,” Singh said while speaking to a gathering in Indian Kashmir’s Kathua district.
(https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/rajnath-singh-attacks-pakistan-says-army-will- give-befitting-reply/articleshow/55922864.cms)
Fast forward 2024, a year that saw the Canadian’s expose: India’s foreign intelligence agency’s termination missions abroad, with similar complaints surfacing in the United States too.
A daily Guardian report in April 2024 – albeit denied by New Delhi – blew the lid off abroad as part of an emboldened approach to national security after 2019.
“It was a few months after the killing of Jamal Khashoggi that there was a debate among the top brass of intelligence in the prime minister’s office about how something can be learned from the case. One senior officer said in a meeting that if Saudis can do this, why not us?” he recounted.
(https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/04/indian-government-assassination- allegations-pakistan-intelligence-officials)
When asked about the Guardian report, then Union home minister Amit Shah had quipped:
Whoever did the killings, what is the problem? The Agencies will do their jobs, why should we interfere,” Shah had asked without feigning innocence.
The arrest in March 2016 of Kulbhushan Jadhav, who Pakistan claimed was a serving naval officer operating in Iran and Balochistan with the Muslim name of Mubarik Husain Patel, appeared to be had further hardened the Indian reluctance in restoring the ties.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Independence Day speech a few months later
(Aug 15, 2016) sought to bring back the focus on Balochistan, nearly seven years
after an India-Pakistan joint statement mentioned it, which led to an outcry over the UPA government’s Pakistan strategy.
“In the past few days people from Balochistan, people from Gilgit, people from Pakistan administered Kashmir, the people of these areas, they have thanked me and have expressed gratitude towards me, people sitting very far away and from places that I haven’t seen; when they respect me, then it is respect for 1.25 billion Indians. And so I want to thank the people of Balochistan, Gilgit and Pakistan administered Kashmir,” Modi said.
Modi’s reference to Balochistan – as expected – evoked angry reactions from Islamabad but Baloch leaders welcomed it and thanked the Indian PM for raising the issue.
Islamabad claimed that Modi’s remarks “only proves Pakistan’s contention that India, through its main intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing, has been fomenting terrorism in Balochistan”
(https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/narendra-modi-pakistan- balochistan-jammu-and-kashmir-2983240/)
Islamabad’s reservations on India’s “sympathy” for Balochistan had formally found mention in the joint statement after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s meeting with his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani.
“Both leaders agreed that the two countries will share real time credible and actionable information on any future terrorist threats… Prime Minister Gilani mentioned that Pakistan has some information on threats in Balochistan and other areas,” said the text of the 2009 statement.
It added, “Many in India considered inclusion of Gilani’s Balochistan reference as “tantamount to admission by India that it had a hand in the Baloch insurgency.”
(https://www.livemint.com/Politics/EjvDYt1wdBrrcgibUqX8gN/PM-Modis-reference-to- Balochistan-in-IDay-speech-seen-as-g.html)
A paragraph from the Indian Express op-ed quoted above sounds quite instructive and also sheds light on what drives the Indian “passion” for Balochistan.
“Needless to say, the form of Indian support will determine the Pakistani reaction and the subsequent geopolitical games. There is an additional subtext to it. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor will pass through both Balochistan and Pakistan- administered Kashmir. Modi’s statement is meant as much for Beijing as for Islamabad. It will not remain quiet as India ups its game in Balochistan.”
With this, for the first time, an Indian PM had upped the ante and raised the issue of Balochistan and Gilgt-Baltistan himself, instead of letting diplomats dealing with it. It was not a tactical manoeuvre any more, the first visible signs of Ajit Doval’s strategy of “paying back to Pakistan.”
The Hindustan Times went on to elaborate.
The fact that India’s Prime Minister has spoken of Balochistan – and from the ramparts of the Red Fort – signifies a level of political sanction and commitment that has not been seen so far on the issue. It also means that once Delhi has taken the plunge, it cannot hop out at will. A new game is about to commence.
(https://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/why-pm-modi-s-statement-changes-the-india- pakistan-game/story-juWjrhi6g754R8nzhk9tUI.html)
Fast Forward 2024
No surprise, therefore, if the situation in Balochistan and the Northwestern Pakistan is seen in the context of Ajit Doval’s threats to wage a water war on Pakistan and to turn Balochistan into Kashmir for it.
A good number of Indian intellectuals and former civil-military officials seem to endorse Modi’s and Doval’s views and talk on use of water and Balochistan as “expanded strategic options”. They may be exercising to reign in and teach a “reticent and wayward” Pakistan a lesson.
This reminds me of a conversation I had with former Israeli prime minister (late) Shimon Perez in April 2006; you will see the benefits if Pakistan entered into even a working relationship with us, Perez had told me at his office in Tel Aviv. He asked, probably rightly, as to what was the point in acrimony if Pakistan had no direct dispute with Israel, pointing to Israel’s business relations with the UAE and Turkey. He also pointed to the utility of Pak-Israel relations for their impact on the Pakistan US relations. Perez, at best, came across as an arrogant Israeli stake-holder, conscious of the “unfaltering US support” that his country enjoyed. (The US-led West’s near-silence in the post October 7, 2023, genocide of Palestinians that Israel has been conducting also underscored that “unfaltering western support” for Israel.)
Many Indians frame their responses on Pakistan in more or less similar way by pointing to the “dividends of peace” that “Bangladesh Nepal and other south Asian countries are reaping from their “redefined relationship with India.”
The public outcry and widespread criticism in Bangladesh against India in the aftermath of Shaikh Hasina’s ouster in August 2024, however, negated the oft-touted Indian narrative of benevolence towards Dhaka.
Hasina’s shock exit also underscored the bitter reality that inter- state relations hinge more on the content than on personalities. That countless of Bangladeshis are sour with India is an unpleasant fact that exposes the imbalance that Hasina’s tilt to India had caused, several think-tankers in Dhaka told me during a recent visit.
Also, little do the Indians realize that Pakistan is not to India what Palestine is to Israel. Nor is Pakistan – despite all its weaknesses and multiple crisis – another Bangladesh, Maldives, Sri Lanka or Bhutan.
China factor
What goes lost on a lot of Indians is that meanwhile Pakistan is to China what India or Israel is to the United States. For both strategic as well as commercial reasons, Beijing will remain wedded to Pakistan despite the baggage of support for non-state actors. It still enjoys empathy of Turkey and Russia too. The proximity to both Iran and Afghanistan (and by implication to Central Asia) makes it an unavoidable regional link. Why?
China is well aware of the mechanics of the China Mission Center, launched publicly by the CIA in October 2021. The stated mission of the Center was to contain an “ascendant China. Both the US and India see the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as Beijing’s instrument of influence proliferation across Asia and Africa. Pakistan stands out as a key link in the BRI project and hence equally exposed to its opponents.
Only few would agree that bi- or-multilateral international relations are usually defined by mutual economic needs and strategic interests and not personal relations between two individuals.
No doubt, Pakistan has bled itself by adopting controversial means, some of them questionable and self-destructive, but most Indians decline to recognize the fact that since 2008 Pakistan has seen the back of three Army chiefs, three political transitions, and considerable success against local terrorist networks. It also endured an almost economic meltdown but continues to survive.
TCA Raghavan, a former Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan, makes an impelling case when talking of the nature of relations.
In his book The People Next Door: The Curious History of India- Pakistan Relations Raghavan encapsulates in a very pithy way the history so far of the intractably tangled bilateral relations rooted in the bitter division in 1947 (from the Indian perspective) as well as the Kashmir dispute and the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971 – when active Indian military support turned the then East Pakistan into Bangladesh.
Factors such as historical baggage, religious acrimony, mistrust “have all – in cyclical patterns – cumulatively entailed skewed official narratives that continue to feed and poison public opinion,” concludes Raghavan. The book as a whole offers sobering thoughts for Pakistanis and Indians alike.
The deeper point the book underlines is – the last two decades in particular, the Pakistani civil-military leadership failed to India’s rise as the global partner of the US-led western alliance that had gradually reduced Pakistan into insignificance because of a three-pronged Indian strategy. It also included a “diplomatic offensive to make the world community understand both the reality of the Kargil war and Pakistan’s continued sponsorship of terrorism in India,” writes Raghavan recalling a statement by former Indian home minister LK Advani.
Like so many other writers, Raghavan, too, glosses over some basic questions when talking of terrorism in Pakistan; who is stoking this kind of terrorism?
Way forward
Any analysis of Pakistan’s current security quagmire cannot be logically complete if it excludes a scrutiny of the possible role the Indo- US counter-terrorism policy has played in it. The future of the Indo- Pakistan relations also hinges on whether and how far both Indian and the US establishment want to push their policy which is primarily aimed at preventing China’s westward expansion via Pakistan.
This policy, apparently, suffered a setback with the return of the Afghan Taliban to power in Kabul. But unsurprisingly, the proxy war has since grown in intensity, with 2024 as the deadliest in terms of terrorist violence in nearly a decade.
Is it really an Islamic caliphate-oriented Islamist movement that drives the violent campaign, or is it proxy terrorist entities designed and sponsored to inflict pain on Pakistan for the policies it has pursued over the last three decades? Do these groups really possess the wherewithal to force the state of Pakistan into submission and impose their way of life on Pakistan? Are they really that naïve? Why would they kill at least 21 Chinese engineers and workers linked to CPEC since 2017?
Neither are they stronger than the state, where even mainstream apologists of these terrorists – the religio-political parties such as Jamiat Ulemai Islam – have hardly secured national power through elections.
Indian officials, academia and intellectuals shall have to shake off the pretence of innocence as far as the role of their country in the TTP- led proxy war that Pakistan has been facing for nearly 17 years now.
Pretending innocence on covert operations will not help. The exposure of India’s anti-Sikh actions in Canada and the United States also provide a glimpse into similar actions on the Pakistani soil. Pakistan’s involvement with the Kashmiri militancy is no secret either.
The prerequisite for resumption of contacts – to say the least, therefore, warrants an immediate cessation of clandestine operations on each other’s soil with a simultaneous resumption of talks first on less contentious cross-border issues such as climate change, energy and border trade.
Without an end to the “isolate and bleed and punish Pakistan” presumably launched by Ajit Doval, chances for resuming normal relations with Pakistan, will remain dim.
This article was originally contributed by Imtiaz Gul to In Pursuit of Peace – Improving Indo-Pak Relations (Vol II), edited by O.P. Shah, published by Centre for Peace & Progress, India (2025).
[1] Also known as the Kerry-Lugar-Berman Act was an act of the United States Congress passed into law on October 15, 2009. It authorized the release of $1.5 billion per year to the government of Pakistan as non-military aid from 2010 to 2014.