Even the powerful Americans couldn’t convince China to abandon its ‘all-weather ally’ Pakistan in banning the JeM chief.

India has expressed its disappointment at the fact that China has once again preventedJaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar from being listed as a global terrorist by the UN, but the truth is that hard-knuckled diplomacy could hardly retrieve what was lost on the ground that awful morning of 27 February.

The minute Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman’s jet was shot down by the Pakistan Air Force over Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, the gains of the Indian Air Force strikes on Balakot the previous day substantially evaporated.

After that, the Narendra Modi government had only one option. Bombing Pakistan again would have put the IAF pilot’s life in danger, and in any case the international community would have hardly allowed another attack that risked escalation between two hostile nuclear powers.

The only option was to sue for de-escalation with Pakistan. Prime Minister Modi had no choice but to grit his teeth and give his word. Imran Khan, who forgot to make the peace offer to return Abhinandan Varthaman the first time he stood up and spoke in Pakistan’s parliament, has since looked like quite the good guy in the eyes of the international community.

Having been forced into a stalemate in the skies, it was now up to India’s diplomats to deliver the goods. A statement by the UN had already come condemning the Pulwama attacks, including by China. For the last two weeks or so, the Ministry of External Affairs put its entire weight in a massive lobbying exercise to persuade the Chinese to not come in the way of proscribing Masood Azhar under 1267 Sanctions Committee. The US led the campaign at the UN Security Council and other countries like France, UK and Australia pitched in.

Last night Beijing thumbed its nose in the face of all those asking. Former foreign secretary and National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon recently told me in an interview that India was using up a lot of its international goodwill for an irrelevance. “What good will it do to ban Masood Azhar? It’s not as if the UN is going to march into Islamabad and pick him up?”

Certainly, the Balakot strikes have signalled India’s intent to not continue to take pain lying down. The IAF has done a difficult job very well, by targeting the madrassa of the Jaish camp in Balakot. The strikes may or may not have killed people, but they signal India’s intention to protect itself by striking at will.

In the end, even the powerful Americans couldn’t convince the Chinese to abandon its ‘all-weather ally’ Pakistan in banning the JeM chief. With Donald Trump and Xi Jinping’s top officials talking so they can arrive at some sort of a conclusion over fair trade, it is unlikely Trump would have pushed Xi so much on the India count.

Simply put, Trump may not have wanted to go out on a limb for India, even though his officials, admittedly, pushed the Chinese to give in and not look like an outlier.  They probably did more than anyone else in the P-5, even if France and the UK have rushed to take credit. Russia remained taciturn, not willing to antagonise the Chinese.

Equally important, the Chinese don’t seem to have listened to the US. In 2008, Beijing blinked when the US pressed for an exemption for India at the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group. Today, the Chinese are far more powerful and demand to be treated as such. They demonstrated last night at the Security Council in New York that they needn’t listen to the most powerful nation in the world, because they are almost as powerful.

Fact is, the Modi government refused to learn from Atal Bihari Vajpayee and ask why he didn’t cross the Line of Control back into Pakistan when India and Pakistan fought a mini-war in Kargil, 20 years ago in 1999. Modi’s top national security officials clearly haven’t read the files or newspaper clippings quoting then foreign minister Jaswant Singh who said, time and again, “Map-making in the subcontinent must come to an end.”

What did Vajpayee and Jaswant Singh and Brajesh Mishra, a predecessor of NSA Ajit Doval, mean in 1999? And why didn’t Modi listen to the voices of his own BJP elders and betters?

Vajpayee, Singh and Mishra meant that India could only hope to defang Pakistan if it played divide-and-rule. Divide up the population by supporting civilian initiatives like travel, trade, education and health, and make India so popular inside Pakistan that you can diminish the all-powerful military establishment.

Modi has done the exact opposite these last five years. He has played fast and loose with his Pakistan policy, sometimes shunning the Pakistanis, other times inviting himself over for wedding celebrations. At the same time, he has adopted a muscular approach inside Kashmir. The result is for all to see.

The nonchalant Chinese refusal to ban Masood Azhar is a major lesson in realpolitik. India cannot allow itself to be baited by the Beijing-Islamabad duo. It has to choose revenge at a time and place of its own making. That time will come, but it is not now.

Want to hear experts engage over the big issues of the day? We bring you Talk Point.

source: The Print

MARGINALIA

A phrase post the Balakot air-strikes repeatedly used by prime minister Narendra Modi and his man Friday Amit Shah, “Hamne Dushman ko Ghar mein ghuss kar mara hai” (We have beaten up the Enemy by entering his house), is worrisome. Everything is fair in love and war, it is said. If this were a war declared by one country on another, perhaps the import of these words would be different. The official position on the air strikes is that they were pre-emptive strikes against terror infrastructure, not Pakistan. The explanation being given was that it wasn’t war against Pakistan but against terrorist camps.
The celebratory tone of the air strikes is blunted by the concerns of strategic experts, other than the war-drum beating generals of the news room studios. They have questioned whether the strikes achieved anything and whether it was pragmatic to use air power for a target that is purported to have been soft. The peaceniks have questioned the wisdom of the strikes that have imposed the threat of war in South Asian region. Inspired by similar concerns the international powers have found a foothold of space for prodding not only Pakistan but also India to mend their fences and deal with Kashmir.
Forgetting all this, even if the air strikes and the way they happened were to be argued as potentially wise and successful and that it was singularly aimed against terrorists and not Pakistan, the jarring tone of ‘beating someone after entering their house’ belies such an assurance. There is a huge mismatch between the official claims of using the explanation of ‘defence’ and ‘deterrence’ as opposed to the political slogans of launching an offensive. That lines between Pakistan and terrorists are being obliterated for political expediency through such rhetoric of beating the enemy in his house obviously has a political import.
The political tone of the language goes beyond the elections and resonates with the Hindutva project of converting India into a Hindu Rashtra. Officially and internationally, his government uses another language but as an election campaigner, Narendra Modi is essentially addressing his core constituency. The evident aim is seeking votes on the basis of the machismo of strikes and the appeal of being an ultra-power. All this is done at the cost of appropriating the Indian Air Force, which belongs to the entire country, not one party. The covert ambition is to inject the poison of hatred and divisiveness and inspire more lawlessness than exists. In a country where difference between Muslim, terrorist, Pakistani is blurred and where targeting of Muslims by mobs inspired by Hindutva frenzy has become routine, such messages have the capacity of not only legitimizing what is already happening but of accelerating the spiral of mob violence. In the last five years, the country has shockingly witnessed rise in incidents of mob lynchings and a political cover-up for such heinous crimes. Frenzied mobs have been silencing minorities and dissenters with their fiery words and also through violence. In the last one month, since the Pulwama attacks, the Kashmiri Muslims have become the prime target. Kashmiri students were recently beaten up and attacked in various parts of the country, shunted out of educational institutions solely on suspicion or allegations of the mobs without giving them a fair hearing. Such incidents leave the secular character of the country in tatters and also impede its economic growth and development which is based on the model of inter-dependence. It endangers the country in multiple ways.
The prime minister recently spoke about a pilot project. The obvious inference was not just air strikes but this entire landscape of hatred, intolerance and mob-violence in which the most likely victim is the Muslim and Kashmiris have become the tool to perpetuate a narrative of hatred that legitimizes that process of victimisation. The impact of creating such an atmosphere has deeper ramifications. A recent report in The Print revealed that Muslim school children in primary schools were being targeted by the children of majority community with taunts like ‘Osama’, ‘Baghdadi’, ‘Mullah’ and ‘Go to Pakistan’. The communal poison has begun to be injected at an age when children are not even conscious of their religion. Was this the ‘pilot project’ Modi was talking about? To what extent is this going to be enlarged.
The air-strikes were a violation of Pakistan’s sovereign air-space. But when that action becomes a petty vote-bank tool and enters the election campaign rally with the machismo of entering people’s house and beating them, in the back-drop of the blurred public perceptions of Pakistani, terrorist and Muslims, such words play an enabling role in lending greater legitimacy to beat up anyone and spread the existing lawlessness horizontally and vertically. Entering ordinary homes and beating up targets in public perception will start becoming a heroic virtue – an idea endorsed and stamped by none less than a prime minister. The words have been carefully picked up not only for their triumphant appeal but for their dualism that serves a long cherished agenda, the pilot project of which has been witnessed in the last five years.
The choice of words which even B-grade Bollywood film-makers would desist from using are being thrown about as some kind of a symbol of high moral conduct. That the prime minister should resort to use of such a vocabulary is itself strikingly appalling. In any civilized culture, the idea of entering homes to beat up its inmates is unacceptable. It amounts to bullying and would be deemed an unlawful activity. Does it behove the head of a civilized nation to use such a language?

source: Kashmir Times

HIGHLIGHTS

• At OIC, Pakistan failed in getting Kashmir included in the final joint communique
• Pakistan did not attend the OIC meeting over special honour to Sushma Swaraj
• Pakistan tried its best to get OIC to withdraw its invitation to India but to no avail

Pakistan may have won the battle at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) but, India has won the war. While Pakistan claimed victory for getting a separate resolution on Kashmir passed by the OIC, it failed in getting Kashmir included in the final joint communique, the Abu Dhabi Declaration.

The joint declaration or the final draft is the only document that the host (UAE) drafts and presents for discussion. It is the only document which is adopted by all the 57 member nations at the OIC.

Despite numerous assertions, the forum and the host country did not give in to Pakistan’s demands to include Kashmir in the final draft.

India Today TV has learnt through sources privy to the goings on at the conference that Pakistan used the forum to protest in every session on various issues related to India. The first protest happened during the second session when the Pakistani delegation led by Raja Ali Ejaz, Pakistan’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, argued with the OIC for extending invitation to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj as the guest of honour.

An official present in the meeting said, “They made their displeasure abundantly clear during the second session of the first day [March 1], blasting the OIC for inviting India. They were referring to some resolution in their Parliament.”

Pakistan, on Friday (March 1), had announced that it will not attend the 46th session of the OIC’s Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM), hosted by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in Abu Dhabi.

During the joint session of Parliament in Pakistan, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said, “A joint resolution has been passed by Parliament, signed by all parties, which demands that Pakistan refrain from attending the OIC meeting. In light of this resolution, I will not attend the meeting.”

That was the first diplomatic win for India.

Pakistan tried its best to get OIC to withdraw its invitation to India but to no avail. Pakistan did not just protest at the forum, the country’s delegation reached out to the UAE and Saudi Arabia and even called for an emergency meeting of the OIC “Contact Group on J&K” in Jeddah on February 27 to get the invitation withdrawn.

Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua and President of AJK or “Azad Kashmir” Masood Khan were also present in the emergency meeting. Their argument was the alleged human rights violations against Kashmiris and minorities in India.

While they tried to make a strong case on why India should not be invited, but the arguments failed to convince the host.

Sushma Swaraj was invited by her UAE counterpart Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Sources tell India Today TV that Pakistan was conveyed that there will be no change in the decision to “invite” India. Pakistan was also informed that Sushma Swaraj would be “welcomed with full honour” accorded to a guest.

Despite its insurmountable pressure on all the Islamic nations, the second and bigger blow came when Pakistan could not get ‘Jammu and Kashmir’ mentioned in the joint declaration of the 46th session of OIC.

The Abu Dhabi Declaration has no mention, not even a passing reference, of Jammu and Kashmir. Much diplomatic effort was put in by India to ensure that it is kept out of the joint communique.

Sources say that UAE and Saudi Arabia had a very important role to play in ensuring the “guest” is not “embarrassed”.

The Pakistani delegation was also seen engaged in serious conversations with various foreign ministers, particularly the Saudi foreign minister. However, their efforts could only get them success in separate resolutions on Kashmir, India-Pakistan peace process, the recent air space violations, minorities’ situation in India and destruction of religious place.

An official explained, “The resolutions don’t reflect or need a consensus. They are essentially national positions of individual countries. Many countries move resolutions of their own interest, most go unopposed.”

The last session of the last day (March 2) was a clincher for India. The session to adopt the final document, the Abu Dhabi Declaration, witnessed some hysterical scenes.

When the joint declaration was to be adopted, there were only two countries that stood in protest. Iran and Pakistan. Iran protested the paragraph which spoke of “Iranian occupation of three Emirati islands”, calling the process undemocratic and unfair.

Sources confirmed to India Today TV that the Pakistani delegation was unhappy about the lack of opportunity to get their views into the Abu Dhabi Declaration. So, while Pakistan has been calling its diplomatic maneuverings a grand success, it is India, an outsider, that won the day.

In the history of all the “joint declarations” at the OIC, the 2016 Tashkent Declaration was the only time when Kashmir was omitted from the final document.

source: India Today

The last few days have reminded us that no war can be won without good diplomacy.

War is politics by other means, said Karl Von Clausewitz, the Prussian military strategist in the eighteenth century. As societies change, and politics changes, so does the nature of war, and the battlefields wars are fought on. The two weeks since the Pulwama attack has shown us that the battlefield is now also on television and social media. If the war has to be won or lost, it must also be fought on these new fronts. As tensions and tempers peaked after the Pulwama attack, bloodlust, and the thirst for revenge was let loose on Kashmiris living in other parts of the country — violence that went unchecked by the very highest levels of government, as though finding some enemy to target was better than finding none. But those clamouring for revenge from the safety of their homes, urging our forces into battle, confident that India has the upper hand militarily have since been chastened, as the harsh reality of the costs of war dawned with Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman’s capture by the enemy. Those who were euphoric that India has sought ‘revenge’ for the terror attack that killed over 40 CRPF jawans on 14 February 2019 by launching air strikes at a Jaish-e-Mohammed camp inside Pakistan twelve days later, swung to despondency as Islamabad announced it had captured the Indian Air Force pilot alive, the next day, again only to be released as a ‘goodwill’ gesture by the Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan. Videos of the pilot, and of Imran Khan’s speech swirled on timelines and newsfeeds. The media is a tool and a weapon rolled into one, and nowhere was this more evident as in the last 48 hours during which India won and lost so quickly.

Today, as a nation, India is thankful that its Air Force pilot is returned safe. Even 48 hours in enemy captivity (Geneva Conventions, notwithstanding) was 48 hours too many. In defending India’s military infrastructure as Pakistan retaliated against Indian air strikes, Varthaman disregarded the risks to his own life, was loyal to his pledge to defend the country, and is now rightfully, a hero to us all. Now that he is back, and the shrill, bloodthirsty rhetoric of the past week is behind us, it is a good time to take serious stock and address uncomfortable realities that have been brought home. Undoubtedly, India has shown it is now prepared to use conventional combat strategies to target terror, albeit still unsure of whether governments or militaries are ready to pay the cost in human life. The tension over the pilot’s detention by Pakistan not even a day after euphoria tells us that is not an easy question to answer.

But perhaps most importantly, the last few days have reminded us that no war can be won without good diplomacy. As international condemnation for the Pulwama attack came in swiftly, India stepped up its diplomatic efforts urging the world community to proscribe the Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist — a demand that has been consistently blocked by China at the UN Security Council. Today, statements from Beijing in the wake of the Pulwama attack show that even China may just find it hard to look the other way as Pakistan obfuscates on action against Azhar, and the prospect that India can act militarily becomes a real one. Numerous news reports have indicated that Wing Commander Varthaman’s release was a result of direct intervention by the United States, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates who spoke to the Pakistani leadership amidst growing international concern over an escalating conflict between two nuclear armed countries.

In diplomacy, language matters, and the strong vocabulary of isolating Pakistan diplomatically that found wings after the Uri attack of 2016, might need to be re-configured. After all in spite of India’s insistence on dealing with Pakistan and resolving the Kashmir dispute ‘bilaterally,’ without outside intervention, perhaps we need to ask if isolation and mediation — as antithetical as they sound — could be two sides of the same coin? And if they are, how does India manage that vocabulary? After all, if it wasn’t for India’s diplomatic efforts to ‘isolate’ Pakistan on the world stage as a sponsor of terrorism, would Wing Commander Varthaman’s release — obviously mediated by countries that wield significant influence on Islamabad — be secured so quickly? By tweeting his expectation of ‘reasonably attractive’ news from India and Pakistan on Thursday, US President Donald Trump made public what most good Indian diplomats would have tried to avoid. Trump’s tweet was followed up by another confirmation from Shaikh Zayed of the UAE who made telephone calls to Indian and Pakistani prime ministers to “stress importance of dealing wisely with recent developments and giving priority to dialogue and communication.”

Conventional wisdom says be careful what you wish for, and perhaps that wisdom will be handy for India’s political leaders to keep in mind today as word games abound. The framework of ‘diplomatic isolation’ comes with its own inherent risks — it re-hyphenates India and Pakistan globally, and draws attention to a conflict India insists can be resolved bilaterally. But could this policy of isolation then open the door for Pakistan to internationalise Kashmir and push its own agenda to get foreign powers to mediate, negating decades of Indian foreign policy? While those who support a more muscular Pakistan policy applaud Prime Minister Modi’s decision to make such a dramatic shift, the reality is that the danger of military escalation between India and Pakistan raised a far louder alarm globally than repeated terror attacks have. After all, this is the first time that two nuclear armed neighbours have violated each other’s airspace.

That the roller coaster of India Pakistan relations is on a steep slide downwards is visible to everyone. Pulwama is not the first provocation India has faced from terror groups that find sanctuary in Pakistan and it is unlikely to be the last. That there is anger — across India — its people, its military, its politicians across party lines — over the impunity with which terrorists strike in Kashmir at will is also clear as day. It is this anger that seemingly resulted in such a paradigm shift in India’s Pakistan policy, and the decades old doctrine of strategic restraint. This shift poses another set of equally valid questions. Launching air strikes, contravening at least two decades of strategic restraint that both former Prime Ministers Atal Behari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh’s saw as wise, was a bold, risky gamble with ramifications that will outlast the current government. Given the long term implications of this, should any Indian government make such dramatic moves that bring with them the danger of military escalation without transparency? If not with the public, then at least with the political opposition?

Wars are easy to enter, difficult to exit — as is evident from successive US efforts to extricate their troops from Afghanistan. The West’s fight against Al Qaeda and later ISIS has told us that air strikes and conventional armies have not been any match for terror groups that exist because of a combination of ideological motivation and state patronage. A very real terror threat needs more than just muscle flexing that could backfire — it needs intelligent strategies. While nation states fight conventional wars with conventional armies, the enemy is not conventional, and fights asymmetrically. Undoubtedly the fight against cross border terrorism and Pakistan’s support to groups like Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba is an important one, and India must continue to find world support for ways to pressurise Pakistan into doing more to control and combat them. As noises from Islamabad are made, threatening it will link Kashmir to the Afghanistan peace process, India needs to find ways to fight that blackmail, especially through economic and diplomatic means. It can only be through well crafted, considered diplomacy that takes a global community into confidence and finds ways to work with them against a common threat, towards a shared objective.

We are lucky today that Wing Commander Varthaman has returned unharmed, and that there was no further escalation that could have led to mass casualties — military or civilian on either side. His story has ended well, but as he comes home, I am reminded of another. Villagers in the Bulandshahr District of UP often cross the makeshift, stubby, still incomplete local memorial of a soldier killed while foiling terrorists trying to infiltrate along the Line of Control in Kashmir’s Nowgam in April 2016. As Sepoy Vishal Chaudhary’s family wept over the body returned to them, the rest of his community was unclear whether to mourn or celebrate. After all, Chaudhary was now a martyr who died fighting to protect his country from the onslaught of terror. In death on the battlefield, his ordinary life was elevated from the prosaic and mundane, to the heroic.

This elevation is part of a larger intellectual mechanism at work — intended to rationalise the horrors of conflict, and to justify what we now refer to as ‘war mongering’ — bloodlust that is only satisfied by the show of strength against the enemy, irrespective of its results.

From the trenches of battle in World War 1, British soldier Wilfred Owen asked:

“If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.”

The symbolism of war lies ultimately not in victory or defeat alone, but in how we as a public convince ourselves of the need for a heroic call to arms. The bloody, horrific Pulwama attack brought both rationale and justification home, together. But as a nation and as a people, if India places primacy on human life, it must remember that winning the peace is as important as winning the war. And to do so, it must evolve conversations not only across the border, but also within the country — conversations that bring down the pitch and create space for dialogues that can lead to resolution.

source: Orf online

India rejects Pakistan’s peace gesture, says Islamabad the aggressor in current conflict

source: Straits Times

New Delhi: Maya Mirchandani talks to Dr Happymon Jacob and Lt Gen (Retd) Syed Ata Hasnain about escalation dynamics between India and Pakistan.

The recent Pulwama attack saw India’s response in the form of air strikes on non-military targets inside Pakistani territory. On Wednesday, Pakistan carried out similar strikes along the LoC resulting in the capture of one Indian Air Force pilot.

Dr Jacob discusses where things will go from here, using his research on escalation dynamics, presented in his recently published book, Line On Fire: Ceasefire Violations and India Pakistan Escalation Dynamics.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Qureshi said that it would not be possible for him to attend OIC meeting where Sushma Swaraj was present
• Qureshi also said that he has spoken to the UAE minister and apprised him of Pakistan’s reservations
• Meanwhile, India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s plans are on schedule

Amid tension and threats of boycott, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi would be skipping the inaugural session of the 46th Council of Ministers’ Meet of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperaton (OIC) since the ‘Guest of Honour’ is India, but has decided to attend the rest of the conference, India Today TV has learnt through reliable sources.

Pakistan had threatened to boycott the entire conference after lodging a strong protest in a letter to OIC Secretary General Yousef bin Ahmad Al-Othaimeen.

Qureshi, in his letter said, “Under the current circumstances, it will not be possible for me to attend OIC meeting where Sushma Swaraj is present.”

India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s plans are on schedule. She will arrive in Abu Dhabi in the intermittent night of Thursday and Friday and would be addressing the inaugural session of the plenary on Friday morning after which there are bilateral meetings lined up for her with many of her counterparts from Islamic nations.

Qureshi said, “India is neither a member of OIC nor an observer. I have spoken to the UAE minister and apprised him of Pakistan’s reservations and told him that he should have spoken to us before inviting Swaraj.”

source: India Today

source: NDTV

Arfa Khanum Sherwani, senior editor at The Wire, discusses what happened in the 24 hours after India’s airstrikes on Pakistan.

New Delhi: After India officially confirmed that one Indian pilot is “missing in action” after an aerial skirmish with Pakistani fighter jets on Wednesday, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan called for “better sense [to] prevail” and renewed his offer for dialogue with India.

source: The Wire