Indo – Pak Relations: Entangled in the long rope, again?

AFTER the December thaw in relations between India and Pakistan, the Pathankot attack has put the Pakistanis in a bit of a spot. For the sake of their own reputation and credibility with the international community, they have to be seen to be doing something against the main accused. Since washing their hands of Pathankot wasn’t really an option, the Pakistanis can now do one of two things – dissemble or deliver.

by Sushant Sareen

( January 22, 2016, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) The proverbial long rope has its uses in diplomacy. The oft-quoted, and by now clichéd, concept of ‘trust but verify’ can be seen as a sort of euphemism for the long rope. When relations between countries are hostile and there is a chasm of trust, the long rope given by one side can create some space for the other side to either deliver on any commitment it might have made, or if the other side reneges, then to hang it with the same rope. Of course, the side giving the long rope must make sure it doesn’t get entangled in it. If the past is anything to go by, India has always given a fairly long rope to the Pakistanis and inevitably managed to get itself entangled in the same. Untangling these knots is not easy, and apart from causing embarrassment, entails a political and diplomatic cost.

What is bizarre is not that despite repeated experiences with Pakistan’s track of treachery, India continues to keep playing according to the same old script, but that after the play is over, India feels wounded by the betrayal of the good faith it placed in Pakistani assurances. Surely after seven decades, India shouldn’t be surprised, much less hurt, by the fact it was betrayed. But if after all these years, India is still not aware of the nature of the beast it is dealing with, then the fault is India’s, not the beast’s.

The problem is that successive Indian governments convince themselves that ‘things have changed’ and that it will be different with them. They even trot out all sorts of naïve, even simple-minded, explanations to justify placing their faith in Pakistan’s bona fides. Not surprisingly, after the Pathankot terror attack, the long rope has once again come out. The optimists are hopeful that it will be different this time with Pakistan; the realists – call them cynics, if you will – are convinced nothing has changed. And for now the jury is out.

In the days after Pathankot, the Pakistanis have played by the book. Officially at least, they have made all the right noises and the correct moves. The Pakistanis haven’t responded with the standard denial about the terrorists having come from Pakistan. But they also haven’t admitted that the terrorists did come from Pakistan. All they have said is that on their end they will investigate on the basis of information and intelligence that India shares with Pakistan.

Legally and otherwise, no one can really quibble with this seemingly reasonable stand of Pakistan. Without an FIR, the most that the Pakistani authorities can do is detain the Pathankot suspects under the provisions of the preventive detention law. For registering the FIR, the Pakistani authorities will need more information, which they are seeking from India. They are also claiming to be building on the information already provided by India. Meanwhile, there are reports of a crackdown on the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) cadres and centres. How these guys and their offices were operating under the noses of Pakistani authorities despite JeM being banned for more than a decade is certainly a question that can be asked of Pakistan. But as of now the focus is what action the Pakistanis will take, and how seriously and sincerely they will take this action to ensure that the guilty are punished.

The trouble, as well as the scepticism, isn’t so much over what Pakistan has done until now against the JeM, but more over what and where all this is leading up to. In the past also Pakistan has made a show of both reasonableness as well as robust action – banning the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) after the Parliament attacks in 2001, and collecting solid evidence against the LeT on its involvement in the 26/11 attacks. But the charade lasted only until the heat was on Pakistan. As soon as things cooled down, the obfuscation started.

After the December thaw in relations between India and Pakistan, the Pathankot attack has put the Pakistanis in a bit of a spot. For the sake of their own reputation and credibility with the international community, they have to be seen to be doing something against the main accused. Since washing their hands of Pathankot wasn’t really an option, the Pakistanis can now do one of two things – dissemble or deliver. As far as delivery is concerned, it will have to be measured not just on verbal assurances but on the basis of actual metrics.

If the Pakistanis had ‘encountered’ some top JeM jihadists, something that they routinely do with ‘expendable assets’, then it would have probably satisfied India about their bona fides. But since ‘good’ jihadists have to be laundered through the legal washing machine, the metrics India will have to use are: what sort of charges are filed in the FIR against the JeM, the people who are nominated in the FIR (senior commanders or mere foot soldiers), the courts in which the cases are tried (normal criminal courts, anti-terror courts or military courts), will the case (if there is one) be fast-tracked or will it meander through the torturous legal processes and ultimately die a natural death, if sentenced then how fast will it be implemented (remember, Omar Shaikh, the terrorist released along with Masood Azhar and then sentenced to death for the murder of the journalist Daniel Pearl, is still alive though petty criminals and murderers have already been despatched to meet their maker).

Even as India measures the progress in the Pathankot case on the basis of these metrics, it will have to reconcile to the fact that even a fast track military court trial will take at least a few months before sentencing is done. The challenge for India will be to balance the need for proceeding with the prospective dialogue (which had been announced with so much fanfare), with the need to see satisfactory action by Pakistan on the Pathankot attack. This means India will have to use the talks to keep pressing and pressuring Pakistan to move against the JeM and at the same time calibrate the pace of the official dialogue to ensure that progress in talks is kept in tandem with progress on terrorism, not just on Pathankot attack but also 26/11 attack. Pakistan cannot be allowed to brush Pathankot under the carpet and tell India to forget about the past and move on. Every time India falls for this Pakistani ploy, the past (read terrorism) keeps repeating itself.

Giving Pakistan a long rope after Pathankot might have been the wise option, and perhaps the only workable option, before India. But it now will be a test of the Modi government whether, like its predecessors, it entangles itself in this very long rope, or it uses the very same rope to hang the Pakistanis if they don’t use the space provided to them to deliver on their commitments on terror.

The author is Senior Fellow, Vivekananda International Foundation. He is regular columnist for the Free Press Journal where this piece originally appeared.