Will Indo-Pak relations ever be good? (Part 2)

As it turns out, our much-maligned home secretary’s remarks to The Indian Express were not off-the-cuff personal opinions after all. G.K. Pillai was only stating what had come to light during the interrogation of David Coleman Headley in the United States. It has now become abundantly clear that Pakistan’s ISI did not just have a peripheral role in the 26/11 carnage in Mumbai. They actively planned and executed the entire operation.

If that is indeed the case, it is not just a random act of terror by “non-state actors”, a term the Pakistani establishment is particularly fond of using, but a carefully calibrated act by the Pakistani state itself against India. And, if that is indeed well established, then in perhaps any other country of the world it would have been construed to have been an act of war. So then, is the Opposition unjustified in demanding an explanation from the UPA Government? Are they wrong when they object to talking with Pakistan?

The question is what has made Pakistan so belligerent in recent times? What has made even super powers like the United States, on whose economic and military aid Pakistan heavily relies, totally ineffective in reining in an adventurist Pakistani army? The answer lies in the turn of events across the Durand Line in Afghanistan. Thanks to increasing domestic pressure, coupled with the responsibility of having to honour his election pledge, Obama seeks a speedy withdrawal of the US forces from Afghan soil. The thinking among his NATO allies is not entirely dissimilar.

Meanwhile, the ground realities in Afghanistan have turned much to Pakistan’s strategic advantage. They know the western armed forces are weary of war in a theatre of conflict in which they see no direct stake. They are more than keen in handing over charge to a fledgling Afghan army and police force by 2014, a decision at least Obama has taken for the US forces. In the mean time, the Afghan Taliban have regrouped and look stronger now than in the recent past, especially in the Pashtun areas adjoining Pakistan.

The Pakistani establishment, particularly its army, has always patronised the Afghan Taliban even as it has sought to crush its counterpart within its frontiers. Pakistan sees itself holding all the aces at present. No withdrawal of the allied forces can take place without some kind of a deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Even the Hamid Karzai government in Kabul seems to have reconciled itself to this fact. Any future administration in Afghanistan which is propped up by the Taliban is bound to be favourably predisposed towards Pakistan and inimical to Indian interests in the region.

Pakistan has played its Afghan card brilliantly. More, in my next post…

* To be continued...