India has provided Pakistan “actionable intelligence” regarding the attack on the Pathankot airbase and demands satisfactory follow-up action by Pakistan if the foreign secretary talks are to start. Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has assured the Indian Prime Minister he will do the necessary. The US is urging India not to postpone dialogue. Reports suggest a number of Nato countries consider the intelligence supplied (including mobile phone conversations between the attackers and suspected handlers in Pakistan, a Jaish-e-Mohammad letter, DNA samples of the attackers, their voice record samples, etc) to be credible leads if not conclusive evidence.
Pakistan’s international legal obligations require it to follow up on these leads to determine whether or not some elements based in Pakistan were involved in the attack. While suggesting Pakistan may need time to conduct its investigations, the US agrees with India that Pakistan must take the leads seriously. The US and Nato lean to the view that the attack probably was planned and supervised from Pakistan by elements with a history of association with the intelligence establishment, whether with or without its direct or indirect connivance.
It is not yet clear what our military’s attitude was to Narendra Modi’s stopover in Lahore. We know that Kargil happened after Vajpayee’s visit to Lahore in 1999; Mumbai occurred after progress in the backchannel talks of the mid-2000s; and now Pathankot takes place after another Lahore yatra. Has Mr Sharif once again been “reined in” by “the boys” to let him know who is boss? The participation of the Pakistan Army chief in a meeting chaired by Mr Sharif to consider the information provided by India is to be welcomed. However, it does not necessarily mean the military appreciates the Mr Sharif’s attempts to wrest exclusive control over Pakistan’s India policy.
In Pakistan, the concept of civil-military relations is dubious. It excludes civil society. It provides cover for civilian political delinquency and military political ambition, whether working in tandem or at cross purposes. It has become the antithesis of democracy. It is a principal cause of incoherent, inconsistent and irrational policies on major domestic and external issues, including policy towards India.
It provides a convenient context for unprincipled politicians, including leaders, to protest the reduction of political space for the discharge of their “democratic responsibilities” by unelected and undemocratic institutions. Likewise, it provides a convenient pretext for an ambitious security establishment to cite the corruption and venality of politicians as reasons for arrogating to itself a decisive role in matters that lie well beyond its competence and remit. The perfect vicious circle! How do we break out of it?
More dangerous than the distortion of civil-military relations is the relentless waging of class warfare in Pakistan. This pits the entire range of political, economic, social and service elites against the mass of ordinary Pakistanis. It has many disguises. Patriotic and religious enthusiasms are among them. So are passionate, romantic and self-indulgent national narratives. These stratagems take shelter under the sacred.
But the ends they serve are largely profane and dishonest. Among their offshoots is the narrative of the “existential” threat posed by Indian hostility and hegemony. This, of course, is rooted in history, fact and reality. But, more importantly, it is also part of the arsenal of our privileged and powerful against the aspirations and interests of our deprived and poor.
If the responses of the rulers of Pakistan convey the message that they are unwilling or unable to control the cross-border activities of anti-Indian and anti-Kabul Jihadis until Kashmir is resolved and Kabul has a “friendly” government, they will do more harm to Pakistan. Nor will they help the Kashmiri freedom struggle one iota. None of this may bother them. How Pathankot and many other domestic and external issues of national importance are handled will determine whether or not their point remains regrettably valid.
By arrangement with Dawn
