The Pulwama outrage on February 14 last year, which witnessed a car bomb attack on a convoy of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), was the biggest loss suffered by India’s security forces in a single incident in Jammu and Kashmir since militancy and terror hit the region 30 years ago.
While regretting this incident perpetrated by a young Kashmiri suicide bomber, one can also assess, as in many cases before, that it was a major mistake by Pakistan in the execution of its strategy of a “thousand cuts” to bleed India. In many ways, it was Pulwama that triggered the situation by which Pakistan is strategically on the back foot today.
On its first anniversary, a needless controversy was generated due to allegations about political benefits to some parties because of Pulwama. These allegations within India unfortunately give Pakistan an opportunity to strengthen its narrative that the incident was a “false flag” operation by India. The series of events through 2019 actually snowballed into a situation completely disfavouring Pakistan. The explanation below bears out this surmise.
To fully understand the relevance of the Pulwama incident and its place in the history of the proxy hybrid conflict, the Pakistani strategy in Jammu and Kashmir needs to be clearly understood. The aim has always been to weaken India’s hold over J&K by all available means, not with just the employment of military means or sub-conventional violence. That makes its strategy hybrid in nature and includes irregular operations combined with psychological warfare to keep the population alienated; the diplomatic domain, too, forms an important element.
The strategy is designed to keep the situation festering and never cross India’s assessed limit of tolerance; for every hit-and-run operation by terrorists, Pakistan assesses that India cannot strike back in the conventional mode. It also knows if that limit is crossed and the planned and sponsored event results in political and psychological impact on the leadership and people of India, the Indian government will have little option but to respond.
Pakistan has hopes that in its calibrated strategy if there is overstepping by any chance, it can deter India from responding by holding out the threat of use of nuclear weapons against our conventional forces or against a value target.
This limit of India’s tolerance was earlier crossed a couple of times, but with major time gaps between them. The 2001 attack on Parliament was followed by the 2008 Mumbai terror attack and the Pathankot air base attack was executed on January 1, 2016 -- intervals of seven years. Concern in India was relatively muted because the intervening periods between these events saw considerable improvement in relationship.
But after January 1, 2016, Pakistan has invariably overplayed its cards. Pathankot was followed by the Uri terror attack on September 18, 2016, and Pulwama on February 14 last year. If we count the Nagrota attack of November 29, 2016, it will prove a level of desperation in Pakistani planners during these three to four years.
In the period between 2016 and 2019, the tearing hurry by Pakistan to increase the frequency of sponsored violent acts to retract lost ground resulted in lowering of India’s limit of tolerance. A couple of factors contributed to this disastrous Pakistani decision-making.
First, the Uri attack went out of control because of unexpected circumstances; Pakistan did not expect such heavy casualties that occurred more by circumstances. Its inability to execute a major act in the hinterland of Kashmir forced it to opt for a tactical strike close to the Line of Control (LoC); that is how Uri occurred.
Second, the high profile and more focused campaign by Indian security forces under Operation All Out, launched after Uri, caused considerable attrition on terrorist cadres with proxy capability taking a major hit and terrorism flagging to lower levels.
Pulwama was an erroneously conceived operation with a hope that it would assist in retrieving the situation for Pakistan by rejuvenation of motivation among the local terrorist cadres and project to them Pakistan's abiding support for their quest. The choice of targeting a jawan bus was by intent and was no accident, it needed planning and coordination; calibration went completely awry in the planning itself. With suicide bombing and general employment of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) having waned after 2004, the potential of achieving surprise was much higher and that is one of the contributing reasons for the selection of this option. This entire period, 2016-19, went completely wrong for Pakistan, in almost every domain.
The triggering of eye-catching violent incidents was in the vain hope that the BJP’s relative inexperience could be put to test to weaken it politically through the expected lack of response. The exact opposite of that happened. The BJP received a political shot in the arm with its decisions to take a risk; in fact, it thereafter made risk-taking its mantra.
The relatively small time gaps between these events helped the BJP play on a policy of robust military response as its USP. The assessed deterrence that Pakistan perceived to be in existence, in terms of its declared policy of ‘first use’ relating to nuclear weapons, dwindled in the light of the higher risk propensity displayed by the Indian side.
The surface surgical strikes of September 28, 2016, post the Uri attack and the Balakote air strike in response to the Pulwama incident clearly demonstrated that with each such incident, Pakistan was handing to India greater scope to test its own doctrine of calibrated response even while the nuclear shadow existed. It is now becoming increasingly clearer that the misnomer of deterrence under which Pakistan chanced its hand each time is progressively diluting and today is almost nonexistent.
The opportunity provided by Pakistan towards calibrated response by India also enhanced the Indian government’s confidence in all domains; political, military and diplomatic. Improving relations with the important countries of West Asia, France and the United States further contributed to that confidence.
There is no evidence to directly link the Pulwama incident with the decisions on the abrogation of special constitutional provisions and restructured administrative set-up of J&K. However, the progressively much higher confidence of the Indian government on its ability to put Pakistan on notice and neutralise the ecosystem that regenerates turbulence every time J&K stabilises contributed in no small measure to the decisions. These decisions were the political initiatives that were long awaited and were triggered by the circumstances set into motion by the Pulwama incident.
With Pakistan deeply troubled by its economic situation, the ongoing Financial Action Task Force (FATF) deliberations and the diversion of its attention towards Afghanistan, salvaging its dwindling fortunes in J&K is going to be a major challenge. While India may take a deep breath on this, it must remain aware that Pakistan has often adopted the route of unpredictability and irrationality to attempt bouncing back. The next Indian response, if necessary, must sufficiently diffuse Pakistan’s ideas of successfully pursuing proxy hybrid war in J&K.
(The writer is a former Commander of the Srinagar-based 15 Corps and now the Chancellor of the Central University of Kashmir. Views are personal.)
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