The short point is that India may already be facing the prototype of a two-front war, which has been until now something of a theoretical construct.
In light of decisions taken by India and Pakistan following the May 10 ceasefire, the relationship between the neighbours with a deeply uneasy past looks headed for unpredictability. The situation could turn volatile in the context of the current tense impasse, as well as the nature of the national leadership on both sides.
Such an eventuality has every potential to fully internationalise the India-Pakistan equation and re-hyphenate the two countries, a least in Western eyes, and return India to a past from which it had made every effort to break free in the Manmohan Singh era, much to the unhappiness of Pakistan and the leading powers.
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State of uncertainty
Since Operation Sindoor has not ended, as government representatives do not tire of reminding us, the sense of disturbing uncertainties is reinforced, although the pause in the fighting “does not have an expiry date”, as a defence spokesman put it almost in passing. Nevertheless, an unintended wrong move is all it takes.
An observation by External Affairs Minister, S Jaishankar, in an interview to the Dutch public broadcaster NOS on May 22, exactly one month after the Pahalgam tragedy, reinforces the ideas that led to India hitting terrorist locations on May 7 and the not unexpected Pakistani retaliation which followed. The minister said bluntly, “If the terrorists are in Pakistan, we will hit them there.”
There was a small dose of mitigation later in the statement, but the sense that stays is that the Indian forces remain in a state of readiness after May 10 – and Operation Sindoor has not been called off. It is the indefinite aspect of this which makes the situation on the LOC (with Pakistan) and with the LAC (with China) not just analogous but quite similar.
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Two-front war
In fact, after many rounds of talks with China, there are signs of de-escalation in some sectors in eastern Ladakh while preparations continue to be at fighting levels in the eastern Himalayas. Quite possibly, we are now in a similar state in relation to Pakistan, at least while Operation Sindoor remains vivified.
The short point is that India may already be facing the prototype of a two-front war, which has been until now something of a theoretical construct. Pakistan’s reliance on China when in a state of conflict with India is not just one of buyer and seller of arms but that of an ally, with all its strategic dimensions, as was evident during the recent conflagration, with China’s new generation air warfare assets being pressed into service. Some experts saw the invisible hand of China even as the military exchange was on, though clarity on the matter is yet to emerge.
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Modi’s new normal
The decisions by Pakistan and India that are likely to be complicating factors in sub-continental dynamics are the raising of Pakistan Army chief, General Asim Munir, to the level of Field Marshal, and the dispatch of Indian multi-party political delegations to foreign capitals to persuade the international community that India is a victim of Pakistan-engineered terrorism, and to rally opinion against terrorism.
Anchored in the latter is the implied endorsement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s conviction that he has devised a “new normal” by hitting upon a novel principle – that a terrorist attack in India would from now on cause an Indian military strike in Pakistan aimed at going after the terrorists, based on the assumption that the Pakistani state is the de-facto choreographer.
Also read: After Op Sindoor, Modi has many questions to answer to Indians
Can India make a strong case?
An implication of seeking to rally opinion after the event, i.e., after the Indian action of May 7, rather than before it, is that India is making an indirect plea that the leading countries hold Pakistan back from using the gambit of terrorism, as things can slip out of hand.
Is it realistic to expect the desired response from major world capitals? At any rate, Pakistan’s “ironclad brother” China is unlikely to have any use for Indian “strategic” thinking of this nature.
The dreadful Indian television media had so dramatised, and in the process caricatured, the Indian effort in the May 7-10 period, in order to make a propaganda push to support regime objectives, and also pushed for India to march into Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK), that India’s case has been hopelessly ruined in foreign eyes.
Munir's communal card
Let’s look at the news from Pakistan.
Its Army chief, General Munir, has been made Field Marshal, the first officer to be so raised since Ayub Khan, the then Army chief, who chose to honour himself in 1959. The difference is that General Ayub was a Sandhurst-trained professional in the British Indian Army whose home fell in the newly created country in 1947. In contrast, General Munir is a madrasa-trained ‘hafiz’, meaning one who has memorised the Quran.
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Days before the Baisaran (Pahalgam) terrorist attack on April 22 in which men were shot dead after the killers ascertained their religion, General Munir addressed the Pakistani diaspora in which he exhorted them not to forget the key principle of Partition and the two-nation theory – that Muslims and Hindus are so different that they cannot co-exist, and in this spirit Pakistan’s military boss exhorted the renewing of solidarity with the people of Kashmir.
This may reflect poverty of thought, but the officer chose that path of communalisation in hopes of rallying his forces and his nation at a time when the Pakistan Army was badly in search of legitimacy.
Pakistan’s Modi
The elected prime minister had been thrown into jail, and the national economy, surviving on periodic international bailouts, was in a tailspin. Regions of the country – Balochistan and parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa – are in turmoil, challenging central authority, in particular the Army.
There is considerable thinking that the General may have succeeded beyond his expectations. For raising the bogey of religion against India, he has been honoured and made Field Marshal, and that is likely to indicate the takeover in Pakistan by a certain kind of approach toward politics, military and regional diplomacy. This has implications.
Also read: How two Asims brought their country Pakistan to the brink of war
Not even General Zia-ul-Haq, who sought to Islamise Pakistan in the 1970s, had gone as far as targeting a neighbour by explicitly using the religion card. In that respect, Field Marshal Munir seems less General Zia, more the Qaid-e-Azam Jinnah himself. He could perhaps be said to be the new Qaid.
Bonapartism in South Asia
If that is indeed the case, and both countries have found leaders to whom religion-centred provocation, religion-based propaganda, and the path of brinkmanship – in the name of bold tactics within the framework of a long term ‘vision’ for their people – come as second nature, then the region as a whole may be looking at uncertainty and instability. The story in Bangladesh in the east is also far from being a happy one.
A military strongman and an unelected strutting peacock to the west and east of this country, leading their people to nowhere except crises, and a sectarian nationalist civilian commander in India whose image in a fighter pilot’s gear, striding forward with the helmet in the crook of the left arm, are signals of Bonapartism in all South Asia even if something worse is averted.
(The Federal seeks to present views and opinions from all sides of the spectrum. The information, ideas or opinions in the articles are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Federal)
