10 January 2013, 05:51 PM IST
There is a way to tackle Pakistan's decades-long undeclared war on India. It needn't involve hot pursuit or surgical strikes across the LoC that could escalate into a broader conflict.
But it needn't be the do-nothing-except-protest-officially approach the Indian government has adopted. There is a robust intermediate strategy available. Let's break it down into several key steps.
First, we must continue to talk to Pakistan and engage with both its government and military. But India must set the agenda for that dialogue.
Action on the 26/11 trial in Pakistan is the first red marker. Four years after the Mumbai terror attack, we must set a timeframe for Pakistan to bring the perpetrators of that crime to book.
What if Pakistan does not? Consequences will follow. What those consequences are is dealt with later in this article.
Second, the brutal attack on the two Indian soldiers on Tuesday cannot go unpunished. India must present its evidence to the international community and seek sanctions against Pakistan if it does not put on trial and punish the men who killed and mutilated Lance Naik Hemraj and Lance Naik Sudhakar Singh in Jammu & Kashmir's Mendhar sector.
The attackers were clearly members of the black-uniformed Pakistan Special Services Group (SSG) backed by the 29 Baloch regiment. The reason for the attack given by Pakitani sources is "retaliation" for the death of a Pakistani soldier on Sunday following cross-firing across the LoC.
If this is a justification for Tuesday's brutal mutilation of two Indian soldiers, it must be dismissed with the contempt it deserves. The Geneva Convention sets clear rules for the conduct of war. What the Pakistani army engaged in was jihadism, not war.
Third, future dialogue, visas, people-to-people contacts and trade must be made conditional to Pakistan satisfying the stipulations laid out in the points above.
Pakistan is a serial offender. Its army, jihadis and mullahs form a troika sworn to enmity with India. Lower infiltration levels in the Kashmir Valley over the past two years are not due to a softening of this troika's stand but because Pakistan's military is pinned down fighting on its western border the terrorist-Frankenstein it created to destabliise India.
Indian peaceniks say there is a peace constituency building among the middle-class in Pakistan. But scratch beneath the surface – including Pakistani "liberal" media and civil society – and apologia for quasi-jihadism rapidly emerges. The veneer is wafer-thin. Much of it is expedient pretence.
Now the key question: what if Pakistan doesn't play ball? What consequences can we impose on it? There are three.
1. Diplomatic. We can downgrade Pakistan to consular status, allowing its embassy limited diplomatic functionality till Rawalpindi GHQ delivers on 26/11 and the other terrorist-criminal acts it has perpetrated on India.
Pakistan posseses whatever international credibility it has by being associated with India. Downgrade that relationship and you downgrade Pakistan internationally. (Its relationship with the United States is merely that of a paid client-state.)
2. Economic: As with diplomatic relations, Pakistan needs India. India doesn't need Pakistan. Pakistan's GDP is barely 12% of India's and growing at less than 2% a year. India's trade volume (the sum of its global exports and imports) is $800 billion and dwarfs Pakistan's. Make trade ties conditional to Pakistan delivering on terrorism.
3. Legal: India is unduly sensitive about "internationalising" its conflict with Pakistan. It should instead make it clear to the world that Pakistan's repeated bluff about holding a plebiscite over Kashmir's disputed status is just that – bluff.
All 1948 UNSC resolutions Pakistan constantly refers to – and wilfully distorts – actually demand that Pakistan vacate PoK before a plebiscite can even be considered in the whole of Jammu & Kashmir.
By taking Pakistan's state terrorism to international fora India can legally shame-and-name a country globally accepted as the epicentre of terrorism – and make it pay damages and reparations. War crimes committed by Serb army generals and politicians in the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s have been tried and punishment handed out by an international war crimes tribunal in the Hague.
All of this does not mean we reduce Pakistan to a pariah state – it has achieved that without outside help. We must continue to talk, to engage and to trade – but with conditionalities.
You can't change your neighbours. But you can change their behaviour. The United States has shown how to do it with Mexico's drug mafia and Israel with its hostile Arab neighbours. So can India.
Follow @minhazmerchant on twitter
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