Confident India is ready for retaliation against any Pakistan misadventure
By Girish Linganna
Pakistan has accused India, its long-standing enemy, of conducting unlawful killings within that country's borders. It claimed having “evidence” of links between “Indian agents” and the assassination of two terrorists. This accusation comes at a time when there is a growing worry that the recent increase in the ongoing indirect conflict could jeopardize the fragile peace between the two countries that has held for the past three years. These accusations have grown more strident after reports last year about alleged Indian plots to hire people for murder in the United States and Canada.
Analysts suggest that India is now more focused on using aggressive tactics to deal with threats emanating from other countries. But there arises a question in one's mind. Are these, in any way, indicative of which way the wind is blowing, especially with the 2024 Lok Sabha elections knocking on our door, in a pattern strangely reminiscent of the February 2019 strike across Pakistan's border that aroused nationalistic fervour across the country, leading to an overwhelming win for the party in power in that year's General Elections?
The Chinese Foreign Ministry, on Tuesday, backed Pakistan's allegations that India was, indeed, involved in the killings of Pak nationals and terrorists, saying that Islamabad's claims were “worth (Beijing's) attention”. China said it was opposed to India's “double standards” on counter-terrorism—a charge that India has often levelled at China for blocking UN resolutions to ban terrorists operating from Pakistani soil across India's borders.
Details accessed by The Sunday Guardian revealed that at least 18 extrajudicial killings had occurred across various parts of Pakistan—Karachi, Sialkot, Neelam Valley (in Pak-Occupied Kashmir), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Rawalkot, Rawalpindi and Lahore—over the past two years. Of these, 16 had occurred since February 2023—all of them either former, or active, functionaries of anti-India terrorist groups, such as the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), and all of them at some time or the other, had aided the killing of Indian citizens on its soil.
The modus operandi had been similar—gunmen on motorcycles shooting them dead from close quarters and fleeing before anyone could have a clue to what was happening. Everything is over in 10 seconds! India's Ministry of External Affairs has, however, consistently refused to comment, saying that it cannot speak on developments that were happening on foreign soil.
During a media briefing on Thursday last week, Pakistan's foreign secretary, Muhammad Syrus Sajjad Qazi, revealed that Islamabad had chosen to disclose its own probes into 12 targeted killings of anti-India militants that occurred in Pakistan last year, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP). Pakistan had earlier refrained from publicizing these incidents.
Qazi was quoted as accusing India's intelligence agencies of being responsible for hiring assassins to carry out these killings and stated that these incidents demonstrated an increasing level of audacity—even refinement—by India in perpetrating terrorist activities within Pakistan, adding that these assassinations were carried out along rather much the same lines as those in the US and Canada.
In September 2023, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had created a global stir, especially among the ‘Five Eyes' partners—comprising the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand that have a tacit understanding on exchanging intelligence on such affairs—when he levelled allegations against India that there was “credible evidence” suggesting the involvement of Indian operatives in the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a designated terrorist and Sikh separatist leader based in Vancouver, outside a gurdwara in a parking lot in Canada's Surrey, British Columbia, on June 18.
At end-November, the US Justice Department filed charges against an Indian, Nikhil Gupta, who had attempted to hire an undercover agent with the intention of assassinating Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, firebrand founder of the Sikh separatist group, ‘Sikhs for Justice', residing in New York, who, in one of the most recent and alarming threats issued on November 4, 2023, had released a video warning Sikhs not to fly by Air India aircraft after November 19 as this could endanger their lives.
Pannun had also warned that the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport in Delhi would be closed on November 19 and that its name would be changed to ‘Shahid Beant Singh, Shahid Satwant Singh Khalistan Airport', in remembrance of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's Khalistani assassins.
Qazi's accusations came only a day after Pakistan's Chief of the Army Staff, General Asim Munir, the country's most influential figure, adopted a tough position on reconciling diplomatic relations with India. During a speech to university students in Islamabad, General Munir pointed out that India had not accepted the “idea of Pakistan”.
Gen. Munir emphasised the ideological divide between Hindu-majority India and predominantly Muslim Pakistan, which had existed ever since both countries were created after gaining independence from British colonial rule in August 1947. Munir claimed that India had not come to terms with the idea of the existence of Pakistan, stressing the historical and religious differences between the two countries.
The SCMP quoted analyst Najam Sethi as saying that the Pak leadership was sending several signals to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration in the run-up to India's ensuing Lok Sabha elections scheduled for April-May this year.
The timing of the press conference by Pakistan's top diplomat, following close on the heels of the army chief's statements, was clearly not a one-off remark, Sethi was reported to have said. Additionally, Sethi noted that targeted killings had been occurring over a period of time, and it was evident that India had a role in these incidents.
On Friday last week, Randhir Jaiswal, Ministry of External Affairs spokesman, dismissed Pak claims that India had given orders to carry out the elimination of jihadists, rejecting the charges as “fabricated and malicious”. Nevertheless, reports published by the Indian media last year regarding the killings included comprehensive profiles of each Pakistani jihadist, indicating that these details were likely disseminated by officials in Delhi.
JeM commander Shahid Latif, whose assassination in Sialkot city in Pakistan's northern Punjab region by unidentified assailants—which Qazi apparently referred to on Thursday, along with that of Muhammad Riaz—was described in Indian media reports as the ‘mastermind' behind the deadly attack on an Indian Air Force base in Pathankot, located in India's Punjab province in 2016. He was also said to be the ‘handler' of the four terrorists who had entered the Pathankot Air Force Station. Nine soldiers were killed in the attack and 22 wounded.
According to Indian media reports, among the 12 individuals targeted and killed by assassins in Pakistan's Karachi was Mistry Zahoor Ibrahim, identified as one of the five terrorists involved in the hijacking of the IC-814 Indian Airlines flight from Kathmandu to Delhi with 179 passengers and 11 members of the crew on board on December 24, 1999. Mistry was reportedly the person who stabbed and killed a 25-year-old Indian man who was one of the hostages. The hijackers were demanding the release of four jihadists, including Shahid Latif and JeM chief Masood Azhar.
There had been long-standing indications that India had carried out extrajudicial killings not only in Pakistan, but also in various other countries, Michael Kugelman, director of Wilson Centre's South Asia Institute, a Washington-based think tank, told SCMP. These acts by India had come under the spotlight only after such actions were challenged in the US and Canada, he added.
Kugelman suggested that India seemed to be adopting a strategy commonly employed by various states that aimed to address threats in foreign countries, particularly when the governments of those countries were unwilling—or unable—to take action against these threats by themselves. Kugelman said there was a noticeable shift in India employing more assertive methods in dealing with threats outside its borders.
According to Sethi, added SCMP, it was clear that Pakistan's General Munir had conveyed multiple messages to India. He mentioned that the first signal conveyed by Pakistan was its belief that India had intervened within its territory, while the second signal indicated that there would be no diplomatic reconciliation if India persisted with such actions.
But, more importantly, Sethi added that the third signal from Pakistan was its retaliatory airstrike against Iran. This airstrike was conducted in response to Iran's attack on the camp of an ethnic Iranian Baloch militant group, Jaish-ul-Adl, in the village of Koh-e-Sabz in Panjgur district, a region in western Pakistan, targeting missiles and explosives-laden drones to carry out the operation on January 16 this year.
A day later, Pakistan's response was an attack on Saravan, in Iran's Sistan-Baluchistan province. Both countries accuse each other of backing separatists, who happen to be ethnic Baloch in both cases. Sethi theorizes that Pakistan's retaliatory strike on the Baloch insurgent group's hideout in southeastern Iran was primarily aimed at bolstering its deterrence against potential Indian attacks, rather than a warning to Iran.
According to a senior official based in Islamabad , due to political compulsions, although there is no direct evidence to hypothesize that Iran had consulted India before conducting the cross-border missile and drone strikes, Pakistan had to take into account all possible scenarios when formulating its responses. Pakistan's reactions are based on earlier instances of Indian support for ethnic Baloch rebel groups engaged in conflict with the Pakistani forces and operating from sanctuaries in neighbouring Iran.
The ongoing conflicts between the Indian and Pakistani forces stationed along the disputed border in Kashmir, referred to as the line-of-control (LoC), intensified following the sudden revocation of the special constitutional status of India's Kashmir by the Modi government in August 2019. This led to Pakistan severing diplomatic ties with India. Instead of garnering diplomatic backing for its stance against India's annexation of the disputed territory, Pakistan faced international pressure to curtail the activities of jihadist groups operating within its borders.
In February 2021, India and Pakistan reached an agreement to cease hostilities along the LoC. Subsequently, Islamabad is believed to have taken steps to restrict cross-border incursions and maintain control over state-affiliated militants hostile towards India. This approach is, probably, driven by a desire to avoid further crises with India, particularly considering the multitude of domestic challenges that Pakistan is currently facing, SCMP quoted Kugelman as saying.
However, it would be premature to conclude that empowering and emboldening these militants is no longer a concern or a recurring issue. According to Kugelman, these violent actors still hold value for Pakistani policy, even if only in theory, as they serve as a means to counterbalance India's conventional military superiority.
In this context, Kugelman was quoted by SCMP to have suggested that, if the relationship between India and Pakistan became more strained, either due to heightened India targeting these actors within Pakistan or increased violations of the ceasefire along the LoC, there was a possibility that Pakistan might retreat from the status quo and grant more freedom to anti-India militant groups. Kugelman emphasised that such a scenario had occurred in the past—and could recur again.
But this might just give Indian government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi the opportunity—and the mileage—it wants before the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha elections! (IPA Service)
(The author is a Defence, Aerospace & Political Analyst based in Bengaluru.)
