Poonch killings: How US is pulling the strings of India-Pak relations

It doesn’t take rocket science to conclude two things from the barbaric killing of five Indian soldiers in Poonch sector of Jammu and Kashmir on 6 August. One, the India-Pakistan process of resumption of dialogue that would have started in a few weeks would now remain frozen and a counter attack by the livid Indian Army cannot be ruled out. Two, it will be a matter of time before the Americans publicly make noises on the need for a cooling-off between India and Pakistan while the State Department’s back-room boys work the phones in New Delhi and Islamabad. But the bigger picture here is: whether the United States is already covertly choreographing India-Pakistan bilateral relations and preventing a flare-up in the subcontinent. Indications are that Uncle Sam may actually have started pulling the strings in New Delhi and Islamabad much faster than Indians and Pakistanis would have imagined. India has a problem on its hands. The mother of all Confidence Building Measures between India and Pakistan – the military ceasefire which came into force in 2003 – has been torn into shreds by Pakistan. The Line of Control is fast degenerating into a Line of No Control with the latest incident jolting the Indian political and military leaderships when the Indian army’s wounds were still raw since decapitation of one of its soldiers in the same sector in January this year. To rub salt in Indian wounds, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) had given an Rs 5 lakh reward to one Anwar Khan, a resident of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, who had beheaded Lance Naik Hemraj Singh on 8 January. [caption id=“attachment_1016783” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  The body of a soldier who was killed in Poonch being carried out. AFP.[/caption] An Indo-Pak cooling-off period suits the newly elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his government more than India at this time.  India can make things more difficult for Pakistan even without raising the specter of war and mobilizing its strike forces along the Indo-Pak border that the Vajpayee government had done in the aftermath of the terror attack on Indian parliament in 2001. All India has to do is to deploy more soldiers on its western borders. This will inevitably trigger concern in Rawalpindi and Pakistan will be forced to come up with a matching response, thinning its troops’ deployment in its western borders with Afghanistan, setting off alarm bells in Washington.  A cash-strapped Pakistan will have to pay through its nose for redeployment of troops at a time when Nawaz Sharif’s two biggest and immediate priorities are to heal up the Pakistani economy and invest on a war-footing in the power and infrastructure sectors to take his country out of its worst energy crisis. However, the UPA government is unlikely to take this step. The American factor is of utmost importance here. The United States will not allow a situation whereby Pakistan withdraws its troops from its Afghanistan border for deployment along the India-Pakistan border at a time when the drawdown of American and NATO troops from Afghanistan is scheduled to begin in February 2014. Needless to say, the UPA government will not take a step which Americans do not approve of. In fact, one of the high points of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s expected bilateral visit to the US next month from the American point of view would be to thrash out a roadmap for dealing with the Af-Pak region post 2014. One has to catch the fine nuances of Defence Minister AK Antony’s suo moto statement in both houses of parliament earlier today.  While narrating the Poonch incident, Antony said: “The ambush was carried out by approximately 20 heavily armed terrorists along with persons dressed in Pakistan Army uniforms.” This is rather queer. Nowhere has Antony blamed the Pakistan Army for the incident! All that he has alluded to the identity of the perpetrators is that these were heavily armed terrorists who were accompanied by “persons dressed in Pakistan army uniforms”. Now let’s have a look at an input which is even queerer. Barely an hour before Antony’s statement in parliament, the defence ministry’s Jammu-based PRO SN Acharya issued a press statement saying that Pakistan Border Action Team (BAT) had attacked Indian soldiers in Poonch. This two-paragraph press statement is worth reproducing in full. Here it is: “A patrol of Indian Army comprising of one Non Commissioned Officer and five Other Ranks was ambushed by a Pak Border Action Team close to the Line of Control in Punch Sector of J&K early morning on 6 August 2013.   In the ensuing firefight, five Indian soldiers were martyred. The ambush was carried out by approximately 20 heavily armed terrorists along with soldiers of Pak Army. “This action is a likely consequence of frustrations of the terrorists’ tanzeeems and Pak Army due to successful elimination of 19 hardcore terrorists in the recent months of July and August along the Line of Control and in the hinterland of J&K.  The effective counter infiltration grid on the Line of Control has ensured 17 infiltration bids foiled this year resulting in killing of a total of 13 hardcore Pak trained terrorists. The numbers of such attempts have doubled this year in comparison to the corresponding period of 2012. Pak Army’s desperation is also evident in the substantial increase in the number of Cease Fire Violations this year. There have been 57 Cease Fire Violations this year which is almost 80% more than the violations last year.” Significantly, the Indian defence ministry withdrew this statement some 90 minutes later and substituted it with Antony’s statement in parliament! The vital difference in the two statements is that the defence ministry’s eventually withdrawn statement gave some details of the ground situation and was probably closer to the truth while Antony’s statement was marked by diplomatese. Not unsurprisingly, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid and the Ministry of External Affairs have maintained a studied silence on the issue. So how does one connect the dots? Does it mean that Uncle Sam was already feverishly at work with the South Block mandarins and ensured that Antony does not come up with a hawkish statement in parliament and squarely blames the Pakistan Army for the outrageous killings of Indian soldiers? This is a nebulous area and the behind-the-scene parleys that took place in the South Block may not come to light anytime soon. Perhaps one will have to wait for help from WikiLeaks in this regard as and when Julian Assange and his team shed light on this episode.