India’s security establishment warns Field Marshal Asim Munir against adventurism.
In just 24 hours, three leading members of India’s national security establishment have warned Pakistan’s Army chief Asim Munir against adventurism. The unsubtle warnings delivered by defence minister Rajnath Singh, Army chief General Upendra Dwivedi and Air Chief Marshal AP Singh could be seen as deterrent signalling — against Pulwama-type massacre targeting Indian civilians or a territorial grab.
Another Pulwama could see an Operation Sindoor 2.0 where Pakistan would lose not just its military infrastructure, but territory.
These warnings come in the light of Field Marshal Asim Munir’s blitzkrieg of global visits. Pakistan has not fixed all of its destroyed runways, radars and command posts shattered by the Indian Air Force during Operation Sindoor. But in the five months since the 88-hour conflict, Munir has anointed himself Field Marshal and now heads a hybrid civil-military government.
He has rebuilt Pakistan’s geopolitical alliances, met President Donald Trump twice and hocked his country’s rare earths and ports, offered an umbrella of nuclear weapons for Saudi Arabia and reminded Beijing of their commitments to its smaller ‘Iron Brother’. It is an astonishing turnaround of fortunes when you look at how, even a year ago, Islamabad seemed globally isolated, a debt-ridden terrorist sponsoring pariah, living a hand-to-handout existence.
Munir geopolitical somersaults come even at the risk of being drawn into West Asia as a mercenary force and being forced into deploying the Pakistan Army as a peacekeeping force in Gaza as part of a Trump-supervised peace plan for the region.
But as history shows, when the military sits in the driver’s seat and Pakistan develops stronger ties with its partners, the military becomes emboldened and adventurous. What follows is a predictable pattern of escalation with India. This has been a familiar pattern over the past few decades.
From Field Marshal Ayub Khan with his land grabs in Kutch and Jammu & Kashmir in 1965, General Zia, who fomented terrorism in Punjab and General Pervez Musharraf, who unleashed his state-sponsored terrorists against India’s Parliament in 2001, Mumbai’s trains in 2006 and two five-star hotels, a Jewish centre and a railway station during the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.
“If Pakistan dares to act in Sir Creek, the reply will be so strong that it will change both history and geography,” Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said at a meeting in the Rann of Kutch on October 2, adding how the Indian Army reached Lahore in 1965, and warning of a land offensive against Karachi.
A day later, on October 3, Army chief General Upendra Dwivedi repeated the ‘history and geography’ warning. Speaking at the military station in Bikaner, Rajasthan, he said India was fully prepared this time around and wouldn’t be as restrained as it was during ‘Operation Sindoor 1.0’.
