India’s top leadership, including PM Narendra Modi, has vowed a befitting reply over the Pahalgam massacre. Pakistan’s role is undeniable, and India has both diplomatic and kinetic options on the table, like after the Uri and Pulwama attacks. This is why Pakistan’s army chief, General Asim Munir, might be risking a limited war with India.
Nothing unites a country like war does. With its economy in the doldrums, armed rebels running riot in two of its four provinces and the popularity of its army at a new low, Pakistan might be itching for a military confrontation. Since the 1971 split, this is the closest Pakistan has come to breaking up. A mini-war could fix multiple problems, and the Pahalgam attack could be intended for that.
That India will respond with might to the Pahalgam massacre has been made clear by the country’s top leadership. The questions are how and when. There is also another important question — Why has Pakistan Army Chief Gen Asim Munir risked a military confrontation with India? That despite witnessing India’s resolve after the Uri and Pulwama terror strikes.
India has been at the receiving of Pakistan’s terror export ever since its formation in 1947. However, the Pahalgam attack was unlike anything that Pakistan-backed terrorists have carried out in India.
Twenty-six people were massacred in south Kashmir’s Pahalgam on April 22. The Resistance Front, indeed a front for the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), claimed responsibility for the attack on holidayers. A top LeT commander, Saifullah Kasuri, is reportedly the mastermind.
It is the targeting of tourists, the toll and the singling out of non-Muslims that make the Pahalgam attack unlike any other in recent years.
The attack seemed well-planned and timed even as tourism received a major boost, with the overall security scenario in Jammu and Kashmir improving in recent years.
Though Islamabad is denying its link to the massacre, it is a given that no terror attack of this scale in Jammu and Kashmir would have been carried out without the support of Pakistan’s military establishment. Experts aren’t debating that.
“This has been unleashed by the Pakistan army. SSG commandos of Pakistan are posing as terrorists and carrying out these attacks,” SP Vaid, former DGP of Jammu and Kashmir, said.
The cross-border involvement was underscored at the meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said on Wednesday.
The communal line in the attack also comes after the recent dog-whistling by General Asim Munir.
“Our forefathers believed that we were different from Hindus in every possible aspect of life. Our religion is different. Our customs are different… That was the foundation of the Two-Nation Theory,” said General Munir on April 16.
This was perceived as a signal to the Pakistani terror assets, according to reports, and the Pahalgam attack came within a week of that speech.
While Pakistani military chiefs have historically made anti-India remarks, it isn’t usual for them to make anti-Hindu remarks.
“It’s not a coincidence that Asim Munir utters illogical words two days back, and such an attack takes place where the religion of the victims is asked, and they are asked to recite the Kalima,” Vaid said.
Munir’s anti-Hindu remarks and the singling out of non-Muslim tourists by terrorists was meant to provoke a massive outrage in India and New Delhi to react.
INDIA HAS MADE ITS INTENTIONS CLEAR ON TERROR
Though Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khwaja Asif said his country had nothing to do with the Pahalgam terror attack, India isn’t buying that.
India signalled its intent with a diplomatic offensive, including the suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty, cancellation of visas for Pakistanis and reducing the strength of the Pakistani High Commission, on Wednesday in the CCS.
However, there might be expectations beyond the diplomatic offensive.
“Must say, I don’t see the measures announced by the Indian government today being able to greatly placate the anger of the Indian citizenry,” strategic expert Faran Jefferey said after the CCS decisions were made public.
With the cross-border surgical strikes after the 2016 Uri attack and an aerial bombing after the 2019 Pulwama terror attack, India has set examples of retaliatory military responses.
In his first public statement since the Pahalgam attack, PM Modi on Thursday said, “India will identify, track and punish every terrorist and their backers. We will pursue them to the ends of the Earth.”
PM Modi was speaking at a rally in Bihar in Hindi and made a rare switch to English to ensure that the world doesn’t miss a word of his fierce message.
There is chatter online that, fearing retaliation, Pakistan has moved its fighter jets closer to bases in the northern region that are closer to the Indian border.
It is well-believed that there cannot be an all-out war between India and Pakistan, two nuclear-armed countries. The fallout will be scary, and the world desperately has to intervene to prevent that. The two countries have fought three wars over Kashmir — in 1947, 1965, and 1999 –, all initiated by Islamabad, or more precisely, Rawalpindi, the headquarters of the Pakistan army.
A limited war is, however, a possibility, and General Munir knows that.
ASIM MUNIR’S RISING UNPOPULARITY IN PAKISTAN
Pakistan’s military establishment is under unprecedented pressure and Army Chief Asim Munir is facing rising unpopularity.
“Pakistan Army chief wants to escalate it, he wants to prove his credibility,” said Vaid, the former Jammu and Kashmir DGP.
Munir and his men are marked in all of Pakistan’s four provinces.
While Baloch rebels are running over them in Balochistan, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan are attacking at will in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. In Sindh, a canal project has brought the people on the streets, and in Punjab, people are furious over the jailing of former PM Imran Khan.
“General Munir can’t even take a train through parts of Pakistan without getting hit and bombed. That is why he has decided to play the Kashmir card,” explained defence expert Colonel Rohit Dev (Retd) on India Today TV.
Since 1971, this is the closest Pakistan has come to breaking apart.
The military has been the most-respected organisation in Pakistan and people have rallied behind it. Recent protests and attacks on people in uniform reveal the extent of fury against them now.
Though the military is all-powerful in Pakistan and runs the country, General Munir cannot ignore popular sentiment for too long.
And what is better than a strike from India to bind Pakistanis together and get them behind their military?
Much like in 2007, when Pakistan’s military dictator Pervez Musharraf faced growing resistance and survived assassination attempts, the Pakistan Army today finds itself battling domestic unrest and an erosion of public trust.
“The Pakistani military, for the first time in the country’s history, does not have the unanimous or even majority support of the Pakistani people in a face-off with India. How the mighty have fallen,” UK-based investigative journalist of Pakistani-origin Adil Raja wrote on X.
WHY ASIM MUNIR WANTS INDIA TO STRIKE BACK
Any counterattack, including a limited war, by India will hit Pakistan’s already-shattered economy.
The fear of India hitting back sent jitters down Pakistan’s stock market on Thursday. The benchmark KSE-100 was down by over 1,000 points.
Pakistan has been going around the globe with a begging bowl. It secured $7-billion in extended loans from the IMF last September.
However, the military has kept its budget intact, and the economy might not be a priority in Asim Munir’s immediate plans to prove credibility and unite the people behind him. Munir’s speech last week, in which he unleashed anti-Hindu rhetoric and raked up the Kashmir issue, came across more as an attempt to assert the establishment’s position both domestically and among the diaspora.
That his reading of the situation isn’t totally incorrect was revealed by former Pakistani minister Chaudhry Fawad Hussain.
“Pakistan is politically divided, but we stand united as a nation. If attacked or threatened by India, all groups — PML-N, PPP, PTI, JUI, and others — will rally together under the Pakistani flag to defend our homeland,” Hussain, a member of Imran Khan’s party, said on Wednesday.
“India cannot twiddle its thumbs. Once the escalatory ladder is revved up, it can go out of hand,” a security analyst told The Guardian on condition of anonymity.
India has almost the same number of nuclear warheads as Pakistan but is much superior when it comes to conventional war capabilities.
Strategic expert Michael Kugelman said that both diplomatic and kinetic responses against Pakistan were on the table.
“Initial public reactions from the Trump administration suggest it may not oppose an Indian retaliation,” said Kugelman.
Not just the US, the whole world is backing India in the aftermath of the dastardly attack in Pahalgam.
