India Pakistan Relations Archives - Lokmarg

What India Achieved With Jaishankar’s Visit to Pakistan

By Prosenjit Nath 20th October 2024

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s go to Islamabad for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit used to be hanging for each its quiet self-belief and strategic precision. In a go-to place, no bilateral talks with Pakistan have been expected and none took place the optics and effect of Jaishankar’s participation conveyed ways more than any sideline conferences should have. India finished two strategic objectives: enticing Central Asia via the SCO and confronting Pakistan and China’s double requirements on terrorism and what they name “good neighbourliness”, all besides being sidetracked with the aid of theatrics or distractions.

There have been no fireworks at the SCO. It used to be uneventful. And in the context of Pakistan, that’s an appropriate thing. Surprisingly, Islamabad pulled off the SCO summit besides a single protection incident no bomb blasts, no terror attacks, and no road protests. In the United States of America which has confronted current terror strikes, such as in Karachi, this used to be a splendid feat. And this was once made feasible by actually placing the complete capital on lockdown.

Jaishankar’s Firm Remark

This was once the first time an Indian foreign minister had traveled to Pakistan in 9 years. Jaishankar’s stance used to be clear from the outset: this used to be an SCO event, no longer an India-Pakistan bilateral engagement. He drew company boundaries properly earlier than he arrived in Pakistan. There had been no bilateral conferences scheduled or even hinted at, and Jaishankar made it clear via each phrase and movement that India’s presence in Islamabad used to be about the SCO, no longer about thawing ties with Pakistan.

With assured physique language and meticulous composure, he represented India’s function perfectly—that this has to no longer be misconstrued as a thaw in ties, that ties with Pakistan would stay bloodless as lengthy as cross-border terrorism continues to be a reality, and that India would be respectful of the host country in an exhibit of grace— something Pakistan’s then Foreign Minister, Bilawal Bhutto, failed to do when he was once in India for an SCO assembly in 2023.

In his speech, EAM Jaishankar provided a veiled but effective critique, stating, “If faith is lacking or cooperation insufficient if friendship has fallen brief and excellent neighborliness is lacking somewhere, there are absolutely motives to introspect and motives to address.” This was once a direct, albeit diplomatic, indictment of Pakistan’s function in fostering terrorism. He similarly bolstered this using stressing that things to do “across borders characterized through terrorism, extremism, and separatism” would preclude regional cooperation on key troubles like trade, energy, and connectivity.

By attending the event, Jaishankar averted giving Pakistan an excuse to declare that India was once warding off communication or engagement. But he additionally used the discussion board to without delay name Pakistan’s position in the promotion of terrorism on Pakistani soil, no less.

At the same time, the EAM’s presence ensured that India persisted in interacting with Central Asia, the usage of the SCO as a platform to deepen ties with international locations like Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. Central Asia remains a key place for India’s strategic interests, especially in energy, trade, and connectivity. However, the area is additionally closely influenced by China, whose Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has supplied big infrastructure funding to these countries. India’s presence in the SCO helps to counterbalance China’s dominance in the region, even as it works to construct strong ties with these nations.

The China-Pakistan Conflict: The Reason India Remains in the SCO

One may ask, why does India proceed to take part in a crew at the place where two of its key adversaries China and Pakistan wield huge influence? The reply lies in India’s broader strategic calculus.

The SCO started as a regional platform to promote change and protection and has grown into an enormous platform connecting India to Central Asia, Russia, and even adversaries like China and Pakistan. With new participants like Iran and Belarus as the tenth individuals of the group, the SCO represents about forty percent of the world’s populace and 30 percent of the international GDP.

The SCO is no longer simply a China-Pakistan-dominated bloc; it additionally consists of Russia, a long-standing Indian ally, and 4 vital Central Asian Republics (CARs) that are vital to India’s regional outreach.

India’s function in the SCO approves it to project the development of an impact on China and Pakistan inside the organization. China has been pushing to flip the SCO into a discussion board that counters Western effects globally, and Pakistan is more than inclined to play along. The two all-weather allies persistently interacted in border aggression in opposition to India whilst pretending to be the region’s custodians. India’s presence ensures that it can counter-narratives rising from Beijing and Islamabad, specifically on troubles such as terrorism and regional security.

For instance, India continues to oppose China’s Belt and Road Initiative inside the SCO framework, refusing to signal associated archives for the duration of the summit. India’s choice now not to propose the BRI is rooted in worries about sovereignty, in particular, due to the fact one of the fundamental BRI projects, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), runs via Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, in violation of Indian territorial integrity.

Increasing Connections with Central Asia and Russia

The SCO is additionally a crucial discussion board for India’s engagement with Russia, a key strategic partner. With the Ukraine warfare reshaping international alliances, India’s ties with Russia continue to be crucial, even as Moscow’s members of the family with Beijing deepen. The SCO lets India hold a working relationship with Russia inside a multilateral framework, making sure that its strategic autonomy stays intact. India’s presence additionally helps Russia using stopping the crew from turning into an entirely China-centric one.

Moreover, India’s position in the SCO is essential for its efforts to construct enhanced ties with Central Asia, a vicinity prosperous in electricity sources and strategically positioned between Russia, China, and the Middle East. However, one of India’s primary challenges in this place is connectivity—both China and Pakistan have used their geographic function to dominate alternate routes into Central Asia. India’s presence in the SCO permits it to push for higher regional connectivity, discover innovative options to omit these challenges, and enlarge its footprint in the region’s markets.

Reaching Two Goals in a Single Visit

To conclude, Jaishankar’s SCO went to Pakistan and hit two birds with one stone—engaging with Central Asia, and confronting Pakistan and China.

His visit to Islamabad, no matter how strained India-Pakistan ties, displays India’s approach to retaining SCO as a key platform for enticing Central Asian countries. India additionally seeks to be a conscience-keeper of the crew via now not skipping Pakistan and as a substitute being existing there to name out cross-border terrorism. India’s presence permits it to project narratives on protection troubles directly, in particular these emanating from China and Pakistan. By enticing the group, India continues its enemies shut whilst combating narratives and initiatives that are harmful to India’s interests.

(The writer is an Indian technocrat, political analyst, and author. The views expressed in the article are his own. His social media handle is @prosenjitnth)

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Revisting Kargil – The Conflict Conundrum

By Mahendra Ved 2nd May 2024

In India-Pakistan relations, the past becomes the present and leaves unpleasant lessons for the future that remain largely unlearnt. Their disputes, no matter from whose side you look at them, remain unresolved, and the chasm has grown deeper.

May 3 will mark 25 years since the Kargil conflict began in 1999. Pakistan’s bid for scoring territorial gains failed, again. But not without turmoil and bloodshed on both sides, allowing those outside to influence and intervene.

Significantly, Kargil happened even as the two were engaged in peace moves, being nudged to talk by a world alarmed at their emergence as the two new nuclear powers. Not enough has been asked why the Good Samaritans also failed to anticipate the incoming events. For, Kargil happened within less than three months of the Lahore Declaration that the Prime Ministers, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif, signed on February 21, 1999.

Going by the adage that history repeats itself, it did in Kargil on two counts. As it had done in 1947 and 1965, Pakistan’s civil-military establishment first sent intruders. Two: it also caught India napping, yet again.

India discovered the intruders accidentally. Like a Muslim shepherd in the Kashmir Valley noticed Pakistanis in 1965, in 1999 Buddhist shepherd Tashi Namgyal looking for missing animals, saw Pakistani regulars in Pathan outfits, digging bunkers atop the Batalik mountain range. Both led to major conflicts.

The Indian Army took a while to discover that the militants were a façade for the Pakistan Army’s Northern Light Infantry (NLI), well-entrenched on the upper ridges, holding all the tactical aces. It was an uphill task, literally, for India. Facing stiff resistance, it deployed the Air Force and the Bofors gun. A victim of political controversy, it redeemed itself.

Young officers and men climbed 90-degree steep rock faces braving bullets and turning the story around. Mostly young soldiers in the 22-35 age group died on both sides. The official death toll on the Indian side was 527, while that on the Pakistani side was between 357 and 453. Pakistan dishonoured another 600 of its militant youths whose bodies it did not claim and collect. The Indian side had to perform the last rites.

BACKGROUND: In the Kargil region, the past practice on both sides was to leave high-altitude posts in the winter because of the extreme weather and reoccupy them with the advent of spring. In the winter of 1999, Pakistan reoccupied the forward positions and strategic heights of Kargil Drass and Batalik before the Indian forces could.

With the-then army chief, General Pervez Musharraf in the lead, the masterminds of Pakistan’s plan were Chief of General Staff, Lt Gen Aziz Khan, Commander 10 Corps Lt Gen Mahmud Ahmed and Force Commander Northern Areas Maj Gen Javed Hassan.

“Operation Koh Paima” was launched in mid-October 1998 when Musharraf had not informed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Even the air and naval chiefs were not taken into confidence. The timing and the extent of Musharraf’s briefing to Nawaz and the operation’s failure triggered a civil-military power struggle which led to Musharraf ousting Nawaz.

As per Pakistani writer Tariq Aqil, Nawaz, with limited knowledge of military affairs, could not fathom the Indian Army’s capacity to respond. “He was under the delusion that the intruders would be successful and capture Kargil, forcing India to accept the final settlement of Kashmir and he would go down in history as the conqueror of Kashmir.” However, Nasim Zehra, in her book From Kargil to the Coup, writes that the army gave Sharif the first detailed briefing on the operation only on May 17. By this time, soldiers had already occupied positions across the LoC.

ALSO READ: Pakistan Army Can’t Be Confined To Barracks

The Pakistani planners had assumed that 1) Pakistan’s nuclear capability would forestall any major Indian move across the international border; 2) The International community will intervene at an early stage, leaving Pakistan in possession of gains across the LOC; 3.) China would adopt a favourable position on its side and the Indian Army would not muster adequate forces with high-altitude training and acclimatization.

All these proved wrong. Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz got the cold shoulder in Beijing. Nobody accepted Pakistan’s version that the Kashmiri freedom fighters were fighting the Indian forces and that the Pakistani army was not involved. US President Bill Clinton virtually ordered Nawaz to ensure the withdrawal of all Pakistani soldiers from the Indian positions they had occupied.

Pakistan launched Kargil to seize a tactical advantage over India. Its success was supposed to cut off links between Kashmir Valley and Ladakh by blocking National Highway no 1 (NH1). The Pakistani planners wanted to force India to withdraw from the Siachen glacier and come to the negotiating table to resolve the Kashmir dispute.

As things stand today, India continues to occupy an advantageous position in Siachen that it captured in 1984. After the Kargil experience, as things stand today, neither side wants to withdraw from this world’s highest battlefield.

The year 1999 ended with an Indian passenger aircraft hijacked, to Lahore and later to Kandahar. India had to release four Kashmiri militants to secure the release of the aircraft, the crew and the passengers. Yet, India launched the peace summit in Agra without adequate preparations, initiating it and then reneging from it.

Twenty-five years on, there is little discussion on these failed moves by India at the turn of the century. In Pakistan, veteran journalist-analyst Najam Sethi has said that Pakistan has lost all its wars with India since it planned and initiated them, but could not achieve any of its objectives.

Although limited in scale and geographical spread, the Kargil War prompted a deep strategic analysis in both countries. India debated its national security gaps. The Vajpayee government constituted the Kargil Review Committee (KRC) under K. Subrahmanyam to review the events leading to the Pakistani aggression and recommend measures to safeguard national security against armed intrusions. The committee noted that the political, bureaucratic, military and intelligence establishments had developed a vested interest in the status quo. It emphasised the need for a comprehensive review of the national security system, considering the Kargil experience, the ongoing proxy war and the ‘nuclearised’ security environment.

Retired Lt. Gen. B S Hooda says the Group of Ministers (GoM) report, which followed the KRC, “was arguably the most comprehensive examination of national security issues undertaken in independent India.” Four task forces were established to evaluate the intelligence apparatus, internal security, border management and defence management, underscoring the seriousness of the post-war assessment.

The two reports led to many changes in the management of national security. The National Technical Research Organisation was formed in 2004 to handle centralised communication and electronic intelligence. The Defence Intelligence Agency was formed to cater to the military’s specific intelligence needs. A multi-agency centre was set up to foster better inter-agency information-sharing and coordination.

The defence establishment underwent some restructuring. This included the creation of an Integrated Defence Staff, the founding of the Strategic Forces and Andaman and Nicobar Commands, and the devolution of financial and administrative powers to the three services. The appointment of the Chief of Defence Staff, as recommended by the GoM, was made in 2020.

Today, India is economically and militarily strong but needs constant vigilance, internally and externally. In Pakistan’s case, the core issues that drove it into an unwinnable conflict remain largely unaddressed. The military still controls the reins in the country, the rhetoric over Kashmir continues, the economy is in dire straits and state support to terrorist organisations persists.

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India-Pakistan Border: A Myriad Mesh Of Ceremonies, Politics & Livelihoods

By Dr. Krishnendra Meena 10th April 2022

India’s borders are diverse, and fascinating is an understatement because of the sheer variety of situations and practices they unravel. An impromptu visit to one such border in Fazilka was arranged by one of the biggest farmers of Kinnow (a citrus fruit), Mr Sandeep Kumar Sheoran, who owns orchards in Abohar district of Indian Punjab. After conferring with the concerned officers of the Border Security Force (BSF), friends from a school reunion arrived at the Sadqi border post just in time for the flag lowering ceremony. On the Pakistani side, the border village is Suleimanqi.

Though smaller in scale and less attended, the ceremony is equally impressive as the one at the more popular and famous Attari-Wagah ceremony near Amritsar. The article, however, points towards certain unique aspects of bordering practices at Sadqi border post. Academics, internationally, have now concluded that each border is unique, and this border post is a testimony to the same. Specific stories of border meetings with the Pakistani counterparts and their inaction on agreements are the norm here as one expects at the border between two fierce geopolitical rivals.

One popular theme is that of the Pakistanis reneging on an agreement to destroy two similar watch towers built during the medieval period but were located on the either side of the border after the partition in 1947. Indians being naïve, meticulous and stickler to the established agreement destroyed the tower and Pakistanis did not. If this one is about the promise to destroy border infrastructure, another relates to construction of towers by both the sides.

In another instance, again disrespecting the established conventions and norms of the bordering practices in the area, a group of overzealous Pakistani soldiers built a watch tower overnight close to the International Border or Zero Line as it is called in the technical jargon of the security forces. When confronted by the Indian officers, they challenged the Border Security Force to build one and in response, it was constructed overnight without any government finances and approvals but with the help of the villagers. Several such narratives and anecdotes were shared by the BSF personnel.

ALSO READ: The Tale Of Two Punjabs

To the observer, however, the presence of an electrified fence on the Indian side and tall Saccharum bengalense grass (Sarkanda) on the Pakistani side is indicative of two related phenomena a) the difference in perception of threats from either side and b) the economic disparities that exist between the two neighbouring countries.

On the one hand, politics, economy and security conditions in Pakistan have always been uncertain since Independence. Political history of Pakistan has been rife with instance of military coups, interventions by the military in the governance of life and livelihoods and exile of politicians. Political conditions have been unstable in general. On the other hand, economic condition of the populace, however, has considerably improved in India since the onset of economic liberalization in the early 1990s. Pakistan, a champion of capitalism has not been able to uplift the masses. Pakistani economy has been dependent upon loans and aid from various international agencies (IMF and World Bank) and the economy is now referred to as severely debt-ridden and being dependent on China. Combined with Islamic extremism and the tendency of the Pakistani intelligence services to foment trouble on Indian territory, this cocktail has led to an unstable Pakistani state with numerous issues. For India, this means a heavily fortified western border.

Smuggling, especially of narcotic substances, has plagued the border in Punjab since decades. Flow of drugs from Afghanistan to Southeast Asia (the Golden Triangle) involves crossing into and passage from the territory of Indian Punjab. Impact of this transit is felt in Indian Punjab, as the youth has taken to consumption of drugs and has severe social ramifications and has featured in the elections to state assembly. Political parties have often made it an election issue.

The recent elections brought victory to Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) which in general rode on its support to the Farmers Movement against the agriculture laws and its reputation as a party which has provided civic amenities, health and education facilities in Delhi. One of the election promises of the AAP was to curtail the use of drugs among the youth and generate employment. The border fence and bordering practices by the BSF personnel play a major role in such promises to materialize.

Punjab is known for its agricultural production and its contribution to the Indian economy. Nonetheless, there are issues which relate to agricultural practices in border villages. As the fence is on the Indian side, a vast tract of cultivable land owned by villagers lies across the fence and along the International Border. Farmers must obtain a few permits from the local administration as well as the BSF and the Army to cross the fence through several gates to cultivate and irrigate their fields. Complications related to the timings for tilling, ploughing, irrigation, harvesting and a host of related activities are resented by the farmers. During military exercises, however, farmers must make way for military vehicles and often standing crops are lost. Furthermore, during military build-ups due to tense geopolitical situations between the neighbours e.g. Operation Parakram in 2001 and the standoff after Mumbai Attacks in 2008, border villages are vacated leading to temporary displacements.

A visit to the Indo-Pakistan border reminds and impresses upon all the problems which prominently play out in the subcontinent and have hindered the prospects of development of regional cooperation when other regions of the world are rapidly integrating.