How should we react to the call made by the Pakistani National Security Adviser to his Indian counterpart to tip him off about intelligence he had received about the infiltration of jihadi terrorists into Gujarat to disrupt Mahashivaratri celebrations there or elsewhere?
On the one hand, one leading newspaper (
The Indian Express, 16 March 2016) has run a front-page story saying 3 of the ten Pakistani terrorists have been killed. On the other hand, no official confirmation has come from the Indian side and so other media are not following up this angle. This leads to the widespread apprehension that perhaps the call was a ruse to mislead us into trusting the Pakistani offer of cooperation with India in fighting the common menace of terrorism. But it may be noted that there is no official denial either of Indian agencies having successfully worked on the Pakistani tip-off, especially as there are allegedly still seven of the terrorists still at large. If so, this is an on-going operation, not to be jeopardized by premature press publicity.
Pakistan, for its part, has claimed that the call "showed Pakistan's commitment to fight terrorism". Saying this, Sartaj Aziz, the
de facto Foreign Minister of Pakistan, has somewhat coyly sought to place this in the framework of the assertion that "sharing intelligence among various nations of the world is routine practice". However, it has hardly been "routine" between India and Pakistan - although it ought to be if Pakistan's claim to "commitment to fight terrorism" is to have any credibility.
It should also be noted that the Foreign Secretaries and Foreign Ministers of both countries appear to be working towards getting together on the sidelines of the preparatory SAARC meting at Pokhara in Nepal - which would be strange if the Indian side officially suspected that the Pakistanis were trying to pull the wool over Indian eyes.
The Pakistan NSA's call ties in with the establishment of a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) by Pakistan that has sought the opportunity to visit the Pathankot air force base shortly. Although senior Indian officials like the Air Force Chief have been quoted as being ready to receive the Pak JIT in Pathankot, confident that key defence installations at the base will be well outside the purview of the Pakistan team, the Prime Minister's Office, at the time of writing, is still to reveal its hand.
Other straws in the wind to indicate that Pakistan does want to demonstrate its seriousness in investigating the Pathankot terror incident include official Pak confirmation that the mobile used by the terrorists has been traced to Jaish-e-Mohammed headquarters in Bahawalpur; and that JeM chief, Masood Azhar, is in custody. Also that the Pakistani regulatory authority has ordered local media to black out Hafiz Saeed's overt call for more Pathankot-like terrorist attacks on Indian targets. More tangentially, but significantly, Nawaz Sharif last week ordered the hanging of Mumtaz Qadri, the assassin of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, despite Quadri's considerable grassroots support for his stand on Pakistan's blasphemy law.
While one knowledgeable Indian observer, Ambassador MK Bhadrakumar, who spent most of his distinguished IFS career on Pakistan affairs, finds significance in these "hard-headed Pakistan-led, Pakistan-owned decisions and moves", another expert, Vinod Sharma, recently returned from a visit to Pakistan, more circumspectly regards these as "a gingerly shift to containing, if not immediately confronting, anti-Indian groups based in the country's eastern enclaves in (Pakistani) Punjab".
So, while the jury is still out on estimating the full import of the direction in which Nawaz Sharif appears to be moving in regard to anti-Indian terror groups, this would appear to be the appropriate juncture to revisit the decision taken ten years ago on the sidelines of the September 2006 Havana Non-Aligned Summit by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Musharraf to put in place an "India-Pakistan anti-terrorism institutional mechanism to identify and implement counter-terrorism initiatives and investigations."
This high-minded intention broke on the rocks when Indian security experts like the late K Subrahmanyam welcomed the mechanism principally because it would provide India with a forum on which to confront Pakistan with evidence of Pakistani complicity in terror attacks on India. This was countered by the Pakistani Foreign Minister retorting that "this anti-terror mechanism will only work if the two sides don't make impossible demands on each other".
Little wonder then that when the two Foreign Secretaries met in New Delhi in November 2006, two months after Havana to flesh out the Anti-Terrorism Mechanism (ATM), all they could agree on was that their two Additional Secretaries dealing with the UN would head the ATM - rendering the entire exercise dead in the water even before it took off. The Additional Secretaries never met. And a few months later, in March 2007, the lawyers' agitation started Musharraf's slide to his ouster. The ATM idea went with him.
For a brief moment, in the immediate aftermath of 26/11, there was a flicker of hope that the two sides might exchange information and work together in investigating the ghastly Mumbai terror attack. The newly-elected Pak Prime Minister rang Dr. Manmohan Singh and offered to send the ISI chief to India to begin the process. What he failed to do was consult the ISI chief beforehand. So he had to shamefacedly call again the next day and, in view of the ISI chief's refusal to travel to India, offer to send the deputy chief. The offer was indignantly rejected as adding insult to injury.
Although tonnes of information have since been furnished to the Pakistanis, it has added up to little because Pakistani courts, acting under virtually the same Evidence Act and penal code that India has, have refused to entertain India evidence that has not been cross-examined by Pakistani lawyers prosecuting the case in Pakistani courts. That is how key suspects have been let off, including Hafiz Saeed and Zaki-ur-Rahman. Protest as we might, the Pakistani authorities hide behind court procedures and court decisions. Their perfidy acquires a veneer of legitimacy and we are left helplessly snorting.
If, as some including myself believe, that the Pak NSA's call to our NSA indicates a desire to open a new chapter, we need perhaps to carry forward the Havana spirit in the direction of institutionalizing at the NSAs' level (not, definitely not, at the Additional Secretaries' level) the kind of steps the Additional Secretaries were mandated to consider: "counter-terrorism measures, including through the
regular and timely sharing of information" (emphasis added). The mandate might remain the same with the level raised to the operational level of the National Security Advisers.
That is the way to go ahead: plodding slowly and discretely, in silence and without undue publicity, patiently and persistently, without polemics or recrimination, towards concrete results. The aim must be that of the Buddha: "The only true victory is one in which there are no victors and no vanquished". Quiet diplomacy by the sherpas, not meretricious grandstanding by Prime Ministers, is what might bring modest but workable results. That is how the 2004-07 Lambah-Aziz back-channel brought us to the doorstep of a Kashmir solution. That is the way in which the NSAs might yet lead us out of the dark tunnel of terrorism.
(Mani Shankar Aiyar is a Congress MP in the Rajya Sabha.)Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of NDTV and NDTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.