What is the government of India thinking? How has it managed to turn what should have been a strategic and tactical victory - strikes across the Line of Control against Pakistani-backed terrorists - into what increasingly looks like a shambling Public Relations failure?
Let's review where we are. Clearly,
some sort of action was taken as retaliation for the attack on Uri. The government went public, providing minimal details. The Pakistanis, initially on the defensive, got their act together swiftly and took foreign journalists to some of the targeted sectors - leading to a series of stories in the
international press casting doubt on India's claims. India's shambolic Opposition got into the act, with Arvind Kejriwal demanding the government reply to Pakistan, Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam claiming the strikes were "fake" and the Congress officially saying that it, too, had done the same when in power - but also demanding "substantive proof" of the attacks.
To which the BJP retaliated with the only weapon in its rhetorical arsenal, accusing all and sundry of being anti-national.
Here's one basic principle: any Indian action against terrorist infrastructure across the Line of Control would be entirely justified. Here's another basic principle: no government should publicly claim that it has committed actions of which, for whatever reason, it cannot provide credible evidence. Here's a third basic principle: in a democracy, asking a government for evidence of the effect of its stated actions is not an act of disloyalty, but an act of patriotism. All governments must be held to account, even - especially! - when it comes to matters of national security.
Part of the problem is the phrase "surgical strikes". It encompasses an entire gamut of possible actions. To rejoicing
bhakts on Twitter, it carries overtones of the US raid on Abbottabad that killed Osama bin Laden. It could mean a large attack to flatten the infrastructure of a genuine terrorist training camp, a few kilometres inside Pakistani-held territory, the sort of damage US drone strikes routinely inflict. Or it could mean a small group of soldiers crossing the Line of Control to attack forward staging posts a few hundred metres in, with half a dozen casualties. (Note the widely different takes even on where Dudhnial itself, one of the likely targets, is: Praveen Swamy in
The Indian Express calls it "4 km across the LoC from India's nearest forward post...ahead of Kupwara" while Ayesha Siddiqua in
The Wire calls it "200 metres inside the Pakistani side of the Line of Control".)
What is clear is that these three different actions vary widely in how much they would provoke the Pakistan army and in how much "evidence" they would leave behind. It's entirely possible that the government chose the last of the options - the sort of thing that is widely known to have been accomplished before - but for its own reasons has chosen to telegraph to its fanatical followers that, in fact, one of the others was carried out. If so, it has only itself to blame for the mess that it finds itself in. It was trying to be far too clever. It was trying to use national security for political ends, and now finds itself scrambling to recover its position.
This is not to say that the strikes have not achieved certain aims. The most obvious is that they have made clear to Pakistan that limited strikes across the LoC will not result in condemnation of India by the international community. Pakistan's military establishment will be forced to confront the fact that it has few allies in defending its own notion of its sovereignty. In fact, Pakistan's vocal attempt to question whether any attacks took place at all is a likely response to this lack of support; if they could depend on outrage, they would no doubt have instead have produced the evidence of attacks that they are currently denying.
(Nor is the Indian side, including the military briefings, a model of consistency. The initial briefing from Lt General Ranbir Singh indicated clearly that "we do not have any plans for continuation of further operations"; and meanwhile, yesterday Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha said the situation is "still live". What on earth is going on? This is exactly the kind of thing that the government should be more clear to its people about.)
It should also be clear what the strikes have not achieved. They have not demonstrated that India has any greater space to respond conventionally to Pakistan than it did earlier. Whatever the full nature of these strikes, they were clearly below the well-understood threshold for Pakistani escalation. Don't get me wrong: keeping them limited was wise on India's part. But some heavy breathing on the Indian side suggesting that this demonstrates that Pakistan will not use, say, tactical nuclear weapons in response to Indian attacks, is ridiculous. In no war-gaming of an India-Pakistan confrontation has such a strike resulted in real escalation.
The truth is that the Indian government should have been able to congratulate itself on a job well done. It had found a via media between doing nothing in response to Pakistani provocation, and pushing the Pakistani army into a corner where it would be forced to escalate the confrontation. But instead of congratulating itself on this, it gave into the temptation of triumphalism. This crass mix-up has hurt it politically, and India strategically. It is not the first time it has done this - remember the "covert" strikes into Myanmar that a junior minister announced on television?
It has hurt the government politically because it allows the Opposition to demand "proof". If the government provides "proof" - always dicey - then some of those who expected the operation to be larger in scale than it likely was will be disappointed. If it does not provide "proof", then the Opposition will attack its credibility, and it plays into the existing image of the Prime Minister as someone who exaggerates his achievements. To expect the Opposition to shut up and salute is both stupid and unpatriotic. We are not a national security state where claims must be swallowed unquestioningly.
And it has hurt India strategically in two ways. First, because triumphalism has raised expectations about India's greater space to retaliate against Pakistan, although no such additional space has been created. This means that in future, restraint will be that much harder to sell domestically within India. The government could have avoided this by spelling out, in greater detail, the limits of its actions and why staying within those limits was wise.
Second, because this triumphalism may have lowered, rather than raised, the bar for Pakistani escalation. In essence, what has been - since at least 1993 - a regular retributory act has been defined instead as a "new" and singular act. This time Pakistan's military has been able to deny it. Next time it may not. It will not then have the ability to argue that this is business as usual on the LoC. It will find therefore that to maintain its own credibility domestically, it will have to respond with a "new" and singular provocation of its own. In effect, the Indian government's decision to try and win political benefits has increased the uncertainty that would surround future actions on the LoC. This is an act of considerable irresponsibility.
India's security establishment did well to find a way to deal with the post-Uri problem. It's a pity the political establishment let it down by squandering the gains in search of chest-thumping triumph. Sadly that's not the first time it's happened under this government, and I suspect it won't be the last.
(Mihir Swarup Sharma is a fellow at the Observer Research Foundation.)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.