The Pathankot attack is not a spontaneous response to recent developments; it is a manifestation of Pakistan’s national security strategy to pursue its revisionist agenda against India, says C Christine Fair, author of Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War, and an associate professor in the Peace and Security Studies Programme at Georgetown University’s Edmund A Walsh School of Foreign Service. Fair, who earlier served as a political officer to the UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan in Kabul, tells Bhaswar Kumar in a telephonic interview that there is a consensus within the Indian security establishment that India lacks the offensive capability to defeat Pakistan in a short war.

1. An analysis on Pak motives on undertaking the Patahnkot attacks....
The Pathankot attack is not a spontaneous response to recent developments; it is a manifestation of Pakistan’s national security
strategy to pursue its revisionist agenda against India, says C Christine Fair, author of Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s
Way of War, and an associate professor in the Peace and Security Studies Programme at Georgetow n University’s Edmund A
Walsh Schoolof Foreign Service. Fair, w ho earlier served as a political officer to the UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan in Kabul,
tells Bhaswar Kumar in a telephonic interview that there is a consensus w ithin the Indian security establishment that India lacks the
offensive capability to defeat Pakistan in a short w ar.
The January 2 attack on an IndianAir Force base in Pathankot was allegedly carried out by Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM)
operatives. What are the dynamics betweenorganisations like JeM and Pakistan’s military and civilian establishments?
Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) set up JeM as a competitor to the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), w hich the ISI had formed
earlier. Before the formation of JeM, three Pakistani terrorists – Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and Maulana
Masood Azhar – w ere released by Indian authorities in return for hostages taken during the hijacking of the Indian Airlines flight IC-
814 in December 1999. Azhar and the tw o other terrorists, upon their release in Kandahar, w ere ferried to Pakistan under ISI escort.
Within a few w eeks, Azhar announced the formation of JeM in Karachi.
LeT and JeM are ideologically distinct organisations. JeM, like the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, is Deobandi; LeT is Ahle Hadees.
Besides, JeM generally conducts suicide attacks, w hile LeT conducts high-risk missions w here the goal is not to die but its
operatives w ould still rather die than be taken captives.
These terrorist groups have an army major assigned to them. It is the majors’ responsibility to ensure the groups’ operatives are
trained and they get the required resources. A major can, for example, authorise a small-level attack in Kashmir against an Indian
army unit — an offensive that does not have major strategic implications. On the other hand, every attack outside of Kashmir has to
have the army chief’s imprimatur, given the likely strategic implications — after all, if the Americans get upset and hold up coalition
support funding, it is the army chief w ho w ill have to answ er.
The Pathankot attack came withina week of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visitto Lahore and the resumption of
talks with Pakistan. Have the terrorists and their handlers achieved their goal by creating a hurdle for the peace process?
If the attack is seen as an attempt to derail the nascent peace process betw een the tw o countries, it might be a misreading of the
w ay in w hich Pakistan employs its jihadi assets to secure its strategic interests in the region. The attack on the air base is not a
spontaneous response to recent developments. It is simply the latest manifestation of the Pakistani national security strategy to
pursue its revisionist agenda against India.
Pakistan has called PM Modi’s bluff. Despite all the rhetoric, there is a consensus within the Indian security establishment – at least
among those w ho draw their conclusions from data instead of speaking from nationalist sentiment – that India lacks the offensive
capability to defeat Pakistan in a short w ar. That is important because there w ill only be a short w ar betw een India and Pakistan,
due to the presence of nuclear w eapons on both sides, if the former responds to such a provocation.
They did it at Gurdaspur, too. The Gurdaspur attackw asnot in response to the meeting betw een Modi and Sharif in Ufa. The timing
of the Gurdaspur attack is important; it occurred after the reported Indian raid in Myanmar against militants. You w ill remember the
statements issued after the Myanmar raid, w arning that all other neighbours of India harbouring terrorists w ould receive the same
treatment. You w ill also remember the Pakistani response to these statements. Gurdaspur w as really about calling the Indian
government out on its statements and bravado after the Myanmar incident.
Both these attacks – Pathankot and Gurdaspur – w ere conducted in and around tier-III cities or small tow ns. Unlike an attack on a
city like Mumbai or Delhi, w hich willcause a massive uproar and have a galvanising impact on the populace – the Parliament attack,
for instance – these w ere carefully calibrated probes to continue to test India’s red lines. We need to see this in tandem w ith the
attack on the Indian consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif. Pakistan has been testing India’s red lines w ithin Indian territory and in
Afghanistan.
When you say Pakistan has calledthe government’s bluff, are you referring to Pakistan’s civilian government or its military
establishment?
The civilians are irrelevant in this case. This is all coming from the army. There is no “rogue” ISI, either. The ISI reports to the
Pakistani army chief.
Don’t you think that the recently revived dialogue process is the only way forward?
India should not be talking to Pakistan at all. Pakistan says it has a legitimate claim on Kashmir, w hich it does not. The Indian
Independence Act of 1947 allow ed the princely states to decide their fate. India possesses Kashmir’s instrument of accession. The
case of Junagarh and Hyderabad complicates the morality of India’s actions, but that is a different issue.
Pakistan could have made a claim for Junagarh at the UN but it has no claim over Kashmir. Pakistan also did not fulfil the first
condition required for a plebiscite under the UN Security Council resolution on Kashmir. Of course, the Shimla agreement obviates
that in any event.

2. As India continues to talk to Pakistan on the issue of Kashmir, it emboldens the Pakistanis and legitimises their narrative
domestically. It fosters the belief among Pakistanis that their claim is entertained by India. The Pakistani army gets to tell its people
that even the Indians know that they need to talk to us.
If Pakistan w ants peace, it could have it by accepting the LoC as the formal border and desisting from sending terrorists across the
border. By the w ay, that would technically be a concession fromthe Indian side since it has an instrument of accession for the whole
of Kashmir. India should be w illing to talk only w hen Pakistan is w illing to ratify the LoC as the border.
Every time one of these attacks occurs, the benefit that Pakistan gets is that the international community calls for talks betw een
India and Pakistan for resolving outstanding issues. In other w ords, the international community imposes a false equivalence
betw een Pakistan and India. If you cannot punish Pakistan for its support to terrorist organisations, at least you can deprive it of any
benefit.
The international community w ill have to change its talking points. If the international community, instead of calling for talks, says
Pakistan needs to act like a responsible nuclear pow er that does not conduct proxy w arfare against its neighbours, and that the
changing of maps by bloodshed is not acceptable, Pakistan w ill be deprived of any benefit from such attacks.
According to reports, Nawaz Sharif has calledPM Modi and assured him of action against the persons responsible…
This is absolute dramebaazi. Sharif is an irrelevant actor in these matters.
Aside from military funding and support, consider the fact that Hafiz Saeed’s Jamat-ud-Daw a (JuD), the rechristened LeT, gets
money from the budget of Pakistani Punjab’s government, w hich is run by Sharif’s party. The government said it w ould run JuD’s
educational establishments, so JuD has a line item in every Punjab provincial government budget.
Besides, JeM enjoys political cover from the tw o factions of the Jamiat ul-e-Islami.
How can India build an effective deterrence against this form of sub-conventional warfare?
I do not see too many options that India has. It has not made the investments it needs to ensure deterrence against such acts by
w ay of offensive superiority on its international border. India’s current conventional posture on the international border is of
defensive competence instead of offensive superiority.
Defence modernisation for such deterrence requires reconfiguring your current military assets, w hich are bulky and easily
detectable, into smaller units that can be forw ard-deployed much more rapidly w ithout the intelligence footprint that Pakistan can
easily detect.
It is about personnelpolicies. India does not need a huge standing army for such purposes as much as it needs specialoperators to
conduct hot-pursuit missions into Pakistani territory without detection. Currently, India does not have a Chief of Defence Staff (CDS)
or “jointness” among the different branches of its armed forces for seamless interoperability. Pakistan does not suffer from these
shortcomings; it has “jointness” and it essentially has a CDS in the form of its army chief. Most disturbingly, Pakistan’s position has
been significantly bolstered by American military largesse.
Lastly, but most importantly, there needs to be the political w ill to use these assets as and w hen required.
This is not a bad time to be an Indian. Successive governments have come to understand that if you remain focused on not having a
large confrontation w ith Pakistan, India’s economy w ill continue to grow . But, you can have this attitude only if you are w illing to
suffer several casualties in attacks from Pakistan every year.
We have seen a resurgence of JeM in the recent past...
JeM had been defunct for years after it split in December of 2001. Its leadership w as divided over w hether they should turn their
guns on Pakistan for aiding the Americans in bringing dow n the Taliban. Azhar said he w ould not turn against Pakistan even as
members of his organisation revolted and w ent on to join Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
Azhar w as kept in protective custody for years and allow ed to grow his empire in Bhaw alpur. The thinking of ISI w as that as long as
people w ere loyal to Azhar they w ould not turn their guns on Pakistan.
As part of its strategy to combat TTP, the Pakistani army contacted TTP commanders and gave them a choice to go back and fight
in Afghanistan; this coincided w ith the elections in Afghanistan. The other important part of the strategy w as that the Pakistani army
revivified JeM to draw back the original defectors from JeM and redirect them to India.
In a piece I had w ritten for India Today in September last year, I predicted the next attack w ould probably be conducted by JeM,
instead of LeT. My colleagues at the UN w ho had been monitoring Al Qaida and the Taliban informed me a year ago that the JeM
cadre w as amassing at the LoC betw een India and Pakistan.
The move to revivify JeM is very much part of the Pakistani army’s domestic security strategy.