India’s funny posturing

While India has understandably been quick in greeting American decision of halting military aid for Pakistan, Director-General Inter-Service Public Relations (ISPR), in a very terse and to the point statement, has made it absolutely clear that conditional aid was not acceptable. In an interview, he said Pakistan was capable of fighting the war against terror without US assistance and this has amply been proved in successful operations in South Waziristan and Bajaur.
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Had the matter been not serious, New Delhi’s audacious reaction to the US military aid cut-down to Pakistan would have been the joke of the century. Welcoming the US decision, India’s external affairs minister S.M Krishna has stated that the heavy presence of the US arms would have disturbed the equilibrium in the region. But with a multi-billion-dollar arms shopping list for state-of-the-art weaponry to refurbish its huge military, one of the world’s biggest, India could be the last to say this. Indeed, one to be worried has to be Pakistan, not India. For, its new armament spree would not only fatten up enormously India’s already-tremendous military might, in the face which Pakistan’s military strength pales into mere puniness. Predictably, this would also ratchet up the threat posture of India to Pakistan greatly. Verifiably, India keeps the bulk of its military might deployed against Pakistan on the ground, in the air and on the sea. And logically much of its acquisitions of warplanes, warships and lethal weapons will be pressed into further building up its military might’s deployment against Pakistan.As a matter of fact, no jingoist voices are being raised from any corridors of the Islamabad establishment. That privilege remains in the domain of the Indian establishment. It is from the high portals of New Delhi that cries of Cold Start and two simultaneous wars on two fronts under nuclear overhang keep pouring out. Not just that. As part of their Pakistan-specific Cold Start doctrine, the Indian military commanders have raised a rapid-action south-west strike command to take on Pakistan along the long border stretching between their states of Punjab and Rajasthan. The strike command envisages a surprise combined invasion on the ground and from the air to quickly capture, control and hold specific targets inside the Pakistani territory well before the international community intervenes. And they have even spruced up their forward airbases as well. Given this, Krishna’s chant could be the most perfidious and deceitful mantra. Unarguably, the real equilibrium disturber in the region is India, both presently for its daunting military build-up as well as potentially for its hunger to fatten up its military muscle awesomely by accumulating the deadly weaponry from all around the world. In fact, the voice for peace, amity and normality is rising constantly from Islamabad, not from New Delhi. And it is Islamabad that is visibly much more forthcoming in working to that end. The obstruction is coming up primarily from the Indian establishment, for whose resistance some almost done deals on outstanding issues like the Siachen demilitarisation are failing to come to finality. Even on Kashmir, Islamabad has over the time displayed a lot of accommodation for its settlement, with Pervez Musharraf going to the extent of compromising enormously on Pakistan’s original stance rooted in the UN resolution for the dispute’s settlement. But, for reasons so obvious, New Delhi remains stuck with terrorism contrivance. Yet if it comes to that, there was also a Samjhota train terrorist episode if there was a Mumbai terrorist carnage. And in that train strike, mostly Pakistani passengers were killed. And that assault was admittedly carried out by rabid Hindu fundamentalists, with deep links in the Indian military. Furthermore, several terrorist attacks that the Indian establishment had instantly slapped on the Pakistan intelligence agency ISI have been traced down to Hindu fanatics by the Indian investigators themselves. Those vile acts had actually been perpetrated by those fanatics with official connections. All said and done, there is hardly a ground for New Delhi for marking any kind of one-upmanship. It has no face to show for piety. Its posturing is too slim and too obscene to hold, so ugly is its track record for expansionism, interventionism and use of terrorism as state policy. Instead of flying into ecstasy of glee over this American adventurism against Pakistan, India would do well to cleanse up its own act.

(The Frontier Post)