The Gurdaspur provocation will spur the Modi government to focus on terror in talks with Islamabad and end flip-flops that defined its Pakistan policy over the past yearThe excitement from Ufa had barely settled in Delhi when a terrorist attack in Gurdaspur provoked a familiar rush of angst and adrenalin. After nearly a decade the international boundary in Punjab had been breached, raking up dreaded memories of the insurgency of the Eighties. With the Line of Control up north in Jammu & Kashmir also tense, intelligence officials wondered if India was in for another round of prolonged insecurity on its western borders.
The big question was if the thaw in Ufa would survive the most recent onslaught of terror. A mere cup of tea barely a year ago between Pakistani high commissioner Abdul Basit and Hurriyat leader Shabir Shah had been enough to put a scowl on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's face. Just like that, India had cancelled impending talks between the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan.
Police fight militants during the encounter in Dinanagar, Gurdaspur, on July 27.
Certainly Modi wants to show the world, at the UN and elsewhere that India, with its size, economy and willingness to break with old shibboleths, is the true leader of South Asia. But since leadership requires the ability to bite both lip and the proverbial bullet, another template was in order to deal with Pakistan.
And so disregarding pressure from an RSS increasingly concerned that he was making peace with the Islamic Republic, the Prime Minister has decided to change the game. Talks with Pakistan will continue, but only on a one-point agenda: terrorism.
The joint statement at Ufa, government sources say, is already heavily loaded in favour of a discussion on the subject and all its manifestations. At Ufa, Pakistan even promised to do what it could to deliver voice samples of the Mumbai attack accused, such as Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi, to India.
"The talks between the two NSAs will be about terrorism, terrorism and more terrorism," government sources said, adding, "the composite dialogue as we know it, when both sides talked on all issues, is dead."
The sources said that the Gurdaspur attack was a deliberate attempt on the part of the Pakistani security establishment to roil the waters and so anger the Indian government that it had no option but to cancel the dialogue.
"But we will do no such thing. We will do exactly the opposite. It is clear that someone in Pakistan, by sending three terrorists into Gurdaspur, don't want the talks to continue. They are hoping India will cancel the talks so they can tell the world, See, we told you so," the sources said.
In fact, across the corridors of power in North Block and South Block and elsewhere, politicians and bureaucrats are girding up their loins to deal with worse-case scenarios. The uneasy feeling that more Gurdaspurlike attacks, in the wake of the Yakub Memon hanging as well as in the run up to the Aziz-Doval meet could take place, hangs around the place.
But Modi is determined to deal with the oncoming slings and arrows of misfortune with renewed energy. Travelling the world over the last year and hearing the world speak to you in very different ways from the time you were chief minister has certainly helped to focus the Prime Minister's mind.
Government sources point out that the three men who were inserted into Indian territory carrying GPS preset to the Dinanagar police station in Gurdaspur district, had to have been mentored, guided and perhaps even trained by the all-powerful Pakistani security establishment. These men were also reportedly carrying night vision devices with US military markings, only used in counterterrorism operations, and which may have been given to the Pakistani military for its own use.
The violation of the Punjab border is significant because unlike the Line of Control in Jammu & Kashmir, this is an agreed-upon border. Home Minister Rajnath Singh told the Rajya Sabha on July 30 that preliminary evidence suggests the attackers might have infiltrated taking advantage of heavy rains and swollen streams along the India-Pakistan border.
The sources were unwilling to say whether these men are Lashkar-e-Taiba cadres or elements within the jihadi groups gone rogue. But they believe the Pakistani security establishment was using them, perhaps "to test the waters in India's Punjab" to possibly reignite a "Khalistani movement of sorts".
It is believed that several Sikh jathas or groups that regularly travel to Sikh shrines inside Pakistan have been addressed by "Khalistani leaders", while the capitals of Western Europe as well as the US and Canada in which large Sikh populations reside are being "sounded out" to perhaps join a potential movement in case the need arises.
On both sides of the border it is widely believed that the main reason for the growing ferment in Punjab is political discontent, and that the state is ripe for change. The ruling Shiromani Akali Dal and its ally, the BJP, don't agree on a number of issues, although they still remain a part of the Union government. However, the Congress party in the Opposition remains unable to step into the political vacuum because it is itself divided and the Aam Aadmi Party, a growing third force, isn't ready yet to jump into the fray.
Enter the Pakistan based terrorist who is finding it increasingly difficult to infiltrate into Jammu and Kashmir, not only because the Line of Control is fenced or that the large numbers of security forces have successfully kept infiltration down, but also because the people of the Kashmir valley have made it clear that accession to Pakistan is a low priority.
That is why, says Lt Gen (retd) Syed Ata Hasnain, a former commander of the 15 Corps based in Srinagar, these cross-border terrorists are being forced to move south. With the 15 Corps "tightening" security in the Valley and the 16 Corps, deployed south of the Pir Panjal, also following suit, it has become "very difficult" to infiltrate both men and material into Kashmir, Lt Gen Hasnain said.
Turns out that the first big district south of the Pir Panjal is Gurdaspur. Once the summer home of the Lion of Punjab, Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Dinanagar became the choice target of attack of the three Pakistan-based terrorists. Within kissing distance is the Ravi river, and on the other side is the Shakargarh tehsil, part of Gurdaspur before 1947 and now integrated with Pakistan's Sialkot district.
Sources also point out the pattern in the up-and-down peace dialogue with Pakistan over the years, how peace moves are often preceded or succeeded by terror attacks, so as to derail them. The classic example is, of course, the Lahore bus ride in February 1999 followed by the Kargil conflict that summer. The failed Agra summit of July 2001 was succeeded by an attack against the legislative assembly in Srinagar in October and the parliament in Delhi in December 2001. As a result India cancelled flights and stopped giving visas, but Pakistani terrorists were back in Kaluchak, Jammu, in May 2002, killing civilians and army personnel and nearly sending both nations to war.
More recently, within three weeks of Nawaz Sharif attending Modi's swearing-in on May 26 last year, the Pakistani army violated the ceasefire 19 times. And two weeks after Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar visited Pakistan on March 3 to break the ice, terrorists from Pakistan mounted strikes in Samba and Kathua. Analysts say that China played a key role in getting its "all-weather partner" Pakistan to come to the Ufa talks. Over the last year Pakistan's international influence has grown by leaps and bounds, both with the US and China, because it has been able to get the various Taliban factions to talk to the Afghan government in Murree, a hill station not far from Islamabad. The second round of these Afghan talks is slated for July 31.
Neither side is said to have expected much from the handshake in Ufa. But surprisingly, sources from both sides say, the hour-long Modi-Sharif conversation went well. Both sides had expected acrimony-in fact, they had prepared for worst-case scenarios-but instead, they got agreement on all key issues.
In the wake of the Gurdaspur incident, producing a joint statement certainly seems the easy part of the high-stakes India-Pakistan engagement. Implementing any fancy communiqué on the ground is the torturous part.
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