Pakistan Tests Modi's Mettle With Gurdaspur Terror Attack

When it was obvious that Narendra Modi would become India's prime minister, Pakistan grew alarmed. Modi's party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, is the party that gave India its nuclear status. Indians voted for Modi and the brave India he promised in hopes that his government would not indulge Pakistani predations, and punish them instead. Pakistan has developed one core strategy in dealing with India over the decades: deploy Islamist militants to attack India while seeking cover from retaliation under its nuclear weapons. It should be noted that while Pakistan is most notorious for supporting Islamist terrorists, it also supports religious and ethnic insurgencies within India as well. Pakistan not only seeks to use terrorism to illegitimately acquire territory in Indian Kashmir, it also wants to resist India's rise in the international system. Until the Modi administration, Pakistan has remained fairly confident that India will not respond militarily to punish Pakistan for its state-sponsored terrorism or to deter it from doing so in the future.
Modi's election prompted Pakistan to wonder how India will respond to a bold Pakistan-backed terrorist attack. Would it follow the path of the previous prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and defuse public demands for revenge in effort to avoiding any skirmish with Pakistan that would impede India's economic growth? Or would it embrace a more hawkish approach that would punish Pakistan?
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The attack on Gurdaspur is an important escalation by Pakistan. It is the first attack during the Modi government's tenure that has taken place outside of Jammu and Kashmir, the territory that Pakistan seeks to wrest from India. Yet Gurdaspur, a middling third-tier city that will not capture the attention of India's public for long, does not have the provocation power of, say, an attack on Delhi or Mumbai. It is unlikely, in the minds of Pakistanis, that India would risk war for Gurdaspur. However, it is almost certain that a tepid response to the Gurdaspur attack will most likely invite more ambitious attacks on high-value targets within India.
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If India fails to respond, it will no doubt court further Pakistani adventurism. After the bust-up in Myanmar, a failure to take decisive action to punish Pakistan will mean that Pakistan has essentially called India's bluff.
India has options that include political, diplomatic, economic and military modes of redress. Diplomatically, it can downgrade Pakistan's mission or even oust Pakistan's ambassador. India can engage in economic sabotage. Military options that are proportionate include air raids on terror camps in Pakistan-administered Kashmir from aircraft safely within Indian airspace. These are all options at the lower end of the spectrum.

Politically, India must change the narrative about this conflict with its major partners. India would be behooved to tell its international backers bluntly that there is no "India-Pakistan problem" -- only a Pakistan problem. India's partners should support India in its application of power and join hands to force Pakistan to abandon terror under a nuclear umbrella as tools of foreign policy rather than, as is the case, finding ways of excusing Pakistan's behavior in order to continue writing checks to Islamabad.
Pakistan is not just India's problem. It's time the international community understood this and began acting accordingly.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/c-chr...spur_b_7926308.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592

My view is slightly different and may not be 'liked' by many. Since some bi-lateral talks are to be held shortly, as usual, the ISI (i.e., the Pak army) is giving a signal to the Pak civilian government that it is the army which is the real boss there in that country. I also suspect that the ISI could have drafted the ISIS volunteers in the Pak-afghan border to show their mettle in a rather new point of the border, and based on their own evaluation, similar attacks are likely to be staged at various points along not only Punjab but also Rajasthan and Gujarat. This would necessitate India employing a large part of its army in its western borders thus weakening the Indo-China and Indo-Myanmar etc., borders. Alternative is to thoroughly train and equip the police forces across the border states to face terrorist attacks 24x7x365.

ISIS volunteers will probably get arms and other equipment without ISI footing the bill or getting caught; the blame can be put, conveniently, on some other terrorist organization like the LeT!

Of course this is just a sneaking suspicion because there was a news item a few days ago that ISIS'next target would be India.

India's diplomatic strategy must seek to raise the stakes for Washington and Beijing by making them more responsible in their roles.
India will, declared Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, provide a “befitting reply” to Pakistan for its terror attacks. Usually, such statements are taken seriously. But in this case, we can expect Pakistan to brush aside such exhortations as empty talk.

Neither will Washington or Beijing take Indian opprobrium seriously. And they are not wrong in their assessment. India’s political elite and security community has failed spectacularly in formulating a viable response to Pakistan’s cross-border proxy war. Each terror incident invokes anger, frustration, and finally, a resigned acceptance. A powerful image underlying the political elite’s prism towards Pakistan is India’s economic stability constrains Indian options. An Indo-Pakistan crisis will frighten investors and isolate India from the world economy. Although in an age of interdependence such an assumption appears intuitive, it is really a self-constructed myth to justify inaction.

India’s $2 trillion economy has its own fundamentals and can ride out spurts of brinkmanship and arguably even limited conflicts. Nevertheless, this notion that India’s economy requires a Pakistan policy that looks the other way to cross-border terror has had a pernicious effect on New Delhi’s strategic thinking. Instead of seeking to develop a credible counter-strategy to Pakistan’s sub-conventional war, India’s security community has taken the lazy way out.

Pakistan’s strategy to impose little cuts on India, no single one large enough to provoke a reprisal but enough to bog India down psychologically and accept a running stream of casualties in its heartland for decades, has been as much Pakistan’s strategic success as India’s sheer failure to adapt its military-strategic and diplomatic ideas.
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/493365/can-india-counter.html

prasad1 said:

India's diplomatic strategy must seek to raise the stakes for Washington and Beijing by making them more responsible in their roles.

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India's foreign policy had tilted towards USSR for a long time and, during this period, Pakistan was smart enough (or fortunate enough) to move as close as possible to the US, probably on the basis that if India has USSR as friend, then US will definitely become closer to their country. This line of reasoning worked especially accurately during the cold war years. US has sort of built its own "base" in Pakistan (just as the US had its base in the Philippines, overtly) and this eminently serves the national priorities of US vis-a-vis China and Russia.

India, on the contrary, seems to be moving farther and farther away from the US, with each step it tries to go nearer!

In such a situation we cannot expect the US to stand by our country in any eventuality. The only way open to India is to develop its own military and arms capacity. And that requires great discipline and greater sacrifice from the people, coupled with complete honesty and dedication to the cause, from the political class across the spectrum, the bureaucracy, etc. But even the present government has revealed that it is no different at all from the previous one in shielding the corrupt and being not answerable to the public voice.

The country's vulnerability and helplessness is not understood by most of the Aam Aadmi, nor have our politicians learned the necessity to make our people realize this subtly, and, with the so-called "hindutva" forces chest thumping, there is a false notion of India having been "the greatest country" in some unspecified past and therefore we will continue to be so and emerge victorious in any clashes with anyone. If and when a contingency arises, our "wise" people will do more elaborate and costlier poojas in the temples of Rama and Krishna, perform "sarvato jaya" yagas by learned pundits, etc., and history will most likely repeat itself after a lull of a few centuries!

India will, declared Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, provide a “befitting reply” to Pakistan for its terror attacks. Usually, such statements are taken seriously. But in this case, we can expect Pakistan to brush aside such exhortations as empty talk.

Neither will Washington or Beijing take Indian opprobrium seriously. And they are not wrong in their assessment. India’s political elite and security community has failed spectacularly in formulating a viable response to Pakistan’s cross-border proxy war. Each terror incident invokes anger, frustration, and finally, a resigned acceptance. A powerful image underlying the political elite’s prism towards Pakistan is India’s economic stability constrains Indian options. An Indo-Pakistan crisis will frighten investors and isolate India from the world economy. Although in an age of interdependence such an assumption appears intuitive, it is really a self-constructed myth to justify inaction.

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The first step needed is to awaken our people from their deep slumber and make them realize the country's vulnerability and its deficiencies. The government and the media together have to do this without giving the impression that the government is getting unnerved.

India has been trying to score high in terms of foreign investibility ever since we opened out our economy. I feel this is a patently foolish step. We have to raise resources from within our own $2 trillion economy, may be by floating government bonds with long duration, etc. Ultimately, however, no step will succeed unless the congenital malaise of pervasive corruption is completely eradicated. However, our mindset, as seen even in this small forum, is to cite that there is corruption in US, UK, Europe, etc., and thus justify our own corruption, even if in a convoluted way.

What astounds me is our extreme religiosity and at the same time indulging in corruption!

India’s $2 trillion economy has its own fundamentals and can ride out spurts of brinkmanship and arguably even limited conflicts.

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This is just wishful thinking. Corruption has already eaten out the country's stamina almost completely and hence even a limited war of a few days will expose our weaknesses to our enemy in more detail. We have to face the truth and tell it to our people. After all, more than half of the Indian population is still BPL and struggling for two square meals a day, and so, any more sacrifices on their part will not add much to the govt. coffers; hence it is the rich who have to be told, but most of them have built their cozy nests abroad, already!

If I were Modi:

1) I will tell Pak plainly that if it comes to a nuclear exchange, India has depth. Pakistan will disappear from the map but India will still survive.

2) Having said that i will instruct the army to fire a few rockets into mainland Pak Punjab every time there is a terrorist attack from across the border.I will strictly tell the army that for every attack inside India, there should be a casualty of atlest 100 in Pakistan due to the rocket attack. If the situation gets out of hand and become a full fledged border incident be it. We can also cause unbearable damage to Pak.

3) If it is going to be full fledged war, let it come. Let us see what is the result.

4) I will carefully encourage the social media in India to blame the rocket shells on the Hindutva forces which are eager to have a war just as we speak about the ISI, Army etc., in Pak. I do not believe in all this nonsense of the Pak Army and ISI being a nation unt0o themselves not controlled by Pak civilian Govt., Stupid. They are manipulating us.

5) At every opportunity the gun will be made to speak and not politicians in India. I will issue strict instructions to my political heavy weights not to talk about Pak.

6) Neither US nor Russia will be bothered about what is happen ing in the subcontinent as they have their own problems pressing them hard. The US today is not the US of Nixon and Russia today is not the Soviet Union of Brezhnev. And India today is also not the India of 1971.

7) I will instruct every Indian in the border with Pak to carry a personal ID card like the aadhaar card with biometric details linked to a central server. Any one without the card will have to prove his nationality. The onus will lie with him/her and not with the Govt.,

8) I will get the wire fencing of the international border completed on priority.

[h=1]India-Pakistan Border Fence[/h] India shares 3323 Km (including Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu & Kashmir sector) of its land border with Pakistan. This border runs along the States of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir. The Indo-Pakistan border has varied terrain and distinct geographical features. This border is characterized by attempts at infiltration by terrorists and smuggling of arms, ammunition and contraband, the Line of Control being the most active and live portion of the border.
India fenced and flood-lit 461 kms of Punjab’s border with Pakistan from 1988 to 1993. The 1,048 km Rajasthan- Pakistan border was fenced and flood- lit by 1999. “Due to this, terrorism and other anti- national acts from across the border have been checked,” said a Parliamentary Standing Committee report on Border Fencing.
Indo-Pakistan border - Construction of 340 Km of border roads and 137 Km of link roads along Pakistan border in Gujarat sector had been sanctioned, of which 294 Km of border roads and 136 Km of link roads have been completed.
Challenges remained on the contentious Line of Control in Jammu & Kashmir and the unfenced 93 km of Rann of Kutch in Gujarat. India caught 128 infiltrators from Pakistan in 2006 and as many in 2007. Some 123 Pakistani infiltrators had been caught till November 2008 and there were two instances of armed Pakistani men cutting the fence in the Jammu Sector.
BSF proposed shifting of 23.380 Km of fencing closer to the border in certain stretches of Ferozepur sector in Punjab due to the problems being faced by the farmers in cultivating their lands. Cost estimates of the proposal are being worked out by CPWD. The work commenced during 2007-08. A total length of 462.45 Kms and 461 Km had been fenced and flood lit respectively by 2008 in the entire Punjab sector, except some gaps in riverine areas. In Rajasthan sector also, the work of construction of fencing and flood lighting in 1048 Kms and 1023 Kms respectively had been completed except certain shifting sand dune areas.
In Jammu sector, the work of construction of 185 Km of fencing had been completed. 175.50 Km of floodlighting works have also been completed and work on 9.96 Km will be undertaken after realignment of fencing. Work of floodlighting in a length of 0.54 Km is in progress in 2008.
With the sealing of Punjab and Rajsthan borders, vulnerability of Gujarat border to infiltration and other illegal cross-border activities increased. Therefore, the Government approved a comprehensive proposal for erecting fencing, flood lighting and construction of border/link roads and Border Out-Posts for Border Security Force in the Gujarat sector of the Indo-Pak border. As of 2008, 217 Km of fencing and 202 Km of flood lighting had been completed in the Gujarat sector out of 310 Km sanctioned.
There was a "time overrun" in completing the Gujarat project due to unforeseen circumstances and natural calamities including devastating earthquake in 2001, unprecedented rains and consequential floods in 2003 & 2006. The cost of the project has also increased considerably due to price escalation, increase in the scope of work, upgradation of specifications for roads and electrical works etc. In addition, an expenditure of Rs.223.00 crore is estimated for upgradation works as per Central Road Research Institute (CRRI) recommendations after floods in 2006.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/india/india-pakistan-fence.htm


The flash floods take down fences. Other natural disasters also breach fences. Insurgents cuts the fences regularly. Erecting fence is not one time job. Maintaining and patrolling such a long fence is not feasible and will be costly.