The Bad Cop Routine

By Abbas Jafari 

 

 

  Usually it is the good cop—bad cop routine that is supposed to get results. India seems to have opted for just a bad cop routine. Everybody there has suddenly become a bad cop out to get Pakistan. The US and UK are trying to be good cops to prevent India from going into areas best left alone when nuclear weapons are around.

 

  The mild Indian Prime Minister read from a script that Pakistan was a state that ‘used terror as an instrument of policy’. He did not sound very convincing and there were no takers for this statement. The Indian Foreign Minister who is trying desperately to turn himself into a hawk has been blaming Pakistan, individuals in Pakistan, entities in Pakistan, the Pakistan Army, the ISI and finally all of these. The Indian Home Minister has threatened to ‘sever all links’ and to ‘isolate’ Pakistan---probably meaning from India and not the world. The latest to be trotted out was India’s Army Chief who after beating around the bush finally did say that ‘there was a military option’ but that ‘it would be the last resort’. He did not add that no one knew where that would take the sub-continent or what would happen to its unfortunate residents.

 

  Various analysts have been talking of the ‘political aim’ of India if it resorted to the military option and how the political aim could be translated into a neat ‘military aim’. A western writer dredged up the whole bit about the insecurity of Pakistan’s nuclear assets to make the point that if Pakistan moved its nukes in response to Indian threats then they would be vulnerable to terrorist takeover. There is the concern over troop movement from Pakistan’s western borders to the eastern border and how Pakistan could be squeezed by a two front threat---the “Afghan militants’ attack on a Pakistani post could be a sort of message. There is the scenario of a naval blockade, an air cap over Pakistan and some kind of surgical strike that will serve as a collective climax for Indians who can go limp after that and relax.

 

  The point being missed is that Pakistan has armed forces---smaller but potent. The Air Force will retaliate, the Navy’s subs will be out in the sea and the Army will be more than prepared to repulse and counter-strike. Also being ignored is the fact that there are no threatening noises from Pakistan—neither from the politicians nor the military. Another fact that is not registering is that Pakistan is offering cooperation and joint investigation. Pakistan has acknowledged that the captured survivor is a Pakistani and that the ‘dossier’ from India would be examined, investigated and responded to. Of course there are doubts within Pakistan—how could those responsible for such a meticulously planned attack be so moronic that they would strew ‘made in Pakistan’ items all over Mumbai? Perhaps they did this on purpose to create the kind of ‘point of no return’ situation that India is bent upon creating. If true then the attackers had nothing to do with the state of Pakistan and India is doing exactly what they wanted it to do.

 

  Fortunately there are sane heads on both sides of the border but will their sanity prevail?