Lesson five: victory without a fight

By Humayun Gauhar

My dear Muhammad Ali:

"It is best to win without fighting," said the Chinese sage Sun Tzu. That's just what we've done.The late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto put it even better. He said that a politician's "fingers have to be nimble enough to insinuate under the bird and remove all the eggs, one by one, without the bird realising it." All India's eggs are gone. I'm not saying it, the Indians are, and no ordinary Indians but their most respected newspapers and publications, namely, Times of India, Hindustan Times and the magazine India Today. What remains to be decided is what to do with the eggs - fry them, poach them, scramble them or make an Indian Masala Omelette out of them. They are going to hate me even more for this - the truth always hurts - but what I am about to say here is in Indian words, not mine - repeat, Indian words not mine. They are the words of India's top newspapers and commentators, not your father Humayun Gauhar.

They are recalling how the Chairman of the US Joint Chief of Staff Committee Admiral Mike Mullen came to Pakistan to ask our army chief for a guarantee that we would not retaliate against Indian surgical strikes and how General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani showed him a photograph taken on December 13 of an Indian Mirage-2000 locked by a Pakistani F-16. "Next time, we'll bring it down," he told Mullen. To make sure that Mullen got the message and didn't think Kayani was bluffing, our jets started patrolling the skies in hot mode and a red-alert was issued throughout the country.

Once again India and Pakistan stood eyeball-to-eyeball. Once again India blinked first. Its media and officials are admitting defeat without a shot being fired - a defeat in diplomacy. Said the Times of India: "While the de-escalation should soothe the tense nerves of the international community, it was being feared that Islamabad, by raising the bogey of war, may have edged out India's concerns. By feeding fears of an imminent conflict between two nuclear-armed rivals, it had ensured that the focus would shift towards conflict prevention. Indian security experts noted that Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani made it a point to mention that, "our friends are persuading India against aggression."

"While the government persisted with reminders to Islamabad about unkept promises, independent security experts said Pakistan may have got away with almost no cost at all. 'As of now, Pakistan has managed to divert attention from the Mumbai attacks to an India-Pak conflict', said K Subrahmanyam.

"It was diplomacy by fear, and Pakistan played it effectively. As it allowed passions to run high and let known terrorists join in the show of national belligerence, it was also playing victim. As part of the script, its foreign secretary, it now turns out, even summoned the Indian high commissioner in Islamabad, Satyabrata Pal, on Friday to lecture him on the need for India to bring down tensions.