Kaluchak, 2002: When India came close to hitting Pakistan

(NOTE: This article was originally published in the India Today issue dated May 27, 2002)If you gaze long into an abyss, Friedrich Nietzsche once observed, the abyss will gaze back at you. In its relations with Pakistan in the past year, India has stood long at the abyss of war. After the audacious attack on Parliament on December 13, 2001, by terrorists backed by Pakistan, India threatened to retaliate by mounting the largest ever build-up of its military forces on the border.advertisementPakistan appeared to take heed. On January 12, President General Pervez Musharraf in a landmark speech promised to make his nation into a kinder, less fundamentalist country. But he flattered only to deceive.Last week, Pakistan seemed to be back in the business of sending merchants of terror across the border. Early on the morning of May 14, three men dressed in crisp army uniforms with regiment badges and name tags waited at a bus station on the Pathankot-Jammu highway.
With their freshly shaved faces and crew cuts, they looked like any of the hundreds of Indian jawans on their way to join duty in the state. One was dressed as a junior commissioned officer with "Maninder Singh" written on his name plate.At 6.10 a.m. they flagged down a Jammu-bound 42-seater Himachal Pradesh Road Transport bus carrying 33 sleepy passengers from Manali. The conductor, Harish Kumar, noticed nothing unusual in their behaviour. They paid for their tickets and asked to be dropped at Kaluchak, one of the oldest cantonments in India, just 19 km away.advertisementHalf an hour later, the militants stopped the bus at gunpoint and ordered the passengers to get to the middle of the bus. As the passengers huddled together, the terrorists opened fire from their AK-56 machine guns, killing eight.The murderous trio were not done. They then stormed the residential quarters of armymen, indiscriminately spraying bullets that felled 24 people, mainly women and children, apart from injuring 43 others. Among the dead were Kuldeep Kaur and her newly born daughter who was to be named only after her father Subedar Manjit Singh, deployed at the border, returned in a week's time. After a three-hour gunbattle, army officers at Kaluchak shot dead the three terrorists.The timing and the nature of the attack pointed to a new dastardly game plan being unfurled by Pakistan to bring Kashmir back into world focus. Pakistan seemed intent on disrupting the Jammu and Kashmir legislative elections to be held in September. For India, conducting the Kashmir elections peacefully and with a modicum of fairness is now possibly national priority No. 1. It would give India international credibility and be a major step in consolidating its hold on the strife-torn Valley.Such a development is obviously anathema to Musharraf. After having conceded Pakistan's Afghanistan card, he could ill-afford to appear weak on the Kashmir issue to his domestic constituency, especially the religious right. Also, with the US forces engaged in joint operations in Pakistan's tribal areas to flush out Al-Qaida terrorists, Musharraf calculates Washington would dissuade India from contemplating military retaliation.advertisement"Musharraf is signalling to his country and the world that keeping the Kashmir issue on the boil is now his biggest compulsion," says Lt-General (retd) V.R. Raghavan, director, Delhi Policy Group. Emboldened by last month's rigged referendum that gave his dictatorial rule a fig leaf of legitimacy, Musharraf is now determined to play his Kashmir hand to the full."The Jammu strike is also a clear indication that Musharraf is telling India: 'I dare you.' It is a brazen challenge," points out K. Santhanam, director, Indian Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses. So will Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee take up the dare? In October 2001, when terrorists attacked the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly in Srinagar, the prime minister, in a tough letter to US President George W. Bush, wrote, "Pakistan must understand that there is a limit to the patience of the people of India." The US had requested India not to take military action as it would jeopardise its Afghanistan campaign.advertisementAfter the December 13 attack, India's patience was clearly running out. It positioned a million troops along the border and seemed poised to strike. The US stampeded Musharraf into delivering his January 12 speech eschewing terrorism. Four months later, India remains unconvinced about the general's intentions of checking terrorists groups operating in Kashmir. India is also peeved with the US for not taking tougher action against Musharraf on this front.There are indications that India may have been preparing for some sort of military action even before the Kaluchak incident. US satellites had picked up the "repositioning and regrouping" of Indian strike corps during routine exercises on the border in the last week of April which indicated a new offensive posture.Another factor that raised US and Pakistani concerns was the induction of forty T-90 missile firing battle tanks, recently imported from Russia, into the western sector. Coupled with the formation of a new artillery division by the army, it gave India an edge in a tank battle. Lt-General Ehsan-ul-Haq, director-general of the ISI, is supposed to have sought US intervention by saying that a "high-risk conflict" between India and Pakistan was imminent in the coming weeks.advertisementPart of the reason why the US sent Christina Rocca, its assistant secretary of state, scurrying to the subcontinent last week was to call for restraint. But Rocca's mission was blown to pieces with the attack in Jammu. She may have sensed the hardened Indian position even before the massacre as she was politely denied meetings with Defence Minister George Fernandes and National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra.Disturbed by India's coolness towards America, President Bush called up Vajpayee to express his distress over the "terrible and outrageous" attack. For once, he did not advocate restraint. Vajpayee thanked him, but added that "India will take appropriate action". Fernandes, who visited the scene of the massacre, also warned that "the perpetrators will not go unpunished".Vajpayee's colleagues did all the tough talking. Among senior leaders, including Home Minister L.K. Advani, there was growing chorus that the Government should not be seen as impotent to the "grave provocation". There also seemed to be political consensus in Parliament on taking tougher action that matched the groundswell of public sentiment that "enough is enough". Though Congress President Sonia Gandhi said the ruling coalition lacked the will to act, the party said it would back any counter-terrorism measures.advertisementThere was pressure too from the Indian military establishment to retaliate as it feels that its credibility will be badly dented. Lt-General Vijay Oberoi, former vice-chief of army staff and a strike corps commander, says, "India should at least take limited action to ensure that infiltration in the vulnerable areas of Jammu and Kashmir does not take place. Otherwise, what are we sitting at the border for these past five months?"Last week, Vajpayee and key ministers toyed with the idea of taking tougher action, including air strikes on terrorist camps across the border. A senior government official stated, "We will not act under jingoistic or populist pressure. There will be no knee-jerk reactions. Ours would be a measured response to ensure that every action we took is in consonance with our key objectives." Currently that is being defined as preventing cross-border terrorism from escalating and ensuring that the Kashmir elections are fair and peaceful with all factions participating.To judge Pakistan's sincerity, India had said that there should be a marked drop in the level of infiltration of militants, especially during the summer months when the snow melts in the mountains and the passes open. However, to India's consternation, in March and April there were close to 300 intrusions and over 600 people were killed in terrorist attacks. India believes that intrusions of such magnitude were possible only because of the backing of the Pakistan Army or ISI.The May 14 attack seems to be part of the overall plan to show that Kashmir was not a settled issue. Even though Musharraf banned the two major terrorist groups - the Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) - India complained that they were regrouping under different names in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (PoK). The three militants belonging to the Al Mansooran, a splinter of the LeT, are believed to have crossed over from Pakistan at the Samba sector.Pakistan was also rattled by the splitting up of a key militant group, the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, and an indication by its breakaway leader, Majid Dar, that he might join the Indian peace process. Pakistan's message to militants: the armed struggle will continue, with or without the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen.Certainly, the next few weeks will see firmer steps on the diplomatic and economic fronts. One of them is to ask Pakistan to recall its high commissioner to India, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi. Internally, there would be a beefing up of forces in Jammu and Kashmir to build what an expert called a "cordon sanitaire" to prevent infiltration and attacks.The crux lies in a graduated military response. A full-scale war is not contemplated because of the risk of such a conflict escalating into a devastating nuclear confrontation. So the current talk is of a "limited" military option that ranges from conducting air strikes on terrorist camps across the LoC to hot pursuit of militants by special forces even if it means crossing the border briefly.There is even talk of occupying territory in PoK to pressure Pakistan into giving up its support to militancy. It is a doctrinal reversal as earlier India always preferred to make its offensive in the western desert and plain while Pakistan concentrated on Jammu and Kashmir. But the problem of India taking territory in PoK is that it may now be in Pakistan's interest to expand the war to other fronts and bring in international intervention double-quick.At the heart of Pakistan's calculus is the assessment that the US needs Pakistan - and its military - in its campaign in Afghanistan. In particular, a reaction is also dictated by the US perception that Musharraf is its best bet in Pakistan currently. There have been tensions within this relationship recently, primarily over the hunt for Al Qaida and Taliban members believed to be hiding in significant numbers in Pakistan's northwestern tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.The corollary to Pakistan's belief in its strategic importance to the US is the assessment that the US will prevent any outbreak of hostilities by India. Any such outbreak - including limited strikes within PoK as advocated by some in Delhi - would almost surely put the US military campaign at risk by focusing Pakistan's military strategy on its eastern border. The assessment is that the US wants India to hold its horses till its anti-terrorists operations in Pakistan's tribal areas are completed and a transitional government is installed at Kabul after the Loya Jirga (grand council meeting) this June.With India showing signs of restlessness, the US has realised that the crunch may be just round the corner. The last thing it wants is a subcontinental war that would unravel its Afghanistan game plan and could lead to tensions across the entire region. Says a senior US official: "We are looking at this jam now. There was a gigantic diversion in the Middle East. But we are getting focused on the subcontinent. It is in our vested interests to ensure that it does not go out of control."The US is now likely to adopt a tough posture towards Pakistan and tell Musharraf "to shape up or we will pull the plug". It is planning to deliver the same kind of ultimatum it gave him after September 11. US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage's visit to the subcontinent next week is part of the plan to upgrade the US's diplomatic stance in the region.For India, the key is its larger interest of ensuring a free election in Jammu and Kashmir. All its actions in the coming weeks would be determined by its assessment of whether that objective could be fulfilled or is under threat. It can choose to go for a limited military strike if more such terrorist acts follow. It would then have international sympathy and backing too.In his Arthashastra, Kautilya had advised rulers about when to launch military action. He said the answer lay in three key factors: desa (meaning state of the state), kala (time or timing, including the season of the year), and varthamana (the prevailing environment). Centuries later, his dictum still holds good.—With Hasan Zaidi in Karachi, Ramesh Vinayak in Kaluchak, Izhar Wani in Srinagar and Rajeev Deshpande in DelhiSubscribe to India Today Magazine

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