India invariably pays a heavy price for seeking the mirage of better relations with Pakistan even as that military-dominated country unabashedly unleashes its terrorist proxies for attacks on Indian territory and on Indian interests in Afghanistan. In January 2001, the Lashkar-e-Taiba attacked Red Fort in Delhi. Hafiz Mohammed proudly proclaimed that he had “unfurled the green flag of Islam” in Delhi’s historic Red Fort.
We ignored this provocation and invited General Pervez Musharraf to a grand gala in Agra, which ended in a fiasco. A few months later, an emboldened Jaish-e-Mohammed attacked our Parliament. We had released J-e-M leader, Maulana Masood Azhar, during the hijacking of IC 814, yielding to pressure tactics of Pakistan’s ISI and the Taliban. The December 13, 2001 Parliament attack thus had its links to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Moreover, just before the Kargil conflict, the then ISI Chief Ziauddin Butt asked the Taliban Government “President” Mullah Rabbani in Kabul for 20,000 volunteers for Jihad in Kashmir. Rabbani replied that he was ready to provide 500,000 volunteers for such a Jihad!
On July 7, 2008, the Taliban’s ISI-backed Haqqani network attacked our Embassy in Kabul killing 58 people including our Military Attaché and Information Counsellor, while injuring 100 others. US President George Bush was briefed on this attack by his Intelligence chief Mike McConnell, with the Intelligence establishing ISI involvement. The Afghans gave us evidence, including wireless intercepts, of ISI involvement.
The US had warned India of the impending Kabul attack and even forewarned us about an impending terrorist attack from the sea. As in 2001, all our worthy Government did was to invite Pakistan’s Foreign Minister for talks on the eve of the 26/11 terrorist outrage mounted by the Lashkar-e-Taiba on Mumbai. Evidence by David Coleman Headley and others clearly establishes ISI involvement in the Mumbai outrage. The mastermind of the attack, the Lashkar’s Operations Commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, continues to direct Lashkar terrorist activities, from his jail cell.
There have been 17 terrorist attacks on Indian nationals, diplomatic missions and economic projects by the Taliban, with ISI support, in Afghanistan, since 2003. India has no military presence there, but has won enormous goodwill of the Afghan people by its involvement across Afghanistan in development projects in hydroelectricity, power transmission lines, road construction, telecommunications, information and broadcasting, agriculture and industry, education and health. Pakistan has two primary aims in Afghanistan.
Firstly, it fears an independent and economically prosperous Afghanistan will be strong enough to revert to voicing its territorial claims across the Durand Line — a 2,640-km-long border imposed by the Colonial British, which no Afghan government has recognised. This, in turn, will revive Pashtun nationalism and demands for a “Pashtunistan” within Pakistan’s Pakhtunkhwa Province bordering Afghanistan. Secondly, the Pakistan army’s obsession with “strategic depth” motivates it to control Afghanistan through the Taliban, for promoting terrorism against India.
While the Pakistan military has a consistent strategy to “bleed” India, our response lacks clarity and resolve. While Jammu and Kashmir, Junagadh in Gujarat and Hyderabad in the peninsula are still claimed to be “disputed” territories in Pakistan, India endorses Pakistani claims on the disputed Durand Line, imposed by the British on the hapless Pashtuns in 1893, as Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. The least India should do, is immediately show, in its official maps, the entire area between Attock, at the Indus River and the Durand Line, as disputed. Further, in our diplomacy with our western neighbours, we should show sympathy and understanding for Pashtun national aspirations. Afghanistan had, after all, opposed Pakistan’s admission into the United Nations because of the disputed border, in 1947.
As Taliban terrorists freely cross into Afghanistan, ignoring the sanctity of the Durand Line as an International border, there is little reason for India, or the international community, to recognise Durand Line as an International border, especially in view of uncontrolled cross-border terrorism across it. Indian diplomacy has to be more proactive on this score. Dialogue, sans relentless pressure, will not persuade Pakistan to behave responsibly.
The writer is a former diplomat.