> They were unable to locate the terrorists even after two or three weeks and needed a distraction.
This does not make sense. When France attacked Daesh in 2015 after the terrorist attacks in Paris or when the US attacked Afghanistan after 9/11, the objective wasn't to target the exact people who carried out the attacks, but the organization behind the attacks. People can always be found as long as the organization remains.
The goal of the attacks would be to make any future terrorist attack an expensive option for the Pakistani military as opposed to something which can be done routinely. There was a sharp drop in the terrorist attacks in Kashmir after the 2019 confrontation.
>when the US attacked Afghanistan after 9/11, the objective wasn't to target the exact people who carried out the attacks, but the organization behind the attacks
The mission in Afghanistan was very much to find Bin Laden. It was changed after he escaped.
The incentives of the Pakistani generals to permit organizations like LeT to commit further terrorist attacks is a different domain from whatever the local political situation is like in India. There has been a past regime where Pakistani generals were able to train and send militants regularly to conduct terror attacks in India. Without an effective response from India putting pressure on these generals, that can easily become the new normal again.
Do you think (plausibly) threatening to cut off water to large swathes of Pakistan, or blowing up some random terrorist camps, is the bigger actual threat?
Cutting off water supply is clearly the bigger threat. However, it involves a longer time frame - building infrastructure which one expects not to use in a normal situation.
Importantly, even once built, it selects the wrong targets, not terrorists or military bases - but regular people who will be faced with scarcity of water and food, as the crops use Indus water. This would be something highly unethical, and also not something sustainable - once visuals of hunger start reaching screens across the world, the force to restart the supply would be strong.
What force, though? Israel does something similar, and how much actual pushback (as opposed to sternly worded statements) did it actually get?
Even if it were to translate to sanctions, I'm not so sure BJP wouldn't welcome it. "The Fatherland is besieged, let's unite together around Dear Leader and fight back like one" tends to be a very popular take in authoritarian countries for a reason, and it's that much easier to pull off when you can actually point at some way in which your country is targeted.
Dont buy your description of India. Elections matter, BJP can and does lose many elections, India is dependent on oil from Gulf countries, it doesn't have US to shield it from actions which it shouldn't even be doing in the first place, there are much better options against Pakistan etc.
India is also buying oil from Russia - at a discount, or used to - because it is one of the few that could do so openly.
Attacking Pakistan over this also strengthens BJP’s hand and distracts everyone from the complaints that have been eroding their support, like ongoing corruption, high taxes with lower quality of life, etc. etc.
Don’t expect the gulf countries to come to Pakistan’s aid over this, especially if it comes to money. Muslim countries in general like to pretend to be friends, and they certainly talk a big game.
When it comes to actually doing anything though, they just use anything going on as a chance to stab each other in the back. Even when there is a chance for going after ‘the common enemy’ like Israel.
India hasn’t even been close to interesting to any of them since the Mughals. The minority Muslim population in India (about 20%) is also just a little less than Pakistans entire population, and almost half of the entire Middle East’s population, so it’s not like it would be a clean ‘attack the Hindu’s’ type situation anyway.
Also, Indians in general are not particularly warmongering, but this is about as righteous a cause as anyone has been able to come up with for awhile to ‘make someone pay’, is total rage bait for the hardliners/Hindutva contingent and is a good distraction for BJP.
As long as it doesn’t get too expensive, or look like it will escalate to Nuclear war, I’d expect it to go on awhile.
India in general loves to get all worked up about Pakistan (and to a lesser extent Bangladesh, though in that case it’s often about illegal immigrants).
It’s a trope like getting worked up about Cartels and/or ‘the illegals’ from down South in the US.
Source: westerner living in India for awhile now. मैं हिंदी नहीं बोल सकता, but I still get around eh?
> Attacking Pakistan over this also strengthens BJP’s hand and distracts everyone from the complaints that have been eroding their support, like ongoing corruption, high taxes with lower quality of life, etc. etc.
This won't last long, though. BJP lost the elections after Kargil War.
I'm not saying that India is full-on authoritarian today. But it's definitely edging in that direction under BJP, and I could see them embracing the war as their ultimate ticket to get there. I mean, if there is a shooting war with Pakistan, and they can credibly blame Pakistan for starting it, what will it do to BJP electoral standing?
As far as US, under Trump, I'd actually expect it to back Modi.
We could have gone after the people who actually did 9/11 but that was a bit of a non-starter. Also I think you're equivocating between multiple interpretations of "the terrorists" when most people absolutely wouldn't draw a distinguishing line between, using 9/11 as an example again, the actual hijackers and Osama bin Laden. There's absolutely no question that any time the phrase "the 9/11 terrorists" is used it means both the actual perpetrators and the people who planned and supported the attack.
The context was a reply to an assertion that the terrorists in Pahalgam were not found by Indian security. I interpreted this as people who physically did the attack.
If by terrorists, we mean the planners of the operation, that trail leads directly to Pakistan. Musharraf, the ex-army chief, is on record saying that the military has funded several militant organizations in Kashmir including LeT. (Osama's haveli in Abbotabad was incidentally also very close to the Pakistan Military Academy). The permission for the operations probably came all the way from the top as the attack came right after a strong statement on Kashmir by the army chief.
"funding militant organizations" isn't the same as committing acts of terrorism. Nobody would have said the US should have responded to the 9/11 attacks with airstrikes on the CIA headquarters.
We are not talking about re-targeting of training and weapons from Afghanistan to Manhattan, but direct planning of an attack with ability to restrain and release the groups on demand. Contra the truthers, even the CIA wouldn't go that far. Musharraf explicitly mentioned the groups operating in Kashmir. He wasn't talking about fighters in Afghanistan.
The CIA wouldn't go that far? Operation Northwoods [1] is obvious evidence to the contrary. The one and only reason that that operation wasn't carried out is because of a President who refused to sign on to it, who would shortly thereafter be assassinated by a 'deluded gunman.' [2]
> There was a sharp drop in the terrorist attacks in Kashmir after the 2019 confrontation.
There were fewer terrorist attacks, certainly. I'm sure the Indian government would like to believe that the 2019 strike had an effect, but far more likely causes are
- Money. Pakistan's economy has stagnated and the country has lurched from one IMF bailout to the next (2019, 2023, 2024). It got so bad at one point that politicians were asking people to drink less tea so they could conserve foreign currency.
- Covid. Affected everything, but certainly harder to think about waging conflict when such a massive problem is affecting the country.
- Internal political instability, especially when Imran Khan took on the military and lost. The military was actually in danger of losing their primacy for the first time in decades.
- Conflict with the Taliban and Pakistani Taliban. The ISI had nurtured the Taliban to be tame pets and it turned out not to be the case. Crushing these was the highest priority, not least because it made their policy of nurturing terrorists look idiotic.
All of these factors meant Pakistan wasn't and isn't in the best shape to wage war overtly or covertly with India. India's economy has continued to grow, in contrast to Pakistan. The official Indian policy of "benign neglect" towards Pakistan appeared to work well.
I'm sure these attacks will be spun as a success in the future. Safe to say a Bollywood movie dramatising the events is already in the works. But Pakistan's own economic and political problems are far more likely to influence its decisions to engage in this sort of behaviour.
If you are actually arguing that a country targeted by a terrorist attack does not gain deterrence with a counterstrike relative to letting things go on, then how uniform do you consider this prescription? Should the terror attacks in the US or France not have had a military response?
What happens to the incentives of terror groups in response to such a policy?
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The role of money only becomes an issue when conducting a terrorist attack becomes expensive. Missiles and jets consume much more money in comparison to training recruits via an intermediary organization like LeT and sending them across the border to carry out attacks.
A regime in which a terror attack leads to a high pressure, expensive situation for the Pakistani military is completely different from regularly scheduled, train and deploy terror attacks from militants which used to happen earlier.
In that situation, the military has to respond to economic pressure, pressure from allies and pressure from its own people.
The Pakistani military cares about itself, above all. It wants to maintain its role as the primary protector of the Pakistani people, answerable to no one but themselves. As long as the threat of India looms large, their primacy is guaranteed. As a reward generals are allowed to grow filthy rich.
Support for the Pakistani military was at its nadir during the era of benign neglect because there wasn't an Indian boogeyman to justify their interference in politics and economic exploitation. But now that India has attacked Pakistani targets this will quiet any internal criticism of the Pakistani Army.
In other words, the military absolutely loves it when India engages in so-called deterrence. No Pakistani army soldier died (according to both sides). Pakistani people support the Pakistani Army more strongly than ever. It's absolutely perfect for the Army. I fully expect that they'll fund more terrorists, leading to a constant cycle of violence.
> I fully expect that they'll fund more terrorists, leading to a constant cycle of violence.
Yes, that's the defining characteristic of all terrorist organizations. Get money, not through politics or production or economy, but by damaging others. Then get paid for not doing quite as much damage. This model has spread quite a bit in the past 5 years.
Yes, an outside target can be used to tackle internal strife. But, there is no sign that the Pakistani army is actually in any danger of being removed from power, barring a major military defeat, nor that it will lose its autonomy over military policy.
If say, India were to let this slide, the default outcome is another such attack. Given the above motivation of the military to create a conflict and the ideological bent seen in Gen.Munir's speech, the expected outcome would be to repeat till this they get a conflict.
Yes, the deterrence won't be perfect. The Pakistan Army might end up repeating an attack whenever there is a relief from economic constraints(it doesn't have money for frequent purchases of expensive weapons) or from pressure from its allies (who dont want their oil trade or pipelines to suffer). But this means that what India has to do to minimize the number of attacks is to not let an attack slide by with low cost for the army.
The best case scenario would be a peace deal, as was arrived in Vajpayee and Sharif's time, but it was sabotaged by the Kargil operation, for exactly the reason you mentioned - a peace deal marginalises the army.
I don’t think Pakistan orchestrated the last attack.
The structure was designed for being disavowed.
I expect it was more the army looked away, over condoned.
And yes, the expectations are to generate a response from the BJP.
By this rubric there are 4 actors on the stage.
- The people of Pakistan, the Pakistani army,
- The people of India, the BJP.
I’ve had this discussion with friends who are Pakistani and they concur that this makes the most sense.
The opinions of the Pakistani army have dramatically changed as per their interactions, having been at a nadir due to their domestic handling of events, and now these actions have reinvigorated public opinion.
The BJP has had its military credentials burnished.
I’d go a step deeper and suspect that there was a traditional response from India planned, and then at some point in the past 72 hours, a functionary on the BJP side raised the potential of a massive PR coup and the old guard got sidelined.
This has worked. This means this behavior will be repeated.
> I expect it was more the army looked away, over condoned.
Right, in the exact same way they "looked away" while OBL lived half a mile away from the most prestigious military academy in Pakistan and the same way they "over condoned" the Taj hotel shootings. You are not disagreeing with me here.
> The opinions of the Pakistani army have dramatically changed as per their interactions, having been at a nadir due to their domestic handling of events, and now these actions have reinvigorated public opinion.
This line describes Hamas just as well as the Pakistani state, unfortunately.
> The BJP has had its military credentials burnished.
Indian media always has been and always will be jingoistic and no matter how the government responded, it would gleefully report on the power of the Indian military.
> This has worked. This means this behavior will be repeated.
WHO has this worked for? The BJP isn't more popular because of this. Pakistan hasn't achieved any strategic goals beyond the continuing destabilization of J&K - which is already well on the way to integration.
> Should the terror attacks in the US or France not have had a military response?
Probably, yes. Military responses to terrorism are almost always counterproductive. I don't know which specific attacks you're talking about, but the ones I can think of the US did far more damage to itself with the blowback than the original attack ever achieved.
Note that I am not referring to the prolonged occupation of Afghanistan, much less of Iraq here. Rather, something like a strike which targets bin Laden and other organizers of the terrorist attack.
So it doesn't matter that military responses that have actually been tried in the real world have been counterproductive, because you can imagine other kinds of military responses and you imagine that those kinds of military responses would have gone better?
So maybe say which specific military responses you want to talk about in the first place rather than just saying "the terror attacks in the US or France" and expecting everyone to read your mind.
> What happens to the incentives of terror groups in response to such a policy?
You're imagining these people to be some sort of loyalists, rather than something closer to anarchists. Triggering military responses is going to be viewed as a bonus.
I'll note people rather frequently claimed Bin Laden wanted the US to be tied up in the military quagmire that their terror attacks produced. There's certainly some logic to that idea. His organization was too small to do much direct damage.
This does not make sense. When France attacked Daesh in 2015 after the terrorist attacks in Paris or when the US attacked Afghanistan after 9/11, the objective wasn't to target the exact people who carried out the attacks, but the organization behind the attacks. People can always be found as long as the organization remains.
The goal of the attacks would be to make any future terrorist attack an expensive option for the Pakistani military as opposed to something which can be done routinely. There was a sharp drop in the terrorist attacks in Kashmir after the 2019 confrontation.