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Ajay Banerjee in New Delhi
The last 15 days of military events between India and Pakistan have left behind multiple lessons, including a new template for Indo-Pak relations, which could leave little space to manoeuver in this age of ill-informed televised debates and jingoism-infused social media hashtags.
Starting with the Pulwama terror attack on February 14 to the release of Wg Cdr Abhinandan Varthaman on Friday, people on both sides of the acrimonious divide have been swinging from despair to war-mongering and from anger to euphoria. The TV channels have been accused of whipping up hysteria while social media narratives of ‘giving a befitting reply’ and aar-paar ki ladaai have been trending.
It has left the two nuclear-armed neighbours hanging on the edges of ‘restraint’. “The fuse has never been shorter,” says a senior officer. India’s right to punish terrorists has been backed by several countries.
Crossing the LoC: If crossing the LoC to launch punitive strikes at terror camps is the new template, only time will tell what is the threshold for India to launch its next attack. It will be risky to assess what will, or what can, trigger the next skirmish between the two countries.
Lt Gen KJ Singh (retd), a former Western Army Commander, says, “The threshold of when to launch a strike will be a complicated decision and it has been further complicated as Pakistan launched itself on military targets.”
India crossed the LoC twice, Pakistan once, the first such cross LoC or Border skirmish since 1971. During the 1999 Kargil War, there were clear instructions not to cross the LoC. The two fighter pilots who ejected on being hit and landed in Pakistan were due to the reason that the LoC runs zigzag. One peak in the Himalayas could be this side and the one next to it could be in Pakistani territory.
Shortest skirmish: Despite the edge-of-the-seat tension following the Pulwama attack, the core of the skirmish was just 31 hours — the shortest in the 72-year history of the two countries. The ‘surgical strikes’ of September 2016 were shorter; those cannot be termed as skirmish as Pakistan did not engage. It was on 3.30 am on February 26 this year that Indian Air Force (IAF) jets hit at a Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terror camp at Balakot in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, some 80 km inside Pakistan. Angry statements from both side followed before Pakistan retaliated by sending its fighter jets over Nowshera in Jammu & Kashmir around 10 am on February 27. India responded and by 10:30, both countries had lost a jet each. On March 1, after Wing Commander Varthaman crossed over to India, firing across the LoC from both sides ratcheted up. These 31 hours are nowhere near the full-scale wars we have fought in 1947-48, 1965, 1971 or the Kargil conflict in 1999.
Nuclear bogey called: Both nuclear-powered countries were locked in a conventional skirmish. It did not escalate to see nukes being fired, hence exposing the Pakistan bogey that it could fire a nuke in case of a skirmish. “It shows that there is scope for a sub-conventional conflict and the nuclear bogey has been called,” asserts Lt Gen KJ Singh.
Superior technology can be beaten: Downing of a US-made F-16 by a Soviet-origin MiG 21, an old warhorse of the IAF, is like a Maruti outrunning a Mercedes. The 86-second dogfight over Nowshera at 900 km/ph ended with both a MiG 21 and an F-16 fighter getting shot. As old warriors say: The goddess of war is fickle with luck! Downing an F-16 in an aerial combat is very tough. Probably a Sukhoi 30MKI can take it on easily, but it calls for superior training for a MiG 21 to beat it. Vice-Admiral Sekhar Sinha (retd), who headed the Navy’s Western fleet and was a naval fighter pilot himself, explains, “MiG 21 has very high acceleration. In case, the F-16 is being chased, the MiG has just to get into the ‘cone’ (military parlance for getting the right angle) to get a ‘lock’ (a target acquisition) on the enemy jet and fire.” Our pilots have mastered the MiG 21, said the Vice-Admiral, who oversaw the induction of MiG 29k fighter jets into the Navy.
However, the MiG 21s cannot be held back. It has to go as per schedule in 2022-23. “There is no doubt. The MiG 21 has to retire,” says Admiral Sinha.
Information warfare the key: Twitter, Facebook and social media played a major role in creating a hysteria. Around 5 am on February 26, Maj-Gen Asif Ghafoor, the Director-General of Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) of Pakistan, tweeted that the ‘IAF crossed the LoC and dropped a payload’ and said it was at Balakot. In this age of Twitter, it was literally ‘breaking news’, and that too by Pakistan. He tweeted with more details again, around 7.40 am. Soon, former J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah told the world that ‘if its Balakot in KPK, its significant (sic)’. India did not respond till 11.15 am when Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale read out that it was pre-emptive strike on a terror camp.
The next day, when the skirmish in the air took place, General Ghafoor used the ‘Facebook Live’ option around 1.15 pm to tell the world that Pakistan had downed a MiG 21. In this, technology transcended borders and information was live in the handheld phones even as Indian news channels followed the ‘protocol’ of not airing ‘Pakistan propaganda’. Around 3.30 pm, the Indian side said its plane was down. Ghafoor erred in saying that two Indian planes had been shot. It later turned out that the second plane was an F-16.
But did Pakistan win the perception game? The jury is still out.
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