Where do we go from here?

We have come out ahead looking good in the fresh round of hostilities between India and Pakistan. PM Imran Khan brought his A game to the table this last week. He reiterated Pakistan’s desire for peace in the Subcontinent’s best interest. He reaffirmed Pakistan’s resolve to fight with all its might if a war is imposed on the country. He showed courage in extending a hand of friendship to the belligerent Modi government. And he showed statesmanship in empathising with those killed in the Pulwama attack and in announcing the Indian pilot’s release as a unilateral peace overture.

PM IK showed leadership in utilising all instruments of policy in the domestic context. His addresses to the nation helped set the narrative before hawks could highjack the moment. He called in the cabinet, the National Command Authority and a joint session of parliament. He had the military’s support and backing. The opposition parties also rose above partisan politics and came together in this moment of crisis. And our media didn’t beat the drums of war like their counterparts across the border. In a nutshell, there was no constituency for war.

Pakistan’s security doctrine is India-centric and reactive in nature: Pakistan wishes to protect itself against a larger and more powerful India. Once India declared that it destroyed a ‘fantasy’ militant camp in Balakot in a preemptive strike, Pakistan had limited options. With the only other choice being to accept India’s status as the predominant regional power with the ability and luxury to strike targets in Pakistan at will, Pakistan had to respond – irrespective of whether the incursion had inflicted any actual losses or not. And when it did, luck was smiling at Pakistan.

Our story is that our planes hovered around the Line of Control, locked in targets the destruction of which would hurt India, and then struck nothing – but made the point that we too can attack targets in India should we choose to. Let us assume we were craftier. That our jets waited long enough for Indian jets to scramble and then lured them into a chase within Pakistani territory where we shot down a plane and captured the Indian pilot. What if the maneuver hadn’t worked? What if all we had was jets firing into random nothingness?

How would the story of our jets firing into empty Kashmir hills be received in Pakistan or the world, with India poking fun at it? What if, heaven forbid, luck had smiled at India and one of our pilots had been arrested? Where would we go from there in the backdrop of influential world powers advising Pakistan to exorcise terror networks on its soil and apply restraint after Indian strikes in Balakot? The skill and fortitude of our air force and some measure of luck has dealt us an upper hand, enabling PM IK to offer peace without looking weak or needy.

The best time to introspect is when you can, voluntarily. PM Modi’s hands might be tied by domestic political needs in an election year. But PM IK has no such compulsions. His first term in office has just begun. There is consensus across Pakistan’s political spectrum that peace with India is in our best interest. With the PTI in power, this is a time of milk and honey for civil-military relations. No one will proclaim IK a traitor in bed with the Indians or some anti-Pakistan foreign nexus. If there was ever a time to introspect about our way forward, it is now.

India is a bigger country with a much bigger consumer market than Pakistan, and is on the trajectory to become one of the largest economies in the world. With its economic clout grows its ability to support a huge defense budget on the one hand and influence policies in important world capitals on the other. The world urging Pakistan to apply restraint and an India gloating over preemptive strikes (that breached the foundational principle of the UN system) is one manifestation. This year’s OIC host, our friend UAE, refusing to rescind the invite to India is another.

This doesn’t mean we make our peace with India as the regional bully. Between being a bully and being bullied there is room for being someone who isn’t a bully and doesn’t allow anyone else to bully him either. In vying for that role, we must identify vulnerabilities that can be exploited by bullies. A key vulnerability is our being perceived as a state that employs non-state actors as an instrument of national security policy to foment trouble in other states. True or not, most of our neighbours and key foreign states believe it to be true in a world where perceptions matter more than reality.

We can deny the existence of NSAs and denounce all our critics as components of a global conspiracy against us. We can justify NSAs in view of the history of their evolution during the first Afghan war and blame the West for its hypocrisy. We can insist that all states use NSAs and the fact that only we are being singled out is sheer duplicity. Or we can quietly acknowledge to ourselves that there are no other states at this time accused of nurturing or patronising within their own territories NSAs that are visible and have the declared objective of inflicting violence in other states.

There is a principle of tort law which says that if you keep a dangerous thing on your land that injures others, you are responsible. This can be applicable to how the concept of state responsibility has evolved since 9/11.

It is true that all intelligence agencies cultivate and use NSAs against enemies. We have presented the case of Kulbhushan Jadhav before the world as someone running a terror network in Balochistan. We have argued that the TTP was financed by India. And, again, almost all states engage in covert operations by cultivating and using NSAs. But they have the benefit of plausible deniability because these NSAs belong to the states where they operate eg the Baloch militants or TTP operatives.

In this context, our alleged NSAs stand out – being based in Pakistan. Their leaders are visible. They work out of seminaries. They issue sermons. They take out rallies. Our argument is that we do not allow them to aid or abet terror in the territory of other states. If their offshoots based in other states carry out terror attacks in such states, while being ideologically inspired by such Pakistan-based NSAs, Pakistan can neither be seen as complicit nor held responsible. In the post-9/11 world, neither our friends nor our foes are buying this argument.

NSAs might have been assets once. But they are dangerous liabilities now. We know from our history of fighting terror that ideologically-driven NSAs are in no one’s control. When they turn on the state, they cause real damage to state and society, as the TTP did. In our domestic context, the mayhem caused by the TLP is fresh in minds. In the international context too, NSAs are no less of a burden. Kashmir is witnessing an indigenous struggle for dignity, human rights and autonomy. Add NSAs to the equation and it becomes easy for India to project it as a terror movement.

We have repeatedly said since 9/11 that our embrace for NSAs is a thing of the past. But NSAs or their rehashed successors are still around and visible. We are being threatened with an FATF blacklist due to NSAs. Key states around the world have publicly demanded that we shun NSAs. Our friends tell us in hushed tones behind the curtain that NSAs are a bane. That serious damage has been averted in this latest episode with India must not be cause for proponents of the failed NSAs policy to dig in their heels. It is time to liquidate NSAs unequivocally. Mr Prime Minister, it is your time to take your vision for peace to its logical conclusion.

The writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad.

Email: sattar@post.harvard.edu