'Pakistan's only concern has been while they were on the FATF watch list was to distance their State institutions and organs from any direct connection with the actual execution of militancy inside Kashmir.'
Few Indians have such a deep knowledge and understanding of Pakistan's military as Rana Banerji, who headed the Pakistan desk at the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency, does.
A frequent contributor to Rediff, Mr Banerji spent 28 years of his 38-year career in intelligence studying Pakistan. And it was only natural that we turned to him to understand the motives of the Pakistan army in sanctioning the horrific terror attack last fortnight, which killed 26 people in Pahalgam.
"(Pakistan army chief General Asim) Munir has been on the defensive because of the uptick in terrorist violence in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. So this time he decided -- or collectively the collegiate leadership of army generals would have decided -- to up the scale of violence or support to non State actors in India or in Kashmir," Mr Banerji tells Rediff's Nikhil Lakshman in the first part of a multi-part interview.
In your deep understanding of the mindset of the Pakistani military establishment, what led Pakistan army chief General Asim Munir to okay the Pahalgam attack? Was it:
- Retaliation for what the Pakistan army sees as India's hand in the recent attacks in Balochistan? To inflict injury on the Indian national mindset by this unprecedented attack?
- The belief that Pakistan had lost control of the narrative in Kashmir with the huge influx of tourists and commerce beginning to flourish, and fewer terror attacks in the Valley?
- Eagerness to restore the army's damaged image in Pakistan by projecting it as the only guardian of national interest by taking on the old enemy, India?
Has Munir succeeded in any of these objectives?
The ISI decides on these things, not the army chief directly. The tap for support for militants from Pakistan working in Kashmir has never really been turned off the last few years.
The attempt has been to send in very well trained and well armed militants having ideological commitment to either the Jaish-e-Muhamad or the Lashkar-e-Tayiba to come in and then work through the hideouts in the hills and forest areas and try to find out the gaps in the the security grid.
They (the terrorists) are actually controlled by the sector commander (in the Pakistan army) who would be the rank of brigadier or at best the major general who is in charge of Kashmir operations in the ISI.
Why was it done now? For some time lately there has been a lot of resentment within the Pakistan army leadership about the uptick in militant violence in Balochistan. Not only in Balochistan, but also in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Now the reasons for that are quite deep seated.
One, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa there has been a collapse of governance and the writ of the police has not run for a long time.
The Tehrik-i-Taliban and the Swat Taliban, they have had some local support. Those who were uprooted from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas which are now merged with the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Some of them belonging to the group of Wali Masood, others belonging to the group of Hafiz Gul Bahadur have been ousted or thrown out of Pakistan territory, but they have enjoyed safe havens in the adjacent provinces of Afghanistan.
From there they have been able to launch operations directed against the security establishment in Pakistan.
In Baluchistan, the Baloch Liberation Army and other groups have herded together quite well, organised extremely well and have shown the capacity to hit different parts of the province and also to direct some of their attacks against Chinese personnel working on various road construction and other development projects in the region.
So this has annoyed the Pakistani army leadership. There is no political initiative to tackle widespread Baloch discontent among the middle classes and on the issue of disappearance of Baloch activists. So it's a purely military solution which they are pursuing which hasn't worked.
Now the undercurrent in all this has been that, oh, somehow there is support from India to explain the uptick in violence both in terms of enhanced financial support as well as military support.
Though they have not been able to establish any smoking gun in regard to the alleged Indian complicity in such an increase in violence in Balochistan, for some time the director general of public relations in Pakistan, the ISPR inter services public relations, they have been alleging that behind all this, although there is a direct Afghan connection, there is an indirect Indian connection which is very much there in collusion with some people in Afghanistan. These allegations they have been making during press conferences.
Now as a result, the view has been that, okay, if India continues to do this, we'll try and get even by getting back in Kashmir where the tap has never really been turned off, as I said. So this would explain why this attack appeared at this time or happened at this time.
Of course, in between there has been this rather vituperative speech of Asim Munir where he has gone back to the two nation theory in such crass terms which only shows the mindset of a typical army officer who has sort of come up the hard way through the ranks and through his professional capacities but has not learned to think beyond the paradigm of hatred for India.
So that is what combined to give this type of a signal to those militants who were already there in Kashmir. They must have been egged on by their handlers at the level, as I said, of the brigadier or the major general in the ISI or even lower down to do something at this juncture and to make themselves relevant.
So that is, I would think, what happened.
The ISI determines such terror attacks and not the army chief?
Yeah, the precise timing of it or the nature of the incident. They (the terror handlers in the Pakistan army) give a lot of flexibility to those who are already there. The well trained, hardline, hardened, militants who have already got very good equipment of Pakistani or Chinese origin. Some of their communication equipment this time has been of Chinese origin. It's very advanced communication equipment that they are carrying.
And so would you say that Asim Munir had no knowledge of this attack?
No, no, that also does not follow. He would have knowledge that definitely the militants are going to do something and we have egged them on, but what precisely -- whether it was Pahalgam or was it going to be on the 22nd -- he wouldn't have known in advance.
Has Pakistan lost control of the narrative in Kashmir?
No, they haven't. They have a certain sort of commitment which they have always shown. They have not closed the tap.
Now their only concern has been while they were on the FATF watch list was to distance their State institutions and organs from any direct connection with the actual execution of militancy inside Kashmir.
That they have achieved through the formation of front outfits like The Resistance Front and the other front that Jaish-e-Muhammad set up recently.
So they have followed this policy of trying to distance their institutions of State from any direct linkages with such outfits.
As you have pointed out in your Rediff columns, Pakistan's generals have been a divided lot. Do you think Munir now has the complete support of his subordinate generals?
Yes, I would think so.
I mean the top collegiate leadership of lieutenant generals and major generals up to the level of senior officers who are aspiring for promotions to three star status or those already who are three star, there will be no open dissent because they have a very rigorous system of keeping an eye on, you know, such dissent.
The military intelligence (in the Pakistan army) for long has had the tradition of watching generals and reporting to the chief directly. At certain times there has been competition between the military intelligence and the ISI.
When Asim Munir was in military intelligence Faiz Hameed was in the ISI and they had a long standing rivalry even in respect of small operations that they were carrying out in Karachi, for instance, operations containing the Muhajirs, for instance.
The rivalry between Faiz Hameed and Asim Munir goes back to those days. Of course, Imran Khan tried to take advantage of this -- support Faiz Hameed to get rid of Asim Munir. But he failed.
How would you rate Munir's current status in Pakistan? Would you rate him as a powerful army chief?
Almost any army chief in Pakistan by virtue of his position becomes powerful. But I won't say that he is the most powerful army chief ever in Pakistan. There have been others who have been equally powerful at different times.
(Pervez) Musharraf was there. Raheel Sharif was quite powerful. (Ashfaq Parvez) Kayani was quite powerful. Kayani was earlier in the ISI and then became the army chief. He was also very powerful till he got discredited through some corruption which involved his brothers. Till then he was very powerful; he was known as the thinking general, a counterpart of our late General Sundarji.
Kayani interacted a lot with the Americans about how the Americans should support Pakistan and go beyond the hyphenation that they usually stop at between India and Pakistan when they deal with the subcontinent. Kayani tried to establish a special relationship with the USA in regard to which he only partially succeeded.
But definitely all the generals were in a higher category in terms of intellectual calibre and foresight than Munir.
So Munir is not intellectually in the same league.
Not at all.
In fact, Munir has got stymied by the domestic situation and his fight with Imran Khan.
The main concern of both Munir and the ISI chief, who has been appointed by the army chief, has been to try and erode the narrative of populist support that Imran Khan continues to enjoy despite being incarcerated in jail.
The February 25, 2024 elections also did not succeed because of this reason. Since then you see they have been struggling to dissipate the narrative of populism of Imran Khan, his victimhood, his martyrhood, the concept of which makes him popular.
And then the Faiz Hameed court martial. Faiz Hameed was involved in support of Imran Khan. They have the evidence, but they haven't been able to nail or complete the court martial proceedings because they want to also implicate Imran Khan in the proceedings.
And the issue of trying civilians in military courts has come up on which the courts are seized of the matter. They haven't given the final verdict.
So Munir has been preoccupied with these issues and he has been on the defensive because of the uptick in terrorist violence both in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
So this time he decided -- or collectively the collegiate leadership of army generals would have decided -- to up the scale of violence or support to non State actors in India or in Kashmir. So that at least on that front it could be said that they were conforming to the old pattern of the army's commitment to this issue.
Some say Munir is an unpredictable military leader who would not hesitate to use extreme measures if Indian actions pushed him to a corner.
This is a typical interpretation by alarmist interpreters of the worst case scenario. The red lines for any nuclear configuration have been very clearly drawn out by General retired Khalid Kidwai when he spoke at the Royal United Services in London. He had spelled out clear red lines of what would involve Pakistani nuclear action.
The military leadership would be taking a consensual decision if they decide to take this step towards nuclear conflict.
It cannot be unpredictable action at the behest of one particular general. I would rule that out. The Pakistan army overall is a professional outfit.
And it's still a professional outfit?
Absolutely, absolutely. There's no doubt about that.
And is there any possibility of the Pakistan army firing missiles at Indian cities in retaliation for Indian military action?
Well, that can be a possibility. The nature of the Indian military action will determine what sort of reprisal will be there.
Any military leader in Pakistan cannot be seen to be weak in his response against India because that will destroy the raison d'etre of the (Pakistan) army's existence as the protector of the sovereignty and integrity of the country.
As it is, there has been a lot of unpopularity of the army with the common people in Pakistan, which I have talked about earlier in my writings.
So the reaction or the response of the Pakistanis would be very carefully again calibrated to whatever India does to show that they are capable, they are professional, and they have the calibre to hit back in equal terms.
Photographs curated by Anant Salvi/Rediff
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