Modi's America Envy: Targeted Strikes in Pakistan?
By Riaz Haq
CA
Is India's Modi planning a limited war with Pakistan ? The talk in the Indian media suggests that he may be doing just that. Here are excerpts of a couple of recent opinion pieces on the subject published in the Indian media:
"The idea of (India's) hot pursuit of terrorists has also not been fully tested yet. Security experts say that aircrafts or commandos can execute an operation against militant camps in Pakistan but argue that returning back to India may not be easy." - Sushil Aaron, Hindustan Times
" Even though a limited war would have high costs for Pakistan, a crisis would frighten away the investors he (Modi) needs to realize his economic vision. Firing across the LoC has been demonstrated not to deter the Pakistan army. Targeting jihadist leaders across the LoC is an option, but India just doesn’t have the capacities for it at present." - Praveen Swami, The Indian Express
These opinion pieces remind me of a post titled "India's America Envy" that I wrote in 2011:
Since Osama Bin Laden's death in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad on May 1, 2011, I am seeing a dramatic increase in cyber activity by many Indians manifesting itself as a constant stream of anti-Pakistan hateful commentary being posted on almost all major news discussion forums.
But, amidst all the usual venomous babble, the following fantasy by an Indian blogger Prashant Agrawal published in the Wall Street Journal stands out in particular:
India’s prime minister greets the Mi-25 helicopters carrying Indian Navy MARCOS commandos. He shakes hands with the returning troops, congratulates and thanks them. For the photographers, he holds up his thumbs, “Mission Accomplished”-style. The MARCOS are returning from Pakistan where they took out some of India’s, and the world’s, most wanted terrorists.
That was the story that didn’t happen yesterday or the week before or the month before or the year before or the decade before that. It’s the story that some, perhaps many, Indians have wished to read. It hasn’t happened but the chances of it happening have gone up slightly.
How interesting!
This reminds me of what Indian author and journalist Pankaj Mishra wrote some years ago. Here's an excerpt from his article:
Gung-ho members of India's middle class clamor for Israeli-style retaliation against jihadi training camps in Pakistan. But India can "do a Lebanon" only by risking nuclear war with its neighbor; and Indian intelligence agencies are too inept to imitate Mossad's policy of targeted killings, which have reaped for Israel an endless supply of dedicated and resourceful enemies.
Prior to this latest episode of wishful thinking, I had heard of India’s “Israel Envy” , a phrase coined by former Indian minister Sashi Tharoor immediately after Mumbai terror attacks in 2008 .
Now it seems that gung-ho Indians like Prashant are also suffering from India’s “America Envy”.
Since I wrote the above piece in 2011, the 2014 election of Hindu Nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi has further emboldened the likes of Prashant among Indian policymakers. They are playing with fire that will burn them along with others in the region. I sincerely hope better sense will prevail in New Delhi and Modi and his Hindu nationalist government will choose to return to dialog with Pakistan without pre-conditions to discuss all issues, including the core issue of Kashmir.
