AT PENPOINT
The ceasefire between India and Pakistan was hogged by US President Donald Trump, who seems to have been only too pleased to gain brownie points as a peacemaker, after signal failures to broker peace in Gaza and Ukraine.
It seemed a reversal in some sort of the ceasefire brokered by US President Bill Clinton in 1999 over Kargil, which had involved Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif going to Washington to get Clinton to intervene. Then India seemed to have the upper hand, this time it did not. Its much-vaunted Rafale fighters have been destroyed, and its S400 air defence system has been breached and hit.
More than anything else, this was an air war. There was firing along the Line of Control in Kashmir, but along the international border, the land forces were limited to remaining watchful. Neither air force crossed the international border, but their missiles and drones did. The use by India of the ‘loitering munition’ Israel-made Harap drone was the first use of drones in the region after the USA used them against both terrorists and insurgents in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
The complete failure of the Harap replicated the dubious performance it had for Azerbaijan against Armenia, not in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, but in the skirmishes preceding it. It was more successful during the war itself, when it played a pivotal role in suppressing Armenian air defence systems, and allowed free rein for the Azeri Air Force to support the ground forces.
The taking out by a Pakistani J10 squadron of an S400 launcher is also worrying for the IAF, for it means the air defence system is rendered dubious. The S400 is the Russian equivalent to the USA’s Patriot or the Israeli Iron Dome systems, which are a combination of radars and missile launchers operating in combination against any intruder. If it becomes unreliable; because it is seen as vulnerable, then the air force operating it may decide not to fly.
Field Marshal Erwin Rommel perhaps put it best: “Anyone who has to fight, even with the most modern weapons, against an enemy in complete command of the air, fights like a savage against modern European troops, under the same handicaps and with the same chances of success.” This is the stake: whichever side obtains command of the air will be able to develop its own ground offensive, and prevent the opposing side from developing its own..
Even the two navies, which had no major confrontation, were destined for an air war, because the Indian Navy had deployed its aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea, but there was no intrusion, and both sides kept their shipping lanes open.
The PAF may have grounds for celebration, but it also needs to get back to the drawingboard. Since the Phulwama incident, when the IAF had a plane shot down and a pilot captured, it went ahead with the Rafale acquisition, and with the S400, which entered service in 2021.
Wouldn’t it now be easier for the world to ensure that there is no further repetition? That would involve the solution of the Kashmir issue in line with the UN resolutions on the subject, and that would have the added benefit of ensuring that international law would be followed.
It should also see the attacks by the IAF, particularly the launch of the drones, as probes, meant more to assess PAF capabilities. Similarly, the PAF’s attacks would be assessed by the IAF to see how it should respond.
Indian PM Narendra Modi has now got to decide where he wants to lead India. If it is on the path he has adopted so far, it will only lead to greater expense, and the country is still poor. If he was to consult the many businessmen who hang around him, he would understand that it would only be to throw good money after bad. He will have to face the reality that the IAF is simply not up to it. Because it is unable to integrate any of the systems it has obtained into its operational doctrine, it has simply not been able to do more than provide targets.
The problem is, Modi has to answer to a constituency, that of extremist, caste-ist Hindus. Pakistanis should never forget that Modi has now won three consecutive elections, and though his majority has fallen after the peak of 2021, he clearly represents something. Those are caste-ist Hindus. It is not as if there is an either/or situation, as if the opposition is any better. It is led by the Congress, which has actually fought all three of India’s wars.
There is some criticism being made of Modi that he asked for US help in reaching a ceasefire, but it should not be forgotten by the Congress that its then leader, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, had asked the USA to help when it seemed that India was on the verge of being overwhelmed by China in the North-East Frontier Area in 1962.
The USA would have found the task of arranging a ceasefire easier this time, as one was formerly its most allied ally, and the other was its regional policeman. It was also worth noting that, unlike previous Indo-Pak crises, China was not seen as playing a part in getting Pakistan and India to stand down. The complication now is that the USA and China are involved in their own stand-off. Though it is primarily a trade stand-off, there is a military component, which was reflected in the close attention the USA will pay to the performance of Chinese equipment deployed by Pakistan. India’s poor performance against Pakistan means it will be unreliable as a regional counterweight to China.
However, this is clearly an unsustainable situation. India has got its own difficulties, the first having got the USA to intervene, something which Pakistan has long pressed it to do. Modi may have political reasons to be displeased, but Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has also not been overjoyed, almost as if he has been deprived of a fight. Shehbaz has an innate belligerence. When he was a young man, hardly more than a boy, his family’s business had been nationalized, and the factory’s workers turned up outside the gate of the family residence. He had to be physically restrained by his father and elder brother from going to confront them. As a backbencher in the Punjab Assembly and the National Assembly, he had always evinced enjoyment of the procedural melees there, and had taken part in encouraging the combatants.
However, the world should realize that it has allowed India to get away with blue murder for too long. The world community has too long been over-impressed by India being a large market (though so poor as to be unlikely to buy), with the result that it has committed murder in Canada, attempted murder in the USA, and fomented riots in the UK. This time, once again, it has put the peace of the world at stake. Would China have gone to war with India if it had gone to war with Pakistan? Would the USA have then jumped in?
Then there is the nightmare scenario of a nuclear exchange. So long as any party is under the misapprehension that a nuclear war is winnable, there will be more scares, and sooner or later, there will be either a slip or some gungho cavalier will go too far.
Wouldn’t it now be easier for the world to ensure that there is no further repetition? That would involve the solution of the Kashmir issue in line with the UN resolutions on the subject, and that would have the added benefit of ensuring that international law would be followed.
