No change of heart: Why Pakistan now offers intelligence cooperation with India

The Gujarat police, NSG and our numerous intelligence and security agencies are currently on an all-India lookout for 10 terrorists who may have “sneaked” into India from Pakistan. Terrorists always “sneak” in, though over the years, they may have found other, less sneaky ways of coming across.

Not only are the top metropolises on high alert – the alert has spread from Gujarat to Delhi, to Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Cyberabad. Smaller cities like Lucknow, Vijaywada, Bhopal, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, and the list goes on, are all on hyper alert.

Some of the Mahashivratri celebrations in the Somnath temple were cancelled fearing that amidst the dancers celebrating Lord Shiva could be suicide bombers.
For the past 48 hours the nation has been on tenterhooks. In other words, the nation has been terrorised without the terrorists having shown themselves.

There are intel alerts and then there are intel alerts. Over the years, despite the ones that got away, like the Mumbai, Gurdaspur and Pathankot attacks, the Indian system’s ability to predict and pre-empt terror threats against India has improved immeasurably.

But the intel this time had a different flavour to it because we were told the Pakistan NSA, Nasir Khan Janjua had alerted Ajit Doval that 10 LeT and JeM terrorists were in India. Since Janjua is the closest India has come to actually talking to the Pakistan army officially, this was beyond interesting.

Pakistan is cooperating with India on terrorism? Islamabad, no Rawalpindi has had a change of heart? India is no longer Pakistan’s worst nightmare? More important, is this the first sign that Pakistan may relinquish its most potent and fearsome diplomatic tool, the alphabet soup terror brigades?

Extrapolations and inferences abound. It feeds into two powerful parallel narratives in New Delhi. The first is that Pakistan is more sinned against than sinning. It’s that eternal optimism that keeps returning to say that Pakistan is finally turning around, we should give them some breathingspace and we should continue to talk to them to reassure them that we want to support the peace constituency, help the democratic forces.

The second narrative is a government one – it doesn’t actually matter whether it’s a Modi or Manmohan government. That goes something like this – Pakistan is now coming round to our view. This is a success of Modi/Manmohan foreign policy. And rush off to schedule the next official dialogue, which continues until the next terror attack.

Who knows, both narratives may be correct. But for those with a slightly longer memory, two things come to mind.

If we believe the Pakistan “intel” implies some kind of epiphany in Rawalpindi, India could soon be occupying the same space the US has graced for the past two decades. Since 9/11, every time the US spoke out against its Major Non-Nato Ally sleeping with al-Qaida and Taliban, Pakistan delivered some second-third tier fellows to them. It shut up Washington, everybody celebrated the US-Pak security relationship and went back to business as usual.

In return, the US pressured India to stay out of Afghanistan to respect Pak sensitivities; turned a blind eye when Pakistan was re-arming Taliban into the resurgent force it is today; swallowed the bitter knowledge that its men were being killed by Pakistan proxies in Afghanistan. And today the even more sobering realisation that they have suffered a military defeat in Afghanistan at Pakistan’s hands. Washington is still pouring good money after bad, including fighter aircraft, while Pakistan attempts to bully Ashraf Ghani into accepting the Taliban in Kabul.

Pakistan plays a very clever tactical game, powered by the fact that countries like India and the US want to believe it, and later are too afraid to admit they were wrong. Once in a while, the nuclear arsenal is rattled, which still spooks hardened souls in the Beltway. Pakistan’s nukes have acquired the “jihadi edge” with their size and mobility, but Washington is considering a nuclear deal to incentivise Islamabad to “stay calm and carry on”.

Instead, it would be more instructive to see why Pakistan would want to be seen to be cooperating with India. America is again giving them grief on Taliban and Haqqanis, their F-16 deal is going through stormy waters in US Congress. Working on terrorism with India brings Islamabad closer to the immediate goal of restarting official dialogue with New Delhi. Its global image has taken a battering and some effort is needed to clean that up.

Equally instructive is a more recent incident. On February 12, Fazlullah Wahidi, former governor of Kunar and Herat, was kidnapped by unknown persons from the heart of Islamabad when he was going to get a British visa. No ransom demand was made, no one knew who had kidnapped him.

Wahidi was released equally mysteriously – “rescued” by Pakistan police – and restored to the Afghan consulate in Peshawar three weeks later, strangely coinciding with the fourth quadrilateral coordination group (QCG) meeting held in Kabul on February 23, where the express intention was to compel Kabul to agree to a peace process with the Mansour-led Taliban.

As Rana Banerji wrote recently, “It would be naïve to expect the army to make a clean break from spawning terrorists of different hues or to take the lead in reversing the religious narrative.” India would do well to remember this.

Meanwhile, new reports say the terror intel could be referring to Gujrat, a village near Pathankot, not Gujarat the state. Funny? Tragic?