Just about two months after the terror attack on the Pathankot Air Force Station, police forces in states bordering Pakistan were issued a terror alert about an imminent attack by a group of around 10 Pakistani terrorists who had infiltrated into India. Apparently, the discovery of an abandoned Pakistani fishing boat only seemed to fuel the fear that another 26/11 type attack was in the offing. The target was believed to be either a major religious site – Somnath and Akshardham temples were cited as possible targets possibly on the occasion of Mahashivratri festival – or some other industrial facility or public place where mass casualty and major damage could be caused.
THE very fact that someone as senior as the Pakistan NSA shared some information means that regardless of the quality of information, it had to be taken seriously by India. This is precisely where the problem lies: the Pakistanis can give junk information, and then not just milk it for earning brownie points but also use it as an alibi for a terrorist attack; the Indians, on the other hand, remain obliged despite having been led up the garden path.
Whether it was because the security agencies went into an overdrive to prevent any attack, or some other reason, there was no terror attack. Nor, for that matter, were the terrorists discovered, much less apprehended. It was almost as though the entire episode was much ado about nothing or, if you will, yet another false alarm. Except that the terror alert was issued from no less a person than the Indian National Security Adviser, and didn’t come from normal intelligence channels. What made the terror alert even more significant was the fact that the Indian NSA attributed the information to his Pakistani counterpart.
Clearly, if the Pakistani NSA was actually sharing real-time intelligence about a possible terror plot with his Indian counterpart, and wasn’t just sending Indian security agencies on a wild-goose chase against a fictitious gang of infiltrators or washing his hands off a plot which had the potential for pushing the two countries towards war or just giving some half-baked information to appear to rest of the world as though Pakistan is turning over a new page, then it was a very big development, almost earth-shattering in what it presaged. Of course, given the troubled state of relations with Pakistan, India just cannot afford the luxury of not looking a gift horse in the mouth. After all, when it comes from Pakistan, it doesn’t take much for a gift horse to turn into a Trojan horse.
As things stand, the quality of information that was shared with India is not in the public domain. It is not clear if the intelligence was specific or general, if it contained list of targets or merely speculated about them, if it identified the terrorists or just gave some random number of people who infiltrated, if there was some shake-down and crack-down inside Pakistan against the groups to which these terrorists belonged or the hands-off approach towards these groups continued to be adopted by Pakistan despite knowing they had sent terrorists into India, did the Pakistanis gain the intelligence first-hand or was it hearsay? There are many more such questions that remain unanswered. But the very fact that someone as senior as the Pakistan NSA shared some information means that regardless of the quality of the information, it had to be taken seriously by India. This is precisely where the problem lies: the Pakistanis can give junk information, and then not just milk it for earning brownie points but also use it as an alibi for a terrorist attack; the Indians, on the other hand, remain obliged despite having been led up the garden path.
Expectedly, the usual suspects of Pakistani apologists and advocates in India are busy spinning the old yarn of how much Pakistan has changed and is changing and how the intelligence sharing signals a tectonic shift in Pakistan’s policy towards India. Basically what the Pakistani lobbyists in India are saying is that India should accept the gift horse without caring too much if it is even worth it, much less checking to see if it is a Trojan. Pakistan sceptics, however, remain unconvinced of any change in Pakistan’s hostile approach towards India, not so much because they are bloody-minded on Pakistan but more because there is as yet nothing on the ground to suggest a major shift in policy and perception about India. Tactical moves aside, which are aimed more at softening the perception and policy about Pakistan rather than perception and policy in Pakistan, there is no strategic shift that would enthuse anyone realist in India about Pakistan. Equally misplaced is the amount of importance being given by some quarters in India to the appointment of a recently retired general as Pakistan’s NSA. While in India there is a sense that the Pakistani NSA provides an interface between India and the Pakistan army, the simple fact of the matter is that the operative part in the phrase ‘retired general’ is ‘retired’ and not ‘general’.
Be that as it may, information or intelligence exchange between India and Pakistan isn’t exactly a new or novel. It has happened in the past, only it hasn’t been as openly acknowledged. Since the late 1980s, the touts of the Pakistani military in the media have often alleged that Benazir Bhutto’s government had given Rajiv Gandhi some lists of Khalistani terrorists and helped India eliminate them. This has never been confirmed by any credible quarter either in India or Pakistan. On the Indian side, there is the famous claim that Indian intelligence has shared intelligence with Pakistan about a threat to the former military dictator Gen Pervez Musharraf’s life and thus helped save him. There are also insinuations of a tacit cooperation (probably through proxies) between India and Pakistan to eliminate the JKLF’s terrorist wing in J&K. Again, this is not confirmed by any credible quarter, but the ruthlessness with which JKLF was wiped out lends some credence to this insinuation.
Although in the present case, the intelligence sharing has been acknowledged by both sides, Pakistanis were chary of publicising the exchange of information. According to the Pakistani media, the Pakistani side was taken aback by the disclosure of the source of information by the Indian NSA as it violated their understanding. When the Pakistanis remonstrated, they were informed that the source was revealed because it gave the alert a level of seriousness that would otherwise be missing. While that might well have been the ostensible reason for disclosing the source, with hindsight it appears that there were also other attendant benefits, some benign and others less so.
For the Indian side, publicising intelligence sharing with Pakistan can be portrayed as a solid outcome of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s bold outreach to Pakistan, and hence provides a justification for re-engaging Pakistan despite the Pathankot perfidy. The political embarrassment suffered by the Indian Prime Minister because of the stab in the back is, to some extent, compensated by Pakistan informing India about a possible terror attack. The not-so-benign aspect of disclosure is that it could drive a wedge between the terror groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad (whose terrorists were supposedly involved in the latest infiltration) and the Pakistani military and political establishment which has been patronising them. At the very least, it will sow seeds of suspicion and distrust between them, which isn’t such a bad thing from the Indian point of view.
The scepticism about Pakistani intentions notwithstanding, it remains to be seen if the intelligence sharing from the Pakistani side was a one-off or is the start of what might become an institutionalised mechanism for intelligence sharing between India and Pakistan. There are reports that Indian officials are exploring the possibility of such a mechanism. But frankly, given Pakistan’s track record – they would produce an Al Qaeda terrorist or launch an operation every time Musharraf was visiting the US or some senior American official was visiting Pakistan – it would take a leap of faith for any Indian to think that Pakistan has indeed turned a new page. India would, however, be well advised to not depend on miracles but on the robustness of its own security mechanisms, which clearly aren’t working well, which is why despite having suffered a 26/11, the spectre of another such attack continues to hang over India.
