Insufficiency of 'terror' labelling

Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar's appeal to the other Members of Parliament to declare Pakistan a 'terrorist state' and snap all ties, economic and cultural, is well-meant, though insufficient and irrelevant in changing the essential ground realities. The evidence to nail Pakistan's complicity in terror is incontrovertible and universally acknowledged, with the hard data since 1998 showing 14,741 civilian and 6274 security personnel, killed in terror attacks, which can be directly linked back to the handlers and progenitors in Pakistan. However, labelling a country unilaterally or even multilaterally is devoid of much tangible course-correction and only appeals to the constituents and cadres, internally.

Even declarations by forums like the UN, for anointing nations, entities or individuals as 'terrorists' or 'terror sponsors' has increasing irrelevance, owing to the sophistry of the procedures involved in the designation and the subsequent inability to enforce tangible restrictions and punitive actions thereon. The UN declaration of Hafiz Muhammad Saeed on 10 December 2008 pursuant to paragraphs 1 and 2 of resolution 1822 (2008) as being associated with Lashkar-e-Taiba and Al-Qaeda and for "participating in the financing, planning, facilitating, preparing or perpetrating of acts of activities by, in conjunction with, under the name of, on behalf or in support of" both entities, mattered little to the Pakistani state which allowed a free reign to the fugitive with utter civil impunity, as the Pakistanis maintained that India ostensibly lacked, 'evidence nor any real proof behind their allegations'. That the UN has declared him a terrorist and that the US had placed a $10 million bounty on his head, besides the ban was simultaneously enforced on Hafiz Saeed's organisation by other countries like UK, Russia, Australia, EU, etc. was of no consequence to the Pakistani establishment and narrative.

Similarly, the contradictory optics of Pakistan's 'all weather friend' China vetoing the designation of the Jaish-e-Mohammad Chief, Masood Azhar as a 'Global Terrorist' at the UN - is to be contrasted with the shocking delisting and lifting of sanctions against another virulently anti-India terrorist, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Better known as the 'Butcher of Kabul', Hekmatyar is the leader of the Hezb-e-Islami faction and is infamous for his single-handed plunder and massacre in Afghanistan. The recent pardon inked by the Afghan government led to the lifting of UN sanctions and the political rehabilitation of the warlord, who remains entirely unrepentant, even after his established scale of brutality. So in effect, today neither is Masood Azar nor Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a UN designated 'terrorist', irrespective of the bloodletting that is directly traceable back to them, individually. In the latest case of Masood Azar, unlike earlier when this proposal was initiated by India, the most recent proposal to seek his branding as a terrorist was initiated by the US, UK, and France. Unfortunately, China thought it prudent to put the same on 'technical hold', even though Jaish-e-Mohammad is already a UN-designated terrorist organisation and China still refuses to explain how it distinguishes the leader from the organisation. Donald Trump's observation of the UN to be "just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time" is reflective of the growing irrelevance for such platforms.

Even the much-bandied issue of withdrawing the MFN (Most Favoured Nation) status accorded to Pakistan in 1996 (without reciprocity, which cites the plausible 'non-tariff barriers' made by India) is rooted in political symbolism than punitive implications for Pakistan. On the contrary, such a move could upset the advantageous trade surplus position to India, besides complicating WTO-level arrangements. So withdrawing MFN, like other forms of 'naming and shaming', is more internally appealing than economically, diplomatically, or strategically hurting to Pakistan.

Pakistani establishment's dangerous and continuing brinkmanship owes its genesis to the genealogical fault lines of its two-nation theory that still rankles its polity with the creation of Bangladesh. The necessity of keeping the 'K' bogey alive feeds the essential relevance of the trinity of ruling institutions in Pakistan i.e. Military, Politicos, and the Clergy. Lastly, poking India via terror through 'non-state-actors' is an invaluable ploy of diversionary abilities to deflect attention from Pakistan's own internal challenges like Panamagate, unrest in Balochistan, etc. The only time Pakistan has drawn a real course-correction is when the applecart of the Pakistani institutional structures is threatened with dire irrelevance, and not through any external condemnation or maldesignation. Geography has bestowed a certain providential opportunity to Pakistan to extract leniency and undeserved equanimity from the US, which often overlooks Pakistan's proven duplicity on terror, owing to compulsions of maintaining supply routes for its assets and personnel in Afghanistan. Despite occasional outbursts and diplomatic berating, the US has desisted from declaring Pakistan, a 'terror state'.

Even the latest report submitted by the dozen-odd US think tanks like the Brookings Institution, Hudson Institute, Georgetown University, etc. to the Donald Trump administration suggest desisting from designating Pakistan as a 'state sponsor' of terror, at least in the first year of administration. While it clearly notes the patent Pakistani duplicity, it also recognises the geostrategic importance of keeping Pakistan afloat, as is, given the lack of immediate alternatives. It does, however, call for more direct finger pointing of the terror nurseries, sanctuaries and the infrastructure of Pakistan's supposed 'strategic depth', as a means to exert meaningful reaction, while, still supporting the democratic framework of the restive country.

The last two times that the Pakistani's retracted from their beaten path was immediately after the 9/11, when General Musharaf did a volte-face owing to US pressures which threatened to delegitimise the Pakistani establishment and its antecedents, and the second time was following the ghastly Peshawar school massacre, which targeted the Pakistani Military institution, directly. Corrective measures were initiated by Pakistan, albeit, selectively and temporarily. Therefore, rather than investing all energies in declaring Pakistan a 'terror state' or any such encomium, it is the unabated hybrid pressure of diplomatic, military, and economic squeezing of Pakistani interests in a hypersensitive-on-terror-world that will shift gears. The new US establishment promises short-shrift to diplomatic niceties and ambiguities. Under a Trump Presidency, America's foreign policy has seemingly centred on an overwhelmingly anti-China stand, and the Pakistanis would invariably find themselves on a sticky wicket, given its vassal status towards China (e.g. CPEC, friendly veto's in UN, etc.).

So, India may 'name and shame' Pakistan with sharp dossiers, though it must be alive to the thick-skinned realpolitik which shows that rogue nations can contextualise any negative label afforded on to them, with their creative interpretations and myth-making. Historically, the only time a sovereign course-correction is initiated is when it faces prospects of either a regime change, economic combustion, or when the ruling 'institution' faces spectres of absolute irrelevance.

(Lt Gen Bhopinder Singh (Retd) is former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry. Views expressed are strictly personal.)