A Matter Of Timing

In a purely legal sense, the Indian Air Force (IAF) cannot be faulted for having shot down the Pakistan Navy's Breguet Atlantique reconnaissance-cum-antisubmarine warfare airplane. Pakistan claims that it was on a routine training flight. It also claims that it was inside Pakistani territory. Lastly, it has accused India of sending in helicopters to pick up pieces of the wreckage and transfer them across the border into India. All of this is superficially plausible. Training flights do take place; the frontier may be fuzzy at points and it is true that Indian helicopters reached the site first. But none of that explains why the Breguet Atlantique, an extremely expensive, hi-tech machine, should have been doing a training flight right on top of the Indo-Pak border only days after a two-month war, when the guns had still not fallen silent in Kargil.

On balance, therefore, one is forced to conclude that Pakistan's story is a fabrication. The plane was doing what Pakistani planes have done regularly in the area,probing India's air defences, forcing it to activate its radar and recording its signature for devising the appropriate electronic counter-measures. Such intrusions took place on no fewer than six occasions in May and June this year while the Kargil conflict was going on, but were either over before the IAF had time to react or, what is more likely, were allowed to go unchallenged for fear of widening the ongoing conflict into a full-scale war. Since that fear has abated, the IAF clearly no longer feels that it has to exercise such stern restraint.

Having said all that, the fact remains that the shooting down of the Pakistani aircraft has come at an inopportune moment. Benazir Bhutto has said that it has virtually killed the Lahore accord. That is not strictly correct. The Lahore process has already become inoperative because Pakistan's gigantic misadventure in Kargil and the diplomatic isolation that has followed has weakened the Nawaz Sharif government till it no longer has the capacity to negotiate any deals whatever. Its foreign secretary and information minister tacitly conceded this when they abruptly began to insist that Pakistan would talk about Kashmir and only about Kashmir.

Meaningful talks will become possible only when the aftershock of Kargil fades away and stability returns to Pakistan. The shooting down of the naval plane will make this more difficult. Not only has it aroused widespread anger and added to the humiliation being felt in Pakistan, but it is leading to calls for 'a fitting response' that prime minister Sharif and General Pervez Musharraf are too weak, politically, to resist. Even if they succeed in riding out the storm, they will emerge still more weakened and therefore less capable of restraint and compromise than they already are.

The next few days are, therefore, going to be extremely tense. Sharif has said that Pakistan will devise a 'fitting response'. One can only hope that this is a display of empty bravado. But he may not have much of a choice. For, he has already been accused of betraying Pakistan by 'agreeing' to pull back the 'mujahideen'. If he once again exercises restraint, both he personally, and the civil state in Pakistan will emerge further weakened. Only the Islamic fundamentalists who are baying for revenge will emerge stronger. If this happens, the 'fitting response' will be given in Kashmir and will be reflected in an intensification of terrorism. The 'Islamic' militants are most adept at displaying it by killing helpless civilians in unspeakably brutal ways. Thus, the highest possible vigilance is required in Kashmir in the coming days. As for the incident in the Rann of Kutch, what is done cannot be undone, but prime minister Vajpayee and foreign minister Jaswant Singh would do well to reimpose the severe restraint that they had placed on the armed forces during the Kargil war.

In the next few weeks, there are likely to be many more fist-shaking actions by Pakistani commanders. Many, perhaps most, will be local wildcat operations that do not have the sanction of the chiefs of the armed forces, let alone the Sharif government. If the Indian armed forces respond with maximum force every time, then not only will the restoration of normal relations become impossible, but the survival of the civil state in Pakistan will itself become uncertain. That is not all. If the lateral links between the Islamic fundamentalists and the lower ranks of the armed forces develop further, anything, literally anything, could happen.

It is not in India's interest to promote the Talibanisation of Pakistan for that will lead to the onset of a disorganised, hydra-headed jehad against India. The country's border is too long and too porous, and there are far too many disaffected groups here to control it through police methods alone. Thus, Indians need a government in Pakistan that is preferably sensible and moderate, but at the very least stable, almost as much as it needs one in New Delhi. Pakistan is a long way from having such a government now and things could grow worse there instead of better. New Delhi cannot control what happens there but it can avoid doing anything inadvertently that makes it worse.

In the meantime, a full explanation to Pakistan of how precisely its airplane came to be shot down, with an expression of regret for the loss of life that occurred, would not be out of place. This would not constitute an admission of fault, but might assuage feelings sufficiently in Islamabad to prevent any precipitate action. Nothing will be lost from such an expression of regret, for the two countries are no longer at war and any loss of human life is a matter of sorrow.