Salwinder Singh’s multi-utility vehicle was hijacked on New Year’s Eve. Singh is a Punjab Police superintendent in Dinanagar. The vehicle was found abandoned about 500 meters away from Indian Air Force base in Pathankot on Sunday.
The vehicle had been used by the hijackers wearing Indian Army uniform to attack Pathankot airbase in the early hours of Saturday, which resulted in six of the militants and seven Indian security personnel being killed. The gunfight and Indian forces’ siege lasted four days, with gunshots and explosions being heard till Tuesday.
On Tuesday evening, Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar confirmed all six militants had been killed. “There is no suspected terrorist inside right now… I will not give a negative report till the combing operations are over,” he said. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) led combing operation was still going on inside the base at the time of filing this report on Wednesday.
A Kashmir-based separatist group claimed responsibility
Indian intelligence reports claimed on Sunday that the militants were affiliated with Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) based in Bahawalpur. The intelligence claims to have tape-recordings of a JeM militant who had a “southern Punjab accent”. In one of these recordings the militant reportedly tells his mother that he is “heading towards martyrdom”.
On Monday, Kashmir-based separatist militant group United Jihad Council (UJC) claimed the responsibility for the Pathankot attack, with spokesman Syed Sadaqat Hussain saying that militants linked with ‘Highway Squad’ instigated the attack.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called his Indian counterpart reiterating his condemnation of the attack and offering support to counter militancy.
“I was not expecting much diplomatic progress following the Modi-Nawaz meeting in Lahore (on December 25),” says Myra MacDonald, the author of Heights of Madness: The Siachen War. “There is no evidence that the Pakistan security establishment has changed its underpinning ideology of confrontation and competition with India,” she adds.
“That said, I do believe India and Pakistan need to talk, for the same reasons that the United States and the Soviet Union talked during the Cold War – to prevent misunderstandings and escalations between two nuclear-armed states.”
Indian sociopolitical blogger Vidyut Kale believes that while critics of Modi will not spare the opportunity to question him, most of them – except Shiv Sena – are very pro-talks. “This holds potential that the Pavlovian cycle of frozen talks in the wake of terrorist attacks – that terrorists clearly count on – could be overcome with some skilful handling,” she says. “I have no idea if the present government is capable of that, but it is a wide, wide opening that is unprecedented in recent history to use the terror attacks to cement talks further and isolate the elements that sabotage them instead of getting sabotaged.”
An Indian police officer carries a pistol in one hand and a document folder on the other during a search operation at a residential area
Beena Sarwar, Pakistan Editor for Aman ki Asha, says it would be a victory for the attackers if the Pathankot attack succeeds in halting the peace process. “There is pressure on PM Modi to step back from the diplomatic process but I hope he will not give in to that,” she says adding that, “(India and Pakistan) should show maturity, stay the course – of peace, dialogue, talks – and not play into the hands of those with a vested interest in preventing détente.”
MacDonald expects Indian government’s restrained response to continue in the short run.
Vidyut Kale lauds the absence of knee-jerk reaction from the Indian side. “The fact that BJP sounds remarkably like UPA2 at the moment will go a long way toward mollifying the Congress with their domestic ‘I told you so’ instead of attacking the talks. Even though there will be questions on Modi’s visit to Pakistan.”
But would the identity of the perpetrators change the way India and Pakistan approach the Pathankot attack?
“It shouldn’t,” believes Beena Sarwar. “The Kashmiri separatists and Jaish-e-Mohammad are closely linked and their objectives are the same. They are hardline militants using religion for political purposes. Regardless of their motives, they are engaged in criminal acts.”
She continues: “The Pakistan government must clearly condemn the attack regardless of who is responsible, and take strict action if the perpetrators planned and carried out the attack in Pakistan. The Indian government must stick to its stated position of continuing talks in any case.”
MacDonald gives “quite a lot of credence to the Indian claim about Jaish-e-Mohammad involvement partly because of the witness testimony reported in the Indian media, and also because Jaish seems to have been fairly successfully infiltrated by Indian intelligence”.
India claims to have recordings of a Jaish militant with a 'southern Punjab accent'
Arshia Malik, a Srinagar-based blogger for Pakistani publication The Nation, believes the ‘scramble’ to claim responsibility and emphasize that it was Kashmiri separatists is ‘fishy’. “The general mood is that Kashmiris are not mentally capable of sustaining gun battles for so long. These have to be Afghan-trained veterans or Pakistan-based,” she says.
Malik also believes that the rushed UJC claim also could be a design to signal a warning that India-Pakistan harmony cannot be sustained without addressing militancy/separatism brewing in Kashmir.
“The RSS too have issued covert warnings to the PM that he cannot be in government for long if he goes traipsing to Pakistan like this,” she says. “The threat is veiled though. UJC’s claim of attacks both inside Pathankot and the graffiti on the wall of the Indian consulate in Afghanistan about Afzal Guru being avenged shows some kind of ploy which the Indian intelligence and Army is not buying.”
MacDonald says the question of Jammu and Kashmir should be addressed for the sake of all the people living in the former princely state, on both sides of the LoC.
“It is also in India’s interest to ensure there is no fresh unrest in the Kashmir Valley that would then be exploited by Pakistan. But the need to address the interests of the people who live in the former princely state exists independently of the tensions between India and Pakistan,” she says. “Even if Kashmir were resolved tomorrow, Pakistan’s own ideology would still require it to compete with India.”
Beena Sarwar maintains Pakistan would need to respond to militancy and address India’s concerns about the Mumbai attack culprits. “It’s not just for India’s sake but for Pakistan’s own sake,” she says. “The criminals carrying out such attacks in India are closely linked and allied to those who carry out such attacks in Pakistan.”
