Mean business: The strikes have signalled our readiness to violate the sanctity of LoC.

IT is quite bizarre. Pakistan’s brazen denial of India’s smart and sharp punitive raid by both the military and civilian leadership has put New Delhi in a quandary about any military riposte. The situation is confusing. GHQ Rawalpindi was extremely surprised by India’s punitive retaliation. While Pakistan’s Inter Services Public Relations maintains that the LoC has not been crossed and army chief Gen Raheel Sharif has called it malicious propaganda. Pakistan TV channels have added to the opacity by showing doctored footage of captured Indian soldiers. Some media reports say the attack was a ground trespass in which eight Indian and two Pakistani soldiers  were killed. Hafiz Saeed has said: “Let us teach Indians surgical strikes.” He wants the Pakistan army to liberate Kashmir. By denying that the LoC had been crossed, a response might be averted.On the face of it, the strategic message is that no escalation is being contemplated and it is business as usual. Domestically and internationally, Pakistan is in one big mess. While General Sharif’s popularity is soaring and his term is coming to an end in weeks, the battle for succession is waging in the minds of the army, the public and PM Nawaz Sharif. Despite the army clarifying that the General will retire by November-end, nobody is sure the transition will be bloodless. The economy is in bad shape, the campaign against terrorism is not going well and Mr Sharif’s standing is slumped. Pakistan has never been so isolated regionally and internationally as it is today. Presidential favourite Hillary Clinton’s latest pronouncement that she fears a jehadi coup in Pakistan and suicide nuclear bombers roaming the streets paints a scary nuclear scenario. Given these conditions, a Pakistan army adventure should not be surprising ‘at a time and place of its choosing’, though without significant escalation. Overt or covert tit-for-tat strikes should be expected in the form of spectacular fidayeen attacks on military camps or more measured strikes inside J&K.World attention was grabbed by India’s retributive, preemptive raid described as a calibrated counter terrorism operation. It was not condemned by even some of Pakistan’s best friends like China, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain. Cleverly choreographed and kept below the escalatory threshold, it sent the right message to Pakistan that henceforth its cross-border terrorism (CBT) will not go un-responded. It is the domestic audience which has been overwhelmed by the punitive retaliation. Dileep Chand, the taxi driver who brought me back after one of the many angry and emotional TV studio indictments of Uri, asked me whether India would retaliate. Before I could answer, he shot back: “Our leaders indulge in empty threats.” He was old enough to have lived through the cyclic ignominy of the attacks on Parliament and Mumbai and the numerous Pathankots and Uris over the last three decades. Dileep Chand is a happy man now.The cross-border operation was symbolic to signal our readiness to violate the sanctity of LoC, something we didn’t do even during Kargil — to make the Deep State rethink its strategy of employing non-state actors as instruments of coercion. As more Uris will happen, our capacity to deal with them has to expand. Former NSA MK Narayanan has revealed that our retributive capabilities are inadequate and that the options of striking terrorist training camps in the PoK were considered unviable after Mumbai in 2008 following a cost-benefit analysis. He said at that time India lacked the capability of conducting spectacular raids, rescue missions and extractions like Entebbe, Mogadishu and Abbottabad, adding that “the reality is that India’s security agencies and the armed forces still do not have adequate capabilities of this kind notwithstanding claims to the contrary”.Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar has admitted that mistakes have been made in Pathankot and Uri. He has also talked about using a terrorist to fight a terrorist and putting back in place the dismantled deep assets in Pakistan. Similarly, NSA Ajit Doval has warned Pakistan “if there is another Mumbai there will be no Balochistan”. These capabilities should be constructed.India has not invested in transparent and clandestine punitive capabilities despite it being bled for the last 30 years, if not 70, by Pakistan’s CBT. According to the latest Pew Research Centre poll,  62 per cent of Indians want military force to be used to defeat terrorism; 63 per cent want India to spend more on defence. An online poll post-Uri suggests that 67 per cent Indians want the application of kinetic force. According to Credit Suisse, India has the fourth-largest militaries in the world and unarguably one of the most competent and yet it has not been employed effectively. That said, it is clear that certain necessary and urgently needed capabilities have not been developed. Who is to blame? The military, of course, but even more, successive governments that have starved it of funds and requisite political direction. The announcement last week by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley that the defence budget will be increased has not come a day too soon.PM Modi should devote more time and resources on the defence of the realm. Without sanitising the periphery and the homeland, his goal of building a prosperous and secure India cannot be realised. There was no reason for him to meet his Service Chiefs individually and collectively four times before going to Kozhikode, had he visited the War Room ab initio more frequently. In fact, on assuming office, he should have asked the military chiefs, two questions: readiness to respond to the next Mumbai type attack; and dealing with CBT. He should also have attended a war game or two to imbibe the nuances of a nuclear overhang. Had he done all this, contingency plans and rehearsals of a fitting reply commensurate with existing capabilities would have been ready for immediate use and not 10 days later.The retributive strike is not going to end CBT. The battle to alter the behaviour of the Deep State has been joined. For now, the Pakistan media is toeing its army’s line that the Indian Army did not cross the LoC. This make-believe allows Pakistan to not respond and escalate the situation. We should not try to rub GHQ Rawalpindi’s nose to the ground but leave it with the face-saving exit option. At the same time, we should be prepared for  retaliation, mainly in J&K. The military should keep its powder dry and let active diplomacy take the front seat, though India’s dilemma will remain crafting retribution over the next Uri.The writer is a founder member of the erstwhile Defence Planning Staff