Indo-Pak Relations: What's The Endgame?

India-Pakistan relations have hit a dangerous low as conflicts mount on the LoC . A look at India’s options

- Raj Chengappa

Pakistan is like the bounceback toys sold in subcontinental markets. Hit them hard enough and they appear to topple, only to rebound and, if you are not watchful, whack you. As he nears the end of his fourth year as prime minister, Narendra Modi must be both exasperated and frustrated with the way his efforts to deal with Pakistan have turned out. Whatever he has thrown at Pakistan to bring it around, it never seems to learn, and keeps coming back for more punishment.

Rarely has so much hostility been witnessed on the Line of Control (LoC)—where the armies of India and Pakistan stand bunker-to-bunker—since the ceasefire the two sides negotiated in 2003. That agreement now seems as good as dead. Last year, there were an average of three violations a day on the LoC even during winter when conventionally there is less cross-border infiltration because of the thick snow cover. There has been no let-up in the new year. Last week, tensions mounted as terrorists struck the Sunjuwan army camp in Jammu in an attack that saw five army personnel and one civilian killed apart from the three terrorists who carried out the mission. Almost simultaneously, another terror attack on a CRPF camp in Srinagar was foiled, but not before a jawan was killed. India’s patience started to wear thin. At a press conference in Jammu, a sombre minister for defence Nirmala Sitharaman charged Pakistan with engineering the Sunjuwan attack and warned: “Pakistan will pay for its misadventure.”

The big questions: To what extremes can India go to make Pakistan pay for such ‘misadventures’? Does Delhi have a game plan to counter Islamabad’s brinkmanship? Is there an endgame?