Pakistan’s ‘inhumane’ act that saw its Border Action Team (BAT) mutilate the bodies of two Indian soldiers in Kashmir’s Krishna Ghati comes merely a week after Indian steel magnate Sajjan Jindal ‘secretly’ met Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif during an unscheduled visit to Islamabad.
The brutal attack, which is believed to have been authorised by Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, came within a week of Sharif-Jindal’s meet on April 26 in Pakistan’s hill station Murree.
The meeting triggered speculation in Pakistani media that bilateral talks between the two neighbouring sides may revive soon.
Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tahreek-i-Insaf (PTI) has alleged that Jindal had either come with a special message from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, or had come to negotiate the release of former Indian naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, who has been sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court.
“Considering incidents in the past, chances of horrid incident had sharply increased after Sharif's meeting with Indian steel magnate Sajjan Jindal. There would be voices linking the incident across the LoC with Jindal's visit to Pakistan,” analyst Abdul Sattar Khan was quoted by Times of India as saying.
The latest attack on Indian forces was clearly meant to disturb and enrage India. Experts see a trend in such incidents. They believe that the threat of such attacks increases every time there is hope or an indication of bilateral talks opening up between the two nations. And the facts attest to this claim.
All major attempts to normalise relations between the two nations have been quickly followed up with an act that changes the scenario altogether. Sample these:
- The Pathankot terror attack came within a fortnight after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surprise visit to Lahore in a bid to strengthen ties with neighbour Pakistan. Defence experts believe that the attack was deliberately done to disrupt the foreign secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan in Islamabad on January 15 last year, adding that the militant organisations as well as the Pakistan Army have always opposed dialogue between the two sides.
- Similarly, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee visited Lahore on Feb 21, 1999, on an invitation by his the then Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif, the two sides signed a historic peace agreement. But in May 1999, Pakistan Army Chief Pervez Musharraf overthrew the Sharif government and masterminded the Kargil War.
- In November 2008, the 10-member Pakistan-based terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba carried out a series of 12 coordinated shooting and bombing attacks lasting four days across Mumbai. The attacks drew widespread global condemnation, killing 164 people. After this attack, the dialogue between India and Pakistan process was frozen.
- In May 2014, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif visited New Delhi to attend the swearing-in ceremony of Narendra Modi government. At that time, it was decided that the foreign secretaries of the two sides will met in August to draw a roadmap to carry forward the engagements. But few days ahead of the scheduled talk, on August 18, Pakistan High Commissioner to India, Abdul Basit, met Kashmiri separatists, forcing India to annul the talks.
- On December 5, 2014, three days ahead of PM Modi's visit to Srinagar and Anantnag, 11 jawans were killed in series of grenade attacks by terrorists.
- On July 10, 2015, on the sidelines of the SCO Summit in Ufa, Modi and Sharif made a commitment to restart the dialogue process. In a joint statement after the meeting, Foreign Secretaries S Jaishankar and Aizaz Chowdhury announced that National Security Advisers Ajit Doval and Sartaj Aziz will meet in New Delhi. But on July 17, three Pakistani terrorists attacked a bus and police station in Gurdaspur killing seven Indian nationals.
The meeting between Sharif and Jindal has also been viewed – at least in Pakistan – as an attempt to restart the peace process. Going by the emotions of the people in India - the dastardly attack by the Pakistan Army has once again managed to do what it does best – provoke India and scuttle the peace process.
