 "Pakistan's JIT visits India for probe into Pathankot Attack")
They came, they saw, they prevaricated. After months of media speculation and behind-the-scenes negotiations, a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) from Pakistan comprising officials from Punjab police, Intelligence Bureau and the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) visited India to carry out its own investigation of the attack on Pathankot Air Force Station in January this year.
The air force station was attacked allegedly by members of the terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), resulting in the deaths of seven security personnel, including a commando from the Indian Air Force’s Garud special forces unit.
Following the attack, the Pakistani government claimed it had clamped down on JeM and placed its leader, Maulana Masood Azhar under preventive custody. As part of Pakistan’s own investigation into the attack, the JIT team was given a briefing by India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) and permitted access to witnesses for questioning. The JIT team was also given limited access to Pathankot Air Force Station to aid in its investigation.
The whole episode is as bizarre and surreal as a fever dream. Pakistan, the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, was just invited to investigate its own hand in a terrorist incident. Those truly believing that the JIT was attempting to investigate the incident in earnest might also be interested in a white marble mausoleum in Agra that this writer would like to sell them.
As a point of reference, the 26/11 trial in Pakistan has gone on for almost eight years with no end in sight. The trial has been delayed on several occasions. Judges have been changed at least five times, 12 people linked to the trial in Pakistan, including an additional district and sessions judge, have been killed, and the alleged mastermind, Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi, has been released from prison.
Expecting any different from Pakistan this time around would be naïve. We are told that the JIT’s visit to India might open the doors to the NIA visiting Pakistan to conduct its own investigation. Great, except that this is what should have occurred in the first place.
Pray, what was the Modi government doing giving the JIT a grand tour of Pathankot Air Force Station when the masterminds of the attack and their sponsors are in Pakistan? If the JIT needed to be investigating anything anywhere, it ought to have been at JeM’s Markaz Osman-o-Ali headquarters in Bahawalpur, Pakistan rather than in Pathankot.
If GEO News’ report on the JIT’s visit to Pathankot is to be believed, it would appear that the Pakistanis came to India not to gather information about the complicity of their citizens in the attack, but to conduct a post-mortem into the shoddy response of India’s security forces to the incident.
The reality of the situation is that the Modi government, like governments past, has invested political capital in a chimerical peace process with Pakistan. Back-channel talks between the Indian and Pakistani NSAs are meant to establish general rules of engagement between the two countries. This may allow India to ‘manage’ its relationship with Pakistan in the short term, but it does precious little to persuade Pakistan from continuing to use terrorism as an instrument of policy vis-à-vis India.
In fact, if the last few months have demonstrated anything, it is that the Pakistani military-jihadi complex can strike at will, and at a time and place of its choosing. Mr. Modi’s out-of-the-box approach to Pakistan, with a visit to Lahore, was rewarded with an attack in Pathankot. For good measure, the Indian consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan was also hit.
The notion that this JIT probe will lead to anything of consequence, let alone the possibility that charges are filed against Masood Azhar in Pakistan, is farfetched. Lest we forget, Lahore High Court, which should have been trying Hafiz Saeed for his role in the Mumbai terror attacks, was instead inviting him to deliver keynote addresses at its bar association in the midst of the 26/11 trial. It should therefore be unsurprising that upon its return to Pakistan, the JIT is reported to have claimed that India failed to provide evidence to prove that Pakistan-based terrorists stormed the IAF base. So we are back to square one.
Meanwhile, Jaish-e-Mohammed’s online newspaper, taken down after Pathankot (which some observers argued was a sign of Pakistan’s seriousness of intent) is now back online. Pakistan’s former NSA Sartaj Aziz claimed that Masood Azhar is in preventive custody, but who in India actually knows that this is the case? On the international stage, China has provided Pakistan the necessary diplomatic cover to block India’s attempts to place Masood Azhar on the United Nations’ list of proscribed terrorists.
Pakistan now seems determined to let the issue of the alleged Indian spy play out in public domain. In so doing, it is very likely to shoot itself in the foot (as is its wont) with regard to its increasingly complicated relationship with Iran, but where does this leave India? It should be clear that Pakistan’s actions have yet again circumscribed the political space for India to press forward with ‘dialog’ and ‘normalization’ with its western neighbor.
Rohan Joshi is a Fellow at the Takshashila Institution, focusing on Indian foreign policy and strategic affairs. He is a regular contributor to Pragati - The Indian National Interest Review and The Diplomat.
He writes about India's engagement with the world on his blog, Bharat Kshetra, a part of Business Standard's platform, Punditry.
He tweets as @filter_c
