Geopolitical Insights: Pahalgam Terror Attack and China-Pakistan Nexus

Potential Strategic Fallouts Of Pahalgam Terror Attack

If India does respond to the Pahalgam terror attack via a military action inside Pakistan with a preparedness to dominate the escalation ladder, then it must be prepared to sustain significant losses in terms of lives and resources itself, and a long-drawn conflict could take a heavy toll on the Indian economy.

Based on the strategic calculus in the region as it appears now, conflict with Pakistan will most likely be a long-drawn affair for India, particularly considering potential Chinese involvement through provision of weaponry and intelligence support to the Pakistani military.

Besides, China could deploy more troops and weaponry along its side of the LAC to keep the pressure on India’s eastern front. An indication in this regard has already come from one of the leading Chinese experts on India, Lin Minwang, Researcher and Vice Dean, Institute of International Studies, Fudan University.

“Not far from Indian-controlled Kashmir, Chinese troops have been stationed there (Ladakh) since 2020, which can actually play a role in balancing and promoting peace in the area. After all, India needs to take China’s feelings and interests into consideration,” wrote Lin in an article published on May 1^st.

Also, China could undertake non-kinetic measures against India in support of Pakistan such as by conducting cyber or electronic attacks against Indian network systems – civilian and military. 

However, the success of this strategy for Beijing hinges upon such a conflict ending inconclusive geographically, which is wishful thinking because it is highly unlikely that New Delhi would undertake any significant war effort against Pakistan without a logical objective, which would certainly be the absorption of PoJK and restoration of India’s territorial integrity.

If India sets in motion all the plans it has been devising for years to retrieve PoJK and successfully executes them, then this will amount to a catastrophic error on part of Beijing. The recent conflict between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah should be a lesson in this regard.

The Israeli military and intelligence apparatus managed to assassinate the chief of Lebanese Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, eliminate significant portion of the organisation’s military leadership and destroy several of its advanced weapons. Also, with the fall of Assad regime in Syria, the Lebanese Hezbollah has been cut-off from its critical supply route for weaponry and other resources from Iran.

Lebanese Hezbollah was a crown jewel of Iran’s regional proxy network, which enabled it to exercise huge influence in the Mediterranean, and now with this organisation in shambles, the entire strategic calculus in West Asia (or the Middle East) has been changed.

Likewise, if India manages to take back PoJK, China will lose its land connection to Pakistan and all its investments in the CPEC corridor will be undone. These investments in the CPEC project were not delivering any tangible economic dividends anyways but Beijing still kept pouring in money due to its potential to deliver larger geostrategic dividends and even those will cease to exist once the PoJK is absorbed by India.

Instead, India after having absorbed the PoJK will come in direct contact with Afghanistan and will now be in the position to project its influence in Central Asia through trade and other means, much to the detriment of China’s interests in this region that have been discussed by the Author in detail here and here.

So, just like Iran lost its crown jewel, that is Lebanese Hezbollah, China could lose the flagship of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which is the CPEC project. Of course, China far exceeds Iran in terms of its military and industrial might, so it is unlikely to be a mere spectator to such a grave loss. 

Therefore, let us also assume that the Indian government does not consider it prudent to embroil India into a long-drawn conflict with Pakistan that also has a prospect of potential Chinese military intervention in it, given what is at stake for Beijing.

In that case, experts in India have suggested several options that fall short of a full-fledged war with Pakistan, and the Indian government has already begun implementing some of them.

For instance, Sushant Sareen, Senior Fellow at New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation (ORF) and considered India’s foremost expert on Pakistan, wrote a piece a day after the Pahalgam terror attack occurred in which he suggested that India could end the ceasefire on the LoC and undertake heavy bombardment of areas inside PoJK so as to exert pressure on the Pakistan’s military and force it to divert its forces from its western front – where there has been an upsurge in insurgent activity in recent years – to its eastern front that is facing India. 

“By heating the LoC and putting military pressure all along the international border, India can force Pakistan to divert and commit the bulk of its forces to its eastern front. India can unsettle Pakistan and keep it guessing by making shows of forays across the border to ensure Pakistan doesn’t redeploy these troops to its western front, where two insurgencies are already raging,” wrote Sareen on April 23.

Other than that, Sareen also suggested some economic measures such as the abrogation of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), cease exports of live-saving drugs to Pakistan, and creating a policy that forbids companies doing business in PoJK from doing any business with India.

The Indian government has already suspended, if not abrogated, the IWT so as to disrupt water access for Pakistan from the Indus Water System, which serves as a principal water source for the country as well as supports its agriculturual sector.

Per the reports, the river system is critical to sustain Pakistan’s agricultural needs particularly in its Punjab and Sindh provinces, meaning stopping its water flow would adversely impact the country’s agricultural sector which accounts for 23% of its national income, supports 68% of its rural population and employs 37-42% of its labour force, per a report by the United Nations’ (UN’s) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Also, around 70% of Pakistan’s exports are directly or indirectly derived from agriculture and 82% of its cultivated land is irrigated, so the suspension of IWT is poised cause lower crop yields and food shortages in months to come, thereby adding to Pakistan’s socio-economic instability.

Besides, there have been sporadic instances of fighting between the Indian and Pakistani armed forces at the LoC in the aftermath of the terror attack in Pahalgam, and if these instances of fighting continue without any respite and possibly with increasing intensity, they will surely deplete the Pakistani military’s resources as well as degrade its ability to deal with insurgencies in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces.

However, the aforesaid measures are effective only against Pakistan, and not the China-Pakistan nexus. In fact, a more weakened Pakistan could result in greater leverage for China over the former which it can use to increase its military footprint inside Pakistan, further complicating things for India, so New Delhi has to be mindful of this possibility as well.

This, according to the Author, is the trap that Beijing has perhaps laid out for India, as it holds promise to deplete not just Pakistan’s but also India’s resources, thereby potentially stymying the latter’s growth trajectory.

For instance, the terror attack on the Indian parliament by Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), another one of Pakistan’s sponsored terror organisations, in 2001 led to similar situation of heightened tensions between India and Pakistan, resulting into the 2001-2002 military standoff between the two countries.

Per a study conducted by the Mumbai-based think-tank Strategic Foresight Group in 2004, India spent a total of US$ 1.8 billion (INR 8,749.80 crores at the time) during this confrontation, which amounted to 0.37% of the country’s GDP at the time.

It is important to point out here that the Author’s assessment is counter-intuitive to what most experts in India are suggesting, which is, that Beijing intends to embroil India in a full-fledged long-drawn war with Pakistan. The assessment is based on the Author’s notion that a trap must be difficult to identify for the successful entrapment of the enemy.

So, the option of a full-fledged war against Pakistan, though costly and painful, could eliminate this China-Pakistan nexus once and for all if India manages to successfully retake the PoJK. Hence, from the cost-benefit perspective, this option appears more viable to the Author, strictly geo-strategically speaking.

The Author here is not mongering for war but simply trying to point out that the deterrence that India established with the Balakot Air Strikes in 2019 has been broken by China-Pakistan nexus with the Pahalgam terror attack, and India has to re-establish it to guarantee the safety of its citizens, most probably through a kinetic action against the perpetrators of this attack.

Already, reports have begun to emerge, citing India’s intelligence agencies – that Pakistan is planning more terror attacks in J&K entailing potentially targeted killings of police officers, railway officials and non-locals in the region.

So, the real question is whether India can afford the cost of a conflict with Pakistan backed by China and is it prepared to double down on its war effort if China decides to join the fray.

This is the question that the Indian government must be able to come up with a clear answer to, before it decides to undertake any significant military action(s) – of the order of magnitude comparable to or surpassing that of Surgical Strikes in 2016 and Balakot Air Strikes in 2019 – against terrorist bases/camps or the military facilities inside Pakistan.

 

Tanmay Kadam is a geopolitical observer based in India. He has experience working as a Defense and International Affairs journalist for EurAsian Times. He can be contacted at tanmaykadam700@gmail.com