Last week’s Pahalgam terrorist attack, which saw some terrorists massacre 26 tourists who were specifically targeted just because they were Hindus, instantly sparked another Indo-Pakistani crisis. India accused Pakistan of playing a role in the attack given its traditional patronage of Delhi-designated separatist-terrorist groups in Kashmir. Not only has Pakistan denied India’s accusation, which was to be expected, but top officials surprisingly made two self-discrediting claims that’ll be analyzed in this piece.
Ishaq Dar, who doubles as Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, remarked that “Those who carried out attacks in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam district on April 22 might be freedom fighters.” Whatever one’s views might be about the Kashmir Conflict, it’s an indisputable act of terrorism to massacre tourists, not to mention on the basis of their religion. Speculating that the perpetrators “might be freedom fighters” discredits bonafide freedom fighters across the world and tacitly justifies terrorism.
That’s because actual members of real liberation movements are supposed to only attack military targets, not civilian ones. Waging a dirty war against civilians doesn’t bring one’s cause closer to fruition. The only reason why some self-described “freedom fighters” have done this in the past was for ethnic cleansing purposes and to provoke retaliatory attacks, both by the security services and enraged civilians, in order to radicalize the group of people in whose name their dirty war was being waged.
The consequent cycle of violence is intended to maximally destabilize the area of operations and even spread beyond it in order to open up a Pandora’s box of problems for the state against which they’re warring. Whatever strategic goals they might expect to advance through such literally terroristic means are overshadowed by the carnage that this causes for civilians. It’s for this reason that bonafide freedom fighters from real liberation movements have learned not to resort to these self-discrediting tactics.
The second self-discrediting claim to be made by a top Pakistani official about the Pahalgam terrorist attack came from Defense Minister Khawaja Asif, who told Al Jazeera that what happened on that dark day might be a “false flag operation”. This is a groundless conspiracy theory which presupposes that India ridiculously orchestrated a terrorist attack against its own people in the union territory that it’s invested so much in over the decades to stabilize or at least deliberately let a detected one unfold.
Both variations of the false flag scenario would be counterproductive for Indian interests. For instance, the Pahalgam terrorist attack has reportedly resulted in a sharp cancellation in hotel bookings and tours that are expected to hit the regional economy hard, thus undoing a lot of the government’s hard-earned progress in rehabilitating this previously restive union territory. Those locals who end up out of work and impoverished might also eventually be manipulated into joining banned groups out of desperation.
In the larger context, renewed tensions with Pakistan could lead to a loss of foreign investor confidence in the rapidly growing Indian economy, which Delhi wants to avoid. Moreover, the risk of a large-scale war breaking out by miscalculation could offset India’s Great Power trajectory, so it doesn’t make sense for it to take this chance this by saber-rattling against Pakistan. India therefore wouldn’t initiate tensions, let alone via a false flag operation, but would only climb the escalation ladder after a real terrorist attack.
Upon reflecting more on what Dar and Asif said, observers will notice a glaring contradiction in that the first strongly insinuated approval of the Pahalgam attack by speculating that the perpetrators “might be freedom fighters” while the second strongly disapproves of the attack and blames it all on India. These scenarios are mutually exclusive and intellectually insulting, and the fact that top Pakistani officials can’t get their story straight suggests that they’re clumsily trying to cover up their side’s complicity.
