Payback Time! Pakistan should respond to the India sponsored insurgency in Balochistan by hitting at her Chicken’s Neck in the North East

On the eve of independence Quaid e Azam, while replying to a foreign correspondent, talked about a local Monroe Doctrine, which would seal the Sub-Continent against foreign interference (Singh, 2010). However, Pakistan and India had different strategic objectives. While the main objective of Pakistan was to survive as a sovereign country, Indian leadership nurtured the ambition of re-absorbing Pakistan into a united India. 

Sardar Patel, independent India’s first interior minister, termed partition as a temporary phase and was confident that Pakistan would soon be brought back into the pack (Wolpert, 2005). Congress’ mindset can be gleaned from a letter written by Nehru to Brigadier Cariappa, a member of the Reconstitution Committee formed to oversee the division of armies: 

  “Let things take shape for a while. But of one thing I am convinced, that ultimately there will be a united and strong India. We will have to go through the valley of shadows before we reach the sunlit mountain top” (Khanduri, 2007). This same Nehru had once remarked to B.K. Nehru “let us see for how long they last’ (Singh, 2012). 

Indian meddling in Balochistan started soon after the Independence. Like the tribal societies elsewhere, Balochistan was a confederacy where different tribes were ruled by the local chieftains called Sardars. The insurgencies that kept sweeping Balochistan from time to time were essentially a power struggle waged by these local chieftains, with covert support from India and the erstwhile Soviet Union, to control the resources of this province. When the Baloch Sardars talk about the rights of the Baloch people, they mean themselves. All the cultivable land, water resources, and grazing grounds are the private property of these chieftains. 

Balochistan has gained added importance due to the projected China- Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Running about 2395 kilometers from Gwadar to Kashgar, it will link Gwadar with China’s Xingjian region via a network of highways, railways, and oil and gas pipelines. The Corridor can be likened to an overland Suez Canal. Whereas it will become the future lifeline of Pakistan's economy, CPEC will accrue two major benefits to China by 1) Opening up the economies of China's two backward western provinces – Xingjiang and Tibet; 2) Providing China an alternate route to the existing sea lane of communications passing through the Strait of Malacca.

 Pakistan, since the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in February 1989, has been fighting an undeclared war forced on it by India, Afghanistan, the United States. After suffering considerable losses, the army has forced the terrorists in Balochistan on the run. To counter the Indian meddling in Balochistan, there is a need to revive the indirect approach of outflanking India from its northeast. 

Northeast of India is like a half severed arm attached to the body, precariously through a thin membrane. This thin membrane is a 22-kilometer wide territory, called the Siliguri corridor. The narrow corridor between Bhutan and Bangladesh provides the only overland connection between the northeastern region and mainland India. 

The region comprises the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, and Sikkim. Except for Sikkim which was a princely state bordering Tibet, the rest of the region was once part of Myanmar. The region was annexed by the British to their Indian empire during the 19th and early 20 centuries. On the departure of the British, the northeastern region was gifted by Mountbatten to his friend Nehru. 

However, the inhabitants of all these states fiercely contested the British decision and demanded independent status. Resultantly, freedom movements started in the whole region soon after 1947, ruthlessly suppressed by India. There are seven decades-long insurgencies in this region, which, despite the Indian ham-handedness, refuse to die down. As far back as the 1960s, undivided Pakistan had been providing support to the Naga and Mizo freedom fighters. The support temporarily stopped as a result of the 1971 War, but resumed during the 1980s. 

  It is in Pakistan and China’s common interest to destabilize India’s northeast. It has been mentioned by this writer earlier that what happens in the South China Sea, particularly the Strait of Malacca, is closely linked with CPEC. China is developing CPEC to counter the US plan for blockading the Strait of Malacca in the event of a war between the US and China. 

The US, goaded by India, is contemplating embarking on yet another series of quixotic adventures in the South China Sea region. To facilitate this, the US is providing COMCASA compatible equipment to India to snoop on the Chinese navy and air force. COMCASA, signed between the US and India in 2018, stands for Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement. It aims at facilitating interoperability between the armed forces of the two countries.

  Reportedly, the US wants India to monitor the Chinese submarine traffic through the Strait of Malacca and, if possible, block it for the Chinese shipping in a future war. Western think tanks say that India can easily block Chinese shipping by parking a few ships at the mouth of the Strait of Malacca. This is a hare-brained scheme. The Strait of Malacca, if blocked, will be blocked for all maritime traffic that passes through it. A coordinated Pak-China strategy in northeastern India will be a payback to India's machinations in Balochistan, particularly along CPEC. 

Saleem Akhtar Malik 

25 August 2021