Finally the government of India has spoken about Pakistan’s deep involvement with the terrorists in Punjab with the necessary firmness. This inevitably raises the question why it has been so muted in its response all this time. Only Mr Rajiv Gandhi can answer this question. One point is, however, reasonably clear. Which is that if till late last year, New Delhi could take the view that it could cope with the level of Pakistani assistance to the terrorists by stepping up security measures within the state, it could no longer afford to do so after the middle of last November. Sometime then, the so-called council for Khalistan, comprising Sikh secessionists abroad, met with terrorist leaders from India in Pakistan. We do not know what happened at this meeting. But we do know that around that time a qualitative change took place in the nature of arms which Islamabad had been providing to the terrorists. In December last year, the Chinese assault rifle AK-47s began to proliferate with the extremists. There could be no doubt about the source. The terrorists used this weapon to massacre two of our finest police officers, Mr AS Brar and Mr KR Gill, in Patiala on December 13. At that time, Indian intelligence reportedly put the figure of AK-47s in Punjab at around 200. By January, it had gone to 400. Now it may be closer to 1,500, than to the 1,000 plus that official sources have been talking about.
While these figures clearly establish that towards the end of last year, Islamabad deliberately decided to step up its support for the terrorists – they just could not have suddenly bought so many AK-47s and other equally deadly weapons such as the American AR 15s and smuggled them into Punjab without Pakistan’s active help – they leave unanswered the question why the Zia establishment chose that particular time to do so. Again, we can only speculate on Pakistan’s calculations and motivations. The terrorists had then taken a severe beating; they were virtually on the run; the security forces were in top form. So it is possible that Islamabad regarded it necessary to raise the level of support for the extremists in order to keep them going. As it happened, Islamabad decided to raise its stakes in Punjab just as it was becoming fully evident that the Soviets had decided to withdraw their troops from Afghanistan. Apparently, there is a connection between the Pakistani knowledge that the Soviets were on their way out of Afghanistan and their decision to increase the level of their support to the terrorists in Punjab. But we cannot say what the connection is. For we do not know whether Islamabad was taking an “optimistic” view of the prospects in Afghanistan and thus feeling free to increase the pressure on India’s internal defences in the strategically critical Punjab, or whether it was worried about the likely course of developments in Afghanistan and regarded it necessary to tie down Indian forces in Punjab.
There is a widespread tendency in certain quarters in India to accept uncritically the second proposition. But assuming this to be the case, how would one explain President Zia’s own bellicosity on Siachen and desperate attempts to seize it and suppose we agree to disregard this and other “inconvenient” facts, what follows? That we should ignore Islamabad’s sharply increased intervention in Punjab? That we should not seek to seal the border to the extent an unnatural man-made border can be sealed? That we should not post the army on the frontier, lest it obliges the Pakistanis to withdraw some of their forces from the North-West Frontier? The answers to these questions cannot be in dispute. We have to take whatever measures we possibly can to stop the free flow of arms from Pakistan to the terrorists in Punjab. For all we know, this might not suffice. We may need to put pressure on Pakistan to compel it to behave.
We still hope that Islamabad will not allow the situation to deteriorate to a point where India feels obliged to exercise its right of hot pursuit. But surely the time has come to leave the Pakistani rulers in no doubt that New Delhi will exercise that right unless they see reason. President Zia blows hot and cold at the same time. He threatens jihad on Siachen and promises peaceful relations at the same time. Hopefully he cannot fool Mr Rajiv Gandhi any longer. Hopefully the Prime Minister would now expect him to provide a solid demonstration of his sincerity. This he can do by not challenging the status quo in respect of Siachen and stopping arms supplies and other facilities such as training to the terrorists. Indeed, New Delhi will be within its right to insist not only that he closes the training camps which the Indian intelligence has identified, but also delivers to it terrorists who are either already in Pakistan or cross into it from now. The danger in Punjab is grave. The Indian government just cannot afford to be mealy-mouthed. It is surprising that it should have wanted to send its Defence secretary to Islamabad for discussions with his counterpart. What discussion do we need when the evidence of Pakistan’s activities against our country is so overwhelming? Such “conciliatory” moves can only encourage the Pakistanis and the terrorists and confuse security forces and peoples. And as if this was not enough the latest reports speak of missiles coming from Pakistan having been seized in a BSF raid on a farm house in Gurdaspur.