For India, it is important to go beyond investing all energies in declaring Pakistan a “terror state” or giving any such encomium. It is unrelenting diplomatic and military pressure as well as the economic squeezing of Pakistani interests in a hypersensitive-on-terror world that will help India to shift gears and get tangible results.

Masood Azhar (left) and Hafiz Saeed enjoy impunity despite all diplomatic efforts. AFP

RAJYA Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar’s appeal to Members of Parliament to declare Pakistan a “terrorist state” and snap all  economic, trade and cultural ties is well meant, though insufficient in changing the essential ground realities. The evidence to nail Pakistan’s complicity in terror is incontrovertible and universally acknowledged, with the hard data since 1998 showing14,741 civilian and 6,274 security personnel killed in terror attacks, which can be directly linked to the progenitors in Pakistan. However, labelling a country unilaterally or even multilaterally does not lead to tangible course-correction. It only appeals to the constituents and cadres, internally. Declarations by forums like the UN, for anointing nations, entities or individuals as “terrorists” or “terror sponsors” is becoming irrelevant. This is due to the sophistry of the procedures involved in the designation and the subsequent inability to enforce tangible restrictions and punitive actions. The UN declaration of Hafiz Muhammad Saeed on December 10, 2008, (resolution 1822), as being associated with Lashkar-e-Toiba and Al-Qaida and for “participating in the financing, planning, facilitating, preparing or perpetrating of acts of activities by, in conjunction with, under the name of, on behalf or in support of” both entities, mattered little to the Pakistani state. Pakistan allowed a free reign to the fugitive with civil impunity, as the Pakistanis maintained that India ostensibly lacked, “evidence nor any real proof behind their allegations”. That the UN  declared him a terrorist and that the US had placed a $10-million bounty on his head, besides the ban was simultaneously enforced on Hafiz Saeed’s organisation by other countries like UK, Russia, Australia, EU etc. was of no consequence to the Pakistani establishment and narrative. Similarly, the contradictory optics of Pakistan’s “all-weather friend” China vetoing the designation of the Jaish-e-Mohammad Chief, Masood Azhar as a “Global Terrorist” at the UN — is to be contrasted with the shocking delisting and lifting of sanctions against another virulently anti-India terrorist, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, known as the “Butcher of Kabul”. The leader of the Hezb-e-Islami faction, he is infamous for his single-handed plunder and massacre in Afghanistan. The recent pardon inked by the Afghan government led to the lifting of UN sanctions and the political rehabilitation of the warlord, who remains unrepentant, even after his established scale of brutality. In the case of Masood Azhar, unlike earlier when the proposal was initiated by India, the latest proposal to seek his branding as a terrorist was initiated by the US, UK and France. Yet, China thought it prudent to put the same on “technical hold”, even though Jaish-e-Mohammad is already an UN-designated terrorist organisation. China refuses to explain how it distinguishes the leader from the organisation. Donald Trump’s observation of the UN as “just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time” reflects the growing irrelevance of such platforms.Even the much-bandied issue of withdrawing the MFN (Most-Favoured Nation) status accorded to Pakistan in 1996 (without a reciprocal status from Pakistan, citing the plausible “non-tariff barriers” made by India), is rooted more in political symbolism than punitive implications for Pakistan. On the contrary, such a move could upset the overtly advantageous trade surplus position to India, besides complicating WTO-level arrangements. So withdrawing MFN, like other forms of “naming and shaming” is more internally appealing than economically or strategically hurtful to Pakistan.The genesis of the Pakistani establishment’s  brinkmanship lies in the genealogical fault lines of its two-nation theory. The creation of Bangladesh still rankles. The necessity of keeping the “K”- bogey alive fuels the essential relevance of the trinity of ruling institutions in Pakistan — army, politicos and the clergy. Lastly, poking India via terror through “non-state-actors”, is a ploy to deflect attention from Pakistan’s own internal challenges like Panamagate and unrest in Balochistan. The only time Pakistan has undertaken a tangible course-correction is when the applecart of the Pakistani institutional structures is threatened with irrelevance, and not through any external condemnation.  Pakistan extracts leniency from the US which overlooks Pakistan’s proven duplicity on terror due to the compulsions of maintaining supply routes for its assets and personnel in Afghanistan. Despite outbursts and diplomatic berating, the US has desisted from declaring Pakistan, a “terror state”.Even the latest report submitted by the dozen odd US think tanks like the Brookings Institution, Hudson Institute, Georgetown University etc. to the Donald Trump administration suggest desisting from designating Pakistan as a “state sponsor” of terror, at least in the first year of administration. While it clearly notes Pakistani duplicity, it also recognises the geostrategic importance of keeping Pakistan afloat, given the lack of alternatives. There is a call for more direct finger pointing of the terror nurseries, sanctuaries and the infrastructure of Pakistan’s supposed “strategic depth”, as a means to exert meaningful reaction, while supporting the country’s democratic framework. The last two times that the Pakistanis retracted from their beaten path was immediately after the 9/11, when General Musharaf did a volte face owing to US pressures which threated to delegitimise the Pakistani establishment and its antecedents. The second time was after the Peshawar school massacre, which targeted the Pakistani military institution. Corrective measures were initiated by Pakistan, albeit, selectively and temporarily. Rather than investing all energies in declaring Pakistan a “terror state” or any such encomium, it is unrelenting diplomatic and military pressure and economic squeezing of Pakistani interests in a hypersensitive-on-terror world that will shift gears. The new US establishment promises a short-drift to diplomatic niceties and ambiguities. It has centred its foreign policy with an overwhelmingly anti-China stand and the Pakistanis would invariably find themselves on a sticky wicket, given its vassal status towards China. So, India may “name and shame” Pakistan with dossiers, it must be live to the thick-skinned real politik which shows that rogue nations can contextualise any negative label given to them, with creative interpretations and myth-making. Historically, the only time a course correction is initiated is when there are prospects of either a regime change, economic combustion or when the ruling “institution” faces spectres of absolute irrelevance.The writer is a former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands.