Today, Explained - Terrorism, airstrikes, tea

Episode Date: February 28, 2019

The long-simmering feud between nuclear powers India and Pakistan is boiling over. Ankit Panda from The Diplomat explains why. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Oh, Brother, the printer company. Brother's got a new printer to make sure that you never run out of ink ever again. It's called the Brother Inkvestment Tank. And how they do it is they just give you a whole lot of ink along with your printer, like a year or two years worth. You can learn more at changethewayyouinc.com. Ankit Panda, you're a senior editor at The Diplomat. A summit over nuclear weapons is wrapping up early in one corner of Asia,

while two nuclear powers in a different corner of Asia are at each other's throats. What's going on with India and Pakistan right now? It's the most serious military crisis between the two countries since 2002. The cause of the current crisis was a terrorist attack in Indian-administered Kashmir on February 14th. India has said it will ensure the complete diplomatic isolation of Pakistan following the attack, the deadliest to hit the disputed territory in decades. The Indians retaliated against a Pakistan-based terror camp that belonged to the group that claimed responsibility for that attack by using military aircraft and conducting an airstrike on Pakistani territory. And of course, now we've seen Pakistan retaliate in its own way. Pakistan says it has shot down two Indian aircraft, which it claims

were over Pakistani airspace. The Pakistani military also says its warplanes carried out airstrikes inside India. So we're looking now to see how India reacts, but potentially if India does decide to respond, then we get into what political scientists and scholars called an escalation spiral that might get out of control and then things start to get really serious between these two nuclear-armed neighbors. So take us back to this terrorist attack. What exactly happened there? militarized region disputed between India and Pakistan. In the Indian-administered part of Kashmir, this convoy was traveling not too far from the state capital, and it was hit by a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device. The attacker was actually a local Kashmiri who was

born and raised in the Indian-administered part of the state, but he conducted an attack. He released a video justifying his, or at least stating his motives. And he claimed allegiance to a group known as Jaish-e-Mohammed, or the Army of Mohammed, which is a Pakistan-based terrorist group. And once this group had claimed the attack, it really became a serious crisis. And these guys aren't first-time offenders by any means. How much worse was this, or was it sort of another in a long line? I think the important context here is that for a little over a decade now, India has effectively been absorbing terrorist attacks that have been

conceived of and planned across the border on Pakistani soil. The most famous one and the worst of these attacks was in 2008 in Mumbai when terrorists belonging to a different group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, attacked civilians in the city and they killed over 180 people. Ten gunmen from Pakistan came to Mumbai by boat, sneaked into the city undetected, unchecked, and then carried out a series of daring raids on four targets, two luxury hotels, the city's main railway station, and a Jewish center. It was called India's 9-11 at the time. But in recent years, in 2016, for example, we saw two attacks against the Indian army in Kashmir.

So India has been trying to figure out how best it can deal with these kinds of attacks that are being planned across the border. And there's, of course, another angle to this, which is that a lot of these groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed in particular, are widely thought to have the tacit and in some cases overt backing of Pakistan's military and intelligence agencies who use them effectively as tools of what's known as subconventional warfare. So it's a really difficult problem for India to deal with. And this time, what New Delhi did was really kind of unprecedented. They used aircraft to strike at Pakistani territory. It's the first time in nuclear history that we've seen air power used

by one nuclear-armed country against the territory of another. So things are getting really serious here. So India launches these airstrikes on Pakistan on Tuesday as a retaliation. What exactly do they hit? So India claims to have hit, and here I should point out that both sides have competing versions of reality. For us on the outside, we're kind of peering in, trying to figure out what's real and what's not real. But this is what India claimed. India claimed that they hit a Jaish-e-Mohammed training camp at a place known as Balakot. It's actually a short drive from where Osama bin Laden was picked up in May 2011. It's in Pakistan proper. It's not in disputed territory. And India basically claimed that it conducted the strike.

It took out this major training camp for Jaish-e-Mohammed and killed a bunch of militants. And what's Pakistan's version of what happened? Pakistan effectively says the Indian aircraft did cross the line of control, but they effectively ditched their payload. They didn't actually hit anything of importance. And this is a trend with Pakistan. In 2016, that previous attack that caused India's retaliation that year, Pakistan claimed that nothing had happened, that India hadn't crossed the line of control or really

done anything significant. And I can understand why they do this. It reduces the chances that Pakistan would have to retaliate. In this particular case, it didn't work because we have seen Pakistan retaliate now. So what does Pakistan do on Wednesday morning? They entered Indian airspace briefly and they bombed what India described as military installations and then they withdrew. They were trailed then by Indian fighters and those fighters were downed by Pakistani air defenses. And now what kind of complicates things even more is that one Indian pilot has been captured and is now being held by Pakistan. And do both sides agree that that is reality? They can't deny it since Pakistan's

already released a video showing an interview with the Indian pilot in their custody. What is your name? Wing Commander Abhinandan. Okay. I hope you have been treated well over here with us. Yes, I have. The officers of the Pakistani army have looked after me very well. They are thorough gentlemen, starting from the captain who rescued me from the mob. I am very impressed by the Pakistani army. Okay, wonderful. So, Wing Commander, you hail from which place in India? Am I supposed to tell you this, Major?

I'm sorry. I'm from down south. I hope you like the tea. The tea is fantastic. Thank you. Okay. And look, I mean, one of the ways I see, you haven't asked me yet about de-escalation or ending this crisis, but I think the fate of this pilot might be a very important part of that. Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan has promised to release an Indian pilot whose plane was shot down during clashes over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

This is what Imran Khan had to say in Parliament a short time ago. We've got the Indian pilot and as a peace gesture, we're releasing him to India tomorrow. In the meantime, what do things look like on the ground in each of these countries? A really interesting dynamic is that, you know, this is the first crisis of this magnitude between India and Pakistan that we're having in the social media era. And it's a huge deal when you have, you know, 1.5 billion people, most of whom actually do have smartphones. You know, 1.5 billion people, most of whom actually do have smartphones, you know, word gets round. And India and Pakistan have a massive problem with, you know, capital F fake news.

And what that means is that, you know, we have television channels, newspapers putting out kind of these outlandish, jingoistic calls to fight a war with Pakistan. There are screenshots going around of these Indian news anchors standing around in military fatigues with models of fighter jets behind them. All these kinds of things, I think, really alter the nature of the conversation on Pakistan within India's democratic system. And India has an election coming up that's going to decide the fate of its currently dominant government. So the politics of this, we can take kind of a cynical read of it and say that the Indian government is using this to kind of whip up a nationalist frenzy that will help it at the polls.

But there is, I think, also a case to be made that from a national security perspective in India, given the history of India absorbing these kinds of attacks, the February 14th attack was serious enough to merit a different kind of Indian response than in the past. And how's this playing out politically in Pakistan? On the Pakistani side, you know, we do have a fairly new prime minister. Imran Khan was elected early last summer. He is from a party in Pakistan that has never governed the country

before at the national level. And in Pakistan, the military is effectively the most powerful political institution. And what we're seeing is potentially the military putting Imran Khan to the test with a military crisis with India. But this terrorist group that instigated the attack, Jaish-e-Mohammed, you say they're essentially an arm of the Pakistani military. Does that mean that Imran Khan, the leader of Pakistan, may have in some way instigated this attack? Or are there some firewalls there? No, so I wouldn't say that. It's more complicated than saying that this terrorist group is effectively an arm of the Pakistani military. They don't wear uniforms, but they do receive equipment and

training, in some cases, Pakistan's inter-services intelligence. The idea is that these groups are only able to operate as they do in Pakistan because the Pakistani government effectively allows them to continue to do so. So do we have any idea what comes next? Is India going to strike back? Is this going to continue to escalate? Or might things calm down after these pair of airstrikes? Well, so I mean, I'm a strong believer in the fact that escalation is not automatic, and it's not fatalistic. A lot of people in India and Pakistan are treating this as now the first steps to a broader war between the two countries. It doesn't have to be that way. The Pakistani Prime Minister made a statement on Wednesday

saying that he would like to open a dialogue with India now. And I think the two sides can still find a face-saving way out of this. But like you said, escalation does remain one of the options. And I don't want to understate how serious this is right now. India and Pakistan have been beefing since day one, and it's always been about the same thing. Kashmir. That's next on Today Explained. We've all had the experience. You're running out of the house on Saturday night to go see Phantom of the Opera. You realize you don't have the tickets.

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These printers can keep your business running. They deliver super functionality, including printing and copying and scanning and faxing. It's a real game changer. You can learn more at changethewayyouink.com and you best get ready to change the way you ink. You better get ready for that. to understand the history of this conflict between india and pakistan do you have to go

all the way back to what before pakistan even existed yeah i mean i think a good place to start is probably 1947 which was the year that both countries came into existence after the end of British colonialism in South Asia. August the 15th, 1947, Independence Day for India. An era has ended, a new epoch begins. A subcontinent larger than the whole of Europe becomes two self-governing dominions within the British Commonwealth of Nations. And Kashmir was at the time effectively an independent monarchy. It was governed by a Hindu monarch and it was a Muslim majority area and it still is today, in fact. And we should say it's what, it's between the northwestern border of India and Pakistan? Yeah, it's a landlocked region. If you look at a map of India, it's basically the northern tip of India, and it's

connected to Pakistan, which sort of runs west to east at the tip, and it's also connected to China. And China claims a separate part of Kashmir that India also claims, and there's a separate dispute there. So Kashmir, a Muslim-majority area, was governed by a Hindu monarch, and at the time of independence, effectively, many of these kingdoms that were independent were able to decide which country they wanted to join. Would they join India or would they join Pakistan? In Kashmir's case, however, that decision was not left to the people. It was effectively the cause of the first war between India and Pakistan in 1947. And that war ran for two years and ended in 1949. And one of the first major crises that the United Nations Security Council actually intervened in was the Kashmir situation. And what ended up

resulting was a Security Council resolution that called on the people of Kashmir to be allowed to have a direct referendum on which country they would be allowed to join. But the conditions for that referendum were particular. Pakistan would have to have withdrawn its forces from the parts of Kashmir that it occupied. And that effectively never happened. What's happened since then is effectively we've had a frozen relic of what happened in 1949 become extended and turn into a new sort of status quo in Kashmir. But an interesting dynamic in recent years under the current Indian government has been the growth of what you might describe as an insurgency in Kashmir. Young Kashmiris who feel disenfranchised and not Indian, but they live in Indian-administered Kashmir. The Indian government sort of feeds into their resentments by using the heavy-handed tactics that it does in the region, and I think that raises interesting questions now for the future of Kashmir.

Why is this territory so important to not even two but three countries? Territory matters to these countries for sort of innate reasons of national sovereignty, and it's not as easy for either side to really let go of this claim to this territory. Pakistan rightfully feels that the Muslim-ma Muslim majority Kashmir region, if allowed to take its own decision through a referendum, would decide to join Pakistan effectively. India obviously doesn't tolerate that. The Indian constitution has sort of a special carve out for Kashmir. And these are sort of fundamental questions at the center of the national identities of both these countries. I guess to complicate all of this, India and Pakistan eventually obtain nuclear weapons. How exactly does that happen for each

country? The best moment to go back to, to I think understand the nuclear dynamics in South Asia, is the 1971 war between India and Pakistan. 1971 was a devastating defeat for Pakistan. Good evening. Government forces in East Pakistan surrendered today to India, bringing to an end 13 days of bitter fighting on that front. The end came quickly at a racetrack in Dhaka. There, General Niazi gave up the Pakistani armed forces in the east to Indian General Singh Arora.

Niazi stripped off his epaulets and touched his forehead to Arora's signifying subservience. What was that war about? That war was about a country known as Bangladesh, which before that war was known as East Pakistan. Pakistan used to be a non-contiguous country that had two parts. Bangladesh used to be part of Pakistan. So when Bangladesh became an independent country, effectively, if you were in Pakistan, in Islamabad, what you just seen is India effectively cleave you in half and liberate half of the primarily Muslim Bengalis who lived

in what is now today Bangladesh. And a result of that, I think, was a deep trauma in Pakistan that really sort of reinvigorated efforts that were already underway, by the way, to acquire nuclear weapons. And once that happened, India had to react and develop its own nuclear weapons. And for Pakistan, these weapons were really seen as a way to prevent a reoccurrence of 1971, that never again could India take Pakistan's territory away from it. There's a famous quote where Pakistan's prime minister at the time says that they would eat grass if that's what it takes, but they will, you know, weather sort of any costs to acquire the bomb because it was seen as necessary to offset their conventional weaknesses against the Indian armed forces. But Pakistan, you know, receives assistance along the way from countries like China and depending on who you ask, even the United States, which used to be a major supporter of Pakistan during the Cold War. India, at the meantime, was conducting its own research and development work on a nuclear weapon.

And then finally, we get to 1998. They both announced themselves to the world effectively as nuclear states. At the same time? Almost the same time. They conducted six nuclear tests all in the month of May in 1998. Wow. Today, at 1545 hours, India conducted three underground nuclear tests in the Pokhran range. Pakistan has been obliged to exercise the nuclear option due to weaponization of India's nuclear program. And then they immediately go to war again.

Not immediately, but a short time thereafter, yes, they did go back to war. It was about a piece of territory in Kashmir. So this is where I think Pakistan tried to test that proposition that nuclear weapons might help you acquire territory because they didn't know how the Indians would react. This was a limited war. This was not on the scale of 1971, but it wasn't really on the scale of previous conflicts. How does that war shake out? It shook out with an Indian victory. Pakistan stood down. It led to a coup that removed the prime minister at the time, Nawaz Sharif, from Pakistan and led to Pervez Musharraf becoming the military dictator of Pakistan for a long period of time thereafter. Is there any point during the conflict where either side came close to using one of its nuclear weapons? Most authoritative accounts really, really don't see a role for nuclear weapons in having ended that conflict. Bringing this back to what we're seeing now, I think that's again a big question,

is that when do nuclear weapons come into play? Pakistan is now using nuclear weapons to signal to India what the risks are, what the stakes are of continuing this conflict. But we'll have to see if that actually has an effect on Indian decision makers. These two countries basically started out in war and then have had three wars since. Is that correct? Yeah, 1965, 1971, and 1999.

And so come 1998, the world learns that both of these countries have functional nuclear weapons, but neither of them use them. And between then and now, we have various smaller incidences of terrorism and continued conflict between the two. And now there are these lowercase w acts of war going on? Yes, in a way. I mean, you know, aside from the attacks, the line of control has been a hot border. There's violations across the border. There's small arms fire exchange. There's artillery shelling, mortars that go off regularly. So really, there's been a low running simmer between the two sides in

Kashmir. But now I think what we're seeing is that it's sort of frothing up into potentially a boiling situation. And so I guess, in the long arc of history, how does this compare? It feels like it hasn't really gotten as bad as it has been in the past, but... It hasn't, but it's this tricky thing where I don't want to understate how serious it is, but I also don't want to overstate and cause panic and say that we're about to head into nuclear war because we're not, at least based on the current set of data. But it's bad.

It's the worst crisis since 2002, since after that attack on India's parliament. It could end by the weekend. It could drag on for weeks. I would say it's highly unlikely we'll get a sustainable peace or a comprehensive peace between the two countries, given the range of issues that they have to work out. I think when this does end, it will be effectively a return to the status quo ante. So the way things were before the attack on February 14th. And that's actually, you know, would be a good outcome. Because the, I think the acrimony and the ill will between the populations on both sides are going to grow pretty dramatically over

the course of this crisis. And that makes it difficult for any kind of productive diplomacy to take place between India and Pakistan in the near future. Ankit Panda hosts a podcast about Asian geopolitics for The Diplomat. You can find it by searching for The Diplomat on your favorite podcast platform. He's covering this conflict all day on Twitter, too. You can follow him at NKTPND. I'm Sean Ramos from You Can Follow Today Explained on Twitter at today underscore explained. Thanks to Brother, not like my brother Nimesh who lives in Los Angeles, but Brother the Printer Company for their support of the show today. Brother's new printer, the Inkvestment tank, helps put an end to you running out of ink when you need it most, when you're running out the door and you forgot to print that thing that you need that you're not going to have that problem anymore with the Brother Inkvestment tank because they send you like a whole lot of ink, like a year's worth or two years worth

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