The Pathankot strike

1965 to 2016

On September 6, 1965, close to twilight, the first day of the Indo-Pak War, No 19 Squadron of Pakistan Air Force (PAF) successfully struck the Indian Air Force (IAF) base at Pathankot, achieving total surprise and decimating a number of front line IAF fighter aircrafts including top of the line MiG-21s.

Fifty years, three months and thirty-five days later Pathankot was struck again but this time by terrorists. The difference is that Indian security agencies managed to defend their strategic assets and eliminated all six terrorists albeit at the personal sacrifice of seven members of the defenders including a Lieutenant Colonel.

In stark contrast to the 1965 strike, which was a war mission and the Mumbai Terror attack of November 26, 2008, Pakistan offered condolences and expressed solidarity with India. Mian Nawaz Sharif called his Indian counterpart Prime Minister Narendra Modi and tendered support. Indian National Security Advisor (NSA) shared intelligence leads to the perpetrators of the crime to his Pakistani counterpart. Pakistani Prime Minister called his national security team comprising the Ministers of Finance, Defence and Interior as well as the NSA, Army Chief and DG ISI into a huddle and took the decision of supporting India in investigating the leads provided. These are unprecedented actions but indicate maturity on both sides of the divide. India linked the Foreign Secretary-level talks to Islamabad’s “prompt and decisive” action in the Pathankot terror attack for which it has provided “actionable intelligence”.

Pakistan formed a committee to probe into the leads, took Maulana Masood Azhar, the head of the defunct Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) and eleven operatives into preventive custody and sealed JeM offices.

As news of his arrest broke on local television channels, JeM Chief Maulana Masood Azhar, writing in the JeM mouthpiece “Al Qalam” under his pen name Saidi, warned the Pakistan government about the “dangerous road” it was taking by cracking down against the Jaish.

While the leads provided by India are being diligently investigated, there are a number of loopholes and unanswered questions in the whole gory Pathankot episode, which Indian security agencies must investigate and follow up to get to the bottom of the attack.

In the blog ‘The Pathankot Paradox’ a number of unexplained phenomena have been highlighted. The author questions the tardy response of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who took his time not hurrying back from his zero-urgency two-day visit to Karnataka until mid-Sunday, 3 January, where the antiterrorist operation took more than 85 hours to conclude.

Gurdaspur Superintendent of Police Salwinder Singh, who was promoted as one of two assistant commandants of the 75th Battalion, Punjab Armed Police, PAP Jalandhar Cantt, was carjacked on the very day that he received his new posting order (Thursday, 31 December, 2015), was mysteriously left alive to inform the authorities of the imminent attack by the terrorists. This is in contrast to the terrorists slitting the throat of taxi driver Ikagar Singh immediately prior to carjacking Salwinder Singh, who had been driving them in a Toyota Innova ‘people mover’. Despite the early warning, the protagonists gained entry into Pathankot airbase. Salwinder Singh’s private Mahindra XUV500, a midsize SUV, had a blue strobe beacon attached to its roof, which facilitated the terrorists to be saluted through to Pathankot Air Force station unchallenged.

Instead of being equipped with their own communication sets or satellite phones, the perpetrators of the terror attack depended on snatching Salwinder Singh and his friend Varma’s cell phones for communicating with their handlers and one terrorist conveniently called his mother allegedly in Bahawalpur in Pakistan. In the real world, hardened terrorists maintain radio silence knowing well the monitoring capabilities of the security agencies.

It is also curious to learn that two other terrorists, apparently from the same gang, managed to infiltrate the Air Force base and remained in hiding for over twenty-four hours. Judging from the arsenal of weaponry recovered from their person, they could have wreaked havoc on the air base but chose to lie dormant instead. It is also questionable how such a large cache of arms and ammunition managed to penetrate the air force base.

Judging from previous attacks executed by JeM operatives, they are suicide bombers and blow themselves up rather than being caught alive or intact. The question of the identity of the terrorists still remains unresolved. The Indian Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has said in an official statement that an Interpol black-corner notice has been issued to identify the terrorists who were killed in the counter-offensive at Pathankot airbase.

Although the attack was claimed by the United Jihad Council, an alliance of Kashmiri militant groups, New Delhi maintains the attackers have a connection to Pakistan and have asked Islamabad to investigate the “specific and actionable information” they provided Pakistan. Pakistani officials have said that a key component of the evidence supplied by India about the terror attack doesn’t check out ─ the numbers that the six attackers called in the hours before opening fire at Pathankot are not registered in Pakistan.

Following up on the lead, the Jaish-e-Muhammad chief Masood Azhar, his key aide Maulana Ashfaq Ahmad, Hafiz Abdul Shakoor and Kasim Jan have been apprehended and are being interrogated.

Meanwhile, a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) office in the Indian capital New Delhi was vandalised by ‘hardliner Hindu activists’. The activists reportedly broke windows and computers at the office. The Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi has contacted the Indian government and has asked for a probe into the incident and sufficient security for PIA offices. India will have to rein in its goons.

It remains to be seen whether the perpetrators of the Pathankot attack who wanted to derail the peace talks have succeeded or the newfound bonhomie between Prime Ministers Nawaz Sharif and Narendra Modi, who are stakeholders in the peace process, enables new chapters to be written in the history of India and Pakistan and allows them to surmount the impediments and press on with the agenda for peace through the comprehensive bilateral peace process.