US confronted Pakistan on ISI’s role in Uri attack: Ex-envoy

Soon after the 2016 terror attack on an Indian Army base at Uri, the US confronted then Pakistan premier Nawaz Sharif with evidence of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency’s role in the assault, according to a new book by former envoy Ajay Bisaria.

The US ambassador to Pakistan met Sharif after the incident in September 2016, which resulted in the death of 19 Indian soldiers and which was attributed to Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), and handed over a file containing “among other nuggets, information of the ISI’s complicity in planning the Uri attacks”, Bisaria writes in “Anger Management”.

So compelling was the evidence, it fuelled Sharif’s resolve to confront the Pakistan Army and put in motion a series of events that led to the PML-N party chief’s ouster from his position in 2017 and forced him to go into self-exile in 2018.

The role of the US in confronting Sharif over the Uri attack has not been reported before. Though Bisaria doesn’t name the US envoy to Pakistan who met Sharif, the post was then held by David Hale.

The January 2016 terror attack on the Indian Air Force base at Pathankot, also blamed on JeM, and the Uri attack derailed prospects created for better India-Pakistan ties by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s invitation to Sharif to join his inauguration in 2014 and Modi’s surprise visit to Lahore in 2015 to attend the wedding of Sharif’s granddaughter.

Sharif, “dismayed” by the information provided by the US on the ISI’s role in the Uri attack, summoned a meeting of civilian and military leaders at the Prime Minister’s Office to discuss the matter. Then Pakistan foreign secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry made a presentation which stated the country faced “diplomatic isolation” and there was a demand for “some visible action” against JeM following an investigation of the Pathankot attack.

The meeting was first reported by Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper in October 2016 and led to the controversy that became known as “Dawngate”. Bisaria writes that an “angry and embarassed [Pakistan] army saw this as the tipping point; a civilian was rocking the boat and publicly questioning a carefully considered ‘security policy’ of deploying militants in the neighbourhood”.

Bisaria adds: “The time had come to remove Nawaz Sharif. The army started playing up allegations of treason against a prime minister who had dared to question a core national interest.”

By July 2017, Pakistan’s Supreme Court disqualified Sharif from holding public office over graft allegations about his family’s links to offshore companies detailed in the “Panama Papers”. However, subsequently, former Pakistani chief justice Saqib Nisar was secretly recorded as saying that the military institutions had asked for Sharif to be sentenced.

Bilateral relations were dealt another body blow by the February 2019 suicide attack in Pulwama, which killed 40 Indian troopers and was again blamed on JeM. Bisaria provides details of how India and Pakistan came to the brink of firing missiles at each other, with Modi deciding to up the ante after the capture of Indian Air Force pilot Abhinandan Varthaman by Pakistan – an episode Hindustan Times first reported in March 2019.

The Pulwama attack came in the aftermath of India’s conversations with the Pakistan Army to “sensitise them to India’s concerns on violence and terrorism”. Without giving details, Bisaria writes that since he had no mandate to meet then army chief Gen Qamar Bajwa, he could be “creative and communicate with Pakistan’s most powerful man through people close to him”.

The Indian side made it clear it “no longer had the patience for words and the ‘no talks with terror policy’ was a fact”, and this position could change if Pakistan showed sincerity in tackling anti-India terror. In this context, two basic tests would be a fall in cross-border infiltration and handing over of 26 Indians wanted by India for terror attacks, Bisaria writes.

“Bajwa conveyed Pakistan’s sincere desire to end terrorism, but signalled in mid-2018 that we would continue this conversation once the government was in place in Islamabad,” Bisaria writes, referring to the election in 2018 that led to the formation of government by Imran Khan.

As tensions over the Pulwama attack dissipated and pressure grew on Pakistan to crack down on terror groups, Bisaria writes he was told by a Western envoy close to Pakistan’s military that he “was optimistic that India’s actions had triggered a rethink by Pakistan Army”. Bisaria adds India’s counter-terror diplomacy after the Pulwama attack was focused and contained “some blunt speaking”.

This diplomacy, which too hasn’t been reported earlier, had 10 messages, including a clear signal that “India’s threshold of tolerance of terrorism had come down” and the country was “determined to take swift, surgical, and resolute action against the terrorists”. India was encouraged by then premier Imran Khan’s reiteration that Pakistani territory wouldn’t be used for terrorism but “wanted to see these promises translated into action”.

India was willing to work with Pakistan to ensure sustained, credible and verifiable action against terrorists but wanted JeM, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Hizb-ul-Mujahideen to be banned and their leaders detained by Pakistan, and the Indian side was “willing to discuss modalities for an informal dialogue with Pakistan on terrorism and ways of tackling it”. Islamabad should also use this opportunity to “tackle what for Pakistan were good terrorists”, Bisaria writes.

The world community should deploy the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to counter terror financing and demand that Pakistan commit to timelines to stop terror funding. At the same time, India was willing to work on humanitarian issues to build trust, such as the exchange of prisoners and the Kartarpur Corridor, Bisaria adds.

Bisaria said in an interview that he chose “Anger Management” as the title as these were two dominant motifs running through 75 years of bilateral ties. “One was anger starting from the foundational moment of Partition, the anger of two wars, Pakistan’s anger about the Kashmir issue and later, India’s anger about terrorism,” he said.

“When we talk of policy, management has been a motif for the essential proposition that this is a relationship which is far too complex, entangled and governed by history to be resolved. So, what we can do is manage it from not taking uglier turns and from becoming a nuclear conflagration.”

Besides looking at bilateral relations in every decade since the independence of both countries in 1947, Bisaria relied on the writings of past envoys to Islamabad, including Sri Prakasa, the first high commissioner, and JK Atal, who was high commissioner for less than two months in 1971 and whose papers were found in an attic.

Bisaria also argues in the book that India would have been better placed to tackle terrorism emanating from Pakistan if it had responded more robustly after the 2008 Mumbai attacks by the LeT.

“I think we were perhaps too soft on Pakistan in the 1980s when it supported terrorism in Punjab, and that could have prevented some of the terrorism we faced in Kashmir in the 1990s. If we had responded in the 1990s in the same manner as we’ve done recently, perhaps we would have prevented the all-India terrorism that happened in the northeast, and from the Parliament attack to Mumbai,” he said.

While the Indian side spent time ascertaining the adversary’s threshold after both India and Pakistan went nuclear in 1998, Bisaria said he believes that “after 2008, the thresholds were much clearer and therefore policy should have been to make a more informed decision about countering terrorism”.