Predicting the next Jihadi attack in India

There will be another Jihad attack in India. If you think there won't be, then you are not being vigilant enough, which will give way to the Jihadis. Intelligence and Security agencies need to succeed every time. Jihadis need to succeed only once.

Reasons:

The Indian air raid on Balakot JeM camp on 26/02/2019 has answered a few questions and raised a few more. It has answered the question about what India can do to the Jihad being fostered deep inside Pakistan. It has busted the Pakistani threat of a nuclear retaliation as empty. It has demonstrated that India can time and again launch offences across borders to support its war on terror. It has also demonstrated India's multi facet attack on Pakistan's culture of breeding Jihadis, vis a vis intelligence, armed, trade, diplomatic as well as political. The new questions arising from this are many. These questions are being asked not just in India, but also in Pakistan.

Questions & Answers:

What is the death count? How did Pakistan manage to hide the damage? What are Pakistan's options against the Indian offensive? What can be the possible target if Pakistan tries to retaliate by any means? When is the right time for Pakistan to retaliate? What damage does Pakistan want to cause in its retaliation?

The answers to the body count and the modus operandi in hiding the shame has been hinted by various insider accounts from the Indian intelligence organizations, the forces as well as a few media accounts. Moreover, as far as the crux of the situation is concerned, the damage has been done irrespective of the answers to the first two questions. The message has been sent. India won't shy away from launching offensive, and Pakistan, being thoroughly exposed, under tremendous international financial and diplomatic pressure, cannot do much to stop India, just like, it could not do much to have a negotiation with India despite having an Indian pilot in its custody, knowing full well, that the pilot caused significant damage by entering Pakistan administered airspace and downing an F 16 and having the Pakistani pilot dropping down to his purported fateful end. The answers to the remaining questions give us clues to the mode, target and timing of Pakistan's effort towards what it sees as a deserving retribution.

Pakistan can no way invite a conventional war upon itself. Despite having utterly humiliated in 1971, Pakistan launched the Kargil offensive as a proxy war, even though it was exposed by India and Pakistan met its fate once again by agreeing to a bitter surrender. However, Pakistan has been violating ceasefire along the LoC and international borders much more intensively these days. They violated Indian airspace using armed fighter jets and tried to target military installations. Of course they did not strike them and rather left their blunders exposed which India is going to use against them diplomatically. News is coming that Pakistan is building a massive military stock along the border and Loc. There have been two instances of Pakistani drones entering Indian air and being shot by India. Pakistani Navy is too limited in its ability to pose any significant challenge to the Indian counterpart. If a military confrontation is next to impossible, why is Pakistan behaving like this?

Methods & Targets:

The fact that Pakistan is doing a lot of drama by violating ceasefire, Indian air space through its regular fleet as well as drones at the Indo-Pak border and LoC, signals that the actual attack will be far from the border and the LoC. Pakistanis are burning in the pain of shame inflicted by India. They want revenge in whatever way possible. For Pakistanis, there is no difference between a conventional war and a Jihad strike in terms of the satisfaction they derive by harming their adversary. The conventional war is out of the equation as Pakistan is in its worst shape till date in terms of economy and international support. With the adversary (India) on very high alert across the border, it is nigh impossible for their Jihadis to launch another attack on the armed forces deployed there especially when the structures in India supporting Pakistani Jihadis are being hunted and sealed. This brings into their sleeper cells within India for consideration. But then who are they going to hit and when? We need to understand the fact that Pakistan can never shun Jihad. Even if these days they are trying to show the world by feigning the resolve to curb the Jihad movement, this is all a sham to avoid being blacklisted in upcoming FATF decision after having been put to the grey list.

[Prime Minister Imran Khan Addresses Parliament Joint Session on Indian Aggression]

Pakistan as a nation severely lacks any basis for existence except for its self-proclamation as an Islamic republic that speaks and stands for all Muslims in the world. That self-proclamation is the ground on which Pakistan was built. Although the founding father Mr M A Jinnah may have had the vision for a secular Pakistan, the movement and mass hysteria that supported him was based on the violent Islamic Jihad narrative. Unfortunately Pakistan is unable to see India as a secular nation that harbours people of all faiths. To Pakistan, India is a Hindu nation and the Indian armed forces are Hindu forces. So, it is nothing but natural and spontaneous that the Pakistanis would love to see the Jihad against the infidels being carried out consistently. What the responsible leaders and Military establishments do is to choose the easier option to exploit that pro Jihad sentiment against India in order to make their lives better, instead of taking efforts to eradicate such mentality and drive their country to a progressive future. Minus that sentiment, Pakistan loses its meaning.

There have been various ways in which Pakistan has tried to beat India. After its military failures, the Jihad movement has also started to decline due to tough actions by the current Indian government by the Pro Hindutva BJP led NDA. Moreover, the public Jihad attacks in India have caused fatalities to Muslims too. This has backfired on the Jihadis. That's why Pakistan has to ensure that its Jihad is precisely directed towards something that won't provoke the anger of the neutral or pro Pakistani segments within India. As it is already getting difficult for any type of attack on India, Pakistan needs to ensure that it can gain as much as it can from that attack. Apart from seeking revenge, Pakistan desperately seeks to weaken the Indian leadership. The Narendra Modi led government of India has taken a stand against Pakistan's evil motives and aspirations which they had never expected from the previous governments in India. This has shocked them to desperation. Now their primary motive is to manipulate the Indians to oust the tough stance of the Modi government or any government that stands on the support of RSS, the Hindu nationalist parent organization of the ruling BJP. This shock has been echoed in the Pakistani parliament many times.

[Minister for Railway Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed speaking in Pakistan National Assembly on Pak India tussle]

Pakistan has understood the divides within India accurately and has been passively feeding these divides. The divides within India are many. There are divides among HIndus, divides among Hindus and Muslims and there are divides among Muslims. The Hindus are divided as pro Hindutva, neutral, anti Hindutva, and minority appeasing. Among the Muslims, there are nationalists, neutral and pro Jihadis. Also, leaving only a handful, almost all Muslims are anti HIndutva (even though Hindutva isn't a restriction on religion). Above all, there are political divides too. The political divide that is of interest to Pakistan's deep state policy machine called Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) is that of pro Hindutva and anti Hindutva. The recent cyber attack on the BJP national website by Pakistani hackers gives us a clue. Moreover, ISI has been employing and nurturing a huge number of social media trolls of both Pakistani and Indian origin to feed the anti Hindutva narrative that is trying to garner support for the Congress led united opposition in ousting Modi. That's why these days the Indian news accounts on social media are seeing a rise in Pakistani and pro Pakistani commenters as compared to Indian and pro Indian ones. In fact, if the pro Hindutva brigade is hit by a devastating Jihadi attack, it is going to serve a lot of purpose to ISI at one go.

1. Since, India has made it clear that the only targets by the Indian forces have been, are and will be the Jihadis and their bases, Pakistan cannot openly target Indian military bases in retaliation. Thus the only viable targets will be the Hindutva organizations viz RSS which Pakistanis, Indian Muslims as well as the (so called) seculars in India see as Hindu terrorists (?).
2. The attack on HIndutva brigade in India won't have much of a civilian backlash towards the Jihadis except from the pro Hindutva Hindus.
3. A Jihadi attack on the Hindutva forces will severely damage Modi's (as well as BJP's) image as Hindu protectionist. This will divert a lot of Hindu votes away from BJP in the upcoming union election, thus giving Pakistan a chance to reestablish a government in India that offers much less resistance than it is getting from the current one.
4. Such an attack would not only pacify the revenge hungry humiliated Pakistanis, but also mark a victory for Pakistan's cyber war tactics.

Timing:

Even if the Modi government's stance on Jihad has been unprecedented, tough and on all possible platforms including diplomacy, trade culture and sports, it is still far from being perfect. However, there is every reason for everyone to believe that, if elected again, in the forthcoming election in April and May 2019, Modi would become a much tougher nut for the Pakistanis to crack. The winds supporting Modi's flight to power has become nothing but stronger by the Pulwama terror attack. This must have given ISI a strong message not to target the armed forces since any such attack unites the Indians favouring Modi. Targeting RSS would seem very lucrative though. The attack cannot happen easily after the elections, since Modi will, by then or soon afterwards, be on a stronger offensive. If, however, the attack happens just before the election commences, or even during the election, Modi's reputation will take a drastic hit which will force BJP to lose power.

Near and during the election are the best chances for the Jihadis to attack. The most eligible targets for the Jihadis are the less secure BJP rallies, congregations of Hindutva organisations or their properties. The recent Kumbh Mela went well managed and without any terror attacks. Although it sounds like a great news, it has a downside to it. The success might lead to future negligence in security and intelligence due to overconfidence. In this scenario, the self vigil and meticulous attention over security of the above mentioned targets are not only pertinent but also highly called for.

Despite being on a very high alert, we must never forget that Intelligence and Security agencies need to succeed every time. Jihadis need to succeed only once.