India-Pakistan Crises, 1999–2016

Hagerty, Devin T.

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-21398-5_2

India-Pakistan Crises, 1999–2016

Devin T. Hagerty²

Chapter
First Online: 23 June 2019

411 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter examines four India-Pakistan crises between 1999 and 2016: the Kargil conflict of 1999, the Twin Peaks crisis of 2001–2002, the Mumbai attacks and their aftermath in 2008, and the Uri attack and subsequent Indian “surgical strikes” in 2016. I present a concise chronological narrative of each episode, focusing in particular on the nature of the Indian response to Pakistani and Pakistan-abetted subconventional aggression. In all of the crises, the Indian government opted for markedly restrained, non-escalatory responses in the face of intense domestic pressures to retaliate with punishing military force. The chapter sets the empirical stage for a comparative analysis of the explanations most often posited by scholars for New Delhi’s forbearance, which is the subject of Chap. 3.

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Notes

1.
For an overview, see Sumit Ganguly, Deadly Impasse: Indo-Pakistani Relations at the Dawn of a New Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
2.
Detailed accounts of the Kargil conflict include: Sumit Ganguly and Devin T. Hagerty, Fearful Symmetry: India–Pakistan Crises in the Shadow of Nuclear Weapons (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005), 143–66; Government of India, From Surprise to Reckoning: The Kargil Review Committee Report (New Delhi: Sage, 2000); S. Paul Kapur, Dangerous Deterrent: Nuclear Weapons Proliferation and Conflict in South Asia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), 117–31; Peter R. Lavoy, ed., Asymmetric Warfare in South Asia: The Causes and Consequences of the Kargil Conflict (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009); V.P. Malik, Kargil: From Surprise to Victory (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2006); Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire: A Memoir (New York: Free Press, 2006), 87–98; Ashley J. Tellis, C. Christine Fair, and Jamison Jo Medby, Limited Conflicts under the Nuclear Umbrella: Indian and Pakistani Lessons from the Kargil Crisis (Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 2001); and Nasim Zehra, From Kargil to the Coup: Events that Shook Pakistan (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel, 2018).
3.
On Pakistan’s support for JeM and other terrorist groups, see S. Paul Kapur, Jihad as Grand Strategy: Islamist Militancy, National Security, and the Pakistani State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).
4.
Detailed narratives of the Twin Peaks crisis include: P.R. Chari, Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema, and Stephen P. Cohen, Four Crises and a Peace Process: American Engagement in South Asia (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2007), 149–83; Ganguly and Hagerty, Fearful Symmetry, 167–86; Kapur, Dangerous Deterrent, 131–39; Polly Nayak and Michael Krepon, “U.S. Crisis Management in South Asia’s Twin Peaks Crisis,” The Stimson Center, Washington, DC, September 2006; and V.K. Sood and Pravin Sawhney, Operation Parakram: The War Unfinished (New Delhi: Sage, 2003).
5.
On LeT and its connections to the Pakistani state, see C. Christine Fair, In Their Own Words: Understanding Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018); Stephen Tankel, Storming the World Stage: The Story of Lashkar-e-Taiba (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011).
6.
Detailed accounts of the 2008 Mumbai attacks include: Myra MacDonald, Defeat Is an Orphan: How Pakistan Lost the Great South Asian War (London: Hurst, 2017), 189–207; Shivshankar Menon, Choices: Inside the Making of India’s Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2016), 60–81; Polly Nayak and Michael Krepon, The Unfinished Crisis: U.S. Crisis Management after the 2008 Mumbai Attacks (Washington, DC: Stimson Center, 2012); and Bruce Riedel, Avoiding Armageddon: America, India, and Pakistan to the Brink and Back (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2013), 1–25.
7.
For overviews of the Uri attack and Indian response, see: Sameer Lalwani and Hannah Haegeland, eds., Investigating Crises: South Asia’s Lessons, Evolving Dynamics, and Trajectories (Washington, DC: Stimson Center, 2018); Nitin A. Gokhale, Securing India the Modi Way: Pathankot, Surgical Strikes and More (New Delhi: Bloomsbury, 2017), 1–52; MacDonald, Defeat Is an Orphan, 255–61.
8.
According to John H. Gill, even though the NLI was “classed as a paramilitary force in 1999,” its “battalions were incorporated into regular army brigades along with regular army battalions, so this was a distinction without a substantial difference.” See his “Provocation, War, and Restraint under the Nuclear Shadow: The Kargil Conflict 1999,” Journal of Strategic Studies 42 (March 2019): 5.
9.
Pakistan’s motives for launching the Kargil initiative are discussed in Feroz Hassan Khan, Peter R. Lavoy, and Christopher Clary, “Pakistan’s Motivations and Calculations for the Kargil Conflict,” in Asymmetric Warfare, ed. Lavoy, 64–91.
10.
Lavoy, “Introduction,” in Asymmetric Warfare, ed. Lavoy, 19. Gill puts the “total number of intruders,” including escorts, porters, and other support personnel, at “at least 1500–2000.” “Military Operations in the Kargil Conflict,” in Asymmetric Warfare, ed. Lavoy, 96.
11.
Gill, “Military Operations,” 99.
12.
In April 1984, Indian military forces occupied the Siachen Glacier in far northern Kashmir, just south of China’s Xinjiang province. Pakistani forces soon followed suit, and sporadic battles have been fought between the two sides since June 1984. The glacier occupies some 1000 square miles of territory in the Karakoram Mountains, much of which lies at elevations above 17,000 feet. The question of which country is sovereign over the Siachen Glacier is a dispute within a dispute, because both India and Pakistan claim all of Kashmir; each country also claims complete control over the glacier. The Siachen conflict has its roots in the vagueness of the 1949 Karachi Agreement, which demarcated the Cease-Fire Line (CFL ) between India and Pakistan after the first Kashmir war. That pact delineated the ostensibly “temporary” boundary between the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir and Azad (“Free”) Kashmir and the Northern Areas, both held by Pakistan. When the Cease-Fire Line was drawn, roughly 40 miles of the boundary leading up to the Chinese border was left undelineated because the area “was considered an inaccessible no-man’s land.” The issue remained unresolved by the Simla Agreement of 1972, which replaced the Cease-Fire Line with the new LOC without addressing the matter of the undrawn boundary. See Robert G. Wirsing, Pakistan’s Security under Zia: The Policy Imperatives of a Peripheral Asian State (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), 143–94.
13.
John Lancaster, “U.S. Defused Kashmir Crisis on Brink of War,” Washington Post, July 26, 1999.
14.
Ramesh Vinayak, “Nasty Surprise,” India Today International, May 31, 1999, 21; Harinder Baweja and Ramesh Vinayak, “Peak by Peak,” India Today International, June 14, 1999, 17–21.
15.
Manoj Joshi and Harinder Baweja, “Blasting Peace,” India Today International, June 7, 1999, 12–17. See also Gill, “Military Operations,” 106–7.
16.
Joshi and Baweja, “Blasting Peace”; Michael Fathers, “On the Brink,” Time, June 7, 1999, 48–49.
17.
Government of India, From Surprise to Reckoning, 105; Zehra, From Kargil to the Coup, pp. 216–17.
18.
Saba Naqvi Bhaumik, “The Dove at War,” India Today International, July 12, 1999, 26–27.
19.
Lancaster, “U.S. Defused Kashmir Crisis on Brink of War.”
20.
Gill, “Military Operations,” 105.
21.
Bruce Riedel, “American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit at Blair House,” Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 2002, 4.
22.
Lavoy, “Introduction,” 11, note 31.
23.
Tellis, Fair, and Medby, Limited Conflicts under the Nuclear Umbrella, 15.
24.
Jaswant Singh, A Call to Honour: In Service of Emergent India (New Delhi: Rupa, 2006), 320.
25.
Malik, Kargil, 259–60.
26.
Gill, “Military Operations,” 111. See p. 112, notes 64 and 66 for media references. For an analysis, including many instances of disorganized nuclear signaling, see Timothy D. Hoyt, “Kargil: The Nuclear Dimension,” in Asymmetric Warfare, ed. Lavoy, 144–70. A concise overview of Kargil’s nuclear dimensions is in Todd S. Sechser and Matthew Fuhrmann, Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 147–55.
27.
Manoj Joshi and Raj Chengappa, “The Marathon War,” India Today International, June 21, 1999, 12–13.
28.
Baweja and Vinayak, “Peak by Peak,” 18.
29.
Harinder Baweja, “Slow but Steady,” India Today International, June 28, 1999, 21; Government of India, From Surprise to Reckoning, 105.
30.
Malik, Kargil, 146–47.
31.
Lavoy, “Introduction,” 21. See Gill, “Military Operations,” 114–19, for a detailed discussion of the Indian Army’s increasingly successful efforts to dislodge the invaders.
32.
Raj Chengappa, “Will the War Spread?” India Today International, July 5, 1999, 14–17.
33.
For an overview, see Strobe Talbott, Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy, and the Bomb (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2004), 154–69.
34.
Raj Chengappa, “Minefield Ahead,” India Today International, June 7, 1999, 17.
35.
Riedel, “American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit,” 4.
36.
John W. Garver, “The Restoration of Sino-Indian Comity Following India’s Nuclear Tests,” China Quarterly, no. 168 (December 2001): 882.
37.
Raj Chengappa, “Face-Saving Retreat,” India Today International, July 19, 1999, 16.
38.
Garver, “Sino-Indian Comity,” 882.
39.
Raj Chengappa, “On High Ground,” India Today International, June 28, 1999, 25.
40.
The most authoritative account of the Kargil conflict, Lavoy’s Asymmetric Warfare, concludes that “Indian troops were within days of opening another front across the LOC and possibly the international border, an act that could have triggered a large-scale conventional military engagement, which in turn might have escalated to an exchange of recently tested Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons.” Lavoy, “Introduction,” 2.
41.
Chengappa, “Face-Saving Retreat,” 17.
42.
Riedel, “American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit,” 6.
43.
Chengappa, “Will the War Spread?” 14.
44.
Lancaster, “U.S. Defused Kashmir Crisis on Brink of War.”
45.
Garver, “Sino-Indian Comity,” 884.
46.
Riedel, “American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit,” 6, 7.
47.
Riedel, “American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit,” 8, 9.
48.
Musharraf, In the Line of Fire, 97–98.
49.
Riedel, “American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit,” 9–12.
50.
Riedel, “American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit,” 11.
51.
Raj Chengappa, Weapons of Peace: The Secret Story of India’s Quest to Be a Nuclear Power (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2000), 437. The three delivery systems were the Prithvi and Agni missiles, as well as the Mirage-2000 attack aircraft. Lavoy contends that “neither Pakistan nor India readied its nuclear arms for employment.” “Introduction,” 11.
52.
Riedel, “American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit,” 11.
53.
Riedel, “American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit,” 12.
54.
“Press Briefing by Senior Administration Official on President’s Meeting with Prime Minister Sharif of Pakistan,” Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, Washington, DC, July 4, 1999, http://www.fas.org/news/pakistan/1999/990704-pak-wh2.htm.
55.
“India Claims Control of Key Kashmir Sector,” CNN Interactive, July 10, 1999.
56.
“India, Pakistan Agree to End Kashmir Fighting,” CNN Interactive, July 11, 1999.
57.
Nawaz Sharif, “Prime Minister’s Address to the Nation,” July 12, 1999, http://www.pak.gov.pk.
58.
K. Alan Kronstadt, “Pakistan–US Relations,” Issue Brief, Congressional Research Service, Washington, DC, October 28, 2002, 9.
59.
Rama Lakshmi, “India Wages a War of Words,” Washington Post, December 19, 2001.
60.
Nayak and Krepon, “U.S. Crisis Management in South Asia’s Twin Peaks Crisis,” 52.
61.
Sood and Sawhney, Operation Parakram, 73–79.
62.
John Lancaster, “Pakistan to Follow India in Removing Troops from Border,” Washington Post, October 18, 2002.
63.
Kapur, Dangerous Deterrent, 134.
64.
Hoyt, “Kargil: The Nuclear Dimension,” 160, note 58.
65.
John Lancaster, “India to Remove Some Forces from Border with Pakistan,” Washington Post, October 17, 2002. The oft-quoted figure of one million Indian and Pakistani soldiers facing off against one another included troops in Kashmir.
66.
Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate, 3rd ed. (New York: W.W. Norton, 2013), 146. (Sagan)
67.
Devin T. Hagerty, “The Nuclear Holdouts: India, Israel, and Pakistan,” in Slaying the Nuclear Dragon: Disarmament Dynamics in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Tanya Ogilvie-White and David Santoro (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012), 223–24.
68.
Praveen Swami, “A War to End a War: The Causes and Outcomes of the 2001–2 India-Pakistan Crisis,” in Nuclear Proliferation in South Asia: Crisis Behaviour and the Bomb, ed. Sumit Ganguly and S. Paul Kapur (London: Routledge, 2009), 144.
69.
Kanti Bajpai, “To War or Not to War: The India–Pakistan Crisis of 2001–2,” in Nuclear Proliferation in South Asia, ed. Ganguly and Kapur, 165.
70.
Rajesh Basrur, South Asia’s Cold War: Nuclear Weapons and Conflict in Comparative Perspective (London: Routledge, 2008), 61.
71.
Steve Coll, “The Stand-Off,” New Yorker, February 13, 2006, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/02/13/the-stand-off.
72.
Nayak and Krepon, “U.S. Crisis Management in South Asia’s Twin Peaks Crisis,” 52, 24–25.
73.
Celia W. Dugger, “Indian General Talks Bluntly of War and a Nuclear Threat,” New York Times, January 12, 2002.
74.
LeT played a small part in the Parliament attack. Tankel, Storming the World Stage, 112.
75.
Nayak and Krepon, “U.S. Crisis Management in South Asia’s Twin Peaks Crisis,” 25–26.
76.
Condoleezza Rice, No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington (New York: Broadway, 2011), 123.
77.
President Pervez Musharraf’s Address to the Nation, January 12, 2002, http://www.pak.gov.pk/President_Addresses/President_address.htm.
78.
Edward Luce, “India Prepares for Strike on Camps,” Financial Times, May 17, 2002.
79.
Steve Coll, “Between India and Pakistan, a Changing Role for the US,” Washington Post, May 26, 2002; Nayak and Krepon, “U.S. Crisis Management in South Asia’s Twin Peaks Crisis,” 19. Musharraf recalls that he “personally conveyed messages to Prime Minister Vajpayee through every international leader who came to Pakistan, that if Indian troops moved a single step across the international border or Line of Control, they should not expect a conventional war from Pakistan.” See Dinshaw Mistry, “Tempering Optimism about Nuclear Deterrence in South Asia,” Security Studies 18, no. 1 (2009), 171.
80.
Chari, Cheema, and Cohen, Four Crises and a Peace Process, 154.
81.
Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 275.
82.
G.V. Gireesh, “Game of Patience,” Outlook, May 27, 2002, 34–39.
83.
Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, “Nuclear Doctrine, Declaratory Policy, and Escalation Control,” in Escalation Control and the Nuclear Option in South Asia, ed. Michael Krepon, Rodney W. Jones, and Ziad Haider (Washington, DC: Stimson Center, 2004), 109.
84.
Sood and Sawhney, Operation Parakram, 82–83. Pakistan also moved its nuclear-capable missiles in May. Mistry, “Tempering Optimism,” 172.
85.
Feroz Hassan Khan, Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), 350.
86.
Nayak and Krepon, “U.S. Crisis Management in South Asia’s Twin Peaks Crisis,” 55. Also see Rahul Bedi, “The Military Dynamics,” Frontline, June 8–21, 2002.
87.
Nayak and Krepon, “U.S. Crisis Management in South Asia’s Twin Peaks Crisis,” 33–36. A former U.S. official, Bruce Riedel, recounts that both Powell and Armitage later told him “that they thought that war was a very real danger and that if it began, it would go to the brink of nuclear war, if not over.” Avoiding Armageddon, 151.
88.
“A Surgical Strike Is the Answer,” Outlook, June 10, 2002.
89.
Nayak and Krepon, “U.S. Crisis Management in South Asia’s Twin Peaks Crisis,” 33.
90.
Michael Cohen, When Proliferation Causes Peace: The Psychology of Nuclear Crises (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2017), 141.
91.
Ganguly and Hagerty, Fearful Symmetry, 177–80.
92.
Rahul Bedi and Anton La Guardia, “Pakistan Steps Back from Brink,” Daily Telegraph, June 8, 2002.
93.
“Musharraf: Here’s What I’ll Do,” Washington Post, June 23, 2002.
94.
“Spokesman Richard Boucher,” State Department Daily Briefing, October 31, 2002, https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2002/14832.htm.
95.
Lancaster, “Pakistan to Follow India in Removing Troops from Border.”
96.
“Musharraf: Here’s What I’ll Do”; “Vajpayee: Keep Your Promise,” Washington Post, June 23, 2002; Christina B. Rocca, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs, “Deepening US Engagement in South Asia,” remarks to the American Enterprise Institute, Washington, DC, October 10, 2002.
97.
Nayak and Krepon, Unfinished Crisis, 1; Angel Rabasa et al., The Lessons of Mumbai (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2009), 4; Riedel, Avoiding Armageddon, 5;
98.
Nayak and Krepon, Unfinished Crisis, 6; Rabasa, Lessons of Mumbai, 4.
99.
Rajesh Basrur et al., The 2008 Mumbai Terrorist Attacks: Strategic Fallout (Singapore: S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, 2009), 19.
100.
“Mumbai Attack Might Have Led to Ind-Pak Nuclear War: Roemer,” Indian Express, September 1, 2011.
101.
Srinath Raghavan, “Terror, Force and Diplomacy,” Economic and Political Weekly 43, no. 49 (December 6–12, 2008): 10–12; Helene Cooper, “South Asia’s Deadly Dominoes,” New York Times, December 7, 2008.
102.
Menon, Choices, 62.
103.
Pranab Dhal Samanta, “26/11: How India Debated a War with Pakistan That November,” Indian Express, November 26, 2010.
104.
Samanta, “26/11”; Pravin Sawhney, “Whither Our War Preparedness?” Pioneer, June 4, 2015.
105.
Praveen Swami, “Talking to Pakistan in Its Language,” The Hindu, June 11, 2014.
106.
Swami, “Talking to Pakistan in Its Language.”
107.
Sawhney, “Whither Our War Preparedness?”
108.
Sawhney, “Whither Our War Preparedness?”
109.
Samanta, “26/11.”
110.
Nayak and Krepon, Unfinished Crisis, 44.
111.
Raj Chengappa and Saurabh Shukla, “Reining in the Rogue,” India Today, December 4, 2008; Basrur, 2008 Mumbai Terrorist Attacks, 18; Samuel Black, “Appendix I: The Structure of South Asian Crises from Brasstacks to Mumbai,” in Crises in South Asia: Trends and Potential Consequences, ed. Michael Krepon and Nathan Cohn (Washington, DC: Stimson Center, 2011), 52, 53.
112.
Rama Lakshmi, “Cabinet Member Resigns amid Anger in India,” Washington Post, December 1, 2008; “Indian Defense Chief: No Plans for Military Action.” Associated Press, December 16, 2008.
113.
Chengappa and Shukla, “Reining in the Rogue.” This piece quotes former Indian Army chief V.P. Malik as saying: “Such strikes are a risky gambit,” as they “can trigger a full scale war.”
114.
“We Feared Indian Strike: ISI Chief,” The Hindu, January 8, 2009.
115.
Riedel, Avoiding Armageddon, 22.
116.
Basrur, 2008 Mumbai Terrorist Attacks, 22.
117.
Nayak and Krepon, Unfinished Crisis, 13.
118.
Black, “Structure of South Asian Crises,” 51.
119.
Nayak and Krepon, Unfinished Crisis, 27.
120.
Nayak and Krepon, Unfinished Crisis, 27–28. In the early 2000s, frustrated by their inability to punish Pakistan for its persistent subconventional aggression, Indian military planners developed ideas for conventional retaliatory options that (they hoped) would not cross Islamabad’s nuclear “red lines.” For more details, see George Perkovich and Toby Dalton, Not War, Not Peace? Motivating Pakistan to Prevent Cross-Border Terrorism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2016), 73–103, and Christopher Clary and Vipin Narang, “Doctrine, Capabilities, and (In)Stability in South Asia,” in Deterrence Stability and Escalation Control in South Asia, ed. Krepon and Thompson, 94–99. The so-called Cold Start option refers to the rapid unleashing of shallow armored incursions along a broad front, intended to seize limited territory and impose a political settlement on Pakistan. In theory, such a quick, measured response could be undertaken before third parties (e.g., the United States) can get involved in crisis management. Indian political leaders have been skeptical of these designs, and Cold Start has never been official Indian doctrine, but Pakistani military planners had repeatedly expressed to U.S. officials their concerns regarding Cold Start.
121.
Nayak and Krepon, Unfinished Crisis, 19.
122.
Nayak and Krepon, Unfinished Crisis, 7, 28.
123.
Black, “Structure of South Asian Crises,” 51.
124.
Basrur, 2008 Mumbai Terrorist Attacks, 22; Black, “Structure of South Asian Crises,” 19.
125.
Emily Wax and Rama Lakshmi, “As Rice Presses Pakistan, Mumbai Residents Hold Massive Rally,” Washington Post, December 4, 2008; Black, “Structure of South Asian Crises,” 51.
126.
Nayak and Krepon, Unfinished Crisis, 42. See also Muhammad Saleh Zaafir, “India Planned Strike on Muridke after Mumbai Attacks, Reveals Kasuri,” The News International, August 28, 2015.
127.
Riedel, Avoiding Armageddon, 21.
128.
U.S. Embassy Islamabad to Department of State, “GOI Embassy Draws Distinction between ISI and Civilian Leaders,” secret cable, December 5, 2008, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/nov/30/pakistan-usforeignpolicy1.
129.
U.S. Embassy New Delhi to Department of State, “Indian Foreign Secretary: ‘Huge Stake’ in Special Representative Holbrooke’s Success,” secret cable, February 17, 2009, http://theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/192309.
130.
U.S. Embassy New Delhi to Department of State, “India Scenesetter for Special Representative Holbrooke,” secret cable, February 12, 2009, http://theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-document/1991731.
131.
“Excerpts of Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh’s Intervention in the Lok Sabha during Discussion on the Recent Terrorist Attacks in Mumbai,” New Delhi, December 11, 2008, https://www.indianembassy.org/archives_details.php?nid=940.
132.
Sumit Ganguly and S. Paul Kapur, India, Pakistan, and the Bomb: Debating Nuclear Stability in South Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 72–73.
133.
Black, “Structure of South Asian Crises,” 52.
134.
K. Alan Kronstadt, “Terrorist Attacks in Mumbai, India, and Implications for U.S. Interests,” CRS Report for Congress, Congressional Research Service, Washington, DC, December 19, 2008, 12.
135.
Black, “Structure of South Asian Crises,” 53.
136.
“Pakistani Army Warns India of Response,” The Australian, December 24, 2008.
137.
Samanta, “26/11.”
138.
U.S. Embassy Islamabad to Department of State, “Scenesetter for Special Envoy Holbrooke,” secret cable, February 4, 2009, http://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/190330; Richard A. Oppel, Jr. and Salman Masood, “Pakistan Moves Troops amid Tension with India,” New York Times, December 26, 2008.
139.
Black, “Structure of South Asian Crises,” 53.
140.
Fayaz Bukhari and Rupam Jain, “India Mulls Response after Deadly Kashmir Attack It Blames on Pakistan,” Reuters, September 19, 2016; Pamela Constable and Annie Gowen, “Deadly Attack in Indian Kashmir Renews ‘War of Words’ with Rival Pakistan,” Washington Post, September 20, 2016; “Militants Attack an Indian Army Base,” The Economist, September 19, 2016; George Perkovich, “India’s Options in Pakistan,” Foreign Affairs, September 21, 2016.
141.
“Rising Tensions in Kashmir,” New York Times, September 23, 2016.
142.
“India Backs Off Major Retaliation,” Reuters, September 22, 2016.
143.
Praveen Swami, “Uri Terror Attack: Avoid Rash Military Action, Commanders Advise Government,” Indian Express, September 20, 2016.
144.
Shishir Gupta, “Mission LOC: How India Punished Pakistan with Surgical Strikes,” Hindustan Times, October 3, 2016.
145.
Perkovich, “India’s Options in Pakistan.”
146.
“Statement by His Excellency Mr. Muhammad Nawaz Sharif,” General Debate of the 71st Session, UN General Assembly, September 21, 2016.
147.
Shubhajit Roy, “John Kerry Spoke to Sushma Twice over Two Days,” Indian Express, September 29, 2016.
148.
Annie Gowen, “India’s ‘Surgical Strike’ on Pakistan Territory Hints at New Era for Nuclear-Armed Rivals,” Washington Post, September 30, 2016.
149.
Pamela Constable and Shaiq Hussain, “Pakistan Prepares for a Possible Indian Attack,” Washington Post, September 22, 2016.
150.
TNN, “Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif Threatens to Unleash Nukes Against India,” Times of India, September 29, 2016.
151.
Gupta, “Mission LOC”; Nitin A. Gokhale, “The Inside Story of India’s 2016 ‘Surgical Strikes’,” The Diplomat, September 23, 2017.
152.
“Transcript of Joint Briefing by MEA and MoD,” Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, New Delhi, September 29, 2016.
153.
The remainder of this paragraph synthesizes the reporting of reputable journalists and media outlets, which are cited below.
154.
Gowen, “India’s ‘Surgical Strike’”; Gupta, “Mission LOC”; Suhasini Haidar and Kallol Bhattacherjee, “Target Terror: India Strikes across LOC,” The Hindu, September 29, 2016; Niharika Mandhana, “India Says It Hit Terrorist Bases in Pakistan-Controlled Kashmir,” Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2016; Manu Pubby, “Army’s Daring Surgical Strike Marks Radical Change in India’s Pakistan Policy,” Economic Times, October 3, 2016; “Reversing Roles,” Economist, October 8, 2016; Sushant Singh, “Inside the Surgical Strike,” Indian Express, October 1, 2016.
155.
See, for example, Gowen, “India’s ‘Surgical Strike’” and Pubby, “Army’s Daring Surgical Strike.”
156.
“Congress Releases Dates of Cross-LOC Attacks during UPA Regime,” Hindustan Times, October 5, 2016.
157.
Manoj Joshi, “Uri Aftermath: Retaliation, With De-Escalation Built In,” The Wire, September 29, 2016. See also: C. Raja Mohan, “Breaking Out of the Box,” Indian Express, October 3, 2016.
158.
One very experienced Indian defense correspondent argues that Modi “chose strikes across the LOC as these had been carried out before and the two armies had dealt with such situations without escalating things further.” Raj Chengappa, “Game Changer,” India Today, October 6, 2016.
159.
Mandhana, “India Says It Hit Terrorist Bases.” One “senior Pakistani security official” did take the opportunity to warn that if India were to initiate a war, Pakistan “could use tactical nuclear weapons.” Ellen Barry and Salman Masood, “India Claims ‘Surgical Strikes’ across Line of Control in Kashmir,” New York Times, September 29, 2016.
160.
“Statement by NSC Spokesperson Ned Price on National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice’s Call with National Security Advisor Ajit Doval of India,” The White House, Washington, DC, September 28, 2016. Barry and Masood, “India Claims ‘Surgical Strikes’ across Line of Control in Kashmir.”
161.
“India Strikes Back, Carries Out Surgical Strikes on Terror Launch Pads at LOC,” Times of India, September 29, 2016.
162.
Pubby, “Army’s Daring Surgical Strike.”
163.
ANI, “Aftermath of India’s Surgical Strikes in POK,” Business Standard, October 5, 2016.
164.
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Department of Political Science, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD, USA
Devin T. Hagerty

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Hagerty, D.T. (2020). India-Pakistan Crises, 1999–2016. In: Nuclear Weapons and Deterrence Stability in South Asia. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21398-5_2

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21398-5_2
Published: 23 June 2019
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-21397-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-21398-5
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)

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