What happened on March 9? There was a technical malfunction due to which a missile was fired “accidentally” that landed in Pakistan. There was no loss of life on Pakistan’s side, India constituted a ‘Court of Enquiry’ into the accident, and the United States too said that there was no indication that the firing of the said missile was anything but an accident. US State Department spokesperson said, “We have no indication as you also heard from our Indian partners that this incident was anything other than an accident.”
The story should have ended here. However, Pakistan has been in habit of weaving narratives and launching information wars against India. This is what it has done again. It is time for India to evolve accordingly in the era of information warfare and start hitting back at Islamabad.
Pakistan lobbying with the international community
In fact, Pakistan is lobbying the international community on the issue. On Tuesday, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said that Islamabad had rejected a statement by India on the accidental missile launch.
Qureshi also told journalists that he had written to the UN Security Council on the matter and had asked the international community to take up the matter.
Pakistan trying to make a big issue out of the incident
Terroristan is pushing through the narrative that the incident was no minor one and that it could have led to an escalation between two nuclear powers. A Bloomberg report for example states, “Errant Indian Missile Nearly Led to Pakistan Retaliatory Strike.”
Pakistan is therefore trying to claim that the accidental launch could have led to an all-out war with two nuclear powers firing missiles at each other. As per the report, people familiar with the matter said that Pakistan held back its retaliation plans because of an initial assessment that something was amiss.
Read more: Pakistan is shifting anti-India terror launch pads from PoK to Afghanistan
So, Pakistan is trying to sound a false alarm here. It wants to show that some sort of tension is building up between India and Pakistan and that Western powers like the US and the EU should intervene through strict actions. Of course, Pakistan is blowing things out of proportion and what remains to be seen is how India reacts to Islamabad’s information warfare.
Pakistan demands a joint probe
On Sunday, Pakistan had also demanded a joint probe into the incident, while calling on the international community to pressurise India. Now, this is an attempted interference of the worst kind. Pakistan wants to bring in the international community and somehow get access to Indian military infrastructure. India, on the other hand, cannot let Terroristan access its highly sensitive apparatus.
For India, it is time to stop playing defensive. Firstly, New Delhi must make it clear that there was no missile crisis, as opposed to the narrative that Pakistan is trying to establish. Also, India needs to call out Pakistani elements who are trying to destabilise the region. One retired Pakistani Major General, for example, wrote, “Pakistan, besides raising the issue at all fora, should unequivocally declare that it ‘reserves the right to respond’ to such probing and provocations. And that means taking out the site of the suspected launch, as missile interception is hard for given reasons.”
His op-ed, which has been published by a Pakistani newspaper, also states, “India needs to beware of the consequent public pressure on Pakistani decision-makers for retaliation to inflict greater pain.”
A retired Pakistani military officer is thus clearly making threats of “taking out” an Indian military site and “retaliation to inflict greater pain”, which are clear signs of warmongering. Given how influential Pakistan Army’s serving and retired officers tend to be, these threats are the ones that need to be called out before the international community.
In reality, there is nothing to retaliate, because India didn’t provoke Pakistan in the first place. In the past, Pakistan has committed many acts of war like sponsoring terrorism in Punjab, Kashmir and other parts of India, apart from attacking India’s Parliament and orchestrating the 26/11 attacks. Every time, India lost the initiative to launch a narrative war against Islamabad.
Read more: 20 years of Parliament Attack – The attack that changed India forever
This time however Pakistan has launched a narrative war without any rhyme and reason, and it is time that New Delhi hits back at Islamabad in the language that the latter understands.