When NSA Ajit Doval outlined India's new Pak strategy- defensive offense - perfectly

NEW DELHI: "Do one (more) Mumbai, you may lose Balochistan," was National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval 's near-prophetic message to Pakistan, a little under two years ago.

Little did anyone know then that Doval had just described - in detail - India's changing strategic response to Pakistani terrorism, a response that came to fruition with the Centre's September 29 surgical strikes in Pakistan .

That new response, "defensive offense", was described in lucid detail in a late 2014 speech the NSA delivered at Sastra University.

Was India already considering a change in strategy back then?

India no more playing 'chowkidar'

For far too long, India's response to

Pakistani terror

has been defensive, "like chowkidars", just preventive, the NSA said then.

Not any longer.

Unlike a purely chowkidar-like response to engaging with the enemy, and even unlike an all-out offensive response - where nuclear war becomes a possibility - defensive offence is when you go and attack the place where the offense is coming from.

That's what the September 29 surgical strikes by India on terrorist camps across the Line of Control (LoC) in Pakistan were - a perfect example of defensive offense.

"There is no nuclear war involved in that. There is no engagement of troops. They know the tricks, we know the tricks better," Doval said at the time.

India did, know the tricks better, that is. In strikes just after midnight September 28-29, India airdropped commandos at the LoC - from where the commandos crossed over 3 kms to the Pakistani side - destroyed 7 terrorist launch pads and killed 38 terrorists. The mission ended in a short four hours.

It was just as Doval described it: "Defensive offence is when you go and attack the place where the offense is coming from." In this case, clearly, it was across the LoC in Pakistan.

"Pakistan's vulnerability is many many times higher than (that of) of India('s). Once they know India has shifted to defensive offense they will find it is unaffordable for them. You can do one Mumbai you may lose Balochistan ," Doval said.

And, sure enough, PM Modi launched India's Balochistan campaign - a little before August 15, and in a blistering speech on Independence Day - after months of continual Pakistani interference in Kashmir.

"The time has come when Pakistan shall have to answer to the world for the atrocities committed by it against people in Balochistan and POK (Pakistan Occupied Kashmir),"Modi said. The PM also said that when children in Pakistan's Peshawar died in a 2014 terror attack, Indians cried. "This is our nature, but look at the other side. They glorify terrorists," he said, addressing the nation from the Red Fort.

'Pak not our well wishers'

This shift - both verbal and militarily - Doval had said should have been made a long time ago. If India had gone into even a partial defensive offense, it could have "probably reduced casualties" a lot more over the years.

"Don't buy Pakistan's argument that Pakistanis are well wishers, they are not. They will continue to bleed us with a thousand cuts," Doval had said.

Again, he was right.

Barely a week after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's surprise friendly visit to Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif on Christmas day last year - seen as an act of unprecedented bonhomie on India's part - came the deadly attack on the Pathankot air force base .

On January 2, Pakistan-based Jaish-e Muhammad terrorists - dressed in Indian army fatigues - breached the air force station's perimeter and entered the living quarters area of the station. They killed 9 soldiers. The gun battle with the terrorists lasted days.

Then another attack on September 18, on a brigade headquarters in Uri in Jammu and Kashmir , led to the killing of as many as 19 soldiers.

To any comments that India might be overreacting, Doval said back then that no one should underestimate 'jihadi terrorism.'

"What makes jihadi terrorism a strategic threat? Is it really a long-term strategic threat?" Doval asked rhetorically, and answered that it indeed is.

The biggest reason jihadi terrorism is a threat is because "it's sponsored by a country which harbours a compulsive hostility towards India, and right from day of it independence, all its policies have had one objective" Doval explained.

That Pakistani objective, he said, is: India is the enemy, destroy it.

"That is indeed Pakistan's objective, let us make no bones about it."




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