Saturday, 28 December, 2019

ThePrint

Today, IAF’s

Abhinandan Varthaman

lives on in Pakistan’s memory either as a mannequin inside a war museum or as a poster boy for a tea stall.

Naila Inayat 27 December, 2019

For as long as you and I can remember, India and Pakistan have been writing new chapters in their book of dislike that they keep for each other. In 2019, the two countries not only continued the trend, they went out of their way to let the world know how difficult it is to live next to each other.

As 2019 comes to an end, a look back at the eventful year shows that things went south between India and Pakistan on multiple occasions.

A string of incidents triggered a variety of emotions, reactions and outrage in Pakistan – the Balakot air strikes, Indian Air Force (IAF) Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman’s captivity, India’s ban on tomato exports, the ICJ verdict on Kulbhushan Jadhav, and the dilution of Article 370 stripping Jammu and Kashmir of its special status.

There wasn’t a single day in 2019 when India and Pakistan played it dull. The Lok Sabha election in India, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s special focus on Pakistan, kept everyone engaged, including Pakistanis. There’s little doubt that 2020 wouldn’t be as rocky as 2019.

It all started with the Pulwama terror attack on 14 February. And two weeks later, on 26 February, India’s Mirage-2000 fighter jets crossed the Line of Control to enter some 70 km inside Pakistan and bomb an alleged Jaish-e-Mohammed camp on a hilltop in Balakot.

Unlike Pakistan’s refusal that India had entered into its territory to carry out the 2016 surgical strikes after the Uri attack, we first heard about the Balakot air strikes from the Pakistan Army itself, when DG ISPR Major General Asif Ghafoor woke us up with a tweet early morning. The IAF dropped payload in haste is what we were told. But there was one thing that puzzled us: why was the IAF in such a hurry?

That the Pakistani radars couldn’t successfully track India’s warplanes was hardly a surprise. If Pakistan’s radars didn’t work when the US special forces entered Pakistan to shoot dead Osama bin Laden, how could they work during the Balakot air strikes? Why Pakistan couldn’t stop India was a question that was best answered by Defence Minister Pervez Khattak: “it was dark”.

As to who was targeted in the Balakot air strikes, it was an open-and-shut case really — a crow and 19 trees. The initial claim that India had killed 300 terrorists was only a myth. An FIR was registered by Pakistan’s forestry department against namaloom (unidentified) Indian pilots for not only crossing into Pakistan but also destroying pine trees in Balakot.

To avenge the killing of a crow and some trees in Balakot, Pakistan retaliated the next morning, on 27 February. Not one but two Indian aircraft were shot down by the Pakistan Air Force (PAF), we were told. Not one but two Indian pilots were caught, authorities claimed. But we were introduced to only one of them. Where did the other one disappear? It is a mystery and shall remain one because who cares about all that.

The glory was Pakistan’s because Abhinandan Varthaman had parachuted in Pakistan. As good hosts, the Pakistan Army served him a cup of tea, which he said was fantastic. The receipt of his chai has now been documented. Forget the 93,000 Pakistani soldiers that India, taking them as war prisoners, had fed after the surrender in the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, it is the tea served to Abhinandan during his captivity here that will cost India the most.

It was as if Abhinandan had fallen in love with Pakistan. We saw him criticise the Indian media in a heavily edited video. I guess the saying ‘Make chai, not war’ suddenly gained relevance during those tense moments between the two neighbours.

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