Pathankot Attack Planned by Pakistani Army Headquarters?

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Pathankot operation was planned by Pakistan army headquarters?

he Pathankot attack may have been masterminded by the Pakistan Army's General Headquarters (GHQ) in Rawalpindi, as per an assessment by a section of the top Indian security establishment.

According to a senior intelligence official, the Pak GHQ is reportedly peeved at the positive reaction of the international community and media to PM Narendra Modi's Lahore diplomacy and Nawaz Sharif's hospitality and feels bypassed after the "fait accompli".

Though there were suggestions that the Pakistan army had backed the recent peace outreach, this narrative disagrees and feels ISI too is of the view that Modi's surprise visit to Lahore created a favourable civil society sentiment in Pakistan towards the civilian 'pro-peace' regime.

The Pakistan Army and ISI, this time around, kept aside their preferred agent Lashkar-e-Taiba, responsible for the 2008 26/11 strikes on Mumbai, and chose Jaish-e-Mohammed, an ISI asset less in the news, to hit Pathankot. This, they felt, would ensure more deniability. Headed by Maulana Masood Azhar, one of three terrorists swapped to end the IC-814 hostage crisis of 1999, Jaish is being resurrected over the past few years.

The Pathankot attackers were part of the Bahawalpur group of Jaish and spoke in Multani dialect, common to south Punjab, during phone calls with their Pakistan-based masterminds. Four calls were made in the intervening night of Friday and Saturday, three to terrorists' Pakistan-based Jaish handlers and one to a family member of a fidayeen. The calls were intercepted by the agencies.

While one of the fidayeen has been identified as Nasir, the two handlers who were heard instructing the attackers to blow up aircraft at Pathankot airbase were called Maulana Ashfaq and Haji Abdul Shaqur. In 2008, the 10-member LeT attack module, including Kasab, was instructed in a similar way by their handlers from a control room in Karachi.

Sources said the objective of the Pathankot attack was to cause damage to air force base assets and technical assets and kill as many personnel as possible. This, some senior officers of the intelligence establishment feel, was meant to provoke the Indian defence establishment and political opposition to retaliate -- undo India-Pakistan peace dialogue and so scuttle the foreign secretary-level talks less than a fortnight away. This would also help bring back focus on Pakistan military propaganda painting their country a victim of terrorism, facing an aggressive eastern (India) neighbour and an India-influenced Afghanistan.

Indian intelligence agencies managed to get advance information, enabling security forces to coordinate a night-long, timely operation on the ground. The multi-agency operation was coordinated and supervised, with NSA overseeing it through the night. The Jaish terrorists were repulsed and neutralized with no damage to any airforce base assets & minimal casualties.

The thwarted attack will serve as a snub to the Pakistani side, besides exposing to the world what India is up against, in form of the "deep state within the Pakistan state", said a senior intelligence functionary.

No rogue strike, all hands point to Pakistani military he full extent of terrorist operations in Pathankot and the likelihood of Delhi facing a similar threat is leading to mounting suspicion that the suspected Jaish-e-Mohammed strikes could not have been executed without Pakistan's armyintelligence complex being in the loop. The multiple terror groups that work out of Pakistan has made it difficult even for the proverbial "deep state" to keep a tab on all, but India operations remain under the close control and scrutiny of the ISI and the general headquarters. There is the possibility of hold outs and elements in the military who may not be as much "on board" the peace process as the army brass was said to be after the recent meeting between PMs Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif in Lahore. Given the infamous mendaciousness of the Pakistan military, suspected to have harboured Osama Bin Laden — the truth about the attack on Pathankot may never be revealed. Evidence that will come to light in coming days could trace the plot with greater certainty but the possibil ity of rogue elements carrying out the jihadi strikes seems to be shrinking as the number of the terror squad rises and it becomes apparent that this was not a small autonomous group. While the Pakistan army could have ostensibly been in the loop over the peace initiative, a belief system that sees India as the enemy in political and religious terms is hard to jettison. At best, there can be a tactical decision to allow the civilian government more leeway at a particular point in