The case of Kulbhushan Jadhav lay mysteriously dormant for months after he was arrested in Pakistan in circumstances that remain murky. It only erupted in the public arena a year after when a military court sentenced him to death on charges of espionage and sabotage.

India reacted in shock and outrage. In the Indian narration, Jadhav is a former naval officer who resigned his commission early this century to go into a business venture servicing maritime shipping. He was involved in the Indian port development project in Chabahar in the east of Iran.

There is still no credible account of how he came to be in Pakistan’s military captivity, but suspicions are that he was snatched from his place of work and illegally “rendered” across the border.

Jadhav, who allegedly adopted Hussain Mubarak Patel as his nom de guerre, was denied consular access or assistance on the shaky grounds that these diplomatic niceties had no place in matters involving espionage and high crimes against a sovereign State. For reasons yet unclear, he was brought to trial before a military court unlike earlier cases of Indian nationals accused of espionage, where Pakistan’s civilian judiciary has been the forum of choice, with the Supreme Court as the ultimate appellate authority.

Exhibit A in the prosecution case was, predictably, a confessional video in which Jadhav admitted in lurid detail to every manner of atrocity in Balochistan, the restive province bordering Iran, where insurgencies have raged in violent and often prolonged spasms for decades. Gwadar port in Balochistan, less than 100 km from India’s strategic outpost in Chabahar, is where the warm waters of the Gulf lap up against the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the ambitious mega-project that runs a rugged course from Tibet through the provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.

The Pakistan military has taken almost an obsessive custodianship over the CPEC, which it sees as a pathway towards the long-sought salvation of “strategic depth”. But the military’s effort to stamp its writ on territory through which the CPEC runs, has stirred up suspicions and animosities within the entrenched feudal chieftaincies in Balochistan. That has created a dynamic of resistance and sabotage by the traditional Baloch feudal elite, which Pakistan accuses India of aggravating.

India sees the CPEC, which runs a significant course through parts of Pakistan-held Kashmir, as a threat to its territorial claims. And it sees the invitation extended by China to participate in the corridor as a piece of effrontery, a call to partake of the liquidation of its own strategic priorities.

In the ambience created by these deeply antagonistic strategic visions, security and intelligence agencies have occupied themselves in endless games of smoke and mirrors. India’s meddling in Balochistan is a firmly stated conviction in Pakistan, though iterated with varying degrees of passion depending upon which corner of the power structure it is emanating from.

Individuals trapped in the coils of this game are normally put through trial with little realistic expectation of acquittal. The inevitable guilty verdict normally attracts the death sentence or, minimally, imprisonment for life. With a shroud of secrecy surrounding it, little is known about how authorities on both sides of the border handle matters involving jeopardy to clandestine operatives.

Recent experience suggests that the newly- favoured method of orchestrating a loud public clamour is the least likely to produce results. Sarabjit Singh, convicted in 1991 on charges of sabotage and terrorism, offers a case in point. After desultory efforts behind the scenes failed, India seemingly adopted a policy of waging war from the news studio, orchestrating prime-time shows to shame Pakistan into setting him free.

The outcome was disastrous. Sarabjit was brutally attacked in his Lahore prison by other inmates and died soon afterwards. A few days later, a Pakistani prisoner held in Jammu was attacked and fatally injured, in what was termed, rather feebly, to be a fracas triggered by personal animosity.

A seasoned diplomat with a record of service in several of India’s most important missions abroad wrote recently that very little sense could be made of the Jadhav affair, except as firm evidence of the “Dovalisation” of policy towards Pakistan. The reference was to Ajit Doval, the former director of India’s Intelligence Bureau, who was designated national security advisor by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in perhaps his first appointment since winning power.

Doval’s approach to security policy, especially in the Pakistan dimension, has been to substitute a defensive posture with what he characterises as “defensive offence” — where India undertakes aggressive actions in places where it perceives a threat. The Doval doctrine was endorsed at the highest level by Modi during his Independence Day address last year, when he declared, in the midst of deepening strife in Kashmir, that Pakistan would soon have to account for its human rights violations in Balochistan.

The new doctrine seemingly dispenses with every element of discretion that may have been part of the operational playbook in earlier conjunctures. And that applies to even the military strikes that were once carried out as subtle warning to the other side when it crossed a mutually recognised red line. Those red lines have now been obliterated and political constituencies in both countries are being cultivated on very public proclamations of military machismo. This is a path along which it is very difficult to control or calibrate the pace of escalation, and offers a foretaste of little else than a state of endless strife.

Sukumar Muralidharan teaches at the school of journalism, OP Jindal Global University, Sonipat

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