Daily Times

India thought that it pulled off an infowar coup by pretending to have carried out a ‘surgical strike’ against 200-300 Jaish-e-Mohammed fighters in Azad Kashmir in the early hours of February 26, but this vote-grabbing stunt by Indian Prime Minister Modi totally backfired on him after Pakistan turned this latest Bollywood flick into a reality by defending its airspace and downing two Indian MiGs that violated the Line of Control.

The hottest Bollywood flick in the world right now is ‘Surgical Strike 2.0’, which is the big-budget and high-stakes sequel to its predecessor that India claims to have carried out in 2016 with no evidence either. The author wrote about this in his piece titled ‘Surgical Strike 2.0 Or Big Bollywood Spectacle?’, which compared India’s lies about a second ‘surgical strike’ in the early hours of February 26 to a re-election movie by Prime Minister Modi, one which he hoped would amount to an infowar coup that would simultaneously boost his own nation’s international ‘prestige’ while denigrating Pakistan’s. It was predicted at the end of that piece that like all Bollywood productions, ‘the show must go on’, but the ‘surgical strike’ series won’t have a happy ending for India after Pakistan promised to retaliate ‘at a time and place of its choosing’, which is exactly what happened the next day.

Pakistan downed two Indian MiGs that violated the Line of Control (LoC) and even managed to capture a pilot who was recorded on camera as proof against India’s original fake news assertions that it didn’t suffer such a humiliating military defeat. Speaking of false claims, India says that it downed a Pakistani F-16 that violated its airspace, yet just like it bragged about killing 200-300 Jaish-e-Mohammed fighters in its ‘surgical strike’ the day earlier without presenting any evidence whatsoever that anything other than a few trees were destroyed (and even those were targeted accidentally after its jet released its payload to jettison extra weight as it fled Pakistani airspace), so too is this also fake news intended to deceive the domestic and international audiences. What actually happened on the morning of February 27 is expectedly much different than how India is portraying it.

Islamabad acknowledged in an official press release that it retaliated tit-for-tat by striking non-military targets in Indian-held Kashmir in order ‘to demonstrate [its] right, will and capability for self defence’, and not to escalate the situation. It also hinted at carrying out actual anti-terrorist ‘surgical strikes’ against the Indian-backed terrorists participating in the Hybrid War on CPEC when it declared that “If India is striking at so called terrorist backers without a shred of evidence, we also retain reciprocal rights to retaliate against elements that enjoy Indian patronage while carrying out acts of terror in Pakistan.” Had India’s elected leadership and its military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies not fancied themselves starring in a Bollywood film and took Pakistan’s words seriously, they wouldn’t have even staged ‘Surgical Strike 2.0’ after Islamabad promised there’d be a response should that happen, but regrettably, New Delhi decided to escalate tensions even further.

Instead of letting Pakistan’s principled tit-for-tat retaliation be the end of their recent tensions, India turned up the notch by dispatching two more of its MiGs to violate the LoC and possibly stage another episode of its ‘surgical strike’ drama, though they were predictably shot down by the Pakistani Air Force. Displaying the maturing that a rising Great Power such as the global pivot state of Pakistan is expected to have, Prime Minister Imran Khan promptly went on national TV to reiterate that his country doesn’t want to take the situation any further but that “no sovereign country can allow another country to become judge, jury and executioners” by using unverified claims such as the Pakistani state’s involvement in the Pulwama attack to violate its airspace and stage a ‘surgical strike’ stunt. India refused to jointly investigate that ‘trigger’ incident with Pakistan, instead choosing to unilaterally act aggressively against it.

This pattern of behavior is strongly influenced by the modus operandi of its new American and ‘Israeli’ allies, who never have any compunction against striking whatever state they feel like, though once again, India’s Bollywood delusions deceived it. Nuclear-armed and battle-tested Pakistan isn’t anywhere in the same league as Arab Spring-afflicted Libya or war-torn Syria, so Modi’s fantasy of carrying out an American- and Israeli-like strike against it – to say nothing of an Iraqi-style ‘shock and awe’ campaign – with impunity was a fantasy from the very beginning, though one which the Indian leadership has dangerously decided to play out in real life. Unlike those aforementioned targeted states, however, Pakistan is strong enough to defend the principles of international law, especially sovereignty and territorial integrity, by militantly upholding the UN Charter, which is why it promptly shot down both Indian jets that tried to stage another ‘surgical strike’ provocation.

‘Surgical Strike 2.0’, the latest Bollywood flick to come out of Modi’s India, was supposed to be an action-packed comedy that would highlight the ‘bravery’ of the Indian Armed Forces as they ‘humiliated’ Pakistan, but the movie abruptly transformed into real life after New Delhi forgot that military stunts have real-world consequences and Islamabad showed that it’s more than willing to turn this comedy into a tragedy for its main protagonists. This ‘plot twist’ revealed that far from being the ‘heroes’, the Indian Armed Forces are actually the antagonists while their opponents in the Pakistani Armed Forces are the real protagonists fighting to safeguard the principles of the UN Charter upon which the rules-based international order is based.

Usually when a movie is going as bad as this one is, it’s a good idea to walk away even if the viewer can’t forget that the experience ever happened, but Modi seems to have a morbid fascination in seeing how much worse things will get. He’s forgotten that he’s not in a flick but is the main player an ultra-risky high-stakes gamble over the fate of his entire nation. The ‘surgical strike’ charade was exposed as the fake news infowar that it was from the very beginning, but unless Modi wakes up and realizes the damage that this vote-grabbing stunt has inflicted on his country, Pakistan will ensure that ‘Surgical Strike 2.0’ has the worst ending in Bollywood history.

Published in Daily Times, February 28^th 2019.