In his Independence Day address on Monday, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi went on the offensive vis-à-vis neighboring Pakistan, suggesting that India could overtly support separatist groups in the Pakistani province of Balochistan and cause trouble in the regions of Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, claimed by India.
Modi’s salvo at Pakistan was driven by two main motivations: one, to deflect pressure on his government for the ongoing crisis in Indian-controlled Kashmir; and two, to project India as a regional hegemon capable of denying China access to economic trade routes through Pakistan into the Indian Ocean region. On both efforts, despite Modi’s braggadocio, India is likely to fail.
private Indian news channels, at the behest of their own government, have been engaging in a crude propaganda campaign against CPEC. Indian media outlets issue false reports of a massive Chinese military presence in Gilgit-Baltistan. They also willfully misrepresent local political rallies as separatist protests. For example, the pro-Modi ANI news service recently used old video footage of an election rally by a Pakistani leftist party in Gilgit-Baltistan and falsely portrayed it as an anti-Pakistan separatist protest. Indian news channels also regularly feature activists and polemicists based in North America who claim to represent Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan and seem to spend half of the year in New Delhi and at meetings in Geneva.
India’s television media seems to believe that much of Pakistan is on the verge of secession and New Delhi can tip the balance. But centrifugal forces in forces in Pakistan have eased, and terrorism in the country is at a decade low. After over ten years of continuous counterinsurgencies, Pakistani security forces are not fatigued; instead, they are more capable, equipped and resolute. India might be able to support small groups like the Balochistan Republican Army and Sindhudesh Liberation Army, but low-intensity attacks have failed to slow down CPEC progress.
