Saturday 7 October 2017

Dispatches From Hindunazistan: The India-Pakistan War of 2019

In the winter of 2018-19, Narendrabhai Damodardas Modi is going to start a war with Pakistan.

Back in 2013 - a year before Modi had taken over – I had written a long fiction piece called Armageddon: The India-Pakistan War of 2019. To this day it remains the most “popular” (if hits and abuse can be counted as popularity) thing I have ever written. You can read it here.

But that was back when I’d imagined it was fiction. Now I am almost convinced I was making a prediction.

Here is why.

Three years after its inception, the Modi project is in a state of collapse. The economy has plumbed rock bottom, courtesy Modi's Great Glorious Demonetisation Jamboree and his General Sales Tax fiasco. Unemployment has reached stratospheric levels. Small businesses - the core of Modi's party's historical support base - are closing down in huge numbers. Farmers are in a state of open revolt. Lynch mobs murdering people on the excuse of protecting cows aren't going to miraculously open those closed brick kilns and textile factories back up. Things are so bad that even Modi - on one of his rare visits to the country between trips to Vancouver and Vanuatu - has been reduced to boasting that his government was still not as bad as the previous one. That's the sum total of his "achievements" in 3½ years - that he is head of a government which, he claims, isn't as bad as the previous one.

Elections in multiple states, including Modi's home state of Gujarat, are coming up, and the outlook isn't good for Modi's Bhaktonazi Jumla Party (actual name, Bharatiya Janata Party: Bhakts are Modi’s Hindunazi worshippers, and Jumla means broken promise). At the least, even if they hang on to power in those states, it will be with a bare majority. And that in turn will finally, probably, galvanise the so far incredibly incompetent and disorganised opposition parties to get their act together and unite.

National elections are due in spring 2019. It's hardly likely that Modi will cut his own term in power - not to speak of his taxpayer funded foreign trips - short by calling early elections, though that would be the smart thing to do at this juncture, before things get even worse for him and before said opposition has a chance to unite. So he will sit glowering over a 2018 which will reduce his chances in the 2019 election with every passing day.

What is the only thing which might save him? A war with Pakistan, which can be spun as a "victory", with the opposition either being compelled to acknowledge him as a "victor" or be branded as traitors.

This war will not face opposition from the military, because Modi has made sure to place a right wing blowhard in the chief of staff of the Army's spot, superseding two senior generals. The air force will do whatever Modi says and the navy is a ceremonial force of no significance. It is the army that counts.

This war will be meant to be of short duration, for these reasons:

1. The longer the war lasts the higher the bloodshed, and the less easy to pretend it is a victory.

2. The longer the war lasts, the greater the chances of a clear battlefield defeat. Destroyed armoured divisions and piles of Indian corpses can't be concealed from the populace in the internet age.

3. The longer the war lasts, the greater the chances that it will go nuclear, with catastrophic consequences for Modi's home state of Gujarat, which is the westernmost Indian state and just across the border from Pakistan.

4. The longer the war lasts, the greater the chances of international pressure enforcing a humiliating Indian backing down. That would defeat the purpose of starting the war in the first place.

5. The longer the war lasts, the greater the economic costs and the chances of a total crash, which again would defeat the purpose of starting it at all.

Also this will have to be a visible war, one that is actually fought, not a fictional "surgical strike" which would mean nothing to anyone except the Modifellating Bhaktonazi fan base, who would support Modi anyway.

Therefore the Modi regime will plan for a short duration war, one fought as much in the television studios with the help of screeching rabid Bhaktonazi propagandamongers like Arnab Cowswamy as on the battlefield. The Indian Army already has a plan for such a war in place; it's called the "Cold Start Doctrine" and envisages a sudden Blitzkrieg invasion of Pakistani territory, to capture objectives close to the border, "punish" Pakistan, and withdraw quickly.

The timing of this war will also be important. It must be fought in the winter, for these reasons:

1. The end of the harvesting season, which will mean that farmlands can be sown with mines and run over with armoured vehicles without too much disruption of agriculture.

2. In winter, Kashmir is snowed in and a Pakistani counteroffensive there won't happen. Mass public demonstrations can also be contained more readily than in the summer.

3. The timing is right, just long enough before the 2019 election for Modi to pose as a victor but not long enough for the costs of the war to come home to roost, in both economic and political terms; before people become aware that they have won nothing at all.

So, will it work?

I believe it will be a disaster. The Cold Start Doctrine isn't secret; Pakistan is aware of it as much as India is, and their spy services are far superior to ours. They'll know what's coming before the first Indian tank clatters across the border in the Rajasthan desert.

Why the Rajasthan desert? Because that's the only place where the border isn't fortified to the teeth and an Indian Blitzkrieg has any chance of penetrating Pakistani defences, that's why.

So the Pakistanis will know when the attack is coming, where it's coming, and they've already prepared for it both militarily and politically.

Militarily, Pakistan has acquired short range missiles with low yield battlefield nukes, which they can and will use on Indian armoured divisions in the desert. They will have to use them because with India's military superiority Pakistan can't fight a long duration war with success, and can't afford defeat without the real threat of disintegration. India has no equivalent weapons, and can only retaliate with city-level nukes on Pakistani urban centres. Can it? Will it, with all the consequences, not excluding retaliation by Pakistan on Indian cities? Or will it quietly withdraw, both sides pretending the battlefield nuclear strikes never happened?

Politically, Pakistan is aggressively wooing Russia, and with considerable success; if the Modi regime imagines it can balance that with an alliance with Amerikastan, it is considerably mistaken. Simple geography, given its proximity to Afghanistan, Iran, and Central Asia, means Pakistan will always be of greater importance to Warshington than India; and no Amerikastani president will want to commit suicide for the greater glory of the Bhaktonazi project in South Asia.

But reality isn't a factor with Nazis, never has been; so expect some kind of "terrorist attack" - genuine or staged - in December 2018/January 2019, followed by an Indian attack on Pakistan, followed by nuclear war.

The Oracle has spoken.