Pakistan arrests JeM chief Masood Azhar, seals offices

India weighing options; foreign secretary-level talks imminent

Talks between India and Pakistan seemed set to go forward on Wednesday, after reports from Pakistan of the arrest of Maulana Masood Azhar, chief of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), the organisation that appeared to have carried out the Pathankot attack, his brother, Rauf Azhar and other members of his family. The Pak government also sealed JeM’s offices.

However, Delhi reacted cautiously. “We have no official confirmation of the arrest of Masood Azhar,” External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said. He said a decision on whether to go ahead with the foreign secretary-level talks scheduled with Pakistan on Friday would be taken after Wednesday night’s meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. The meeting was underway at the time of filing of this report.

Although the dates are yet to be firmed up, the arrest of Azhar — described by Pakistani sources as ‘protective custody’ — is likely to weigh favourably with India, which had demanded ‘prompt’ and ‘decisive’ action against those who had conspired to carry out the attack in Pakistan. Voice samples suggested it was Azhar’s family members who were the handlers of those who had carried out the attack. As news of the arrest broke, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar drove to Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj’s residence. She then met the PM. India had given both voice samples and DNA evidence to Pakistan soon after the attack. Pakistan had accepted without demur the involvement of its citizens in the attack and had not attempted to dissemble or prevaricate. It also formed a joint investigation team of officials from the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Military Intelligence and other arms of the Pakistani establishment days after India had handed evidence of Pakistani involvement.

A statement from Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s office also announced that Pakistan was ready to send a special team to the Pathankot airbase to investigate the assault. “In the spirit of the cooperative approach, it was decided that in order to carry the process forward, additional information would be required, for which the government of Pakistan is considering to send a special investigation team to Pathankot, in consultation with the government of India,” the statement said.

“The offices of the organisation are also being traced and sealed and further investigations are underway,” the statement added. A high-level meeting chaired by Sharif took the decision after the first round of initial investigations. Pakistan army chief Raheel Sharif; director-general of ISI; Lahore Corps commander; ministers of interior and finance; Punjab chief minister; and other senior civil, military and police officials were present at the meeting.  “The meeting noted with satisfaction that as part of Pakistan’s commitment to eliminate terrorism from our soil and the expressed national resolve not to allow our territory to be used for acts of terrorism anywhere, considerable progress has been made in the investigations being carried out against terrorist elements reportedly linked to the Pathankot incident,” said the note.

The meeting and prompt action on Pakistan’s part might have been chivvied forward by the intervention of the US. On Saturday, US Secretary of State John Kerry had urged Pakistan and India to continue talks despite the Pathankot attack. Pakistani newspapers reported that Kerry called Sharif and expressed the hope that the bilateral talks between Pakistan and India would continue despite the terrorists’ attempt to thwart them. Using both flattery and persuasion, Kerry was reported to have praised Sharif’s leadership skills amid difficult times in the wake of the Pathankot attack.

It is possible that Azhar and his associates are being offered as fall guys to prevent information about a linkage between them and the Pakistani state from becoming public. However, there is no doubt that India’s basic demands — prompt and decisive action – have been met.

If India now makes fresh demands – that the linkage between the attacks and state agencies be investigated by the government — Pakistan could legitimately claim India was trying to interfere in its domestic affairs and changing the goal posts. Talks between the foreign secretaries, therefore, are inevitable.

However, whether they will take place on January 15 — a date announced unilaterally by Sartaj Aziz, foreign affairs advisor to the Pakistan Prime Minister - remains to be seen. Another obstacle to the talks could be statements from Afghan police officers that Pakistan military officers were involved in the attack on the Indian consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif on January 3.