12 May, India
Pakistan Air Vice Marshal calls Pulwama attack “tactical brilliance,” contradicting years of denials.
In an outburst of theatrics and heat of tensions, Pakistan’s military establishment might have unwittingly acknowledged its role in the murder of 40 paramilitary personnel in Pulwama in 2019.
The unprecedented acknowledgment that the Pulwama terrorist attack was “a tactical brilliance” of the Pakistani military came after years of denial in front of dozens of media representatives, including foreign journalists.
At a Friday media briefing, Pakistan Air Vice Marshal Aurangzeb Ahmed said they tried to tell India with “our tactical brilliance in Pulwama” about the pride and thrust of Pakistani forces.
Ahmed, who is the general director of public relations for the Pakistan Air Force (PAF), said there is no compromise on Pakistani airspace, land, or territorial waters. “Pakistani people, anytime they are taking advantage of loss of life, loss of material, that cannot go fidelity,” he stated in the briefing.
“The pride and the trust the Pakistani nation has in its armed forces, we have always defended it whenever there was a loss to it at all. We did try to tell them with our tactical brilliance in Pulwama. Now we showed them our operational prowess, strategic guile, and guidance. I think they should take heed of it,” Air Vice Marshal Aurangzeb Ahmed said.
With this, Aurangzeb has not only destroyed the fig leaf that Pakistan was using over the Pulwama attack, but also the April 22 Pahalgam attack. The rare admission runs counter to Pakistan’s claim of innocence in the Pahalgam terrorist attack, and the pretence of seeking evidence from India over its involvement.
Lt Gen Chaudhry is the son of nuclear scientist Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, who had met al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden and tried to provide the terrorists with nuclear weapons technology. He is on the UN Security Council’s al-Qaida Sanctions Committee list of terrorists.
Pakistan has continually denied it had anything to do with the Pulwama attack, during which a Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) suicide bomber killed 40 CRPF personnel. The JeM claimed the attack.
Air Vice Marshal Aurangzeb Ahmed could have discussed the entire gamut of the Pulwama event, including India’s Balakot strikes and the subsequent dogfights, during the press conference under heat due to the April 22 Pahalgam terrorist attack.
Even before the Pulwama incident, India was always aware of Pakistan’s role as JeM was being used by the military and the infamous spy agency ISI as a proxy.
Pakistan’s then-Prime Minister Imran Khan said the incident was a “matter of grave concern” but continues to deny the army establishment’s complicity in the incident.
Pakistan asked for evidence and rejected the charges made by India, despite the JeM accepting responsibility. Pakistan continued to dispel any evidence, even though India’s dossier showed that the attacker, Adil Ahmad Dar, was a member of the JeM, whose headquarters in Bawahalpur, Subhan Allah camp, were destroyed by Indian strikes in Operation Sindoor.
The military said that more than 100 terrorists were killed in Operation Sindoor, including members involved in the Pulwama attack and the IC-814 hijacking, at a tri-service media briefing on May 11.
Shortly after the 2019 Pulwama attack, India conducted air strikes on a JeM terror camp in Balakot, POK. The operation, involving 12 Mirage 2000 jets, targeted JeM’s largest training camp in its operation to pause terror hideouts.
Pakistan’s reaction was an aerial dogfight where one fighter pilot, Abhinandan Varthaman, was captured. However, the air force officer was released by Pakistan a few days later as tensions between the two nations were high.
While the recent acknowledgment from Pakistan may be infrequent, it is not the first. In October 2020, the then Minister for Science and Technology of Pakistan, Fawad Chaudhry, acknowledged in the National Assembly that Pakistan was responsible for the Pulwama terrorist attack – a provocation that nearly brought it to war with India.
‘Humne Hindustan ko ghus ke maara (We hit India in their home). Our success in Pulwama is a success for this nation under the leadership of Imran Khan. You and we are all the success,’ Chaudhry was quoted as saying in the National Assembly (Parliament).
The state was now the creation of a new air force officer Aurangzeb. And since this was an admission from a military establishment – the genuine power center in Pakistan – it was particularly noteworthy, because the civilian leadership has been continuously vulnerable to Rawalpindi’s whims.
Though the country’s government has never before accepted responsibility for the assault on Pulwama, Aurangzeb’s moment, an act of idiosyncratic bravado literally in the eyes of the cameras, did what years of pressure could not do.
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