Terror attacks cannot be avoided, whatever be the security grid. But repeated major attacks send a signal about our preparedness and abilities. Capabilities must be enhanced and sharpened to make the adversary pay a price. The army and security forces must introspect how such attacks take place.
Gratuitous advice about how Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had to go through hoops to be able to come to India — and how we should be grateful for that — is most misplaced. It is also most unfortunately timed, given as it was on the day terrorists attacked a military post in Uri in Jammu and Kashmir in the early hours of December 5.
The advice came also on the day Pakistan's poster boy Hafiz Saeed was exhorting a government-assisted rally with calls to defeat India and capture Kashmir. It is about time Nawaz Sharif and others went through similar hoops to shut down terror and its archangel, instead of facilitating his harangues in Lahore.
It is for Pakistan to walk the talk, not for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. India would appreciate that more than Pakistan's internal compulsions that prevent a rational relationship with neighbours.
Pakistan has been smarting for a number of reasons. The invitation to Sharif to come to Modi's swearing-in ceremony left Islamabad in a bind. Refusal would have been churlish. Acceptance meant going to the 'Delhi Durbar' as an equal to other smaller Saarc nations. He ultimately came, but did not utter the 'K' word.
The cancellation of the foreign secretary-level talks because of the Pakistani high commissioner refusing Indian advice not to meet members of the separatist Hurriyat was seen as a denial of a birthright. Sharif and Modi did not meet in New York during the UN general assembly while Modi's US visit was a success. Pakistan's most important man, General Raheel Sharif, visited the US on a repair (read: hat-in-hand) mission. His one-week stay got mysteriously extended by another week. He had disappeared from the radar for a week till he surfaced in US secretary of state John Kerry's room.
There is considerable speculation about what happened and the truth will be out eventually. One measure of a successful visit was the announcement soon after Raheel's return that al-Qaeda's Adnan Shukrijuma, who had a $5-million bounty on his head fixed by the US government, was killed in a Pakistan Army raid in South Waziristan. Incidentally, Hafiz Saeed has a bounty of $10 million, but he openly holds rallies in Lahore.
However, as soon as Raheel Sharif returned, there is an armed assault at a military camp in Mohra, Uri, followed by three other smaller attacks all over the Valley. Eleven soldiers and policemen died and seven terrorists were killed. The Uri attack is similar to the kind of attacks that have taken place in Pakistan on Pakistani military establishments in recent years.
The terrorists were well-equipped, they knew their target and had considerable intelligence about locations and targets. Obviously, these terrorists are alumni from the same or similar institutions run by jihadi organisations that flourish in Pakistan, many of them aided by the military.
It's not rocket science to say that Pakistan cannot afford a successful election with a big turnout in Jammu and Kashmir. Nothing else will have knocked out the bottom of Pakistan's erroneous claims than a peaceful election that confirms that its favourites, the Hurriyat, have long been irrelevant and their jihadis have become redundant and unemployed cannon fodder.
Nor do the Pakistani rulers in Rawalpindi and their civilian partners in Islamabad actually want a solution. They also don't have the interests of Kashmiris at heart. Their love for the Kashmiri is about as deep as it is for the Baloch or the Hazara or other Shias.
A major attack was always on the cards and any security force should have been ready for last week's attacks, coming as they did after the attack in the border town of Arnia a week before that. In January 2013, an army patrol had been ambushed in Mendhar and soldiers beheaded. Surely, there were lessons to be learnt.
Prime Minister Modi visited Jammu and Kashmir on Monday (December 8). Elections must be held. There will be more killings organised by Pakistan. That is to be expected from a country that knows no other policy. Attacks cannot be avoided, whatever be the security grid. But repeated major attacks send a signal about our preparedness and abilities. Capabilities must be enhanced and sharpened to make the adversary pay a price.
More importantly, the Indian army and security forces must introspect how such attacks take place. Slogans, promises and warnings will not.
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Vikram Sood is Advisor at Observer Research Foundation. Mr. Sood is the former head of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) — India’s foreign intelligence agency. ...
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