I have little doubt in my mind that we did indeed undertake a series of surgical strikes during the early hours of 29 September. I have no doubt, however, that this is not the first surgical strike we have undertaken. At least since 2008 - and possibly earlier - the military have been left to take such action as they deem appropriate along the Line of Control or LoC. Repeatedly, therefore, almost year after year, the Indian army have resorted to such strikes. The Congress spokesman has
furnished the dates.
A second point that needs underlining is the one that the reputed defence analyst Col. Ajai Shukla has been making in the face of a barrage of personal insults by ruling party spokespersons, namely, that we need to distinguish between action "along the LoC" and action well across the LoC or the international border. The latter requires duly deliberated government sanction. The former is par for the course. Ever since the LoC was established decades ago, it has been left to the military to determine locally how best to respond to Pakistani provocations along (but not far across) the LoC. The surgical strikes undertaken by the Indian army in 2008, 2009, 2011 and 2013 were in keeping with these standing instructions. It would seem the Pakistanis decided to so treat the September 29, 2016 surgical strikes as there have been precedents for such strikes that went officially unacknowledged on both sides of the LoC. It was Modi's government that has decided to project the current round of "surgical strikes" as proof of the "strong action" the BJP pledged through Modi during the 2104 elections, and has asserted repeatedly since. That has left the BJP in the position of someone pushing at an open door.
Third, one possible reason the Pakistanis decided to play it cool was that on the morning after the strike, and before informing the general Indian public, our Director General of Military Operations or DGMO had called his Pakistani counterpart and reportedly assured him that this was a one-off strike and not a precursor to a barrage of strikes. The Pakistanis might therefore have decided that instead of making a song and dance about such strikes, for which there were precedents going back at least eight years, they would take their time to determine how to prepare their response - and so, for the present, to dismiss our strikes as flea-bites.
Fourth, what is a "launch pad"? Is it a terror camp? Is it a sophisticated nerve-centre controlling operations? Or is it just one of a simple cluster of rural huts where terrorists can rest, grab a bite to eat and get some water to drink before they cross the LoC? One of our most acute journalists specializing in military affairs, Praveen Swami, editor of
The Indian Express, has described "launch-pads" as "essentially rural homes located close to military facilities". They could be shacks; they could be itinerant shepherd's huts, easily destroyed and easily reconstructed. What they definitely are not is "terrorist camps".
Little deterrence against terrorist operations is achieved by targeting such "launch pads" - a term more in keeping with the launch of nuclear-tipped missiles. Neither has the Pakistani terror machine been dismantled, nor has the Pakistani army been undermined. What has happened is that media hawks on sides have had a field day, but essentially the doctrine of "strategic restraint" remains in place, as convincingly argued in
The Hindu by the MIT scholar and member of its Security Studies Program, Vipin Narang. What, however, is a bit unnerving is that another close American observer of India-Pakistan relations, Bruce Reidel, has told
The Times of India, "India has upped the stakes with its operation and Pakistan's Chief of Army Staff, General Raheel Sharif, won't back down. He probably will plan a response that ups the ante more." If the extremely powerful Pak COAS really does do that, particularly to end his tenure on a high note, November might yet cold start the "Winter of our Discontent".
The difference between UPA strikes and BJP strikes is that instead of leaving it is as a localized military retaliation as in the past, the Modi government has played up the 29 September strikes publicly and through the media as unprecedented "strong" action against state-sponsored Pakistani terrorists. I expected an indignant and outraged Pakistani reaction. Instead, they have played it down. This too is unprecedented. Normally, the victim of the attack would have played up his victimhood and exaggerated the extent of the damage and the numbers killed and injured. The Pakistanis claim there was none. They have even taken the international media to the area. Not one of them has confirmed that there was an attack. It just is so easy to cart away the bodies and clean up the area.
The UN Military Observers Group for India and Pakistan, that we have not since 1971 allowed to monitor the LoC but who remain active on the Pakistani side, have also reported that they have seen no evidence of Indian action. Public opinion in India, egged on by belligerent TV anchors and the government, has, therefore, risen to fever pitch in insisting that there were surgical strikes. But we are caught in the bind that until and unless Pakistan admits that it has been damaged, it is extremely difficult to work out what the impact has been, and what the Pakistani response will be. Will they just take it on the chin and move on (as they have done in the past), or will they need to answer the Pakistani Ram Madhavs who demand an Indian jaw for a Pakistani tooth?
This is the critical conundrum that only the future will answer. For the present, what we do know is that a "militant" attack has been mounted
after our surgical strike on a paramilitary base at Baramulla, a mere 50 km from Srinagar. One of our personnel has been killed; none of the attackers. They simply disappeared, adding a paramilitary base to the air force base at Pathankot and the army base at Uri, not civilians or civilian installations, as their targets. Is this deliberate to moderate international reaction? Indeed, was this Pakistani retaliation at all or was it an internal Kashmiri dissident job? The Pakistanis have also fired heavy artillery ten times across the LoC in just 36 hours. Is this their retaliation even as they deny that we hit them in any significant manner with our surgical strikes? Or are they just bent on denting Modi's propaganda blitzkrieg?
To ask these questions is not to belittle our armed forces. They are doing an impossible job in impossible conditions. But in a democracy, even a democracy at war - which we are not, at least at the time of writing - it is legitimate, and the duty of concerned citizens, to ask questions and expect answers. Throughout the First and Second World Wars, questions were asked in the House of Commons, and fiery debates held, on the way those wars were being waged. Churchill was compelled by parliamentary and public opinion to resign after the fiasco at Gallipoli. Yet, why go so far out of India and so far back in history? Here on our soil, on November 8, 1962, bang in the middle of the India-China war that began on October 20 with the Chinese attack on Dhola post and ended on November 21 with the announcement of the Chinese pull-back, Atal Behari Vajpayee no less demanded and got Nehru's consent to a resumption of proceedings in the Rajya Sabha where he tore into Nehru's conduct of the war. Did the Bharatiya Jana Sangh denounce their leader as "unpatriotic"? It is not a reflection on our brave jawans but on our confused government to ask what they intended to secure from these "surgical strikes" and whether they have achieved their own goals.
The favourite government response has been to recite a long list of international personalities who have endorsed India's right to resort to surgical strikes to hit back at terrorism. Leading the list is, of course, Barack Obama, who initiated surgical strikes as an alternative military operation when he had an unarmed Osama bin Laden gunned down and quickly buried at sea to avenge the terrorist attack launched on the Twin Towers a decade earlier. Yet, all those who have "endorsed" our actions have unanimously added that instead of escalating tensions, India and Pakistan must sit down and resolve their differences through mutual negotiation. We cannot congratulate ourselves on one part of their "endorsement" while continuing to ignore the operative other part of their statements.
After the 1947-48 war, the two countries sat down and negotiated the cease fire signed at Karachi on New Year's Day, 1949. After the 1965 war, the two sides met under the aegis of the Soviet Prime Minister at Tashkent and pledged themselves to peaceful negotiations. After the 1971 war, Indira Gandhi and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto got together in Simla (now Shimla) and agreed that bilateral talks would chart the route to a "final settlement of Jammu and Kashmir". Kargil 1999 ended when the Butcher of Kargil was invited to Agra after a million Indian soldiers were posted to the border in retaliation for the terrorist attack on parliament, and then withdrawn after about a year without a shot being fired. Dr. Manmohan Singh made unprecedented progress in moving towards the "final settlement" by talking to the Butcher.
That is how the present confrontation will also end if we are not to blow each other up to smithereens. Then why not "uninterrupted and uninterruptible talks" now, before things spin out of control?
(Mani Shankar Aiyar is former Congress MP, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.)Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of NDTV and NDTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.