Deepak Laad
Post Pulwama blast that claimed 40 CRPF jawans, there was tremendous pressure from the nation’s janta, braying for blood of terrorists from across the border. So the surgical strike 2.0 was to happen. Trump knew, Imran Khan knew and we too knew it was imminent. And it happened.
The strike was justified too. In recent times, the terrorists from across the border were becoming bolder and mounting attacks after attacks in the valley. Absence of appropriate major retaliatory response emboldened them to launch an audacious assault on CRPF men of the ‘Pulwama’ proportion.
Balakot terror camp with infrastructure to train terrorists complete with Hostels and swimming pools did not sprout up in a night. It was a known venue where most fidayeen suicide squads were indoctrinated and trained for the jobs. There were ample inputs that Jaish-e-Mohammad was up to something big this time as the top operatives of the outfit had arrived in the valley last December. We could have saved those forty lives lost in Pulwama if only the preemptive ‘non military’
strike against terrorist pads had to happen two months earlier. Right timings are paramount to make such strikes effective. If Pakistan did not hesitate to show picture of bleeding captured pilot to the world, we too were justified in releasing pictures of Jaish terrorists slain in our strike. Since we had kept major nations in the loop about the planned attack on terrorists’ pads, we also owed them photographic evidence that would validate our claims and put Pakistan in the dock.
Well, there is another side to this terrorists issue. Terrorist groups in today’s world are kind of cancer that has no permanent cure. Do we have the capability to liquidate all the major and fringe terrorist groups operating from Pakistan if given free hand by that country to launch attacks from our soil? Can Pakistani civil government or army have the strength to obliterate the multitude of them from their own land?
Soviets wouldn’t have felt compelled to leave Afghanistan after occupying it for a decade if they could over power the local resisting outfits and today USA wouldn’t be leaving that nation worried about losing their own men. After pumping billions of dollars in Pakistan as aid to fight Taliban today they are holding out olive branch to them. How is that we have failed to exterminate Naxal menace from our own soil? Can we blame some other country for our failure? Trump said the world had seen the last of ISIS. Again not true. It was recently reported that the group has $ 200 mn and is hibernating and may regroup in some area in the near future to launch new campaigns.
It is difficult for any nation, however strong, to fight these slippery, loosely knit fluid group that are like Hydra headed monsters. Fighting the terrorists is an endless and ongoing process in the world. We too will have to fight them from to time to time.
Now about going to all out war with our enemy neighbour. Number of boots on the ground matter no more in today’s wars. Small nuclear states have started flexing muscles and even the superpowers cannot risk ignoring or underestimating them. Or else why a President of a superpower should travel around half the world eager to meet and sign an agreement with a young despot Kim Jong Un in Hanoi who is more vicious than Masood Azhar and whom he himself once lampooned as a small missile man?
Now here we are dealing with Pakistan, an irrational state, with sizable nuclear arsenal. The world knows that the democracy in Pak is a façade to receive dole from the US. The actual military decisions-making powers rest with and are wielded by the warmongering Generals and ISI bosses. There is every possibility that when cornered they may at least go for use of tactical nuclear missile, that are relatively less destructive. In the event of all out war, when cornered badly, things are
bound to go out of hand. Otherwise would anyone have anticipated a democratic, decent and reasonable nation like the USA drop atomic bombs on Japan? That too go ahead and drop a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki after witnessing holocaust in the aftermath of bombing Hiroshima.
That is the precise reason why both, India and Pakistan, the warring nuclear powered neighbours are wary of each other and hesitated to escalate an all out aggressive military campaign when both had this opportunity, recently. And rightly so. There are no decisive winners in such wars. Both sides get mauled. After initial aggression and post losing one fighter plane each in a dogfight, both the sides were eagerly looking for honorable way to disengage and stand down -- waiting for the other to blink first. If Imran said he wanted peace, so said Sushma Swaraj during her meeting with her counterparts from China and Russia.
It is true that Pakistan’s economy is in dire strait but then ours is also not exactly in the pink of health to support and sustain a prolonged war. Despite the bravado both sides will suffer casualties in a full blown war -- economic as well as human. The blustering, slogan shouting brigade itching for war may incite emotions as long as one of their own is not dead or injured and enemy mortar shells do not crack their house walls and kill live stocks in their backyard, like it happens with residents of Poonch, Naushera and other such towns situated near LoC whenever there is flare up.
There are no unscathed winners in today’s war.
