Line of conflict on the Boil

The Modi government faces its crucial national security test as the line of control with Pakistan has become a line of conflict. What is required for the Narendra Modi government to demonstrate spine in dealing with the errant neighbour.

There have been 96 ceasefire violations along the LoC – whose fencing runs a 550 km (340 mi) barrier along the 740 km (460 mi) disputed land.

Three Indian soldiers have paid the price with their lives fighting militants in Jammu and Kashmir.

This happens amidst flagrant LoC violations across the Indo-Pak border, and the heaviest since 1971 claims Director-General of the BSF. A senior Border Security Force (BSF) official blamed Pakistan for trying to push militants into the Indian Territory.

The country has always placed blame on its neighbour for the militancy which is ever in a political flux.  Just recently when Sharif met India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi the JuD protested the goodwill gesture as a betrayal to Pakistan. Sharif and Modi played friends; exchanging hand-shakes, smiles, and saris and shawls for their mothers. But what awaited Pakistan’s Prime Minister was a brewing club of political threats.

The turmoil in Pakistan, the repeated ceasefire violations following peace gestures from the government and the envoy meeting the Hurriyat leaders have made the big question about Sharif resurface.

It is proof enough that the Pakistan Army holds power especially when it comes to a relationship with India.

 

Free man in Pakistan

The Laskhar-e-taiba was held responsible for the deadly 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts, 2011 attack on Indian Parliament, 2006 train bombings, and 26/11 (2008) attacks in Mumbai – all under Hafiz Muhammad Saeed.

The 2008 attack in Mumbai claimed 166 lives and injuring more than 300. Saeed, the mastermind, was a professor of Islamic studies and was reportedly taught by the same teacher who taught Osama bin Laden.

Saeed has been declared a terrorist leader by the UN and the US and his groups LeT and parent body Jamaat-ud-Dawa as terrorist organisations.

Yet, the man continues to receive protection by the Pakistani Police and his supporters in a “fortified house, office and mosque” in Lahore.

There has also been several reports of huge funding of JUD from the Pakistan’s Punjab Province Government headed by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N.

 

Lashkar-e-Taiba

The group was founded in 1990 by Hafez Saeed, Abdullah Azzam and Zafar Iqbal in Afghanistan.

The primary area of operations of LeT’s militant activities is the Kashmir Valley but the group is actively involved in several other spheres of anti-Indian terrorism.

It conducts training camps across Pakistan, running 16 Islamic institutions, 135 secondary schools, and even has an ambulance service, mobile clinics, blood banks and seminaries according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal.

The institutes of learning are used for proactively targeting potential cadres by the LeT.

 

LoC violations

August has seen a robust round of firing between the two countries.

What has raised eyebrows is the huge escalation in the cross-border firing along the IB, which being a settled border is manned by BSF.

India, incidentally, had put the bilateral composite dialogue process with Pakistan in cold storage last year after raids by Pakistani border action teams, which had first beheaded an Indian soldier and mutilated another’s body in Mendhar sector in January, and then killed another five jawans in Poonch in August.

After the two armies exchanged heavy fire with each other over several months last year, the Indian and Pakistani DGMOs had met in December to discuss ways to strengthen border de-escalatory mechanisms, including the holding of flag meetings between rival brigade commanders, to ensure the maintenance of “sanctity and ceasefire” on the volatile LoC.

The ceasefire had come into force along the 778-km LoC, the 198-km IB in J&K and the110-km Actual Ground Position Line (AGPL) in the Siachen-Saltoro Ridge in November 2003 as a major CBM between the two countries. But while the ceasefire by and large held in the early years, it has seen a huge spike in violations over the last three years.