India paid a terrible price for its eternal vigil in Jammu & Kashmir against state-sponsored terror exported from Pakistan. The Army lost a colonel, who was the commanding officer in a raid on terrorists opening fire from the Kokernag area forest near Anantnag, a major and a young and highly regarded DSP of police, besides losing a rifleman and a Labrador member of the Army’s dog unit named Kent in another encounter in the Narla area of Rajouri district.
Proof of Pakistan’s complicity was in abundance in the frontier Rajouri district where a cache of Pakistani arms and ammunition, besides medicines made in Pakistan, were recovered after two terrorists who had crossed the border were shot down. The encounters proved that while there may be a lull in action by those who carry out Pakistan’s perfidy, a storm is never too far away.
Members of the Indian Army and paramilitary forces, besides J&K police have been proactive in containing terrorist and militant activities over the last few years when incidence of terror has come down. There is, however, no guarantee that fatalities will not take place when India’s prickly neighbour keeps choosing to send trained disruptors across in well-documented acts of weaponising terror and aiming it at the forces as well as civilians.
The saga of militancy and terror in the Kashmir Valley is without end and yet heart rending whenever high-profile fatalities occur. Losing senior officers is a sign of the risks involved though this may have had an operational cause as the Army was closing in on terrorists based on credible intelligence in the Anantnag encounter with the seniors leading the way in the line of fire.
The political chatter around the latest incidents, coming at a time of rising international and domestic tourism J&K and Ladakh that pointed to a long lull in action, was in high decibels as the success of G-20 summit was being celebrated by the national ruling party even as elder J&K politicians kept parroting the line about the importance of talks with the terror exporter Pakistan.
There are no ready answers to the J&K situation save in calling for full restoration of democracy through elections, which represents a different dimension of the subject altogether. The only constant must be 24X7 vigil against the policies of fragmented governance of the neighbouring country where the state plays with terror as the means to an unclear end.
