Heightened infiltration activity in the last week along the LoC and the international border when Indian counter-insurgency operations led to seven cross-border terrorists being eliminated and one captured puts paid to the pretences of Pakistan that it does not use terror as a State weapon. It is not often that these trained and highly motivated conduits of terror are captured alive. The Indian Army ascribes it modestly to this Lashkar-trained teenaged terrorist from the Pakistani Punjab having been unarmed at the time of the encounter and hence was nabbed rather than eliminated.
The price we pay for preserving the peace even in the face of such sustained State activity on the part of our prickly neighbour is eternal vigilance and the Army, bestowed the difficult task of counter-insurgency, too, deserves all credit for its efforts in stamping out terror before it can be unleashed. It is another matter that despite the passage of more than seven decades since a Hindu king of Kashmir chose to accede to India under special conditions that parts of the world are yet to reconcile to the territorial integrity of India with Kashmir an integral part.
It might be no more than a diplomatic irritant that Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey should rake up the Kashmir issue again at the United Nations General Assembly last week. There are some like him who may view India’s Kashmir differently but the realities of the ground situation allow India little freedom from vigil on the border and against homegrown militants. However, it is a fact that civil liberties are often constricted and the Army is also accused of excesses, as former CM Mehbooba Mufti has done once again in pointing a finger at its latest actions in Pulwama.
While Kashmir is a continuing saga of denial of human rights, the Army would do well to dispel any notions that it is overstepping its lines of discipline in carrying out crucial functions as in foiling the designs of terrorists being exported by Pakistan and other threats.
