Ceasefire violation, infiltration cause of concern
Reports of increased infiltration attempts and more cross-border firing in Kashmir are worrisome. The Army has, of course, assured us that all these attempts have been unsuccessful and that the tight, well-coordinated counter-terrorism grid that's in place is strong enough to keep out the unsavoury characters. But the strong defence mechanism must not lull us into a comfort zone. According to the Director General of the Border Security Force, Mr DK Pathak, there were about 62 infiltration attempts this year, which is significantly higher as compared to last year's 48 along the International Border. Also, it is well-known that the Pakistan Army engages in willful violation of the ceasefire agreement along the line of Control so as to provide fire cover to infiltrators. Hence, as expected, the numbers of ceasefire violations along the line of Control and the International Border have also gone up significantly. In fact, the ceasefire agreement that was signed after the Kargil War and helped keep peace on the loC for a decade, has been in tatters since 2013. This year, for instance, there have been instances of ceasefire violations every single month not to mention the two major attacks in March and July. On March 20, militants stormed a police station in Jammu & Kashmir's Kathua district, killing four persons, including three security personnel. On July 27, three militants fired on a bus and then, in a rare attack in Punjab, struck the Dina Nagar police station in Gurdaspur district. Three civilians and four policemen were killed; five bombs were found on the rail bridge along the Amritsar-Pathankot line.
November alone has been a trying month for our Forces on the border. On the 17th of this month, Commanding Officer of 41 Rashtriya Rifles Colonel Santosh Mahadik was killed in action. He was participating in an operation to flush out suspected lashkar-e-Tayyeba terrorists from the Haji Naka forests in Jammu & Kashmir's Kupwara district. Days later, on November 24, three militants attacked the Army camp in Tangdhar, killing one civilian. There has been some talk that the attack was carried out by Jaish-e-Mohammed, which is considered to be a spent force but could be trying to re-group. The Army has dismissed the JeM theory but there is no denying that such groups cannot be written off just yet. Only recently the BSF said that that Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief and 26/11 mastermind Hafiz Saeed was visiting training camps on the Pakistani side of the international border to recruit and train new terrorists. It has also been reported that there was a meeting recently between Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence and leaders of the lashkar-e-Tayyeba, the Hizbul Mujahideen and the Jaish-e-Mohammed. Indian intelligence agencies believe that 30 militants, divided into three groups, are planning to infiltrate from Pakistan and carry out large-scale attacks in this country. Then, there is the Islamic State threat. We mustn’t let our guard down.
