My day literally started off with the news of an audacious Indian Air Force bombing mission across the border with Pakistan in retaliation for the Pulwama terrorist attack. Initial reports suggested that the bombing was done deep inside Pakistan territory. It emerged quickly that the confusion emanated from the similarity of two places with the same name in Pakistan. Balakot in the PoK where the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) training camps were located was the target of the bombing.
In the midst of all the chest thumping and nationalistic and patriotic outpouring of emotions, questions have already started popping out. One being if the camps were so close to the LoC, why use the air force at all? Indian army has the guns and especially the Bofors guns to take out the camps. The next one is more telling. No information has been revealed yet as to how many in the JeM leadership have been killed in the bombing. Targeting a terrorist camp is one thing and targeting with the objective to wipe out its leaders is completely different. If the leaders were not present in the camp or survived the bombing, they can rebuild the camps and that too with renewed vigor to avenge the deaths of their brethren. This would make the valiant effort of the IAF pilots irrelevant.
What was really required and would have made far greater impact was the targeted killing of JeM leaders, either through bombing or through covert undercover operations. Taking out military leaders is a common practice in battles and wars because seeing their leader taken down invariably weakens the morale of the soldiers. Like I have mentioned in my previous article, the camps in PoK exist only because disgruntled youth from J&K are being brainwashed, goaded into becoming terrorists and taken to these camps for training.
Targeting the JeM leadership would have sent out a clear message that anyone who aspires to cause terrorism on Indian soil by going for training in camps across the border would be targeted by the Indian military and the higher they rise as terrorist leaders the more precarious their lives would become.
All the gloating and self appreciation by the BJP would only serve to create more questions especially with the general elections just a stone’s throw away. While the entire nation goes ga-ga over the bombing, the fact remains that a clear intelligence warning about a possible terrorist attack was ignored which led to the Pulwama massacre. Now a retaliatory action by the Indian military has only destroyed terrorist camps without causing any damage to the leadership of JeM. Simply destroying terrorist camps is largely symbolic than effective but it does create a grandiose image in the minds of people.
The air strike was meant to whip up patriotic sentiments and sway public perception towards Modi. It will definitely have a ripple effect on his sagging political image in the days to come and the opportunity to break away from the opposition’s stranglehold over him and the government on lack of governance, unemployment, corruption, demonetization and Rafale deal.
Social media is already abuzz with electing Modi and BJP back to power in the elections. Simply said, this is a psychological strategy to leverage on the people’s short term memory and selective amnesia. In the name of giving more freedom to the armed forces, BJP has been openly using the credibility of the military for its own propaganda which was on abundant display when it created a movie itself on the surgical strike at Uri.
The brouhaha over the air strike will definitely extend into BJP’s political narrative as campaigning for elections heats up in the days to come.
The pertinent question we need to answer here is, has the air strike solved the J&K issue? Far from it, further escalation in terrorist attacks and more violence could be on the cards. MEA has already clarified that it was a non-military action not targeted at Pakistani civilians which is in itself confusing as to how can a military offensive be called non-military. Anyway, with those comments, the Indian government is clearly hoping for the Pakistan government to not escalate the issue and retaliate militarily.
Like I have mentioned in my previous article, creating dissident youth in J&K is what is keeping the training camps in PoK functional. What the people of J&K need is good governance, education, jobs, good living conditions and prosperity in their lives. They have been voting for these every 5 years but they are getting exactly the opposite of what they are expecting. BJP and Modi have been consistently blaming the successive previous Congress governments for the prevailing situation in J&K but they haven’t been able to do any better. They haven’t been able to solve the J&K issue either. Violence has never created peace and exhorting violent methods is an open invitation for more retaliatory violence.
Over 40 lives of CRPF soldiers have been sacrificed to rebrand Modi’s image and create a political lifeline for him. J&K is a political issue and governments and political leaders of both India and Pakistan have used it time and again for their political gains. This is why it remains an unsolved problem after 70 years. People who are caught up in between their political games are just collateral damage.