Jamil Chughtai
Having relations with its next-door neighbour already at the worst, India did not hesitate to further escalate the situation at the Line of Control with Pakistan. This time around, however, the enmity has not been expressed by resorting to cross-border shelling or violation of cease fire, rather it has been done with the deployment of US-made spy drones, Predator. The objective, as it appears, is to keep Pakistan consistently tense and fully engaged.
Predator, the unmanned night-vision capable surveillance platform, is going to be used for carrying out aerial photography, monitoring and reconnaissance over both sides of the border for providing the requisite information to its deployed troops through the data centre located in Srinagar. To further ensure that Pakistan remains militarily on-toes in the days ahead, India is also following-up this US-transaction with armed version of the Predator and Avenger drones to carry out attacks against alleged militant groups inside Pakistan. What motivated India is the belief that with the acquisition of these armed drones, it will be able to create a ‘strong deterrence for any militant(s) across the border’.
Apparently India tends to tell Pakistan it would execute her ‘hot-pursuit’ doctrine from here-onwards. By deploying US made spy-craft in Poonch and Rajouri sectors, India has not only substantiated the fact that it has and will be fully enjoying American support in her future enterprises but also ensured that Pakistan should not hope for better ties with both Delhi and Washington at least for some foreseeable time. On top of it, to manifest its unconditional support to India, the US has given a brazen rebuff to Pakistan with regard to sale of the same surveillance capability while dolling out the said technology to Pakistan’s noted adversary.
For Americans, on the other hand, the recent defence deals have helped it topple USSR from the pulpit of the erstwhile top military supplier to India. The buck did not stop here; with this new-found love with the United States as a generous arms provider, India is also on the cusp of sealing a nuclear reactor deal worth billions of dollars with the US. In return, Washington has given New Delhi a free-passage to its top-of-the-notch military technology, including a new system to launch planes off-the-aircraft carriers, besides influencing other countries to give India membership in the Missile Technology Control Regime, which cleared the way for the sale of drones.
Defence analysts on both sides of the LOC consider this particular Indian move to have huge impacts on region’s geo-political future besides escalation in tension not only with Pakistan but also for Kashmiri people in the Indian occupied territory. The viewpoint of one retired Indian Air Force officer speaks for the majority opinion in Indian establishment as he maintains that “once people across know that they can be struck from the air without India thinking too much that there would be a pilot who may get shot down, that sends a deterrent”. Defence analyst Lt-Gen (Retd) Talat Masood has rightly observed that the drones, which can reach anywhere in Pakistan, obviously can heighten the tensions and increase the risk of a conflagration.
The situation between Pakistan and India is already at a point of extreme fragility owing to last year’s self-engineered militant attack on Uri base followed by self-acclaimed surgical strikes in Azad Kashmir by Indian army on the plea that attack on the Base was carried out by Pakistan-controlled militants. There are no two opinions about the fact that both these dramas were staged by India merely to divert the world attention from the ongoing popular and indigenous uprising in Indian Occupied Kashmir. It is being realized now that the world media ?? predominantly controlled by Indo-Israeli lobby ?? has remained fairly successful in downplaying the growing support of the human rights bodies that had clearly started to prop-up the Kashmir uprising as an indigenous freedom movement at that time.
This latest hostile gesture of India, when seen in the backdrop of formidable increase in her recent defence spending and massive arms buying spree, clearly manifests that it has started ti cherish its designs for regional supremacy and global power status at the cost of very basic needs of its poverty-stricken general masses that makes it a so-called largest democracy of the world. Pakistan, on the other hand, continues to stick with the belief of acquiring and maintaining a minimum deterrence capability to ensure its national security. At this critical juncture, the international community must play its due role in forcing India to positively respond to Pakistan’s proposal for a Strategic Restraint Regime in South Asia, rather than focusing attention merely on deflecting world’s attention from atrocities being perpetrated by its forces in occupied Kashmir and by keeping the LoC issue hot. India had violated the ceasefire agreement more than 1,400 times since 2013 and in 2016 alone it violated the ceasefire 400 times. The world at large bears witness to the fact that Pakistan has never engaged in any kind of arms race, nuclear or conventional, but always gave preference to its national prestige and sovereignty, besides lasting peace and stability in the region.
