Jamil Chughtai
Most of us can recall the famous story of ‘Stuffed Trout’ in our school syllabus where each of the elderly fishermen coming to the pub gave a boastful tale of how years back he braved to catch the big fish that was seen placed in a huge glass-box hanging above the bar counter. The fallacy of the fish and falsehood of the bragging sailors are finally out when the said container accidentally comes crashing down and the big Trout also turns into small pieces of ‘Plaster of Paris’ that it was actually made of. Thus the crowing and swaggering claimants are put to utter shame before everyone. Putting the moral aspect of the story aside, one needs to delve a bit deep and find out as to what had actually forced the sailors to make such false claims. The only psychological explanation to this particular attitude is the frustration of the old fishermen about their past that was devoid of any act of notable performance worthy to be mentioned later on as a work of merit to be noticed or known with. Hence, it is this realization of ‘practical inability’ that makes the people brag about things they merely dreamt of doing. Like individuals, certain nations also have tendency to succumb to similar inferiority complex owing to their genetic cowardice degenerated further by their centuries-long history of defeats, subjugation and humiliation they were subjected to by better opponents. The case in point is that of India and her ‘mock strikes’ inside Pakistan-administered Azad Kashmir. India made headlines in late September last year for having carried out “surgical strikes” on militants across the border in ‘disputed’ Kashmir. India’s Director General Military Operations, Lt Gen Ranbir Singh publicly announced that the strikes were carried out “based on specific and credible inputs that some terrorists had positioned themselves at ‘launch pads’ along the LoC to carry out infiltration and conduct terrorist strikes inside Jammu and Kashmir to pre-empt infiltration by terrorists.” The so-called surgical strike was declared as a retribution to the Uri incident when insurgents had attacked an army base in Indian occupied Kashmir killing 18 soldiers. The said assault was said to be carried out by one of the factions of India’s indigenous insurgents. Ironically however, soon after the rumour was spread about this act of ‘bravery’ on 29 September, the enthusiasts in India have started cheering the idea that their army’s strikes had taught Pakistan a long-awaited lesson. Dismissing the whole episode of surgical strikes as an “illusion” on the part of India, Islamabad was forced to set the record straight by categorically stating that what India only did was rather limited to her usual antics of cross-border firing which killed two Pakistani soldiers. As a matter of fact Pakistan military has attributed this very notion of surgical strikes and their link with alleged terrorists’ bases as a ‘fantasy’ deliberately generated by India to create false effects. Since it is an illusion, India has not been able to provide the details of the operation except for propagating that the “surgical strikes” consisted of a heli-borne unit and Special Forces infiltrated two to three km beyond the LoC and conducted assaults on seven suspected terrorist ‘launch pads’. For neutral observers nevertheless, there exists huge scepticism over surgical strike operation as to whether Indian forces have the capability to launch such a sophisticated and coordinated attack that necessitates airborne or artillery-based precision guided strikes or ground force based assaults. Plainly enough, India is yet to build the asymmetrical capability which is a prerequisite to conduct counter-terror operations as its forces are only trained on Cold War models so far. Moreover, most part of the asymmetrical warfare capability that India has lately started to boast about is still being developed and tested. Additionally, a cross border air raid by either heli-borne assets or drones would still prove exceedingly difficult as Pakistan is known to maintain an incredibly impressive air defense system. On top of all, Pakistan-controlled Kashmir is a high threat area for shoulder fired surface to air missiles, and any air operation of the sort over the territory would be under threat from these weapon systems. That is why, and naturally so, India has not been able to release any detail on the operation. There are no two opinions about the fact that the last year’s militant attack on Uri Base followed by self-acclaimed surgical strikes in Azad Kashmir by Indian army were dramas staged by India merely to divert the world attention from the ongoing popular and indigenous uprising in Indian Occupied Kashmir. This Indian demeanour, in fact, is their chronic complex out of their physical inability to achieve something really big and heroic, like what they usually depict themselves doing in their Bollywood movies. Their despondence and frustration finally compelled them to at least boast performance of an act they neither were nor would ever be capable of doing on ground. To cut a long story short, the surgical strikes of 29 September 2016 are not what had actually happened but merely an Indian wishful thinking of what they could have done had they not been so fearful of a severe blow-back from Pakistan. The present Indian mental condition can best be described through one of the legendary fables by Aesop in which a fly while sitting on the axle of the chariot-wheel found saying,” what a dust do I raise”. Like that personified insect, India indeed deserves the right to be happy and proud for doing ‘nothing’.
