Afia Ambreen
Last week, India in its dossier submitted to Pakistan has failed in provide any fresh and tangible intelligence to implicate any outfit present in Pakistan in the Pulwama suicide attack that resulted in killing of 44 personnel of Indian CRPF. Well placed diplomatic sources told that Foreign Secretary Ms. Tehmina Janjua was entrusted to scrutinize the dossier. They studied the dossier and couldn’t find any concrete substance in the voluminous pack of documents. It is understood that the dossiers comprises Indian intelligence own reports submitted to their government to satisfy their bosses. Incidentally similar documents in the dossiers were submitted to Pakistan a number of times before as well.
Ironically, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s gambit to ensure his re-election by hostility and military action against Pakistan has badly backfired. Contrary to Indian calculations, Pakistan was not cowed by the BJP’s bullying. It gave a matching response to the bombs India hastily dropped across the Line of Control, but yet took precautions to avoid Indian casualties in its matching response. And, when Indian aircraft intruded again, it promptly downed two of them without any loss and took an Indian pilot prisoner. From the outset of the exchanges, India’s authorities lied about the nature and impact of their first strike, claiming this destroyed a fictitious ‘terrorist camp’, and next day, after the loss of its own aircraft, falsely claimed to have shot down a Pakistani F-16. In contrast, Pakistan did exactly what it said it would do; and said what it did, plainly and truthfully. Most significant was the contrast between the belligerent and boastful threats of Prime Minister Modi, and Indian military and civilian leaders, and the sober appeal for restraint, the military caution and the magnanimity demonstrated by Prime Minister Imran Khan and the Pakistan civil and military leadership.
A clear violation but a small story is what it took Indian government and media to claim that it was a surgical strike and that their air force targeted some “terror camps” in Pakistan. Pakistan government and army is mulling a response to this serious violation but in the meantime social media users in Pakistan are having fun over this “Surgical Strike 2” claim which is as false as the first one. India claimed that 300 people were killed in a surgical strike on a terrorist camp in Pakistan’s Balakot but this is quite far from the truth. When some media men visited the site of the so-called attack in Balakot there was no terrorist camp and definitely no casualties. Instead, there were damaged trees. The local DFO said that around 15 Chir pine trees were partially or totally damaged when the Indian payload dropped. Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi had said that the entire incident was a ploy by the Indian government to garner more votes in the upcoming election.
Interestingly, eyewitnesses present at the site of India’s 26 February bomb strikes against a Jaish-e-Muhammad base say they saw up to 35 bodies being transported out of the site by ambulance hours after the attack. The dead, they recounted, included 12 men who were said to have been sleeping in a single temporary shack, and several individuals who had earlier served in Pakistan’s military. It is important to mention that the so-called video of eyewitness was uploaded on 25th February on the website of BBC India while the incident happened on 26th Feb. Moreover, the question arises here that why the attacked place was not shown in this video? This is only a drama to justify their claim of surgical strike.
What remains to be seen now is how the Indian government responds to the return of the captured Indian pilot. The political opposition in India has begun to ask tough questions of the narrative put forward by the BJP-led government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but hawkish elements in Indian politics and the media may try and push for further reckless action. Unfortunately, Pakistan is sending their people back alive and India sending back dead bodies like Shakirullah. Shakirullah was attacked and killed at the Jaipur Central Jail on February 20. He was from Sialkot. His brother Shehzad told that he crossed the border in 2003 when “his mental state wasn’t okay” and 16 years later they found out he had been killed in an Indian jail. They want an investigation into his death.
The continuing danger in the region has been bloodily underlined by ongoing violence along the Line of Control. The violence has claimed the lives of four individuals, including two soldiers, in Azad Kashmir in unprovoked Indian attacks across the LoC. In what Prime Minister Imran Khan said was a gesture of peace the release of the Indian pilot, whose warplane was shot down over Azad Kashmir, may have de-escalated the fast-spiraling confrontation between the two countries but the crisis is yet to see a line drawn under it. Indeed, the aftermath of this Modi-instigated crisis offers an opportunity to advance the objective of peace and stability in South Asia. Rather than attempt to appease India, the international community should utilize this crisis as a spur to build the foundations for peace and security in South Asia.
