Govt. Soft on Pakistan: Army Demoralised

In Pakistan, it is the Army and the ISI who have virtually ‘veto  power’ in handling the border  with India. The Kargil war is an example in point. The then Army Chief Gen. Parvez Musharraf plotted intrusion and crossed the Line of Control and put up bunkers and posts inside Indian land. Nawaz Shariff, the present Prme Minister who was also Prime Minister of Pakistan at that point of time is said to have learnt the intrusion only after war broke out between the two countries.

In India, the Pakistan affair is handled not even by the Ministry of External Affairs or by Ministry of Defence but is under the domain of Prime Minister of India. But it is strange that even in the matter of ceasefire violation on the LoC by the Pakistan Army, our Defence Minister says that our jawans – 5 of them- were killed by ‘terrorists’.  It is unbelievable that twenty terrorists can reach the border without being notices and challenged by the Pakistan Army. They were all heavily armed. How could they cross the line of control without the approval of the Pakisan Army. Independent report suggests that the intruders were not terrorists but regular Army of Pakistan. To say that they were terrorists is like giving clean chit to Pakistan Government and its Army that they did not violate ceasefire and that they were not Pakistan army but terrorists who fired and killed our soldiers on the Indian side of the border.

I pity A K Antony, who is an honest politician, perhaps the only honest man in the Union Government for speaking like a tutored parrot on the floor of Parliament on Tuesday. Antony despite his other good qualities is not assertive. The Indian Army had said that the intruders were regular Army of Pakistan. But the Army had to change its stand and corrected its version of the incident. It had to toe the official line when the Defence Minister said that they were not Pak Army but terrorists. The Army or for that matter the whole of our defence forces felt demoralized by the government stand on the killings of our jawans.

There are standing orders from the Chief of the Army Staff that in case of skirmishes on the border or ceasefire violations, the local commander deployed on the border should take decision in handling the situation and retaliate accordingly to any act of aggression or transgression, sounds logical. But every time our soldiers and officers responded to firing from across the order or tried to repulse intrusion, they were subjected to volley of questions from South Block like why you resorted to firing, why retaliation etc. This has demoralized our men on the border to the extent that hostile forces whether they are from Pakistan or from China get away with incursion and occasional firing at our posts.

The impression being created that the Congress Party is concerned and serious about increasing hostilities from across the border and that the government and the Prime Minister of the country are not or at best are casual in their approach to the increasing ceasefire violations on the border- as many as 57 ceasefire violations this year by Pakistan, appears to be misleading.

Congress President Sonia Gandhi was prompt in shooting out yet another letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressing her concern over killings of Indian Army jawans by Pakistan troops and urging him to take appropriate steps to safeguard our territory. Sonia Gandhi knows and knows it well that the government has its own plan and it does not mind few intrusions and firing from the hostile armies from across the border so long its peace process is on.

Nobody wants war. But no nation can bend backward when it comes to defending its sovereignty and territorial integrity to please the super powers!

~R. K. Sinha