Army Chief’s address: a reflection

Aggression is counterproductive and so has it proved for New Delhi. Amid the continuing ceasefire violations by Indian forces along the Line of Control and the Working Boundary, the high point appeared to have reached on the day seven Pakistani soldiers died. But the same day 11 Indian servicemen were also killed in retaliatory fire from the Pakistani side of the de factor border, according to army chief General Raheel Sharif. So far, 40 to 44 Indian soldiers have been killed in skirmishes, the army chief said in an informal chat with journalists at the Presidency where he was attending a dinner hosted by President Mamnoon Hussain in honour of his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The disclosure came two days after the military said that seven soldiers had embraced martyrdom in shelling by Indian forces in the Bhimber Sector of LoC in Azad Jammu and Kashmir. At that time, the military’s media wing, the ISPR, only said that “Pakistani troops while responding to unprovoked Indian firing targeted Indian posts effectively”. With fuller details of the engagement now coming to light, it becomes blindingly obvious that the initiator of aggression is paying the price far more than it had possibly calculated. Which is the context in which the army chief remarked that Indian Premier Narendra Modi must have fully realised by now what Pakistan’s armed forces were capable of. “He [Modi] knows what we are doing and what we can do. He has come to know that aggression is counterproductive,” he added.

After the Uri incident, not only did the Indian military increased the frequency and intensity of ceasefire violations but also claimed that its special forces had carried out ‘surgical strikes’ against ‘terrorist launch-pads’ on the Pakistan side of the LoC. The Indian claim blew in its face as it failed to substantiate it with evidence. The ongoing border encounters are hardly a thing to be cherished by either side, displaced as they already have scores of people living along the border on both sides of the divide in addition to causing loss of life and limb. One can only hope that at long last better counsel will prevail in New Delhi and the guns spewing unnecessary fire will be silenced.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 18^th, 2016.

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