Low intensity warfare

Since the Ceasefire Agreement of 2003 between India and Pakistan, 2018 recorded the highest number of violations and consequent fatalities than any of the 15 years preceding. 

Crucially, repeated, boastful and premature claims were made by the Indian Government as well as by an increasingly loquacious Army Chief in the wake of the ‘surgical strikes’ of September 2016, that India’s audacious attack across the Line of Control had taught Pakistan a ‘lesson’ and that “The ceasefire violations by Pakistan have come down post-surgical strikes”.

The reality, however, is that the surgical strikes have marked the beginning of a dramatic and fruitless escalation. 

There were a total of 449 ceasefire violations by Pakistan in 2016, the year of the ‘surgical strike’, resulting in 13 civilian and 13 security force fatalities. The number more than doubled to 971 ceasefire violations in 2017, with 12 civilian and 19 security force fatalities, and more than tripled to 2,936 violations in 2018, resulting in 31 civilian and 38 security force fatalities.

According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal, 2019 has already recorded over 39 incidents, and four fatalities (one civilian and three SF personnel, data till January 24).

New Delhi has repeatedly and proudly asserted that part of the ‘success’ of the surgical strikes was that not a single Indian soldier died in the operation. 

There is, however, a deafening silence on the growing number of lives lost as a consequence of the pointless escalation that has been a direct result of the internationalisation and politicisation of the surgical strikes. 

And it must be understood and constantly reiterated that the current escalation is utterly pointless, both tactically and strategically, and from the perspectives of both India and Pakistan. 

Both sides are now trapped in an escalation cycle and every time an Indian politician or general boasts about muh tod jawab or killing five Pakistanis for every one Indian killed, Rawalpindi tries to match both word and deed. 

Crucially, neither side has anything to show for all these lost lives — except, possibly, strutting rights in the cynically jingoistic domestic political discourse that has become the life-blood of right-wing politics on both sides of the border. 

Nor, indeed, does Pakistan appear to have learned any ‘lessons’ with regard to its support and sponsorship of terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir – one of the officially declared objectives of the surgical strikes. 

Civilian and security forces’ fatalities have been rising continuously in the state as a result of terrorist action, with 86 civilians and 95 security personnel killed in 2018, 53 and 83, respectively in 2017 and 14 and 88 in 2016. The 2015 toll of civilians and security personnel was 19 and 43. 

Once again, the government is not particularly keen to discuss this rising toll, but does believe that harping on the rising numbers of terrorists killed is an important index of the state’s ‘achievement’: 178 terrorists were killed in 2015: 267 in 2016; 354 in 2017 and 457 in 2018. 

This does, of course, demonstrate the operational efficacy of the security forces; but it demonstrates, equally, the abject failure of policy. 

For years, state agencies have been placing the estimate of terrorist strength in the Valley at between a 100-150 and yet, with well over these numbers being killed each year, the supply of terrorists remain uninterrupted. 

Worse, a rising proportion of terrorists in J&K, both active and those killed, are local recruits. After decades of declining indigenous recruitment and activity, the current regime has created an environment in Jammu & Kashmir that has ratcheted up alienation, polarisation and a politics of violence that is refuelling an escalating cycle of terrorism.

Terrorism, the surgical strikes, the cycle of escalation of cross border exchanges, all these, on the Indian side, have been perversely instrumentalised by the ruling dispensation at Raisina Hill, to secure ends that go no further than transient electoral gain. 

Nowhere has national interest been factored in, and the interests of the people of Jammu and Kashmir have been completely marginalised. 

Worse, all pathways of political management within Jammu & Kashmir have been progressively shut down. Not only has there been no effective initiative to manage elements within the separatist constituency, but the entire range of constitutional political parties has also been isolated. 

Indeed, the malfeasance goes much further, as the continuous sequence of political disruption, of destabilisation and of the abuse of constitutional processes, as well as the exploitation of deeply divisive issues in Jammu & Kashmir, clearly demonstrates. 

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s principal plank in the state has no conceivable hope or expectation of securing any support in the Valley, and limited appeal in the sparsely-populated Ladakh region (the BJP did win the single Lok Sabha seat from Ladakh in 2014, but its sitting MP has now resigned, and the party drew a blank in subsequent local elections). 

It is the Hindu vote in the Jammu region that is its exclusive concern and if a rising tide of blood can feed the jingoism that may yield a voter dividend in this region, it seems, this is a price the leadership is easily willing to pay – the lives at stake, after all, are not theirs. 

It is civilian and security force blood that fuels the ruling party’s electoral campaigns. 

Author is a security expert