JOIN USPakistan’s brazen and repeated violation of the decade-long ceasefire has assumed alarming proportions.
Since January this year, the ceasefire has been violated 192 times – the highest since the ceasefire took effect in December 2003, up from 117 last year and 61 in 2011. The sharp escalation in recent months is evident from the fact that 130 violations took place since August this year, with the past four days alone registering ten violations. The firing is taking place not only across the Line of Control but also the international border in Jammu and Kashmir.
The situation on the ground is tense. Several jawans have been killed. So serious is the tension between the armed forces of the two sides that on Eid this year they did not exchange sweets as is the tradition. Villagers in J&K are worried that the ceasefire agreement, which brought a semblance of normalcy in their lives since 2003, is unravelling. A return to daily shelling that defined the lives pre-2003 could well be the future scenario.
Sections in India are calling on the government to halt the ongoing dialogue with Pakistan and to adopt instead a tit-for-tat policy i.e. use the language of force. Have they forgotten that the muscle flexing India indulged in between 2001 and 2002 through its massive military deployment along its border with Pakistan was unproductive and that it is the dialogue process that has borne fruit in the long run?
Use of force may yield quick results but likely to crumble just as fast. Dialogue, although a slow process, often frustratingly so, puts in place a peace that lasts. However, the two sides are allowing a fraught situation to drift. Following their talks in end-September, prime minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif announced that their Director Generals Military Operations would meet “within a week.” Why has that not happened yet? Apparently, the DGMOs talk on phone daily.
But surely face-to-face talks, especially in a situation of escalating violence, would be more useful in clearing the air.
It is likely that under cover of firing Pakistan is infiltrating militants into J&K. It is also possible that the Pakistan military is violating the ceasefire to signal to Sharif that it is the military not the political leadership that calls the shots on India-Pakistan issues. Whatever the reason, India must beef up its defences as we cannot allow the insurgency in Kashmir to get a new lease of life.