Applaud, don't shoot the chief

Colonel (Dr) Anil Athale (Retd) is Chhatrapati Shivaji Fellow of the USI studying insurgency, and the co-ordinator of Inpad, a Pune-based think tank.

With US breathing down its neck to close down the Jihadi factories and India deciding to forge instruments to punish proxy attacks, there is natural disquiet in Pakistan over the loss of leverage obtained through patronising terror organisations like the Lashkar-e-Toiba..

But what is surprising that even some Indians found this new strategy objectionable. Do they want India to suffer another Mumbai-style attack?

Ayaz Amir in the ‘News’ (of Pakistan) and Mr K Subrahmanyam, former convener of India’s National Security Council, have made more or less the same points as I have made above. But the real ‘Elephant in the room’ is the distance that we seem to have covered in acquiring the needed capability.

Thanks to the inefficiencies of the DRDO, the Indian armed forces have fought all wars with technology inferior to the enemy. This was true of 1962, 1965 and even 1971, be it the artillery, tanks, radars or even infantry weapons. Not just our adversaries, but even terrorists have had better weapons than our own soldiers. That we still held our own is a tribute to the valour and leadership of our forces.

This is not mere bellyaching, or a bad carpenter blaming his tools syndrome. We were in a situation that we did not have the necessary tools at all . The fact that we are in a position to now think of a ‘flexible response’ strategy as opposed to ‘all or nothing’ means that we have now the means to carry out the required tasks. This would not be possible without the support of the US, the leading country as far as military technology is concerned.

Perhaps wisdom has finally dawned on the West that India –not Pakistan-- is the frontline state as far as the war on terror is concerned. Strategically, with the Americans building up in Afghanistan and the Pakistanis on the backfoot, there was a possibility that the Jihadis would mount attacks on India to derail the US operations by diverting the Pakistan army to check India. It is to counter such an eventuality that the new ‘cold start’ strategy has been initiated.

Hope for peace, or `Aman ki Aasha` for the subcontinent depends squarely on the Pakistani state giving up terror as a state policy.

That being the case, this is an occasion to celebrate, not castigate the messenger.
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Applaud, don't shoot the chief

Dear Friends,
I have received this article titled "Peace with Pakistan: Chasing a mirage" click here from a friend and am passing it on to you all. It deals with a situation that affects us all, in fact even our children and grandchildren.
Regards,
Cdr K K Punchhi (Retd)