Bloodbath in Pulwama – An Enraged Indian Reprisal Ensues

As evidence of the savagery, an IED-laden Scorpio SUV rammed into one of the trucks in the 78-vehicle Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) convoy passing through Pulwama en route Srinagar city causing martyrdom to forty soldiers and grievously injuring several others on February 14. Choosing this day for effectuating the carnage corroborates the ruthless barbarism engraved in the fidayeen attackers, along with their terror perpetrators, namely the diabolical western neighbour Pakistan backed by the India-obsessed Inter-Services Intelligence, whose newer benchmarks of nefariousness have earned itself a disreputable nomenclature - global terrorism safe-haven.

Incidentally, double-the-usual strength convoy comprising over 2500 security personnel, began its wee hour voyage from Jammu around 3:30 am with the slated arrival in the summer capital of the erstwhile princely State near sunset. Preliminary reports disclose the quantitative enormity of the high-grade RDX at a massive 80 kg in triggering the explosion, thereby causing such widespread fatalities unprecedented since 2016 brazen Uri military compound ambush butchering 17 gallant soldiers. With several critically wounded, the tally of caskets encapsulating self-abnegating the Patriots wrapped in the national tri-colour flag might increment further.

Despite the stark modus operandi similarities, in tandem with a vague intelligence input, notwithstanding the perpetual promulgation about giving retaliatory latitude to the armed forces by those dwelling within the well-secured Lutyens Delhi-based South Block governmental corridors, the security scenario in India's strife-torn Crown State remains unabashedly unchanged.

Be it the contradictory alliance with militancy-endorsing People's Democratic Party (PDP) propounded as honouring the fractioned 2015 Jammu & Kashmir Assembly election mandate or the consequential fiasco release of stone-pelters in droves from prison, which turned the pristine valley streets into mayhem zones witnessing daily face-offs between the delinquent over-ground workers (OGW) and the security forces on frivolous pretext are two debacles by the Modi-regime, whose repercussion will reverberate.

But, hindsight is the easiest, yet the worst place to exist.

To the unperceptive, these bewildering ambiguities highlight the occasional surge of cluelessness seemingly permeating the present-day dispensation relating their Kashmir policy, allowing the opposition to flame the hypothesis about the total dubiety regarding their approach vis-a-vis Pakistan. Amid the cacophony of one-upmanship, neither of the forthright Gandhi family scions have directly admonished Pakistan without mincing words for the freshest instalment of barbarity. Putting aside the political bickering, a pattern of resolute ideological coherence in Indian polity is evident from an extensive analysis, especially apropos the path-breaking diplomatic initiatives leading to the international isolation of the culprit country. Not to mention the hot pursuit in the intervening night of 28-29 September 2016, pulverising the militant launch pads across the Line-of-Control (LoC), as a military response to the Uri Army headquarters attack epitomises new India's unseen iron-fist firmness and the unsparing conviction in handling adversaries.

Expectedly, the notorious Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) has claimed ownership up for the Valentine Day killings, which is an amalgamation of the wicked Deobandi jihadist zealotry DNA associated with the infamous Harkat-ul-Mujahideen group and the terror catalyst ISI. It got constituted at the fag-end of the 20th Century, as a fall-out of the Harkat complot for hijacking, & consequent, diversion of the Indian Airlines flight IC 814 to the Taliban-dominated Kandahar. After the week-long hostage-crisis, the NDA government wilting under media brouhaha coupled with public furore headed by the then Prime Minister - Atal Bihari Vajpayee, post negotiations heeded the demands of the Al-Qaeda linked assassins releasing three mercenary Islamists - Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar, Ahmed Omar, Saeed Shaikh, and Maulana Masood Azar.

Notably, the erstwhile Foreign Affairs Minister - Jaswant Singh, escorted the Quadro to the Kandahar airport.

HISTORICAL CONNOTATION

Towards the conclusion of second Millennium’s fourth decade, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, a military general becoming the self-anointed President quintessentially usurped power in a Coup, started fulfilling the anti-India thousand-year war doctrine verbalised by their 9th Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in his acrimonious 1965 UN Security Council speech, giving it his own diabolical connotation - bleed through a thousand cuts. Stoking movements of secessionism, this dictum got unleashed in the late seventies with multi-dimensional ISI support - financial, infrastructural, ideological, and weaponry, during Punjab’s Khalistan crusade, subsequently traversing upon the Kashmir insurgency tangent, incepting from 1989 onwards, wherein low-cost asymmetrical warfare got waged.

Evidently, post the gruesome 9/11 attacks, United Nations consequently outlawed JeM a month later in October 2001, followed by the US banning it in December the same year. 

Coincidentally, after the harbouring country replicated the prohibition in 2002, the group changed its nomenclature to Kuddam Ul-Islam.

Each selection has a fallout, which in this case, translated into these demonic fugitive fundamentalists establishing the JeM, whose ignominious feathers include - 1999 Parliament strike, 2002 Daniel Pearl kidnapping and slaughtering, 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, 2016 Pathankot Airbase, apart from the latest sinfulness. Apparently, the Pulwama suicide bombing marking a tactical shift by the Islamabad-stationed military masterminds acting in connivance with the JeM Kingpin, Masood Azar, introducing the concept of suicide bombing ought to set the alarm bells ringing within the hierarchy of India's national security apparatus.

Addressing an event organised for flagging-off the country's fastest train - Vande Bharat Express, PM Modi without mingling words forewarned the western arch-rival of dire consequences, a strong reprisal, and a free-hand to the army.

Once, rising terror frequency, intensity and severity not solely begets mortalities, but rips apart the cultural ethos, idle pacifism is detrimental to the social fabric which weaves a sense of oneness within every civilisation. Furthermore, with the countdown underway for the 2019 Parliamentary elections, instantaneously the system activates into a damage-control mode, as the who's who of the Union Cabinet make a beeline for press-briefings uttering the hackneyed 'befitting reply' comment.

Hopefully, time deciphers the magnitude and infers the definition of those verbal bravados courageously.

Soon, the continually mushrooming television news media springs into frantic commotion, inciting fervour on verbose prime-time debates. Some over-zealous channels began proffering in chronological order the various stratagems - conventional warfare, diplomacy suggestions, & economic sanctions as options. However, every tribulation has its silver-lining, which in the current situation is a unified nationalistic wave of patriotism.

History narrates tales as to how no Head of State, ever calls the shots in an anarchical hegemony, especially in globally-acknowledged rogue nations of the modern era where democracy is merely a farce. So, those with a semblance of insight apropos the complexly entangled relationship between neighbouring nemeses, intermittently punctuated by momentary bonhomie and endless antagonism are well-versed about the inefficacious futility of top-level talks.

Piling body bags, flaring tempers, and dwindling patience of the citizenry, shall not only mount pressure but multiply it exponentially on Raisina Hills and 7 Race Course Road, simultaneously. From a strategic standpoint of rapid dominance, the time-frame in any retaliatory situation is mostly a week, at the most.

While brainstorming potent combat reprisal for avenging the gravest transgression ever, herein is the solitary long-lasting solution to truncate the perennial feud, in a three-step chronological sequence -

1. Precision Pounding - With over 750-strong fleet of fighter jets constituting the state-of-the-art multirole Sukhoi-30 MKI and the trusted Mirage 2000 H/I in the weaponry, the world's fourth mightiest Air Force has the prowess to pound with surgical precision the 60-odd terror camps, mostly operating willfully inside the military installation perimeters on the subjugated territory referred to as the Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir. Indeed, suffice expertise in high-grade Satellite imagery, real-time tracking of those sites is child's play.

Better still, the newest Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) substituting human combatants or a radar-detectable full-fledged aircraft, having intrinsic ordnance carrying capacities being laden with missiles, may also step up to the plate for a shock-and-awe onslaught.

WAKHAN CORRIDOR - A BYGONE ERA PASSAGEWAY  

Alternatively, for exterminating the terror camps deep inside enemy, entering from the Wakhan Corridor, a constricted mountainous strip nestled amid the Pamir range in Afghanistan's northeastern Badakhshan Province locking boundaries with the Gilgit-Baltistan, part of the Greater Kashmir, subjugated under the PoK, could become the next rapid dominance avenue. In the same vein, forging a trilateral sub-continental alliance of the Pakistan-estranged nations - India, Afghanistan, and Iran, will stand everyone in good stead.

Perhaps, to equalise the precariously-positioned power dynamics of regional stability, it’s time for reopening the ancient Silk Route, aerially.  

2. Area Domination - Once the camps get neutralised to annihilation, the army with a mind-boggling 1.3 million personnel on active duty, shall effectively unfurl a full-spectrum superiority reclaiming the topography lost over the last seven decades, eventuating into the complete nullification of the repeatedly breached Line-of-Control by Pakistan-trained insurgents.

3. Territorial Sanitisation - Upon retrieving the lost territory, the vast 13,297 square kilometre expanse that legitimately is ours, ought to get sanitised of all possible underground mines, bunkers, barracks or pickets, enabling the substratum for an administrative, executive and political ascendancy established on democratic egalitarianism, replacing dictatorial despotism.

Cutting to size the next-door Devil is one-half of handling this septuagenarian suffering, as the other, an internal eruptive situation awaits exigent measures.  In a Republic, estrangement originating from long-standing dissonance, albeit based on a fallacious yearning for self-determination, usually becomes the genesis of the conflict. And discord that prolongs merely fosters severance.  Ideally, social harmony, cultural oneness, and ethnic consonance (similarities), through novel initiatives, shall ensure alleviation of unfounded alienation percolating the Kashmiri minds.   

Examining through the nitty-gritty reveals seven immediately workable solutions to entangle the inner muddle -

1. Attenuating alienation to rekindle oneness between the local inhabitants with the remaining population via novel confidence-building methods.

2. Subordinate to the above clause - developing a reliable network of informants, this shouldn’t be problematic considering the exasperation from residents enduring incessant terrorism.

3. Annulling the contentious the Article 35A - a baneful hindrance for an amalgamation of communities, to significantly alter Kashmir’s skewed demographic paradigm, outright. Moreover, this shall boost vocation creation avenues, especially for propelling the mesmerisingly sublime valley as a prospective global travel destination.

As it is, idleness creates dopey rebels with inclinations towards fomenting ungrateful insurrections for cash handouts. Sadly, a dearth of subsistence prospects gets seized by the handlers forming freelancing-jihad-savagery rate lists for such pawns to unleash.

4. Identifying to uproot the radicalisation hubs, especially garbed via worship places as fronts, where Wahabi-fanaticism-preachers indoctrinate mindless bigotry within impressionable minds is imperative. To this effect, constant monitoring is necessary and by installing CCTV cameras in all ambiguous areas of dubious distinction, giving live feeds to law enforcement control rooms will act as a deterrence.

Unquestionably, the invariable post-Friday namaz brazen hoisting of pro-ISIS and Al-Qaeda flags in Kashmir should serve as the ominous harbinger to all sane-minded entities.  

5. To end everyday street menace preoccupying the paramilitary duties in the Valley, incarceration of the ballpark 9,730 stone-pelting champions and reinstating the withdrawn cases against these treacherous traitors is the pragmatic way ahead.

6. A clampdown on their masters, namely the Hurriyat leaders and et al., parroting the frivolous sedition theory propounded by their fanatic employers across the LoC, to ensure they languish in solitary confinement prison cells till sanity dawns.

7. Graduating from providing logistical support, prying into military secrets, undertaking site recce, gathering intel, and handing tactical blueprints to effectuating lethal attacks, the over-ground workers are replacing the traditional-insurgency-praxis contrived across the border. Owing to their nationality, blending seamlessly with the remaining sinless population is not more than child's play.

On 14 May 1954, President Rajendra Prasad getting directions from the former PM Jawahar Lal Nehru, invoking the prerogatives vested with the jurisdiction of his designation, issued a Presidential order, specifically Article 35A amendment to the Article 370 of the Constitution, authorising the Jammu and Kashmir's legislature for defining the state's permanent residents.

Resultantly, the dictum conferring upon them a privileged status concerning their immovable property, settlement and employment under the Temporary, Transitional, & Special Provisions domain became the root of the ensuing misery. Unequivocally, the corresponding reign of nationalism-espousing BJP, both within the state and at the centre, was a God-sent opportunity to rescind the pestering scourge. 

Sadly, that opportune opening closed once the alliance with PDP collapsed, and as they say - the rest is history. 

Often, the avariciousness of power has a blinding effect on most, implying another lost possibility for reinstating the unified nationhood concept. At this momentous cusp, the question is whether, as an aspiring Superpower, shall we persist with the self-imposed no-first-use nuclear moratorium shackles from the bygone Nehruvian era, triggering the current predicament or display fortitude by carving a seemingly arduous, yet efficacious path, for devising an uninhibited sphere of influence, recalibrating the entire geopolitical and geographical dynamics, forever.

Above all, the pretentious are well aware that with more than a billion-resilient populace, India not only has the comprehensive wherewithal for thwarting but unleashing its fury of credible second-strike capacities for eliminating the venturesome assaulter.

So, rather than fretting over nuances of the nth infringement that got this soil drenched in the blood of own gallant warriors, it's high time for repaying their inestimable karmic debt by adopting a preemptive aggressiveness and shifting the battle zone beyond the enemy lines.

VENGEANCE FOR PULWAMA 

Date - 26th February 2019; Time - 3:40 to 3:53 A.M. IST

Meanwhile, twelve days post the horrendous Pulwama terror strike, 14 advanced Mirage-2000H with Sukhoi-30 MKI fighter jets in tow of the Indian Air Force carrying Spice-2000 smart bombs pounded the laser-guided weaponry on Balakot, Chakoti, and Muzaffarabad terror camps within the Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir, neutralising anywhere between 200-300 Jaish-e-Muhammad Mujahideen in their Jihadi graves. This unprecedented wee-hour conventional blitzkrieg lasted merely 21 minutes. In Balakot, home to the oldest and largest JeM terror base, the brother-in-law of its fugitive-turned-founder - Maulana Masood Azhar, gets exterminated. Talk about putting Pakistan, a bigoted rogue sanctuary of Wahabism, in its deserved place. Barely fifteen minutes before the Air retaliation, the National Technical Research Organisation’s surveillance tip-off about 300 active mobile phones on ground zero, reaffirms the total number of fedayeen in the Balakot camp itself. 

Undoubtedly, Air force brings the much-needed shock-and-awe element, facilitating the ensuing step of retrieving lost land - an integral core of India, via territorial domination. 

An indebted billion-strong nation salutes the act of retribution by the self-abnegating Bravehearts. Video footage recording the Air Strikes wrath unleashed upon the Balakot-based JeM infrastructure, getting telecasted on several news networks in Pakistan, validates the gallantry exhibition of fearlessness by the Hindustani pilots over PoK.

With a rapidly progressing market economy enhancing the growing monetary clout, at least sycophancy is not a policy measure of Indian diplomacy anymore. Ergo, hallucinating in fallacious righteousness, those preaching restraint, ought to ruminate about their abysmal track record of invading hapless foreign lands under the garb of combating terror. No self-regarding civilisation on the planet has displayed such forbearance while bearing the brunt of a next-door neighbour abetted four-decadal asymmetrical-proxy-war killing thousands, in addition to the intermittent breaching the nuclear threshold threats.

Hereon, each reprisal is justifiably necessitated and deservingly long overdue. After all, the daily humdrum of civilian well-being is not only subservient to but founded on provincial integrity and national sovereignty. Whenever, a nation roars in an offence manoeuvre for vanquishing its pestering foe, invariably becomes the proudest moment to externalise.