N2013
Rate this item
(9 votes)
Author: pioneer
Pakistan has crossed the red line this time
The Congress-led UPA Government has called the killing and mutilation of two Indian soldiers by the Pakistani Army inside Indian territory a “grave provocation”.
That it certainly is, but the question is: What is New Delhi going to do about that, since it has been so gravely provoked? Officials here have summoned the High Commissioner of Pakistan to India to register a ‘strong' protest against the action. There will be parleys at the level of Director General of Military Operations from both the sides. But, given Islamabad's record of blatant denials even in the face of concrete evidences on various matters, these diplomatic niceties are unlikely to yield results. Already, indications are that Pakistan will not accept culpability and instead blame ‘Indian propaganda' for ‘distorting the truth' of the incident. For instance, sources in Islamabad are already hyperactive in linking Tuesday's ghastly incident in Mendhar sector of Poonch in Jammu & Kashmir to that of the exchange of firing between the troops of the two countries on the Line of Control a couple of days ago in Uri. Pakistan claims that India had violated the ceasefire understanding while New Delhi has said that its jawans resorted to retaliatory fire. Since Pakistan has a record of blatantly violating the ceasefire agreement, it is difficult to accept its charge that the Indian troops had opened fire first. In any case, the earlier incident has no comparison with, much less justification for, the Tuesday killing, for at least two reasons. First, Indian troops had not crossed the Line of Control; and second, they had not mutilated the body of any Pakistani soldier. It is clear from the shameful incident that Pakistan not only does not care for the ceasefire agreement but it also does not bother to conform to international guidelines that prohibit the torture or mutilation of enemy soldiers. In such a situation, the Government of India will have to do more than protest. It must do two things without delay: Collect evidence of the latest brutality by the Pakistani Army and expose that country before the international community, and reconsider the wisdom of continuing with the dialogue process which it had wrongly initiated after the dust over the 26/11 Mumbai attack had settled down. On the first point, It can be argued that Islamabad will yet again — as it did with the piles of material which New Delhi gave it on the involvement of some of its citizens in the Mumbai terror strike — rubbish the evidence. Nonetheless, the Pakistani Army will at least be answerable to the international community. Indeed, that should have happened when we received the badly mutilated body of Captain Saurabh Kalia in the wake the Kargil War in mid-1999. Unfortunately, we did not take up that issue strongly with Islamabad all these years, and Pakistan seems to have got the message that it can get away with similar atrocities.
As for the second step, the UPA Government must at least now — if not even now, when? — reconsider its strategy of engaging with Pakistan through the series of dialogues that it had suspended for a while after the 26/11 incident. The Government had back then faced considerable flak for restarting the dialogue (call it ‘composite' or by whatever name) despite the fact that Islamabad had done nothing to bring the perpetrators of the terrorist attack to justice. That was a big mistake on New Delhi's part. It's time to correct that. If this is the price that the country has to pay for persisting with its peace initiative with a recalcitrant neighbour, it's not acceptable. Unless India sends that message across strongly through action, and not mere words, nothing will change.
============================================
No comments:
Post a Comment