COLUMN
Is Pakistan planning some major terror attack in India? This question arises from some recent developments and statements emerging from Pakistan.
Many Pakistani media outlets, quoting unnamed officials, have said that the Pakistan Army has been put on high alert along the border with India as it fears that India may carry out a surgical strike, like the one in September 2016.
On the night of September 28-29, Special Forces of the Indian Army crossed the Line of Control (LoC) at multiple places and carried out a surgical strike on terror camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, destroying a number of those and killed an unspecified number of terrorists. The action was in retaliation to the ghastly terror attack on Army camp in Uri, in which 19 Indian soldiers lost their lives.
Significantly, the stories in the Pakistani media about high alert on the border emerged along with the atrocious insinuation expressed by Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi that India could stage a ‘false flag operation’ to blame Pakistan and divert attention from the ongoing farmers’ protest. By ‘false flag operation’, he meant a staged terrorist attack in India.
It may be recalled that Pakistani leaders had made similar insinuations about false flag operation even before the terror attack on CRPF convoy in Pulwama in February last year. And subsequently, when the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad terror outfit carried out the attack, Pakistan resorted to denials as the alibi had been already created by it.
Pakistan tried to mislead the world even on the Mumbai terror attacks of November 2008 and attempted to cloak it as ‘Hindu terror attack’. The Pakistani establishment had created fake Hindu identity for the 10 Pakistani terrorists who came to Mumbai by sea and carried out attacks at multiple places on November 26, 2008. Had one of them – Ajmal Kasab – not been arrested alive, Pakistan’s alibi would have succeeded and the attack would have been passed off as the one carried out by Hindus.
So, there is a pattern, which leads to concerns that Pakistan may be up to something big.
One possible major terror attack was foiled only last month, when security forces intercepted and killed four heavily-armed Pakistani terrorists on Jammu-Srinagar national highway in Nagrota area.
The terrorists, carrying 11 AK rifles, three pistols along with a large quantity of ammunition, more than 30 grenades and huge quantity of explosives, were intercepted when they were on their way to Kashmir from Jammu after infiltrating from Pakistan via the International Border in Samba district of Jammu.
Meanwhile, Pakistan Army has stepped up cross-LoC shelling and firing and attempts by terrorists to infiltrate have also gone up.
Possibly, Pakistan wants to escalate tensions with India to the level that an armed conflict is imposed, at a time when India is already locked in a military stand-off with China on the Ladakh border.
Therefore, rather than the Pakistani troops, it is the Indian security forces which need to be on high alert to thwart continuous evil designs of Pakistan.
