Modi's bravado ups the ante in India Pakistan fighting
Sun, Oct 12 01:39 AM EDT
By Rupam Jain Nair and Mehreen Zahra-Malik
NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - To judge from the shrill outrage of
India's TV news channels, the past week's bloody clashes along the border
dividing Kashmir are all Pakistan's fault: one network has been plugging the
Twitter hashtag #PakBorderDare.
However, military officers in both countries and officials in New Delhi
say the violence that has killed nearly 20 civilians escalated because of a
more assertive Indian posture under the new government of nationalist Prime
Minister Narendra Modi.
"The message we have been given from the prime minister's office is
very clear and precise," said a senior Indian Home Ministry official.
"The prime minister's office has instructed us to ensure that Pakistan
suffers deep and heavy losses."
In his first extensive comments on the violence, Modi told a political
rally on Thursday - when 1,000 Indian mortars rained across into Pakistan -
that "it is the enemy that is screaming".
"The enemy has realized that times have changed and their old
habits will not be tolerated," he said.
The exchange of mortar and gunfire across a populated border area of
Jammu, in the lowlands of Kashmir, has been India's most serious brush with
Pakistan in a decade.
Almost 20,000 Indian civilians have fled their homes to escape the
fighting, taking refuge in schools and relief camps.
The guns fell quiet on Friday, hours before the Nobel committee named an
Indian child rights crusader and Pakistan's teenage education activist Malala
Yousafzai as this year's Peace Prize winners. But heavy firing resumed on
Saturday And continued into the early hours of Sunday.
Modi's robust approach towards Pakistan, supporters say, is aimed at
emphasizing India's superior strength and making Pakistan's military think
twice before firing across the border.
It is a strategy he also used to stand up to India's larger neighbor,
China, during a border standoff between several hundred Indian and Chinese
troops on the Tibetan plateau that coincided with President Xi Jinping's visit to
New Delhi last month.
But the new stance risks more violence in the Himalayan region of
Kashmir, already one of the world's most volatile fault lines, and has eroded a
border truce that has largely held between India and Pakistan since 2003.
The nuclear-armed rivals have fought two of their three wars since
independence in 1947 over Kashmir, which is divided between them and claimed in
full by both.
Since Modi's election victory in May, military commanders have been
encouraged to step up border patrols and retaliate with more force if they come
under attack. New Delhi has insisted there can be no talks with Pakistan unless
it ends shootings and pushing militants into the Indian side of Kashmir.
"This is what we feared would happen if Modi came to power," said
Ikram Sehgal, a former Pakistani military officer and chairman of one of the
country's largest security companies.
"This could easily escalate into something that won't be good for
Pakistan or India."
RISKY GAMBLE
India may be gambling that Pakistan can ill afford to inflame
hostilities in Kashmir while its army is engaged in a full-blown offensive
against jihadi militants close to Afghanistan.
But the stakes are also high for India.
An editorial in the Indian Express on Friday called for cooler heads,
saying further escalation would damage India's reputation as a responsible
nation and attractive investment destination, and could rekindle a separatist
insurgency on its side of Kashmir.
Officials say India's new policy is being orchestrated by Ajit Doval,
the country's national security adviser, a decorated former intelligence
official renowned for his role in dangerous counter-insurgency missions. He has
long advocated tough action against Pakistan-based militant groups.
In conversations with Reuters as head of a right-wing think tank in New
Delhi before he joined the new government, Doval said India must lay down core
security policies, one of which was "zero tolerance" for acts of
violence.
In August, after days of cross-border firing between India and Pakistan,
Doval attended a meeting at the Home Ministry along with the head of the
para-military Border Security Force (BSF) and a decision was taken to give
a free hand to the ground commanders in Jammu, a top security official in the
region told Reuters.
Until then, the BSF, which guards the Jammu section of the border with
Pakistan, had complained that instructions on how to respond to provocations
were unclear.
"It is a very tough stand that our top bosses want us to take
against Pakistan and the tone is very different from the previous
government," said the Home Ministry official.
"The previous government indulged in lip service. Publicly the
former home and defense minister would showcase an assertive stand against
Pakistan but actually neither BSF nor the army was given a free hand."
A spokesman for India's defense ministry did not respond to requests for
comments. Pakistani military leaders say they have been taken aback by the
level of aggression of Indian forces over the last week.
At a time when the Pakistan army is combating militants in the tribal
areas in its northwest they do not want the distraction of battling India on
its eastern flank, they said.
"India is deliberately putting pressure on Pakistani security
forces by opening this new front," said a senior Pakistani military
official posted on the border. "The message from India is clear: 'We will
teach you a lesson.'"
Indians in the border areas of Kashmir, who have lived through decades
of cross-border firing, said they themselves had noticed a change in tactics by
the Indian forces.
"Pakistan fires one, our boys fire six back," said Atma Ram,
71, who was standing about 300 meters (yards) from the electrified fence that
separates the two countries in the Suchetgarh area near Jammu. "They are
giving a response we should have given before."
(Additional reporting by Sanjeev Miglani in ARNIA, India and by Fayaz
Bukhari in SRINAGAR, India; Writing by Andrew MacAskill; Editing by John
Chalmers, Frank Jack Daniel and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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