GAMEPLAN PAKISTAN

Intransigence from across the border has reached a new high. Pakistan is showing no signs of mending its ways. Attacks and cross border firing has been continuing unabated since the last one month.

On Monday an army camp in south Kashmir’s Kakapora area was attacked by militants. The militants lobbed grenades towards the army  camp. Though there has been no casualities the district administration has closed down all the 84 schools in the area. The army is on alert.

The attack on the army camp comes a day after four soldiers were killed in a cross-border firing by Pakistan along the Line of Control (LoC) in Tarkundi and Sunderbani areas of Rajouri district of Jammu and Kashmir.

The Vice-Chief of the Army Staff, Lieutenant-General Sarath Chand said that the Army will give a befitting reply to Pakistan’s actions.

Pakistan has seemed to stepped up its attack from across the border. In the past 35 days, there were 240 incidents on the LoC and the International Boundary together, higher than the 228 for the entire 2016.

Apparently there is a strategic shift in Pakistan’s strategy. Till some time back the cross border firing were resorted to in an  intermittent manner. More stress was on low-key attacks by terrorist outfits and stand alone desperadoes. In this low intensity warfare, guerrilla tactics were employed and damage to strategic areas and unto the armed personnel were aimed at.

A case in the point is the way in October 2016  militants had attacked an Indian army camp in Baramulla , Kashmir with gunfire and grenades, killing one border guard and wounding another.

Such attacks kept happening at regular intervals. This served the Pakistani strategy of low intensity warfare well. The cross border attacks made heavy force deployment by the Indian Army alongside  the border a necessity.

However, Pakistan could well spread its army thin across the border and use the additional manpower in troubled areas alongside the Afghan border and in interior hotspots.

However, with India resorting to surgical strikes into the Pakistani side the war strategy got changed. First it was denial of any such surgical attacks by Pakistan. But when confronted by regular surgical attacks by India which were then buttressed by video and other proofs, Pakistan had to change it’s strategy.

It  went into a more manifest attacking mode, and the frequency of attack has  kept on increasing.

Furthermore, in a deliberate attempt to malign India it has stepped up its anti –India propaganda.

Recently ,  Pakistan’s Interior Ministry has informed Gilgit-Baltistan  government in the disputed PoK territory that India has made a plan to attack the installations of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor to sabotage the multi-billion project.

This  is an clear attempt to raise the India bogey in Pakistan.

The Pakistani establishment, especially the Army, is under pressure from the United States to mend its ways in its policy of nurturing terror groups. There has been a fund squeeze from the side of America. Trump had tweeted his displeasure against Pakistan providing safe haven to terrorists,and  of foolishly providing  $33 billion in aid over the last 15 years.

Trump didn’t stop here. On January 24, this year he ordered a drone attack on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and wiped out two Haqqani network commanders and two terrorists.

Clearly it was revist of the Osama Bin Laden type of attack where the territorial sovereignity of Pakistan was compromised, leaving it humiliated.

The surgical strikes by India and direct intervention by the United States had left Pakistan with no option but to go on an offensive against India. If for nothing else, then to salvage its pride.

Thus with building up of pressure from the United States on both the strategic and diplomatic level, it is wont that the Pakistani Army is going for diversionary tactics, and indulging in India baiting.

The time tested tactics of anti-India tirade will make the Pakistani Army and the Establishment buy time, before new game plans are devised.