Major Policy Shift by India on Pakistan - Part I

Current Affairs
Fri Oct 16 2015

Just last week NASA published a night-time photograph of international border between India and Pakistan. Astonishingly the borderline that demarcates the two nuclear neighbours from each other was clearly visible even from space, thanks to the security lights that run the length of the border. This photo very clearly proves the tensions and the mutual mistrust between these two countries.

 

Nasa Image
 Image of India - Pakistan border at night captured by NASA. Courtesy - www.nasa.gov

 

There has been major escalation in tensions between the two countries not only on their borders but also in the diplomatic rings recently in the backdrop of falsely contested claims of victory by Pakistan in the 1965 India-Pakistan War.

 

Indian security forces in action
 Indian security forces in action during Gurdaspur terror attack Courtesy - www.indiatoday.in

 

The tensions recently started to brew up consistently with Pakistan regularly violating the ceasefire agreement with its unprovoked firing at the border. The Gurdaspur terror attack and the trail of its rootspointing towards Pakistan, arrest of two Pakistani terrorist alive in Kashmir by Indian security forces, repeated terror attacks in the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir by Pakistani terror groups have all been adding fuel to this fire. The atmosphere of mistrust was further darkened when the Indian Army got intelligence inputs of 1475 terrorists being trained by Pakistan in its territory for launching terror strikes on the India soil. Accordingly India started to erect a safety wall along the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK). This issue was brought to notice of Pakistani authorities by none other Syed Salahuddin who is head of terrorist groups Hizbul Mujahideen and the United Jihad Council which are two anti-India terror syndicates. This was a major irritant for the Indian side. Later Pakistan even took this issue to the United Nations but neither India nor the world paid much attention to it.

 

Pakistan Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif
Pakistan Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif at UNGA Courtesy - www.un.org

The major diplomatic flashpoint between India and Pakistan came recently at the annual session of United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in the second half of September in New York. To have a face saver and to cover-up the failures of his government back home, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif once again cried of Pakistan itself being a victim of terrorism rather the its sponsor. Like all his predecessors Sharif too towed the same line of demanding India to vacate the territory of Jammu & Kashmir which Pakistan purportedly claims. Further in his 15-minute address to the UNGA the Pakistanipremier made several references to Kashmir as a land under “foreign occupation”.

He followed this by proposing a ‘4-Point Plan’ under which he proposed that India and Pakistan begin with ending the firing at the LoC and formalise and respect the 2003 ceasefire agreement. He also asked the United Nations Military Observer Group to monitor this process. Sharif proposed ‘no use of force’ by either side. Finally, he proposed steps to demilitarise Kashmir and mutually withdraw troops from the Siachen glacier.

To be continued...