Avenging Uri: Modi has sent a message of resolve, but India must be on high alert

Avenging Uri: Modi has sent a message of resolve, but India must be on high alert

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Uri would not go unpunished, it was not only to assuage widespread outrage in the country following the Uri terror attack. Indian commandos have delivered by attacking terror launchpads across the LoC. Pakistan is obliged by the Islamabad declaration of January 6, 2004 not to permit territory held by it to support terrorism in any manner – which it has been honouring mostly in the breach in recent times. India has suffered a series of devastating attacks supported by the terror infrastructure across the LoC and border over the last year – from Gurdaspur to Pathankot to Uri.

New Delhi has offered evidence and access and made any number of appeals to Pakistan to cooperate in the investigations. It has, however, been consistently stonewalled. The Pakistan army – far from intercepting – supports and facilitates the terror infrastructure operating from its domain, which regularly costs the lives of Indian soldiers and civilians. India, therefore, is within its rights to strike back at terror launchpads. It is also worth remembering that Pakistani soldiers breached the LoC en masse to launch the Kargil war in 1999.

Apart from the surgical strikes, the Modi government has taken a series of steps which make New Delhi’s intent clear. It has moved to diplomatically isolate Pakistan, pulled out of the Saarc summit in Islamabad, and said meetings of the Indus Water Commission can resume only in the absence of terror. At the same time Modi has held out India’s hand of friendship, should Pakistan be inclined to take it.

There is little scope for triumphalism or even unwarranted optimism at this stage. Rather political parties must rally round the government to underline the country’s resolve on meeting the terror challenge. After India won the Kargil war Pakistan retaliated with the IC-814 hijacking and obtained the release of, among other terrorists, Masood Azhar who went on to found the dreaded Jaish-e-Muhammed. Pakistan could now move terror launchpads further from the LoC as well as activate terror cells inside India. While the latter would be fodder for India’s diplomatic campaign to isolate Pakistan, that doesn’t take away from the imperative of foiling them and having standard operating procedures, resources and equipment ready in case they get through. But it would be best for Pakistan to head off the path of confrontation. If it can forswear terror, it will find New Delhi more than willing to talk to it on any issue it wants.