SRINAGAR: India’s prime minister on Monday summoned top security advisers to thrash out a response to a deadly raid on a Kashmir army base blamed on ‘militants’ from Pakistan, amid calls for tough action against the nuclear-armed nation.
Narendra Modi has vowed to punish those behind the attack in which gunmen hurling grenades stormed a base, killing 17 soldiers in the worst such attack in over a decade. An 18th soldier died in hospital on Monday.
The Hindu nationalist prime minister promised during his election campaign to take a hard line over Kashmir and has faced calls from army veterans and even some in his own party for military action against Pakistan.
On Monday, he summoned his national security advisers and military leaders to formulate a response, which media reports said could include air strikes on ‘training camps’ on the Pakistan side of the Line of Control (LoC).
But security experts say India lacks the military capabilities to take on its neighbour in the divided region, already tense after weeks of violent clashes between police and demonstrators protesting at Indian rule. “It’s not like the US conducting air strikes in Syria to tackle ISIS that’s hundreds of miles away from home ground… Pakistan is next door,” said Ajai Sahni, executive director at the Institute of Conflict Management think-tank in Delhi. “India knows it can’t sustain a 15-day war against Pakistan and Pakistan knows it can’t sustain a similar war against India.”
Local media also urged caution, with the Indian Express saying that calls for military action were “easier made than acted upon”.
On Sunday, Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh accused Pakistan of “continued and direct support to terrorism and terrorist groups”. As the war of words intensified on Monday, Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Raheel Sharif said his forces were “fully prepared to respond to entire spectrum of direct and indirect threat”.
Islamabad, meanwhile, accused New Delhi of trying to deflect attention from weeks of unrest in Indian-held Kashmir (IHK) with what it called “vitriolic and unsubstantiated statements”.