Daily Times

This April militants kept security forces are little more occupied than the new normal, especially in North Waziristan, which used to be their main headquarters till the army flushed them out and won the local war against terrorism. And let us never forget that this victory came at a very high price indeed in terms of both civilian and military lives. No doubt the bad guys are trying to take advantage of the unusual situation caused by the coronavirus. They seem to have bet on the idea that the military was too busy helping the government enforce the lockdown and keep essential supply chains intact to keep an eye on all the hotspots in the Waziristan belt, but they were clearly wrong.

Pakistani forces proved up to the task in the tribal area on the Afghan border and also, lest anybody forgets, on the Line of Control (LoC) on the Kashmir border where our Indian neighbours have also been busy creating as much trouble as they can to keep the Pakistani army unhinged at this sensitive time. According to news reports, the Indian army has carried out almost 900 ceasefire violations in the last four months alone. And yet, for all their troubles, they achieved nothing except a red nose and further loss of personnel and equipment, as always.

The Indian strategy is as simple to understand, and as self-defeating, as that employed by the militants on the Afghan border. Fed up with its own problems at home, Delhi is clearly trying to turn its hawkish media towards Pakistan and the poor, suffering Kashmiris once again. The Modi government has not seen a good day in months. Not many people came out to protest against his unilateral usurpation of Kashmir’s special status, but there was indeed a very strong reaction to his government’s citizen amendment act (CAA). Then, as the coronavirus spread, his sudden lockdown was done in the worst possible manner, leaving millions of people stranded without food or shelter which, eventually, only facilitated in spreading the disease further and wider. And Delhi’s only fallback strategy, quite literally all the time, is to fire a few more mortars across the LoC, wait for the response, and then blame the whole thing on Pakistan. Fortunately, as the army chief said just the other day, Pakistan is well prepared to meet all sorts of situations, whether from the old unfriendly neighbour or militants licking their wounds in Afghanistan. *