Op proves PM’s ability to spring surprises
NEW DELHI: Trust Prime Minister Narendra Modi to spring a surprise when you expect it the least. Just when it appeared the NDA government was exploring non-military response to the September 18 terror strike on the Uri army base, the armed forces launched surgical strikes on terror “launchpads”, or camps used to facilitate infiltration of terrorists, across the border in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) on Wednesday night. It’s a first since Pakistan started exporting terror to India in the 1990s.
The implications and ramifications of this gambit are not clear yet. But the move underscores — yet again — Modi’s risk-taking ability that has been the defining feature of his diplomatic initiatives as well. “Modi may not follow a script. But he works to a logic. Look at the Pakistan policy. First he tried to be friendly with the neighbour. When he failed, he knew that he had to live up to his image of a strong leader who cannot let terrorists keep on targeting India. So he follows a logic and his political instinct,” said former foreign secretary Lalit Mansingh.
Few expected Modi to invite Pakistani premier Nawaz Sharif, along with other Saarc heads, to his swearing-in ceremony in May 2014.
“Bomb dhamakon mein baatcheet ki awaaz band ho jaati hai,” Modi had told his Pakistani counterpartthenextdayof theceremony.Sharif agreedandproposedthe resumption of bilateral talks.
That started what the foreign policy establishment described as “great chemistry” between the two leadersthatsurvivedmanyupsand downs in bilateral relations — until Sharif called slain militant commanderBurhanWaniamartyrand dedicated Pakistan’s Independence Day on August 14 to the freedom movement in Kashmir.
But the preceding two years weremarkedbydecisionsthatwere described variously — and paradoxically — as “knee-jerk”, “bold” and “out-of-box”. New Delhi’s decision to call off foreign secretarylevel talks in 2014, after Pakistani high commissioner Abdul Basit met Hurriyat leaders, was unexpected. Again, few anticipated the NSA-level meeting in Bangkok in December2015,whichcamebarely a week after Modi-Sharif meeting in Paris on December 1.
The surgical strike against terrorist camps along the Line of Control (LoC) announced by the Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) has confirmed what had been anticipated over the last few days — Team Modi would ‘respond’ in an appropriate manner to the enormity of the Uri terror attack.
This strike was a limited counter-terror operation with a clear set of signals embedded in it — and some of them can be de-coded from the press briefing by Lt. Gen Ranbir Singh.
As the phrase surgical-strike suggests, this was a precise incision, with a limited objective — namely that of neutralising the terrorist pads that were likely to