In a precise and daring pre-dawn attack into foreign airspace, Indian fighter jets hit specific targets to destroy terror training camps in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (POK) and Pakistan. On 26th February, the nation awoke to news of what is now being called surgical strike II. There was, of course, a meme fest online, but also voices of caution. While I was hugely proud of a tactical mission flawlessly carried out by the men in those flying machines, there are many, many misgivings as well when the euphoria faded and reality set in:
The first time around the Indian army performed middle of the night operations where incursions across the line of control were made to target and neutralise terror camps. Dozens of terrorists were said to have been neutralised in that surgical attack; a response to the Uri attacks.
While some sources in the Indian media claim that as many as 300 terrorists have been eliminated in the air strikes, the Pakistanis claim that there were no casualties. According to the Pakistani version, Pak jets were quickly scrambled and the payload was dropped in open spaces, resulting in no casualties.
After withdrawing the largely Most Favoured Nation status from Pakistan, India also stopped its export of tomatoes into Pakistan. This is clearly a reference to that.
Former CM of Jammu and Kashmir Omar Abdullah tweeted this in response to a particularly poorly timed tweet that said “Sleep tight because PAF is awake”. Clearly the Pak Air Force was caught napping in this instance.
People have been celebrating the capability of the highly professional, trained IAF as well as the possible neutralisation of terrorists and prevention of future attacks. There was visible glee at ‘revenge’ at Pakistan being ‘taught a lesson’. However many cautioned against such gleeful celebration of violence; pointing out that reality is very different and far more brutal than the dramatised stories we see on film screens.
While the numbers floating around remain unconfirmed and there are no official figures put out by the government, this is significant at many levels. This is a paradigm shift because it is a ‘preemptive’ strike and one that audaciously made deep incursions into enemy territory.
The claim that a Surat-based woman was one of the pilots who were a part of the 26 February strikes surfaced soon after. However, right now the IAF has only a few women in combat roles; not trained on the Mirage platform. None of them are named Urvisha Jariwala and the made-up designation ‘senior chief commander of squadron leaders at Indian Air Force’ on the Facebook account is frankly laughable.
While many are lauding the ‘political will’ that resulted in the attacks, there are voices of sanity cautioning against the use of the IAF raid for scoring political brownie points.
People are busy lauding the bold, decisive action of the country’s political leadership in giving the military a free hand to conduct strikes like this. Yes this could have been done earlier. There were very good reasons it wasn’t. Violence only begets more violence. The vicious cycle of retaliation; once started is impossible to stem. In the end, war doesn’t decide who was right; it only determines who’s left.
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