Once again it is the border residents of Jammu region who are the worst victims of the cross-border firing resorted to by Pakistan. Dislocated and uprooted from their hearth they remain ‘unwanted’. The Kathua administration requested people living near the zero line in Bobiya area of Hiranagar to move to safer places. Indo-Pak relations have worsened ever since the Uri terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir on an Indian Base Camp by Pakistani terrorists, which killed 19 soldiers. After the terror attack, India had decided to isolate Pakistan at all international forums and conducted a surgical strike on terror launchpads in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir on 29th September. The death of seven Pakistani rangers now could delay the process of de-escalation of tensions between the two neighbouring countries. But it is clear that the surgical strike has not been a cost high enough to stop terrorism. How, then, can anyone celebrate the surgical strike as having successfully imposed a cost on Pakistan to stop terrorism? The surgical strike may have “avenged” Uri but has by no means affected the pattern of terrorists attacking security forces in Kashmir. We respond with outrage only when the casualty count is high — such as in Uri. And we gloss over an attack when we lose just a soldier or two. In doing so, we miss the larger pattern of what is happening here. In the post-Uri scenario there has been an increase in cross-border firing and infiltration bids which shows that a wider pattern is emerging and in any such attack there could again be a high casualty count. Some claim that the Uri surgical strike has completely changed the balance of power between India and Pakistan. But on the ground nothing has changed till date.
