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Old Wine in New Bottle: Pakistan’s Dirty Game of the Ceasefire Violation
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Jatin Kumar | Date:17 Aug , 2015 0 Comments
Jatin Kumar
Research Scholar at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Pakistan’s continuous ceasefire violations and a spate of terror attacks in Jammu & Kashmir and Punjab recently is a wake-up call for India, which is apprehensive that its north-western neighbour is again scheming to bring life to a grind in the areas adjoining the Line of Control (LoC).

According to inputs of security agencies along the International Border, a large number of terrorists are waiting to sneak into India and ongoing ceasefire violations are an attempt to provide them with a cover to do so.

Since the Nawaz Sharif-led Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government came to power, there has been a significant increase in ceasefire violations and infiltration. In 2013, when Sharif took charge it was said that Pakistan wants peaceful relations with India. But that was not to be. The Pakistani ‘Deep State’ tried to create a situation of limited war and instability along the LoC. In October 2013, Pakistani Rangers opened fire at 25 different posts of the Border Security Force (BSF) in Samba sector of Jammu and Kashmir, the biggest case of ceasefire violation on international border in the past 10 years.

It is important to understand that in the same year Punjab government of Pakistan had allocated huge amount of money to Jamaat-ud-Dawa (Pak Rs 61 million in its budget for fiscal 2013-14), the parent body of banned terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba that carried out the 2008 Mumbai attacks. This huge allocation of money can be linked with Pakistan’s new move to establish a terror cells in the Indian side of Punjab, Gurdaspur attack can be linked with this new move. According to Indian security experts this money is used by Jamaat-ud-Dawa to destabilize the areas which are close to LOC or international border.

Lieutenant General Subrata Saha in an interview to ANI, underlined that the incidents of ceasefire violation mostly have some links with infiltration. According to inputs of security agencies along the International Border, a large number of terrorists are waiting to sneak into India and ongoing ceasefire violations are an attempt to provide them with a cover to do so[i].

Ongoing tension also highlights the changes in Pakistan’s strategy, according to which focus has been shifted to destabilise Jammu rather than Kashmir.

In 2015, the story of ceasefire violations remains unchanged, almost every week cases of violation has been reported. In this year, 206 ceasefire violations have been reported so far[ii]. Along with these violations, two major terrorist attacks have been neutralized by the security forces (Gurudaspur and Udhampur). The important fact coming out of these incidents is that most of ceasefire violations took place at a time when the political leadership of the two countries were trying to stabilise relations between them. The post-mortem  of the ongoing problem along the international border divulges that it turned worse after the joint declaration by the two Prime Ministers in Ufa (Russia). It amply indicates  that the Pakistani Militaryhas a major role in Pakistan’s policy making, and is trying to hamper the talks stagemanaging ceasefire violations and terrorist infiltration.. Ongoing tension along the LOC can be seen as an attempt to debilitate the National Security Advisor level talk between Mr. Ajit Doval and Sartaj Ajiz. The necropsy of the domestic politics of Pakistan also underlines that the Pakistani military is pressuring the government “not to go ahead with talks between the National Security Advisers of the two countries that New Delhi proposes to host later this month”, it underlines the difference of opinion between Pakistani political and military leadership on the issue of peace with India[iii].

Ongoing tension also highlights the changes in Pakistan’s strategy, according to which focus has been shifted to destabilise Jammu rather than Kashmir. In these circumstances the Jammu-Pathankot national highway is the most vulnerable target for terrorist because most of the military camps located on this highway and the population along the road is largely Hindu[iv]. It seems that the strategy behind these violations is to allow terrorist to sneak in India by engaging security personnel in crossfire, so that these terrorist can attack in different parts of India, especially the areas which are close to LOC.



[ii] DD News, Pakistan violated Ceasefire 192 times in 2015, URL: http://ddinews.gov.in/Home%20-% 20Headlines/Pages/ceasefire.aspx

[iii] Hindustan Times, NSA-level talks in danger as Pak army leans on Nawaz Sharif govt, URL: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/nsa-talks-ties-strained-pak-holds-back-on-dates/

[iv] Hindustan Times, Chandigarh, Why Pathankot-Jammu highway is vulnerable to terror attacks, NSA-level talks in danger as Pak army leans on Nawaz Sharif govt, URL: http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/terror-on-track-why-the-pathankot-jammu-highway-is-vulnerable/article1-1373608.aspx


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