As Modi Govt completes three years, militancy data explains Jaitley's anger

Heat on LoC, IB is up despite surgical strikes; in interiors loss ratio is worst of 27 years

ZAFAR CHOUDHARY

JAMMU: A day before Prime Minister Narendra Modi completes three years in office, Defence Minister Arun Jaitley said, with reference to the situation in Kashmir, "military solutions to be provided by military officers, how to handle a situation must be left to them". This clearly indicated that the Centre was in no mood to go for a dialogue as being pressed for the BJP's ally Peoples Democratic Party.
While the internal unrest is already a highly challenging situation, Jaitley's clear go ahead of free hand to the Army is apparently in the background of rising militant violence and increasing violation of ceasefire agreement on International Border and the Line of Control despite historic deterrence offered by the surgical strikes of last year. The data suggests it all.
The Modi government's Kashmir narrative has often veered around handling situation -on borders and in interiors -through strong security measures and not the Congress style dialogues. This approach appears very far from achieving any tangible results despite the historic surgical strikes. Militants in the Valley and Pakistan's forces on the borders are striking with renewed strength. In early 2013 when New Delhi and Islamabad were warming up to renewed prospects of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visiting Pakistan in, what could have been, a major breakthrough for bilateral relationships, India had to stall even the existing engagement. Beheading of an Indian soldier in Mendhar sector dealt the peace process with a deadly blow. Gen Bikram Singh, the then Chief of Army said, in reaction to beheading, something very interesting: the level of India-Pakistan relationships has to be determined in context of current situation on Line of Control. If Gen Bikram Singh's dictum is to be held then the India-Pakistan relationships are at their worst in many years but not the worst ever. The 'Table I', three years before Modi and three under him, offers disturbing account.
But those who think situation is back to that of 1990s are grossly wrong. Leave aside early 1990s, look at where even the things were years after Gujaral-Nawaz bonhomie, which laid foundation of Composite Dialogue Process, or the Lahore agreement. The incident of fighting on the IB and LoC in 2002 were 8376 leading to killing of 313 persons -169 civilians and 144 security personnel. In 2003 -the year of historic ceasefire, there were 2045 incidents IB/LoC fighting.
Situation in the hinterland has also been following a disturbing trend. In 2011, there were some 15 killings on monthly average which included 13 militants and two civilians and members of security forces put together. 2012 saw not more than 10 killings a month, which would include eight to nine militants and one to two civilians and security forces personnel. 2013 saw spike in violence with 15 casualties a month. The number militants killed a month almost remained the same as previous year but the security forces began to suffer more losses -five to six killings a month as against one to two the previous year. 2014 also saw an upward trend with a little change in whose gun roared more -killing of civilians and militants was up by ten over the previous year while killing of security forces down by the same number. 2015 was marked with decline in overall statistics of violence even as the number of militants killed was twice as much the number of civilians and security forces killed put together. 2016, which was marked by high profile attacks such as Uri camp and Nagrota garrison, saw total number of killings cross 250 first time in six years but this included a disturbing trend from the counter insurgency perspective -the ratio of security personnel to militant killed 1:2 was lowest since 1990 (though 2013 was another exception but the total number was far less). This trend continues into 2017 as well with more disturbing features -the number of security forces personnel and civilians killed put together has been roughly equal to the number of militants killed in first four and half months. Since January 1, 23 civilians and 25 members of security forces have been killed. Number of militants killed in this period is 50. This sufficiently explains the anger of Defence Minister and Army Chief.