The Indian Army base at Uri has been attacked and the country has again been depicted as helpless and without intelligence. Death toll of Indian soldiers, as reported, has touched 17, while 19 are seriously wounded.
The Fidayeen movement, which had gone quiet for over a decade, seems to have been reinvigorated and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) has claimed credit for it. After the recent attack at Pathankot air force base, Indian Prime Minister Damodardass Modi had tweeted that strong reprisals will follow.
Nothing happened that could be termed as retaliatory. The Pakistani investigation into the Pathankot attack resulted in their team of investigators visiting the Indian Air Force base and getting a closer view and deeper understanding of the reasons for the failure of that attack.
That team had also included an ISI member. Simultaneously, India, too, had launched investigations and when the Indian investigators wanted to go to Pakistan, they were refused entry citing many reasons, the principle being that India does not pinpoint what exactly it wants to see.
Then came the statements of Modi supporting the Baluchistan movement. While many ‘Bhakts’ appreciated Modi’s aggressive foreign policy, neither the government nor the armed forces had bothered to prepare themselves for any kind of imminent counter-attack at the actual ground level.
It seems Mr Modi is still very unaware that cyberspace and ground realities, in reality, are light years apart. His preoccupation of watching the screen of his computer removes him from brutal reality.
Even after the Uri attack, the Indian PM has, once again, tweeted that “those behind Uri attack won’t go unpunished.” Allah the Merciful alone knows whom Modi and his ministers think of chasing and punishing.
The international community of defence experts believes that India is incapable of any tangible retaliatory or aggressive action. They also have publicly commented that Pakistan, although a very small state with a smaller defence budget, is effectively bogging down India’s huge armed forces and India is incapable of playing a decisive and effective role in this part of the world.
Incidents such as Uri make every Indian sad because those 17 young men lost their precious lives for no reason save the imbecile and irresponsible statements tweeted by supposedly responsible leaders.
While the political establishment can be unequivocally pulled up for its inept handling of the Baluchistan affair, the Indian army brass must also be condemned for its abject failures and continuously bad leadership, which leaves the poor soldiers as sitting ducks.
Unless Indian security forces have the ability to pull up their socks and are made fit enough to be called combat ready, it is improper for the administrators to delve into aggressive foreign policies. It must be admitted that the (JeM’s) Fidayeen are not full-fledged and trained to the hilt armed forces.
They are a resolute, prepared to die, set of young people whom our trained army has no ability to face. The Indian army seems to have completely lost leadership and is incapable of protecting itself. The Uri attack and consequent death toll on the Indian side proves that the attackers were extremely successful.
It also reasserts that the morale of the Indian forces is terribly low. The nation should now not only ask Modi to stop talking and quit tweeting immediately but also start wondering where all the huge annual budgetary provisions for the armed forces are being spent. If our soldiers are dumb, untrained, unprepared and so very low on morale, we have a lot to worry about.
