Terror in Gurdaspur
The as-yet-unidentified gunmen who entered Dinanagar in Punjabs Gurdaspur district, close to the Pakistan border on Monday morning, raise grave security concerns. The attackers first targeted civilians at the bus-station, and then moved on to the police station. The violence claimed the lives of the superintendent of police (SP) Baljit Singh along with five others. This is the first time in many years that a terrorist attack has taken place in Punjab. The intrusion appears to be from the Pakistan side. In the recent past, the infiltration, the subsequent terror attacks and the gun-battles have mostly been confined to Jammu and Kashmir. The terrorists came into JK from the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), and generally turned out to be volunteers recruited by jihadi groups operating from Pakistans territory. The infiltrators used the Line of Control (LoC) in JK to cross over into India.
There is he need to keep in mind the point made by Chief of the Army Staff Dalbir Singh Suhag last week.
He had hinted that there are traces of the spread of the Islamic State (IS), the Sunni military group operating in Iraq and Syria, which has expanded the area of its terror acts beyond the region, into Pakistan and India.
The general must surely have based his assessment on information provided by the intelligence sources. If this is so, there is need to evolve a different kind of strategy to counter the IS.
The Indian security forces and the intelligence organisations are capable of countering the threat posed by the Pakistan-based jihadi groups quite effectively. This would however require the Modi government to adopt a well-thought-out position towards the new development. A knee-jerk response of declaring a war against the terrorists or of loudly accusing the covert operations of Pakistans ISI will not suffice. Mere condemnation of the terrorist attack in Gurdaspur is not enough. But the government would need to draw up a plan to fight the terror on the ground rather than just blame Pakistan.
It matters little if the terrorist infiltrators are recruits of Pakistan-based jihadi groups. The Indian security forces will have to intercept them and repel their attacks.
DNA
