Washington, March 10

Restricting or conditioning of military aid to Pakistan will be detrimental to US interests as it may “reduce” the country’s willingness to continue its counterterrorism operations, top Pentagon commanders have warned lawmakers.

“The risks of ineffective and unclear signals and conditioning may risk us losing our access and frank dialogue to Pakistan in areas critical to our US interests,” General Joseph L. Votel, nominee of the Commander of US Central Command told members of Senate Armed Services Committee during a confirmation hearing.

Votel warned that curtailing aid “may reduce” Pakistan’s willingness to continue its counterterrorism and counterinsurgency (CT/COIN) and “risks our current access” to Pakistan Air Lines of Communication and Ground Lines of Communication to support operations in Afghanistan and the region.

“We will need to continue cooperation with Pakistan to defeat al-Qaeda, support Pakistan’s stability, and achieve a lasting peace in Afghanistan,” said Lieutenant General Raymond Thomas, nominee for US Special Operations Command during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The US-Pakistan relationship is fundamental to our vital national security interests, Thomas said.

“If confirmed, I would in consultation with Commander United States Central Command (USCENTCOM) continue to evaluate the specifics of the relationship based on my assessment of our shared interests with Pakistan and its effectiveness of achieving our shared goals,” Thomas said.

“I will continue to evaluate the efficacy of the SOF-to-SOF military cooperation we have with Pakistan and identify ways in which we can support USCENTCOM efforts to work with Pakistan to enhance regional stability,” Thomas added.

Votel said Pakistan’s counterterrorism and counterinsurgency campaigns remain vital to targeting militants that threaten the United States and Pakistan.

“Our security assistance, which focuses on enhancing Pakistani CT/COIN capabilities is critical in this regard,” he said, adding that the risks and benefits of conditioning US assistance and support to Pakistan vary.

“The important thing will be for the United States to maintain credibility while still accruing benefits toward our US CT/COIN interests,” he added.

“If we are able to strike such a balance and remain consistent in our bilateral relationship, we may see Pakistan increase its transparency and cooperation with Afghanistan on the full range of security, border control, and economic issues,” he said.

“Likewise, Pakistan may take further action against violent extremist organisations, such as Haqqani network,” Vitol said. — PTI

GOC-in-C, Western Command, Lt Gen KJ Singh (left) interacts with gallantry award recipients during the triennial convention.

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 5

The Army is renaming important landmarks in military stations after the names of gallantry award winners of the armed forces to give them due recognition and inspire the present generation.Lt Gen KJ Singh, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Western Command, stated this while addressing participants at the silver jubilee convention of the War Decorated India (WDI). He said many residential colonies, office complex entrances and important structures had names that had little or no relevance with India’s contemporary military history.The Western Command, he said, was associating such landmarks with war heroes who had set professional standards for others to look up to. The WDI is an association of Param Vir Chakra (PVC), Maha Vir Chakra (MVC) and Vir Chakra (VrC) recipients and is engaged in looking after the welfare of the soldiers decorated for gallantry in war or their next of kin. Over a 100 gallantry awardees, many of them now in their sunset years, their widows or survivors from various parts of the country attended the convention. They were also honoured on the occasion.Prominent among the attendees were Wg Cdr Jagmohan Nath, the only survivor among six officers decorated with the MVC twice.

War heroes, kin divided over Indo-Pak tie

Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service,New Delhi, March 3

Indian security agencies are searching for an “enemy within”, who allegedly helped a person based in Pakistan to spread military-related information in real-time using Twitter.A probe is on in New Delhi as to how a man in Karachi was uploading pictures on the web in real time of the gunfight between terrorists and security forces at Pampore in Jammu and Kashmir between February 20 and February 22. Seven tweets of the person are under scrutiny.The Army and the CRPF had been locked in an encounter with terrorists, who had stormed a building of the Jammu and Kashmir Entrepreneurship Development Institute (JKEDI) at Pampore.Security agencies were baffled over the real-time pictures being uploaded on Twitter from an account, which suggested the person was based in Karachi. Also, the pictures are from such locations where it’s impossible for any photographer to reach. The person has 13,000 Twitter followers. (The name of his Twitter handle is being withheld as a probe is on). The Karachi-based person, in one of his tweets, credited a Mumbai-based person (name withheld) for the pictures.The Twitter account of the Mumbai-based person is accessible to only 72 persons.The most vital link is the person, who clicked the pictures and possibly circulated the same using either WhatsApp or Hike to the Mumbai-based person, who further tweeted them to his closed group, and from thereon, the Karachi-based person picked them up.Here are the tweets that are under probe.At 10.28 am on Feb 22:  A tweet from Karachi showed the bullet-riddled body of Capt Pawan Kumar Khatkarat a hospital. It’s a close-up shot taken from less than 5 feet away and inside a hospital. The media was reportedly not allowed inside the hospital.At 10.32 am on the same day, the Karachi-based man posted two pictures of an Army mini-UAV – one ready to take off and another one flying at a low altitude to locate terrorists at Pampore. The tweet appeared almost real-time and the UAVs were used in the operation, said sources.The Karachi-based Twitter handle also uploaded pictures of a CRPF convoy, the JKEDI building set on fire and bodies of terrorists surrounded by Army men.

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, February 28

A brain dead Army man’s liver gave a new lease of life to a Patiala woman, who had a damaged liver due to autoimmune hepatitis, at the PGI here today.“Continuing with the practice of organ sharing between various hospitals in the region, an organ donated by a brain dead patient at the Command Hospital in Chandimandir was transplanted to a patient at the PGI,” an official spokesperson said.She disclosed that an Army man, aged 39, unfortunately suffered from intracranial haemorrhage and was admitted to the Command Hospital. He was declared brain dead by doctors there.“The wife of the patient took a noble decision of donating the organs of her husband. As no recipient was available at the Command Hospital for liver with the same blood group, they decided to share the liver with the PGI, Chandigarh,” the spokesperson said.She revealed that the liver was successfully harvested by a team of experts from the Command Hospital and the PGI and transported to the PGI around 10 am on Saturday. “This was successfully transplanted to a female patient from Patiala,” the PGI spokesperson said.

It is high time that the counter-terrorism strategy in J&K. is reviewed to factor in militancy’s changing face. The terrorists, equipped with the latest techniques, are now prepared for the long haul.Old tactics cannot work.

Smoke billowing out of the JKEDI building, where militants reportedly took refuge after launching an attack on a CRPF convoy at Sempora Pampore, near Srinagar. PTI

The encounter at the multi-storey building at Sempora, just a kilometre outside Srinagar, which lasted for more than 48 hours from Saturday to Monday afternoon, (from February 20 to 22) is a perfect lesson on how not to conduct an anti-terrorism operation in Kashmir. The sanitisation of the massive building with 44 rooms was still on as the security forces disposed of unexploded explosives and searched for the booby traps left by the slain trio.Over the years, lulled by the obsolete battalion approach, the Army has not devised any new strategy to deal with new threats. It has also ignored the growing challenges on the ground in a self-delusion that its “Sadhbhavana” or goodwill operations, granting computers to schools or sponsoring all-India tours of children and the aged, have generated new sources of information and the pro-militancy sentiment has retreated. Contrary to that, the fact is that the situation on the ground has worsened. If there were any doubts, the Saturday to Monday gun battle offered ample proof of the worsening situation.Acute complacency about the situation, despite claims to the contrary, and declining interaction  between the top Army leadership and the men in the field, is  hampering the emergence of new counter-terrorism strategies. Rather than devoting adequate time at map-reading in operation rooms, much time is consumed in projecting themselves before the cameras. Much has changed since 1990, the calendar year of the start of the armed rebellion  in  Kashmir. The Army has taken certain things for granted  and taken its eyes and ears off the ground, where Kashmiris have developed a psyche of drawing a vicarious pleasure from the prolonged exploits of militants in their fight against the security forces.The Sempora encounter, which started with an ambush of the CRPF convoy, in which two troopers were killed and nine injured on Saturday afternoon, had multiple inbuilt challenges. After the ambush, the militants deviated from the hit-and-run option, a familiar strategy they would adopt during the 1990s. Instead, they walked into the Entrepreneurship Development Institute building, where they asked the civilians to flee. They forced those who were reluctant and scared to run by firing in the air. Major-General Avinder Dutta, General officer Commanding, Victor Force, based in Awantipore in south Kashmir,  made an apt observation: “Militants had sought to provoke the forces and cause collateral damage.”  However, the unanswered question is where was the quick-reaction team that is supposed to follow the convoys? The fact that raises a pertinent question is that at this very place a similar attempt had been made to ambush the same convoy two months ago and yet it did not ring alarm bells.The CRPF team entered the premises but had to withdraw because of the intense assault by the fully armed and equipped militants. Then the Army adopted a flip-flop strategy, losing two Captains and one Lance Naik. It was a much heavier price in terms of the  ratio of 1:4, before it pounded the building with rockets. What needs to be asked is: Could not what the Army did in the end have been done in the beginning? Perhaps what has not been factored in is that a prolonged encounter etches an image of macho terrorists who die fighting a much larger number of soldiers. Undoubtedly, they were in an extremely advantageous position, hiding in a building that is more than 60 feet, with many windows and nooks and crannies. Why had the Army never calculated such a scenario in its counter-insurgency strategies. That something happens for the first time is no logic. Fidayeen attacks are nearly a 17-year-old phenomenon in Kashmir now.The reliance on the past practices, when the Army  would conduct cordon-and-search operations for hours together in extreme weather conditions and the people would bear them, is not a good strategy, to put it mildly.What has been seen is that the locals of the areas, whether after being instigated or voluntarily, march toward the encounter sites. At times, they even provide the militants a human shield to escape, while at other times, like at Sempora, a message of solidarity is broadcast  through pro-militant slogans and anti-India exhortations.It is the time to review the counter-terrorism strategy against the backdrop of the changing face of  militancy in the state battered by militants  for the past nearly three decades. Counter-terrorism experts need to come out of their drawingroom mindset and study the field situation afresh in Kashmir. At the same time, it becomes incumbent upon the Army commanders posted in this sensitive, terrorism-hit state to interact more with their men rather than showcasing themselves as messiahs pedalling goodwill missions which  burden the taxpayer.Old tactics cannot and should not be applied in the changed situations where terrorists adopt new techniques and are equipped with a new mindset to fight for  days together. In the 1990s, when the Army used to cordon off areas and go in for anti-terrorist operations, it would overwhelm militants with  its numerical strength. The soldiers would use that advantage to neutralise militants after a brief spell of gunfighting. This was followed by a phase when militants would take shelter in mosques as part of their hit-and-run tactics. The public disapproved of this strategy of the militants. Elders would act as intermediaries  to get  mosques vacated. There was always a next time for the soldiers to take on the militants. The Fidayeen cult, the signature style of Lashkar-e-Toiba, which came into vogue after the Kargil War in 1999, is continuing. The basic training to deal with such battles where militants create an imminent death-like situation has not been worked out for the past nearly 17 years. Raising boundary walls and seeking safety in the rolling out of concertina wires has not served as a deterrent. That was obvious in Pathankot as well.Another tactic adopted by the militants was to storm civilian buildings, hotels and then attract the security forces to surround them. It was patience and intelligence that paid dividends, not knee-jerk reactions. That time, the public did not come out and no attempt was made to reach the site of the encounter to create a law-and-order situation. Now the youth, armed with stones, often reach the site where the gun battle is underway. The delay in concluding  operations can create other disturbing situations. Again, this eventuality has not been taken into consideration. Complete coordination between the police, paramilitary and the Army in such an eventuality is a delusion. The ground situation is an altogether different story.What have been recorded as the “peak years of militancy” in Kashmir, now appear like its infancy as compared to the level and intensity of the new terror attacks. Die-hard elements among militants, who want to go down fighting instead of offering to surrender to a higher number of military personnel, reveals a hardened mindset.  Earlier, picking up the gun was a romance. It was believed that merely carrying a gun, or firing bullets on security pickets or patrols or hitting and running after hurling grenades was enough to show commitment to the “cause of the liberation of Kashmir” or earn the aura of a “martyr”.  At one stage, their death was treated merely like that of militants and not martyrs. This is no longer the case now. The battle at Sempora has proved it beyond any doubt.

ajoshi57@gmail.com

Jat protesters block a railway track near Pataudi on Saturday. photo: Sayeed Ahmed

Nitish Sharma &Suman Bhatnagar.Tribune News Service.,Ambala February 20

Several trains were cancelled and many buses remained off road today due to the Jat agitation.  The disruption in traffic inconvenienced thousands of people, especially the aged, infants and women.While buses on the roads were packed to capacity with people hanging out, the situation was no better at the Ambala Cantonment railway station, where people jostled to board the trains on the Saharanpur route. Only a few Uttar Pradesh bound trains arrived following the agitation.As many as 87 trains, including Shatabdi Express, Shan-e-Punjab Express, Heerakund Express, Rajdhani Express, Jhelum Express, Himalayan Queen, Sampark Kranti Express, Dadar Express, Jan Shatabdi Express and Howrah Express remained cancelled today. Some of the trains coming from Punjab were terminated at Ambala Cantt.Some of Bihar and UP-bound migrant passengers have been waiting for the trains for last 24 hours. The Railway officials were not able not give accurate information about when the service would be restored. Station master Hans Raj said a family of Ambala, who had reserved 25 seats for February 21 for Mumbai a few months ago for celebrating the marriage of their daughter there has to cancel the seats on Friday as none of the Mumbai bound train was available at Railway station. Some of the passengers bound to Panipat and Delhi hired taxis to reach their destination for which they have to pay two to three times the charges of train fare. Daily passengers faced difficulties to reach their offices in time. Sham Singh (50), a resident of Etawah, said: “We are nine persons, including four children, who had boarded Toofan Express on Thursday from Etawah for Abohar (Punjab). However, when we reached Delhi we were told that the train will not go further. From Delhi, we reached Sonepat on a passenger train and had to spend night there.”

Rohtak watches as buildings burn

Army personnel take out a flag march as Jat protesters went on the rampage in Rohtak on Saturday. Photo: Manoj Dhaka

Sunit Dhawan,Tribune News Service,Rohtak, February 20

Jat protesters today set ablaze more than 10 buildings, ransacked and looted showrooms despite curfew and shoot-at-sight orders.Group clashes were reported from several areas in which one person was killed and over 100 were injured.The Vita milk plant on the Gohana road near the Sukhpura chowk was also set ablaze. Following this, ammonia gas leaked from the plant and the residents of the Vita colony were moved to safer locations.In view of the situation, Army troops were airdropped at the Rohtak Police Lines. From there, they started a joint flag march with BSF and police personnel. However, in view of a massive assembly of protesters near the MDU gate number 2 on the Delhi road, they were directed to take a U-turn, so as to avert a clash.Later, the Jat protesters went on the rampage and set the BJP’s office, Meham police station, several hotels, restaurants, a petrol station, a shopping mall, showrooms, shops and other commercial establishments on fire. Several vehicles were also torched.Police personnel, who had vanished from the spots of violence yesterday, abandoned their police posts today and locked stations.A number of Punjabi and non-Jat businessmen, traders and shopkeepers alleged their showrooms and other establishments had been specifically targeted. Jat youths allegedly threatened members of the Punjabi and other non-Jat communities of raiding their houses during the nightOn the other hand, Jat residents of Sector 3 alleged threats of attack by members of Saini, Gujjar and Balmiki communities.The Principal Secretary to CM, RK Khullar, said he had noted the details and action would be taken. He, however, had no reply to the question why the Army had been unable to check the rioters. …

Agitation peaceful in YamunanagarYamunanagar: Jat agitators on Saturday blocked roads at several places in the district, but the protest passed off peacefully. The agitators blocked the road at Kail village, Chhachhrauli, Bilaspur, Sadhaura and Radaur towns. The blockades in Sadhaura and Radaur towns were lifted with intervention of Deputy Commissioner SS Phulia and Superintendent of Police Arun Singh. The protesters did not stop any ambulance or other emergency vehicles. The district administration had made arrangements to divert the traffic and as a result. The DC said the situation was under control in the district. — TNS

Two Roadways buses torched Bhiwani: Unidentified protesters torched two roadways buses parked at the Charkhi Dadri depot in the wee hours today after they threw crude petrol bombs. Fire engines were pressed into service and saved other buses from catching fire. Naresh Kumar, bus depot chowkidar, said nearly 10 youths barged into the bus depot on motorcycles and started pelting stones. Later, they threw crude petrol bombs on buses, he said. Vijaypal Singh, workshop mechanic, said the staff ran away after the youths created ruckus.   — TNS

Bhiwani remains shut; shops vandalisedNew Delhi: The Congress on Saturday adopted a twin stance on Haryana, with some state leaders appealing for restoration of peace and social harmony and others accusing the BJP-RSS of conspiring to divide the society on caste lines. Former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda sought to adopt a statesman-like approach, suggesting the state government to find a solution on Jat reservation and not indulge in “petty politics”. Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surejwala said he was pained that the BJP-RSS was dividing Haryana on caste lines. — TNS

Anarchy prevails

• Clashes reported for several areas. One killed
• BJP office, shopping mall, police station, petrol station, markets gutted
• Army troops airdropped at the Rohtak police lines
• Flag march taken out by the Amry, BSF and state police personnel
• Essential services such as ambulance and fire engines hit