According to a tweet by DG ISPR Major General Asif Ghafoor Pakistan Army shot down a spy Indian drone in Bagh sector along the LOC on Tuesday. The tweet also reiterated “Not even a quadcopter will be allowed to cross the LOC” This is not for the first time that the Indians have sent drones for aerial photography along the LOC. Pakistani forces reportedly have shot down seven Indian drones so far since the Indians started violating the ceasefire along the LOC and the working boundary. The downing of the drones is a befitting response to the Indian belligerency and a clear message to them that Pakistan was fully capable of responding to any indiscretion by India. Pakistani forces have been responding in a similar way to the incidents of ceasefire violations by the Indian security forces.

India has kept the ceasefire line hot under a well thought out strategy to divert the attention of the world community from the killing spree in the IHK by its security forces and the blatant violations of human rights. The Indians have been using different tactics to up the ante against Pakistan. In the backdrop of the Uri incident the Indian Army Chief and the political leadership hurled open threats to retaliate and even raised the hoax of a surgical strike within the Pakistani territory during the night of 28-29 September 2016, a claim which was categorically rejected by Pakistan Army. The members of UN Military Observers Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) who visited the area also did not find any corroborative evidence of the Indian claims. It was actually raised for the consumption of the Indian masses in the backdrop of the war hysteria that India had created.

The threat was repeated in February 2017 in the wake of an attack on an Indian army camp by armed militants near Jammu which killed seven people including the attackers in a day-long battle. The Indian defence minister Nirmala Sithraman said that India would make Pakistan pay for the attack. The minister said that the attackers belonging to Jaish-e-Muhammad had their handlers in Pakistan and India had credible evidence to that effect, although she did not unravel the evidence that she claimed they had.

However India did not dare to undertake any adventure fully knowing the capability of the Pakistan armed forces to respond in the same coin. Their resolve to give a matching response and refusal to be cowed down by the Indian threats helped to call the Indian bluff of surgical strikes though the Indians still persist with their claims of having carried out the surgical strike in September 2016. According to the Indian TV channels and The Times of India, Modi in his recent interview mentioned details of the surgical operation which he reportedly said was being monitored by him as he wanted the safety of the Indian soldiers. NDTV quoted him as having said” Pakistan will never improve on the basis of one war. That nation will still take some time to improve. All Prime Ministers of India belonging to all parties have never opposed dialogue with Pakistan” He also made a claim of having isolated Pakistan in the region.

His statement indicates his motives to persist with hostility towards Pakistan. His contention that no Indian Prime Minister had opposed dialogue with Pakistan is a travesty of ground realities. India has a proven history of reneging on her pledges and pulling out of dialogues on one pretext or the other. It is pertinent to point out that it is India which has disputes with all the regional states and not Pakistan. Since Modi taking the centre stage, India has been maintaining a more aggressive and hostile posture towards Pakistan and all peace overtures made by Pakistan have been shown a cold shoulder. As far as his claim of isolating Pakistan in the region is concerned there cannot be a bigger lie than that. Pakistan is pursuing a policy of peaceful co-existence in the region and except for India it has very cordial relations with all the countries of the region including China, Russia, Iran and the central Asian states. Relations with Afghanistan are also on the upward curve.

The Modi government has been persistently trying to achieve the objective of isolating Pakistan by accusing her of sponsoring terrorism in India, particularly the Bombay attack but there were very few takers of those claims except the US and her allies. India persistently claimed that the mastermind of the Bombay attack was a Pakistani citizen and even hanged him in 2012. However Times of India on 22/11/2018 made a shocking revelation that Ajmal Kasab who was hanged at Yerwada jail in Pune on 21 November 2012 had been issued a domicile certificate at Bidhoona tehsil in Uttar Pardesh’s Aurariya district. The revelation unmasked the Indian plan of stage-managing the Bombay attack and using it as ploy to malign Pakistan.

The fact is that it is India which has been sponsoring acts of terrorism in Pakistan and fomenting insurgency in Balochistan as confessed by Kalbhushan Yadev the Indian Navy officer who was arrested in Pakistan. The revelations made by him in his confessional statement leave no doubt about India using state terrorism against other states. India has also let loose a reign of terror in the Indian held Kashmir where its security forces have killed thousands of Kashmiris since 1989, raped thousands of women besides destroying thousands of structures. During the year 2018 the Indian security forces have killed 500 Kashmiris and indulged in blatant violation of human rights; a fact also revealed in the report of the UN Human Rights Commission.

The obsession of the Indian leaders to establish hegemony in the region, suppressing the freedom movement in Kashmir through use of brutal force and the belligerent posturing towards Pakistan has consigned the region to perennial instability which is ultimately also going to harm India herself. They need to wake up to the ground realities and make a sincere effort to resolve her disputes with Pakistan including the core issue of Kashmir and also abandon their desire to establish their ascendency in the region. Pakistan is a nuclear state and has the matching capacity to thwart any aggressive design against her. Peaceful co-existence and relations based on sovereign equality provide the best available recipe to save the region from a possible conflict and ushering in an era of shared economic prosperity. Indian must give a serious thought to it.

The writer is a freelance columnist.