Testing times for troops on Line of Control

JAMMU: Lines of razor-sharp wire trailed harmlessly from the poles that make up the India-Pakistan border fence, like so much confetti.
On the night of May 9, a large group of jihadist infiltrators had cut their way through the barbed wire and concertina rolls that make up the fence, near the town of Samba. The wiring had been slashed at least 30 places.
Officers listened with disbelief, as soldiers stationed at an observation post just 200 metres away insisted they had seen and heard nothing. But all this summer, similar events have been playing themselves out all along the Line of Control.
In 2003, when a ceasefire went into place in Jammu and Kashmir, India used the opportunity to build a three-layer fence along the troubled border with Pakistan. Work was completed on some 720 kilometres of the LoC and on the 197 kilometre border in Jammu.
Even as work on the fence ploughed ahead, infiltration dropped year on year, and violence levels fell drastically across Jammu and Kashmir.
But now a fresh wave of infiltration, executed using increasingly sophisticated techniques and tactics, is testing India’s counter-infiltration posture once again.
Ever since January, as first reported in The Hindu on Friday, at least half a dozen skirmishes have taken place along the LOC.
In most cases, the fighting has been provoked by jihadist groups located alongside Pakistan Army positions just before attempting to cross the LoC.
Equipped with global positioning satellite navigation systems to locate their final destinations, infiltrators have been able to do away with their traditional dependence on the guides and traffickers who often betrayed cross-LoC movements to Indian forces. Infiltrators are also equipped with encrypted satellite-phone systems and sophisticated fence-cutting equipment.
Firing, officers serving in the region say, has most often taken place in an effort to distract Indian forward positions.
Such incidents are not altogether new. In January, 2007, for example, Border Security Force troops at Matkula, near Jammu, came under attack from jihadists from across the LoC. However, the intensity of this year’s clashes and their frequency has been worrying.
Unlike Jammu, northern Kashmir has seen no skirmishes on the LoC, bar one incident last month in Tangdhar.
However, large-scale infiltration has taken place there too, in a build-up Indian intelligence analysts believe is directed at hitting election campaigning later this year.
Between March and May, intelligence officials believe, at least 16 infiltrating groups, altogether between 100 and 120 terrorists, crossed the LoC along the Keran-Karnah-Gurez arc. Most made the crossing in March and April, when snow damage to the fencing along the LoC was yet to be repaired. Just eight of the infiltrating groups were interdicted by Indian border patrols.
Crossing the fence is difficult but far from impossible. In northern Kashmir and parts of Poonch, altitude and terrain make secure, year-round fencing more fantasy than fact. Infiltrators use mountain gullies and ravines where fences cannot be laid, and monitor patrol movements, to pick the best time to cross.
But even in Jammu, where favourable terrain has allowed India to run twin layers of two-metre high barbed wire and rolls of concertina wire along a concrete foundation, the fence can be penetrated and often is.
Each Border Security Force company made up of 120 men is meant to guard a stretch of approximately 5 km. On average, half a company’s strength is on leave, tied up in training, or committed to non-combatant duties. That means between 50 and 60 men must take turns through eight-hour stretches. No small ask.
Moreover, the peace along the LoC has also led to some lowering of guard. Anti-tank ditches in the Jammu sector have been dry for over a year and a half now, depriving India of a second layer of counter-infiltration defences.Strategic context
Conventional wisdom has it that Pakistan needs the LoC ceasefire to hold more than India, since its northern army reserve is denuded by Islamabad’s own internal wars in the North West Frontier Province.
But some experts fear the Pakistan Army is preparing to address just that weakness, though its efforts to negotiate an end to its feud with the jihadists. Earlier this month, the eminent Pakistani journalist Ahmad Rashid reported that General Kiyani had decided not to retrain or re-equip troops to fight the counter-insurgency war the Americans are demanding on Pakistan’s mountainous western border. Instead, Mr. Rashid wrote, the bulk of the Army will remain deployed on Pakistan’s eastern border and prepare for possible conflicts with traditional enemy, India.
Should Pakistan scale back the counter-terrorism campaign in its north-west, Pakistan’s severely-depleted Northern Army reserve would revive.
Pakistan’s Army could take a more aggressive posture along the LoC, confident that it could hold its own against punitive Indian actions.