The same story again

No freedom fighter anywhere in the world ever had such facilities as the Pakistani intruders shelling Kargil and other areas have access to. Yet, they are in Sharif8217;s parlance 8220;freedom fighters8221;.

The Pakistani strategy nowunfolding itself is so familiar and repetitive that it even runs the risk of breeding contempt. Ever since Jinnah coveted Jammu and Kashmir and expected it to fall in Pakis-tan8217;s lap just because it was a Muslim-majority state, the Pakistani strategy has been to sneak in intruders to prise Jammu and Kashmir from India.

In 1947, when all his attempts to browbeat Maharaja Hari Singh into acceding to his proposal failed, as also the two dastardly attempts on the Maharaja8217;s life, his minions instigated the tribals of the North West Frontier Pr-ovince NWFP to march on Kashmir. It is an altogether different matter that but for a Congress boycott of polls, even NWFP might not have become part of Pakistan.

Jinnah believed that in the wake of the widespread communal killings caused by the Partition, calls for jihad 8212; or holy war 8212; coupled with the promise of loot and plunder were sufficient to persuade them. He was not wrong.

Today, the mercenaries have to be found from among Islamists of various hues andat hefty dollar payments. As the zealots marched to Srinagar, the Pakistan government in wanton disregard of the standstill agreement virtually cut off Jammu and Kashmir from the rest of India. M.C. Mahajan, who was the Maharaja8217;s Prime Minister, in his autobiography narrates how Jinnah8217;s plans to engineer trouble in the Valley by staying there in the guise of spending a holiday were frustrated by the Kashmir ruler.

This had made Pa-kistan8217;s founder all the more bitter. If Jinnah could not order the regular Pakistani army into combat, it was not because no such attempt was made but because the British commander refused to pit the Pakistani army against the Indian army, both of which had at that time a common chief 8212; Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinlek.

Yet, as in the nature of a tribal-based irregular army, the rebels, who were aided and abetted by the Pakistani forces, stopped to plunder and manhandle the local population, rather than complete their mission of annexation. Incidents such as attackingChristian churches and raping nuns did great damage to their credentials, so much so that if a plebiscite was held at that time, the vote would have gone decisively against Pakistan.

By then the invaders had wasted much time, Hari Singh had irrevocably signed the instrument of accession in favour of India, Mountbatten had issued the necessary notification and the Indian troops had been airlifted to Jamp;K.

Incidentally, it was in Ladakh8217;s Kargil 8212; home of the Drokpas, a community that has retained its animist and Naga worship despite being generally assimilated with the Tibetan and Shiite communities around it 8212; that some of the most imaginative and bloody fighting took place and the Indians were able to check Pakistani advances coming south from Skardu. Unfortunately, in a grievous error of judgment, Pandit Nehru approached the United Nations enabling Pakistan to hold on to what is called Azad Kashmir8217;. It is this unfinished task8217; that then Prime Minist-er P.V. Narasimha Rao referred to in one of hismemorable Independence Day speeches.

Pakistan8217;s Operation Gibraltar that resulted in the war in 1965 was preceded by widespread infiltration over the cease-fire line by Pa-k-trained militants and activists with the express purpose of stirring up ill-will against Indians and to frustrate India8217;s defences, as has been borne out by the biographical details of Ayub Khan and Z.A. Bhutto. The Indian Army not only repulsed the attack, it even captured several strategic positions. The Pakistani assumption 8212; a costly one 8212; that the Muslim Kashmiris would welcome the Pakistanis as liberators badly misfired.

In none of their sinister operations did the Kashmiris go to the aid of the invading forces; instead, they kept the Indian Army informed of Pakistani movements. Perhaps the harsh treatment the invading tribes had meted out to them in 1947 had not yet disappeared from their memory.

Thus, there are striking similarities between the Pakistani operation now and the ones in the past. It is significant thatinitially Pakistan said it had no knowledge about the infiltration. A few days later when there was incontrovertible evidence of Pakistani collaboration, it said they could have used Pakistani territory to move into the mountainous positions vacated every winter by the Indian Army. All this reminds one of the UN debate when first Pakistan denied its presence in Jamp;K, then refused to vacate the areas occupied by its army and then demanded India8217;s withdrawal instead.

In all these changing stances, the strategy is at once clear: Pakistan is not prepared for a war. It feels that a low-intensity proxy war, like the one it has been waging for two decades in Kashmir, will serve the purpose. The Pakistani leaders know only too well that the state of their economy being what it is, they cannot afford to wage a war with India. It is in recognition of this stark truth that they have facilitated the quot;freedom fightersquot; to occupy the vantage positions to launch a ruthless military campaign against India and possibly cutJamp;K off from India.

It also finds in the infiltration an opportunity to internationalise the Kashmir issue and to rake up old issues settled by the 1972 Simla accord. It was under that accord that the ceasefire line was converted into the LoC and the two countries had decided that all disputes would be settled only bilaterally. There was also an unwritten agreement that because of the cold inhospitable conditions in certain sectors of the LoC, the positions would remain unmanned for the better part of the year. It was this agreement that was breached by Pakistan8217;s 8220;freedom fighters8221;, causing the present war-like situation.