Doda continues to keep its date with death. All the chief minister's strategic plans and the union home minister's army reinforcements have failed to provide a modicum of security to this troubled district. Just over a month ago, two weddings here were turned into a mass funeral for 25 people.So ugly were those killings that Home Minister L.K. Advani assumed full moral responsibility for them and vowed to fight militancy in the region until it was rooted out. He visited the area and told the people there that he saw this task as both a challenge and an opportunity.A four-pronged strategy, which included strengthening the democratic forces in the state and responding actively and effectively to the plans of militants, was devised. The Union government also indicated that it would be closely reviewing the Farooq Abdullah government's security operations and even sanctioned additional funds to help it in this endeavour.Yesterday morning's attacks in two separate villages of Doda district caused thedeath, not just of 16 hapless people, but the credibility of both the state and Central governments. It signalled that no matter what the government does, or says it does, members of the minority community in the region remain as vulnerable as ever to militant strikes if they should choose to live in the land of their ancestors.Theirs has been a tragedy unparalleled in the annals of this country. Already, some 300,000 Hindus in the Valley have fled the region in terror. The few who have remained have been systematically targeted, destroying the hope that some of them may have had of normalcy being restored once an elected government was put in place.The relevance of the timing of the incident must also not be overlooked. Doda II was engineered even as the leaders of both India and Pakistan were preparing for their two meetings at the SAARC summit in Colombo on July 29. The possible involvement of the Pakistan-trained Hizbul Mujaheedin in the latest massacre certainly does not help build confidence inthat country's commitment to normalising relations with India.There is cruel irony in the fact that even as the Home Minister informed Parliament of his plans to convene a meeting on August 18 to examine ways to improve the internal security scenario in the northern states, news of Doda's latest outrage should come in. The Centre apparently is contemplating embarking on a series of measures to this end, including border fencing, intensification of border patrolling, and the alerting of state governments on the movement of ISI agents and the like.All this sounds wonderful on paper - but it may be a case of too little coming too late. The recent bomb blast in a Haryana Roadways bus in Delhi, and the Doda killings must remind the country's rulers that they do not have the luxury of procrastination on security issues. They had better move quickly and efficiently on evolving credible contingency strategies. The terrorist waits for no plan to be put in place - he can strike any where, any time.
