The Hindu : India starts blocking infiltration routes

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, May 21, 2003

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India starts blocking infiltration routes

By Sandeep Dikshit

NEW DELHI MAY 20. As part of a three-pronged counter-terrorism strategy in Jammu and Kashmir, India has started blocking infiltration routes favoured by militants, reviewing troop deployment along the Line of Control and installing an electronic warfare system to cut off communication between terrorists and their mentors across the border.

The Army has recently begun placing barbed wire inside the Indian territory, parallel to the LoC, on certain stretches in the higher reaches known to be used by infiltrators. So far no opposition has been reported from the Pakistan Army.

The International Border, 100 metres from the zero point in the Jammu region, had been the target of Pakistani shelling because Islamabad considers it to be a "working boundary".

India has already fenced a considerable part of the IB in Rajasthan without much opposition, as there is no dispute over it.

"This is an area that has been looked into in great detail," sources said, suggesting that there was no intention to unilaterally convert the LoC into a permanent boundary. Though the work looks suspiciously close to fencing the border, the sources said the final aim matched the intentions expressed by Pakistan — to check the movement of terrorists across the LoC.

The second leg of the strategy is an exhaustive review of troop deployment along the LoC. Army officials here were short on details because the exercise is on, but said the focus would be on the second tier of defence which, unlike the first, keeps an eye on both infiltration and exfiltration.

The review will also consider stepping up the supply of "force multipliers" such as imported night vision devices and thermal imagers to detect body heat.

The third part is installing electronic warfare systems to cut off the ability of Pakistan-based commanders of terrorist organisations to communicate with and pass instructions to militants operating in India.

The Government is in the process of finalising an elaborate electronic system that would detect and jam all transmissions from Pakistan to operatives in Jammu and Kashmir. The omnibus electronic system will also be able to record most of the transmissions between terrorist groups inside Indian territory, thus considerably cutting down the reaction time of the security forces.

The Army may like to accelerate work on all these counts following its recent major success in an encounter about 50 km from the LoC. Operating in rugged terrain, troops of the Romeo Force of the Rashtriya Rifles shot dead 60 terrorists and busted 90 hideouts where they were stocking food and ammunition.

The importance of "Operation Sarp Nash" (extermination of serpents) could be gauged from the fact that the Chief of Army Staff, N.C. Vij, accompanied by the Director-General of Military Operations toured the area for two days in order to boost the morale of the troops who entered into close quarter combat for nearly four weeks while suffering casualties themselves.

The operation has been called off with the recovery of considerable ammunition and documents, but the troops are learnt to be still scouring slopes of the forbidding Pir Panjal range for remnants of three terrorist organisations that had congregated in what is known as the Hill Kaka area.

Highly-placed sources said the bulge was strategically located and would have supported conventional operation by cutting off the lines of communication of Indian troops.

But another, and more likely, interpretation is that terrorists infiltrating from Pakistan used it for regrouping because of thick woods and sparse population. This time they had probably planned to make it a quasi-permanent transit point for their entry into the Kashmir Valley.

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