Letter to the Editor

By K.N.Pandita – Sir, This is with reference to your editorial ‘Terrorist strikes: Stop the infiltrators in their tracks’ (The Taribune 21 July). This rhetoric has been in place for last sixteen years. Neither infiltration has stopped despite commitments by General Musharraf nor the routes of infiltration are sealed despite loud claims by
Indian security officials. At one time it was said that some special sensoring devices were imported from Israel that would put a total check on infiltrtion. It has not happened. The army claimed having mounted more vigil along the LoC. That may be true but the line is long one and the topography so varied and difficult that even extraordinary vigil cannot stop infiltration.

Ironically nothing is said by the government in regard to the main support to the militants for infiltration. That is the logistic support they receive from the local civilian population espeically on our side of the LoC. The popular government cannot elaborate that point as it goes against its interets at a time when it is applying the « healing touch ». It means that as long as overt and covert support from the local civilian population and sections of bureaucracy are available to the cross-border infiltrators, their perfidy will continue and the army cannot do anything more. When the « healing touch » is available not only to the facilitators of infiltration but willy-nilly to the infiltrators also, let us take it for granted that infiltration in J&K will never have an end. The most disappointing and dangerous part is that the jawans who are deployed to protect the LoC are fully aware of it.