Why India Fails to Tackle Terrorism?

India remains one of the biggest victims of terrorism and yet we hesitate to take some proper action against the perpetuators. We know who our enemy is and who is sponsoring these terrorists, yet we limit ourselves to just exchanging dossiers and criticizing Pakistan. Why is that we fail to address the issue of terrorism?

Finding Roots of Terrorism

Pakistan was formed in 1947 after partition with India, there was a temperament among Pakistanis to bring back the glory of Mughal Empire by bringing India under Islamic Rule. There was a very popular slogan “HAS KE LENGE PAKISTAN LAD KE LENGE HINDUSTAN”, and this belief was very much evident with Pakistan’s actions. Pakistan attacked Kashmir in October 1947, fearing that Kashmir would join India. Pakistan again attacked India in 1965 and 1971, with a dream to establish “Gazwa-e-Hind”, which shattered miserably. 1971 war also resulted in disintegration of Pakistan, which forced Pakistan to rethink its strategy.

In 1989, the Soviets under constant attack from Mujahedeen’s decided to leave Afghanistan. Pakistan saw this, as defeat of a super power, by the hands of unorganized army provoked by religious sentiments. In 1990’s Pakistan started to use same strategy and started pushing Islamic radicals into Kashmir valley. Once these armed Mujahedeen’s were ineffective against Indian Army, Pakistan started influencing local Muslims to take up arms against India.  

Pakistan is also home to more than hundred terrorist organizations and their training camps. Pakistan also provides intelligence and funding to carry out attacks against India. Pakistan also provides shelter to many terrorists wanted by Indian agencies. So why is India still silent?

What has India done to curb Terrorism?

India deployed its Army in Kashmir to fight armed Mujahedeen’s and was successful in pushing the armed militants out of its soil. But, still terrorism in Kashmir is an issue that has not been resolved for more than 25 years now. Pakistan is still able to infuse violence into Kashmir valley and even carries out terrorist attacks in other parts of India.

India’s strategy in dealing with terrorism has been defensive rather than offensive. India just eliminates those terrorists who try to enter our soil. But lately, this policy seems to have lost its credibility among Indian citizens, who are now demanding a permanent solution to the situation. So why is our government unable to curb Pakistan on the issue of terrorism?

Does India lack political will?

India has always been lenient towards Pakistan, despite having all proofs and witnesses, India has never acted strongly against Pakistan. In 2001, after terrorist attack on Indian Parliament, government decided to launch a massive retaliation against Pakistan. But before India could launch an attack on Pakistan, India had to drop the plan due to global pressure.

Be it lack of Political will or lack of powerful government, India has never sought to solve the issue of terrorism permanently. All actions are focused on fixing the current problem rather than working on eliminating the cause. Many terrorist attacks have taken place in India, numerous cases have been registered against perpetuators, but most of them are of no use. Hafiz Saeed, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, Dawood Ibrahim and many others are living freely in Pakistan.

What Options do India has?

In 2014 elections, India elected a full majority government, people saw huge hopes in Mr. Narendra Modi. Dealing Pakistan with an iron hand was also one of his electoral promises. But till now it seemed as if after joining the office Mr. Modi, also seems to follow the old school way of just issuing dossiers and criticizing Pakistan. 

Sometimes people say that we should launch a full scale attack against Pakistan. If we have the capability to destroy Pakistan and its terror infrastructure then why do we wait? For that many experts argue that war is not the solution, any war takes away 10 years of development. But again the question is “Is development more important than lives of our soldiers”, who get martyred protecting our borders?

It is not that they are beyond our reach, it is that our government never really tried hard enough to get those who dared to challenge India. Our intelligence agencies always have know-how of location of all people working against India, but government has never given them free hand to intelligence agencies to eliminate our enemies.

Lately Mr. Modi reacted with surgical strike against Pakistan, causing heavy causality to Terrorists and their launching pads. But are such surgical strikes effective?

How effective are Surgical Strikes?

A surgical strike is a military attack which results in damage to the intended legitimate military target, and no or minimal collateral damage to surrounding structures, vehicles, buildings, or the general public infrastructure and utilities. If you have to win a chess match need to defeat the king, killing a pieces will not win you the game. Similarly, if you have to defeat terrorism you need to kill the head of the organisation.

If we go on war with Pakistan we can dismantle its structure, but that would cost us many lives of our soldiers. If we do more surgical strikes on these handlers, then it may seem as a better option as it will save innocent lives on both sides. Israel Mossad is the best example, it is a known that if you do something against Israel, then Mossad will search you and kill you wherever you hide. If we develop our secret services in similar manner, the number of attacks against India will decrease substantially. Surgical strikes also infuse a sense insecurity and fear among these terrorists even in their safe heavens. 

India has the structure, our secret services are well spanned and well equipped, we just need a little push and we can kill the snake that is trying to bite our motherland.