Defence Minister A.K. Antony has visited forward areas in J&K and addressed a high power security review meeting attended by the army top brass and the Chief Minister, Deputy Chief Minister and the heads of security agencies. In terms of security review this could be called a very significant meet. Defence Minister’s visit has taken place after a gap of 18 months. The main purpose of the visit was to apprise himself of the ground situation in the State. He also visited forward areas along the LoC and was briefed by the commanders.
While addressing a joint security review meeting at Srinagar, the Defence Minister said that efforts had to be made to reduce the visibility of the Armed Forces as much as possible without compromising security. This is a major statement or what may be called policy matter. In view of the two decade-long militancy in J&K, the State Government had to call in the army to assist the Government in fighting the menace of armed insurgency sponsored and supported from outside the borders of our state. Obviously on finding the magnitude of infiltration, the agenda of the enemy and the plans it had drawn to derail administration in the State and to destabilize peace, the army took all preventive measures it felt necessary to take. Thus the quantum of presence of armed forces in the State, the logistics of anti-terror operations, and the mechanism of operative part, everything had to be streamlined and put in place. A joint command of civilian and military administrative outfit had to be created to coordinate anti-terrorism policy and operation. It has to be remembered that there is a long LoC from Siachin glacier down in the South to Samba district that had to be taken into security cover. This is mostly mountainous track and there are numerous points from where infiltration has been taking place. As such the job before our security forces was stupendous.
Our jawans in the army, our security personnel and the state police have made many valuable sacrifices but made it impossible for the enemy to achieve its objective of disrupting peace in the State. Today the situation is far better and improved. Army has upgraded the security of LoC to the extent that it is denying the infiltrators chances of carrying on their nefarious designs. Many of the infiltrators have been liquidated before they could succeed in sneaking in. Today J&K is a far more improved place in terms of security. Credit goes to the defence and security forces.
Presence of army is all right in a disturbed state because it is the strong deterrent to acts of terrorism. But when the army has achieved maximum of its objective of restoring peace, it no more feels necessary to be visible to the people in overtly manner. This is what the defence minister precisely meant to say. The State Chief Minister has said that the army would be withdrawn once the Government is satisfied that normalcy has been maximally restored. In the past the army and the State Government had minor divergence of opinion in regard to certain security measures that would ask for withdrawal of special powers of the army or of disturbed areas in the process. Over the time, now it appears that the two sides are converging on an agreed approach to the issue. It has to be remembered that the Army would be the happiest to go back to the barracks satisfied that it has performed the job assigned to it. In the same way the State Government would be happy to see that, having done its job of assisting the civilian government restore normalcy, the army is returning to the barracks. The State Government has many advantages if the visibility of the army is reduced to minimum.
This is one side of the picture. The other side is that the Defence Minister has been apprised of the fact that terrorist training camps on the other side and all along the LoC are intact. A large number of terrorists are waiting in those camps to seize any opportunity of sneaking into this side of the line and boosting the residual militancy cadres operating in some places in the State. However the Defence Minister was given assurance by the field commanders that no chance would be given for infiltration. The main theme of the Defence Minister’s address to the joint review meeting was that coordination among all security actors was of paramount importance. “Enemies from across the border will continue their efforts. However, if the security and intelligence agencies understand each other better, the efforts of the enemies will not succeed,” Antony told the review meeting.
The Defence Minister was appreciative of the State Government and conveyed to the Chief Minister that New Delhi would support the efforts of the State Government to maintain peace and proceed with developmental projects. His assurance that the rent of the private land occupied by the army would be increased and the process had been started brings solace to the land owners.
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