India’s Surgical Strike in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK)

On September 18th, 2016 in the Jammu and Kashmir’s town of Uri, four terrorists (suspected from the militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed) who were heavily armed ambushed attacked the Army base. This high-profile fidayeen attack caused the death of 19 Indian soldiers and four terrorists including non-fatal injuries to about 30 people. This attack sent waves of anger throughout the nations towards the neighbouring nation of Pakistan that has been suspected of housing many terrorist groups and cells.

Surgical Strike summary

• After this horrific attack Indian government tried going the diplomatic way by summoning Pakistan’s high commissioner Abdul Basit to India on 21st September and was given a letter detailing the involvement of his nation in the attack. The clear answer of this line of questioning was answered by the radical speech by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif at the United Nations General Assembly.
• After exhausting the diplomatic avenue India’s PM Narendra Modi finally decided on a surgical strike that is a military attack on a legitimate military target with minimal or no collateral damage.
• And finally, 11 days after Uri attack, India claimed to have carried out surgical strikes on the terror launch pads at LoC (Line of Control).

How the Surgical Strike was carried out

• After the decision of surgical strikes were made all the communications between operational planners like National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, Army chief General Dalbir Singh etc. were made either in person or through highly secured lines. This was done in order to prevent a leak thereby causing the failure of the mission not to mention the loss of life.
• Special Forces troops from the 1, 4 and 9 parachute were put at the army chief’s disposal to prepare for the action. The area where they were to be dropped was monitored through satellite but as Pakistan’s radars were activated the special force squads wore night vision equipment.
• The Special Forces squads were equipped with various ammunitions like high explosive grenades, shoulder-fired missiles. AK-47 assault rifles etc. and the teams were divided into 30 men each with a specific target to attack.
• And finally, 10 days after Uri attack in September, Special Forces squads went across the LoC towards their given target. Though no resistance was met for the Indian soldiers they were well prepared with machine guns and mortar on the Indian side to demolish any form of resistance or counter attack.
• The mission was a success as the Indian Special Force Squads were able to destroy 6 terrorist cells or launch pads and kill at least 50 terrorists at the various targeted location.
• This planned attack was quite an avenging act for the Uri attack but more than that this was an attack on terrorism in its own way violence.

This whole surgical attack might have been kept top secret but after the mission was complete all the information of the attack were made public, but the video of the attack is yet to be made public. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has to decide whether to release the video of surgical strike conducted by the Indian Army across the Line of Control (LoC) in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK).

In the wake of the Uri attack, India also cancelled its partaking in the 19th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit to be held in November 2016 in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Responses for the surgical strike

This successful attack has elated the Indian citizens and has increased their pride for the Indian soldier as this is the first time India has been in the offence rather than defence in the fight against terrorism. But this surgical attack has raised the question of previous cross border attack by India; this can be seen in various countries newspapers like New York Times etc. And as it is to be expected Pakistan is infuriated by this attack as they have allegedly lost five of their soldiers.