Yes, most of the world knows those "various reasons" pretty well.
Fact is the elders that were inconvenient to you were removed. Permanently.
Irrelevant to the point I was making.
No different to what the IA fights every day in Kashmir. In dense urban pockets as well as the rural hamlets in the valley. You seem to have very little idea about counter insurgency operations in India. Which is fine. Not interested in fighting you on whose operations are tougher and better executed, seeing as these are our own people. Its something that needs to be done. And while we prefer the rapier, you obviously prefer a sledgehammer.
It is very different from what the IA 'fights every day in Kashmir'. The IA's efforts in Kashmir (now and over the past few decades) are more along the lines of the PA & civilian law enforcement actions in Swat AFTER the military operation was over and the local residents were returned and rehabilitated. The military and local law enforcement actions in Swat since the military op was over are now overwhelmingly along the lines of what the IA has been doing in Kashmir - almost no airstrikes or artillery used (since civilians have returned), using the 'rapier' so to speak. The IA has never really engaged in the kind of overall counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism campaign that Pakistan is engaged in FATA given the unique status of FATA (and other reasons mentioned in my previous post), and therefore a direct comparison of Pakistan's North Waziristan Operation with India's COIN campaign in Kashmir cannot be made.
The Golden Temple complex is a mini city. Come and visit it someday to know what a complex it is. And it was fortified and escape routes and hidden entrances and bunkers and exits built in well in time, over the preceding years. You seem to think it was the same as Lal Masjid. It was nowhere close.
Even as a 'mini city' the GT is still a single complex, just on a larger scale than the Lal Masjid, which is why the approaches to the two were similar and why the comparison of the Indian raid on the GT is better made with Pakistani operations at the Lal Masjid. The GT is in no way comparable to the massive operation against terrorists and their facilitators across
several actual cities in a vast region that has not had any State control since it became part of Pakistan.
They are terrorists - whether you blow their head off with an assault rifle or blow them up with an artillery or airstrike, the end result is the same - they are dead. There is no 'humane' weapon - they all kill.
There are very very few nations on earth which use fighter planes, helo gunships, missiles, and heavy artillery against their own people. Both historically and in recent times.
And those countries usually do not stop there. Chemical and Biological agents come next. Once you de-humanise the other side to the extent you can wield your full military weight against it, the gloves come off. From both sides. As was seen recently sadly.
The overwhelming majority of the local civilian population (and probably many terrorists who disguised themselves as civilians) has been evacuated. Tens of thousands even crossed into Afghanistan because the local terrorist war-lord Gul Bahadur demanded they not use Pakistani IDP camps. Despite Gul's threats to the locals, almost a million IDP's have been registered and several hundred thousand are using Pakistani government IDP shelters. The overwhelming majority of people now left are the terrorists and their facilitators, who are being targeted by ground troops, artillery and airstrikes, and I have yet to see a good reason from you or
@Samandri why these terrorists should not be targeted by artillery and airstrikes given the minimal to zero chance of civilian casualties.
Can you order hostages to flee their captors? Get serious man.
Tens of thousands of residents from NW are in IDP camps in Afghanistan, while almost a million are residing in IDP camps in Pakistan, so yes, I am serious and the overwhelming majority of 'hostages' have indeed 'fled their captors' - the facts and numbers on the ground bear that out.
What is ludicrous is you trying to defend a state using its military sledgehammer against its own people. Ludicrous and quite pathetic as well actually.
Again, a terrorist shot in the head with a gun is just as dead as a terrorist killed in an artillery or airstrike. With the overwhelming majority of the population evacuated, the risk of civilian casualties in such strikes is essentially zero. You have offered no rational reason as to why the military should not use artillery and airstrikes to kill these TTP terrorists given that low to no risk of civilian casualties.
