India & Pakistan Ceasefire Violations

[Flintlock]

I will tell you where is the pakistani version. We don't cry like babies StealthA should goto sailkot Sector and just stand at the border in side Pakistan he will find out in about 10 sec is he going up or is he going down and this happens every day. If we start complaining or nagging about it news paper will be filled with complaints and photos of dead Pakistani men. Army and civilians.

Here are some more complaints...


Firing at LoC; Indian soldier killed

Press Trust of India
Jammu, May 19, 2008

An Indian soldier was killed by gunfire from Pakistan across the Line of Control (LoC) in Krishna Ghati sector in Poonch district of Jammu and Kashmir on Monday, army sources said.

The incident came on the eve of foreign secretary and foreign minister level talks in Islamabad on India-Pakistan relations.

The soldier belonging to Gorkha Rifles was killed when bullets were fired from across the LoC in Krishna Ghat, about 200 km north of Jammu, the sources said. The LoC is the effective border between India and Pakistan in much of Jammu and Kashmir.

Officially, the army neither confirmed nor denied the incident.

This is third incident of firing from the area of Kashmir under Pakistani control this month. On May 8, Pakistani Rangers had fired from across the border, facilitating infiltration in the Samba sector. On May 14, there was firing from across the border in Tangdhar in the Kashmir valley.

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What I can understand from this, is that the current Pak govt. has little or no control over the army, which is trying its damdest to sabotage the talks.

 

[Myth_buster_1]

its just hilarious to know that how 4-7 militants can cause havoc for 200,000 thousand hindu armed forces!

 

[Flintlock]

its just hilarious to know that how 4-7 militants can cause havoc for 200,000 thousand hindu armed forces!

Rrrright...

 

[IceCold]

What I can understand from this, is that the current Pak govt. has little or no control over the army, which is trying its damdest to sabotage the talks.

What got you to this conclusion? Your army did not confirmed that this happened. And besides it not that PA wants to sabotage the talks, the same can be said about the hardliners on your side of the border as well. Remember that indian foreign sec is coming to pakistan and someone just does not want the talks to go forward, and that someone is certainly not from our side, this much i can gurrantee.

 

[Flintlock]

What got you to this conclusion? Your army did not confirmed that this happened. And besides it not that PA wants to sabotage the talks, the same can be said about the hardliners on your side of the border as well. Remember that indian foreign sec is coming to pakistan and someone just does not want the talks to go forward, and that someone is certainly not from our side, this much i can gurrantee.

Which hardliners? BJP? The BJP isn't in power friend.

Your government is following one path, and the army is doing the exact opposite.

What is the most logical conclusion? The two aren't listening to each other.

Besides, it is an established fact that the Pak Army and ISI regulary acts independenly of the civilian government. Don't tell me that you have no clue about these realities.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Stealth:

The army under Musharraf reduced the level of LOC violence and reduction in infiltration, so I am not certain that suggesting that "the Army isn't under control" makes sense.

The current COAS can hardly be described as a "hardliner" - and at this point there is nothing to suggest that all of a sudden the Army just decided to start taking pot shots at the Indians. Could this have been militants again?

I know that Salim has expressed his suspicion that this might be being done to "distract the masses from economic hardship", but incidents on the LOC are closely watched by the likes of us defense buffs, not the average person on the street trying to feed his family.

The only way one could "distract" them were if there was an incident of the scale of Kargil or larger, and even then the economic situation would only get worse, and the party in power would have to deal with that worse situation - so I don't see any advantage the political parties could have doing that.

The answer probably is that with the onset of spring, infiltration is going up, and the GoP is distracted with the peace deals in FATA and the judiciary issue and some of these banned groups have taken advantage of the situation to reorganize.

With regards to the ISI, Musharraf started the "purge" in the ISI - and under Kiyani that organization was responsible for uncovering fundamentalists within the Military attempting to assassinate Musharraf.

The current head of the ISI (Nadeem Taj) is a Musharraf confidante and was appointed by him, and given Musharaf's policy towards India, I am highly skeptical that the ISI is working at cross purposes to the the GoP.

Remember that we just had 4 soldiers, out of 13 total, killed in a suicide explosion. There is a limit to how much protection or reduction in infiltration can be realistically accomplished.

 

[vish]

AM could it be possible that some of the Army's lower level and middle level personnel are sympathetic toward the infiltrators?

 

[Muradk]

We also have a serious problem and that should be taken into account , when ever there is a marriage/ Shadi, some one have a baby or some other function they take there AK-47 and start firing tracers, That tracer has a 2 to 3 mile range and as fast as it goes up it come down the same way. And quite a few times Indian soldiers have died this way. haan I know that sound bad but instead of pointing the gun on the other side of the town the point is toward the Indians which tends to create problems.

 

[Energon]

We also have a serious problem and that should be taken into account , when ever there is a marriage/ Shadi, some one have a baby or some other function they take there AK-47 and start firing tracers, That tracer has a 2 to 3 mile range and as fast as it goes up it come down the same way. And quite a few times Indian soldiers have died this way. haan I know that sound bad but instead of pointing the gun on the other side of the town the point is toward the Indians which tends to create problems.

Oh yea, that could certainly lead to a dangerous misunderstanding. People should certainly be prohibited from just firing in the air like that.

 

[Flintlock]

Oh yea, that could certainly lead to a dangerous misunderstanding. People should certainly be prohibited from just firing in the air like that.

I had no idea that there were so many weddings at the LOC...lol

 

[Muradk]

I had no idea that there were so many weddings at the LOC...lol

Do you know how big the LOC is I mean FROM pakistan TO INDIA the distance between it. In some places the forces both Indian and pakistan are so close that they actually keep inviting each other for dinner and play cards all night long. Trust me I didn't belive it my self my brother was commanading and he took me to met them and all night long we played cards and they had drinks too thanks to the Indians I remember it was beer some thing called I think isher I admit my first time being in the air force Liquor was free and I dont drink but that day my brother said you will effend them just take a few sips
( the reason we lost all the card games )

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

( the reason we lost all the card games )

Good one sir!

Here is an article from the HIndustan Times, that discusses the shift in Pakistan's position - both polity and military.

In addition, I would like to point out an article that Fatman posted a few months ago (the article itself was dated 2006), in which a senior Army officer was discussing the PA's plans for modernization, and it was quite clearly mentioned that the PA considered terrorism to be a lrger threat than India - which is an earthshaking shift in position in the context of Indo-pak relations.

That opinion has since been mentioned over and over again by various Military officials. This is not to say that the military is not vary of India's intentions, but that the "inherent pathological hatred for India", that so many Indian commentators attribute to the Pakistani establishment, specifically the Army, is nothing more than a bogeyman created to dehumanize Pakistan.

Pak wants to keep mending fences with India​

Amit Baruah , Hindustan Times
Email Author
Islamabad, May 19, 2008

As External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee prepares to head for Islamabad, he will find that the civilian government headed by Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani wants to maintain the trend of building positive relations with India.

Analysts in Lahore and Islamabad believe that Gilani’s government might well use its own language in pursuing relations with India, but both the PPP and the PML (N) have displayed a positive attitude towards New Delhi.

“Pakistan wants to open up to capital inflows from India,” Daily Times consulting editor Khaled Ahmed told HT on Sunday, echoing the view expressed by noted Pakistani economists Asad Saeed and Akmal Hussain, a day before on Dawn News.

Anybody familiar with India-Pakistan relations cannot but note that these ideas are radical departures from past establishment thinking and represent fresh thinking on what Islamabad and New Delhi can do together. In the past, such
ideas could not have been expressed publicly in Pakistan.

“India will have to trust Pakistan,” Ahmed said two days before Mukherjee reviews the state of the composite dialogue with his new counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi.

On Tuesday, Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon will hold talks with his counterpart, Salman Bashir. “Pakistan’s Army is no longer obsessed with India. It believes that the threat to Pakistan is internal and not from India. The worldview of our establishment has changed,” Ahmed argued. On Gilani describing Pervez Musharraf’s out-of-the-box thinking on Kashmir as “half-baked ideas”, the veteran journalist claimed that the civilian government wanted to go beyond Musharraf’s ideas.
“This is basically a review meeting. Both sides seem determined to push the process of dialogue forward,” a retired Pakistani diplomat, who preferred anonymity, told this writer.

“There has been enough discussion. India and Pakistan need to take some concrete steps to push the peace process along,” he said, pointing out that Sir Creek and Siachen were areas where the two countries need to clinch agreements.

At the same time, there is awareness in Pakistan that India is headed towards elections in the next few months and the UPA government could be reluctant in pushing for a settlement on a critical question such as Siachen.
Pak wants to keep mending fences with India- Hindustan Times

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

On a related note to Murad's point about the proximity of the civilian population to the LOC - during the days of regular LoC firing, there were always reports of civilians being shot, houses catching fire, and being destroyed during the exchanges (On the Pakistani side).

 

[Flintlock]

In any case, I am quite sure the troops are capable of making out the difference between random firing at a wedding, and sustained cover-fire to aid infiltration.

I am quoting from a recent article in TOI:

India is picking up the threads of a composite dialogue with Pakistan under a new civilian government. But the initiative has been beset by a resumption of terror attacks, infiltration in J&K and ceasefire breaches on the LoC.

Infiltration, in fact, is literally back with a bang and is expected to figure in the Indian side's agenda in Islamabad. What has surprised officials here is the sheer brazenness of ongoing infiltration attempts, reminiscent of the early 2000s. While mechanisms have been set up to address complaints, India has found that Pakistan's denials have the old ring of familiarity to them.

"With the new civilian government in Pakistan still trying to find its feet, the Pakistan army could also be reasserting that it will lay down the line vis-a-vis India as far as Kashmir is concerned," said a senior officer.

"Hardline elements in Pakistan army and ISI as well as militant outfits obviously do not want the Indo-Pak peace process to make any progress. Moreover, General Pervez Kayani (Pakistan army chief) himself recently spoke of his commitment to the 'Kashmir cause'," he added.

Source: LoC rocked by heavy firing again, 1 dead-India-The Times of India

Also from Dawn...

NEW DELHI, May 19: India has proposed a flag meeting with Pakistani commanders amid reports that troops from across the Line of Control opened “unprovoked firing” on an Indian post, killing a solider in the Poonch sector of Jammu and Kashmir, reports said.

“We have called for a flag meeting of local commanders,” an army spokesman said in New Delhi.

The meeting is being called after reported firing from across the LoC that killed Naik Yashwant Singh of Gorkha Rifles on the Dhip post.

This is the second time India has called for flag meeting of commanders within a week to lodge a protest against alleged violation of the ceasefire agreement.

The firing incidents have come as the valley starts the run up to state polls due later this year.

Source: India seeks flag meeting amid firing allegations -DAWN - Top Stories; May 20, 2008

 

[Muradk]

Kashmir is a total different place but sailkot is one plce where civilians do get hurt average is 12 a month.