The counter terrorism strategy of PM Modi is effective against Pakistani extremists.

At the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit on November 4, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that there was a time when India used to seek global support after a major terror strike against Bharat but after 2014 it is the terrorist supporting country (Pakistan) that runs to global fora for support against Indian retaliation.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi
Prime Minister Narendra Modi
The remarks made by PM Modi were not a casual expression but he spelled out the new counter-terror doctrine of Bharat, which is that India will retaliate against the terror group responsible for strikes within or outside the country. The 2016 surgical strikes and 2019 Balakot strike by the Indian armed forces are visible expressions of the CT doctrine. Both these retaliations were planned well in advance with all the three services ready for both vertical and horizontal escalations across the borders. The role of Army and Air Force in both the strikes is well documented, but what is not known is that Indian Scorpene hunter-killer submarines were already patrolling off the Makran coastline before the Balakot strike to counter any Pak navy threat from Karachi, Gwadar or Pasni bases.

While Pak Islamists tend to use the capture of Wing Commander Abhinandan in post-strike by Pakistan on February 27, 2019 as their victory, but what they conveniently forget is that Rawalpindi was scared to even touch the Indian pilot after India deployed batteries of Prithvi ballistic missiles in the Rajasthan sector and threatened to use them if any harm came to the MiG-21 commanding officer. Such was the Indian threat that then Pakistan Prime Minister announced the decision to free Abhinandan in the National Assembly the same day.

While Left-Liberal commentators may praise UPA government’s pusillanimity after the 26/11 Mumbai massacre as a shining example of Indian restraint, it was the then political leadership not the Indian armed forces that was paralyzed after 175 innocents were gunned to death and more than 300 maimed after the LeT-ISI joint strike in the financial capital of India. That the UPA government chose not to retaliate ensured that India was hit by terrorists in 2010 in Pune and again in Mumbai in 2011. Even today the victims of 26/11 are awaiting closure of their misfortune as the government of that time chose to mix politics with terror.

The retaliation by the Modi government across Occupied Kashmir in 2016 and in Balakot in Manshera district in Khyber-Paktunkhwa (KPK) in 2019 has ensured that Pakistan based terrorist groups think 10 times before even striking in Indian hinterland. It is to the credit of the decisive political leadership, the security forces and the intelligence that Bharat has been able to prevent any major terror strike since Pulwama in 2019. The overt and covert retaliation against Pakistan based terrorist groups has had a deterrent effect with India rejecting the nuclear flashpoint theory parroted by the west trained think-tank experts in a bid to deter retaliation by the Indian military against nuclear armed Pakistan.

One must remember that it was due to lethal mixture of politics with terror by the UPA regime that gave Pakistan a free pass to strike in India between 2004-2011 through Indian Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist groups with as many as 500 innocents being killed in a spate of bombings all over the country. And every time, India sought support from the west against Pakistan, it was advised restraint with mere words of condemnation of the attack, not the country behind the strike. The role of the UN in getting justice for Indian victims is not even worth talking about.

Even though Pakistan is currently reeling under economic and political crisis, the jihadists are alive and kicking under various brand names with mayhem in Jammu and Kashmir and hinterland India still on their agenda. But their leaders have been forced to take shelter in safe houses of Pakistani deep state due to fear of Indian overt and covert retaliation. This is a positive outcome of Modi’s counter-terror doctrine.