Sanjiv Krishan Sood

Cease fire violations (CFV) along the nearly 700km Line of Control (LC) with Pakistan have once again started with the ferocity matching that which existed before Balakot. An army soldier was killed in the last week of July in the Sundarbani sector. Indian Army thwarted a BAT (Border Action Team) attack by Special Service Group (SSG) of Pakistan in Keran Sector on August 3 reportedly killing five Pakistani intruders. Sudden spurt in the CFVs can be attributed to Pakistani attempts to exploit the last few weeks of summers to infiltrate militants before the passes close due to onset of winter and snowfall.

Repeated CFVs are a major problem faced by the security forces, constantly keeping them on their toes and disrupting normal life along the LC and International Border (IB) in the Jammu sector. While the troops are deployed in well-fortified bunkers along LC and the population density is much thinner, the situation along the 200km IB in Jammu is entirely different.

The villages are located very close to the border and are within the range of flat trajectory weapons like the medium machine guns and even rifles and light machine guns in some cases. CFVs cause loss of life among security forces, civilians and their cattle affecting agricultural produce. These also have severe psychological impact on young children living in the border area by disrupting their education and normal activities.

What are the causes of CFVs? There appears to be no cogent answer to this vexed question. India believes that Pakistani troops resort to unprovoked firing to facilitate infiltration of militants. This is true to a large extent. It will however be simplistic to assume that this is the only cause of violations.

Besides serving along the LC I had the opportunity of having commanded my unit at Samba — a 200km stretch of border in Jammu — which Pakistan treats as disputed border and equates its status with that of LC. Till about early 1990s, official communication called ‘Protest Notes’ by Pakistan used to refer to this stretch as ‘International Boundary’ or IB. Cleary, until then Pakistan did not regard the border in Samba sector as disputed.

They started referring to the border as ‘disputed’ when we started to construct the fence along it in mid-Nineties. Pakistan contented that Jammu being part of the J&K state was also part of the disputed territory and India had no right to construct the fence. The initial cause of firing along these borders thus appears to have a connection with our efforts to fence it and their objections to it. The intensity of firing continued to increase until 2003 when th