Counter-terrorism expert asks ruling party to stop playing polarisation in J&K

New Delhi, Feb 19: At a time when emotions are running high in India in the wake of the horrific terror attack in Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir on February 14, not all are convinced with the tit-for-tat narrative.

Counter-terrorism expert Ajai Sahni expressed his dissatisfaction over the way the Indian government has responded to the gruesome deaths of the CRPF jawans in an interview with The Quint. He has event said that "we haven't learnt any lessons from the past".

Sahni, also an author, said India has been using vocabulary like "cowardly" and "dastardly" against the terror attacks over the past three decades and asked if it could not do enough to change its vocabulary, then how could one expect it to alter its policy of "knee-jerk reactions"?

Sahni even advised the Indian government to stop "polarisation" and felt that the deterioration in the democratic politics in Jammu and Kashmir has been detrimental for the security situation in the sensitive state. According to him, the regular pitting of Hindu Jammu against Muslim Pakistan is a subset of the polarising politics that the ruling BJP plays.

"By 2012, we had reached a comfortable level in J&K. There was a balance between counter-terrorism action and democratic processes. Security agencies were successful in eliminating terrorists using intelligence inputs from the people of Kashmir. The people of Kashmir are also tired of the situation. They want to be treated with respect. We must narrowly target terrorists and terrorists only," Sahni said in the interview.

Sahni criticised the government's move of withdrawing security cover to some of the separatist leaders, calling it as a "childish, petty and meaningless move."

He also said that a strategic response to terrorism becomes feasible only when one has the capacity, adding that no such capacity building has happened in this government's time even though the security systems were weakened under the earlier ones.

He also cautioned saying escalation in terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir is "inevitable" irrespective of retaliatory strikes.