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India: No sitting on the
fence
By Sudha Ramachandran
The announcement of a ceasefire along the
India-Pakistan international border, the Line of Control
(LoC) in Kashmir and the Actual Ground Position Line
(AGPL) in the Siachen has led to a perceptible change in
the region. The guns have been silent since midnight on
Tuesday, November 24. Instead of exchanging fire, Indian
and Pakistani soldiers are reported to have exchanged
sweets at several posts along the border.
Optimism notwithstanding, India is viewing the
developments along its western front with caution. Few
in India believe that Pakistan will change its policy of
infiltrating terrorists into India. Consequently, India
is not taking any chances. Defense Minister George
Fernandes has stated categorically that Indian troops
would engage terrorists crossing the border into India.
The ceasefire, he said, was limited to the uniformed
forces of Pakistan and non-state actors violating the
sanctity of the border or indulging in violence in Jammu
and Kashmir (J&K) state would not be shown any
leniency.
Sources in the Indian Border Security
Force (BSF) told Asia Times Online that the security
forces are not lowering their guard. Nor are they going
to stop the fencing of the border and the LoC. India has
been fencing the border and the LoC in J&K to
counter infiltration. India's fencing of its frontier
with Pakistan is not new. In the late 1980s when India
was fighting terrorism in the state of Punjab, it began
fencing the international border with Pakistan in Punjab
in an attempt to stem the flow of weapons from across
the border.
India has constructed a fence along
the border in the states of Punjab and Rajasthan.
Encouraged by the success of the fence in these two
states in keeping out illegal intruders and smugglers
from Pakistan, India launched the fencing of the
frontier in Jammu and Kashmir. The India-Pakistan
frontier in Jammu and Kashmir consists of three sections
- the 198-kilometer long international border (which
Pakistan does not recognize as the international border
but refers to as the "working border"), the
778-kilometer long LoC and the 150-kilometer long AGPL.
Fencing in J&K was first attempted in 1994
but was stopped because of relentless Pakistani fire.
Fencing along the international border in Jammu began in
early 2001. Progress has been slow, as the BSF has had
to work under constant Pakistani shelling. Work on the
LoC started around May this year. The barrier is no
ordinary fence. Around 260 aggregate tons of cement,
iron pickets and steel wire are required to fence a
kilometer, writes Murali Krishnan in the Indian weekly
newsmagazine Outlook. A kilometer of fence costs between
Rs 2.5 million (US$55,000) and Rs 3 million depending on
the terrain, and the entire fencing project in J&K
is estimated to total around Rs 11 billion.
More
daunting then the monetary cost of the fence is the
physical challenge involved in erecting it. Travel and
transport to the site are not easy tasks and often
involve days of trekking. The fence runs through
difficult terrain, snaking across high mountains and
through thick forests and deep ravines. Fencing is not
possible in some areas where the topography is
particularly difficult for workers to overcome.
As well as this, the work has proceeded so far
in the shadow of shelling. Consequently, fencing work
has moved at a snail's pace. In certain sections,
workers have toiled through the night to avoid enemy
fire. The construction of the fence has evoked sharp
criticism in Pakistan. The Pakistani government has
accused India of violating the United Nations Charter
and the ceasefire agreement. "The border in Jammu and
Kashmir remains un-demarcated. It is a working boundary
and a ceasefire line," said Major General Shaukat
Sultan, Pakistan's military spokesperson. "Any measure
to alter the status of these and any attempt to erect a
new impediment is a direct violation of international
commitments, and Pakistan opposes it. Border fencing is
not allowed."
Some analysts in Pakistan have
also sought to draw parallels between India's fencing
along its western front and Israel's construction of the
"security wall" in the West Bank. However, their
arguments reveal the rather superficial understanding of
the two fences. The Israeli fence is a 25-foot-high
barbed wire and concrete structure that supposedly runs
along its border with the West Bank. Israel describes it
as a barrier to keep Palestinian militants from entering
Israel by limiting points of entry and exit into Israel.
The Israeli fence is not being built on or even near
Israel's border with the West Bank. Rather, it makes
deep inroads into Palestinian land. Middle East analyst
Catherine Cook points out in an article on the Middle
East Research and Information Project website that
"because the wall is located inside the West Bank, [it]
will incorporate most of the Israeli settlement
population and leave large areas of the West Bank under
Israeli control". The wall, she writes, "has more to do
with Israel's territorial ambitions".
But like
the Israeli security wall, the Indian fence is a barbed
wire and concrete structure. And like Israel's stated
objective for erecting the barrier, India, too, hopes to
prevent the entry of militants from Pakistan into India.
But there end the similarities, for unlike the
Israeli fence, India's fence does not eat into Pakistani
land. Indeed, it does not run on the border. In fact,
the Indian fence runs well inside Indian territory.
While in some parts of Poonch (in Jammu) the fence is
almost on the LoC, at other points the fence is about 75
meters from the LoC inside Indian territory. In fact,
there are areas where the Indian fence runs even three
kilometers inside Indian territory. Unlike the Israeli
fence, points out an officer in the Indian army, terrain
not territorial ambitions determine where the Indian
fence lies.
The Indian fence along its western
frontier is part of a multi-tier security setup,
including sensors, thermal imagers and night-vision
devices. When completed, the fence will be electrified
in some sections where infiltration is particularly
high. While infiltration is said to have fallen in some
sectors where the fence has been erected already, there
have been cases where militants have managed to get
through after cutting the wire.
For optimists,
the India-Pakistan ceasefire could result in a
resolution of their conflicts. For realists living in
the shadow of shelling, the ceasefire - depending on how
long it lasts - could at least help fencing work move
faster.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Ltd.
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