Lock, Stock And No Smoking Barrel

There is no perceivable evidence of India’s covert operation across the LoC, precisely because it was what our special forces intended. THE WEEK brings you exclusive details about what happened before, during and after those crucial four hours when our men were out avenging Uri.

- Namrata Biji Ahuja And Ajit K. Dubey

There was no surgical strike. What the Indian Army did to seven Pakistan Army-guarded terrorist launch pads across the Line of Control was a covert commando operation. An eminently successful one at that.

A surgical strike, says the Macmillan Dictionary, is “a military attack, especially by air, that is designed to destroy something specific and to avoid wider damage”. The common military understanding is that it is an attack carried out without warning and intended to deal only with a specific target. Such operations are quick and covert, but the result is left open for the world to see. The classic example is Israel’s air raid on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981.

What the Indian Army did on the night of September 28-29 was a slow and laborious operation, which had troops creeping, climb- ing and crawling across the LoC and across two kilometres of rugged terrain, avoiding stepping on land-mines or alerting village dogs, reaching largely undefended targets, catching the enemy off-guard, killing him and destroying his camp in the dark. No photos sent, no bodies carried back, no trophies. But they did it.

As much was conceded, though inadvertently, by Air Marshal (retd) Shahzad Chaudhry of the Pakistan Air Force: “What India has done is an LoC violation. Not a surgical strike.”

The Indian Army had done it earlier, too (see graphics). Pointed out Lt Gen Hardev Singh Lidder, former chief of Integrated Defence Staff and veteran special forces officer: “We have had strikes earlier, but those were mostly local. This is the first time that strikes were carried out as a national policy.”