ISLAMABAD: The newly appointed Defence Secretary, retired Lt Gen Zameer Uddin, told a joint panel of the Senate on Thursday that India had moved an additional division of army to the Line of Control (LoC) and brought a squadron of Russia-made SU-35 multi-role fighter jets to a forward base.

He told a joint meeting of the Senate’s standing committees on defence and foreign affairs that India had also relocated some other contingents from the areas of their peacetime deployment.

The defence secretary and Foreign Affairs Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry gave a briefing to the in-camera session of the committees on the situation prevailing along the border with India and Afghanistan and Pakistan’s defence preparedness. Nuzhat Sadiq and Mushahid Hussain Sayed, who co-chaired the meeting, told journalists that the three services of the country had been put on high alert and airbases had been activated.

They said any attempt to strike would be violation of the United Nations charter and international law. Pakistan’s armed forces are fully prepared to give a telling response in case aggression is imposed.

Since the Uri incident, they said, India had committed 58 ceasefire violations at the LoC. “The number of such violations over the past one year is 103 and the number of violations on the Afghan border during a year comes to 203.”

Lt Gen Zameer Uddin also talked about Indian claims of conducting a surgical strike across the LoC. “Physically crossing the border and conducting a physical attack are two components of a surgical strike and both of them are missing in this case.”

He said that the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan had also confirmed that it did not observe such firing or surgical strike, and that there was no evidence of it.

“Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had taken the hype to a level that he had to fabricate the tale of a so-called surgical strike,” Mr Sayed said. “He [Mr Modi] was criticised in India over the episode and a prominent writer described it as a diplomatic disaster.” The meeting passed a unanimous resolution condemning recent aggressive statements of the Indian prime minister in which he had attributed terrorism to Pakistan. The resolution rejected Indian propaganda of a surgical strike and asserted that such tactics could not distract attention from the atrocities being committed in held Kashmir.

The meeting commended the world leaders for not supporting India’s propaganda during the recent BRICS summit in Goa. It took notice of Mr Modi’s statement about Israeli oppression in Palestine and hinting at a similar attitude to Kashmir.

The briefing was followed by questions from members of the two committees.

They were told that Pakistan shared with India 1,094km of international border, 193km of working boundary (between Pakistan and held Kashmir) and 767.67km of the LoC (between Azad Jammu and Kashmir and held Kashmir).

As many as 598 gates have been installed at the international border and 179 at the working boundary.

To avoid a knee-jerk reaction from either side, a hotline link exists between the directors general military operations (DGMOs) of Pakistan and India. The framework of border management between the two countries is based upon the border ground rules of 1960.

The meeting was told that Pakistan had a highly porous 2611-km-long border with Afghanistan, which posed a major challenge in checking flow of terrorists, insurgents, drug traffickers and smugglers. In addition to the routes serving as traditional crossing points — Torkham, Chaman, Ghulam Khan and Angoor Adda — there are other crossing routes across the border.

According to a DGMO report, 78 routes are used to cross the border, 16 frequently and 62 non-frequently. If some other small border crossing points are taken into account, the total number comes to around 100. These are prone to cross-border movement of militants, terrorists and drugs/arms smugglers. Therefore there is a need for effective border management.

The meeting was informed that 86 incidents of cross-border violations from Afghan territory had taken place since the commencement of the Operation Khyber III in mid August. Two serious cross-border firing incidents occurred over the past week.

It was told that the government remained committed to implementing border management policy along all border crossing points to ensure that cross-border movement between Pakistan and Afghanistan was fully documented. Matters relating to border management will be discussed with Kabul in a forthcoming meeting of a joint technical working group, being scheduled in Kabul in the next few days.

Published in Dawn, October 21st, 2016