Resumption of Balakot camp’s Activities

Why in news?

According to official sources terrorist camp in Balakot has begun functioning again.

What is the brief account on Balakot terrorist camp?

• The 2019 Balakot airstrike was conducted by India in February 26.
• Indian warplanes crossed the de facto border in the disputed region of Kashmir, and dropped bombs in the vicinity of the town of Balakot in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan.
• India, confirmed the airstrike characterized it to be a preemptive strike directed against a terrorist training camp, and causing the deaths of a "large number" of terrorists.
• India also claimed to have taken out about 300 terrorists being trained there.
• That action is seen as a punitive response for the Pulwama attack which killed 40 CRPF personnel earlier that month.
• The airstrikes were the first time since the India-Pakistan war of 1971 that warplanes of either country crossed the Line of Control and also since both states have become nuclear powers.

What are the recent findings on Balakot terrorist camp?

• Army chief Bipin Rawat’s reveled that the terrorist camp in Balakot has begun functioning again is a deeply worrying development on several counts.
• Though the Army Chief paraded this information on resumption of Balakot camp’s activities as yet more conclusive proof that the air force strike had put that terrorist camp out of business for the intervening months, it really comes across as an action that has not had any of the intended effects the planners had hoped for, not one. Indeed, it seems to have had the opposite effect.
• Gen. Rawat said that there were 500 terrorists ready to infiltrate into Kashmir, and that to counter those attempts the Army had “thickened” its presence along the Line of Control.
• This is possibly in addition to the troops that were sent into Jammu and Kashmir to strengthen the security grid ahead of the moves on Article 370 and Article 35A, after which the State has been in a lockdown.

What are the concerns created by recent findings?

• Things that have been turned around in less than seven months opens the door to more questions about the much-touted efficacy of the strike as well.
• Evidently, the Jaish-e-Mohammed, though a banned entity, continues to operate with impunity.
• This underlines the reality that replenishing the numbers of terrorists who are taken out of reckoning is not a challenge for Pakistan’s establishment.
• Certainly, the new development in J&K does not increase the Indian people’s confidence that the Balakot strike has somehow frightened terrorists and their patrons in Pakistan into demoralized disarray.
• The longer the clampdown lasts, the longer the soldiers remain deployed on trigger fingers, the more the accretion of belligerence continues on either side of the LoC.

Source: The Hindu