If army cannot defend itself from a few Fidayeens, how can it protect the country?

There is something seriously wrong with the security at our army bases in J&K. What are our army generals doing? Some of them are certainly idiots, who do nothing but to drink cheap rum and let their brains rot. And there are others who are busy wheeling and dealing in New Delhi and securing plum assignments for themselves.

They have no concern for the lives of our Jawans and have very little capacity to guide and lead them. One has known many such dud heads who somehow survive in the army, in spite of their rank incompetence and stupidity. They sit on the heads of good men, making them as ineffective as themselves.

How can our army keep falling into the same trap time and again?

A few terrorists, wearing army fatigue, carrying AK 47s and a few hand grenades keep storming army units, killing our soldiers with impunity, engaging elite commandos for hours in gun fights, burning the camps and some times getting away with all this. What does it show? It shows that our great army has not yet worked out an effective deterrent to check the recurrence of such events. Who is supposed to be doing this job? Where are the army strategists? When are they going to get out of their drunken state and act?

It is very easy to cordon off large areas, conduct house-to-house searches, and nab a few inconsequential terrorists. The difficult task is to plan, strategize, equip, direct, and guide our army men to deal with the unconventional approach of militants. It is one thing for the terrorists to succeed in lobbing a grenade at a security check post or planting an IED on a bus, but storming an army camp is something quite different. It demonstrates our lax and indifferent approach to security. Even Fidayeens should not succeed in getting into our army camps. They should know that such an attempt will be futile and will not serve their cause, as they will be dead in their tracks, much before the periphery of the camp.

The Defense minister should have been concerned about this. However, since the killing of a few Indian soldiers is not big news any more, he is content to issue some standard statements and do nothing else about it.

This is the problem with this third rate government. It is a government that acts on big news and whatever is not in the headlines of the newspapers neither stirs the conscience nor the butts of these eunuchs.

We are told that we have a multi-layer security system in our army camps. This perhaps exists on paper. Or else it is designed thoughtlessly and indifferently like what we see at our airports. At Mumbai domestic airport for Indian Airlines we see a CRPF Jawan standing at the main entrance of the arrival lounge, right in the middle of the area, fortified by a few sand bags, looking around listlessly, his outdated 303 rifle resting comfortably on one of the sand bags. He does occasionally ask the people to stay away from his fortified post. He is a sitting duck for a terrorist. Whenever a Fidayeen band decides to enter the airport, they can do it without much problem. They will riddle the poor Jawan with the deadly bullets of their smart weapons, throw a few hand grenades in the waiting area, and can even manage to escape in the resultant confusion.

Now, did the officers who deployed that poor CRPF Jawan at the airport visualize this scenario? They did not. Because they don't take this seriously. May be, they still think that the presence of a soldier in uniform with a 303 rifle is an effective deterrent for terrorists.

Various ministries of this government have been making routine pronouncements about our security preparedness. Routine steps and routine deployments of our forces follow these. Everything is done as per the routine here.

The irony of the situation is that the terrorists too have started following a routine, which of course is different from that of the security forces. They too have started storming our army camps routinely. The Press too reports these incidents routinely. And the people? They have always been asked to live by the routine since their childhood. They too look at death of Indian soldiers and civilians as a routine occurrence now.  They get shaken up only when Americans die in terrorist attacks and then they line up the city streets for candle light vigils.