IAF’s cross-LOC strikes have left Pakistan “confused”: former foreign secretary

Pakistan has been left “confused” and is still contemplating its retaliatory options to the cross-LoC raids carried out by the Indian Air Force (IAF) jets in the early hours of Tuesday morning, said former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal.

“While their military is trying to downplay the air raids on their terror camps, the statements coming from their political establishment are of a more hawkish nature,” said the former top diplomat.

Sibal said that going for an all-out retaliation was a risky proposition for Pakistan, as any aggression towards the Indian armed forces or Indian civilian targets would be seen as provocation for war.

“The IAF attacked their terror camps. We don’t have any terror camps on our side of the LoC. Their only retaliation could be towards our Army,” he said.

The comments by the former foreign secretary came as Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan warned that the country would respond to India’s pre-dawn raids at a “time and place of its choosing.”

Major General Asif Ghafoor, the spokesperson for Pakistan’s armed forces, had in the morning claimed that Indian jets were forced to beat a hasty retreat after crossing the LoC, in the wake of Pakistan Air Force scrambling its fighter jets. Later on, Pakistan’s foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi issued a statement saying that Pakistan reserved the “right to retaliate.”

Ghafoor’s was one of the first reactions to the IAF strikes on the “largest” camp of banned United Nations outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) in Balkot, located in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.

Confirming the air raids in the morning, India’s foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale told reporters that India’s strikes were “pre-emptive” and “non-military” in nature.

“In an intelligence led operation in the early hours of today, India struck the biggest training camp of JeM in Balakot. In this operation, a very large number of JeM terrorists, trainers, senior commanders and groups of jihadis who were being trained for fidayeen action were eliminated. This facility at Balakot was headed by Maulana Yousuf Azhar, the brother-in-law of Masood Azhar,” said Gokhale.

Defence analyst and former Indian Army officer Colonel (retd) Jaibans Singh said that the IAF raids shouldn’t be seen as a “tit-for-tat” reaction to the Pulwama terrorist attack.

“Pakistan needs to take heed of the emerging fact that India will no longer tolerate terrorist activity directed against her from Pakistani territory. The possibility of all such terrorist camps detected near to the Line of Control is now open,” he said.