Who Moved My LoC?

Who Moved My LoC?

2.07 AM  - The General stirred in his sleep.  The recurring dream which he had been having almost every night for ages was coming to its now predictable usual end.  He was standing in the Lal Chowk in Srinagar and there were cheering crowds all around him shouting his name and hailing him as ‘The Liberator’. Soon there would  be a celebratory volley of shots from the AK47s and tracer bullets lighting the darkening sky above.  He, The General, had succeeded where the mighty generals and prime ministers of past had failed, Ayub, Yahya, Zia, Musharraf and even those upstarts Bhuttos – Zulfikar and Benazir. The glory would be his and his alone for having liberated Kashmir. From here Islamabad would be just a step away. Kashmir, Kashmiris and fidayeens who were around him at the moment would have to take care of themselves and each other. He would hardly be concerned  to what happened to these uncouth ruffians afterwards. True, they had their uses.  He would now be The Chief. That nincompoop of an incumbent had to go; maybe exiled to London like that wily old fox Mushy or better still far far away and rather permanently like those Bhuttos.  

But instead of the volley of shots which he had experienced everyday in his dream, the sound which penetrated The General’s ears was more like a telephone bell and one which continued to ring brazenly even after the General lifted the receiver and slammed it back vehemently.   Finally the General realized that the caller on the other side was not about to give up. He looked at his watch 2.09 AM. He did a rapid calculation; US was still on the daylight saving; it must be 4.09 PM in DC. About time for the Senate Committee to have gone through the day’s agenda.  It must be his mole in the entourage of US Secretary of State calling him. Maybe there was some news about a few more billions that those Americans had agreed to cough up to bolster his fight against the jihadis. The General chuckled. He had frankly lost count of the number of times he had managed to pull wool over the eyes of those gullible Yankees. 

It had become a routine now. Talk about new threats from Al Qaeda, report a couple of attacks from the Haquaanis, stage an ambush or two  in Afganistan by the Taliban and a few more billions were bound to come rolling in.   “Who was that Russian chap who predicted all that? Oh yes, Pavlov” mused the General.  Well, the things were getting a bit rough especially after The Sheik was ambushed in his  hiding place in Abbottabad right next to the Army base. It had taken a lot of ingenious explanations  by everyone to convince the Americans that they were innocent. Thank Allah it was managed somehow. True their funding had come down to a trickle but even a trickle can do wonders if it is a trickle from the US war chest.

Of course, these funds would be made good use of; some would no doubt find their way for the ‘non-state actors’ who had such an important role to play in the games generals play but a big chunk would go to The Coterie which controlled these ‘non-state actors’, The Coterie of which he was the ex-officio President. ‘Non-state actors’, The General couldn’t help a smile at the thought, whosoever had coined that term was a pure genius; in US of A, NSA stood for National Security Agency , ha!  “This is our NSA” mused The General.  

All these thoughts flitted through his mind as he picked up the receiver.

The General : “Yes?”

Voice over the Phone : “Assalam-alekum General. This is Major Altaf from the War-Room”

TG :  “Waleikum –assalam. Major Altaf this better be important.”

Altaf : “Sir, we can’t find the LoC.”

TG : “Major, if you can’t hold your liquor you shouldn’t be drinking and definitely not be on duty in the War Room” barked TG. “You are relieved of your duties as of this moment and report to the Peshawar HQ by tomorrow evening.”

Altaf : “Sir, I am not drunk and am very serious. The LoC has vanished.  A few minutes ago suddenly the LoC vanished from the large Situation Map in the War Room which we monitor day and night.”

TG : “ Kya bakte ho!” TG was a great fan of Bollywood and would unconsciously lapse into filmy dialogues when under duress.  Our readers would recognize this particular line made famous by K N Singh. TG was under a strong impression that he resembled the actor in his saturnine looks, grim demeanour and a gruff voice to match.  He was not far wrong.

Altaf : “Yes Sir. The LoC has vanished from all the maps that we have with us.”

This woke up TG right and proper. He immediately went to the map on the wall of his Drawing Room and there it was staring at him. The map was there but sans the LoC. Till the time he went to bed LoC had been marked boldly on the map clearly showing all the border posts and the “other” locations which pin-pointed what he liked to call the ‘Green Rooms’. The Green Rooms were the makeshift camps from  where the non-state actors got ready to effect their entry on the world stage.  Now the border posts could still be seen on the map but the LoC had vanished and so also had a few of those Green Rooms near khairati Bagh and Dudhnial opposite  the Poonch and Kupwara sectors.

*

2.23 AM : The War Room of the Pakistani Armed Forces is located in the Nuclear Command Authority deep inside the Joint Chief of Staff HQ in the Rawalpindi Military District. As the General was being driven over there, his thoughts were in a turmoil. Disappearances by themselves were not something which bothered him. Journalists who got too snoopy or those foolish liberals who wanted a diminished  role for the mullahs or those cowardly pacifists who wanted peace with their neighbours  or even those disgruntled dissidents  who wanted  to cede from Pakistan, often disappeared without a trace in his awam. There would be some hue and cry, some enquiries from UN Human Resources Commission but eventually The Coterie would prevail and things would settle down. It was even easier to make inanimate things disappear, guns and ammo, rocket launchers and bazookas, even heavy artillery which they had received from US to fight the Al Qaida and the Taliban in Afganistan would disappear  routinely. No doubt all of those “vanishing assets” had duly “re-appeared” on the eastern border as props for his favourite  non-state actors. But in all these disappearances, it was his magic wand which made things happen. This missing LoC business was too bizarre. The General was totally flummoxed and he didn’t like people playing tricks on him.

The situation in the War Room was predictably grim, everyone there seemed to be crowding around the large map on the wall, some with magnifying glasses trying to locate the missing LoC. A murmur went around announcing his arrival in the room and the room fell absolutely silent.

“Good Morning, sir” it was Major Altaf.

“Tell me what exactly happened” The General was curt.

“Sir, at 2.01 AM, the red LEDs showing LoC started blinking rapidly and within a few seconds the entire LoC just vanished. We first thought it was an electrical fault but found no such issues.”

“How can it happen? Iss mapka chappa chappa chhan maro”  roared The General. This was a throwback to Ajit the Lion. ‘”Get the latest satellite images, go over every square foot of imagery. I want that LoC located.  And located right now. Call up border posts and check with them”

Next few minutes there was a hectic activity as the War Room staff went through this very unusual situation of trying to locate the LoC while The General paced the room. 

*

2.41 AM : Suddenly a telephone rang. One of the staff picked up the phone, listened to the caller on the other end and handed the phone to The General “Sir, Border posts commander for you”.

TG : “Yes, Brigadier Masood. Have you discovered where the LoC is?”

“No Sir, but I have discovered what may have happened to LoC. There has been a large strike by the para-commandos of the enemy and a number of our Green Rooms have been totally wiped off. There is a heavy firing from across the border on all our posts and it is bloody pin-point accurate.” As The General stood there wondering what had hit him there came a scream of howitzer shell landing near the outpost where Brigadier Masood must have been and the line went completely dead. 

There was a dazed silence all around. Those crazy bastards had actually crossed over and hit them, a  possibility that the military strategists advising The General had outright pooh – poohed a countless number of times. “Our assessment is that the Indian forces do not have the gumption to cross the LoC at any point in near future, not when we have our nuclear war-heads ready for launch at a moment’s notice” were the exact words in the last Strategy Report which was on The General’s table.  Well now that notice had been well and truly served and the moment had actually arrived.  

The crack team manning the Situation Room had played out this scenario in every War Game they had engaged in. A message flashing on the big screen that Indian fighter planes had breached the air-space and the command issued by The General (No! The Prime Minister was not to be brought in the picture at that point of time for the fear of political dithering and procrastination) to activate the nuclear codes and then the ultimate punching of the string of codes by The General himself or his next in command or the officer-in-charge of the Situation Room, which would send the Hatf- IV and Shaheen  rockets armed with nuclear war-heads streaking across the sky eastwards to fulfill the dreams of generations of Pakistani Generals and Prime Ministers.

On this morning of 29^th September 2016 at Rawalpindi, the digital clock on the wall read

0246 Islamabad / 0546 Beijing / 1646 Washington DC / 2046 London GMT / 0216 New Delhi.

The Situation Room was but a surreal tableau as everyone present there waited with a bated breath trying to record in their minds the moment when history was being made. All eyes were on The General.  

The General stood there with his eyes fixed on the panel of buttons which he and he alone could activate. But he was also the only one in the War Room who knew the real score; how many of those missile heads were real and how many were dummies elaborately created to inflate the number of war-heads which the outside world would credit his country with, the elaborate efforts made to “leak” information to the US, Indian and Israeli intelligence agencies to “establish” the strength of Pakistan’s arsenal, the brazen posturing in every international forum  for creating this image of invincibility and nonchalant preparedness for any eventuality. 

No. He couldn’t throw away everything. This had always been a game of bluff and double-bluff. Indians had called his bluff but he was sure they would be prepared for any eventuality. He had studied the reports streaming in after the Uri attack and he was sure the two weeks had given his counterparts across the border enough time to think through the possible outcomes of their action. He was in a fix now. Doomed either way, damned forever if he chose to press the button or be labelled as the man who shrank from exercising his duty if he abstained from doing it.

Then it hit him. Brilliant. He had an escape route. He would deny that there had ever been a strike by India this side of LoC.  The strategy which The Coterie had used with much success in all the terror attacks ; just deny and go on denying that such a thing had ever happened. Not much of a chance that India would go public with their brazen act of crossing the LoC. That’s it. As simple as that.

He became aware of the Staff awaiting his next move. He turned to Major Altaf and told him.

“Carry on Major. Our job is to first locate the missing LoC. As for the report from Brigadier Masood, everyone here must understand that one should not believe in all reports coming from border from men under extreme duress. We will  cross-check with ISI and we will issue a statement in the morning. Any leaks otherwise and all of you can get ready for being court-martialled. ” 

The General walked out of the War Room.

*  

 Right at that very moment , The Missing LoC was smiling contentedly to itself as it settled into its new location. For a long time it had wanted a change of scenery, tortuously laid as it had always been across hills and valleys of Kashmir. Well, Kashmir was fabulous for the romantics, the nature lovers and the honeymooners but as far as LoCs are concerned it was not all that great. Having to endure annual bouts of heavy snow was one thing, difficult but still manageable, however that constant deafening noise of gun-fire across its body and no end of people trampling it at their own whim and fancy was not to The LoC’s liking. 

Basically LoC’s are peace-loving animals. That’s why they are born, to keep peace and that’s the way they want to continue their existence. Best case scenario for any LoC is to wait for the day the two warring parties decide to call a truce and promote the LoC to an international border. But that was now past. Next few days at least it could lie dormant, undetected and unmolested.  

Let The General and his team search high and low for it in Kashmir and around the international border, not unless they looked closely at the Sind - Punjab -  Balochistan borders would they have any chance of locating The LoC. Till then The LoC could take a well-deserved breather. “But for how long?” The LoC wondered.

 

LazyBee

21^st October 2016