Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque :
There are breaking news for a couple of weeks about Indo-Pak strained diplomatic relation. It is – as if Indo-Pak war is going to occur centering around Kashmir as the bone of contention. Media flash with face book gives wide coverage on the recently cropped up conflict. Wishful thinking about the war spill over the social media concerning the people. But experts would downsize it as a great hoax. War of words between India and Pakistan spills over to social media. We have been given to understand that war is imminent with the possibilities of using nuclear warheads.
We are not going to war with Pakistan. It wasn’t an option for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh when 166 people were gunned down by Pakistani terrorists in Mumbai eight years ago. And it isn’t an option for Prime Minister Narendra Modi today, after 18 Indian Army jawans were killed in an attack on a military base in Uri, Kashmir by suspected Jaish militants.
This is not the first terrorist attack on an Indian military base. Just eight months ago, terrorists were running amok in Pathankot after striking the Air Force Station base which allows our forces to be above enemy territory within minutes.
At the time, India allowed a team of Pakistani investigators to visit the air base and collect “evidence” over a course of three days. But this time, social and mainstream media are demanding war. Catch phrases like “hot pursuit”, “surgical strike”, and “covert operations” are being discussed with as much alacrity as 140 characters permit. Because, for the very first time, the call for retribution has came from within the Indian government. We are apprehended about human casualties, environmental terrorism out of nuclear war. Think of devastation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
As Wikipedia report: Depending on the design of the weapon and the environment in which it is detonated the energy distributed to these categories can be increased or decreased. The blast effect is created by the coupling of immense amounts of energy, spanning the electromagnetic spectrum, with the surroundings. Locations such as submarine, surface, air burst, or exo-atmospheric determine how much energy is produced as blast and how much as radiation. In general, denser media around the bomb, like water, absorb more energy, and create more powerful shockwaves while at the same time limiting the area of its effect.
When an air burst occurs, lethal blast and thermal effects proportionally scale much more rapidly than lethal radiation effects, as higher and higher yield nuclear weapons are used.
The physical-damage mechanisms of a nuclear weapon (blast and thermal radiation) are identical to those of conventional explosives, but the energy produced by a nuclear explosive is millions of times more powerful per gram and the temperatures reached are briefly in the tens of millions of degrees. Energy from a nuclear explosive is initially released in several forms of penetrating radiation.
When there is a surrounding material such as air, rock, or water, this radiation interacts with and rapidly heats it to an equilibrium temperature (i.e. so that the matter is at the same temperature as the atomic bomb’s matter). This causes vaporization of surrounding material resulting in its rapid expansion. Kinetic energy created by this expansion contributes to the formation of a shockwave. When a nuclear detonation occurs in air near sea level, much of the released energy interacts with the atmosphere and creates a shockwave which expands spherically from the hypocenter.
Intense thermal radiation at the hypocenter forms a nuclear fireball and if the burst is low enough, it is often associated with a mushroom cloud. In a burst at high altitude, where the air density is low, more energy is released as ionizing gamma radiation and x-rays than an atmosphere-displacing shockwave.
In 1942, there was some initial speculation among the scientists developing the first nuclear weapons that there might be a possibility of igniting the Earth’s atmosphere with a large enough nuclear explosion. This would concern a nuclear reaction of two nitrogen atoms forming a carbon and an oxygen atom, with release of energy. This energy would heat up the remaining nitrogen enough to keep the reaction going until all nitrogen atoms were consumed. Hans Bethe was assigned the task of studying whether there was a possibility in the very early days, and concluded there was no possibility due to inverse Compton effect cooling of the fireball.
Richard Hamming, a mathematician, was asked to make a similar calculation just before Trinity, with the same result. Nevertheless, the notion has persisted as a rumor for many years, and was the source of black humor at the Trinity test. Human casualties and environmental damage would be out of our estimate. The whole crop land with vegetation will be damaged with massive reduction of fertility. The main cities will be raised to the level with tremendous death toll. So avoid any war and believe in peaceful coexistence putting humanitarian consideration first
In the latest development Indian army equipped with modern war heads successfully complete surgical strike a it claimed to flush out the terrorists coming from the border areas. Recent reports describe surgical strike:
A surgical strike is essentially a swift and targeted attack on specific target that aims to neutralise them while ensuring minimum collateral damage to the surrounding areas and civilians. Neutralisation of targets with surgical strikes also prevents escalation to a full blown war.
Surgical strikes are part of India’s Cold Start doctrine and have proved effective in foiling a new infiltration bid by terrorists groups across the LoC who were ready to attack several locations in Jammuand other Metro cities in India.
Indian Army carried out surgical strikes on Pakistani terrorists positioned across the Line of Control on terror launchpads on Wednesday night. Director General of Military Operations Lt General Ranbir Singh in a joint press briefing with the MEA revealed that Indian forces led by a Special Operations Group led the surgical strikes operation and caused significant casualties to terrorists and those who were shielding them However, India’s counter infiltration grid which remains on the lookout of such operations alerted the Army.
Indian Special Ops teams work closely with these counter infiltration teams to ensure immediate neutralisation and remove threats of repeated waves of infiltration bids at different locations on the LoC.
Surgical strikes gain importance in India’s case as Pakistan has repeatedly shown its intention to use tactical nuclear weapons on Indian Forces, even risking the collateral damage to its own troops, to stop Indian military operations. Therefore, the covert surgical strikes are a powerful weapon for the Indian armed forces to carry out the necessary dirty work while ensuring the status-quo between the opposing armies on the LoC.
The Pakistan army has dismissed claims that India’s military conducted “surgical strikes” against “terrorist units” on its side of the border in Kashmir region. Pakistan rejected the claims as an “illusion” but acknowledged the loss of two of its soldiers in the exchange of fire that also wounded nine others on Thursday.
“There had been cross border fire initiated and conducted by India which is [an] existential phenomenon,” said an Inter-Services Public Relations statement released shortly after the Indian director-general of military operations held a press conference making claims about surgical strikes.
“The notion of surgical strike linked to alleged terrorists’ bases is an illusion being deliberately generated by India to create false effects,” the Pakistani military said in a statement.” This quest by Indian establishment to create media hype by rebranding cross border fire as surgical strike is fabrication of truth.” Indian soldier by the terrorists.
Tension remains high between the neighbours after the killing of Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, had given warning that those responsible for the attack on an army base in Uri, near the Line of Control, on September 18 “would not go unpunished”.
In a statement on Thursday, Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s prime minister, “strongly condemned the unprovoked and naked aggression of Indian forces” and pledged that the military was capable of thwarting “any evil design to undermine the sovereignty of Pakistan”.
Lieutenant-General Ranbir Singh, the Indian director-general of military operations, said the “surgical strikes” were launched following “very specific and credible information that some terrorist units had positioned themselves to infiltrate”. “Significant casualties have been caused to these terrorists and those who are trying to support them,” Singh said. He said he had called his Pakistani counterpart to inform him of the operation.” Some terrorist teams had positioned themselves at launch pads along the Line of Control,” Singh said.
(Dr. Mashreque teaches Public Administration in Chittagong University)
