English daily published in Bengaluru & Doha
26/11: IAF on standby and yet India paused
By Neena Gopal
In his new book ‘10 Flash points; 20 Years’, Congress politician Manish Tewari’s stinging attack on Dr Manmohan Singh’s government’s tame response to the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks by Pakistani terror ists was guaranteed to grab eyeballs.
In playing up this aspect of the book, only days ahead of the 13th anniversary of the attack on November 26, 2008, the passing mention served its primary purpose.
But was the Congress MP right? Did India drag its feet? In doing nothing, did India come across as weak and effete? Should it have executed a Balakot as Prime Minister Narendra Modi did when a suicide bomber of Kashmiri origin – Jaish-e-Mohammed’s Adil Ahmed Dar – rammed his explosive-laden vehicle into a bus in Pulwama that was part of a CRPF convoy, killing 40 CRPF personnel? The finger-pointing and mud-slinging on who was more macho, Modi or Singh, aside, the fact is that unlike 26/11, when the U.S. quietly mounted pressure on Delhi to refrain from a punitive retaliatory strike against the Lashkar e-Taiba terror group, the 2019 Balakot attack saw world leaders from across the spectrum openly back ing Modi as he claimed to have wiped out the Jaish’s terror training camp during the cross-border strike.
Insiders close to develop ments have strenuously maintained that the Indian Air Force had been kept on standby. This was rein forced by then chief of air staff, Air Chief Marshal (retd) Fali Homi Major, who admitted in a number of interviews that the IAF had been readied for a cross border attack within hours of the Mumbai attack.
Even before the Manmohan Singh government had asked, the IAF, as per established pro tocol, had prepared a contin gency plan for a surgical strike, sources said. This was however shot down, sources close to the developments told News Trail, as not only was there pressure from Washington, but also the Singh government erred on the side of caution as they felt an aerial bombardment would spark a full-scale conflagration between the two nuclear armed nations.
