Ironies of air strike reporting

The media outcry after Balakot air strike made for an intriguing watch. While Indian media screamed about the destruction of Pak terror camp and extermination of over 300 militants,

Pakistan denied the existence of such a camp or any casualties and showed photographs of a ploughed-up grove of pine trees, claiming that the swift response of its air force had forced Indian pilots to hastily dump their missiles on untenanted landscape.

Pakistan's Climate Change Minister, manfully striving to establish an equivalence of terror, subsequently accused India of bombing a forest reserve and being guilty of "eco-terrorism". Gradually, through the fog generated by shock-jock boosterism, the outlines of another story became visible. In this version, the Indian government had never formally put a number on the terrorists killed. That had been a bit of colour attributed to 'sources' cited by patriotic news agencies. Nobody knew the extent of destruction or the number of casualties.

This was either because satellite cameras had been obstructed by cloud cover or because the Pakistanis had restricted access to the camp and repaired the damage before it could be reported on, or because there had been no tenanted camp there in the first place. Sober national security pundits dealt with this mutating story by encouraging their readers not to miss the wood for the trees.

Whether India's aircraft had killed militants or pine groves was irrelevant. The big picture was made up of India's willingness to use air power to answer terrorism, the depth of the incursion and the indelible lesson the Pakistanis had been taught: namely, that India would not hesitate to strike Pakistan's mainland if it didn't mend its rogue ways. This was not exclusively a bhakt position; sage security experts, committed to the national interest, not Mr Modi's electoral fortunes, saw the attack as a necessary, if long-deferred, lesson.

Dr L K Sukumar, Hyderabad