Pakistan has once again been left embarrassed by the failure of its intelligence forces to gather input as Iran managed to infiltrate its borders and conduct a surgical strike to free its soldiers. According to news reports, Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) on Tuesday freed its two soldiers, who were among the 12 soldiers kidnapped in 2018.
“A successful operation was carried out last Tuesday night to rescue two kidnapped border guards who were taken as hostages by Jaish ul-Adl organization two and a half years ago,” the IRGC was quoted as saying in an official statement on Wednesday.
BIG: Iran conducts surgical strike style operation inside Pakistan to free two Iranian soldiers who were captured by terror group Jaish Ul Adl for last more than two years. Kulbhushan Jadhav was also abducted by the same terror group and handed over to Pakistani secret agencies. pic.twitter.com/RhoamOcQF2
— Aditya Raj Kaul (@AdityaRajKaul) February 4, 2021
After India in LAC and Balakot, and the US in Abbottabad, Iran has become the third country to conduct surgical strikes in the notorious country of Pakistan. The Shia dominated country was planning the strikes for over two years now. The state agencies reported that a Pakistan-based radical Wahhabi terrorist group ‘Jaish ul-Adl’ had on October 16, 2018, kidnapped 12 IRGC guards to the Pakistani territory in the city of Merkava in Sistan and Balochistan province on the border between the two countries.
Tehran immediately went back to the drawing board and formed a joint committee between the two countries to free the guards. With sustained pressure, Iran managed to free five of the 12 soldiers, who were released in November 2018. Meanwhile, another four Iranian soldiers were rescued by the Pakistani army on March 21, 2019.
It is imperative to note that Jaish ul-Adl, or Jaish al-Adl, is a Salafi jihadist militant organization that mainly operates in southeastern Iran and with a majority of Sunni Baluchis as its member on the border between Iran and Pakistan.
Tehran has classified it as a terrorist organisation as Jaish claims to be waging an armed struggle against the Iranian government, saying it defends the rights of Baloch Sunnis in Iran.
It was the USA that had first set the precedent by surreptitiously infiltrating the Pakistani border and flying all the way to the city of Abbottabad where the world’s most dangerous terrorist, the al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden was hiding with the support of Pakistan government, army and the ISI.
However, the US Navy SEAL commandos managed to infiltrate Osama’s highly guarded compound and killed him in less than 40 minutes, and buried his body at the sea bed. bringing to end, a 10-year long manhunt.
Then came India which took revenge for the dastardly terrorist attack on the army base camp in Uri by crossing the LAC and killing over 100 terrorists. The 8 locations earmarked for the operation covered 3 significant divisions of the Pakistani army and thus gave cover to the terror launch pads that would be used against India.
In order to avoid detection by the Pakistani radars and anti-personnel aircrafts, most of the soldiers crossed the LOC on foot, while most of the paratroopers dropped from heights as high as 35000 feet, which were out of the range of the Pakistani radar deployed to detect the presence of intruders.
Read more: How the Indian Army executed the daring surgical strikes
India further piled on the misery of Pakistan by conducting airstrikes in Balakot in early 2019 and shooting down several terror launch pads as well as shooting down a much advanced F-16 jet using decades-old MiG-21.
The Iranian surgical strikes might not sting as much as the Indian surgical strikes but for Pakistan, it is another ‘egg on the face moment’ and it shows the utmost criminal negligence of its security as well as intelligence forces.