Menace of Border Tunnels for Infiltration
After the encounter of militants on 19 November at Nagrota toll gate and subsequent recovery of GPS led to the discovery of a tunnel near International Border (IB) at Samba, has again raised the issue of menace of tunnels which are being used for infiltration. These types of tunnels were being used even during time of Punjab militancy in late 90s after erection of border fence. Although the use of tunnels on one hand signifies that present system of border guarding is quite effective and it is becoming more difficult to infiltrate but on the other aspect it is posing new challenge of detection and neutralizing the threat.
The border tunnels were initially used in Punjab area by smugglers and sometimes by militants but in the past ten years it has exclusively been used for infiltration of militants.
Under CIBMS seismic radars are employed to detect any kind of seismic activity which is caused by digging but these kind of equipment have their own limitation as they can detect the seismic activity only up to certain depth and density of soil. Experience has shown that such kind of tunnels are built in the areas where the surveillance is weak or is obstructed by thick undergrowth, as their starting and opening point needs to protected from observation. Usually these kinds of tunnels are built where soil is not weak or sandy and the earth dug out can be disposed without detection. For effectively detecting tunnels, border guarding forces have to identify and map such kind of areas by permutation and combination of factors like nature of soil, areas not under effective observation, proximity of counterpart posts and any other such factors which contributes to possibility of construction of tunnels. It has been experienced from Punjab’s border case that tunnels were repeatedly built in particular areas where possibility of such factors were strong.
Border guarding forces can also learn from Israel’s experience of detection of tunnels through use of radars and sensors on the Gaza border, also in 2014 during Israel Gaza conflict one of the main objectives of IDF was to destroy tunnels. The concrete wall which is being built on the Gaza border is built up to a certain depth to negate the possibility of tunnels through the border wall which is further augmented by sensors to detect all such seismic activities.
Improving cross border intelligence is also required as the tunnels that are being detected in the past few years required technical expertise to construct them and employment of persons certain amount of professional engineering skills; also the dimension of these tunnels requires substantial earthwork and disposal of earth from digging of tunnels. Since all these construction and survey activities happens within five hundred to thousand meters of IB, an effective intelligence cover is required to forewarn of any such activity. There is no denial of the possibility that many more such attempts of infiltration and smuggling of arms through these tunnels will be witnessed in future with increase in surveillance activities hence we require serious proactive strategy to check construction of such tunnels.
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