Indian Army former Northern Command Lieutenant General (retd) DS Hoda while talking to BBC has said that people of Occupied Kashmir hate Indian Army and conducting an Army operation in occupied Kashmir is a big challenge.
He conceded that there is no military solution to the Kashmir issue which has troubled relations between Pakistan and India since their independence from the British colonial rule in 1947.
Kashmir is an internal and multi-dimensional issue. There is also a lot of support for Pakistan. The Indian army’s role is to bring the security situation at a level conducive for political activity,” Hoda told BBC Urdu in an interview.
Delhi accuses Pakistan of being behind a long-drawn separatist insurgency in the disputed region – a charge Islamabad vehemently denies.
Gen Hoda also spoke about a so-called surgical strike that Indian forces claimed to have carried out to neutralise militant bases in Azad Kashmir last year.
The so-called ‘surgical strikes’ had supposedly been carried under the supervision of Gen Hoda, who was then commander of the northern command of Indian army.