Salute, April-May 2019 issue
A trial balloon was floated
recently in the media that the government has asked the army to dispense with
services of the commanders of the bases that were attacked by terrorists. Three
bases found mention in the media report: Uri, Nagrota and Sanjuvan. Rightly,
the army has reportedly pushed back, citing the negative effect on aggressive
leadership any such move is likely to have.
While the veracity of the report
is not known, the media source being largely credible, it bears reflection as
to what the political minders and bureaucratic henchmen imagined when they
sought to prevail on the army to take such action.
It is well known that the military
has to be on perpetual alert in counter insurgency beset areas, whereas the
insurgents/terrorists have to be lucky but once. Therefore, for a base to be
attacked as part of an ongoing insurgency/proxy war is only par for the course.
It is the immediate reaction and response that is consequential in determining
the showing of the outfit attacked.
By this yardstick, it can be
argued that even the seeming setback suffered in the Uri terror attack needs
moderating. The deaths of a dozen jawans owed not so much to terror action but
to an accident resulting from the situation in which the tent they were
sleeping in burnt down. The three terrorists were neutralised with just about
double the number of own dead, which is reasonable considering that terrorists are
no pushovers themselves and their advantage of surprise had first to be
negated.
The army transferring of the
commander out of the area then was therefore justified, but going any further
now would amount to being stampeded by an unrealistic expectation in the minds
of civilian desk warriors in Delhi.
They need reminding that friction
is endemic in conflict. Friction is the military equivalent of Murphy’s law. As
Clausewitz illustrated it, all actions in conflict zones are akin to walking in
water. Its effects must be factored in when envisaging operations and their
consequences. The fog of war serves to compound fluid situations.
This phenomenon is true for
crisis also. The heightened tensions can result in unintended and inadvertent
actions, such as in the unfortunate case of fratricide in which an air force
missile unit shot down an own helicopter at Budgam. The friendly fire incident
owed to the spike in tension and uncertainty – the fog of war – resulting in
the tragedy, an instance of friction.
Though the air force is considering legal action against the involved
officers and weapons handlers, it bears reminding that the situation was one of
an ongoing armed attack. Insisting on standard operating procedure
implementation is fine, but the human element in combat needs taking into
account in any such consideration. The air force must not be overly zealous in
attempting to impress its political minders by taking legal recourse in
relation to an operational action.
If this advice is valid for the
air force that lost air men in the accident, it holds doubly true for the army
when confronted with unreasonable demands on how its handles its internal
inquiry systems. It needs maintaining its autonomy and having military
considerations prevail.
It is strange that this
suggestion has been bandied when there has been no accountability in relation
to the Pulwama incident. Pinning of responsibility would have reckoned with at
least two heads to have rolled of the Indian Police Service brass, namely, the
ones who planned the convoy that was targeted and the intelligence supervisors
who missed the car bombing in the offing.
Protecting internal turf is a
command responsibility. The army chain has let the government know that the
necessary action has been taken. Any further push by civilians is therefore
only intended to push the military into a corner and keep it there, in a
travesty of civil-military relations. Appropriate democratic civil-military
relations entail the military professional sphere being off limits to political
muddling.
The theory that has it that
civilians are always right even when patently wrong is viable only in states
where civilians have a modicum of sensibility for what the military domain
implies. The idea broached of sacking commanders instead has fingerprints of
amateurs all over it.
Fortunately, the brass shot down
– for now - the sentiment likely originating in the national security
bureaucracy that over-lays the defence sector these days. Only by standing up
will the military continue standing tall.
