UNEDITED VERSION
In Kashmir, the GD Bakshi way
Maj Gen GD Bakshi has been a very visible face on the idiot box over the past decade. While in military service he was perhaps one of the most prolific of writers of his generation. Though his writings dot the gamut of military publications over the years, one piece that did not see light of day back then has recently surfaced.
In a close look at the defence
staff college in Wellington, an American author, David O. Smith, made a
reference to this unpublished article by GD Bakshi. Interestingly, Smith first came
across the article, ‘Low Intensity Conflict Operations: The Indian Doctrinal Approach’,
while undertaking his earlier study of the Pakistani joint command and staff
college at Quetta.
Apparently, there it was among
the readings for students, quite like in India. It is likely that American
attendees at Wellington receiving the article in their pre-course material
package, shared it with fellow American military officers attending the staff
course at Quetta, which is how it trickled into the recommended reading there.
I came across the article in the
readings package while attending the staff course some twenty years back.
Efforts since to trace the article in service journals did not bear fruit,
indicating that editors possibly balked at publishing it for some reason. That
it found its way into the staff course reading material perhaps owes to GD
Bakshi, who taught at the college as a colonel causing its insertion into the
bumpf.
That it was not carried in
service journals (to my knowledge after years of trying to track it down) tells
a story. The article then amounted to a counter narrative. While the narrative
up-front had it that counter insurgency operations centered on ‘winning hearts
and minds’ (WHAM), the counter narrative was that these were part of low
intensity conflict (LIC), as GD Bakshi puts in it in the title.
While LIC draws on a kinetic
approach associated with Americans, counter insurgency tilts towards the
British way of countering insurgency, encapsulated by the Templar-Kitson model,
the former, Gerald Templar who as governor in Malaya applied its tenets while
Frank Kitson subsequently articulated these in his writings. In the late
nineties, there was considerable doctrinal ferment in the Indian military over
the two terms – LIC operations and counter insurgency - beset as it had for
over a decade in subconventional operations in Punjab, Sri Lanka, Assam and,
significantly by then, in Kashmir.
The official narrative was in
favour of WHAM, but the ground reality was split between the kinetic approach
and a nuanced one. It is best reflected in GD Bakshi’s paper. To him, his
articulation of the hardline constituted India’s LIC doctrine. An easy to spot
difference between the official narrative on counter insurgency and the GD
Bakshi version is on the place of the tactics, cordon and search operations.
For Bakshi these were to exhaust the populace in its support for the
insurgents. Repeated, extensive and continuing sweeps were to serve as a
punitive measure against people, the proverbial ‘sea’, for their support to
militant ‘fish’. The Bakshi paper goes on to talk of employment of proxy
groups, such as the Ikhwan, the Salwa Judum and the surrendered Assamese
fighters. Tellingly in the course material at the defence staff college this
page is blanked out, presumably for being rather radical even by the standards
of Bakshi’s own paper.
For adjudication, there was a
older edition of the counter insurgency pamphlet that relied heavily on the
British model and informed by the army’s conduct in the north east. It was only
sometime in the nineties, a fresh edition of the counter insurgency pamphlet
was put out bearing the imprint of the army’s subsequent experience,
particularly in Sri Lanka of the simultaneously hapless and innovative Indian
Peace Keeping Force. The pamphlet was less elegant since it was more fleshed
out and with tactical operations in greater detail. The newer version too was
fairly WHAM friendly.
It was only in the mid 2000s,
that the army came up with a self-regarding doctrinal product on counter
insurgency, ‘The Doctrine for Subconventional Operations (DSCO)’. The early
2000s saw the army writing up its doctrines at long last, with the doctrine on
conventional operations of 2004 superseding its first edition of 1998 without
so much genuflecting to the predecessor doctrine product.
The new subconventional doctrine
was also in favour of a people friendly approach, perhaps under influence of
the then army chief, JJ Singh, who had once famously teared up on national
television. It was also released in a race with the Americans, then writing up
their doctrine under tutelage of David Patraeus, and therefore presumably
needed to emphasise its distinction from the American approach, then sliding
into discredit in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Even so, the dissonance on ground
was reflected in doctrine. The DSCO ruled in favour of kinetic operations
initially to gain ascendancy over militants and, with stability restored, shifting
to population sensitive intelligence-led operations. While it echoed the
Supreme Court on ‘minimal’ use of force, the joint doctrine – hierarchically a
higher one – called for ‘optimal’ use of force, seemingly a larger latitude to
use of force.
Whereas earlier there was
dissonance within the service between the official narrative and the counter
narrative, today the very name ‘Operation All Out’ and the manner of its
conduct over the past five years suggests that what was once the counter
narrative is now the officially sanctioned one. National Security Adviser
Doval’s protégé, General Bipin Rawat, early in his tenure signified the shift
unapologetically in his wanton defence of Major Leetul Gogoi’s infamous use of
a human shield.
Today the trend is starkly
manifest. The police figures for militants killed in Kashmir last year is 225.
Only late in the year at long last, they let on surrenders were being accepted,
with some nine militants surrendering. This level of kinetic operations must be
seen in light of a mere 200 militants operating across Kashmir and reportedly
under considerable material shortfalls.
Clearly, the earlier
self-effacing counter narrative that was in any case alive and kicking even
when people were reputedly at the heart of India’s counter insurgency effort,
has been ascendant in the Modi era. That it is blatantly so is evident from the
Shupian encounter late last year in which three innocents were killed and guns
planted on them. Since the crime was called out then, resulting in military
justice consequence for the perpetrators, there is yet another in-your-face
crime, this time the killing of three at Lawaypora is sought to be justified by
the police alluding to the victims being ‘associates’ of militants.
Whereas the official doctrine
called for neutralization of over-ground workers (OGW), it appears that now
such action includes elimination of OGW. The timing of the latest crime,
coinciding as it does with the legal developments in the Shupian case, specifically
filing of a charge sheet filed in the court of chief judicial magistrate
Shopian, indicate brazenness, reminding the target population, long beset
Kashmiris, that they continue in the corner, lest emboldened by small victories
as in exposing the uniformed killers of Shupian, they attempt a break out.
The dissonance within the
military as to how to view counter insurgency persists. The counter narrative
on taking over the intellectual high ground characterizes insurgency as hybrid
war. Hybrid war is now the catch-all, a proxy war waged in the ‘gray zone’ with
information war as its motif for relatively stable times. Information war
includes propaganda by deed, to borrow a phrase from the terror lexicon, which
in this case includes deliberate human rights infringements, with impunity
broadcast, to show a populace its place as subjects.
Observers such as David Davidas
in his book, Rage, have showed up the strategic price the country has
paid. The case he makes is that the violence the departure from official
doctrine wrought in Kashmir in the nineties has given rise to the generation of
rage today. Under a right wing government’s will to power under what Yashwant
Sinha called the ‘doctrine of state’, the counter narrative has won out. The
price shall be into this decade, when GD Bakshi is well into his dotage.
