https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/is-kicking-the-kashmir-problem-upstairs
Is kicking the Kashmir problem upstairs a solution?
Recently, two of India’s top national security experts have had this to say of the manner Kashmir is being handled by the Modi regime.
In an interview, a former intelligence hand, AS Dulat, said that he believes National Security Advisor (NSA), Ajit Doval, ought to be in charge of India’s Kashmir policy. Apparently, ‘Doval understands Kashmir and knows the solution and the way forward.’
In like vein, a former Military Adviser in the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS), General Prakash Menon, informs that,
Right now, it is the MHA that is driving the J&K agenda. Instead, the strategy should be broad-based and driven by the highest rungs of the executive powers that are far better placed to evolve approaches based on an integrated perspective…. A review of the existing approach is warranted…The larger question is whether we can transcend the narrow domestic political considerations.
Both in their own words appear to suggest that Home Minister Amit Shah must be divested of the Kashmir portfolio and the problem be taken over by the governance rung at which an integrated perspective can be conjured up and its implementation supervised.
This despite, Shah, only last October, claiming that his boss Prime Minister Narendra Modi had sorted out the Kashmir problem. Presumably, he was referring to the Constitutional caper of August 2019.
However, for two of India’s leading security watchers and Kashmir experts to independently arrive at the conclusion that all is not right - and also coincidentally proffer a similar answer - shows up the narrative plugged by the regime on normalcy in Kashmir.
Their answer is that the Kashmir - and perhaps India’s Pakistan policy also - be taken on at an appropriately higher level, which can only be at the Cabinet or Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).
While Dulat relies on personalities, plugging for colleague Doval to take over the reins, Menon – with a full term in the NSCS - seemingly calls for a scooping up of the reins at the PMO (“highest rungs of executive office”), using aegis of the NSA and NSCS.
Notable is that these observations are when India is well into the fourth decade of the insurgency in Kashmir; the problem of Kashmir itself dating to Independence.
Recent developments
The timing of their intervention is informed, in part, by to two recent developments.
One was the ambush close to the Line of Control in which five Indian soldiers were killed, and, second, was revelations in Pakistani media that the back channel was so active in 2021 that Prime Minister Modi was supposedly slated to visit Pakistan after the reiteration of the ceasefire in February that year.
The latter is not implausible, since the Pakistan Army had created the conditions by having a ‘selected’ Prime Minister Imran Khan in place. General Bajwa, Army Chief then, had set the ‘Bajwa doctrine’ going, emphasising ‘geoeconomics,’ which necessitated an outreach to India. Bajwa allowed India a bye, when it could have created much more fuss in August 2019.
India might have been game, a temple visit thrown in clinching the issue for its prime minister. Its outreach to Nawaz Sharif had flopped spectacularly, not only at Pathankot but in the Army – not in on the initiative - exiling Sharif.
This time round, it made geopolitical sense for both sides to have their backyards quiescent while each tackled more significant turmoil on respective other border: Pakistan in shepherding a post-Global War on Terror Afghanistan back to quietude, and, India, the Dragon in Ladakh.
In the event, Imran Khan – who had started off his innings by expressing warm sentiments towards India – rightly read the political winds and stymied the initiative.
While - from recent revelations - it appears Bajwa’s doctrine owed to the Army facing up to the fact of power asymmetry between India and Pakistan, Khan proved more tuned in to the continuing disaffection in Kashmir and the political price of looking away.
This begs the question whether the Doval-led backchannel with Pakistan’s military, midwifed by mutually acceptable interlocutors in the Gulf, has been efficacious.
Though a ceasefire is holding along the Line of Control, that incidents continue across it – the latest being the bespoke ambush in Poonch and Pakistani accusations – shows its limitations.
However, India was not entirely wrong in putting its eggs in Bajwa’s basket. It’s been long reckoned that India’s national security establishment needs to engage with Pakistan Army.
The conundrum was how could India’s civilian-led national security establishment engage Pakistan’s military, since it could only be at the cost of Pakistani civilian democratic forces. Abandoning its reservations on this score has evidently been to little avail.
Is the solution realistic?
On their part, the two strategists seem to suggest that ideology is contaminating strategy. Both wish the structure is set right, cauterising the policy domain from the regime’s proclivities.
Since Narendra Modi who has empowered Amit Shah to do his bidding in Kashmir, its not self-evident how they duo can be weaned away from their power trip. The two are legatees of Shyama Prasad Mukherjee.
As is their wont, they’ve carried it rather far. To them, inflicting humiliation on Kashmiris is the ideological imperative. Amit Shah has proved an able instrument.
Doval has obediently done his bit, using his knowledge of Kashmir in providing security oversight. To expect better of Doval is to be unmindful of both the man and his circumstance.
Dulat informs of Doval making a difference in Kashmir when he took over the handling of Kashmir under Dulat’s supervision. Hagiographies credit Doval with the use of proxy groups to neutralise terrorist groups there then.
Lately, he intrumentalised the Army, putting in place Army Chief General Bipin Rawat to set the stage for the August 2019 Constitutional blood-letting. That there was no uprising owes to his able crafting of the security grid. He took ownership of the measures with a televised biryani repast on Kashmir’s empty streets.
It is not known if Doval represented against the regime going too far in its reengineering of Kashmir’s ‘integration’, as a truncated Union Territory. It’s difficult to buy Satya Pal Malik’s version – he was then governor - that fear of a police rebellion required that statehood be discontinued to allow internal security be directly handled by Delhi.
In Dulat’s profile of Doval in his book, Doval comes across as a practitioner merely lending his expertise to political incumbents. Dulat neglects that Doval exerted every sinew to get the present dispensation into position during the Manmohan Singh interregnum.
Even relatively mild Sushma Swaraj is credited with sotto-voce suggesting to Pakistani interlocutors to hold out from clinching a deal with Manmohan Singh, holding out better prospects when her party came to power.
Doval was the de-facto shadow NSA. As intelligence czar, it is unbelievable that he was not privy to the actuality behind the terror that India witnessed in those years, both in the hinterland and behind the fake encounters in Gujarat where Narendra Modi’s built his image as a strongman.
He, and his right-wing cohort, outflanked national security minders as they went about sabotaging the Manmohan Singh’s national security establishment efforts at rapprochement, incidentally an initiative inherited from Vajpayee.
Doval is not merely an opportunist - as Dulat makes him out to be - but a Believer.
Besides, in the rumoured institutional strains between Shah and Doval, Doval is a distant second. While knowledge of Modi’s secrets explains the relative proximity of each with Modi, Shah’s delivery of electoral dividend makes his hand stronger.
Modi is not about to chop off his right hand, Shah, by empowering Man Friday, Doval. National security is not about to displace parochialism.
Secondly, politics determines policy. A majoritarian polity impels a policy of a particular kind, in this case visiting deprivation on the minority. Doing so in its demographic strongholds is particularly satisfying.
In concertina-ridden Kashmir, the vulnerable populace is easy prey; and where the right wing has the electoral upper hand, as in Assam and Uttar Pradesh, fixers inflict damage with impunity. Bengal and Kerala are out of reach, but not for want of trying.
Externally, even the touted diplomatic and strategic wizard, Dr. S Jaishankar, admits to finding dealing with Pakistan ‘difficult’. If proficiency is in delivering results under extraordinary circumstance, Jaishankar falls short.
Surely, cross-border terrorism is not holding up Jaishankar as much as is ideological encumbrance, a salient a political factor. Afterall, he famously coined the regime’s legitimising phrase: the correcting of historical wrongs.
Effects of the structural deficit
Though wishful in expecting policy to be sanitised of politics, the two national security experts are right in one sense: their pointing to the structural weakness undermining India’s Kashmir policy.
The problem predates the regime and has always been compounded by the political factor.
The outbreak of insurgency in Kashmir saw India with neither structure for nor a culture of rational policy making.
With Mandal embroiling politics, the VP Singh government and its successor, was ill-placed to measure up to the challenge. The response to the Rubaiya Sayeed kidnap and Governor Jagmohan’s over-reaction in late January, against the advice of his Adviser Ved Marwah, is a case in point.
At the Centre, the shenanigans for personal and political reasons of successive Kashmir focal points are well known, be it George Fernandes and later Rajesh Pilot; the latter often upstaging his senior minister.
To an interview question posed by me while on an academic field trip, the joint secretary on the Kashmir desk in North Block rued lack of a Kashmir policy in New Delhi.
Not only was India on the backfoot in the proxy war, but the simultaneous turn to liberalisation took precedence. The right wing, gaining traction on the back of the Ayodhya agitation, restricted any thought of negotiated settlement, either externally or internally.
At the ground level, the structure in place was for coordination, not unity of command. A Unified Headquarters (HQ) under the Adviser Home at best served for information exchange, rather than operations; the army sending a colonel from the Sub Area to attend its meetings.
With a return to elected government, the Unified HQ continued in place but with two security advisers, the Corps Commanders north and south of the Pir Panjal respectively, who reported up their channel to an Army Commander headquartered within the state.
Even then, the structural deficit persisted, with the security buck stopping with the Home Ministry, even though the lead counter insurgency force was the Army that reported to the Defence Ministry.
This was compounded by a factor typical to Indian civil-military relations, in which the doctrinal and operational space is ab-initio conceded by civilians to the military. The role of ministries was merely to ensure the human rights issue did not get to fore-front.
The Vajpayee years saw dialogue and peace initiatives rolled out, recounted in another book by their protagonist, Dulat, then adviser on Kashmir in the PMO. But, prime minister-in-waiting LK Advani scuttled these in respect of Pakistan at Agra, though he did follow up dutifully on the internal one later, holding a couple of rounds of dialogue with separatists.
Manmohan Singh took the openings he inherited forward, but with circumspection. He did not bring the energy to bear on Pakistan and Kashmir that he brought to mating with the United States (US).
He didn’t have the political heft to supersede kinetic means with non-kinetic measures, relying on economic incentives to sugar-coat political paralysis. Political inattention led to the Special Interlocutor model failing, in both its single (NN Vohra) or committee (three interlocutors) format.
As a result, the possibilities were overtaken by circumstance – that witnessed Pakistani President Musharraf wobbling and the outcome in the Mumbai terror attack. India’s Pakistan policy hasn’t recovered since.
The current impasse
In the Modi era, the multiple chains of command persist. Malik now says that had he been approached, he would’ve prevented Pulwama by providing an airlift to the central police. It begs the question why his Adviser Home was not sacked for not stepping up.
In its Dineshwar Sharma iteration, the Special Interlocutor model was decisively wrecked by the duplicity with which it was set up – to fob off the US then engaged in disentangling from Af-Pak.
At the Centre, vacillation over an outreach to Pakistan continues. Learning the hard way that merely networking the civilian side in Pakistan was not good enough, India has had Doval engage the Pakistani Army.
The structural factor has undercut what Doval might have promised in the backchannel. If Malik is right, Modi does not bother much about Kashmir, leaving it to his chief lieutenant, Shah. The home minister holding the keys, Doval is left out in the cold.
Pakistan has – not unreasonably - held out for restoration of statehood in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), something the regime can only countenance if its ambition of installing a Hindu Jammuite in power materialises.
The latest gambit towards this end having self-destruct – Ghulam Nabi Azad with the release of his autobiography passing into history – the regime stands stumped on next steps. Further, Malik has thrown the cat among the pigeons, linking an aspirant for the post - long resident in the PMO - to corruption.
The ‘solution,’ isn’t
A problem of privileging the way out of the strategic cul-de-sac proffered by the two well-meaning strategists – kick the problem upstairs - is that it undercuts the Constitutional cabinet system of governance by placing an unwarranted onus on an NSA.
While the first incumbent juggled advisory and operational streams in his position by retaining principal adviser post along with being NSA, the current NSA has gone on to displacing the Cabinet Secretary from the National Security Council (NSC) structure, styling himself as head of the Strategic Policy Group.
Even so, the NSC cannot displace the Cabinet Committee on Security, the hats worn by the membership – even if identical - being different. Accountability requires working the self-given structures.
Inability or unwillingness to do so should reflect on the leadership quotient of the incumbent prime minister. Gujarat cadre chelas and Hindutva-sanitised busybodies are reminiscent of the ‘committed’ bureaucrats of Emergency yore.
Therefore - though not spelt out in the recommendation of General Menon - the higher body that requires stepping up should be the CCS, with the Cabinet Secretariat – currently displaced by the centralised PMO - playing its part.
It is well-nigh possible India had given itself a Westminster cabinet system it has since been unable to work. To be sure, remedies required must be found. It cannot however be upended by willy-nilly supplanting it covertly with a presidential system.
Any alternative reliance on a sub-par national security establishment – as demonstrated in the case study above on Kashmir – shall prove untenable.
What’s to be done?
Firstly, the advisory aspect to the NSA and NSCS must be leveraged for drawing up strategy, policy advocacy within the system and coordination. To compensate for an inability to strategise, it cannot attempt substitute ministries. It must instead displace coteries, kitchen cabinets and extra-Constitutional influencers, such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
Secondly, India could review the Malaya model in which there was unity of command in counter insurgency. Over preceding decades, the Governor or the elected government in J&K – which ever was in saddle - could have been vested with the mandate and resources to deliver peace, including through compassionate dialogue.
Even if the proxy war element was not present, the model has proved useful in Assam, Tripura and erstwhile Andhra Pradesh. By over-emphasising proxy war in Kashmir for self-exculpatory reasons (as Jaishankar continues to do), India has shot itself on both feet - internally (it won’t talk to ‘terrorists’) and externally (it won’t talk to terrorist sponsors).
Thirdly, Prime Minister Modi just has asked bureaucrats to keep check on politicians; in his mind’s eye, only those differently persuaded. The corollary is that institutions of governance are free to balance ministers like Shah and an overzealous PMO.
It’s a wonder that a couple of personages from an economic advisory position to their eternal credit resigned on a point of policy divergence. But, no one in the national security system has taken cue, be it over missteps as the Constitutional sleight of hand over Article 370, Citizenship Amendment bill, impunity for Hindutva’s lackeys, Ladakh, Kashmir, Rafale or Agnipath.
If Doval was indeed a suitable substitute for Shah, the sound of his thumping the table for a different policy plank on any of these has been remarkably muted.
Fourthly, personalities matter. But making a fetish of this has pushed India down the road to authoritarianism. A compliant national security system has acquiesced in the usurpation of authority, spin doctoring the coup for public consumption. Recall also, the Pegasus was bought with intelligence funds. Reverting to democratic good health requires resuscitating institutional strengths, not relying on personalities.
Finally, politics cannot be wished away from policy sphere. The voting public can take note of the effects. It will strengthen democracy if we recognise and boot out unworthy incumbents. If we don’t, we can only deserve who and what we get.
