Showing posts with label indian army. Show all posts
Showing posts with label indian army. Show all posts

Wednesday, 23 July 2025

 https://open.substack.com/pub/aliahd66/p/was-the-chinar-corps-commander-right?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=i1fws

Was the Chinar Corps Commander right at Kokarnag?

A message on social media carried an account of an exchange some 35 years back between the then Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) and the Chinar Corps Corps Commander (CC).

The long-retired DGMO says: “I spoke on the telephone soon after, while he was still in the hospital, and chiding him jovially saying, “XXX you must remember that you are now a Corps Commander, not a Platoon or Company Commander”. He responded equally jovially saying, “XXX, you know me well. That’s who I still think I am!”

The former DGMO’s intervention on social media chatter lent authenticity to the episode. It was prompted by a photo of an MRI scan of the CC’s head – taken in an unrelated matter - that had shown up a foreign object lodged in his skull. Perplexed the doctors had brought it to the CC’s attention; who had then wracked his memory to figure out how it could have got there in first place.

As it turned out the CC had received head wounds during an encounter in Kashmir while in command of Chinar Corps. The banter between the two regimental mates over the episode was when he was receiving treatment at the Base Hospital.

The doctors there had pulled out some 4-5 splinters and patched him up. Having to do it quickly, they apparently left one splinter that resurfaced three decades later to cause a social media flutter.

Their urgency stemmed from the Pakistani media going to town over news that the CC, along with his ADC, had been gunned down by Kashmiri ‘freedom fighters’ in Kokarnag that morning. Hurriedly made presentable, with a beret to cover the scars, the general – through pain - credibly refuted the ‘fake news’.

The ‘news’ was of an encounter in Kokarnag that winter morning in the early period of outbreak of troubles in Kashmir. The general had led his Quick Reaction Team (QRT) in a house clearing drill at the fire-fighting station to get two Anti National Elements (ANE, as was the terminology those days) holed up inside.

The ANEs had dropped two of our jawans in an ambush the previous evening. Though cornered in the building through the night, they’d taken out another two soldiers; and for good measure murdered a local school master sent to persuade them to give up.

At this juncture, the CC, who was keeping tabs, turned up at the scene as was his wont. Sensing despondency, he probably felt the need for early action to turn the tables. The divisional commander (GOC) fetched up in quick succession.

Recce and tactical appreciation done, the CC had the GOC’s QRT provide covering fire while he, with his QRT, would in true Infantry style, ‘close with the enemy, capture or destroy him.’

He crawled up through the snow past the bodies of two of ours downed earlier. The ADC, after tightening the cordon around the site, dashed up to join the general and his QRT.

A firefight ensued.

The general threw in two grenades in quick succession to enable a break-in. As they spilled into the house, they were greeted with a magazine worth of Kalashnikov. The upshot was ricochet splinters plastering the CC’s scalp. Profuse bleeding from embedded splinters led to the QRT pulling the CC out of the fight by the scruff.

The ADC at the front of the pack could not disgorge back into the open. Losing blood, the CC was unpersuaded by entreaties for evacuation, insisting he would only leave only with his Aide onside. Providentially, the ADC survived the pounding the building received thereafter.

Had the story’s ending been any different, at a minimum, the DGMO – a military diplomat in a previous appointment and going on to be UN force commander - might have been less diplomatic. Himself a war-time gallantry award winner, he best knew his was a bitter pill to administer.

Consequently, the CC wasn’t spared a firing by the Army Chief the following day.

In that telephonic call, the CC held that being senior-most on the spot, he could only first place his own life on the line. A Higher Command course-mate, the Chief let him off.

The DGMO is spot-on with his observation that as corps commander, the CC’s job was cut out. Since it patently does not include rushing ANEs, the episode raises the question: Was the CC right?

Whatever the reservations of the GOC - who went on to be Army Chief in his turn – either did as ordered or participated in the decision. It’s possible therefore to infer all was not wholly wrong.

A perspective on command at the operational level in counter insurgency situations –pitched by a general with the staff experience in Kashmir later in the early years – was that the commander must have a wide-angled view and busy with managing the environment, leaving his radar screen clear of clutter of ground detail.

Another commander from the field opined (p. 354) that the higher commander must have a light touch, knowing when to pat on the back.

Such a managerial perspective must be contrasted with a leadership-centric one.

The early years of insurgency in Kashmir were somewhat turbulent as the army came to grips with it. Whereas initially it was people-centric, with mass movements as a characteristic, it gradually turned into a militarised proxy war of sorts only by the middle of the nineties.

At its outset, Chinar Corps, that CC headed, was relatively stretched. Recall, it spread from Demachok to the Pirpanjals. It bid for and received an additional division, that was at the time of the operation in question, only settling in.

Indeed, the managerial perspective is a product of the learning from the immediate period thereafter, as SOPs got written up and the grid steadily firmed in.

The CC thus had to lay the touch-stone and foundations for the counter insurgency that followed.

He just did it in inimitable style, with his jovial rejoinder to the DGMO giving the hint.

To him it was obvious that Patton’s Third Army could not have pivoted in the Ardennes in face of Hitler’s last gamble, without the general not positioning himself at muddy forest crossroads.

By no means was he intended for that command. The army had twice earlier sought his services in the North East.

A product of his generation, he had earned his spurs battling Naga hostiles in the late fifties in Nagaland.

Volunteering for an active command to get away from the drudgery of staff at a corps headquarters, he led the Assam Rifles in Mizoram in a second one-star command. This was at a crucial time when military pressure was applied during the Mizo talks-process in the mid-eighties; receiving a distinguished service award for his efforts.

His counter-insurgent credentials were backed by his knowledge of Kashmir acquired during his next - two-star - assignment along the Line of Control (LC).

It is at this juncture that destiny took hold.

When off to the North East with his luggage already transiting Gauhati, he was asked to instead head back to Badami Bagh as the incumbent Chief of Staff was felled by a heart attack.

Promoted three-star, he was slated as the low-profile head of the Assam Rifles in Shillong. A bureaucrat intervened, citing that his professional credentials stood embellished by his once topping the staff course. If his name had anything to do with it, it remained unsaid.

So it was back to Kashmir, but at a time his whole life seems in retrospect to have prepared him for – a tenure bookended with by Rubaiya Sayeed kidnap and the Kunan Poshpora episodes.

He was an early practitioner of what came to be called ‘iron fist in a velvet glove’ a decade later.

His life lessons were from Nagaland, where one evening his company was packed off overnight to another location. Apparently, hostiles’ ambush of a convoy had led to stockading of nearby villages for ease of surveillance and control, if not quite retribution.

He had set about interacting with the villagers, organising evening volleyball for the young adults; tutoring children into ‘jana, gana, mana’; and attending Sunday church unarmed and unescorted. A Naga shawl gifted in appreciation at the end of the two-months long interaction was handed back to the church.

Kashmiris were beneficiaries with Governor Jagmohan recounting in his memoir of the army’s efforts to win hearts. That the army lost a mere five men to ANE action in the period of his command - not counting the dastardly shooting down of airforce personnel at a bus stop among the opening salvos of what amounted in time to a war on and within Kashmir – perhaps owes in part to the fair conduct of troops under extreme pressures of cold, night and relentless operations.

But it was in the operational side, he was in his element.

Son of a state force’s brigadier, he came under fire first as a teen when his father’s convoy was strafed by the Indian Air Force. A young lad forced to go back by the Partition from his military cadet school in Dehra Dun, he was accompanying his father when spotted by the IAF.

The Brigadier - the first state forces’ staff course graduate himself - was siting the defences of Gulbarga sector to prevent the impending Operation Polo making a headway from the south west towards Hyderabad. In the event, the fight in this sector was fierce enough for India’s first Ashok Chakra to be awarded for gallantry in the battle to unlock the axis.

A bantam-weight boxer at the academies, the cadet went on as commissioned officer to be cited for no less than the PVC in 1965, winning the Vir Chakra instead.

His rise through the ranks marked him out a maverick, with not a few seniors at successive tiers hearing that they were at liberty to sack him or accept his resignation if they didn’t have faith in his professional judgement.

story has him on the phone telling the army commander in Udhampur when queried on why he had ordered the opening up of artillery on enemy LC defences that in case the army commander didn’t agree, he could sack him.

His reading shelf stocked the biography of Rommel, a tome on the Chindits, Kitson’s counter insurgency tract, and, The Brothers Karamazov.

A stanch belief – as was his - eases launch into the unknown.

So, when confronted with the situation at Kokarnag, it is easy to grasp why the CC chose a particular manner to turn the situation around. Grasping the essentials on arrival at the site, with a coup d'œil befitting an infantryman and a general to boot, he seized on it as an opportunity for administering an indelible and very personal imprint on his command.

Indian history is replete with such acts, the result notwithstanding, such as that of Tanaji Malusare. Not for him a managerial huddle at a time of test in military leadership – when a despairing body of soldiers look on to see what the senior or does not do.

That his example inspired is clear from the newly promoted brigade commander in question leading from the front in all operations thereafter, receiving a bullet in his thigh for his pains; but which put him ahead of his equally competent colleagues when it came to his turn to be Chief.

Soon thereafter another two-star out in front stopped a bullet, as did another two one-star commanders destined for Chief in respective turn. Indeed, an army commander too earned a wound medal a decade on. Prudence has been inculcated since the ambush of Brigadier Sridhar.

It’s fair to ask: Wouldn’t the Indian grip over Kashmir have been less firm if the CC had dithered, waited for reports and briefings instead?

Whereas Indian young officers have a well-earned status at the frontline of leadership, senior ranks are not easily spared scepticism.

Even so, there is sufficient evidence of daredevilry at the higher echelons – whether it is Rajinder Singh rushing up to Mahore; Usman sleeping on the floor; ‘Timmy’ Thimayya riding up with the 7 Cav; Mehar Singh touching down in Dakotas; Hanut carving out a minefield lane; Sagat Singh’s green-field landings along the Padma; Ved Malik landing with the initial flights on to an uncertain runway; Jameel Mehmood flying himself as two-star and turning in a bullet-holed helicopter at the pad; Tipnis and ‘Jimmy’ Bhatia flying across hostile territory; Nair landing in Daulat Beg Oldie; a Suresh Babu heading a patrol, to recall a few.

That seniors face scepticism in a Cynical Age only implies a greater thrust to ensure leadership trumps managerialism.

If Mahabharata is guide, the subcontinental leadership bar has always been high. Meeting it even when not doing so would go unremarked is the acid test – when only mere soldiery is looking on.

After all, it would have taken but a couple of hours to reduce that building to dust.

But then there would be no scope for counterfactuals: Kargil being detected earlier; Mumbai massacres ending in quick time; Chinese evicted at first step across; Pahalgam killers tracked down and laid out.

As the CC fades away, the detecting of a foreign body embedded in his scalp is an apt juncture to record his contribution to Indian military leadership ethic: let not the joy of soldiering die with the throttling of the young platoon and company commander within each officer as he (or she) grows in service.

Monday, 26 May 2025

https://m.thewire.in/article/politics/why-naya-bharat-needs-a-jameel-mhmood

https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/why-naya-bharat-needs-a-jameel-mehmood

Why Naya Bharat needs a Jameel Mehmood

Even as the Indian armed forces engaged in Operation (Op) Sindoor, some concerning headlines this side of the border collectively call out for tempering of the elation in its wake.

Here, the incidents in question are first listed, followed by a caution.

It's not all that glitter is gold

One, with the hot-pursuit of terrorists who perpetrated the atrocity at Baisaran meadow failing, Kashmir witnessed the demolishing of houses of militants with controlled explosions, including of those uninvolved. The operation was by night and in at least one instance, neighbouring houses were also damaged. The security forces involved refrained from releasing official information on the action.

Two, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar has opened an inquiry into “unconscionable, unacceptable acts” off the Rakhine coast in Myanmar. Allegedly, under the cover of darkness, the Navy dumped Rohingya refugees – who had been corralled from Delhi and transported by air to the Andamans by air - into the sea. (It would be a pity of the aircraft for move to Andamans were furnished by the air force.) Worse, allegations include sexual misconduct by unspecified escorts aboard the vessel.

Three, the Eastern Command informed of killings of 10 armed cadre of an unnamed armed group near the border in Manipur by the Assam Rifles. A Myanmarese group involved in the civil war against the military-led central authorities has since questioned the encounter. Apparently, the group was against the ongoing fencing of the border in the area; also objected to by local communities.

Four, the Sikh clergy denied deployment of air defence assets within the Golden Temple complex, forcing the army to distance itself from the statement of its air defence chief and local army commander. It appears that army was countering an earlier propaganda plank of the Pakistani military that improbably held that the Indian side had targeted Golden Temple during Op Sindoor.

For Indians to also refer to Golden Temple in a mirroring information war is to unnecessarily involve an Indian community in intelligence games. Whether the Temple witnessed a ‘surfeit of drone and missile attacks’, in keeping with the intelligence on threat to the Temple, is questionable.

Further, the commanding general in Amritsar in his media statement held that consequent to the Pahalgam attack, ‘the nation’s anger under able leadership took the form of Operation Sindoor.’ In Hindi, he describes it as ‘prabal netritva ke adheen (under bold leadership)’. Since the reference to the ‘able and bold leadership’ can only be to the political masters of the military. This is of a piece with the air force’s shabash: “…has been possible only because of budgetary and policy support from the government of India in the last decade." Both are egregious.

Five, the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Anil Chauhan’s new book just hit the stands. In it, the general has opined against any need for a written national security doctrine (NSS). Evidently, the leading military authority, in face of expert opinion to the contrary, provides covering fire to the government that has not been able to come up with one for over a decade.

Further, the timing along with its aim – “a cogent viewpoint…as to how the Indian Armed Forces are transforming…and their steadfast contributions towards realization of the national vison of becoming ‘Sashakt, Surakhshit, Samridh and Viksit Bharat’ by 2047” – lends ballast to the ruling party’s surge, capitalising on the military’s operational showing as is its wont.

Get up, stand up

It was not always this way. The military has been known to retain its lights even in face of political pressures. Its reputation for professionalism rests on this feature, of truth telling.

In the Nehruvian period, General Thimayya’s confrontation with Defence Minister VK Krishna Menon is well known. General Manekshaw, in keeping with Indira Gandhi’s view, reassured Indira’s cabinet that it would be premature to take down Pakistan in April 1971. General SK Sinha as Western Army Commander held a different perspective from Indira Gandhi on how the then nascent Sikh extremism should be handled. He was superseded, and the rest as they say is history. The military consistently pushed for nuclearization, even when the political class dithered. A naval chief was sacked, inter-alia, for intercepting gun-running through the Andaman Sea for Myanmar rebels favoured by the then defence minister.

General JJ Singh, though initially in favour of a peace deal over Siachen, changed his mind. General VK Singh was not above keeping the bureaucracy on tenterhooks during his stand-off over the date-of-birth issue. From the turn of the 2010s, the military stood for a two-front threat perspective, in face of foot-dragging by successive governments. In Kashmir, the army withstood pressures for rollback of its special powers, though operational circumstance made it appear feasible. The army shied away from deploying in Central India against Maoists, though termed the graver threat to national security.

Don’t give up the fight

Have things changed over the last decade?

In Kashmir, the army abandoned the ‘velvet glove’ in favour of solely an ‘iron fist’. The air force went along with the shift towards a smaller number of Rafales at a higher cost. The army stood askance as the ruling party capitalised on its surgical strikes for electoral gains, using the army to organise Parakram Parv. Its operations’ head then denied surgical strikes were previously conducted. The air force hid its blue-on-blue helicopter accident till the elections were over, while maintaining a façade over the Balakot strikes. The army maintained a stiff upper lip on the extent of Chinese intrusions onto Indian territory. Lately, the air force was reticent on its losses.

Withholding information amounts to turning the information war inwards, to keep citizenry in the dark and the parliament uninformed. Willy-nilly the dividend is yet again to their political master, embarked on yet another campaign on the military’s shoulders.

It appears the military has abandoned taking a position on a professional matter professionally arrived at. This is colourfully put by a middle order politician as: ‘forces are bowing down to Modi.’ Veterans ruing such a state of affairs is testimony.

State capture by the right wing appears near complete.

So now you see the light, ay

Brigadier RR Palsokar, the commander of Mullaitivu brigade, brought out a heart-felt account of his command tenure at one-star rank. Anyone of the generation that witnessed or participated in the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) would know Mullaitivu as a hotspot then, and later as the site at which the Tamil Tigers took their last stand.

The Brigadier recounts a dilemma he faced towards the end of his command when the IPKF was recalled to the mainland by VP Singh on the change of government.

The Perumal government propped up by India was wary of ending up a foundling. The intelligence agency, perhaps with the concurrence of Indian diplomats in Colombo as Jaishankar and Hardeep Puri (‘Viceroy’ Dixit had likely left by then), wanted to steady their protégé in Jaffna. The Citizen’s Volunteer Force (CVF) was thought up.

While Perumal’s coalition herded Tamil youth together for the ‘boots on ground’, the agency ferried in weapons. What the project had not reckoned with was the commander on the ground in Trinco, Major General Jameel Mehmood.

Not lost on anyone in IPKF at the time - including this author - was that another fiasco was in the offing. A CVF company of underage youth rounded up from villages was deployed in his company area.

As Palsokar mulled over what he should do, he received a call from Jameel, whose area abutted Mullaitivu. Jameel told him what he had done in Trincomalee; going to the camp where the CVF was being assembled and asking after who were volunteers. Those who were not volunteers were marched out to rejoin their families. Palsokar’s recall in his own words:

Now came General Jameel’s crunch question. What was I going to do? I tried to tell him what our divisional headquarters had told us. He then asked me a direct question, what did I think personally? I said that I would like to do what he did, but I was not sure if I had either the authority or the guts to do so. General Jameel’s response was, ‘are you a commander?’ That settled it (pp. 169-70).

Folklore has it that Jameel, knowing that the weapons when in CVF hands would eventually get to the Tigers, took a stand. He was transferred out before the weapons were handed over to the CVF.

When I went round the CVF company in my area checking alert levels by night, I could see the luminous foresights of the Kalashnikovs from yards away. This, when I carried a World War II Sten. By when we reached Madras port on de-induction, the CVF had dissolved.

No wonder it took the Sri Lankans another two decades to clear out the Tigers; at the cost of being arraigned internationally for genocide.

Jameel was overlooked for three-star rank. On representation, he went on to command the eastern army.

You stand up for your right

Victories with stand-off weapons are laudable, but by the prime minister’s promise, the next round will be different. The Pakistanis have made that equally clear. If it turns out so, the Chinese might not sit it out either.

Instances recorded at the outset here could get to be a habit and habits we know are character-forming. If careers of officers of the Jameel ilk are not preserved, the CDS-envisioned Transformation and, in turn, Modi’s dream of Viksit Bharat will come to naught.