http://kashmirtimes.com/newsdet.aspx?q=83871
Ajit Doval's platter: Centralisation with a purpose

Four years into the Modi regime, it is disingenuous for strategic analysts to continue analysing its moves through the prism of strategic analysis. The commentary attending the appointment of National Security Adviser Ajit Doval as head of the strategic policy group, one of the pillars of the national security system, examines the move against the parameters of effectiveness and efficiency. This is a misleading start point, even if the commentary mostly arrives at the conclusion that there is little that has changed in a largely elephantine, if not dysfunctional, national security system. 
The problem with such analyses is that it credits the Modi government with intent to inject a sense of urgency and purpose in the system. The superimposition of Doval - the supposed supercop and intelligence wizard - on the strategic policy group, comprising the heads of all national security related silos, is taken as just the potion required by the system. It follows the move some months back of the creation of the defence planning committee, headed - you've guessed it - by our very own Agent Rana and Agent Vinod, Ajit Doval. 
This both misrepresents and misleads. If it is institutional vigour that Doval is supposed to bring about, setting him to it four years into the tenure is too little too late. Besides, centralization is no answer to multiplying institutional strength. In any case, if Amit Shah informs that Mr. Modi's leadership mantra is institutionalization, it is surely a bit of information that must be treated to the 'barrel of salt' test. In his recent op-ed, 'The Modi I know: The PM thinks big and is an institution builder par excellence', Amit Shah credits Narendra Modi with being an 'institution builder'. Neither does credibility of Mr. Shah, nor that of his subject, allow the attentive reader to place disbelief in suspension in the manner of their believers, the bhakts. If institutions were being sought, then centralization of the order as witnessed under Modi and his Gujarat cadre devotees would not have occurred. At the fag-end of his tenure, he would not have to foist Doval over heads of institutions. 
The moves come rather late in the tenure of the government. These are tacit acknowledgment that Modi's boast of being national security sensitive has proven just that. It does not take a Nitin Gadkari to inform of the nature of Modi's election time boasts, being vacuous, if not lies altogether. Gadkari's candour was picked up in the Marathi vernacular, when he was perhaps explaining why as they survey the coming elections the government must not be held to its election time promises. 
It also is an admission that the Modi sarkar in its lame duck year is fearful of its own shadows. The Modi-Shah duo that orchestrated the 'wave' last election time is best aware of how it engineered the paralysis of the Manmohan government. Even if Manmohan's second stint was mired in corruption, its ineffectual showing was also due to the defection of the bureaucracy - a subset of the middle classes. Enamoured of the anti-corruption juggernaut, with activists and the putative Aam Aadmi Party at its spearhead, the bureaucracy wrote the epitaph on Manmohan, well prior to his sell-by date. 
The Modi-Shah duo is aware of how the anti-corruption movement was hijacked by the Hindutva platform, through its Trojan horses as Baba Ramdev. The trajectory of cop Kiran Bedi and member-of-the-brass VK Singh is illustrative. It is no wonder then that the common man's party continues in the government's cross hairs five years on, lest its counter reel back the Bhartiya Janata Party's developmental constituency. Keeping the bureaucracy to the heel - should it make an anticipatory shift in its political master - requires a watch dog. The bureaucracy may yet discover its spine, but not due to the right reasons. It is surely put off by the manner the Gujarat cadre Modi aficionados have been let out and the police lobby, under Doval's tutelage, taken over the roost. Doval's professor emeritus status in the intelligence community presumably enables the omniscience to keep the governmental wheels humming, otherwise at risk from a logjam. 
But Doval's elevation - in terms of power, authority, reach and image - has more to it. 
Amit Shah has predicted a fifty-year Hindutva Reich. This requires keeping a date with the voter in 2019. Between now and then, Modi's 56 inch claim cannot be shown up as hollow. Already, his dash to Wuhan to buy time from the Chinese is being taken as a measure to preempt another Doklam or a reverse Doklam. He cannot afford a crisis in election year. The periodic diatribes of the army chief are to deter Pakistani adventurism. If the hardline was to be taken to its logical conclusion, there would not have been a return to a ceasefire at the Line of Control since early this year. Its continuation contradicts the 'pain' the army chief wishes to inflict on the Pakistani army. The army instead appears content to bring scholars and academics moonlighting as 'terrorists' to meet their maker within Kashmir. 
Ensuring that the benign security climate does not end up as a crisis, a crisis a confrontation and a confrontation a conflict requires a firm hand at the national security helm. This explains in part Doval's reeling in of all the reins into his person. His task over the coming year is to ensure Modi's longevity in power. The national interest in Hindutva terms is that the proverbial nation needs an extension in Modi's mandate. Another five year term is essential for the following forty-five. Ajay Mohan Bisht is under preparation to take over the mandate thereafter. In some 1500 'encounters' in his tenure in Lucknow, deaths have been in upper double digits. He is following the Modi-Shah script from their Gujarat days, even if one case led to Shah seeing the inside of jail and exile from his province. The national interest as seen through the strategic lens has to be kept in cold storage for the next six to eight months. Mr. Doval, with his lifetime of experience in the system, his ideological commitment, well-advertised belief in a strongman leader and valuing his proximity to the pretender Leviathan, can be trusted to deliver an environment that returns Modi to power. 
Unfortunately, that may not be all. Unfortunately for Modi, dark clouds are accumulating on the horizon. The Rafale scam joins demonetization and the goods and services tax with the magnitude and potential to bring down Hindutva's castles in the air. Worse bhakts and their icon are increasingly at the butt of social media jokes. Given this developing siege of Iron Man II (LK Advani not counted) may require trotting out of the usual election gimmicks up the ruling formation's sleeve, polarization being one. The Mandir card is available to play. While its internal dimension is self-evident, a crisis with Pakistan can be manufacture in case an external Other is required. The manipulation of voter perceptions in the run up to elections may require orchestration of the national security apparatus. 
An able hand on the till is therefore necessary. Mr. Doval may have more on his hands than meets the eye.

https://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/4/15204/Making-Security-A-Voter-Consideration

Making security a voter consideration

Here on, end-September will likely figure as the annual culmination of the India-Pakistan summer campaign over Kashmir. Thus far the arena has been the General Assembly’s chamber in New York with the right of reply being deployed by both sides. In the latest episode, India called-off a meeting - though one not amounting to talks or a resumption of the peace process - between the two foreign ministers that was to be held in New York.

As India heads into its fifty-year Reich predicted by Amit Shah, the context back home to the annual joust in New York will be provided by the observance of the Parv Parakram, celebration of the anniversary of the ‘surgical strikes’.

There being no meetings left to call off in case needed, the stage is set for the next crisis. An expert relying on notes taken on a field trip to the region rules in limited war.

Apprehending as much, the Indian Army Chief is set on a military reforms agenda. He believes the Indian army is configured for fighting ‘previous wars’. Army commanders at this autumn’s conference are to sign off on a restructuring agenda to make the army’s cold start doctrine implementable.

The Army Chief let on that India has options up its sleeve other than surgical strikes. He wishes to reprise surgical strikes and inflict like pain on Pakistan, but without the brutality that attends Pakistani provocations.

This implies a perforation of the subconventional-conventional divide in an up-gunned variant of surgical strikes by conventional means. The aim is to rekindle escalation dominance.

Escalation dominance is a perception in a side that it can prevail at a certain level. This has deterrence value in that the ability to prevail at a certain level of conflict, prevents the other side from escalating to that level fearing ending up the worse off.

The conventional advantage being with India, Pakistan for its part, has sought to undercut this by introducing tactical nuclear weapons at the conventional level. It has obscured the divide between the two levels, conventional and nuclear.

Taking cue from Pakistan - that obscured the nuclear-conventional divide - India appears set to obfuscate the subconventional-conventional one. This will enable leveraging India’s conventional advantage at a lower level, at the subconventional-conventional divide. This will keep well off any nuclear thresholds conferring renewed utility of conventional power into the nuclear age.

Though having deterrence benefits, the underside of such exertion is an impetus to brinkmanship. Assuming escalation dominance, a side may be more willing to go to the brink and court conflict in crisis.

Improved conventional capabilities tend to prompt India’s conventional muscle flexing, while Pakistani belief that its ‘full spectrum deterrence’ covers the conventional level. Unintended outcomes can result.

The two sides not talking to each other, there is currently no buffer. This means there is one step less between trigger events and crisis.

Earlier, the two sides had put their eggs into one basket, that of contacts between the two national security advisers. The Indian side having a security czar in Ajit Doval, the Pakistani side had reciprocated with appointing a military man as his counterpart. The two reportedly met discreetly some six times over the past four years.

The Pakistani national security adviser having resigned on Nawaz Sharif being forced out of office, even this link no longer exists. The Imran Khan administration is disinclined to recreate the appointment, merging the office with is foreign ministry.

It is apparent then that political distancing and military preparedness are dangerously coextensive.

As India heads into elections, there is a political necessity to keep the India-Pakistan pot simmering. This can enable the ruling party to use the ongoing face-off for political dividend when needed. With the Rafale episode joining demonetization, the general services tax and jobless growth kicking in together, political compulsions may require trotting out the Pakistani bogeyman.

The usual autumnal reports of some 300 militants in terror launch pads waiting to infiltrate prior to snows setting in are already being put out. The local elections within the Valley can provide the tinder. The upcoming tenth anniversary of Mumbai 26/11 serves as a difficult juncture. If the death of three special police officers and mutilation of a border guard’s body caused a pause in meetings between the two countries, no recourse is left but retaliatory violence at the next provocation.

Pakistan for its part would not be averse. It would like to get back at India, viewing India’s hard-to-get stance as a spurning of its hand outstretched over the past year. Counter-intuitively, it may like to smoothen the path to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s continuing in power, knowing that a crisis would be useful politically for him. PM Modi in power is only superficially bad news, since his hardline is useful for the Pakistan army’s lease on power in Pakistan.

Political portents indicate a troubled relationship in the run up to Indian elections. Putting in place shock absorbers is the only practical bet for the interim. Sushma Swaraj’s formula that meetings are only to discuss terror can prove a handy band aid.

Equally notable are the levels of insecurity at the fag-end of the government’s tenure. Its posturing on national security ever since Mr. Modi’s trip to Rewari inaugurating his election campaign in 2013, that was backed by cheerleaders on Delhi’s strategic circuit, stands exposed.

The offensive-defensive dialectic is the sine-qua-non of strategy. So far, India’s military developments have only driven Pakistan further down the nuclear route. The last round of conventional change India instituted - its cold start doctrine – resulted in tactical nuclear weapons appearing on the subcontinent. The current day thrust for restructuring cannot but have like innovative response, and therefore is not quite the route to security.

The shift to cold start doctrine and its implementation phase was in the context of improved India-Pakistan atmospherics. This round of restructuring requires similar buffering. Instead, the current trajectory of India’s Pakistan policy worsens Indian security.

Four years into the hardline policy, continuing insecurity must be laid at its door. Consequently, security considerations must figure in voter considerations ahead.

https://southasianvoices.org/india-pakistan-and-the-tussle-of-escalation-dominance/

India-Pakistan and the tussle of escalation dominance

Unedited version

The cancellation of a meeting of the two foreign ministers that was to be held on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session framed the Indian army chief’s statement that, ‘there is a need for one more action (surgical strike).’ He later added that surgical strikes are not the only option for decisive action for India confronted with Pakistan provocation.

On cue, the Pakistani military spokesperson claimed its military is ready for war, rationalizing that war happens when either side is unprepared for it. Pakistan’s information minister took care to remind India that Pakistan is a nuclear power.

The annual war of words between the two sides continued at the 73^rd General Assembly session in New York with the two foreign ministers using respective addresses to trade barbs, followed by officials exercising the right of reply.

This period of rhetoric, brought on by the slide to brutalization in Kashmir in the killings of special police officers and mutilation of a Border Security Force trooper, framed the end-September Parakram Parv (celebration of valour) exhibition commemorating the second anniversary of the surgical strikes.

The singular aspect of the surgical strikes episode missing in the valourisation was its cognizance of escalatory possibilities.

Surgical strikes were deliberately kept limited, a feature emphasized early in a press briefing by India’s military operations chief. For its part, Pakistan, aware that the onus was on it, wisely pretended that the trans-Line of Control (LC) raids never took place.

If the ratcheting up of rhetoric now is any indicator, the subcontinent is closer, yet again, to another crisis, especially since the buffer of meetings and talks - that could serve as an intervening step in being called-off - is no longer there.

In case the lesson learnt from the surgical strikes is to apply to the next round, then India shall likely keep any substitute options to surgical strikes equally limited.  

The problem is that the Pakistani army cannot use its earlier alibi twice over. Once bitten, it has surely war gamed its reaction. It follows then that there are two possibilities.

The first is Pakistan - duly prepared - drawing blood. The second is - caught flatfooted yet again - it is forced to up-the-ante.

In the first case, the onus of upping-the-ante would be on India. Having milked the surgical strikes anniversary for political dividend, the government would not like egg on its face as it goes into elections. Irrespective of the military’s itch to get even and goading by the long-compromised media, it will have its own political compulsions to ‘do something’.

In the second case, to save face with its domestic constituency, Pakistan’s army may make a retaliatory move or two. India’s putting up its guard and warding the counter punches off, constitute steps towards a slippery slope.

Both would edge towards a slippery slope, with an eye to catalyzing intervention of the international community. A worried United States, that has political heft with both countries, and China, that can work better on Pakistan, will be on hand to help de-escalate.

This is a happy ending of a script going from crisis to confrontation.

Its likelihood depends on validity of each sides’ self-assessment of ‘escalation dominance’. Though usually associated with nuclear warfighting, the term can be used to imply the ability to prevail at a particular level along the spectrum of conflict: subconventional, conventional and nuclear.

To illustrate, India’s effort over the past decade and  half has been  at honing its conventional edge has been to signal that since it has the advantage at the next higher level, Pakistan would be better advised not to test its tolerance threshold in its proxy war at the subconventional level.

Pakistan’s turn to ‘full spectrum deterrence’ is an effort to deny India escalation dominance at conventional level. Noticing Pakistan obfuscation of the conventional-nuclear divide in its introduction of tactical nuclear weapons (TNW) into the picture, India has lately broadened its subconventional options. This explains surgical strikes and any variants up its sleeve.

India is alongside embarked on rekindling escalation dominance at the conventional level. It has an army restructuring program afoot, reportedly to be signed off at the army commanders’ annual autumn conference.

Emphasising its necessity, the Indian army chief confessed that the army is only prepared to fight previous wars. Apart from the other features of the reforms such as optimization of manpower and equivalence of army ranks with civilian peers, the restructuring shall enable the army to work its ‘cold start’ doctrine better.

To recap, the doctrine is informed by the limited war concept. The reported doing-away with divisional headquarters of pivot corps in the reform will make for sprightly and multiple limited thrusts, while remaining under even the TNW threshold.

This brings the conventional level back into play, while preserving India’s punch in the form of strike corps that are not subject to the restructuring. India’s military restructuring promises to expand the scope for moving from crisis to confrontation. Its deterrent value is in being able to take a step closer to the slippery slope.

The tussle is between India pulling up the window for military options below the nuclear level and Pakistan thrusting down the nuclear awning over it. In the doctrinal tennis match, the ball is now in Pakistan’s court.

https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/politics/opinion-india-pakistan-ties-how-dangerous-are-the-waters-3014121.html

India-Pakistan: How dangerous are the waters?

In the run up to the Parakram Parv, the pan-India observation of the second anniversary of the surgical strikes, Army chief General Bipin Rawat, expressed his belief that "there is a need for one more action (surgical strike)". He later added that surgical strikes are not the only manner of hitting Pakistan back. He wished to keep the option up India’s sleeve, a surprise.

In reminding Pakistan that it better keep its jihadis in check, particularly as the tenth anniversary of the Mumbai 26/11 attacks is coming up, his remarks were useful for refreshing deterrence.

At the receiving end of his signalling, the Pakistani military spokesperson claimed its military is ready for war, pointing out that being unprepared for war was to invite it. Alongside, he took care to helpfully point out — in case it has missed Indian notice — that Pakistan is a nuclear power.

The episode’s happy ending was not fortuitous. Taking cue, Pakistan, aware that the onus was on it to escalate or otherwise, wisely resorted to the fiction that the surgical strikes never took place.India does not need any reminding. One of the salient features of the September 29, 2016, surgical strikes was that these were cognizant of escalatory possibilities. They were deliberately kept limited, and by going public with the limited nature and intent early the following day, India’s director general of military operations nipped any potential for escalation.

However, there is no guarantee that the next round will be as tame as the past one, especially since by revealing the footage of the surgical strikes India has shown up Pakistan’s lie. Besides, home minister Rajnath Singh recently claimed that India has given Pakistan yet another retaliatory bloody nose.

The unedifying exchange late last month between the two perennial rivals in the august hall of the UN General Assembly in New York suggests that the threat of crisis ending up a confrontation shall persist for some time.

Even if India keeps its opening gambit calibrated, Pakistan may not be able to play ball. It follows then that if it is duly prepared as its military spokesperson claims, then it has an ace up its sleeve.

The onus of upping the ante would then be on India. Already in election mode, the government would not like egg on its face. It may be forced — egged on by a military wanting to even the score and a public sentiment whipped up by an unthinking media — to ‘do something’.

Pakistan’s alacrity and India’s reaction may push both to a precipice, from which neither would not like to back down.

Both would be propelled by a belief in what is called ‘escalation dominance’. The term implies a self-assessment that a side is able to prevail at the level the conflict is fought.

Pakistan believes it dominates the sub-conventional level through its use of terror. With a turn to surgical strikes and its variants, India believes it has acquired ‘escalation dominance’.

Checkmated at the sub-conventional level, Pakistan may up the ante, believing that it has trumped India’s conventional advantage by its introduction of tactical nuclear weapons into its armoury.

Both countries can believe in ‘escalation dominance’ simultaneously, but both cannot have it at the same time, when push comes to shove. A side will prevail, prompting the other to likewise step on the accelerator. This constitutes the potential for a crisis script to go awry.

With diplomacy at a low ebb, there are no buffers left. The interim between now and the 2019 elections is therefore one of heightened tensions on two counts.

First, Pakistan, listening-in to Indian strategic debates, may be heartened by the army chief’s confession that India is only prepared to fight previous wars.

Second, it also knows that India’s Army is moving towards reconfiguring its forces in line with the precepts of the ‘cold start’ doctrine it adopted over a decade back. For the Pakistan army, a tryst sooner may be better than later once the Bipin Rawat reforms start kicking in.

While the political undesirability of confrontation degenerating into conflict is well grasped, there are military factors that tend a different way.

The upshot then is that the interim till elections needs tiding over by the Narendra Modi government discreetly restoring the buffer. While preserving it from uncertainty, it can prove a start point for the next government in 2019.

https://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/4/15086/India-Pakistan-Politics-Stumps-Strategy

India-Pakistan: Ideology trumps strategy

An earlier contribution to The Citizen very rightly brings out the political rationale for the government calling off the meeting of the foreign minister with her Pakistani counterpart set to have taken place on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York this month. Here his point is reinforced by showing up the strategic rationale given – that terrorism continues – as a false one.

Indeed, the situation in Kashmir is such that the government could instead well have yelled ‘Victory!’ and turned the tide. That would have been sound strategy in the circumstances, and with political dividend including with its core Hindutva constituency.

Within Kashmir, the promising factors that could have been capitalised on included the appointment at long last of a political governor, who just made the sensible point that assembly elections, not horse trading, is how the next government in Srinagar would be formed. There continues to be a special representative in place, appointed about a year back, whose mandate of dialogue could be taken to its logical conclusion.

The ongoing military operation, Operation All Out, has accounted for some 360 terrorists killed in the last two years. The potential of the short-lived Ramzan ceasefire was undercut by its hasty termination. In short the military and political prongs of strategy of could have culminated with the military prong having done its bit being superseded by the political prong getting into high gear.

On the India-Pakistan front, the Pakistanis have sent out feelers for resuming talks over the past two years. Its army chief has weighed in in favour of talks and an economic opening. Taking the cue, so has the new government in Islamabad, promising two steps to India’s one. Since, as India’s minister of state for external affairs points out, it is a creature of the army it appears that the Pakistanis – speaking with one voice – could have proven a credible interlocutor. India could well have chosen to keep the talks about terrorism, as Minister for External Affairs Sushma Swaraj intended, and continued with its line that this was a meeting and not talks or the resumption of dialogue.

At the regional level, US President Donald Trump’s policy has panned out over the past year. He set it rolling last August by promising a military conditioning of the Taliban, but with no dates of departure thrown in. Over the year, the Americans have opened a direct channel of talks with the Taliban, alongside the twice-proclaimed ceasefire initiative of the Afghan government. They have rapped Pakistan on the knuckles for not doing its part to bring the Taliban to the table by withholding USD 300 million in military subsidy and cutting off access to military education programs in the United States. The Russians and Iranians, who interface intimately in Syria, also have a line to the Taliban in the region. In short, there is little more that Americans could be doing to turn the screws on Pakistan.

In any case, the day-long working visit of the Afghan president to New Delhi preceded the acceptance of the meeting by India at Pakistan's request. Thus, the meeting was not called off owing to the wider situation. It therefore – as India admitted, citing the three policemen killed there – had to do with Kashmir.

The calling-off of the meeting is not the first about-turn in the Modi-Doval stewardship of India’s Pakistan policy. The first was the infamous one in which India overreacted to the Hurriyat's meeting with the Pakistani high commissioner, disregarding the precedence amounting to normality of such interaction. The second was after Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a flying visit to the Raiwind farm house of Nawaz Sharif, when the Pathankot airfield terror attack aborted the process.

Whereas the Pathankot episode had the magnitude to affect talks, to use the killings of three policemen in Kashmir – when some 20 policemen have been killed over the year – calls into question the rationale given, particularly when the policemen were irregulars called special police officers, and not constabulary.

Perhaps the intention is to highlight at the UN General Assembly – where no doubt the tradition of an India-Pakistan war of words is set to continue this year – the Pakistani hand in support of terrorism. But the international community will be difficult to persuade.

A fourth of some 250 terrorists in Kashmir are estimated to be Pakistani. Of the list of 22 ‘most wanted’, only three are Pakistani. The leader most active is indigenous, Riyaz Naikoo of the Hizb and of the six A++ terrorists, four are Kashmiri. Even the casualty figures released by India talk of local militants mostly, with the disaggregated data for Pakistani terrorists not available even on the meticulously compiled satp.org datasheet.

As for infiltration, had Pakistan been at its mischievous best, a hardline government would hardly have gone in for a renewed ceasefire along the Line of Control.

Besides, the deterioration in Kashmir owes much to India’s hardline. The report of the UN human rights watchdog has drawn blood, finding mention yet again in the taking-over briefing of the new high commissioner for human rights. Terrorists have for the most part in the recent past restricted themselves to military targets, thereby undercutting India’s case that it is subject to terrorism and a proxy war, not insurgency.

It is largely over the course of this year that a certain brutalisation appears to have crept in. Families have been targeted by both sides, making it irrelevant to point out who started both sides down the slippery slope. The targeting of special police officers may indicate a spike in the intelligence game in which the terrorists are out to stanch intelligence sources, even as intelligence is used to get to more of them. The resumption of large-scale operations, the high-handed nature of searches leaving behind a trail of complaints by house owners, the continuing killings of up to a score a month of local lads who have taken to insurgency out of desperation and anger and lack of hope absent political initiative have contributed.

The upshot is that India cannot blame Pakistan credibly for the mess in Kashmir. It cannot rehearse its earlier line on terrorism with any plausibility. The army chief has gone on record saying that a three-tier counter infiltration grid has been reinforced this year, and some 100 terrorists killed astride it over last year. It is thus not terrorism India faces, it is insurgency. India cannot believably play the Pakistan card any more to bail itself out of the need to switch to the political track.

India must recognise that it is at what its army chief called its Neeraj Chopra moment, referring to the sportsmanship of the Asiad gold medalist, who reached out to his Pakistani bronze medalist compatriot on the podium. India could well have likewise climbed the podium and extended a hand both externally to Pakistan and internally to Kashmiris.

That such a circumstance has not been seized after four years in the saddle by the present government indicates that the circumstance is fortuitous. It is not of India’s making as much it is of Pakistan largely divesting itself of the terrorism tag. Continuing force application indefinitely is not strategy; it marks the absence of one.

Further, India’s strategy minders are ideologically blinded to see the juncture to be seized. This suggests that politics has trumped strategy, and in the process national interest.

http://www.kashmirtimes.in/newsdet.aspx?q=83157
India on the brink

One explanation for the enduring India-Pakistan rivalry has been that it is an identity conflict: India as a multitudinous democracy and Pakistan as a military-run state. A cynical view of Pakistan has it that its envy of India results in its constant provocations, including terror attacks and periodic dusting of the threadbare territorial issue, Kashmir. 

It has deployed its intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), to this end. From the headlines these days it can be inferred that the ISI has succeeded beyond its wildest imagination. 

The more significant affect has been at the political level. Using the terrorism the ISI indulged in as leverage, black operations by India's majoritarian extremists have in some measure led up to the capture of power in India by cultural nationalists. 

One prop that enabled Hindutva champion, Narendra Modi, gaining a national profile was that ISI instigated home-grown terrorists were out to get him when he was at his provincial perch. Four years into the Modi era, the Indian Muslim - having been driven into a corner - would makes for an implausible foe. Thus, the ploy is reportedly yet again in play but with a new bogeyman, the urban naxal. 

The Othering of the India Muslim and electoral dividend of polarization originated partially in the ISI scare of the eighties and nineties. While this is the ISI's handywork at the political level, collateral damage from terrorism has had an operational level impact too. 

Out in Kashmir, brutalization is underway with potential to impact the professionalism of the army. The army - as its veterans constantly remind - is India's last defence line. If the army loses its sheen, India loses. That ISI appears to be scrubbing off the army's sheen is reason enough for the army to step back from the brink.

The defence minister - perhaps suffering from an appreciation deficit - let on at a TV talk show that Indian army has been head-hunting on the Line of Control. Thus far, it has been a rather well-kept secret. 

This could well be the usual braggadocio on part of the defence minister. Or else it could have been equally brought on by a - unnecessarily - perceived need to compensate for being a woman in what is - again unnecessarily - perceived to be a man's domain. 

Be that as it may, it is clear the Indian army has been giving as good as it gets, even in emulating terrorists. Unlike with the 'surgical strikes', the defence minister admits we have not been owning up to these. 

Evidence in the open domain suggests that this conduct predates the current government with documents relating to a certain Operation Ginger, dating to 2011, accessed by the media. Reportedly three Pakistani heads were carted to India as booty in that operation. Perhaps, the momentum of tit-for-tat actions on the LC over the past three decades has been such as to by now make the 'chicken and egg' question - as to who cast the first stone - moot.

It is understandable for terrorists to undertake such inhuman action. Terrorism, by definition, requires an audience. The more flagrant the violation and criminality, the more the fear induced and its reach widest. Mumbai 26/11 is example. Mutilation of victims fits well with the definition. Its what terrorists do. 

The ISI's backing however suggests there is more. There is a strategy to it. The resulting brutalization is to reduce the India army to their level. The hope is that an angered army will lash out, within: in Kashmir. 

On the LC, the Pakistan army has also likely acquired a few comforting trophies - that cannot be exhibited in an officer's mess - by having its members mentor and participate in border action team activity. No doubt it has paid in lost heads for this. 

As an army it has read its Clausewitz. It is aware of the nature of war and that it cannot go against the grammar of war. This perhaps explains its hiding behind the 'ceasefire' on the LC when the going gets tough, even as it outsources violence to terrorists. 

It is the Indian army that has given currency to the term 'moral ascendancy'. This implies that the army thinks it needs to land the last blow and the heavier blow to get the better of the other side. This has the interconnected psychological connotations of putting down the other side, while boosting oneself up. 

While calling what's on at the LC as war may be overblown, but a low intensity conflict has been underway for three decades. Exchanging blows on the LC is what makes it so, even if - for the squeamish - some blows appear to be below the belt.

However, there is a strategic underside and it is this that attracts Pakistan's ISI. The dividend Pakistan seeks is not on the LC. 

The disaffection in Kashmir offers a setting for over-the-top response by the counter insurgent, such as the human shield episode and the rewarding of its perpetrator by no less the army chief, albeit for a different set of actions. 

An officer whose name found its way into a first information report for killing of stone-pelters was soon thereafter awarded a gallantry medal, with perks such as a lifelong railway travel permit thrown in, albeit - yet again - for an action that preceded the stone-pelter killing incident by his patrol. 

The latest twitter-storm has a terrorist's body being dragged in full media view after an encounter in which he was killed. Perhaps the army was wanting to send the message across that such a fate awaits terrorists. The terrorists involved in the latest encounter were from Pakistan, attempting to get into Kashmir no doubt to bolster the local militants who have comparatively shorter lifespans. It is moot whether such a message serves to deter or energise them. 

This time round, the army has initiated inquiry, even though its apologists have gone to town explaining the action as a prudent one intended to set off booby traps. The inquiry indicates that it is live to the prospect of brutalization that stares it in the face. 

That brutalization has raised its ugly head is unmistakable. The retaliatory killings between the local militants and the Kashmiri police are indicative. Police, paramilitary and army men on leave have been abducted and killed. Likewise, there was a case of an alleged over ground worker being found by the wayside with his throat cut. In the event, he survived to tell a tale of torture. 

Notable is that the threat of brutalization is in a period when counter insurgency experts remind us that there is no existential threat in Kashmir. Operation All Out has put paid to indigenous terrorists at the pace of some 15 a month in its run over the past two years. It is a period tailor made for employing the doctrine of 'iron fist in a velvet glove'. 

Take, for instance, reports in the aftermath of searches, of houses left upturned and possessions damaged. The longstanding aping of Israel in taking down houses where terrorists are apprehended or killed - supposedly as collateral damage in the firefight - continues. The report of the global human rights watch dog on Kashmir, even if trashed by the government, has drawn blood. 

The lesson is that brutalization of the counter insurgent leads to loss of moral ascendancy and drives insurgency.

At the political level, the ISI has already won. It has had a hand in India losing its democratic sheen. But at the operational level, it can yet be bested, and the army's sheen can yet be preserved. 

The army needs to view its Kashmir predicament afresh in this light. That its operations will not be called off by this government is a given. The madam defence minister appears set even to declare the JNU campus as a disturbed area as precursor to AFSPA over it! 

However, how the army conducts operations are within its own remit. It should not be that the army dances to an ideological and opportunistic hardline tune of its political masters. A strategic view would suggest revising the laxman rekhas and renewing respect for these.

Book review

Saifuddin Soz hit the national limelight when his lone vote in the Lok Sabha brought down the Vajpayee II government. In 1999, the late Prime Minister Vajpayee was into the thirteen month of his second stint—the earlier one in 1996 being aborted in a mere thirteen days. Vajpayee’s coalition lost the No Confidence Motion in April 1999 by the narrowest margin possible of one vote—attributed to Soz voting against the whip of his party, the National Conference. He later joined the Congress Party and became a minister in the Manmohan Singh government. Alongside, he served to further the United Progressive Alliance government’s outreach to disaffected Kashmiris in a period when the peace initiatives were at their most credible mark. In the event, the Manmohan Singh government was unable to deliver and peace remains elusive in Kashmir a decade on.

The book under review is therefore timely. Disturbed by the continuing unrest since the killing of Burhan Wani, an icon of Kashmiri militancy, Soz returns to his long- standing position that the problem in Kashmir is not one of law and order, but is a political problem. As a political problem, it behoves a mutually negotiated political solution. This is useful to reiterate at a time when the ruling party at the Center has chosen to bring down the provincial coalition in which it was partner in Srinagar. Though there is a special representative in place and a governor with a political background has been appointed after over a half century of non-political governors in place in Raj Bhawan, it is equally clear that in an election year political initiatives are unlikely. As for the elephant in the room—Pakistan—the change in government there to one headed by Imran Khan and his proposal of a return to talks is unlikely to change the Indian position on ‘no talks without an end to terrorism’ before national elections next year.

Given that the status quo in terms of militancy and disaffection is set to continue in Kashmir for another year, the book provides ballast for peace voices. It is altogether for the good that the release of the book attracted controversy. The saffronite media had it that in his book Soz was advocating ‘azadi’—defined by them as freedom—for Kashmir. Soz gamely defended his view that azadi to Kashmiris is not self-determination as much as a release from the political stranglehold India has acquired over its affairs ever since it dismissed and imprisoned Sheikh Abdullah in 1953. To this has been added the militarized template over the past three decades. Soz defends Kashmiris wanting out of this bind. He courageously also calls on the Hurriyat—the hold-out political formation there—to moderate its position on talks.

Soz brings out that Chidambaram, Home Minister in Manmohan Singh’s second term, had the correct interpretation of ‘azadi’, but was unable to follow through. Federalism holds the political answers, but New Delhi then did not have the political heft, and currently is unwilling to countenance the possibilities that it opens up.

Soz is clear-headed on the way forward, elaborated in the last chapter. To him, India, Pakistan and the people of Kashmir are the relevant parties. He thinks recourse to the United Nations is passé. The problem is in India’s ‘impairing the constitutional relationship between Kashmir and the Union of India established on the basis of the Instrument of Accession, the institution of the Jammu and Kashmir Constituent Assembly and the Delhi Agreement of 1952’ (p. 205). He thinks the dispute is not a complex problem, but is a simple proposition in case political sagacity it forthcoming. He believes that the contours of resolution exist in the two speeches by the Lion of Kashmir in the J&K Constituent Assembly on 5 November 1951 and 11 August 1952.

As a first step, Soz advocates a gesture from the Union government to bail Kashmir out of its cycle of violence. He advocates a dialogue with the primary stakeholders, the people of Kashmir, through the political conglomerate, the Hurriyat. He believes a political consensus through dialogue is an ‘achievable goal’ (p. 206). His second point is in the Center undertaking introspection where it went wrong over the years. These include the junctures: arrest of Shaikh Abdullah in 1953; lack of follow up on the Indira-Abdullah accord of 1975; dismissal of the Farooq Abdullah government in 1984; foisting the hardliner Jagmohan on Kashmir yet again in 1990; and alleged rigging of the 1987 elections. His third point is on lifting of ‘repression’ (p. 207). The army must reach out to the people, rather than indulge in bean counts. The fourth is instituting a commission of enquiry to bridge the trust deficit resulting from over 70000 Kashmiri deaths and 5000 disappeared over the period of the unrest. The fifth is on a common understanding between the mainstream political class in mainland India and the Hurriyat on the terms of the settlement. The sixth is an internal dialogue between the three regions of Kashmir—Kashmir, Jammu and Ladakh—organized by the central government. Seventh is demilitarization of Kashmir, which can be merged with his eighth point, the revocation of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. It is in his ninth point that Pakistan enters the equation. He wants the rigours of the people along the Line of Control to be lightened by ending the military stand-off along it. His tenth and final point is on ending the perpetual animosity between India and Pakistan that plays out in violence in Kashmir.

Some of these points are in hand. With Pakistan, much ground was tread in the Musharraf-Vajpayee-Manmohan formula. Internally, the recent appointment of a political governor—who does not owe affiliation to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh—and the earlier one of the former intelligence head as special interlocutor has potential. In US embassy correspondence carried on wikileaks Soz is credited with helping put the Hurriyat in direct touch with the central government. He therefore exhorts the government to take up meaningfully a ‘credible discussion and dialogue without any pre-conditions’ (p. 214). He warns against raking up the Article 35A issue, even while highlighting Mr. Modi’s Independence Day reference to Kashmir in his 2017 address as promising. Soz in his conclusion rightly makes the point that the present juncture provides yet another opportunity for a policy shift—the proverbial ‘ripeness’ moment for conflict resolution initiatives. Both sides appear at a ‘hurting stalemate’ with the indigenous militants having a short shelf life and the army acknowledging through periodic utterances of its chief that it promises to be a long haul in Kashmir.

Though not self-consciously so, the book appears divided into two parts. The first—longer part—covers the past, starting from its remote recesses seen through the eyes of historians and travellers through Kashmir. The author aims to highlight that the region is distinct, if not different, thereby making his case that it merits a different federal yardstick than mainstream India. He brings out the wellsprings of Kashmiriyat, setting the stage for possibilities of a liberal-secular conflict resolution approach. The second part is his laying out a case of how political neglect of this unique feature of Kashmir has resulted in yet another calamity for the people of Kashmir. The next government at the center of whichever hue has its task cut out in following up on the Soz road map for Kashmir. As he points out (p. 211), it is the ‘only option available to the Government of India….’