https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/opinion-the-divergent-prescriptions-for-kashmir-3761261.html
The divergent prescriptions for Kashmir
Reacting to a campaign remark by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah that Article 35A would be abrogated by 2020, Omar Abdullah called for bringing back the state’s high officials of the pre-1965 period, namely, a governor and chief minister equivalent called sadar-e-riyasat and wazir-e-azam respectively. At this, Prime Minister Modi sharply questioned in a campaign speech if there could be two prime ministers in one country.
The good part of the exchange is that Kashmir has been placed on the national election agenda, where it rightly belongs considering that the issue almost led to a war with Pakistan just a month ago.
It is unsurprising that there are two divergent positions on Kashmir. The positions contribute to delineating the two sides – the ruling party and its challenger coalition – from each other, and call for the voter to make an informed choice.
The Congress manifesto adds to the distinction. It promises a change of tack in Kashmir, countenancing a soft-line predicated on dialogue and reviewing the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. The Congress has roped in general DS Hooda on whose watch the post Uri surgical strikes had taken place. So, its security pitch would be hard to dismiss outright.
While the BJP manifesto is yet to hit the stands, the party can be expected to be sensitive to its constituency south of the Pir Panjals. With assembly elections due at an indeterminate date after parliamentary polls, the BJP would likely have a placatory menu for supporters. It would also be mindful of the Kashmiri Pandits, who have been overlooked in the Congress manifesto.
The last time round, in late 2014, the BJP won assembly seats in southern J&K on the back of the Border Security Force heating up the international border (called working boundary by Pakistan) in fire assaults. An active Line of Control may work in the BJP’s favour in the elections.
The party pulled out of the coalition with the Valley-based People’s Democratic Alliance in the middle of last year, allegedly hoping to form a government with a new partner in Sajjad Lone’s two-member People’s Conference and break-away assembly members of the PDP.
The timeline was cognizant of national elections and the possibility of clubbing of the assembly poll after a spell of governor’s rule followed by president’s rule. The hiatus had the advantage of enabling the hard line to play out in Kashmir under central oversight.
Reportedly, Operation All Out accounted for over 250 militants last year, with some 42 killed this year. Arguably, the hard line created the conditions for the car bomb attack at Pulwama in February, resulting in uncertainty over whether the security situation over the coming summer would permit assembly elections.
The BJP would not be averse to this uncertainty since it hopes to gain political dividend nationally by appropriating the mantle of being “strong on defence”. It has already set the state agenda in outlawing the Jamaat-e-Islami and the J&K Liberation Front; separatists are also on the defensive because of National Investigation Agency lens on them.
While in 2014, the BJP manifesto was against the continuation of Article 370 – the bridge article linking J&K to the Union - it diluted this as the price for being part of the ruling coalition in Srinagar for the first time.
This time round, while the BJP will retain its traditional plank on the constitutional articles 370 and 35A, dating to its avatar as the Jan Sangh, it may not be strong enough to overturn these in a coalition. Article 35A by way of which state subjects are allowed some special privileges is currently under judicial scrutiny.
Understandably, the regional parties and the Congress prefer continuance of both Articles 371 and 35A. Leaders of both regional parties, the NC and PDP, have respectively sounded the alarm on any tinkering with the two articles that they aver are foundational to Kashmir’s linkage with the Union. A robust defence enables them to remain relevant in Kashmiri public opinion.
They have expressed mutual support in defence of autonomy, signified by their last minute bid to form an unlikely coalition in November last year that instead prompted the governor to dissolve the assembly.
They also unsurprisingly call for the roll back of the largely military template and a dialogue with separatists to politically address issues. Alongside, they prefer a cooling along the Line of Control, with the new central government talking to Pakistan.
In conclusion, the BJP hard line and its threat over Articles 370 and 35A would likely see a continuation of troubles, especially since the isolation of Pakistan would continue. Prime Minister Modi has hinted that the Balakot aerial strikes were a demonstration of readiness to deal with the consequences. On the other hand, the opposition plank has de-escalatory possibilities and potential to reverse the trend since 2016.
The strength of the coalition at the center – to be known only in end May - would dictate the efficacy of its conflict management and conflict resolution strategies.
Thursday, 4 April 2019
http://www.milligazette.com/news/16633-will-pakistan-be-happy-if-modi-returns-to-power
Will Pakistan be happy if Modi returns to power?
In a campaign speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi thundered that Pakistan would be happy in case he is removed by an electoral verdict from power. As is his wont, he was implying that those who vote against his party are doing the handiwork of Pakistan, an enemy state. They are Pakistani agents, who naturally deserve to ‘go to Pakistan’ for their ‘anti-national’ act of voting against his return to power.
His logic is that since he is strong on defence, Pakistan would not like to see him re-elected, preferring instead traditional pusillanimity in the Indian leadership. A strong man at the helm would deal them the required blows from time to time as Mr. Modi has done with his claim of three surgical strikes – on land, through the air and in space in the form of a deterring anti-satellite (A-Sat) test.
Displacing Modi would be music to Pakistani ears and that of its ‘deep state’ constituting the army and the intelligence agency, supported by jihadist formations. To Modi, those who vote against him would please the Pakistani establishment. The subtext is that doing the Pakistani bidding, even if unwarily, would amount to treason – dissent and sedition being synonyms these days – now that Modi has revealed Pakistani expectations.
Is Modi right? Would Pakistani minders be pleased with an election outcome that sees him banished from 7, Lok Kalyan Marg?
Absent a ‘wave’ as in 2014 - observed by the political leader from the Deccan, Asaduddin Owaisi - there are jitters in the ruling party, best evidenced by the two ‘surgical strikes’ – Balakot and the A-Sat test. It also is reason for the polarising rhetoric orchestrated by no less than the occupant of the high prime ministerial office, Narendra Modi. Therefore, it is quite unnecessary to dissect his invective while on the campaign trail, even if the campaign has nothing to do with it since he is a genuine believer in himself, the first bhakt so to speak.
Nevertheless, to fact check Modi is useful, first, to ascertain if his claim to being strong on defence is valid, and, second, if that makes Pakistan quake in its boots.
Modi’s claim to three surgical strikes serves as a starting point. The first one – conducted across the Line of Control in the wake of Uri - was based on two preceding trans-border raids in the north east into Myanmar in 2015 and the following year. The 2015 raid was hyped up and the commanding general was later elevated as army chief. A similar operation the following year was downplayed by the then commander in the east, who was summarily overlooked for the post of chief for his temerity to deny the ruling party an opportunity for grandstanding on security.
Of the operation post-Uri terror strike, it was unnecessary to begin with, since the number of casualties were not a direct result of terrorist action but inflated by a dozen unfortunate soldiers perishing in a resulting fire in their tent. As for the outcome in terms of deterrence for further such terror attacks, the subsequent terror attacks south of the Pir Panjal on military installations and the car bombing at Pulwama in February this year, are testimony of failure of deterrence, the advertised aim of the ‘surgical strikes’.
As for Balakot, whatever the actual result on ground, an Indian general, Ata Hasnain, has admitted in a speech at a London think tank that the Pakistani information warfare got the better of the Indians. Pakistan in any case virtually evened the score immediately thereafter with its aerial strike at Rajouri-Naushera, downing of an Indian plane and capture of its pilot. It also gained an upper hand in the optics by releasing the pilot soon thereafter. The deterrent effect of the Balakot strike will be known in the coming summer and whether India is able to hold the assembly elections in Kashmir without embarrassment on its democratic credentials from the numbers turning out to vote.
As for the third surgical strike, the National Aeronautics and Space Agency has criticized the A-Sat test for the creation of space debris that could impact the international space station. This implies that the A-Sat capability is not usable, in that it has a collateral damage potential that cannot be risked politically. India would end up losing potential supporters in war in case it damages their satellites by taking the war to space. As for usability, China being ahead of India by a dozen years can easily be expected to deter Indian resort to A-Sat warfare. Against Pakistan, it would be useful but Pakistan has no known prowess in space that India needs to take out in war. In any case, today’s technology does not rely on kinetic-kill for such action but on cyber war.
The list could go on and include the down-turn in Kashmir, the hold-up in India-Pakistan relations, the subservience to the Chinese on display in Wuhan, the stench of scandal in defence procurements from the Rafale scam, the status quo on the Nagaland ceasefire, subversion of institutions, the inability to integrate defence acquisitions revealed in the friendly-fire incident in which an Isreali weapon system allegedly brought down a Russian-made helicopter due to incompatible identification friend or foe systems, doing a hit-wicket on India’s position on terror by releasing Hindutva terrorists in many terror cases, and the inability to institutionalise the national security system owing to an over-focus on the personality of its head, Ajit Doval. The list is ended here for want of space.
This survey of the defence side does not indicate any particular merit in the Modi-Doval stewardship of security. This prima facie means that there is no reason for Pakistan to fear a return of Modi to power.
That said, the reverse is more likely truer. Though the diplomat I accosted at the book release function was too professional to let on the Pakistani mind on the issue, it can be hazarded here that the Pakistani deep state would like to see Modi back in saddle. Firstly, as seen, they are not over-impressed by the Indian showing on defence, as to be losing any sleep. Secondly, they are aware of the mess in national security, which even Modi’s famed troll army has been unable to sweep under the carpet.
Finally, and more importantly, another term of Modi at the helm would result in a backlash to the Hindutva project that he seeks to entrench. His resort to all manner of jumlas, surgical strikes, outright lies (that there are no Hindu terrorists (if so, as Siddharth Varadarajan wondered, who, pray, was Nathuram Godse?)) is under-gird by the logic that ends justify the means, the ends being the greater glory of Hinduism as defined by its Hindutva proponents.
Any backlash would not necessarily be from Muslims, who are largely socially ghettoized, politically marginalized and cowed down by micro-terrorism. The Indian liberals are the first line of defence of the Constitution. Then there are leftists, currently down but could reemerge as the corporate-politics nexus under Modi runs aground in rural neglect and farmers’ strife. The entrenching of Hindutva would not result in an imagined homogenous nation in a Vedic-brahmanical frame, but a ‘million mutinies’, to borrow Naipaul’s phrase. The ongoing one is in Kashmir and in the pipeline could well be what might result from the populating of the register of citizens exercise in Assam and sought by the ruling party to be started also in West Bengal. There is, of course, the temple at Ayodhya to be built and ever higher statues that could at best divert attention. The military may be put out by the politicizing attentions of the far-right and their work being put to domestic political utility by the Modi-Shah combine. India’s closer strategic embrace of the United States and Israel would likely end in the same internal effects on polity as witnessed in other states that have been subject to such attention, significantly Pakistan as a US-frontline state. The fallout of this relationship would be in increased pressure from China. A cumulative backlash and a Modi-Doval authoritarian counter would push India back.
This survey of national security as it stands at the end of Modi’s five years and the possibilities ahead in a possible second term suggests that Pakistan would be quite happy to see Modi return to power. It would turn India into a Hindu-Pakistan and a poor imitation at that, a prospect not unwelcome to India’s antagonists. This would also be at a time when Pakistan for its part imagines it is slowly coming out of the tunnel of obscurantism that it had entered three decades back. For India to rush into the tunnel voluntarily would – counter intuitively – place Pakistan a step ahead, courtesy Modi.
Will Pakistan be happy if Modi returns to power?
In a campaign speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi thundered that Pakistan would be happy in case he is removed by an electoral verdict from power. As is his wont, he was implying that those who vote against his party are doing the handiwork of Pakistan, an enemy state. They are Pakistani agents, who naturally deserve to ‘go to Pakistan’ for their ‘anti-national’ act of voting against his return to power.
His logic is that since he is strong on defence, Pakistan would not like to see him re-elected, preferring instead traditional pusillanimity in the Indian leadership. A strong man at the helm would deal them the required blows from time to time as Mr. Modi has done with his claim of three surgical strikes – on land, through the air and in space in the form of a deterring anti-satellite (A-Sat) test.
Displacing Modi would be music to Pakistani ears and that of its ‘deep state’ constituting the army and the intelligence agency, supported by jihadist formations. To Modi, those who vote against him would please the Pakistani establishment. The subtext is that doing the Pakistani bidding, even if unwarily, would amount to treason – dissent and sedition being synonyms these days – now that Modi has revealed Pakistani expectations.
Is Modi right? Would Pakistani minders be pleased with an election outcome that sees him banished from 7, Lok Kalyan Marg?
Absent a ‘wave’ as in 2014 - observed by the political leader from the Deccan, Asaduddin Owaisi - there are jitters in the ruling party, best evidenced by the two ‘surgical strikes’ – Balakot and the A-Sat test. It also is reason for the polarising rhetoric orchestrated by no less than the occupant of the high prime ministerial office, Narendra Modi. Therefore, it is quite unnecessary to dissect his invective while on the campaign trail, even if the campaign has nothing to do with it since he is a genuine believer in himself, the first bhakt so to speak.
Nevertheless, to fact check Modi is useful, first, to ascertain if his claim to being strong on defence is valid, and, second, if that makes Pakistan quake in its boots.
Modi’s claim to three surgical strikes serves as a starting point. The first one – conducted across the Line of Control in the wake of Uri - was based on two preceding trans-border raids in the north east into Myanmar in 2015 and the following year. The 2015 raid was hyped up and the commanding general was later elevated as army chief. A similar operation the following year was downplayed by the then commander in the east, who was summarily overlooked for the post of chief for his temerity to deny the ruling party an opportunity for grandstanding on security.
Of the operation post-Uri terror strike, it was unnecessary to begin with, since the number of casualties were not a direct result of terrorist action but inflated by a dozen unfortunate soldiers perishing in a resulting fire in their tent. As for the outcome in terms of deterrence for further such terror attacks, the subsequent terror attacks south of the Pir Panjal on military installations and the car bombing at Pulwama in February this year, are testimony of failure of deterrence, the advertised aim of the ‘surgical strikes’.
As for Balakot, whatever the actual result on ground, an Indian general, Ata Hasnain, has admitted in a speech at a London think tank that the Pakistani information warfare got the better of the Indians. Pakistan in any case virtually evened the score immediately thereafter with its aerial strike at Rajouri-Naushera, downing of an Indian plane and capture of its pilot. It also gained an upper hand in the optics by releasing the pilot soon thereafter. The deterrent effect of the Balakot strike will be known in the coming summer and whether India is able to hold the assembly elections in Kashmir without embarrassment on its democratic credentials from the numbers turning out to vote.
As for the third surgical strike, the National Aeronautics and Space Agency has criticized the A-Sat test for the creation of space debris that could impact the international space station. This implies that the A-Sat capability is not usable, in that it has a collateral damage potential that cannot be risked politically. India would end up losing potential supporters in war in case it damages their satellites by taking the war to space. As for usability, China being ahead of India by a dozen years can easily be expected to deter Indian resort to A-Sat warfare. Against Pakistan, it would be useful but Pakistan has no known prowess in space that India needs to take out in war. In any case, today’s technology does not rely on kinetic-kill for such action but on cyber war.
The list could go on and include the down-turn in Kashmir, the hold-up in India-Pakistan relations, the subservience to the Chinese on display in Wuhan, the stench of scandal in defence procurements from the Rafale scam, the status quo on the Nagaland ceasefire, subversion of institutions, the inability to integrate defence acquisitions revealed in the friendly-fire incident in which an Isreali weapon system allegedly brought down a Russian-made helicopter due to incompatible identification friend or foe systems, doing a hit-wicket on India’s position on terror by releasing Hindutva terrorists in many terror cases, and the inability to institutionalise the national security system owing to an over-focus on the personality of its head, Ajit Doval. The list is ended here for want of space.
This survey of the defence side does not indicate any particular merit in the Modi-Doval stewardship of security. This prima facie means that there is no reason for Pakistan to fear a return of Modi to power.
That said, the reverse is more likely truer. Though the diplomat I accosted at the book release function was too professional to let on the Pakistani mind on the issue, it can be hazarded here that the Pakistani deep state would like to see Modi back in saddle. Firstly, as seen, they are not over-impressed by the Indian showing on defence, as to be losing any sleep. Secondly, they are aware of the mess in national security, which even Modi’s famed troll army has been unable to sweep under the carpet.
Finally, and more importantly, another term of Modi at the helm would result in a backlash to the Hindutva project that he seeks to entrench. His resort to all manner of jumlas, surgical strikes, outright lies (that there are no Hindu terrorists (if so, as Siddharth Varadarajan wondered, who, pray, was Nathuram Godse?)) is under-gird by the logic that ends justify the means, the ends being the greater glory of Hinduism as defined by its Hindutva proponents.
Any backlash would not necessarily be from Muslims, who are largely socially ghettoized, politically marginalized and cowed down by micro-terrorism. The Indian liberals are the first line of defence of the Constitution. Then there are leftists, currently down but could reemerge as the corporate-politics nexus under Modi runs aground in rural neglect and farmers’ strife. The entrenching of Hindutva would not result in an imagined homogenous nation in a Vedic-brahmanical frame, but a ‘million mutinies’, to borrow Naipaul’s phrase. The ongoing one is in Kashmir and in the pipeline could well be what might result from the populating of the register of citizens exercise in Assam and sought by the ruling party to be started also in West Bengal. There is, of course, the temple at Ayodhya to be built and ever higher statues that could at best divert attention. The military may be put out by the politicizing attentions of the far-right and their work being put to domestic political utility by the Modi-Shah combine. India’s closer strategic embrace of the United States and Israel would likely end in the same internal effects on polity as witnessed in other states that have been subject to such attention, significantly Pakistan as a US-frontline state. The fallout of this relationship would be in increased pressure from China. A cumulative backlash and a Modi-Doval authoritarian counter would push India back.
This survey of national security as it stands at the end of Modi’s five years and the possibilities ahead in a possible second term suggests that Pakistan would be quite happy to see Modi return to power. It would turn India into a Hindu-Pakistan and a poor imitation at that, a prospect not unwelcome to India’s antagonists. This would also be at a time when Pakistan for its part imagines it is slowly coming out of the tunnel of obscurantism that it had entered three decades back. For India to rush into the tunnel voluntarily would – counter intuitively – place Pakistan a step ahead, courtesy Modi.
Saturday, 30 March 2019
https://www.dropbox.com/s/b7rnxkq853j7so1/Book%20X%20%281%29.pdf?dl=0
My tenth book - Ebook
South Asia at a strategic crossroad
by
Ali Ahmed
Book X – eBook compilation of writings on
www.ali-writings.blogspot.in
October 2017-March 2019
For those who speak truth to power
Foreword
The themes in this book compilation remain the same as in my earlier nine books, specifically, India-Pakistan strategic equations, nuclear and conventional doctrine, counter insurgency, Kashmir, military sociology and minority security. I have remained engaged with the major issues in national and regional security in South Asia over the year and half over which I wrote these commentaries. The book thus provides a source under one cover for appraising and understanding the ideas and events that have swirled in the cup of strategic affairs. It is particularly pertinent as it has been put together prior to the 2019 national elections in India, enabling voters to reprise the recent past and make up their minds as to whether they feel secure and are convinced that their country’s security is in safe hands.
The undercurrent in the pieces collated here is that national security has suffered under the the regime subscribing to cultural nationalism. Its view of security through ideological blinkers has endangered India and imperiled the region. This was brought to a head in the India-Pakistan crisis of February 2019. While a set of articles dating to the period present this case, the commentaries in the run up over the preceding year appear to predict the oncoming crisis in their coverage of the dangerous – if not reckless – manner national security in India has been run under its current minders.
The election mindedness of the ruling dispensation, with a view to further the cultural nationalist project on a reset of India along right wing lines, has been the over-riding factor and has quite naturally influenced strategic thinking and action. I record in these essays that this influence has been baleful at best. Strategic vacuity has been on full display for anyone caring to look and not be swayed by the compliant media and majoritarian extremists in the strategic community.
I remain indebted to my editors who have courageously accepted my contributions for publication. This has been despite the environment being one of intimidation, where dissidence and sedition are mistaken as synonyms. My insights – if any – on these pages only build on the back of observations and work of straight talking liberal thinkers and activists, who have stood up in difficult times to be counted and spoken truth to power. I believe their effort has firmly contained the right wing lurch of India, but there is much still to be done to reverse the tide of political and strategic toxicity. The book hopes to make a difference.
The book’s 72 commetaries are divided into 4 parts. The Strategy pages cover the issues arising in India-Pakistan relations, developments in Kashmir, internal security under assault by cultural nationalists and politico-military strategy. The Nuclear pages comprise articles on nuclear doctrine. The Military pages are devoted to the army that figured more often than usual in the headlines in the period owing to the visibility of its chief in the media. Finally, I cover the issue of security of India’s Muslim minority in the last part.
Contents
The Strategy pages
· Post poll national security options
· The National Security Agenda for the Next Government
· Can Shah Faesal bring the winds of political change to Kashmir?
· What is the difference between 'defensive offence' and 'offensive defence'?
Lessons learnt from the Balakot strike
· Balakot: Divining India’s strategy from its messaging
Where does the needle point?
· Pulwama: The counter attack
· India and Pakistan must de-escalate the current crisis
· Understanding India's land warfare doctrine
· Options before India to respond to the Pulwama terror attack
· Putting the army’s land warfare doctrine in the dock
· Why There Has Been No Military Response on Pulwama So Far
· Reminding The Political Class Of Clausewitz's First Injunction
· The Army's land warfare doctrine
· The land warfare doctrine: The army's or that of its Chief?
· Operation Kabaddi Revealed But Only Partially
· What do the echoes of Operation Kabaddi really say
· Kashmir: More of the hammer in the coming year
· Kashmir: Need for a peace process
· Kashmir: Towards peace with dignity
· Governor, 'root causes' matter
· Why the events in J&K are not good for democracy in the state
· Divide and kill
· Ajit Doval's platter: Centralisation with a purpose
· Making security a voter consideration
· India-Pakistan and the tussle of escalation dominance
· India-Pakistan: How dangerous are the waters?
· India-Pakistan: Ideology trumps strategy
· India on the brink
· Kashmir: When politics contaminates strategy
· India's spooks: Getting too big for their boots?
· Another disastrous idea from the Modi-Doval stable
· Decoding the Logic Behind the Shelving of India’s Mountain Strike Corps
· The army's two impulses in Kashmir: Human rights Doctrine and departures
· Human Rights: All so unfortunately ho-hum
· To fail Kashmir is to fail India
· Kashmir Peace Initiative: Depriving Pakistan Army Of A Lifeline
· What normalising the Sangh means for national security
· India’s military: Preparing for war in the nuclear age
· The Doval Scorecard
· India's internal security unravels
· A police wallah as proto Chief of Defence Staff
· War in 2018?
· Spiking possibilities: What is the army chief up to?
The nuclear pages
· India’s Nuclear Doctrine: Strategic Direction or Drift?
· Modi May Say Otherwise, But India Is Still Short of ‘Survivable Nuclear Deterrent’
· Modi at the Helm: Whither Nuclear Decision-making?
What nuclear weapons have done to us
· Are India’s nuclear weapons in safe hands?
The military pages
· Contextualising the army chief’s news making
· Selectivity in military justice
· Command responsibility in relation to good faith
· Opening up the cantonments: Army in the cross hairs of the right
· The army chief as regime spokeman?
· The Hindutva project and India's military
· Budget let down further strains army-government relations
· A revolt of the generals?
· A political army or an apolitical one?
· Dissension in the top brass?
· The General is at it again
· The Army: Introspection is warranted
The Chief has spoken; but is the Chief listening?
The Muslim minority pages
· Nailing the lies in name of national security
· Consequences for India’s minority of the gathering war clouds after Pulwama
· George Fernandes keeps his date with Gujarat carnage martyrs
· The minority security problematic
· Finally, the IS bogey laid to rest
· PM Modi's version of Rajdharma
· The army’s robustness in aid to civil authority: Lessons from the Gujarat Carnage
· On the Strongman myth
· A national security mess
· Noting the spokesperson-minister’s remarks
· An officer and gentleman: Worthy of a Muslim's ambition
· The 'incident': Nothing but political
· Is there an Indian 'deep state'?
· The dissident terror narrative
--
My tenth book - Ebook
South Asia at a strategic crossroad
by
Ali Ahmed
Book X – eBook compilation of writings on
www.ali-writings.blogspot.in
October 2017-March 2019
For those who speak truth to power
Foreword
The themes in this book compilation remain the same as in my earlier nine books, specifically, India-Pakistan strategic equations, nuclear and conventional doctrine, counter insurgency, Kashmir, military sociology and minority security. I have remained engaged with the major issues in national and regional security in South Asia over the year and half over which I wrote these commentaries. The book thus provides a source under one cover for appraising and understanding the ideas and events that have swirled in the cup of strategic affairs. It is particularly pertinent as it has been put together prior to the 2019 national elections in India, enabling voters to reprise the recent past and make up their minds as to whether they feel secure and are convinced that their country’s security is in safe hands.
The undercurrent in the pieces collated here is that national security has suffered under the the regime subscribing to cultural nationalism. Its view of security through ideological blinkers has endangered India and imperiled the region. This was brought to a head in the India-Pakistan crisis of February 2019. While a set of articles dating to the period present this case, the commentaries in the run up over the preceding year appear to predict the oncoming crisis in their coverage of the dangerous – if not reckless – manner national security in India has been run under its current minders.
The election mindedness of the ruling dispensation, with a view to further the cultural nationalist project on a reset of India along right wing lines, has been the over-riding factor and has quite naturally influenced strategic thinking and action. I record in these essays that this influence has been baleful at best. Strategic vacuity has been on full display for anyone caring to look and not be swayed by the compliant media and majoritarian extremists in the strategic community.
I remain indebted to my editors who have courageously accepted my contributions for publication. This has been despite the environment being one of intimidation, where dissidence and sedition are mistaken as synonyms. My insights – if any – on these pages only build on the back of observations and work of straight talking liberal thinkers and activists, who have stood up in difficult times to be counted and spoken truth to power. I believe their effort has firmly contained the right wing lurch of India, but there is much still to be done to reverse the tide of political and strategic toxicity. The book hopes to make a difference.
The book’s 72 commetaries are divided into 4 parts. The Strategy pages cover the issues arising in India-Pakistan relations, developments in Kashmir, internal security under assault by cultural nationalists and politico-military strategy. The Nuclear pages comprise articles on nuclear doctrine. The Military pages are devoted to the army that figured more often than usual in the headlines in the period owing to the visibility of its chief in the media. Finally, I cover the issue of security of India’s Muslim minority in the last part.
Contents
The Strategy pages
· Post poll national security options
· The National Security Agenda for the Next Government
· Can Shah Faesal bring the winds of political change to Kashmir?
· What is the difference between 'defensive offence' and 'offensive defence'?
Lessons learnt from the Balakot strike
· Balakot: Divining India’s strategy from its messaging
Where does the needle point?
· Pulwama: The counter attack
· India and Pakistan must de-escalate the current crisis
· Understanding India's land warfare doctrine
· Options before India to respond to the Pulwama terror attack
· Putting the army’s land warfare doctrine in the dock
· Why There Has Been No Military Response on Pulwama So Far
· Reminding The Political Class Of Clausewitz's First Injunction
· The Army's land warfare doctrine
· The land warfare doctrine: The army's or that of its Chief?
· Operation Kabaddi Revealed But Only Partially
· What do the echoes of Operation Kabaddi really say
· Kashmir: More of the hammer in the coming year
· Kashmir: Need for a peace process
· Kashmir: Towards peace with dignity
· Governor, 'root causes' matter
· Why the events in J&K are not good for democracy in the state
· Divide and kill
· Ajit Doval's platter: Centralisation with a purpose
· Making security a voter consideration
· India-Pakistan and the tussle of escalation dominance
· India-Pakistan: How dangerous are the waters?
· India-Pakistan: Ideology trumps strategy
· India on the brink
· Kashmir: When politics contaminates strategy
· India's spooks: Getting too big for their boots?
· Another disastrous idea from the Modi-Doval stable
· Decoding the Logic Behind the Shelving of India’s Mountain Strike Corps
· The army's two impulses in Kashmir: Human rights Doctrine and departures
· Human Rights: All so unfortunately ho-hum
· To fail Kashmir is to fail India
· Kashmir Peace Initiative: Depriving Pakistan Army Of A Lifeline
· What normalising the Sangh means for national security
· India’s military: Preparing for war in the nuclear age
· The Doval Scorecard
· India's internal security unravels
· A police wallah as proto Chief of Defence Staff
· War in 2018?
· Spiking possibilities: What is the army chief up to?
The nuclear pages
· India’s Nuclear Doctrine: Strategic Direction or Drift?
· Modi May Say Otherwise, But India Is Still Short of ‘Survivable Nuclear Deterrent’
· Modi at the Helm: Whither Nuclear Decision-making?
What nuclear weapons have done to us
· Are India’s nuclear weapons in safe hands?
The military pages
· Contextualising the army chief’s news making
· Selectivity in military justice
· Command responsibility in relation to good faith
· Opening up the cantonments: Army in the cross hairs of the right
· The army chief as regime spokeman?
· The Hindutva project and India's military
· Budget let down further strains army-government relations
· A revolt of the generals?
· A political army or an apolitical one?
· Dissension in the top brass?
· The General is at it again
· The Army: Introspection is warranted
The Chief has spoken; but is the Chief listening?
The Muslim minority pages
· Nailing the lies in name of national security
· Consequences for India’s minority of the gathering war clouds after Pulwama
· George Fernandes keeps his date with Gujarat carnage martyrs
· The minority security problematic
· Finally, the IS bogey laid to rest
· PM Modi's version of Rajdharma
· The army’s robustness in aid to civil authority: Lessons from the Gujarat Carnage
· On the Strongman myth
· A national security mess
· Noting the spokesperson-minister’s remarks
· An officer and gentleman: Worthy of a Muslim's ambition
· The 'incident': Nothing but political
· Is there an Indian 'deep state'?
· The dissident terror narrative
--
Friday, 29 March 2019
https://www.indianewsstream.com/kashmir-pakistan-national-security-options-before-next-government/
Pakistan: Post poll national security options before present or next ‘chowkidar’
In history, ‘chowkidar’ will forever be associated with the 2019 elections. In Prime Minister Modi’s appropriation of the term, it signifies an alert, anti-corruption watchdog, somewhat personified by none other than himself.
Though the term dates to the 2014 elections, when Modi presented himself as out to clean up the stables of United Progressive Alliance’s malfeasance, the term has expanded in its current avatar post-Balakot to depict Modi as the one to be entrusted with national security.
While different people would say differently on Modi’s claim in regard to the first version of the term , the second, recent, version of the term needs detain us longer. This owes to the electoral agenda featuring national security for the first time, distracting from more significant issues as joblessness and farmer’s plight.
To begin with, the Balakot aerial strikes, now considerably politicized, not least because of ruling party first making the claim of 300 dead. The effects of the strikes are not of much consequence. The key question instead is on the outcome of the strikes.
This is yet to play out and would be evident in the coming summer when India would be faced with holding assembly elections in Kashmir. Simultaneous elections to the parliament and assembly being ruled out on security grounds by the election commission, a decision on the assembly elections will be the first challenge facing the new government. Its choice would be dependent on the expectation of voter turnout that would likely be so bleak as to expose the underbelly of Indian democracy.
In case the Modi government is returned to power, it will be happy to postpone assembly elections indefinitely with security indices in support of its decision. Its recent political actions of banning the Jamaat and the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front have set the post-national election agenda. The advantage it would seek would be in enabling the military template another summer to wrap up the insurgency.
Since the indigenous wellsprings of insurgency may dry up if another cohort of Kashmiri youth is killed in the bargain, Pakistan is unlikely to watch from the sidelines. The ceasefire violations testifying to an active Line of Control provide it cover to infiltrate terrorists and send in weapons. In short, Modi would have set up the conditions for another Pulwama-like incident.
India’s response – and the Pakistani counter – can both prove escalatory. Having exhausted the surgical strikes option after the Uri attack and forewarned of the escalation potential of aerial strikes by the Balakot-Naushera tit-for-tat exchange, Modi may settle for lobbing missiles across.
The missile threat figured in the immediate aftermath of the Pakistani aerial bombardment in Naushera, on the day following the Indian Balakot strike. Reportedly, India readied its short range missiles for launch, apparently to force Pakistan to treat its pilot, Abhinandan Varthaman in their custody, as per the Geneva Conventions and return him safely.
Pakistan, for its part, threatened to hurl back thrice the number of Indian missiles. Elsewhere, the numbers involved have been reported as 9 Indian and 13 Pakistani missiles readied for launch. While there was no indication of the intended targets on either side, these could well have been escalatory in themselves, besides the fact that missiles crossed the Radcliffe line for the first time since their advent in arsenals in the eighties.
Fortunately, President Trump’s second Singapore meeting with the North Korean dictator had aborted by then, enabling the Americans to step in with their class monitor act. In short, the step up the escalatory ladder was avoided.
The question that needs asking is whether the Indian reaction to Naushera – aborted by timely American intervention – and the inevitable Pakistani counter would not have precipitated matters that were already at a boil in the recent crisis? How could the missile strikes have secured India?
The answer is fairly self-evident. A source reported in the media has it that the Indian side was willing to up the ante into the uncertain terrain of missile exchanges merely to force the Pakistanis to treat one of its combatants in Pakistan’s custody in keeping with international humanitarian law. That Pakistan would have had no other choice but to play by the rules of the Geneva Convention since it had released the visuals of the pilot on social media and officially admitted to his capture was overlooked by Indian decision makers.
This over-solicitousness for the well being of the serviceman even when engaged in the life threatening part of his occupation is part of a pattern.
During the surgical strikes, the prime minister admitted in an interview that troops had been asked to return prior to first light irrespective of their task being successful or otherwise. A report on the air force’s aerial strike has it that the air force had similar parameters to contend with in that the planes were not to venture too far on to the other side but to launch a stand-off attack.
This caution is perhaps understandable. With elections approaching, the political decision maker perhaps did not want to hold the can for casualties. The strictures also suggest dampening of escalation possibilities – which is all for the good – but put a question mark on the chest thumping ongoing since then.
More gravely, it indicates that the prime minister and his national security minders are not aware of what military action – essentially a bloody enterprise – entails. They need acquainting with one of the insights of the doyen of military strategists, the great Prussian general, Carl von Clausewitz, who wrote:
Let us not hear of generals who conquer without bloodshed. If a bloody slaughter is a horrible sight, then that is a ground for paying more respect to war, but not for making the sword we wear blunter and blunter by degrees from feelings of humanity, until someone steps in with one that is sharp and lops off the arm from our body.”
Alternatively, it is well nigh possible that the missiles were readied not so much for securing the release of Abhinandan – as the news report has us believe – but as cover to follow up on any Pakistani counter to Balakot.
In the event, firstly, the readying of the missiles did nothing to deter the Pakistanis – if they picked up the messaging – and, secondly, India did not follow through with the launch. The missiles-to-help-free-Abhinandan story in this reading is a post-facto rationalization, meant to kill two birds with one stone: one, take credit for Pakistan’s release of Abhinandan, and, two, to explain the climb down from missile readiness to missile stowage.
This has implications for the future.
The scores of the Balakot-Naushera episode are not unambiguously in India’s favour. Pakistan by its brazen daylight attack forced a draw of sorts on a more powerful adversary. To realists, this required India to have upped-the-ante, for, not having had the last laugh, it has instead conceded the moral ascendancy to Pakistan.
If Modi returns to power, to compensate for this, he – more likely than not – will overreact to the next terror outrage. This can potentially set the region afire, as there is a nuclear button at an uncertain rung up the escalation ladder.
The second post election possibility needs examining. In case of a change in government, there is likelihood that anticipating a foreign policy shift Pakistan may hold its horses in Kashmir. This would prevent the triggering event; thereby allowing the new government to conduct the elections – even if the president’s rule is extended by another six months in Kashmir. A different direction in the Kashmir and Pakistan policy may follow.
This is a policy shift which even Narendra Modi if re-elected can equally choose to pursue. Now that he has demonstrated his strength, he could opt for the softline – of parallel though separate talks with Pakistan and Kashmir.
It is apparent that there are other ways to beget national security. Hopefully, the next government – of whichever hue – would choose the path that less imperils national and regional security.
Sunday, 24 March 2019
https://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/4/16547/The-National-Security-Agenda-for-the-Next-Government
The National Security Agenda for the Next Government
In case the Indian voter sees through the last-gasp clutching at perception management straws by the ruling party using the Balakot aerial strike, the next government would have a full national security agenda.
The outgoing government has set the stage that enables it to pick up the pieces if returned to power, even as it has queered the pitch for the next government if of a different complexion. The latter would enable it to call the shots even as the fledgling coalition finds its feet.
A new government’s agenda would be two tiered.
One would be an immediate term retrieval of India’s twinned Pakistan and Kashmir policies from the wreckage left behind by Ajit Doval’s stewardship of national security over the past five years.
The second, spread over the duration of its tenure, would be detoxification as part of stabilizing national security institutions truncated to varying degrees by ideological influence and penetration of cultural nationalism.
To begin with the first, a roll back to India’s Pakistan and Kashmir policy would not be as difficult as the Bharatiya Janata Party may have liked it to be with its disruptive gambit. Even so Pakistan’s prime minister, finding his initial outreach rebuffed by the Modi government that was contemplating elections, maturely decided to resume the initiative after elections.
The eponymous ‘Bajwa doctrine’ that under-grids the outreach – credited to the army chief’s reported privileging of Pakistan’s doddering economy over its proxy war commitments – may get a lease of life with General Bajwa granting himself an extension come November when he superannuates.
As for Kashmir, from the back-to-back bans on the Jamaat and the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, it is clear that Ajit Doval, a veteran of intelligence battles with Pakistani intelligence minders of these outfits, is living in the past and is way past his sell-by date.
India’s Kashmir policy would need immediate rescue from the return to the nineties in terms of a militarized template operational there.
While a BJP government would likely have persisted with president’s rule if re elected in order to attempt wrap up the insurgency militarily, a different coalition would have a significant decision immediately on taking power on its hands: of holding assembly elections before president’s rule expires early July.
For a BJP dispensation to postpone elections would be understandable since India is not in a position to have its democratic credentials in Kashmir exposed by an absence of voters from booths. However, a new government need not worry since, in anticipation of a change in policy, the very change at Delhi would energise mainstream parties, including the smaller and newer parties such as those of Sajjad Lone and Shah Faesal respectively, and the electorate, particularly youth.
The government would require eventually substituting the no-talks policy – under pretext of continuing terrorism - with a dual-pronged but separately-tracked talks’ process. Assured that Pakistan would not keep up its end of the 2004 Islamabad agreement under threat of Indian coercion, India - backtracking speedily from its manifestly military action at Balakot in the statement of its foreign secretary following the strikes – promised to keep up its end of the bargain: of talks in case of Pakistani restraint on export of terrorism.
A new government can keep to the commitment, sanguine that talks within Kashmir will have the beneficial effect of dampening any pull (Kashmiri disaffection) and push (Pakistan’s axe to grind) factors underlying Pakistani support of terrorism there.
The second tier reforms would assuredly be more challenging. In the intellectual space, the shift over the past three decades towards cultural nationalism and its influence on strategic culture can at best be contained.
What needs doing is to have conservative-realism reclaim its legitimate space, lost over the past five years to religious majoritarianism infected political and strategic culture.
This contextual political-level exercise would be internal to the conservative spectrum of national politics and likely fall out of an electoral defeat in which the hard-line verities of the strategic doctrine of the Modi-Doval combine are questioned.
Instigating and encouraging such retrospection needs to be done by the liberal realists in the strategic community in a counter discourse challenging the media-enabled dominance of the majoritarian ideologues. Doing so would be a necessary prerequisite to the strategic shifts by the new government.
At the institutional level, the muck is self-evident, the latest illustration being the letting-off of the Samjhauta blast perpetrators. The National Investigation Agency has long lost its integrity, victim as all other institutions to the intimate attentions of ideology purveyors in power.
Policy makers seem unmindful of the laughable implications for India’s single-track foreign policy – counter terrorism. Perhaps to them, India’s bid for a global consensus on ‘international terrorism’ (India champions the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism) precludes domestic terrorism from the purview of the definition of terrorism, enabling keeping India’s ‘good terrorists’ – its majoritarian (frankly put, Hindu) terrorists – off the radar.
The implication is that the imprint of the powerful intelligence fraternity must be diluted. It has got powerful in an imitation of its favourite bogeyman – the Inter-Services Intelligence – and to similar affect. Confidence needs to be infused in foreign service officers to hold their own in policy making.
Another – more problematic - illustration is in order. Cultural nationalist historiography has it that India was colonized a thousand years ago. No less than the prime minister adheres to this trope. The same has now penetrated the thus-far liberal and secular military. A serving colonel writing unselfconsciously in a 2017 number of the prestigious, Trishul, the intellectual output of the Defence Services Staff College, has it that India was lost to colonizers at the Battle of Tarain. It should disconcert that the editorial board did not find this amiss.
If the military has not been spared the attention of the cultural nationalists, it can well be imagined what the impact of the last five years has been on the normally spineless police and on the long-corroded steel frame, its bureaucracy. Detoxification based on a liberal-secular and modern outlook is the answer.
The plausibility of the foregoing agenda for the next government indicates the vacuity in the proposition bandied in wake of the Balakot strikes that there can be a consensus on national security with cultural nationalist narrative at its pole. The media-fanned notion is intended to place the opposition on the defensive. Instead, since the ruling party is parading its national security showing, it needs to be exposed.
The ruling party’s muddying of the Balakot aftermath by likening questions on damage assessments as undercutting the air force is to deflect a legitimate critique of its intelligence-led choice of target. The strategic purposes served need querying in contrast to the escalatory potential of the strike. Consider the counterfactual: What would have been the consequence if indeed 300 were killed at the site? This reveals that political calculus were at work behind the decision, not national security considerations.
The government needs changing for precisely the reason it thinks it needs another term. For now, the counter narrative can form the manifesto for the alternative.
The National Security Agenda for the Next Government
In case the Indian voter sees through the last-gasp clutching at perception management straws by the ruling party using the Balakot aerial strike, the next government would have a full national security agenda.
The outgoing government has set the stage that enables it to pick up the pieces if returned to power, even as it has queered the pitch for the next government if of a different complexion. The latter would enable it to call the shots even as the fledgling coalition finds its feet.
A new government’s agenda would be two tiered.
One would be an immediate term retrieval of India’s twinned Pakistan and Kashmir policies from the wreckage left behind by Ajit Doval’s stewardship of national security over the past five years.
The second, spread over the duration of its tenure, would be detoxification as part of stabilizing national security institutions truncated to varying degrees by ideological influence and penetration of cultural nationalism.
To begin with the first, a roll back to India’s Pakistan and Kashmir policy would not be as difficult as the Bharatiya Janata Party may have liked it to be with its disruptive gambit. Even so Pakistan’s prime minister, finding his initial outreach rebuffed by the Modi government that was contemplating elections, maturely decided to resume the initiative after elections.
The eponymous ‘Bajwa doctrine’ that under-grids the outreach – credited to the army chief’s reported privileging of Pakistan’s doddering economy over its proxy war commitments – may get a lease of life with General Bajwa granting himself an extension come November when he superannuates.
As for Kashmir, from the back-to-back bans on the Jamaat and the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, it is clear that Ajit Doval, a veteran of intelligence battles with Pakistani intelligence minders of these outfits, is living in the past and is way past his sell-by date.
India’s Kashmir policy would need immediate rescue from the return to the nineties in terms of a militarized template operational there.
While a BJP government would likely have persisted with president’s rule if re elected in order to attempt wrap up the insurgency militarily, a different coalition would have a significant decision immediately on taking power on its hands: of holding assembly elections before president’s rule expires early July.
For a BJP dispensation to postpone elections would be understandable since India is not in a position to have its democratic credentials in Kashmir exposed by an absence of voters from booths. However, a new government need not worry since, in anticipation of a change in policy, the very change at Delhi would energise mainstream parties, including the smaller and newer parties such as those of Sajjad Lone and Shah Faesal respectively, and the electorate, particularly youth.
The government would require eventually substituting the no-talks policy – under pretext of continuing terrorism - with a dual-pronged but separately-tracked talks’ process. Assured that Pakistan would not keep up its end of the 2004 Islamabad agreement under threat of Indian coercion, India - backtracking speedily from its manifestly military action at Balakot in the statement of its foreign secretary following the strikes – promised to keep up its end of the bargain: of talks in case of Pakistani restraint on export of terrorism.
A new government can keep to the commitment, sanguine that talks within Kashmir will have the beneficial effect of dampening any pull (Kashmiri disaffection) and push (Pakistan’s axe to grind) factors underlying Pakistani support of terrorism there.
The second tier reforms would assuredly be more challenging. In the intellectual space, the shift over the past three decades towards cultural nationalism and its influence on strategic culture can at best be contained.
What needs doing is to have conservative-realism reclaim its legitimate space, lost over the past five years to religious majoritarianism infected political and strategic culture.
This contextual political-level exercise would be internal to the conservative spectrum of national politics and likely fall out of an electoral defeat in which the hard-line verities of the strategic doctrine of the Modi-Doval combine are questioned.
Instigating and encouraging such retrospection needs to be done by the liberal realists in the strategic community in a counter discourse challenging the media-enabled dominance of the majoritarian ideologues. Doing so would be a necessary prerequisite to the strategic shifts by the new government.
At the institutional level, the muck is self-evident, the latest illustration being the letting-off of the Samjhauta blast perpetrators. The National Investigation Agency has long lost its integrity, victim as all other institutions to the intimate attentions of ideology purveyors in power.
Policy makers seem unmindful of the laughable implications for India’s single-track foreign policy – counter terrorism. Perhaps to them, India’s bid for a global consensus on ‘international terrorism’ (India champions the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism) precludes domestic terrorism from the purview of the definition of terrorism, enabling keeping India’s ‘good terrorists’ – its majoritarian (frankly put, Hindu) terrorists – off the radar.
The implication is that the imprint of the powerful intelligence fraternity must be diluted. It has got powerful in an imitation of its favourite bogeyman – the Inter-Services Intelligence – and to similar affect. Confidence needs to be infused in foreign service officers to hold their own in policy making.
Another – more problematic - illustration is in order. Cultural nationalist historiography has it that India was colonized a thousand years ago. No less than the prime minister adheres to this trope. The same has now penetrated the thus-far liberal and secular military. A serving colonel writing unselfconsciously in a 2017 number of the prestigious, Trishul, the intellectual output of the Defence Services Staff College, has it that India was lost to colonizers at the Battle of Tarain. It should disconcert that the editorial board did not find this amiss.
If the military has not been spared the attention of the cultural nationalists, it can well be imagined what the impact of the last five years has been on the normally spineless police and on the long-corroded steel frame, its bureaucracy. Detoxification based on a liberal-secular and modern outlook is the answer.
The plausibility of the foregoing agenda for the next government indicates the vacuity in the proposition bandied in wake of the Balakot strikes that there can be a consensus on national security with cultural nationalist narrative at its pole. The media-fanned notion is intended to place the opposition on the defensive. Instead, since the ruling party is parading its national security showing, it needs to be exposed.
The ruling party’s muddying of the Balakot aftermath by likening questions on damage assessments as undercutting the air force is to deflect a legitimate critique of its intelligence-led choice of target. The strategic purposes served need querying in contrast to the escalatory potential of the strike. Consider the counterfactual: What would have been the consequence if indeed 300 were killed at the site? This reveals that political calculus were at work behind the decision, not national security considerations.
The government needs changing for precisely the reason it thinks it needs another term. For now, the counter narrative can form the manifesto for the alternative.
Friday, 22 March 2019
https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/india/opinion-can-shah-faesal-bring-the-winds-of-political-change-to-kashmir-3680971.html
Can Shah Faesal bring the winds of political change to Kashmir?
The year 2019 had an ominous start in Jammu & Kashmir under conditions of rule by Delhi with the six months period of governor’s rule transitioning into President’s Rule for the first time in 22 years on December 20. With the Election Commission of India deciding to not hold simultaneous elections to Parliament and to the assembly on security grounds, President’s Rule may well end up being extended in case the incoming government at the Centre takes its time to settle in and decide on new dates.
This extension of rule by Delhi has one bright side. It gives Shah Faesal’s newly-launched political party, Jammu and Kashmir’s People’s Movement, time to find its feet. Launched on March 17, it gets off to a flying start fielding candidates in the parliamentary elections, including possibly Shehla Rashid, the Jawaharlal Nehru University student leader who shot to fame in the episode of alleged sedition in 2016. Its plunge would provide it an indication on the political winds that it could in the breather between the two elections build on or course correct.
The new political party ticks all the right boxes in its vision document, pledging to make people “politically empowered, economically prosperous, socially emancipated, ethically evolved, culturally enlightened and environmentally conscious”. It comes as a breath of fresh air in otherwise rather bleak prospects in Kashmir over the coming summer.
The jury is still out whether Delhi’s rule can be brought to a close any time soon. The last time in the early nineties it lasted six years. The bypoll in the Anantnag constituency, vacated by Mehbooba Mufti on taking over as chief minister in 2016, became the longest delayed bypoll since 1996, being postponed thrice over on security grounds in 2017. The bypoll in the Srinagar constituency held in April 2017 had a record-low seven per cent turnout. The urban local body elections in October last year witnessed a further fall, with Srinagar City recording merely two per cent polling. A low turnout in assembly elections could prove embarrassing for India and show up the hardline in Kashmir as politically vacuous.
The latest round of troubles in Kashmir, dating to the killing of Burhan Wani in July 2016, have registered an uptick with the Pulwama car bomb terror attack on February 14 and by security forces killing at least 18 terrorists in J&K since then. The latest incidence of the hardline is in the banning of the Jamaat-e-Islami, despite its distancing itself from terror long back.
Since the summer would be in full swing, the prospects of Pakistan-supported infiltration would be higher, as would violence indices. The recent India-Pakistan crisis may prompt Pakistan to be more proactive than it has been lately in its proxy war. All this would increase the likelihood of the next Union government — even if it is a second term for Prime Minister Narendra Modi — considering postponing the assembly elections. This is even thought the current position of the Union home ministry is to hold it in June before the spell of President’s Rule ends in early July.
People staying away from polls would also reflect their disaffection from the nature of democratic politics in the state. This is already seen in the insurgency being largely centred in south Kashmir where people were angered by their chosen party, Mehbooba Mufti’s Peoples Democratic Party, aligning with the Bhartiya Janata Party to form the government. The BJP pulled the rug from under the PDP in June last year.
Soon thereafter, rumours were rife that the BJP connived with Sajjad Lone — whose party had just two legislators — and potential PDP defectors to attempt to form a government. Finally, in November, the governor dissolved the assembly under circumstances in which rival claims were made through social media.
Faesal’s arrival on the scene in a political avatar after leaving the administrative service helps with alleviating this bleakness. His topping of the civil services 2010 batch served as an inspiration to Kashmiri youth back then. He hopes to repeat the same a decade on. It remains to be seen if he can live up to his slogan, ‘Ab hawa badlegi’.
Can Shah Faesal bring the winds of political change to Kashmir?
The year 2019 had an ominous start in Jammu & Kashmir under conditions of rule by Delhi with the six months period of governor’s rule transitioning into President’s Rule for the first time in 22 years on December 20. With the Election Commission of India deciding to not hold simultaneous elections to Parliament and to the assembly on security grounds, President’s Rule may well end up being extended in case the incoming government at the Centre takes its time to settle in and decide on new dates.
This extension of rule by Delhi has one bright side. It gives Shah Faesal’s newly-launched political party, Jammu and Kashmir’s People’s Movement, time to find its feet. Launched on March 17, it gets off to a flying start fielding candidates in the parliamentary elections, including possibly Shehla Rashid, the Jawaharlal Nehru University student leader who shot to fame in the episode of alleged sedition in 2016. Its plunge would provide it an indication on the political winds that it could in the breather between the two elections build on or course correct.
The new political party ticks all the right boxes in its vision document, pledging to make people “politically empowered, economically prosperous, socially emancipated, ethically evolved, culturally enlightened and environmentally conscious”. It comes as a breath of fresh air in otherwise rather bleak prospects in Kashmir over the coming summer.
The jury is still out whether Delhi’s rule can be brought to a close any time soon. The last time in the early nineties it lasted six years. The bypoll in the Anantnag constituency, vacated by Mehbooba Mufti on taking over as chief minister in 2016, became the longest delayed bypoll since 1996, being postponed thrice over on security grounds in 2017. The bypoll in the Srinagar constituency held in April 2017 had a record-low seven per cent turnout. The urban local body elections in October last year witnessed a further fall, with Srinagar City recording merely two per cent polling. A low turnout in assembly elections could prove embarrassing for India and show up the hardline in Kashmir as politically vacuous.
The latest round of troubles in Kashmir, dating to the killing of Burhan Wani in July 2016, have registered an uptick with the Pulwama car bomb terror attack on February 14 and by security forces killing at least 18 terrorists in J&K since then. The latest incidence of the hardline is in the banning of the Jamaat-e-Islami, despite its distancing itself from terror long back.
Since the summer would be in full swing, the prospects of Pakistan-supported infiltration would be higher, as would violence indices. The recent India-Pakistan crisis may prompt Pakistan to be more proactive than it has been lately in its proxy war. All this would increase the likelihood of the next Union government — even if it is a second term for Prime Minister Narendra Modi — considering postponing the assembly elections. This is even thought the current position of the Union home ministry is to hold it in June before the spell of President’s Rule ends in early July.
People staying away from polls would also reflect their disaffection from the nature of democratic politics in the state. This is already seen in the insurgency being largely centred in south Kashmir where people were angered by their chosen party, Mehbooba Mufti’s Peoples Democratic Party, aligning with the Bhartiya Janata Party to form the government. The BJP pulled the rug from under the PDP in June last year.
Soon thereafter, rumours were rife that the BJP connived with Sajjad Lone — whose party had just two legislators — and potential PDP defectors to attempt to form a government. Finally, in November, the governor dissolved the assembly under circumstances in which rival claims were made through social media.
Faesal’s arrival on the scene in a political avatar after leaving the administrative service helps with alleviating this bleakness. His topping of the civil services 2010 batch served as an inspiration to Kashmiri youth back then. He hopes to repeat the same a decade on. It remains to be seen if he can live up to his slogan, ‘Ab hawa badlegi’.
Thursday, 14 March 2019
https://idsa.in/askanexpert/defensive-offence-and-offensive-defence
What is the difference between 'defensive offence' and 'offensive defence'?
At a lecture at Sastra University in February 2014, the National Security Adviser (NSA), Ajit Doval, who was then heading a New Delhi-based think tank, characterised strategic doctrine into three modes: defensive, defensive offence and offence. Elaborating on these three modes of engaging an adversary – Pakistan – he made a case for shifting from a defensive mode to defensive offence.
The defensive, which India preferred through a strategic doctrine of strategic restraint, had the limitation of lack of positive results and being status quoist. The offence on the other hand was unmindful of the nuclear threshold. This left India with the strategic doctrinal choice of ‘defensive offence’.
The offence component of defensive offence is to carry the fight to the enemy through means such as exploiting internal contradictions, international isolation, etc. It has a deterrent objective of sensitising the adversary, best illustrated by Doval’s dramatic phrasing: ‘You do one Mumbai, you lose Baluchistan.’ This, to Doval, kept out the nuclear dimension and therefore worth a gear shift for India.
Since Doval went on to be appointed the NSA in the new government soon after this speech in which he advocated the gear shift, it can be inferred that defensive offence best describes India’s strategic doctrine of today.
An illustration of its operation is in the recent India-Pakistan crisis in which India responded to the February 14 Pulwama terror attack that killed 44 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) troopers with an aerial surgical strike on February 26, targeting the training facility of the perpetrators within mainland Pakistan at Balakot. That India did not militarily counter Pakistan’s aerial riposte to the Balakot strike through its air attack on military positions in Naushera sector of the Line of Control is indicative of India’s defensive/deterrent intent, but through offensive means (defensive offence).
‘Offensive defence’ is similar, though differently worded. The term has been linked to Pakistan’s strategic doctrine dating to the post-Zia period. Pakistan, known to have limited strategic depth, was loath to lose territory to Indian offensives based on India’s strike corps. It therefore adopted a doctrine of offensive defence in carrying the war preemptively to the enemy, India, taking advantage of the mobilisation differential in its favour. With an overall defensive purpose, the offensive is to force the larger foe on the back-foot at the outset by seizing the initiative.
Its doctrinal evolution, after being posed with the challenge of India’s ‘cold start’ doctrine, has reinforced its offensive defence doctrine, now named ‘comprehensive response’. It is permissive of counter-offensive ripostes and is the conventional complement to the move to ‘full spectrum deterrence’ in its nuclear doctrine.
Strategic doctrine has been conceptualised variously. In some versions, the modes of a strategic posture are: defence, deterrence, offence and compellence, with each mode having subdivisions, such as deterrence which could be of two types: defensive deterrence (deterrence by denial) and offensive deterrence (deterrence by punishment).
The choice of strategic doctrine is a prerequisite for a government as it informs its actions in preserving, creating and securing the conditions of security for the state. The strategic doctrine is usually in the form of an official national strategic review document that sets the aims and parameters for the follow-on doctrines of the instruments of state, such as joint military doctrine and service-specific doctrines.
For more on the subject, please refer to the following:
Shri Ajit Kumar Doval’s Lecture at Sastra University, February 21, 2014.
Ryan French, “Deterrence Adrift?: Mapping Conflict and Escalation in South Asia”, Strategic Studies Quarterly, 10 (1), Spring 2016, pp. 106-137.
What is the difference between 'defensive offence' and 'offensive defence'?
At a lecture at Sastra University in February 2014, the National Security Adviser (NSA), Ajit Doval, who was then heading a New Delhi-based think tank, characterised strategic doctrine into three modes: defensive, defensive offence and offence. Elaborating on these three modes of engaging an adversary – Pakistan – he made a case for shifting from a defensive mode to defensive offence.
The defensive, which India preferred through a strategic doctrine of strategic restraint, had the limitation of lack of positive results and being status quoist. The offence on the other hand was unmindful of the nuclear threshold. This left India with the strategic doctrinal choice of ‘defensive offence’.
The offence component of defensive offence is to carry the fight to the enemy through means such as exploiting internal contradictions, international isolation, etc. It has a deterrent objective of sensitising the adversary, best illustrated by Doval’s dramatic phrasing: ‘You do one Mumbai, you lose Baluchistan.’ This, to Doval, kept out the nuclear dimension and therefore worth a gear shift for India.
Since Doval went on to be appointed the NSA in the new government soon after this speech in which he advocated the gear shift, it can be inferred that defensive offence best describes India’s strategic doctrine of today.
An illustration of its operation is in the recent India-Pakistan crisis in which India responded to the February 14 Pulwama terror attack that killed 44 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) troopers with an aerial surgical strike on February 26, targeting the training facility of the perpetrators within mainland Pakistan at Balakot. That India did not militarily counter Pakistan’s aerial riposte to the Balakot strike through its air attack on military positions in Naushera sector of the Line of Control is indicative of India’s defensive/deterrent intent, but through offensive means (defensive offence).
‘Offensive defence’ is similar, though differently worded. The term has been linked to Pakistan’s strategic doctrine dating to the post-Zia period. Pakistan, known to have limited strategic depth, was loath to lose territory to Indian offensives based on India’s strike corps. It therefore adopted a doctrine of offensive defence in carrying the war preemptively to the enemy, India, taking advantage of the mobilisation differential in its favour. With an overall defensive purpose, the offensive is to force the larger foe on the back-foot at the outset by seizing the initiative.
Its doctrinal evolution, after being posed with the challenge of India’s ‘cold start’ doctrine, has reinforced its offensive defence doctrine, now named ‘comprehensive response’. It is permissive of counter-offensive ripostes and is the conventional complement to the move to ‘full spectrum deterrence’ in its nuclear doctrine.
Strategic doctrine has been conceptualised variously. In some versions, the modes of a strategic posture are: defence, deterrence, offence and compellence, with each mode having subdivisions, such as deterrence which could be of two types: defensive deterrence (deterrence by denial) and offensive deterrence (deterrence by punishment).
The choice of strategic doctrine is a prerequisite for a government as it informs its actions in preserving, creating and securing the conditions of security for the state. The strategic doctrine is usually in the form of an official national strategic review document that sets the aims and parameters for the follow-on doctrines of the instruments of state, such as joint military doctrine and service-specific doctrines.
For more on the subject, please refer to the following:
Shri Ajit Kumar Doval’s Lecture at Sastra University, February 21, 2014.
Ryan French, “Deterrence Adrift?: Mapping Conflict and Escalation in South Asia”, Strategic Studies Quarterly, 10 (1), Spring 2016, pp. 106-137.
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